Chapter Text
The Arseni Mansion in Thailand smelled like sea and something warm.
Rome stood near the entrance, bags still in his hands, his eyes wandering across the mansion. It has been six months since Thee and Peach’s wedding. Six months since he had gone back to hong kong and handled business there. Now he was back for good.
It should have felt like coming home but instead it felt like he was walking back into something that didn’t want him. Walking back into a life that had moved on without him.
Thee found him standing at entrance with a lost look on his face. He quickly walked over to his brother observing how he stood still as if contemplating if he should enter or leave.
“You are just going to stand there?” Thee said. His arms crossed over his chest. “Peach made too much food for you. You would think he is cooking for a wedding guest.”
“P’Kian.” Rome acknowledged Thee with a smile. “P’Peach is happy I guess, let him cook.”
“Yeah he is happy.” Thee agreed softly. His face relaxed thinking about his husband with whom he is madly in love with. Their father has approved of their marriage, let Thee have a happy ending with Peach because Thee handled the legal side mostly.
The clean business where he would sit in the office and make deals. The public face whose charming personality was enough. A man like that could get away with having a heart.
Rome watched his brother’s face soften as he was remembering something valuable and felt his chest twist in agony. It was not jealousy. He could never be jealous of his brother. It was something else. It was grief. It was the fact that he was loosing something he didn’t even have.
Thee had gotten his ending. His sweet love story, a beautiful wedding and two children. A happy life. A life their father allowed it. However Rome was different. Tome was going to take over the dirty parts of the business. The parts that never showed up on paper, never on the headlines.
And for the kind of job Rome had, he was not allowed to carry someone else’s heart.
Love is a weakness. People will use it against you.
Vassili used to say it and has instilled it into their mind. That was the worst part part. Vassili was a father trying to protect his son but for Rome it was becoming a punishment.
________________________________________
Mok was in the garden.
Of course he was. He wasn’t a bodyguard anymore. He wasn’t the one now who wore black suits and an ear piece. He hasn’t worn it in six months. Ever since Thee decided to fire him. not as a means to throw him out but as a means to keep him close a friend.
Since then he had stayed in the mansion as a friend and occasionally as a secretary. Because even if there was nothing left for him to do, there had been something left. There was always something for him.
Today it was trimming the plants.
Peach had asked him to help with the garden once before the wedding. At that time he has dismissed it. He was a bodyguard and there was a gardener for him. But now he comes here often. Two or three times a week. Trimming and fixing things that weren’t even broken.
But there’s one thing that he couldn’t fix even if it was broken.
Rome stood in the doorway and watched Mok for a second. sun falling on his shoulders and sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Mok’s eyes razer focused on the plants like he used to have watching a room for danger. His hands working like he didn’t know what to do without something to protect.
“You are not on the clock anymore.” Rome said walking out to him. “You don’t have to keep fixing the garden and work.”
Mok didn’t look up tho and there was a reason. “Somebody has to. Peach asked me months ago.”
“Once. He asked you once. And there is a gardener to do this work.”
“I don’t mind doing it.”
That was Mok’s answer to everything these days. I don't mind staying late. I don't mind driving you even though it's not my job anymore. I don't mind being here even though I don't have to be. It was like he was trying to occupy his free time with something to do. He didn’t want to sit idle.
“Mok.”
“Hm.”
“Look at me.”
Mok stood still. He did not turn and didn’t even spare a glance at Rome who was standing there waiting. Waiting for one glance.
“Mok, please look at me.”
The soft pleading voice broke Mok. He looked at Rome finally. And that was the thing that always got to Rome, Mok’s eyes never learned how to lie. Even when Mok has gotten so good at it. His eyes was still the same. Plain as day which reflected every emotions and every truth.
“I am satying here for good. With Thee, with-” with you. He wanted to say with you but didn’t it hung there anyway.
