Work Text:
Song for the chapter - Natural by Valley
Prologue
People with polar-opposite personalities often clash and collide—but not Duang and Qin. Somehow, they fit—like sunlight meeting still water. Because when it comes to his husband, Duang turns into a hopeless, pathetic crybaby. He doesn’t know how to argue, let alone win one, because he never fights back.
Duang is the embodiment of sunshine—bright, childish, and full of untamed warmth. He has spent his life being loved, and perhaps that is why he overflows with love himself, so naturally. An endearing fool when it comes to affection, Duang wears his heart so openly that it becomes impossible not to love him back.
Qin, on the other hand, is the essence of calm—the stillness of a lake under moonlight. He doesn’t speak often, but when he does, his words carry sincerity that lingers. He loves his husband deeply—every ridiculous, dramatic, tender part of him. And even when he looks exasperated, he is never truly irritated. Because to him, Duang is the reason his once monochrome world burst into color. Every little thing Duang does means infinitely more to him than words can express.
People often say Duang is “too much” for Qin, but Qin always disagrees. To him, Duang is simply Duang—the person who softened his rough edges, who flooded his life with warmth, tenderness, and laughter. Because of Duang, Qin looks forward to every tomorrow, knowing that his husband will be there waiting.
To Qin, Duang is a ray of sunshine meant only for him—the kind that doesn’t burn or blind, but seeps gently through the cracks of the heart. It settles deep within, mending wounds as it travels through his veins, filling it with warmth and comfort instead of the usual indifference.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
Episode 1: “I’m a Changed Man from Today!”
Duang sat cross-legged on the couch, his laptop perched atop a soft fluffy pillow balanced carefully on his lap. His brows were drawn together in deep concentration as he studied the new pastry collections for his café. The fringes on the front were carefully tied into a tiny pony to stop it from falling into his eyes. The faint glow from the screen reflected in his eyes, illuminating his focused expression.
The screen showed graphics and photography of various pastries and desserts—ranging from Western, European to local Thai ones where all three were improvised desserts. Moving his fingers over the sensory mouse pad of the laptop, he scrolled slowly through the videos, assessing the powerpoint presentation and texture through the visuals alone—for now. Tomorrow, he planned to test the recipes in the café and decide whether any were worthy of joining the new menu he was curating for the longest time now.
Across from him sat Angbao—their beloved cat, once solely Qin’s pride and joy—lounging regally on his own luxurious pillow on top of a basket made with jute. Angbao observed Duang with the unimpressed stare of someone who had witnessed this brand of human nonsense far too many times. Each lazy flick of his tail seemed to carry a silent judgment. His thoughts, if cats could have such things, wandered back to a memory that bore an uncanny resemblance to the scene before him—back when he was just a two-month-old kitten, and his two exceptions had only recently started living together.
Just like that, Angbao’s eyes grew heavy, his tail stilled, and the memory began to unspool behind his half-lidded gaze.
Flashback to eight years ago: When They First Started Dating and Living Together
Duang had been preoccupied since morning. Business was slow, and both staff and boss had taken the rare opportunity to ease into a lazy afternoon. Everyone was either chit-chatting or doomscrolling during this time. Duang did the same. However, as he scrolled past the memes and cat videos, unhinged posts, a peculiar tweet appeared on his feed, and everything in his brain seemed to rewire on the spot. He was slouched comfortably in his chair, iced latte in hand, when his eyes caught the line. Mid-sip, he froze. Then, in an instant, he shot upright—eyes wide, mouth parted slightly, as though lightning had just struck him with divine revelation.
The tweet read:
“Studies reveal that people with a charismatic and mysterious aura attract their crush even more.”
And just like that, his thoughts immediately flew to one person—Qin, his enigmatic, infuriatingly composed boyfriend.
If I became mysterious like him, Duang thought, heart suddenly pounding with ridiculousness, feet making tiny hops in excitement, would he fall for me all over again?
Duang wasn’t a stranger to self-doubt. By now, it clung to him like a second skin—something that felt more like confinement than comfort. When he and Qin had first started dating, Duang believed he could maintain his façade of composure, even when people commented on how impractically mismatched they were, or how lucky he was to have a boyfriend like Qin.
