terror in the resonance

by toomoon (jjjat3am)

Summary:

"You're awake," Todd says, surprised. "Do you need anything?"

"Yeah," Black says quietly. "I need you to leave me the fuck alone because I'd honestly rather rot than to have to be rescued by you again."

There's a beat of silence before Todd lurches awkwardly to his feet. "Alright," he says finally, "whatever you want."

or,
After the events of Not Me, Todd tries desperately to keep control over the broken pieces of his life. Black makes it worse. And then, he makes it better.

Notes:

I started writing this story in March. It's now July. I think that's about the definition of walking into a fandom several hours late with Starbucks.

Please note that this story discusses a serious illness and the impact it might have on someone's life. Please take care of yourselves.

 

 

Todd opens his eyes to the steady drip of IV fluid. There’s a tube attached to his arm, and he doesn’t feel like much of anything, which is strange. The last thing he remembers is a fist digging into his gut and the blinding pain of broken ribs. He blinks heavy eyelids, swollen shut, and manages to open them a sliver. 

 

He’s in the hospital, that much is clear from the off-white walls with badly cleaned stains of body fluids, and the gauzy blue curtains that flutter constantly from the movements beyond. His heart monitor echoes too loudly. He can hear an emergency alarm somewhere beyond his cubicle. 

 

Black is sitting in a chair by his bedside.

 

Todd has the vague awareness that seeing him should alarm him, that being vulnerable around him is dangerous. Mostly he’s relieved to be able to cling to something familiar.

 

Black is reading, deft fingers leafing through the pages of a book. His knuckles are bruised red to match the covers. It’s probably the Communist Manifesto because the slim volume is the only thing Black always carries besides his wallet. Todd never saw a point to it, since he knows that Black can quote it from memory.

 

Todd wants to tease him about it. ‘ A spectre is haunting Europe,’ but all that comes out is a gargle around the tube in his mouth. He takes a quick breath, panics, and chokes. Black looks up from his reading, and closes the book, folding the edge to mark his place. 

 

Once upon a time, Todd would have confidently said he could read all of Black’s expressions. He doesn’t know this one. Black stands up and approaches the bed. There’s a piece of Todd’s brain that’s screaming at him to get up, back away, call out, even if he struggles to piece together why.

 

Black raises a hand. Todd remembers in a flash, looking down the barrel of a gun held in those fingers. His body doesn’t have any energy to move. He watches, almost amused by his own placidity, as Black presses the call button for the nurse’s station.

 

The alarm starts to blare, echoing loudly in his ears.

 

Todd closes his eyes. The last thing he sees is Black’s face, looking down at him, blank and unfathomable.

*

Todd opens his eyes to pain. It’s shooting up his torso and burning through his arms, and something is scraping agonizingly against his throat. He must make a sound because the nurses and doctors rush around him, their scrubs rustling as they ease out his breathing tube. He chokes and hacks uncomfortably, but at least he’s breathing on his own. A nurse injects something into his IV and his pain eases as it drips steadily into his bloodstream. She props him up so he can grip a glass of water with shaking fingers. He offers her what he hopes is his most charming smile. It probably comes out as a grimace.

 

After the bulk of the doctors and nurses leave, his chief security officer walks in. She’s a tall, severe woman with a military haircut, some twenty years his senior. Her nickname - Pistol - fits her well. She looks a little alarmed seeing Todd in the hospital bed. Probably worried about her paycheck. 

 

Todd tries to recover some equilibrium between them by asking for a security report with a voice as clear as he can make it through the gravel sitting in his throat.

 

Most of it sails right past him as the pain medication starts working harder. He gathers that the protests against Tawi had intensified after ROL’s kidnapping and subsequent rescue, and have splashed over to impact some of Thailand’s other oligarchs. Todd’s telecommunications company had largely avoided backlash so far, but security around the buildings and employees has been tightened accordingly.

 

He’s been moved to a private room while he was sleeping. He drifts for a while, watching the azure sky outside, Pistol’s voice an almost comforting drone in the background. It’ll probably be past visiting hours soon. He’s relieved to have an excuse to rest more. He doesn’t know how Black did it, waking up from a coma and to take on fights he couldn’t hope to win. Todd can barely move his hands to curl them up into fists under the scratchy blanket.

 

“...and the individual known as Black has been banned from your home and hospital room,” Pistol is saying, and Todd sharply tunes back into her monologue.

 

“No,” he says, wincing at how dull he sounds, “keep his access. If he goes into the house, don’t stop him. If he comes here,” and Todd doubts he will - Black has said his piece, “make sure he can come and go as he pleases.”

 

Pistol’s eyes widen to saucers. It’s as thrown as Todd has ever seen her. “Aren’t you going to press charges?” she asks, incredulous. Todd shrugs. 

 

“Keep his access,” Todd repeats, “and keep an eye on him, but don’t go out of your way to approach him. He’s dangerous.”

 

“All the more reason to keep him out of your hospital room!” the security officer pleads her case. Todd shrugs again and she subsides, angrily muttering as she inputs a couple of things into her tablet. 

 

There's a knock on the door and Pistol tenses like she's expecting Black to come flying in, fists first. To her credit, it's not entirely unprecedented.

 

It's just the doctor, gaze darting around the room nervously. "I wanted to discuss an anomaly in your lab results," he says, and there's something Todd recognizes in the tight slant of his mouth, in his tense frame. He knows what bad news looks like coming from a white coat.

 

He sends the security officer out with a sharp dismissal, ignoring her affronted look. Outside the window, the blue sky bleeds into bruised purple as the sun begins to disappear beyond the horizon.

*

Todd has the surgery. He feels fine afterward. It takes less time to heal than the broken ribs Black left him with. The only loss he feels is his muscle mass from lying down for a longer period of time, but it's a small thing, fixed by going to his tailor to get a few suits refitted, ordering a few more, the fabric folded and stitched to create bulk where there isn't any.

 

Image is its own kind of armor. It means that the whispers and looks that follow him when he enters his company slide right off him as he dispenses harsh reprimands and charming smiles. He breathes a quiet sigh of relief when he enters his office, even if it only lasts until he sees the mountains of paperwork on his desk.

 

It’s as he’s digging into the first stack that something outside the glass doors to his office catches his attention. His secretary, Nail, is wiping her tears away with a handkerchief, silently crying as she sits at her desk. It’s unusual behavior. She’s a quiet woman, very capable and diligent. Todd suspects it’s largely her intervention that has saved his whole office from being filled with paper. He’s never seen her show any type of extreme emotion, and he’s known her his whole adult life.

 

She continues to sniffle. After the quiet of his private hospital room and his recovery in the privacy of his home, the sound is agitating. He can’t seem to focus, his eyes drifting her way through the glass. Just outright asking her to stop feels like it’ll come across as callous. 

 

The situation requires a more subtle approach. By the time he’s through with his first stack of paperwork, he’s got the rough beginnings of a plan.

 

Let it not be said that Todd isn’t charming when he wants to be - he perches casually on his secretary’s desk as he delivers the paperwork, smiles sympathetically, asks the right questions, and learns the whole story. It’s not uncommon, unfortunately.

 

Nail met her husband during a mixer with a foreign company. He was British, well-dressed, and spoke passable Thai, which she’d found admirable rather than suspicious. They dated, fell in love, and got married. A year into their marriage, she’d gotten pregnant. Her son was born, and they were happier than ever. And then her son turned ten and all of a sudden, her loving and devoted husband was away on business more and more often. He became distant and cold, until one day, he confessed to cheating and served her divorce papers.