Something crossed Mok’s face. Hot surprise, more like bracing for a hit. He didn’t know why tho. “That’s good. Khun Thee will will glad.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Mok’s jaw tightened at his words. He looked at the plants again. He didn’t wanna face Rome. “Rome.”
“Don’t say my name like that. Like something restrained, you are afraid to pronounce.”
“It is one.”
“Mok.”
“I was your brother’s bodyguard once.” Mok said slowly. He wanted Rome to understand whatever he was going to say. “I am not even that naymore. I am nothing. I have nothing to give you Rome. You are going to run everything your father built. The Arseni legacy is in your hand. You need someone who can stand next to that. not someone whose whole life was built around standing in front of a gun for your family.”
"I don't want someone who can stand next to it," Rome said, his voice cracking. "I want you. I've wanted you since we were seventeen, and I had to pretend I wasn't in love with you the entire time.”
Mok flinched like he'd been hit with something heavy and unknown. His breathing quickened for a bit.
"You don't get to say things like that," he said quietly.
"Why not? They're true."
"Because I can't…." Mok stopped himself, breathing hard, hands gripping the shears so tight his knuckles went white. "Because even after knowing it doesn't change what I am. I was made for one thing. To protect Khun Thee. To be his shadow and never leave his side. That's it. That's all I have. I don't get the rest of it. The house, the mornings, none of that was ever going to be mine, Rome, and pretending it could be is just going to get us both hurt."
"We're already hurt," Rome said, and it came out broken. "Look at us. We've been hurting for ten years, Mok. At least if we let ourselves have this, it would mean something. Please Mok think about it"
"It would mean I forgot my place," Mok said. "And I can't afford that. Not with your father. Not with what I am to this family. I was not meant to be a family. I was meant to be a shield."
"You're not a thing to this family. You're not furniture, Mok, you're not a job that got cancelled….."
"I might as well be." Mok's voice broke, just a little, just enough for Rome to hear the boy underneath the man for one unbearable second. "That's what I was hired as. That's what I'll always be to him. And you loving me doesn't erase that. It just makes it worse. And now that I fired, I am useless Rome. So it makes it worse."
It wasn’t always like this between them. Rome remembered it clearly.
He was 15 when he first saw Mok. A thin careful boy same age as him standing behind his mother. He was scrawny and slightly trembling. Rome has sneered at him. Stubborn refusing to accept a new person.
They grew up in the same room after that. and slowly Rome changed. He saw the person behind the mask Mok wore and slowly he softened. Slowly he fell in love with the man who was supposed to protect them for the rest of his life.
He remembered being seventeen and Mok has fought off an enemy all by himself. 15 people and he has ended every one of them. Vassili had been pleased about it. it meant the year spent training Mok were paying off. But Rome noticed how nobody asked how Mok was.
When Rome used to come back with split knuckles there were maids, doctors and everybody present to care for him. Mok had nobody.
That was the year Rome understood he was in love. He didn’t say it tho. He couldn’t. Every time he tried to speak he would stop. You didn’t say things like that in a house where love was categorized under liability.
He'd hoped, for years, that time would soften the walls Vasilli built into Mok, brick by brick. Instead the walls just got better hidden. Mok grew into a man who could take down an attacker in seconds and still couldn't sit in a room with Rome without holding some part of himself back, like affection was a weapon that could be turned against him too.
________________________________________
Peach found Thee in the kitchen that evening, staring out of the window towards the garden with a look on his face like he was watching something break apart slowly.
“Khun Thee?” Peach softly called out.
“They are doing it again.” Thee said not turning around. The grip on the edge of the kitchen counter tightening instead.
“Doing what?”
“Standing apart from each other and having the loudest yet silent fight.” He sighed rubbing his temple. “I don’t know how to fix it Peach. I have tried. I have tried talking to my father but he won’t listen. Mok won’t listen when I tell him it’s okay to show affection and love. He is not bounded by anything now.”
Peach instinctively wrapped his arms around Thee from behind and rested his chin on his shoulder.
