Chapter Text
The first time Fai is in the hospital after being stuck in a cave with Kaphrao, her cousins aren’t there to visit her. It’s okay, really. She knows they are busy — P’Din is tending to a heavily pregnant Boss Rose, P’Nam has just opened a new resort and had to oversee the operations, and P’Lom was on her honeymoon with P’Blew. Of course, none of them would be there.
Fai is in the hospital every other month anyway — a broken finger (she told the doctor she slammed the door on her finger), a broken leg (she told the doctor she fell down the stairs, nevermind that her leg was the only broken limb with no other visible injuries), a bruised but surprisingly not broken rib (she didn’t even tell the doctor an excuse for this one).
So, no, Fai doesn’t hold any hard feelings towards her cousins for not being there. They probably don’t even know she was injured. Fai knows there’s no way her father and aunt, both of whom hate anyone who loves her, would have called her cousins.
But Fai gets a routine check-in call with Lom — they have one scheduled for every Wednesday, her father and aunt don’t know about it — and she misses it because she’s doped up on whatever pain medications the doctors had her on. Subsequently, her phone buzzes and buzzes and buzzes and when she wakes up, it is to 32 missed calls from P’Din, 21 unanswered messages from P’Nam, and a threat from P’Lom to hop on a plane and track her down. She musters up whatever energy she can to reply to P'Nam — not anything substantial, just a “I’m alive, don’t worry” message. She knows P’Nam will convey the information to the others.
Then, Fai rips off her IV, checks that her father and aunt aren’t around, and drags herself to Phrao’s room. Phrao, it seems, is more doped up than her because the girl doesn’t even stir despite Fai almost slapping her across the face. Fai knows they are short for time and she is desperate to get them out before her father and aunt get back. So, Fai does what she does best, and she improvises. She grabs the wheelchair, conveniently placed by Phrao’s bedside, she hurls Phrao onto the chair and then she grabs two surgical masks and places it across both their faces and she leaves the hospital.
—
If there is one thing Din knows to be true, it is that Fai will never announce before she bulldozes her way into Din’s peace and quiet life. Fai is always so loud and theatrical when she gets somewhere so Din is taken aback when she opens the door to Fai’s face, so pale with fatigue that Din is convinced she is seeing a ghost for a moment.
“What—” Din tries to get her words out of her mouth but she is cut off by Rose.
“Later. Let’s get them settled in first.” Rose takes charge of the situation, seeing that Din is shell-shocked at seeing her sister so banged up and fragile and so unlike Fai. Even pregnant, Rose is an unstoppable force of utter protection and safety when she takes Phrao’s wheelchair away from Fai and eyes Din to bring Fai in too.
Together, Din and Rose get Kaphrao out of the wheelchair and onto the pull-out couch. Fai stands, rooted to the ground, apology and gratitude on the tip of her tongue but unable to speak or do much of anything. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, Fai is starting to realize how much she is burdening Din and Rose by bringing two injured people to their doorstep with no warning.
But then Din’s hand is on her cheek, and Din’s eyes are looking into hers — searching for something, searching for signs of life, searching for her sister — and Din’s hand is so warm and tender and soft and Fai is so cold and Fai is in pain and Fai wants to cry. She collapses into Din’s arms — open and so welcoming — as she tries to breathe and fails and tries again and fails again and Rose is telling her to breathe, Fai, you’re safe now, it’s okay, everything’s going to be okay. The gravity of the situation hits Fai at once as she loses her footing and Din stumbles under the additional weight of her baby sister. Din brings them safely to the ground as Fai sobs, big and watery and painfully raw. Din holds her close and hugs her so tightly and Fai only feels her older sister.