 

She was understandably devastated when he disappeared back to his home country, refusing to pay her any child support. It wasn’t about the money as much as about the agony of knowing that if she ever got sick, her child would have no one and nothing. 

 

Todd listens and nods in all the right places, and returns to the office to phone his lawyer. The man seems surprised - he’s an expert in corporate law, not family law, but he explains to Todd, in a long-winded and tedious way, that there really is nothing he can do, with the law being what it is.

 

Distracted by his paperwork, and thoughts of his lunch, Todd shrugs off the explanation. “Then we’ll change the law,” he tells the lawyer, who promptly laughs in his face.

 

And see, if it weren’t for that, maybe Todd would have let it go. He doesn’t have enough political power to outright influence changes in the legislature, especially involving foreign countries. There’s already so much paperwork on his desk, and Black is enough of a headache all on his own without adding anything else to the mix. He just doesn’t have the time.

 

But, he’s always had a thing about people telling him about what he can’t do. 

 

Todd’s heard it all before: He can’t possibly take over his grandfather’s telecommunications company at 20. He can’t raise profit margins by 40 percent in the first three years without cutting wages or layoffs. He can’t increase the fiber optics coverage in the city margins by 30 percent in five years. He can’t invent his own TV station and make it one of the country’s top-viewed news outlets. 

 

He’s done all of those things and more. So he elects to ignore his paperwork to make a few phone calls instead.

*

Todd finds his solution deep in the heart of Bangkok, in a non-profit organization that’s part law firm and part activist group. He remembers its leader -  Gan, a tiny, handsome woman in her early thirties - because she’d spit in his face at a protest after his TV station took over a smaller independent news outlet. Todd doesn’t know if growing up with Black has conditioned him into it but he likes that sort of fire in a person. He would have been tempted to invite her out to dinner if Gan wasn’t so outwardly and unapologetically a lesbian. 

 

“I don’t trust your intentions,” she tells him bluntly after reviewing the documents and listening to his secretary tell her story. “But we need the money you’re offering to pull this off, and once we do, it’s going to help a whole lot of single mothers. I can’t afford to refuse you. Just know that you aren’t getting anything from me - not my approval, not my endorsement.”

 

Todd shrugs, smirking because he knows it’ll just make her madder. “Pull it off and I won’t ask you for anything else,” he says, and ducks out of the office before she can gather another wad of spit to lob in his direction.

*

Todd doesn’t hear from Black for a month. He’s not worried. He doesn’t expect Black to contact him. Maybe after a while, when his temper has cooled, or he needs Todd’s help with something.

 

It’s a semi-frequent fantasy.

 

Anyway, there are trackers sewn in several of Black’s clothes but he has either found all of them or disposed of his clothes by now. It’s not like it matters - if he’s in the country, Todd can track him down in less than six hours, and Black can’t leave without his passport getting flagged in every airport or port in the country.

 

It’s enough reassurance, or so Todd tells himself. It’s also other things, like normal, and healthy, to give Black space and time, to return to Todd’s orbit when he wants to. If he wants to. 

 

Anyway, he’s got a private CCTV camera set on the building where White and his friends are. Once Black shows up again, he’ll go there first. A glimpse of his face, distorted by the distance and bad quality, will have to be enough. 

 

Todd tries not to dwell on it much. 

 

Actually, he avoids all thoughts of Black in general. He doesn’t think about the expression on his face right before Todd landed the first blow or the way his fists felt breaking Todd’s ribs. He doesn’t remember the way the cold muzzle of the gun felt pressing into his temple, or the way Black’s hand had trembled on the trigger. He definitely doesn’t think about the shape of him, curled up on Todd’s armchair in a cat nap, the sunlight painting golden on his skin before everything between them went to shit.

 

So actually, Todd thinks about Black more than he thinks about most things, which is why he’s surprised to see a familiar pixelated figure on the camera feed in his hallway. Security lets him pass as instructed, and Todd doesn’t have a thought to spare for their feelings. 

 

He fixes his hair in a mirror as he power walks to the liquor cabinet to pour himself some scotch. If he stands in front of the tallest window in his office, it’s because he’s admiring the view of the city and not because he knows how the evening golden hour highlights his features.

 

The heavy doors leading to his study open, and Todd takes advantage of the reflection in the window to check out his visitor. He immediately bites down on a sigh. Familiar tattoos peek from the edges of worn denim layered over a deep burgundy top, the vest’s edges bleached with peroxide splatters. Dark eyes stare at him moodily from under a too-long fringe, rosebud mouth pursued in an almost pout, body tense and coiled like a spring.

 

It’s a decent likeness. Too bad that Todd isn’t that easily fooled.

 

“Hello, White,” he says, turning around and tipping his glass in a mock salute, “it’s so nice of you to visit.”

 

White’s expression immediately drops into something almost petulant as he reaches up to brush the hair out of his face. “How do you always know it’s me?” he asks, shifting his feet into a more natural position. If he’s being himself, he never slouches, his posture etiquette perfect.

 

There’s a lot Todd could say to him. 

 

In the grand scheme of things, he’s only known White for a few years, but he’s been around Black for more than half of his life. He knows him, or he used to, down to the little details, like the way he smiles when he’s actually sad, or the way he breathes when he’s having a nightmare. It’d take a lot more than some clothes and a combover to fool him.

 

“You’re nothing alike,” he says instead.

 

“Sean never has any issues anymore, but the guys always tell me they have a hard time telling us apart without the glasses,” White says, and promptly takes them out of his pocket, rubbing them on his shirt.

 

It must be a fit of temporary insanity brought on by the leftover adrenaline in Todd’s system. He opens his mouth. “Black actually needs them too, he just refuses to wear them,” he says.

 

White freezes, mouth open, glasses threatening to slip from his slack grip. “What?” he asks. 

 

“He says it’s because they’re hard to fight in,” Todd offers. White’s affronted expression is hilarious.

 

“Are you telling me my brother has been walking around half-blind this whole time?” White hisses, not unlike an angry kitten. 

 

“I don’t know his prescription,” that’s a lie, Todd has his whole medical chart memorized, though the information is out of date, and that rankles, “but yeah, probably.”

 

“How does he even drive his bike?” White asks, gesturing angrily with his hands. “What about traffic signs?”

 

Todd shrugs. “I think he just sort of creatively interprets them,” he says, trying and failing to suppress his laughter.

 

White almost seems to deflate. “That explains so much,” he says. "And contact lenses?"

 

Todd shrugs. "They make him paranoid," he says.

 

"Everything makes him paranoid," White sighs, shaking his head.

 

There's a moment of silence, as they contemplate the person they have in common. Todd stops himself from shifting uncomfortably. It's not that he dislikes White, it's just that his presence highlights the absence of his brother. It's going to be another long evening of trying to distract himself with alcohol and annual reviews.

 

"So, is there a reason you came here, dressed like that?" Todd asks finally, nodding at White's denim vest. "Or did you come to get your revenge?"

 

"My brother already beat you almost to death, I think we're good. He's the one you have to apologize to, not me," White says, shrugging. "Anyway, I came to find out if you've seen him recently. It's been more than 14 days and he hasn't called."

 

Todd's whole body abruptly feels like it's been doused with cold water. His focus sharpens, mind racing through scenarios. 

 

"He usually checks in-" White starts.

 

"Every seven days, yes, I know," Todd cuts him off briskly, striding to his computer. 

 

"How do you know that?" White asks, and Todd elects to ignore it rather than tell him he used to have a tap on Black’s phone.

 

Predictably, all of the tracking devices on Black's person are either dead or disabled. The person he's got following Black's movements lost track of him the moment he left Bangkok. Todd bites back a curse.