It had been six months since then—six months of steady affection, of choosing each other again and again without hesitation. By all logic, those voices of doubt should have faded by now. But instead they grew louder. Each thought felt like a cruel angel's whisper coaxing him to spiral.
Most days, Duang knew how to lock those thoughts away, tucking them neatly behind a bright smile and easy laughter. But there were days when their weight pressed too heavily on his chest, dragging him down into quiet misery. He never showed it outright but he was a mess inside.
That was how he ended up here, hours later, sitting cross-legged on the couch in their living room of their shared apartment, laptop balanced precariously on his knees, face scrunched in solemn concentration.
On the screen, a YouTube video played in full seriousness. The title read:
“How to Be Cool, Mysterious, and Attractive in 3 Simple Steps.”
Meanwhile, the unwitting subject of this entire scheme was out on the balcony, blissfully unaware of the chaos brewing indoors.
Qin stood there, freshly showered, a towel draped loosely around his neck, one hand holding a steaming cup of coffee. The evening light fell softly against him, casting a golden haze as the city began to clock out for the day. His loose white shirt hung open at the collar, half-tucked into pajama pants that sat carelessly low on his hips. Fringes of damp hair clung to his forehead, catching the last blush of twilight just right.
He never tried to look stunning. He just was.
As the skyline melted into shades of amber and violet, a small, indulgent smile tugged at his lips.
The sunset reminds me of his eyes… beautiful and endless.
Qin wasn’t the kind to romanticize things. He didn't find appeal in those things. It's just the way he was. Yet lately, everything—the things he saw, the things he heard, as if his senses were attuned with that one person alone—seemed to circle back to Duang—his laugh, his eyes, the scatter of moles across his face, and that soft, unrelenting love he carried in his heart which never seemed to dim at all.
Thank you for letting me enter your world, Duang, he thought, the warmth in his chest rivaling the cup in his hand.
Back inside, Duang sat hunched over his laptop as if deciphering a sacred scripture from the 1200s. His brows were furrowed in fierce concentration while he mouthed the words that appeared on screen.
“Step one… talk less.”
“Step two… maintain mysterious body language.”
“Step three… don’t smile too much.”
He blinked. The last one hit him like a personal insult. “But smiling is… my thing,” he whispered, scandalized, his tone dripping with betrayal as the speaker on the video went on with their analysis.
From the armrest of the couch, their kitten Angbao observed the entire ordeal with the detached curiosity of someone witnessing a very slow, very predictable disaster. His tail slowly flicked once, dripping with judgement.
Angbao wondered how in the world, his owner, fell in love with a human who in every angle looked more like a catastrophe than a human.
Duang met the feline’s look and pointed dramatically. “Yes! I’m going to be stoic from now on. Like Qin. That way he won't leave me,” he declared with great conviction as he kept aside the laptop and stood up from the couch. “Watch me, baobao!”
He clenched his fists, pulling his elbows tight to his sides in all seriousness.
The kitten blinked once, unimpressed, before turning away and delivering the slowest, most exasperated tail flick known to mankind. In his tiny feline heart, Angbao was certain this human was about to do something spectacularly stupid and embarrass himself.
By the time Qin stepped back inside in the living room, the transformation had already begun. He was about to enter the kitchen to rinse his cup when he noticed something very unusual from the corner of his eyes.
Duang.
That in itself wasn’t strange. What was strange was how he was standing—leaning against the counter like he was posing for a noir movie poster, arms folded, chin tilted down, eyes half-lidded in what he clearly believed to be a smoldering, mysterious stare.
Qin stopped mid-step. “…What are you doing?”
Duang didn’t answer. Instead, he tilted his head a fraction, as though pondering the metaphysical depth of the question. His lips curled into what might have been intended as a sly, alluring smirk—but landed somewhere between “mildly menacing” and “deeply confused clown.”
Qin blinked, baffled. It wasn’t the first time his boyfriend had done something absurd in all these months, but that never made it any less perplexing. “Are you okay?”
