Work Text:
Peach thinks of kissing him for the very first time on the floor of a stayhome.
In his head, the image suddenly pops up full-formed, a fetus in a bottle. He could swing a leg over Thee’s lap and just sink into him. He could grab the glasses and fling them somewhere on the bed. The heat of Thee’s pleased surprise beating hard and fast right under his fingertips. Big, strong hands on his body that will not burn Peach’s skin with repulsion, will not shock him with agitation, but instead will curl perfectly around his waist and stay warm, safe. He will lower his mouth on Thee’s mouth and watch his glowing eyes flutter close.
When it happens for the second time, it’s unexpected and faintly red.
The sterility of the hospital bends and cracks under the weight of it; like a sunrise, it’s a watermelon oozing with its innards in a sea of simmering relief. All his limbs are in place and functioning with a heightened sensitivity. Nerve-endings jump and override each other like misfiring pyrotechnics. He remembers Wivid kicking at him and then brandishing a golf-club, and then memories he’s not thought of in years. Normalcy seems like a doll house someone shook out and left tilted on the floor. By all means, kissing another man shouldn’t be on his mind at all.
But this strange gaping void in him demands to be filled. It demands when Thee reaches out and strokes the back of his head, surprisingly warm and gentle, and whatever flinch his body wants to do dies on the spot. Violence is but a myth of origins, not even a shadow of its frame touches the tip of Peach’s hair. His body aches with the remembered bruises but comes alive singing on the other side of it in the cup of Thee’s palm. He’s spilling. He’s everywhere. He can’t be contained; he has been held.
You are mine, Theerakit Kian Lee says. Nobody dares to mess with the one I call mine. He’s holding Peach’s face very lightly, looking down at him with a conviction so strong that Peach has no choice but to believe it. A white, a yellow and a golden blooms around them. And then, underneath it all, the red. Thee brushes his tears away with the pad of his thumb, and Peach, caught in the sharp focus of his own desire, imagines a phantom press of lips, a tangled intake of breath. Something undeniably present, impossible to forget.
The third time, he’s not surprised by it, and he reigns it in.
After seeing Thee off, he goes up to his room, already fully packed and looking forward to his vacation. His mind is still replaying Thee’s dramatic antics, and he’s suddenly so endeared by it that he has to sit down on the bed and stare at the floor for a full minute.
Another image washes over him, more thought than vision: he could’ve kissed him in the middle of his rant. While he was going about Lee family’s ancestors and heaven and hell, and while he had his hands around Peach’s wrists, Peach could’ve just leaned forward and pecked him right on the lips. He thinks that would’ve definitely shut Thee up, but he wouldn’t mind watching the rant continue on its natural course regardless. So he could peck Thee again after he was done raving. I’m going on a vacation—peck—It’s a domestic flight—peck—with a return date.
He quickly wraps up for the night. No need to become the daydreaming one in this relationship. Whatever strange, weird version of a relationship he’s got going with Thee.
The fourth time, he’s in a big, big trouble.
Thee is right there, sitting in front him, close enough to imbalance the raft with one wrong move. His solo trip has been hijacked and he really should’ve seen this coming. It was suspicious that Thee let him go anywhere alone, family birthday celebrations notwithstanding. And Peach is so completely surrounded on all sides, afloat in more ways than one, and he’s thinking of kissing Thee. Again.
It’s Thee’s fault, and quite blatantly, at that. He’s just said something about not wanting to be Peach’s son, and now Peach wants to shove his tongue into Thee’s mouth or have Thee’s tongue shoved into his mouth, and it’s horrible. He looks away.
Despite everything that’s been going on in his head for the past few days, he’s not prepared for what happens next. By the time Thee’s finished bringing up their brief discussion on consent and intimacy, Peach’s whole body has gone into a kind of statis, a type of paralysis. He’s watching Thee, unable to look away or blink, ensnared in the magnetic cadence of his voice, as if all of a sudden he’s woken up with a fully-functioning body and a heart that responds to something other than pure fear. He replies like an automaton. He knows what’s happening, and where Thee is going with this, but he also, at the same time, does not. It’s so difficult to accept whatever Thee says to him, not because it’s ridiculous but because it makes him feel good, and Peach is not used to this. This red filling his vision, swallowing up the blue, and yet mighty and humbling and safe.
For once, he imagines nothing. His head conjures up no possibilities. When Thee kisses him, it all goes quiet. Peach is underwater. His hair is floating around his face, his hands and feet are webbed, his spine is an instrument of the ocean and he’s spinning lazily in a circle. He’s bleeding. Thee’s breath is warm, lips soft, barely even a press, more like a cautious greeting than a passionate embrace. Peach doesn’t think he could do passion, anyway. It’s not for him. And if Thee pressed a little more, he’d realize this, too.
There’s something at the back of his head which is absolutely stunned at such a turn of events. Peach is sure he’s not responding enthusiastically enough; he’s sure he’s stuck in a loop with his lips parted, a tiny gasp of wonder, but staying put. Very still. He doesn’t want to disturb this moment—on this rocking boat with the winds swiping hard at them.
He thinks he might’ve stopped breathing.