 

"He's not in the city anymore," Todd says, looking up at White, who's come nearer to awkwardly hover over his shoulder. "Where was he when you spoke last? What was he doing?"

 

White hesitates. Todd's heart races as he waits for him to make up his mind. The scenarios in his head are narrowed down to just a few possibilities. He likes none of them. Black could be out there, hurt or dying and Todd wouldn't have even known, wouldn't have realized.

 

He meets White's gaze. "Did you feel anything through your twin connection? Is he hurt? Is he-"

 

Todd cuts himself off. He's revealing too much and White isn't stupid. It won't be long until he puts two and two together and comes to the right conclusion.

 

"Why am I not surprised that you know about that?" White says, and in any other circumstance, Todd would have laughed. The day at the pool, when White almost drowned, Todd had been the one to hold onto Black's hand, keeping him from doing something stupid, like punching the pool or hurling himself over the jumping platform. "You really care about my brother, don't you?"

 

"Unfortunately," Todd mutters. He can anticipate the next question, and he’s not looking forward to answering it.

 

"Then why did you hurt him?" White asks, and Todd looks away, outside the window where the city's lights glitter like stars. 

 

There’s a moment of silence. Todd swallows around a dry throat.

 

"I had a plan," Todd says finally. He didn't expect to be saying this today, but he doesn't think White will budge otherwise. "It wasn't a particularly good plan, in hindsight."

 

White is silent, patiently waiting him out. "Some of ROL's activities were getting too close to my own plans," Todd starts to explain, "I'd been planning to eliminate them before they really became a problem. I didn’t anticipate that Black would meet Gram, and be convinced to join. It all became more complicated. We had a fight. I know Black - he wouldn't have backed down."

 

"So? You beat him up to punish him?" White prompts after Todd had been silent for a bit.

 

"Not really,” Todd says because he and Black have never really worked like that, “I needed him to stay out of the way for a while," he shrugs, "it was that or a jail cell, and jail time would have gone on his permanent record."

 

White looks incredulous. "You beat him into a coma to keep him out of the way while you made his friends disappear?" he asks.

 

"I told you it wasn't a great plan," Todd says uncomfortably. Admitting out loud that he was wrong always rankles. "And I didn't have enough information to proceed with ROL anyway."

 

"So you approached me," White says, and it’s frustrating that Todd doesn’t know him well enough to tell what he’s thinking. "Why?"

 

"You were expendable," Todd says because in his own gentle way, White had insisted on the truth, so Todd gives it to him, even if it makes White visibly flinch.

 

"I was expendable, and Black’s friends were expendable," White echoes, frowning at him. "But not Black."

 

"No," Todd says quietly. "Not Black."

 

There's a silence between them. White looks thoughtful like he's finally putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Todd looks at his hands and tries to forcefully unclench them. There's a gun in his desk's upper drawer. He could go get it right now, hold it to White's temple and force him into telling him everything, but he's got a feeling that it's something that Black couldn't forgive him for doing. Then again, he's done plenty of things that Black will never forgive him for, so why does this feel like a sticking point?

 

"He was tracking down one of Tawi's drug operations," White says suddenly, and Todd's head snaps up. "Down south somewhere. The last time I spoke to him he was in Hat Yai. Does that help?"

 

"Yes," Todd says, relieved. "Yes, it does."

 

Because he's been keeping track of Tawi's drug operations too. And he knows exactly which one White is talking about.

*

Six hours later, dawn is barely breaking over the horizon as Todd tears through a forest in the back of a four-wheeler with an AK-47 cradled in his arms. There's a heavily armed security team with him, and he's shouting coordinates at them through his headset to be heard over the sound of the wind.

 

Roughly half an hour later, he's kicking down the door to a small wooden shack. He feels the impact on his hip and grits his teeth through it, charging in first. Inside, he finds stacks upon stacks of heroin, and Black. 

 

He looks up from where he’s slowly choking a drug dealer into unconsciousness with his thighs, to frown at Todd coming through the door. He’s already got two other goons knocked out and tied up in the corner. As Todd watches, he kicks the man in his grasp in the head with a complicated maneuver, dropping him on the floor so he can turn and glare at Todd instead.

 

“Why the fuck are you here?” Black asks incredulously. The man on the floor groans pitifully and Black kicks him again, breaking his nose with a sickening crunch. Black waves his hands to encompass the space and the bodies. “I had everything under control.”

 

“I can see that,” Todd says dryly. Another goon chooses the moment to come charging through a trapdoor behind Black, his eyes widening when he sees the rifle in Todd’s arms. It’s a fatal mistake, because Black calmly bends over, picks a knife off the floor, and throws it at him. It buries in the man’s shoulder and he goes down howling a moment before Todd’s security subdues him.

 

Black sniffs contemptuously and adjusts the tattered remains of his clothing. Looking at him up close, he’s filthy and sweaty and bruised all over. He strides out, calmly walking past Todd’s armored guards, ignoring the way they tense when he comes nearer, and then out the door, into the morning sunlight.

 

In the ensuing silence, Todd sighs.

*

It turns out that Black doesn’t have it entirely under control, because he collapses a few steps away from the shack, the cocktail of drugs in his system finally taking effect. His captors had kept him drugged and docile while waiting on orders on what to do with him, and it wasn’t until they missed a dose that Black was able to fight his way free, though not before they’d injected him with a higher dosage.

 

Todd gathers all of that by training his rifle on the only goon left awake, relishing the fear apparent in the parts of his face that Black hadn’t already mutilated. He promises him his life for the information, and then he shoots him anyway because it’s the fastest way to deal with the problem while Black lies on the dirt floor, Todd’s jacket bunched up under his head as he shakes, lost in delirium.

 

The clearing is too small for a helicopter to land, so they have to take the four-wheelers, Todd sitting in the back, cradling Black to his body as securely as he’s able, even as Black starts to trash, lost in the grip of waking nightmares, his body burning up. From there, they get to Todd’s private helicopter, airlifting out of the forest and back to civilization.

 

The hospital is out of the question. Black’s mother is an influential woman, despite everything, and Todd can’t risk them informing her of his drugged-up condition. Black in a coma after a beating barely registered on her radar, but if she caught wind of anything involving drugs, her reputation would be at stake, which would make her an unpredictable force. 

 

Rather than deal with that whole headache, Todd calls in his family doctor. The same doctor did all of Black’s check-ups too, after the divorce, because his mother forgot he needed them, but Todd never did. The doctor seems upset over Black’s condition but ultimately pronounces that he’ll be fine once he sweats the drugs out.

 

In the time it takes them to get from the doctor’s office to Todd’s house, Black has gained some lucidity. Or at least, enough to vomit all over Todd’s foyer the moment they step through the front door. 

 

It’s fine, Todd never liked that carpet much anyway.

 

The next few hours are harrowing. Todd has to almost carry Black to his bathroom, where he seizes and vomits. He regains enough consciousness to fight off Todd’s hands where he’s brushing his hair out of the way but after a while, he’s too weak to reject the damp cloth that Todd presses to his skin or the glass of water he puts to his mouth between bouts of cramping. 

 

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Black’s body decides to take a break. He passes out sprawled across the cold marble floor of Todd’s bathroom, exhausted. After making sure it won’t earn him an elbow to the gut, Todd hauls him up in his arms and half drags him to his bed. Black’s small frame is packed full of wiry muscles, and he’s not light. Somehow Todd gets him situated. And then he has to take a break to catch his breath. He’s been getting tired more easily recently.

 

Eventually, he brings over a basin with warm water and a washcloth and does his best to clean the dirt and sweat and vomit off him, revealing bruising that makes Todd’s blood boil. For a moment he wishes he’d shot the men somewhere where it’d hurt more, drawing out their deaths. 