“Maybe it’s not about listening.” Peach gently said. “Maybe Mok still doesn’ believe that he is allowed to have what we have. What a normal person should have.”
“He should be. He is family. He is my best friend. He has been family since he was 15 and my mom brought him home.”
“Being family and believing you deserve love are two different things khun Thee.” Peach tilted his head and kissed the side of Thee’s head. “You get to be married with me because you father approved of it. I know. I know. You would have still married me but your father wouldn’t have been happy. Mok has never been let. Not once. You father always implied it that love is not allowed. Maybe not explicably to him but still he had taken it to his heart.”
Thee turned towards Peach and dropped his forehead to Peach’s shoulder. “I don’t know hoe to tell him that he is allowed to love. He is allowed to have a normal life. If I tell him, then I have to tell Rome then. And then father will get to know about it. There will be so much drama and…”
“I know.” Peach interrupted him rubbing slow circled on his back trying to calm him down. “I know. But watching them like this, we know it’s not going to end quietly. Something’s going to break before it gets better. I can feel it.”
From the doorway, small feet pattered in, Marn, ten years old dragging her brother Mhok by the sleeve.
"Dad, Mhok said monsters aren't real but I saw one under the bed," she announced like this was the biggest problem in the house.
Thee wiped his face quickly and crouched down. "No monsters get past me. I promise."
Mhok however didn’t listen to them. He didn't say anything. He looked up at Peach and tugged his sleeve a bit.
"Uncle Mok looked sad again," he said finally.
Peach's chest ached. "I know, sweetheart."
"Is it because of Uncle Rome?"
Nobody answered that. Nobody needed to.
Later at night Thee checked under the bed, behind the curtains, and finally announced that there was no monstr. Marn lingered behind him trying to see if he was telling the truth or not.
"Papa," Marn said sleepily, "why does love make grown-ups sad? You and dad aren't sad."
Peach smoothed her hair back, and smiled. Even the little kids have witnessed and felt the tension between Mok and Rome. "Because sometimes people get told for a long time, that they don't deserve good things. So even when the good thing is standing right in front of them, they're scared to reach for it."
"That's silly," Marn said who was already half asleep. "You should always reach for it."
"You should," Peach said softly. "I hope you always do."
He softly kissed marn’s head before leaning across and kissing mhok’s head too.
He turned off the lamp and found Thee still standing there with his arms crossed across his chest staring down the hall towards Rome’s closed door.
"She's smarter than all of us," Thee murmured.
Peach smiled. "they are kids. They see everything and pay attention to the details that adults often look by.”
They stood there a while longer, looking at the kids sleeping soundly in their bed.
Rome's door was still shut. No sound from inside. Thee told himself that was a good sign. He would be wrong.
________________________________________
Vassili called that week. A week after Rome arrived in Thailand. He wanted to talk to Thee about a shipment of paperwork but Thee was out with Peach and therefore Rome picked up the phone in the office.
“You are staying in thailand then?” vassili asked.
“I am.”
There was a pause on the other side before vassili spoke again. “Good. It will be good for you to be near your brother before you take on more responsibility. I have been hinking it’s time to start bringing you into the northern operations.”
Rome froze in his spot. He wasn’t afraid of the responsibility. He has never have been. He was afraid of moving away again. “That’s a conversation for when I am back in hongkong father.”
"It's a conversation for now. You're twenty seven, Rome. Old enough to understand that the future you might be picturing for yourself there" there was a pause again, and Rome knew exactly what it meant even though his father never said Mok's name out loud. "isn't the one waiting for you."
"Thee got his happy ending. He got the man he loves. He got the wedding. He got the kids. Why not me?"
"Thee shakes hands at dinners and signs papers. What you will handle needs a clear head and no soft spots for anyone to attac. I didn't protect you your whole life so you could hand someone the most sensitive part where one swipe of knife and you could be dead."
