Chapter Text
In all honesty, Firstone never thought that this is what his life would come to.
Or at least, he thought a little differently.
Tailored suits and satin blouses. Golden spoon and champagne flutes. He always knew their family was far from common.
At a young age, he knew he wasn’t like the rest of the kids. While other children recounted adventures of scraped knees from playing in public parks, free to fail, to be perfectly ordinary, he was not. Every choice—from the school tie he wore to whatever book he was reading—was made for him. He was never allowed to decide what he could and couldn’t do. His dream, his career and apparently, even who he would marry.
He knew he couldn’t simply choose a nobody to be his lifelong partner. Yet he still thought, at least hoped, their meeting would have been organic. Presumed by his parents but a little different. Even when he could only choose amongst the snobs and families of old nemeses, whose shared dinners were disguised attempts to make connections and talk about business matters, he at least thought he would meet someone with whom he could exchange genuine emotions.
In hindsight, he did.
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“I pity the ducks.”
Those had been the first words ever spoken between them, and even for how long it has passed, he remembers them very distinctly.
The water was still, a reflection of the hazy sky in an afternoon and a small raft of mallards paddled lazily near the bank. His shoulder shook with the effort of silence. The sting in his eyes was a fierce hot thing, a mix of hurt and frustration that only a child would understand. He watched the ducks, trying to focus on their carefree dipping when a shadow fell across the damp grass beside him. He didn’t dare look up for fear of seeing his mother’s steely gaze, only it wasn’t her but just another child, perhaps a year or so older.
“I pity the ducks,” he said thoughtfully, as he sat down quietly next to him, not too close, as if to keep a respectful distance between them.
For a long moment, there was only silence. The only sounds were the soft lapping of the waters and the gentle quacks. He didn’t know who he was or whether he was even allowed to answer. He was taught never to speak unless spoken to. He didn’t dare to engage for fear of making another mistake that would only further anger his mother but the confusion and curiosity must have shown on his face despite the tears still tracking down his cheeks as he stared intently at the birds, chin resting on folded arms on his knees.
“They spend their whole lives on the water. They can never stay still and just… dry off. They’re always damp.”
The boy had said with a paused glanced at him and just as quickly, returned his focus to the pond.
“It must be terrible to always be a little bit cold.”
His words had not made any immediate sense but they created a strange unexpected distraction. For the first time in many times he had to console himself alone in silence, he stopped thinking about cold glares and flared nostrils and started thinking about the ducks’ eternally damp feathers.
It was very strange and unusual, yet so deep that he himself as a child would never have thought of it till that very moment. More strangely enough, it had consoled him. It was that bizarre empathy of an eleven-year-old boy and moment of unsaid connection between them that dried his tears without either child having to mention why he was crying.
That was the first time he met Tle.
Tle was everything Firstone wasn’t.
When he fumbled with words to express himself, flushing crimson under anyone’s gaze and breath cutting short with unwanted attention, Tle would stand tall, his voice clear and articulate, effortlessly carrying himself. Tle would wait without interruption, offering the simplest encouragement for him to continue. When he would end in a mumble retreat closed to tears in his eyes as the other children pushed him to corners, Tle would step in between, acting as a protective barrier, scaring the other kids away.
Tle was better.
Better at being smart, better at being confident...
Better at being a son his parents would have wanted him to be.
At first, he didn’t understand why Tle would choose to stick himself to someone like him. Tle was the sun in comparison and he was the perpetually awkward shadow. A sharp contrast to anyone who would look at them and could easily discern, yet Tle never once let Firstone feel less of himself.
All of a sudden, Tle was everywhere Firstone was till it became Tle and Firstone together.
He thought it would always stay that way.
Until it didn’t.
It wasn’t until Tle disappeared and came the person who now stands before him. The light behind his eyes, once a reckless welcoming spark had been extinguished, leaving behind a cold polished flatness that reflected nothing like the person whom he used to know.
The person inhabiting the same body, who shares the same face, is now just a ghost of the past, an unrecognizable stranger who stands before him, chained together not by affection but which their consents were mere formalities.
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“Phi.”
It is times like this when he finds himself eye to eye with the older male that Firstone looks back so he can try to figure out what it was exactly that sealed the deal for him.
To figure out exactly when it was that his heart decided to give itself away to one Matimun Sreeboonrueang.