 

It doesn’t matter now. He’ll make Tawi pay for it instead.

 

There’s a circular scar on Black’s elbow that he got while racing with White when they were kids and a nearly vertical slash on his lower thigh that he got while hauling Todd’s drunk ass out of a club while they were still underage. Beyond that, there are countless scars across his body, some that Todd can place, and many more than he can’t. He wonders, with a sick fascination, how many he put there.

 

Somewhere, packed with Todd's childhood stuff, are Black's old pajamas. They're blue with little red airplanes. Black always slept better than Todd did, and he used to pass the time at night looking at those cartoon airplanes and imagining that he and Black were flying off somewhere far away. Away from his father's contemptuous looks and the sneers thrown their way by Black’s mother. They could go find White, and play together, and it would all be like it was before Todd's mother withered away in a hospital bed.

 

There's no way Black would fit in those pajamas now, so Todd dresses him in his clothes, even though they're way too big for him. He looks small, swallowed up by Todd's hoodie. Vulnerable. Todd averts his eyes to the bedspread to keep from staring. It's late afternoon and he's exhausted. He only means to rest his head for a minute.

 

He wakes up sometime later in the dark with a crick in his neck from where he's been awkwardly leaning against the bed. He blinks a couple of times before he realizes that Black's eyes are open, shining liquid in the limited light from the streetlights.

 

"You're awake," Todd says, surprised, trying to shake off the spiderwebs clinging to his brain. "Do you need anything?"

 

"Yeah," Black says quietly, his voice a deadly rasp in the darkness, "I need you to leave me the fuck alone."

 

Todd is silent, trying to blink awake, something cold settling like a blanket over his chest. Black still has more to say.

 

"Stop it with the trackers and with the stalking, and with the CCTV," Black continues, his expression unreadable in the dark, "I'd honestly rather rot than to have to be rescued by you again."

 

There's a beat of silence before Todd lurches awkwardly to his feet. "Alright," he says finally, "whatever you want."

 

He staggers, shaky on his feet, out of the room. He sleeps on the couch in his office instead of the guest room, because it's nearer to the bedroom, and Black might have a relapse in the night.

 

In the morning, the bed is empty and his clothes are gone. The sheets are neatly made, and Todd briefly contemplates the pillow creases. He wonders if the bed smells like Black, like cigarettes and car oil, but he doesn't check. His whole body feels strangely numb, disconnected from his surroundings. 

 

Todd scrolls through his piling up emails idly all through breakfast. The titles all sound like they'd be urgent but the content is just the same old shit. He loses himself in an old daydream where he just up and quits, forcing his father out of his retirement in Monaco, watching him flounder when he has to abandon his lifestyle of whores and gambling to lead the company while Todd goes on vacation somewhere quiet and remote, and doesn’t have to worry about next month’s revenue, or things like diplomacy, or politics.

 

His phone chimes quietly with another email. It’s from the doctor’s office. They want him to come in for another check-up. A sense of foreboding settles like ice in his chest.

*

Black held a gun to Todd’s head, hands shaking and tears in his eyes, words breaking in his mouth, and he didn’t pull the trigger. Todd shouldn’t have deluded himself that it meant something more than it did.

 

Fundamentally, they’re still the same people - opposite in all the ways that actually matter, and similar enough that they know exactly how to hit where it’ll hurt the most.

*

Spring is in full bloom, with birds excitedly bursting into song to be heard above the din of motors and exhaust fumes, their wings dark silhouettes against the azure sky dotted with cotton clouds lazily drifting on their way. 

 

The hospital room is painted a sickly mint green, which is probably supposed to be calming but it’s peeled enough in some places that it exposes the paint underneath, which was yellow and was probably supposed to be cheery. Todd feels neither calm nor cheered. There aren’t any windows in the room, and the memory of the sky he’d glimpsed before going in is slowly fading.

 

He’d brought his tablet and some paperwork to work on, but it’s been an hour in and the letters are swimming in front of his eyes. He can’t focus and his body feels leaden, weighed down by exhaustion.

 

All he can do is watch the slow drip of the IV fluid attached to his arm. Beyond his hospital door, the world keeps on spinning - nurses go about their work as patients shift impatiently in their beds, bored out of their minds. People talking, crying, screaming, but the only thing he can really hear is his own breathing and the sound of the steady drip of medicine flowing into his veins. 

 

Drop by agonizing drop.

*

Todd wakes up from dreams sometimes. Water, all around him, in his lungs, the press of it overwhelming. His hands around Black’s neck, squeezing until he goes limp. He has dreams where he doesn’t stop, watching as Black’s body slowly floats to the surface of his pool.

 

He wakes up sweaty and cold, his chest aching.

*

It’s mid-summer and Todd hasn’t been outside for almost a month. He keeps the house dark with curtains drawn over the windows except for early in the morning and late at night when the sunlight is low and gentle. If he keeps the aircon on, he gets too cold and if he turns it off, he’s sweaty, so he compromises by keeping it on and wrapping himself in a soft blanket.

 

He works remotely and leads meetings with the camera turned off. There are all sorts of rumors flying around at the company as to where he is - the front runner seems to be that he’s bought a private island off the coast where he throws lavish parties and his camera is turned off so a scantily clad guest doesn’t flash everyone. It sounds like someone’s wishful thinking.

 

He prefers the rumors to having them know the reality. 

 

His body has changed now, losing most of the muscle definition he’d been so proud of. It feels like if he tried to throw a punch now, his bones might shatter apart at the impact. He hasn’t got much of an appetite. Exhaustion has settled over his body, bone-deep, a constant companion. He used to be so proud of running half-marathons in the morning and swimming laps for hours. Now he gets out of breath if he uses the stairs.

 

His old clothes dwarf him, loose in the chest and shoulders, hanging over his knuckles. He keeps his hood up more often than not, his shaved head making him feel oddly vulnerable. He is vulnerable - every bump raises stark bruises on his skin. He spends a lot of time just sleeping.

 

During the day, the only people he sees with any frequency are his housekeeper and his secretary, and his security detail is down to a minimum since he never leaves the house. At night he lies awake for long stretches of time, straining to hear the distant sounds of traffic so he doesn’t feel so alone in his own head. He sleeps when dawn breaks, demons finally gone quiet.

 

White texts him sometimes, which is a surprise. His boyfriend and his friends are graduating. He’s working at an interpreter firm, translating documents into any of the multiple languages he speaks. His boyfriend has started an internship with the same activist law firm that Todd has on his payroll, which is an interesting coincidence. White doesn’t mention Black. Maybe he thinks Todd already knows. 

 

Todd doesn’t.

 

His father visits the house only once, walking through the door in a suit he’s sweated through, smelling like expensive cologne and European sunscreen. He looks at Todd, huddled on the couch, in his blankets and too-big clothes, surrounded by paperwork that keeps his company running.

 

“You’re just like your mother,” he says, and leaves. So, nothing has changed there.

 

Todd is almost as old as his mother was when she got sick. She'd married at 18, a corporate match that merged their two companies together into a technological giant that was supposed to dominate the industry for years to come. She wasn’t blind to the cracks in her husband’s innocent facade, but as her father’s only daughter, she’d done her duty.

 

Todd’s father was a barely-there presence, distant and severe, always out on vacations disguised as business trips or on long evenings out with his business partners. Todd grew up around his mother and a gaggle of everchanging house staff, with occasional breaks for frigid dinners with his grandparents and boring glittering galas that never made themselves welcome to children.

 

That was, until Black.

