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The longtail boat cut through emerald water so clear they could see the shadow of fish darting beneath them. Porsche leaned over the edge, letting his fingers trace a path through the Andaman Sea, while Kinn sat rigidly behind him, one hand gripping the wooden bench like it might disappear.
"You're supposed to be relaxing," Porsche called over his shoulder, his fingers still dragging through the water.
"I am relaxing."
"You're strangling the bench."
Kinn opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. He was, in fact, holding the seat like he wanted to strangle it. He made his fingers relax.
The boatman, a man in his sixties, glanced at him in the rearview mirror and smiled, amused.
They had been in Krabi for almost three days. Three days without phones, without bodyguards, no rival family movements to track.
Porsche had practically dragged him onto the plane, and now, as Kinn's gaze got lost, fascinated, in the limestone cliffs beginning to rise from the sea, Porsche could finally see the tension slowly leave his boyfriend's shoulders.
"See?" he said with a triumphant smile, sliding closer. "Worth it."
Kinn allowed himself a small smile.
"Tell me that again when we're not on a floating toothpick about to die."
Porsche just shook his head and laughed, always surprised by how delicate his boyfriend could be about certain things.
Later, back on land, as they searched for a place to eat, the rain came without warning.
They ran, hand in hand, past souvenir stalls and massage shops, until Porsche spotted a small shop with a sign that simply said: Jok.
They burst into the shop completely soaked, laughing. Inside, it was just as small—maybe six tables and one wall covered in photographs. The air immediately wrapped around them with the gentle scent of garlic and ginger, of rice simmering slowly.
"Welcome," said an old man from behind the counter. He had a serene look about him and wore metal-rimmed glasses. "Sit, sit," he said, gesturing to the tables as he saw them drenched. "I'll get you some towels."
A man around his same age emerged from the back carrying a pot. He was thinner, with long silver hair tied back loosely.
"Trin, let me get them," he said, setting the pot down to disappear again and return with two clean towels.
Kinn and Porsche dried off as best they could while settling at a table by the window. The rain still hammered against the glass, but now inside, they felt warmer.
They ordered two bowls of jok with egg, and while waiting for their food, Porsche's gaze wandered over the walls.
There was a black-and-white photo showing a young man in an elegant suit, standing in front of what looked like a university, holding a book that said 'Principles of Economics.' He smiled with the confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was going.
"That's Trin," said the silver-haired man as he poured them two glasses of iced tea. "Before he met me and I ruined all his plans," he added with a knowing smile.
From behind the counter, Trin called out, "Tanwa, don't tell them that."
"It's the truth." Tanwa settled into a chair at the next table. He seemed happy to talk while his partner cooked. And Porsche, who also loved to talk, looked at him expectantly—"Trin was a promising economist. He definitely would have ended up advising the government, or maybe even winning a Nobel Prize."
"What happened?" Porsche asked.
Tanwa's eyes crinkled. "He met a hippie. Very handsome. Very impractical," he said, pointing to another photo on the wall—a younger Tanwa with a band, his hair even longer, a guitar in his hands. "My father said I would never amount to anything. He was right, but not in the way he meant."
Porsche laughed, and beside him, Kinn's lips twitched.
The porridge arrived—steaming bowls topped with crispy garlic, spring onions, and a perfectly poached egg. It looked simple, but the first spoonful made Porsche close his eyes. It tasted like home. Like something a grandmother would make when you visited.
"It's delicious," Kinn said, and coming from him, that was high praise.
Trin nodded in thanks, but his eyes were fixed on Tanwa, who had drifted back to the counter to wipe already-clean spoons. They orbited each other like planets in the same solar system, like they'd had decades of practice.
Porsche nudged Kinn under the table. "Hey."
"What?"
"Look at them."
Kinn glanced at the two old men, then back at Porsche, confused. "I see them."
"No, I mean—" Porsche lowered his voice. "Doesn't it kind of look like... I mean, Trin kind of looks like me if I wore glasses, and Tanwa kind of looks like you, if you were even older and had better hair."
Kinn ignored the last comment and looked at them properly this time. And then he did something Porsche rarely saw: he blinked in genuine surprise.
"That's..." Kinn started.
"Creepy? Sweet? I can't decide."
"We don't look—" Kinn stopped.
Tanwa had turned at that moment, and in profile, with his silver hair and relaxed smile, he looked too much like an older, kinder version of Kinn himself. And Trin, frowning as he adjusted his glasses to read something, had that exact expression of concentration Porsche only showed in special cases: when he was fully focused during meetings, when he was negotiating with other clans, when he was trying—really trying—to understand Kinn.
"Okay," Kinn admitted. "That's a little strange."
Porsche grinned. "Told you. In fifty years, we're going to be them. Running a porridge shop in Krabi."
"We are not running a porridge shop."
"Why not? You already make that face." he said, imitating the serious, calculating expression Kinn wore at meetings. "That's your 'I'm evaluating this business opportunity' face."
Kinn tried to maintain his dignity, but a smile escaped him anyway.
"Aren't I supposed to look like Tanwa? Eat your porridge," he said, pointing at the bowl.
They were almost finished eating when Trin approached with a teapot, refilling their cups without asking. It was the kind of discreet service that came from genuine care, not obligation.
"You two," Trin said, settling into the chair Tanwa had occupied earlier. "How long?"
Porsche and Kinn exchanged a glance. The question could mean many things in their world—how long in the organization, how long in the city, how long since they'd last slept. But something about Trin's gentle demeanor made the answer clear.