He wonders if it was that time when they accidentally brushed hands and the older male boldly grabbed his hand and took it on his own. The older male had acted as if he knew exactly how much of a wreck he was in that moment.
Firstone wonders; was it his lapse of concentration which managed to spill through the facade on his face, the twitch on his eyebrow or wobble on his lips that gave him away? Or perhaps the drag of his breath and how close he was to tears as his mother shouted how good he was only for his pretty face and nothing else?
He knew it wasn’t comfort. It was damage control.
He didn’t reach out to share the weight of the moment, to offer a tangible anchor against the raging storm that was the younger male’s mother. No, he was simply trying to keep the younger male on his feet, a subtle yet heavy on the chest reminder it was all a reflexive action to prevent a more public and ugly mess.
Keep it in.
Don’t make a scene.
A silent firm warning.
Don’t make it more complicated.
To keep his composure and preserve whatever shared public face they have.
And yet.
The touch was a sudden seismic shift. The warmth of his palm against his was a promise—not of silence but of solace. He felt the subtle tremor of his thumb against his knuckles and instantly translated it into the language of intimacy and reassurance.
It was the first real sign of support the older male had shown throughout that one evening, a lifeline thrown at the last minute.
And it saved him.
The moment their hands touched, in that instant, the loud and suffocating room shrank away, and in the middle—there stood them. It was just the two of them, linked by a vulnerability that he mistakenly believed was mutual. No, neither mistaken nor mutual. Not at all. For he knew exactly what it had meant. Yet in that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to stop and drill it to his head and he had made a fool out of himself.
Firstone twisted the truth to fit his own narrative that the pressure of the older male’s fingers on his wasn't a warning to not engage but an invitation to lean in, to let the carefully constructed walls he built around himself crumble just a little and let in the false knowledge that he was there to catch the pieces. He reframed the meaning to a point where he genuinely believed he was right there; he would always be.
An anchor.
A support.
Comfort.
Was it then?
Maybe.
That whole experience feels incredibly distant now.
Still, it fits with how it seems he has always been wrestling with his feelings for the older male for as far as he can look back on. This acceptance allows him to simply put the memory to rest and neatly tuck it away. But then, there are moments when he thinks to himself, times when a different thought occurs to him.
Maybe it wasn’t just that singular moment. Days when he suddenly finds himself reminiscing and realizes it was even before then. Past the memory when he learned how warm the older male’s hand could be as he held his hand tight on his. How beneath all the cold surface he shows him, there is warmth he hides very carefully from the others.
There was more than then.
Even before what they now have that shackles them to one another.
A loveless, cold, arranged marriage.
That’s when it gets more complicated.
It's harder to move past the feelings tied to countless moments, rooted in too many chances he has seen the older male behind his carefully crafted front. A multitude of memories where he thinks, maybe, just maybe, the intensity of his feelings is rewarded. That maybe it is reciprocated and it is with that belief where he slowly, unknowingly fell, a slow and steady descent into love, leaving him hopeless with no way to turn back.
“Do I need to tell the maids to prepare dinner?”
Will you come home tonight?
The moment their eyes met, they didn’t stray from each other.
Something in his chest clenches, the faintest crack on top of several others.
It’s cold.
The way he looks back at him.
“No need to.”
Short. Curt. Terse.
Firstone nods.
“Okay,” his voice comes out soft, quieter, than intended.
Still he didn’t break contact. He was never one to break contact when he finds himself lost into the older male’s eyes.
Even when they look the least familiar, he waits.
Whether it is for the older male to be the first to look away or if something else, he doesn’t know.
Perhaps, hope?
A sliver of recognition.
Of amity.
Yet he was rewarded with nothing.
The older’s eyes stare at him cold as ever.
And as he continues to hold his gaze, the question of when did it change starts to surface.
When have those eyes that used to stare at him like he holds the sun confined into those orbs started to dim?
And in them, were replaced by indifference?
When have those eyes started to look at him with silent malice, his gaze cold as ice?
He could still faintly recall when there was sun to his eyes, when there were rays to his smile, but even that was a lifetime ago already.
“Don’t wait for me.”
A car comes to a halt next to them and Matimun opens the door.
“Goodnight, Phi.”
Firstone murmurs, the words almost caught in his throat.
His heart sinks as he watches the car drives off, leaving him stranded on the desolate driveway. The cold familiar weight of the empty house, of what should have been their shared home, rushes in to claim him.