 

Some of his earliest memories are of toddling after Black and White, getting into all sorts of mischief during formal dinners, and driving their nannies up the wall at playdates. Black was always the instigator, the one with the ideas, and White was the one who was dragged along reluctantly only to end up egging them on into further trouble almost without meaning to. Then, once the trouble was made, Todd came in to smooth things over with the adults and get them out with a slap on the wrist. 

 

There must have been bad moments back then but Todd doesn't remember them, only that the days passed him by in uncomplicated happiness, surrounded by his friends - Black, White, and his mother.

 

Then, all of a sudden, White was gone and he was down to two friends. Black became quiet and angry. Instead of innocent mischief, Todd dragged him out of fights with schoolmates and confrontations with teachers. There was a hole in Black’s life that Todd couldn’t fill all by himself. It was the first time he couldn’t be enough for Black. 

 

It wouldn’t be the last. 

 

Just before he turned thirteen, Todd’s mother passed away, diminished to beyond a shadow in her hospital bed. Nothing about her death was sudden - she died by slow degrees and none of her money could ease her suffering. Todd spent most of his time by her bedside, attending to her needs as best as a thirteen-year-old could, smiling through his fear and pretending the smell of antiseptic didn’t make him feel sick. 

 

During those long months, Black practically moved in, taking care of them both, a quiet shadow in the corner of the sick room, poking and prodding at Todd until his smile became less fixed, and curling up around him at night when he finally allowed himself to cry.

 

Black was a lifeline, after. If Todd didn’t want to be in his empty house, Black would take him out, driving through back streets on a shitty motor scooter until dawn when they went to school in the same rumpled uniforms from the day before. 

 

Black liked to feel the wind on his skin, pushing the motor to its limits as the first vestiges of dawn painted across the horizon. ‘Freedom is the oxygen of the soul,’ and Black’s fingers threading air like water, lit up with golden light.

 

In contrast, Todd clung to Black’s body like a lifeline and it wasn’t just because Black liked to take risks doing turns. Black found freedom in letting go. Todd held onto freedom with both hands, curling his body around Black’s slighter frame, close enough that they seemed like one body. He’d close his eyes and press his forehead into a denim vest that smelled like car oil, and the world would fall away for a brief, priceless moment. 

 

Black started smoking and Todd started drinking, and they made idle bets on which one was more self-destructive.

 

They had a fight at Todd's 18th birthday party. They’d fought before, with fists and words that stung worse than punches, but that fight was the worst one.

 

By then, Todd had been learning how to run a business with his grandfather for years. He hated the old man and his coldness and his severe reprimands. It was near Todd’s 18th birthday that his health began to decline and he began to talk more seriously about Todd taking over, as it became obvious that his father was unable and unwilling to assume the role. 

 

In preparation, Todd tried to become more involved in the high society social scene. Before, being with Black was enough, but now he needed other friends, rich and high-positioned so that they could become powerful allies in the future. Enduring their vapid conversations about studying abroad and luxury yachts seemed like a small price to pay.

 

Black, who had become increasingly involved in social activism, attending protests and reading radical authors, was not happy with Todd’s new friends, or his decision to join the ranks of the capitalist oppressors. He especially wasn’t happy about having to attend Todd’s birthday party. He came anyway. Because Todd asked him to. Had insisted.

 

He shouldn’t have, in hindsight. He’d known Black would feel uncomfortable and out of place, but he’d wanted him there, to see all the people admire him and praise him for decisions Black regarded with suspicion and contempt.

 

It ended with Black throwing his drink in the face of the son of the prime minister, and then roundhouse kicking his security guard into the wall before leaving the party in spectacular fashion. Haunted by the whispers from the attendees, and his grandfather’s palpable disapproval, Todd had chased after him. 

 

He’d wondered over the years, how things would have turned out if he hadn’t.

*

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

 

Todd finds Black in his office, in his favorite armchair. He’s sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, and the position should make him look vulnerable but every muscle in his body is tense, coiled like a spring. His fury is a palpable thing in the air between them.

 

“You’re right,” Black says, voice gone low and angry, “I should have stabbed him with one of the canapes instead. Have him bleed all over his precious suit.”

 

“This isn’t a joke,” Todd hisses, “you really embarrassed me out there.”

 

He’s angry too, feels it burn cold through the haze of the alcohol he’s consumed, leaving him with the focus of the halfway sober. Black snorts contemptuously. He hasn’t turned to acknowledge Todd’s presence and it’s something that would have barely registered any other day but tonight it makes his anger burn brighter, diffusing sickly through his veins.

 

“You’re embarrassed?” Black asks, silky soft and dangerous. “Since when do you care about what people like that think of you?”

 

“It’s important for my image,” Todd says, haughtily, glaring at Black’s back, “if I want to get into politics later, there’s no way I can do it without their backing. They might look dumb now but in the future, they’ll inherit their parents’ fortunes.”

 

“So until then, what?” Black asks, low and dangerous. “You’ll nod along to their conversations about designer bags and their beliefs about how beggars should be rounded up and put in prison? Is that what you’re going to do?”

 

“So what?” Todd explodes, shouting. “It’s not like it matters if I’m just doing it for my own gain. I couldn’t care less about anyone else. I just want their money and their support, I don’t have to have an opinion on who they are.”

 

“Do you know what he said to me?” Black says, voice shaking with fury. He folds his arms in front of him but not before Todd sees them trembling. “That he hopes his father can pass more anti-gay legislation because those deviants deserved to rot in prisons for the rest of their days. You expect me to hear that and not react?”

 

“His father is a useless puppet, he can’t pass any legislation at all,” Todd says dismissively. Finally, Black turns around to look at him. He’s deathly pale except for the twin spots of color high in his cheeks. His eyes are liquid and dark, drawing the light.

 

“Do you think someone like that could accept you if he knew about your preferences?” Black asks quietly. Todd swallows dryly. He came out to Black when he was 16, not that Black didn’t know before that. It’s never been an issue between them. If Black suspects that Todd has feelings for him, he’s never said anything about it.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Todd says, as resolutely as he can in the face of Black’s piercing gaze, “plenty of men like that marry women and then have quiet agreements with them. I don’t have to tell anyone else about it. It’s my private business anyway.”

 

“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Black says quietly, and Todd can’t stand to look at him anymore. He turns away.

 

“That’s such a straight male thing to say,” Todd says, rallying what’s left of his wits. “Or did you forget that you come from a place of privilege too? Soon enough you’ll have to grow out of this poli-sci crap if you want your mother to choose you as the heir to her company.”

 

“I don’t want the company,” Black says quietly. “I don’t want anything to do with it, or with her. I’m waiting until I turn 18 and then I’m moving out on my own.”

 

“You’re what?” Todd asks, the news dropping like a stone in his stomach. This is the first time he’s hearing this. Even though Black isn’t at his mother’s often, he still officially lives there.  “What do you mean, you’re moving out? Where are you going to go?”

 

“I’m moving into a shared apartment with a few people I know,” Black says, straightening up in his seat, “and I’m attending college on a scholarship. I’m aware that I’m privileged to be able to do that much. At least I’m earning it on my own merit.”

 

Todd recoils, stung. It’s hard not to think of the words as an insult to himself and his own lifestyle. He feels upset and angry and scrapped raw by the knowing in Black’s eyes. He’s never been so exposed in front of anyone, and the feeling is scary. Maybe that’s what makes him say it.

 

“Well, a year down the line when this inevitably fails, don’t expect that you can come crawling back here and eat my food, and sleep in my guest bed,” he says. Black’s expression shutters, rendering it entirely unfathomable for the first time that Todd can remember.

 

“Trust me, you don’t have to worry about that happening,” Black says, and then he gets to his feet, and walks out.