"Almost three years," Porsche said. He felt comfortable enough not to lie. "Feels like much longer, actually."
Trin nodded.
"We hit 53 years last month." Porsche couldn't hide his surprise. Fifty-three years. It was longer than Porsche's parents had been alive. Longer than Kinn's family business had existed in its current form. It was almost an entire lifetime.
"How?" Porsche asked before he could stop himself. "I mean—" He made a vague gesture toward the shop, the photographs, the improbability of it all. He struggled to say it, but Porsche didn't know many couples like them from that time.
Trin smiled.
"You want the economist's answer, or the real one?"
"Both," Kinn asked, equally interested.
Trin leaned back.
"The economist's answer: we adapted. We found a niche that worked for us. We managed risk." He glanced toward Tanwa, who was now humming softly as he organized jars of spices. "The real answer: we just never stopped choosing each other. Through everything."
Tanwa drifted over, drawn by some invisible thread. "He's being modest. The economist's answer is also the real answer. We did adapt." He sat on the arm of Trin's chair, with an ease that spoke of decades. "When we met in '68, being like us wasn't something you talked about. It wasn't illegal, exactly, but..."
"But the law is only part of it," Trin continued. "Society has its own rules. And in the sixties, even I had come back from Paris with this idea of building a new Thailand. Modern. Progressive. And that meant certain ideas about men and women. About families." He shook his head. "And an economist and a hippie... people start talking. So there came a point where we didn't fit anymore. Not in the city. Not anywhere, really."
"So we made our own place," Tanwa picked up. "This shop. It was nothing at first, but it was ours."
Porsche was surprised to feel Kinn's hand reaching for his under the table. Porsche let him.
Tanwa noticed. Of course he did.
His eyes followed the movement, and when he looked up, there was something in them—recognition, maybe, or a memory.
"You're lucky," he said simply. "The world is different now."
"It's not that different," Kinn said quietly. "In our line of work..." He stopped.
Trin nodded.
"Working with people is hard when they start talking, when they look for a weak spot," he said, as if he knew exactly what Kinn did for a living. "But you're here. Together. On vacation. At your age, we couldn't travel together without..." He waved a hand. "Questions. Explanations. Hotels that would only give us one key, expecting us to pretend one of us was just visiting."
"We didn't have anyone like us to look at," Tanwa said. "To show us it was possible. But maybe—" He looked at Trin, then back at Kinn and Porsche. "Maybe you do."
Porsche felt something catch in his throat. Beside him, Kinn was very still.
"We're not—" Kinn started, then stopped. Cleared his throat. "We're not exactly role models. Our... profession is complicated."
Trin laughed softly.
"I was an economist. I know all about complex professions with gray moral areas." He leaned forward. "The work you do—that's not who you are. Who you are is who you choose when the work is done."
Tanwa reached down and squeezed Trin's shoulder. "He's always like this. Very wise, very annoying."
"I learned from the best."
"You learned nothing from me. I'm a terrible influence."
Porsche laughed, and the tension broke. Kinn's hand tightened around his, just once, a silent acknowledgment.
Outside, the rain stopped as abruptly as it had started. Sunlight broke through the clouds, turning the wet street outside into a river of gold.
Kinn pulled out his wallet, but Trin waved it away. "No charge. Consider it a gift."
"We can't—" Kinn started.
"You can." Trin's voice was gentle but firm. "Take it as what it is. One generation to another."
Tanwa walked them to the door. As Porsche stepped outside, he felt a hand on his arm. He turned.
"You look like us," Tanwa said quietly. "Did you notice?"
Porsche watched Kinn saying goodbye to Trin. He did it with a warmth he rarely showed strangers.
"Yeah, we noticed," Porsche said, laughing.
Tanwa smiled. "Good. Then maybe you'll remember—fifty years goes fast. Don't waste it on things that don't matter." He said it lightly, but Porsche felt the weight of something more beneath the words.
"We won't," Porsche promised, smiling.
They walked toward the hotel in silence. The air smelled like wet earth, and palm trees let fat drops of water fall onto the path.
Halfway down the street, Porsche stopped.
"What's wrong?" Kinn asked.
Porsche just looked at him. At the way the late afternoon light caught his features, the familiar furrow between his thick brows that meant he was thinking too hard about something. The hand hanging at his side, close enough to reach for.
"I want to remember this," Porsche said. "This whole day. The conversation in the shop."
Kinn watched him for a moment. Then, slowly, he reached out and took Porsche's hand. Without checking if anyone was watching.
"We will," he said.
They stood there for a moment, just two men in the middle of a street in Krabi, holding hands, while the world went on around them. A motorbike whizzed by. On a corner, a cat groomed itself—Porsche thought about petting it later. From some open window, the faint sound of someone practicing guitar drifted out.
Porsche thought about the two men they'd met, fifty-three years into their own story. He thought about all the mornings they'd woken up together, all the nights they'd closed up the shop, all the storms they'd weathered.
And then he thought about all the mornings he wanted to wake up next to Kinn. All the nights he wanted to argue about what to eat for dinner and fall asleep watching Khun's k-dramas. All the storms ahead.
"Come on," he said softly, tugging Kinn forward. "Let's go find something to eat. I'm starving."
"You just ate a whole bowl of porridge."
"That was hours ago."
Kinn shook his head, but he smiled. The real smile—with the dimples that appeared just above his cheekbones. The one he only showed when they were alone.
Porsche squeezed his hand once, twice, three times. And they kept walking.