"He would never do that and you know that father"
"I didn't say he would," Vasilli said. "I said the soft spot itself is the danger Rome. Not him. You. You think I haven’t noticed how you look at him? Loving someone the way you love him makes you easy to read. Easy to predict. A man who knows you love someone knows exactly where to attack to make you do the things he wants. I've buried men who forgot that lesson."
Rome had no answer for that. There wasn't one that would satisfy either of them.
"Think about it," Vasilli said, and hung up before Rome could tell him he already had, for ten years and the answer was always the opposite of what his father believed would have been right. And that scared him because Mok thought that too.
He didn't tell anybody about the call. He told himself it didn't matter. Really it was because some scared part of him worried that if anyone hears it. Mok heard it he'd take it as proof of everything he already believed about himself, that he was a liability to Rome. A soft spot for Rome where everyone could attack.
What he didn’t understand was that he was not a liability or a weakness to Rome. He was the strength Rome needed. He was the reason Rome fought hard enough to live and come back home.
The days that followed were two people trying very hard not to want each other in a mansion so big.
Rome noticed everything tho. The way Mok still remembered how he took his coffee. The way Mok's hand hovered a second too long whenever he passed Rome something, like he was whole heartedly fighting the urge to stay. The way Mok would wander through the halls and end up in the office for no apparent reason only to stand there and watch Thee and him work.
Rome knew better it was him that Mok was watching. He always felt his eyes on him.
It would have been easier if Mok didn't love him back. Rome could have grieved that cleanly. Instead he had to watch someone love him and turn him down in the same breath, every single day, and there was no word for how cruel that specifically was.
He tried to be patient. He told himself Mok needed time. He told himself years of being told his worth started and ended with a gun in his hand couldn't be undone in one season. He told himself that Mok needed time to unlearn everything and learn that his worth was not measured by how he can protect people. He told himself a lot of things, like how Mok needed to know that he was not a shield. He was a human being. He has the right to have feelings and the want to have a family and love. Everything that normal people wanted.
But they were not normal people.
But patience runs out, and Rome hit the end of his on a Thursday.
It started small Mok had again wandered into the office. This time Rome’s personal office fidgeting around the papers, the sheleves, the landlines. Rome asked, half joking, if Mok was ever going to stop finding excuses to hang around a house he didn't have to be in. Hang around the office more specifically.
"I like helping Thee," Mok said, not looking up from the table.
"But you are not in his office Mok. You are in my office standing in front of me. You don't have to lie to me. Not about this."
"I'm not lying."
"You are." Rome's voice sharpened without meaning to. "You're here because of me, and we both know it, and I'm so tired of you acting like it's something else. I'm tired of being handled like I'm dangerous to want. Like…like wanting me is something that you cannot afford."
Mok froze at his words. His throat was dry and his heart thumped like a horse, his jaws clenched and tight. "Don't start this again."
"Why not? When is a good time to start this tell me Mok? Tell me. Give me a date. Give me an age. Give me a version of this where you finally let yourself have something."
"It's not about letting myself…."
"It is! It's exactly that! You had a job, and the job is gone, and instead of finally being free you just had to built a new cage out of the same bars. You still won't let yourself want anything that isn't about protecting someone."
"Because that's all I know how to be!" Mok's voice cracked out louder than either of them expected. Rome froze. For the first time he saw Mok like this. He was slowly coming undone, slightly trembling.
His hands were shaking. "That's all I've ever been allowed to be, Rome. I was fifteen years old when your mother found me. I was sold by my own father to human traffickers. I was beaten, I was starved. I was used as a slave. Your mother took pity on me and brought me home. I didn't get a childhood after that, I got training. Your father never told this but I know what he thought. He thought of me as someone with no family and there would be the most perfect shield for his sons. I got told that if I was useful, I could stay. So I learned to be useful. I learned it so well I don't know how to be anything else. You want me to just, forget twelve years overnight because you decided you want the rest of it too?"
"I'm not asking you to forget it overnight. I'm asking you to try. With me. Because I've loved you since we were kids, Mok, and I've spent ten years watching you decide, over and over, that I'm not worth the risk. I have watched you choose p’kian over me again and again."