 

It feels like a part of him walks out of Todd’s life for good.

*

“If I really could, you wouldn’t be standing here.”

 

It’s Todd’s second-biggest secret, choked out into the fraught air between them, Black’s expression blurred by the tears that Todd refuses to let fall. That Todd can’t kill Black even if the carefully constructed pieces of his world are falling apart because of him. 

 

The only time he’s ever admitted to weakness and the only person he’ll ever admit it to. 

*

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Todd’s father was a familiar face in Bangkok’s prostitution scene. He had a deal with one of the minor mob families that supplied new prostitutes for his formal and informal business dinners and a stream of young women coming to his private apartment nightly. It was distasteful and very well known, and Todd’s mother bore it publicly with all the grace of her high-class upbringing. 

 

It was such a normal part of who his father was that Todd didn’t actually feel that impacted by it until his fifteenth birthday when his father presented him with the first and only present that he picked out for him all on his own - a prostitute, pretty and dark-eyed. Just his father’s type.

 

“Tonight, my son, you finally become a man!” his father had leered at him, smelling of alcohol and sweat, and Todd - revolted, terrified, and deeply closeted - almost bit straight through his own tongue.

 

At eighteen, Milk looked younger and had the experience of a woman twice her age. She’d been pimped out for years before Todd met her, and she must have read his abject horror at the thought of sleeping with her on his face because that first night all they did was talk.

 

Milk had a lot to say - she was smart and observant. She was ambitious - planning to run her own brothel before she turned thirty. And she knew all sorts of things, about all sorts of people, but mostly men in power. That first night, she told them to Todd for free, just thrilled to have someone listening to her. 

 

In time, he’d learn to put the secrets to good use and she’d learn to charge him for them, but that first night they were just two teenagers exchanging gossip about some of the most powerful people in the country.

 

Where his father saw only pleasure and leisure, Todd saw a business opportunity. In a couple of years, he had one of the most extensive information networks in the country, run entirely through brothels and strip clubs. Taking over his father’s reputation as a player and a whore was particularly useful because it allowed him to meet his informants without arousing suspicion.

 

The news channel run by his company had a reputation of being on the scene of the scandal before other news stations even caught wind of anything happening, and no one could quite figure out why that was. Meanwhile, Todd was blackmailing politicians and royal family members with their dirty little secrets.

 

Milk was at the center of it all, a brothel owner and a pimp, and a smart female entrepreneur. She was both beloved and reviled, sometimes by the same people, and her presence made a real impact in whatever she chose to be involved in.  So the sight of her broken and twisted body on the pavement of one of the busiest streets in the city sent shockwaves through Bangkok’s underground.

 

Everyone who works the streets at night knows it comes with its own dangers. A woman, unaccompanied on the streets is fair game, and even Milk’s reputation can’t protect her everywhere. A group of men surrounds her, beats her, and hurts her, leaving her on the sidewalk where a couple of police officers pick her up for loitering. She’s coherent and furious, despite her injuries, but when she tries to report the crime, the officers just laugh.

 

She’s a whore, a prostitute, and probably a drug addict too. Does she want them to call her pimp so he can pick her up? No one bothers to call for medical attention. Instead,, they arrest her for prostitution and throw her in jail, berating her for bleeding through their bedding.

 

Hours later, half-delirious with pain, she finally gets to make a phone call. Instead of anyone at her brothel, or the commune she lives, she calls Todd, rasping the story through clenched teeth while a guard hisses at her to hurry up.

 

That same guard watches bug-eyed an hour later as a well-dressed lawyer from one of the city’s top law firms walks past him, escorting a beaten-up prostitute out the front door.

 

Todd visits her in the hospital, after. It’s somewhat of an ordeal - no one had seen him in the country for a few months and he isn’t thrilled about getting spotted. He goes in the night, under cover of darkness, dressed in layers. Her gaze, dissecting and sharp in her swollen face, reads the truth in his body.

 

She opens her mouth and then closes it. Todd relaxes minutely. They regard each other quietly for a moment, cataloging the changes in each other - his gaunt face and her bruises. Then she beckons him closer.

 

He perches on the edge of her bed instead of the uncomfortable-looking chair and grasps her outreached hand. “What do you want?” he asks her because out of all of his business partners, she’s the only one he could almost consider a friend.

 

"I want them to pay," she says and he knows that she doesn't just mean the men who left her to die, but the policemen and the judges who sneered at her face, and maybe also men like Todd's father who'd taken advantage of her in the past.

 

"I'll do my best," he promises, and her mouth quirks into a smile on her swollen face. Her voice has a hint of bitterness to it.

 

"What do you want in return?" Milk asks and Todd's first instinct is to deny it. He's surprised by it - the whole reason he's been able to get as successful as he has is that he knows how to put a price on his favors. 

 

"You become a martyr," he says in the end, almost apologetic. "There won't be any hiding for you after what we’re going to do."

 

"There's always a price,” she says quietly and nestles back into the pillows, turning her face away. She looks young like this, swaddled in bandages, like she should have a doting parent by her bedside, holding her hand, comforting her. Instead, there’s Todd, who quietly pats her blanket, awkward and unused to the motions of comfort. He sits there until she falls asleep, watching the steady drip of her IV line instead of her tear-streaked face.

*

Todd still has bad days.

 

His body aches. Exhaustion has settled down in his bones, making him feel hollow, but he can’t fall asleep when he closes his eyes, so he just ends up listlessly lying on the couch instead. It’s warm inside the house but he’s wrapped up in a blanket. He gets a glimpse of himself in the mirror and can barely recognize his face, gaunt and tired. Older. 

 

There’s a small amount of whiskey in his glass and he’s been watching it get diluted by ice water for the last hour. He can’t drink alcohol anyway. It interacts badly with his medication. He’s poured it in a last-ditch effort to cling to some normalcy. It hasn’t really worked.

 

His phone beeps with an alert and it breaks through his melancholy haze. There’s someone in the front hall. Todd switches over to the app connected to the security cameras and - 

 

There he is. 

 

Black is creeping down the hallway towards his office, sticking close to the walls and hiding behind doors, like one of the housekeepers might come across him and start doing martial arts with her broom. He’s broken in through the basement, which is funny because his security code for the front door is still active. Todd never changed it.

 

He watches Black in on the pixelated camera feed. He looks good as he strides through familiar hallways to Todd's office. Todd considers getting up, getting dressed, and putting on one of his custom-made wigs. Pretending just for a few minutes that his life hasn't changed in some fundamental ways.

 

He doesn't do it in the end. Waits quietly, wrapped up in his blanket, watery whiskey leaving a condensation mark on the coffee table. The couch is at an angle, so Black doesn’t notice him when he comes in, zeroing in on the desk. He starts going through the drawers, giving Todd some uninterrupted time to watch him. 

 

Black makes for a striking figure in the half-dark, the fading sunset backlighting him in warm tones that lengthen the shadows on his face, making him look sharp and alien. Todd drinks him in, hit with a sudden impulse to memorize the details of his face - the way his hair falls against his forehead, the frustrated furrow between his eyebrows. His eyes narrowed in focus, his body a tense line, always anticipating an attack. Black moves with so much grace and he takes up space with such unshakeable confidence that Todd can’t help but find it reassuring. It’s a relief that some things remain the same.

 

The moment feels stolen, almost elicit. The chasm between them has never felt wider. Black upends a pen holder and sends pens scattering across the desk.

 

Todd withholds a sigh. “Is there anything I can help you with?” he asks finally. Black flinches, and his eyes flit to the side to look at Todd. The sun has sunk beyond the horizon, leaving the room in darkness and Todd a shapeless blob on the couch. Black’s eyes move away in deliberate dismissal and Todd has to suppress a smile at the audacity. Less than a year ago, he’d been the one to put Black in a coma but he still barely registers as a threat.