Duang exhaled a long, deliberate sigh—the kind reserved for tragic heroes in black-and-white films after they won the fight. Arms still crossed, he turned away with exaggerated composure. “I’m fine,” he said flatly, though it sounded far more like a man lying to himself than anyone else.
An amused snort escaped Qin's lips. “You sound like you’re about to confess to a crime you didn’t commit, Duang.”
Duang straightened, lowering his voice an octave in what he hoped was a cool baritone. “No,” he said, nodding gravely. “I’m silently observing.”
Now it was Qin’s turn to cross his arms. With one brow raised and lips twitching, he asked. “Observing what?”
“Life,” Duang declared with great solemnity.
Qin stared at him for a solid five seconds—long enough to question not only his boyfriend’s sanity, but possibly his own decision to come back inside. Finally, in the flattest tone imaginable, he asked, “Duang, did you hit your head somewhere?”
Duang’s jaw tightened. His arms crossed tighter, posture rigid with effort. On the inside, though, he was seconds away from cracking—from pouting, whining, and clinging to his boyfriend like usual.
But he reminded himself of his sacred mission. He was a new man from tonight. He was going to make Qin fall for him all over again. By hook or by crook.
Be cool. Don’t babble. Be like Qin.
His face remained stoic. His soul, however, was screaming in distress. He tried to arch a brow—or at least thought he did. Unfortunately, it came out more like a nervous twitch, the kind you see right before someone gets possessed in poorly directed horror movies.
Qin bit back a smile, finding this all a little entertaining as he walked past him toward the sink, setting his empty mug down with deliberate calm. Without even looking at Duang, he turned on the tap and said casually, “Duang, if you’re trying to seduce me, you’re doing it wrong.”
The “cool, mysterious” composure vanished in an instant. At that one line, Duang’s entire face combusted into red. His eyes went wide, heart thudding so loud he was certain it could be heard across the apartment. “I–Terrr—” He coughed awkwardly, straightening in panic. “Seduction is for the weak! I’m a changed man from now on, Qin!”
Qin glanced over his shoulder, brow lifting once again, lips curving into a lazy smirk. “Changed man? Duang, you literally cried during a conditioner ad this morning.”
Duang's jaw dropped at the incredulous response of his boyfriend . “That was a beautiful story about second chances!”
Qin sighed softly, shaking his head as he turned off the tap. Crossing the room in a few quiet steps, he stood face to face with his boyfriend, looping his arms loosely around Duang’s neck. With a teasing pull, he drew him down until their noses brushed. His voice softened, half fond, half amused.
“Alright then,” he murmured. “Now, explain this to me—what’s going on, kha?”
With one Kha by his boyfriend, Duang deflated like a balloon losing air. His pout returned, looking into his boyfriend's eyes as a string of murmurs escaped his lips. “I was just… trying to be cooler. You know, like you.”
For a second, Qin blinked—genuinely thrown off by that response.
Cool? Like me? he thought, eyebrows scrunched together in mild disbelief. What does that even mean?
He blinked again, as if trying to decode a Morse code. “Cool?”
Duang nodded, sheepish now, all the earlier bravado dissolving. “You’re always calm and composed. People see you and think you’re mysterious and cool. And when they see me, all they see is an emotional disaster masquerading as a human being.”
“That’s not true,” Qin said softly, fingers absently tracing the back of Duang’s neck, playing with the little tufts of hair there—his favorite absentminded comfort.
Duang immediately sagged under the touch, shoulders loosening like a puppy getting its ears scratched. “Really?” he asked, voice small and hopeful.
Qin hummed thoughtfully, pretending to ponder, eyes flicking toward the ceiling. “You’re not always an emotional disaster,” he said at last. “Sometimes, you’re just a clumsy barista.”
Duang cheeks puffed out in protest. He glared down at Qin with a dramatic whine. “You’re so mean.” Then, in typical Duang fashion, he promptly buried his face into his boyfriend's neck to hide his embarrassment. But the turmoil inside him didn’t ease—it only deepened, humming under his skin.