Behind them, Rose makes some executive decisions. She messages P’Nam and then Lom and then for good measure, she calls Lada and Blew as well, informing them of the situation at hand and she confirms that they will be on their way to Hua Hin within the next 3 hours and hangs up. Then, she goes to the kitchen and prepares a bowl of cold water with a fresh cloth — earlier, she had felt the warmth coming off of Phrao’s skin, she thinks the girl might have an infection. It would be wise to stay on top of cooling off her body, lest she comes down with a fever. Then, she prepares Fai’s favourite honey green tea.
When Rose gets back to the living room, Fai and Din have moved to the foot of the couch. They are seated on the floor, Fai’s head leaning back and resting against N’Phrao’s shin. She looks so exhausted in a way Rose has never seen before but one look at Din tells her this isn’t the first time Fai has done this.
Rose places the cup of tea in front of Fai, and strokes the girl’s cheek, so similar to the way Din had earlier.
“What happened, N’Fai?” Rose asks, her voice brimming with concern.
Fai chokes on a sob. “Aunt Panee— She—” Fai is unable to get another word out before she collapses in hysterics again.
Rose and Din share a look before Din says, “Let’s go to bed, Fai. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”
‘I don’t wanna be alone. P’Din, please, don’t leave me.” Fai grabs onto Din’s arm and her begs breaks something in Din that she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to fix.
“Who said anything about leaving you?” Rose questions, voice as soft as the petals of her namesake. “We’re sharing the room, Nong. So is Phrao. Come on, you two. Help me get her up.”
—
Getting Kaphrao from the couch to the room is a harder task than from the wheelchair to the couch because there’s a stairs to climb and unfortunately for Din, her sister was injured and her wife is one jealous being. Except this is Kaphrao and the girl clearly had everyone wrapped around her pinky from the very first time they met her and Rose is surprisingly okay with Din carrying another girl bridal style.
The bed is bigger than Fai expects. For two people, it is very spacious and comfortable. However, with 4 of them, it is a tight fit and Din and Rose — on opposite ends of the bed with Fai and Kaphrao in the middle — are practically lying with their outer legs almost touching the ground. But they still don’t complain and so Fai doses off to sleep with Kaphrao by her side, safe and sound.
—
It isn’t quite morning when something wakes Rose up. It takes her a while to blink the sleep off of her eyes and realize that the thing that woke her up — a knock on the door — is coming from downstairs. She quickly looks at the 3 girls in her bed and decides she’s not going to be alone in this. She gets off the bed and walks over to Din’s side.
Frantically pushing at her shoulders and coincidentally matching the rhythm of the knocks on their front door, Rose says, “P’Din! P’Din, wake up. Someone’s at the door.”
Din startles awake and thankfully has more survival instincts than any of the other 3 women. She immediately grabs the gun from her drawer — a habit she couldn’t quite stop after everything that happened with Wasu and Kaew — and runs downstairs. Rose rushes after her but stays at the top of the stairs, just in case it really is intruders and not one of the cousins and she needs to go in to get Fai and Kaphrao to safety.
Luckily for all of them, when Din finally opens the door, she comes face-to-face with Lom. Unluckily for them, Lom is also pointing a gun straight at Din’s face. But thanks to Nam’s reflexes, neither of them shoot each other as she gets between them and angles both guns away from their faces and towards the ground instead.
“Fuck, Lom! I could have shot you.” Din swears, fear creeping down her spine. She had gotten so close to losing one cousin and now she had almost shot another. Was Nam going to be next?
“Well, you were taking so long to answer the damn door. I thought Akanee and Panee had gotten to y’all.” Lom yells back, chest heaving with adrenaline.
“Where’s Fai?” Lada asks.
“And Kaphrao?” Blew asks.
“Upstairs. Come on.” Rose says, from her spot at the top of the stairs.
One by one, they all enter the room, their movements swift.
Fai and Kaphrao are still cuddled up on the bed, blissfully unaware of the chaos they had caused.
The cousins have a silent agreement that whatever talk they were going to have will have to wait for the morning. What’s important is that both Nongs are safe. And they will remain that way, if the Phi’s had any say in the matter.