 

“Oh, so you're here,” Black says, casually, as he upends another pen holder, this one definitely deliberately. “I thought the rumors were true and you’d fucked off to some private island, and stopped stinking up the air in this country.”

 

“Sorry to disappoint,” Todd says dryly. "Are you looking for anything in particular or are you just looking to take some anger out on my pens?"

 

"They're just bullshit frivolities," Black says, picking up a pen out of the chaos on the desk, a sneer on his face, "why would you ever need a pen made out of glass? Does it write better words? Words with more meaning? It's a waste of money, fueled by the very rich to cover up how little of what they have to say is utterly meaningless, just written in expensive ink."

 

He throws the pen down with a careless motion and it clatters onto the desk and shatters, the ink pooling on the documents. Todd sighs, loud in the ensuing silence. Nothing on the desk is important, or it wouldn't be out in the open, but it's still going to be a pain to replace.

 

"Anyway, that's not important," Black continues, as if he hasn’t just spent the last few minutes pettily destroying writing utensils, "I need information about the amphetamines Tawi is pushing. Routes and suppliers, and the names of his dealers."

 

"What makes you think I have them?" Todd asks. He watches detachedly as Black starts wrenching out drawers, scattering their contents on the floor, the paper fluttering through the air like startled doves.

 

"The dealer I've been tailing is notorious for his pillow talk," Black shrugs, elbow deep in Todd’s desk, "and you pay a lot of prostitutes for a gay man. You're using them as informants."

 

It's an astute observation and for a moment Todd feels almost proud. Black is smart, much smarter than anyone ever gives him credit for. 

 

"I could be paying them to service my employees," Todd points out, just to feel out his reasoning.

 

"No, I don't think so," Black says, carelessly. He switches on a desk lamp because it's gotten dark while they were talking, sunset bleeding into nighttime. "All of your close associates are women anyway."

 

"You've been keeping tabs on me," Todd says, and maybe at some point that would have given him some form of joy.

 

"No more than any of my other enemies," Black says dismissively. "Look, I don't really want to spend more time in your presence than I have to, so either you're giving me the files the easy way or-"

 

The desk lamp is spilling soft yellow light across the room, illuminating Black's face as he turns to face the couch. Todd watches his focused expression slacken as he actually looks at him for the first time. He can imagine what Black is seeing - the way the sweater hangs off of Todd’s skinny frame, the dark bags under his eyes, the buzzcut where his hair is only just barely coming in.

 

“You’re sick,” Black says and it’s more of a statement than a question. Black was always quick on the uptake. 

 

“Yes,” Todd says, fascinated by the interplay of emotion on Black’s face. Surprised that he can understand it after so long. Confusion, anger, worry. Sympathy. 

 

“Is it the same as your mother?” Black asks, and Todd nods. “What stage?”

 

“Treatable,” Todd replies, feeling more and more uncomfortable under the Black’s scrutiny. “It’s a funny story actually - if you hadn’t beat me half to death, the doctors wouldn’t even have noticed it.”

 

Black is looking at him with a particular kind of intensity. It’s unfamiliar, but it doesn’t feel angry. In his expression, there’s something of the boy that used to curl up with him at night so he wouldn’t be lonely when he cried, and it burns right through Todd’s dulled defenses. Todd looks away, towards the drab carpet at his feet.

 

“Todd,” Black says and it feels weird to hear his name from his mouth after so long, “why didn’t you tell anyone?”

 

“Who would I tell?” Todd asks, keeping his eyes on his feet. He’s aware of Black moving across the room, his socked feet near soundless over the carpet, and isn’t it weird to break into someone’s house and still take your shoes off so the housekeeper won’t have to clean up the mud you’ve tracked in.

 

“You could have texted White,” Black says, and he’s close enough now that Todd can smell familiar cigarette smoke. Black still smokes shitty Malboros. “I know you two talk. If you said anything, he would have told me and I could-”

 

“You?” Todd cuts him off, his tone dripping in derision. Suddenly he’d rather be anywhere else than in this room, having this conversation. “What could you have done?”

 

“Todd,” and Black is kneeling on the carpet in front of him, his eyes dark liquid and expression serious. It’s strange, being looked at like that after all these years. Like he’s got Black’s entire attention. Black reaches out to touch Todd’s forearm. His hand is so warm that it feels almost scalding, and Todd startles so violently that he flinches backward into the couch. “Does that hurt?”

 

Todd shakes his head. All of a sudden, he can’t stand it anymore, Black touching him gently, looking up at him like there isn’t a history of hatred and pain between them. There’s a gun in the desk drawer. Todd could heave himself up to get it, and level the playing field between them. 

 

But Black is in his way and he’s too tired, and it’s just too much.

 

“I don’t need your pity,” he means for it to sound venomous but it just comes out sad. “The third drawer on the left has a hollow bottom half. There’s a keypad under the clip holder, the password is 10040308. The USB key is labeled F89 - it should have what you want. Take it and leave.”

 

There’s a moment of silence before Black moves, standing up and walking towards the desk, opening the drawer. Todd keeps his gaze on the floor the whole time but he can hear the click when Black inputs the correct code, and wonders if he’s understood the reference.

 

The contents of that drawer are enough to ruin him if they fall into the wrong hands, and they’re protected only by an 8-digit code made up of his and Black’s birth dates. 

 

The door clicks shut behind Black’s retreating form. Todd should go up and check if he hasn’t taken anything else. He puts his head in his hands instead.

*

Black doesn’t actually leave the house, which Todd doesn’t learn about until a few hours later when his disgruntled housekeeper tells him that she’d already served dinner to his guest but that in the future he should inform her before he has anyone over so she can prepare properly. She says it like she doesn’t know exactly who Black is like she hasn’t given him double portions of mango sticky rice for years because it’s indisputably Black’s favorite food. 

 

There have been a few times in the past when Todd wondered what the housekeeping staff thought when Black stopped coming around. While Todd made sure to replace all the security detail hired by his father, the core housekeeping staff chosen by his mother remained mostly the same throughout his childhood and into adulthood. They’d doted on Black like a second son.

 

“He’s gotten too skinny,” is the only other comment she has before leaving Todd with his unflavored rice porridge. It’s the only thing he can stomach to eat, the night before chemo.

 

A cursory browse through the surveillance cameras reveals that Black is holed up in the library. Something in Todd’s chest aches, seeing him curled up in his favorite chair, a stack of volumes next to him. It gives him a sense of deja vu. Except if this was the before, Todd could walk into his library and demand that Black gives him a rundown of what he’s reading, and then he’d probably drag him out somewhere to go drinking or driving, or clubbing. 

 

As it is, he ignores him. He’s not really tired and it’s still early but he prepares himself for bed anyway. He showers and dresses in comfortable pajamas, and avoids looking in the mirror. And then he curls up in his bed and stares out the window.

 

It must be some hours later that his bedroom door swings open, sending a slash of light from the hallway flooding in. Todd tenses up, drowsy but not actually sleeping. The door clicks shut after a moment. Black walks quietly across the hardwood floors. 

 

Todd’s first thought is that Black has finally brought himself to pull the trigger on his gun and has come to finish the last phase of his revenge. The thought doesn’t register as more than a mere annoyance. If Black does shoot him, it’s just something that the cancer or the chemo could do a few months down the line. It’s just a shame that it’ll make such a mess for the housekeeping staff to clean up. 