Qin chuckled softly, the sound barely a whisper against the crown of Duang’s head. He could feel the soft brush of breath against his collarbone, all warm and fragile in its form.
It was always like this—the teasing, the banter, the gentle affection that filled the spaces between words. Duang never noticed how Qin’s gaze softened during moments like this—how his heart melted, completely undone by the sight of him. Because beneath the laughter, Qin knew something with all the certainty of a person like him in love could be:
Duang had a heart that was ridiculous, expressive, messy, and impossibly golden. Watching him try to be someone other than being himself—even for a moment—felt wrong. Like the sun woke up one fine day and decided to rise from the west instead of the east.
Entirely unnecessary.
Because Duang was already enough just the way he was—he needed no changes at all.
Then, quietly—almost like a thought slipping out before he could catch it—Duang spoke.
“I just wanted to match you,” he murmured, voice cracking in the process but honest. “Sometimes I feel like you’re still thousands of leagues away from me.”
Qin’s gaze landed against the mop of brown hair as if trying to hide away from the world, but Duang kept going, gaze fixed somewhere on the floor and the kitchen cloth that was lying on the floor, words tumbling in hesitant confessions.
“You’re like a river,” he whispered. “Calm and steady. You always seem to know where you’re going even in the storms. And me? I'm like a waterfall. The complete opposite of yours—loud, uncontrollable, and too much.”
Qin’s lips curved faintly. “Is that so?” he murmured, tone laced with fond amusement.
Duang groaned softly and squeezed shut his eyes, mortified by his own words. “Are you going to scold me?”
Qin didn’t say anything at first. Something inside him tightened—a knot pulling in too many directions at once, a flicker of warmth that burned in the coldest parts of his chest. He could feel the loud beating of his lover's heart, the way tried to contain himself, Qin could feel every bit of it.
He had a hunch of what might've gone down. He knew about Duang's past and the pain he carried inside his heart. This wasn’t about “cool” or “mystery.” This was Duang’s way of saying:
Tell me you won't leave… even if I show how badly I'm bruised.
Qin's hand continued its slow rhythm, fingers combing through Duang’s hair in gentle, grounding, wordless comfort. His face was calm, but his eyes gleamed with something deeper, a warmth that reached bone-deep.
“You don’t have to do all this, you know,” he said at last.
Duang shifted, starting to protest. “But—”
“Let me finish kha,” Qin interrupted softly.
That single line shut him up immediately—like a scolded, heart-heavy puppy. Or more like a husky in this case.
Qin’s fingers never stopped their tender movement as he spoke. “You might seem ‘too much’ in the eyes of others,” he said slowly, “but in my eyes, you’re just right. You don’t need to try to be someone else, Duang.”
He leaned in whispering into Duang’s ear, voice lowering into something intimate, certain. “And until the day you start believing that—believing that you’re enough—I’ll keep showing you. I’ll keep telling you. Over and over again.”
Duang’s breath hitched faintly against his chest.
Qin smiled, the tone of his voice softening further, brushing his thumb against the crown of his head. “You make people breathe easier just by existing,” he whispered. “You make rooms warmer. You make me laugh. And I wouldn’t trade that for ‘cool’ or ‘mysterious’ — not even for a second.”
Duang blinked, momentarily dazed, as if his entire world had shifted a fraction to the right.
Sure, people in his life had told him countless times that he was enough, but hearing him say it—his boyfriend, who spoke less but meant everything he said—was different. The quiet promise in Qin’s words, “I’ll keep showing you until you believe it,” wrapped around him like a vow carved into his soul. It wasn’t just reassurance; it was love in its purest, most rawest and honest form.
His eyes immediately filled with tears, but he fought them back with all his might. He wasn’t going to cry—he refused to cry. And yet, a small, helpless sob escaped anyway. He quickly wrapped his arms snug around Qin's waist, pulling him closer, holding him tight, as if to contain everything he felt in that single embrace.
Qin shook his head in fond, understanding without needing to ask. He didn’t tease this time—just murmured, “There, there,” in that steady, soothing tone that always found its way through Duang’s storms.