"That's not what this is…"
"Then what is it?!" Rome was shouting now, something in him finally cracking open after years of careful patience. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks exactly like that. You'd rather stay safe and useful than risk having something good. And I get why. I do. But I can't keep standing here loving someone who won't believe he's allowed to be loved back. P’kian fired you Mok. He didn’t fire you because you were useless, he fired you because he thought of you as his best friend and wanted you to have something for yourself at last. But still you are hiding, trying to be safe.”
Mok's face had gone pale, stunned, like every word was landing exactly where it was aimed. "Rome…."
"No. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you don't love me and I'll walk away right now and never bring this up again. Say it."
The silence stretched awfully long, because Mok couldn't say it. He never could. The truth sat in his throat like a stone he wouldn't swallow or spit out. He loved Rome. He knew it. But still something forced him to not speak.
And that silence was unbearable for Rome. It was what broke Rome completely.
"You know what," Rome said, and his voice had gone quiet now, quiet in the worst way, the way voices go right before something you can't take back comes out of them. "If I had known we would come to this, I wouldn't have fallen in love with you at all."
The room went dead silent.
Mok didn't move. He stood frozen at his place trying to contemplate the words that came out of Rome’s mouth. He didn't seem to breathe. Something in his face just went out, like a house with all the lights switched off at once. Rome watched it happen and felt the words leave his own mouth like they belonged to someone crueler than him, someone he didn't recognize, and he wanted to take them back the second they landed, but it was already too late. He had already spoken those words. In anger. In fear. In whatever emotions he felt right now.
They were already inside Mok, doing the damage words do when they hit exactly the softest part of someone. Undoing every healing process he has done in the past few months. Rome stood horrified. He didn’t know what to do.
"Mok, I didn't…."
"No," Mok said. His voice was very steady. Too stead for someone whose insides were breaking down piece by piece. "No, you're right. You're right, Khun Krit. It would've been easier for both of us."
Rome froze. Khun Krit. Mok called him that again. He realized what he did. He had just destroyed even the little progress they had made. And it destroyed him, knowing what he did.
"That's not what I—"
"I know what you meant." Mok wasn't looking at him anymore. He was looking somewhere past Rome's shoulder, somewhere far away. "You meant it would've hurt less. And you're right. It would have."
"Mok, please, I was angry, I didn't mean…."
"I need to go."
He turned to leave, and something about the way he moved, the finality of it, made Rome's chest tighten with a fear sharper than anything the fight itself had caused.
"Mok, wait…."
Rome caught his wrist. Mok stopped. For a long moment neither of them moved, Rome's hand around Mok's wrist, Mok's back still to him, both of them breathing like they'd been running.
Then Mok turned around.
His eyes were wet, Rome had never, not once in twelve years, seen Mok cry, and there was something in his face Rome would spend a long time afterward trying to understand and failing, because in the moment it looked like love, and it was only much later that Rome would understand what it actually was: grief. The kind of grief that happens when someone is saying goodbye while being looked at like they're saying hello.
"Mok…."
Mok kissed him.
It wasn't soft. It wasn't the kiss of two people finally allowed to have something, it was desperate, almost rough with how much it was trying to hold onto, Mok's hands gripping the front of Rome's shirt like he was scared of being pulled away before he was ready, and Rome, without meaning to, kissed him back the same way, ten years of wanting crashing into one unbearable moment.
He held Mok softly. His hands never applying the pressure because he wanted to give Mok time. He wanted Mok to not feel pressured. So he stood there holding him softly while letting Mok kiss him. Kiss him like he needed air, like he needed something to breathe in.
The kiss slowly turned soft. Rome could feel Mok’s body going lax in his hand. It transformed from the rigid body to something soft and pliant. And Rome treasured it. Because for the first time ever Mok has let himself be held, be kissed. For the first time ever Mok let himself be soft and lean on somebody.
