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His heart hasn’t quite ceased making itself big and important in his chest cavity when the question comes to him. It’s hushed, like an unsuspecting cottage. “Is this comfortable for you?”
“Hm? You’re awake?” Peach’s voice flakes into a petering laughter.
At first, Thee’d decided on not speaking; he’d thought they’d just go to sleep side by side right away, for little chance of talks or interludes. Strangely, however, as leaden as his limbs feel with exhaustion, he can’t seem to fall asleep.
He turns his head to catch a glimpse of Peach’s profile in the dark, the faintest glimmer of smooth skin and jewelry, “You’re awake as well.”
“Hmmh.” The shape in the dark—a hand’s distance away—rolls over and slots into a pair of watchful eyes, never dulled by anything and yet gentle. The darkness molds itself a little more sharply to a face, a sensation, an outside force entirely out of Thee’s control. “Let’s hear it. What’s on your mind, Khun Thee?”
Thee looks away, slowly. Cottages are flimsy and unenduring. “These beds are miniscule—barely enough for the both of us. It’s appalling.”
“Are you having trouble sleeping because of this?” A silver of concern. Thee mutters a no, and fixates unseeing on a dot of moonlight stuck to the mosquito net, right at his feet. The concern shifts to confusion, as it’s bound to, “Khun Thee.”
Peach makes whole sentences out of his name. A making of symbols and then assigning it images, like putting a red dot for the sun.
“You should be uncomfortable with this arrangement,” he says, forcing his mouth to move. “This certainly qualifies for ‘inappropriate’.”
“Not really.” The amusement is back, warm and twinkling, “I mean, look, we’re both lying comfortably, protected from bugs, and the bed is soft.”
Thee almost turns towards him again before catching himself and retreating safely to his dark sanctuary of shadows, “It is not that.” Expectant silence follows this declaration, prompting him to continue, “You told me that I couldn’t sleep over at your house because it wouldn’t be appropriate. What did you mean, then?”
“Oh.” Peach makes a soft sound from the back of his throat, “You really- you don’t see anything odd about sleeping at someone’s house when you barely know each other?”
“Are we not sleeping together right now? I don’t understand.”
There’s a strangled groan, and a short pause. “Khun Thee. Sleeping together—” another pause, slightly less graceful, “next to each other—is not the problem here. It’s the context around it. A house is a personal space; this stayhome is not.”
You make a lot of weird theories up in your head, it’s right on the tip of his tongue, and if he were not a day wiser as Peach’s intern, he might’ve even said it. Instead, he chooses to not reply and glares at the moonlit dot in silent frustration.
Peach’s voice drifts towards him again, cinnamon on the wind, “It’s actually quite nice. Being here with you.”
His lawless heart revels in the admission, and now that he has it, he realizes this is what he was hoping for. The cottage-dwelling people leap out of their doorways to wave cornstalks in the air, golden and sunlit, full with ripeness. A festival beckons, promises simple and easy things bartered at the value of life and death. Thee will gladly sell himself away.
The shirt gets a special place in his walk-in closet, and Thee directs the butlers to keep it where he can always lay his eyes upon it immediately after entry. He’s owned a lot over the years but this is hard-earned—awkwardly pleading the stayhome lady to let him bring this one shirt back with him was far more difficult than he could’ve imagined. Not because she was especially close to it but because she kept looking between him and her inn, as if wondering how his request related to someone still asleep upstairs.
Thee did pay her and she didn’t seem offended. To avoid making an old mistake, he asked her what amount she’d prefer to suitably compensate for her generosity, and it was definitely lower than the amount he’d spent with Peach yesterday.
As he drives back to his mansion, satisfied with the responsibility he gave Mok before leaving, he stares at the name scribbled on the shirt stretched taut between his hands. The phantom pressure of the marker moving over across his chest; Peach’s falling hair; his world expanding within the limits of Peach’s proximity. Many people indulge Thee, mostly out of fear or greed or both, but Peach is not many people. Peach is the prayer for all suffering, the convergence point where pain bears fruit, and Thee would gladly get another tattoo if it’s by his hands.
He thinks, even unreachable in that soft, denying way that Peach is, he’s still more reliable than the gun in his coat. Thee is not a man denied; this is neither a gain nor a loss. Bereft of all equations, empty of all expectations. Thee has never felt so helpless and yet so exhilarated. He cannot hold Peach in his arms, perhaps, but this—his thumb brushes over the ink of his first name—is how Peach leaves himself with him, and this is how he’s all Thee’s to keep.
Any utterance of Thee’s name, any praise he gives him, and any happiness he makes Thee feel, all belong to Thee.
“It’s like he wrote his name on my heart,” Thee whispers to the shirt.
“I feel like I should apologize for making you wait all night, Khun Mok,” Peach says regretfully, sliding into the backseat.
Mok starts the engine, “Not at all, Khun Peach. Boss told me to leave but I chose to stay for a little while longer. And then I went back, too.”
“But Khun Mok …” a short pause, “you’re still in your disguise.”
Mok looks down at himself, caught unawares, “Oh. Well, yes, I guess I am. I didn’t go back to the mansion, Khun Peach, I was in the area and Khun Thee wanted me to pick you up immediately.”
“I have to say, it is weird to see you driving in Hawaiian shorts.”
“Well, yes-“
“And you also have a gun strapped to your waist which is—” Peach breaks off into a light snort, quickly clearing his throat afterwards. “Sorry, I’m- Please, ignore me.”
The car is silent for a long second before Mok turns his gaze to the rearview mirror, his smirk hidden from view, “You’re in a good mood today, Khun Peach.”
“Hm?” Peach’s amused expression instantly bleeds into a slightly panicked one, so fast that it’s Mok’s turn to snort. The little exchange seems to break some sort of spell. Peach starts to smile, and looks out of the window instead, as if reminiscing, “Yes. It’s a good morning, Khun Mok.”
Mok inclines his head, though Peach is no longer paying attention, “Good morning, Khun Peach.”