They stood like that for a long while, swaying gently from side to side, until the storm inside Duang’s chest softened into something calmer—something closer to the word peace.
Then, his voice came again, quiet and tentative. “If there comes a day and you'd have to leave me…would you leave me Qin?”
Qin let out a low laugh, lips curling into a crooked smile. “I don't know what the future holds, Duang. But I do know one thing for sure—I’m going to be beside my only human puppy. No matter what time, no matter where.”
Duang immediately pulled back just enough to stare up at him, eyes wide and mouth agape—like a golden retriever hearing the word good boy for the first time. “Terrr, you complimented me!”
Qin raised an eyebrow, completely unbothered. “I said you’re a puppy. How is that a compliment?”
But Duang only grinned wider, triumphant. “You said ‘only puppy’! That counts! You’re totally complimenting me!”
Qin sighed and muttered, “Here we go again,” shaking his head.
Yet the faintest blush dusted the tips of his ears—a soft pink that Duang noticed immediately. And the sight of it—his stoic boyfriend quietly flustered—felt like a secret sunrise blooming inside his chest.
Later that evening, when their friends arrived, Duang still hadn’t come down from his cool chill guy training high. In fact, he was determined to show it off now — though somewhere along the way, it had stopped being about proving himself and turned into pure entertainment for everyone else.
“Buddy,” Tong said, squinting suspiciously, “why do you look like you just smelled spoiled milk?”
Kim tilted his head, frowning. “Is he… okay?”
“He’s being mysterious,” Qin replied from his corner of the couch, sipping his espresso with the calm detachment of someone long past the point of intervention.
The dryness in his tone was so immaculate that their friends immediately burst into laughter.
“Mysterious?” Pae wheezed between laughs.
“He looks constipated!” Jamie hollered.
Duang’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “You guys are bullies! Can’t you at least pretend to be impressed by my switch-up?!”
Qin hid a smirk behind his cup. “You were born to cry, not brood.”
Duang glared at him, crossing his arms. “Can’t I be both?”
Qin leaned back, eyes gleaming with quiet mischief. “Crybrood? Sure. Make it a trend.”
“Stop,” Duang groaned, but he was already laughing—cheeks pink, eyes crinkling, his laugh bright and contagious. Qin’s smirk softened just slightly, the corners of his lips tugging upward as he watched him glow.
Flashback ends
Angbao, who had been fast asleep, stirred at the faint sound of rustling. His eyes fluttered open, heavy with drowsiness, and he blinked twice before his vision adjusted to the dim, amber light of the room.
Two figures came into focus by the couch.
If Angbao had been human, he might have raised a curious brow. There was his papa—Qin—standing by the sofa, carefully draping a blanket over his baba’s sleeping form. Duang was curled up, face soft with exhaustion, a faint snore escaping every now and then. The laptop beside him had been closed, the glow of the screen gone.
Qin lingered a moment longer, gaze fond and unwavering, before leaning down to press a gentle kiss to Duang’s temple. At the touch, his baba made a small, sleepy whine in half protest and half contentment.
From his spot, Angbao could see clearly now why they were a mismatch but perfectly a match made in heaven for each other.
He could see the way love shone in his papa’s eyes for his baba. It wasn't loud like his baba or performative like the ones he shows in the TV shows. Rather it was constant, quiet, consistent and so achingly sincere that even the air around them turned a hundred degrees warmer and lovelier.
Living with them all these years, Angbao had come to recognize that glow. He’d seen how their world softened when they were together—how even silence felt full, how the ordinary shimmered into something almost magical.
It looked, he thought, like something out of a fairytale.
And he couldn’t help but wonder what a beautiful, fragile, impossible thing this emotion called love must be.
His gaze lingered on them, and his thoughts drifted back to the memory—the one he had just witnessed like a dream.
Individually they might appear to be a perfect example for a mismatch. But when together, they weren’t opposites. They were a balance. A perfect blend of two different harmonies, overlapping with each other to create a beautiful symphony.
They were softness and stillness. The storm and the sea.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────