Rome’s breath hitched when he felt the trembling lips of Mok travelling down his jaws to his neck. Those soft butterfly kisses. A sharp moan escaped his lips when he felt the sharp teeth slightly digging into the skin.
He could feel the warm breath over his neck and could feel the slight tremble. It was new for them. For both of them. And Rome wanted to treasure it away.
He wanted to lock this moment and keep it in a safe, thinking, finally, finally, this is it, this is the start of it, start of something he has always wanted. Always craved for.
He didn't know. He couldn't have known.
That for Mok, standing there with his whole heart cracked open by that devastating line, this wasn't a start at all.
It was the only ending he thought he was allowed to have before he leaves….
________________________________________
Thee stood in the hallway outside Rome's room, hand raised to knock, and didn't.
Because he could hear them. He had heard the words that Rome said. He had heard everything. He could feel his own heart breaking as he saw how his best friend and little brother were suffering. He wanted to go inside and slap them both forcing them to see how much each of them loved the other.
But then he heard the unmistakeable sound of a moan. It was low yet Thee could hear it. it was of Rome’s. He couldn’t believe it. his heart refused to believe that they would so easily reconcile after speaking so harshly to each other.
Peach found him there, still, hand hovering by the door.
"Khun Thee?"
"I think," Thee said quietly, "something is about to happen that we're not going to be able to fix."
Peach slipped his hand into Thee's and said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
________________________________________
In the morning, Mok would be gone before the sun was fully up.
He'd laid awake most of the night beside Rome, naked covered by a thin blanket, watching him sleep, an expression on his face that was somewhat between regret and love. Something closer to a man memorizing a room he knows he'll never be let back into. He traced the line of Rome's jaw, the small frown even sleep couldn't smooth out, the hand that had reached for him twice in the night out of habit and found him there both times, still. He let himself have that. One night of being reached for and found.
One night of finally experiencing what it feels to be needed. What it feels to be wanted. What it feels to be a normal person.
Not a bodyguard.
Not a shield.
Just Mok.
Just a normal person trying to find love.
Somewhere near sunrise he got up, got dressed in the dark, and stood in the doorway a long moment looking back at the door. He didn't leave a note. What was there to write that wouldn't sound like an apology for existing. I love you felt like a lie if he wrote it and left anyway. I'm sorry felt too small for the size of what he was doing.
So he left the way he'd been trained to leave every room in his life, quietly, without a trace, like he'd never really been there.
He stood in front of Thee and Peach’s room for a while. Just standing there reeling every moment they have spent.
He even stood outside mhok and marn’s room smiling. He remembered how they clung to his arms calling him uncle Mok. How much their little faces would lit up in joy seeing him.
Then he left. He left the mansion.
The arseni mansion.
The man for whom he was trained to be a shield.
The man who treated him like a friend.
Two children who treated him like their uncle even if he wasn’t.
And the man who loved him patiently for years.
Rome would wake up smiling, reaching for the man with whom he had spent the most beautiful night of his life yesterday. He would try to hold the soft, pliant body but find nothing.
It would be empty.
He wouldn't learn until much later, Mok had spent the whole night believing he was doing the right thing, the trained thing, the useful thing, saving Rome from a future built on a soft spot someone could put a knife into, and never once stopped to ask if Rome would have chosen that risk anyway, gladly, a thousand times over, if it meant not waking up alone.
But that morning, none of them knew any of that yet.
Thee would find Rome first, sitting on the edge of an empty bed with his phone in his hand and seventeen unanswered calls, his face falling apart in total silence. He would look up at Thee with hopeless eyes. He would wrap his arms around Thee and cry just like he would do in childhood.
Peach would quietly stand at the doorway trying to control his own tears as he looked at the brothers falling apart. He would cry in his husband’s arms later at night, sobbing at the loss of a friend.
And somewhere across the city, in an apartment rented under a name that wasn't quite his, Mok would sit on the floor with his back against the door, finally letting himself cry the way he hadn't in twelve, telling himself, over and over, that he'd done the right thing.