 

There’s no tell-tale click of a gun safety disengaging. Instead, there’s the sound of a zipper, and something heavy thrown over Todd’s recliner. Probably Black’s denim jacket. He loves that old thing, maybe he just doesn’t want to get it dirty.

 

More footsteps and Todd swears he can feel Black’s stare on his back like a touch. He refuses to turn around. Maybe it’s not a gun, maybe it’s a knife, or a grenade, or who knows what else Black’s gotten his hands on.

 

The bed dips. Black slides under the covers, his lithe body spooning up against Todd’s back, his knees slotting behind Todd’s knees, his arm coming up over his torso to rest over his heart. His breath ghosts over the nape of Todd’s neck. Todd’s whole body is tense as a bowstring, confusion churning sick in his gut. 

 

Todd has had the same room since he was a child. The decor has changed and so has the bed, but the tree outside his window still cast the same shadows and if you squint really hard and keep the curtains open, you can pretend the city’s lights are the stars. The last time someone held him like this, his bed still had bed sheets with little toy cars on them and his mom had just died. It was Black back then too.

 

The first sob catches him off guard.

 

The ones that follow tear from his throat like something stolen. His face is wet and he tastes salt when he licks his cracked lips. His whole body shakes like a willow tree in a storm, bending and bending until he feels like he’s going to break. Black doesn’t say a thing, just holds his shaking body tighter, until there isn’t a sliver of space between them, two halves of one person. Black radiates an almost unnatural warmth and it seeps into Todd’s bones, warming him up, melting the glaciers in his chest until they crack and drop into the ocean.

 

He cries for what seems like hours, and he doesn’t even know why. For the person he is, or maybe for the person he’d wanted to be, or maybe it’s for the person everyone sees him as. Todd cries until he’s all cried out, tear ducts running empty, just gasping heaving sobs that scrape against his raw throat until they too eventually quiet, and he falls asleep, still tucked in Black’s arms.

*

Todd wakes up alone. 

 

Last night feels like a fever dream, like a nightmare, and he’d dismiss it as fiction entirely if it wasn’t for the salt on his lips and the way the other side of the bed is messed up. Instinctively, Todd rolls over to press his nose into the pillow. Smells cigarette smoke and the shower gel he keeps in his guest showers. Definitely not a dream. But Black’s clothes are gone and so is any other trace of him, and Todd is honestly too exhausted and nervous to worry about it.

 

Black turns up halfway through breakfast, which for Todd is strong black tea, and struggling to read through the morning paper on his tablet. Black just walks in, takes a mango out of the fruit bowl, and starts peeling it.

 

Todd blinks, almost dropping the tablet. "Why are you here?" he asks.

 

Black looks at him, his hands full of mango flesh, the juices dripping all over the table. "I'm taking you to your appointment today," he says.

 

"No, you aren't," Todd says, flabbergasted, "my security is taking me to my appointment."

 

Black snorts. Todd narrows his eyes. "What did you do to her?" he asks. Black shrugs nonchalantly, his mouth full of mango.

 

"I handcuffe d he r to the radiator in her room," Black mumbles. Todd sighs.

 

"I have other security," Todd says, struggling to remain calm, "someone else will take me."

 

"They're all indisposed, I'm afraid," Black says, radiating smugness, "it's going to have to be me."

 

Todd frowns. "You didn't kill them all, did you?" he says. He doesn't doubt Black for a second because he knows that he absolutely could.

 

Black shrugs. "Just a few bruises," he says. "But you know what they say about how dangerous it is to drive with a concussion."

 

"Yeah, about that, it's your driving skills that I'm having doubts about," the banter comes forth instinctively, some half-remembered coping mechanism. "Do you remember how to drive a car at all?"

 

"We learned from the same instructor, remember?" Black asks as if Todd could forget. "She always praised my driving."

 

"I don't know about that," Todd says, snorting, "I mostly seem to remember a lot of 'Black, slow down when you're going through intersections!' and 'you have turn signals, use them!'"

 

"That's rich, coming from someone who hit a stop sign on his second driving lesson," Black says dryly.

 

"I just grazed it!" Todd says and realizes he's grinning. Black is smiling back, a small amused curl to his mouth. Their eyes meet across the dinner table. Todd squints.

 

"Are you wearing contact lenses?" he asks, and Black rolls his eyes.

 

"Yeah, because someone snitched to my brother that I needed them," he says.

 

"And you gave in, just like that?" Todd asks incredulously.

 

Black shrugs. "I'm trying to listen to other people's advice more, recently," he says and Todd doesn't know what to say to that, so he takes a sip of his tea instead. The corners of his mouth are a little sore like his face muscles have gotten unused to smiling.

 

It really seems like no one from his security is coming, which is a little troubling. He's confident that Black didn't kill them, so the amount of time it's taking them to get out of whatever restraints he's put them in is disappointing. As he gets up from the table, Black jangles the car key under his nose and Todd resigns himself to his fate.

 

Sitting in a car with Black is both better and worse than what Todd imagined. 

 

Better, because considering the stunts he pulls on his bike, Black is a surprisingly good driver. He navigates the streets with ease, driving smoothly. There's only one moment where he has to step on the brakes quickly, and his hand shoots across the aisle to stop Todd from coming out of his seat. His arm is warm even through the material of Todd's jacket. When he takes it away, Todd feels bereft and hates himself for it.

 

Riding in the car with Black is worse because Todd is sitting in an enclosed space with him and Black is impossible to ignore. He smells like cigarettes and the herbs in bruise cream. He radiates heat even in the air-conditioned car. Todd stares out the windshield because looking over at Black once would mean he couldn't stop looking at him for the rest of the ride.

 

Black knows what hospital to go to without Todd telling him. "Did you hack into my computer?" Todd asks. Black snorts.

 

"I didn't have to, you had your appointment paperwork in your bag," Black says, opening the car door to get out.

 

"You went through my bag?" Todd asks as Black opens his car door for him. Rationally he knows that he should have expected as much, but he's annoyed anyway. It's probably too much to ask that Black didn't look at his wallet while he was snooping. There’s a picture in there, faded and creased, of two boys smiling with their arms around each other. It tells more than Todd is ever going to be comfortable disclosing.

 

“Of course I did,” Black says, “I took the gun out by the way. I don’t think you should have that in the hospital.”

 

Todd is hit with the weird impulse to hit him, especially once Black looks up at him from under his fringe, smiling slightly just to say: “I took some cash out of your wallet too. I was out of cigarettes.”

 

Todd sighs.

 

Black follows him through the hospital doors and through check-in. Nobody questions his presence. They're a private hospital, known for their discretion, it's the reason Todd chose them in the first place. They must assume Black is his bodyguard. 

 

Todd tolerates it up until they get to the treatment room and it looks like Black will follow him in. He puts up his hand and Black almost runs into it before he stops and sends him a questioning look. 

 

"You can't come in here," Todd says, as calmly as he’s able. There’s something burning in his chest that has nothing to do with warmth.

 

"Why not?" Black asks, looking at him questioningly and the anger Todd has been holding at bay floods his veins, red hot.

 

"Because I don't want you in there," he says and Black actually takes a reflexive step back from him, like Todd could actually do something to stop him in his current state. "You drove me here, fulfilling whatever weird guilt complex you presumably have, and now you can leave."

 

"I still need to drive you home," Black says, looking up at him defiantly, almost painfully earnest, so uncharacteristic it makes Todd want to scream at him. "I read that you can get dizzy after, or sick-"

 

"I know what I'll be like after!" Todd yells, and he knows it's attracting attention but he doesn't care. "I've gone through three treatments without you, you don't get to decide that you need to be present now just because you suddenly feel sorry for me."

 

His whole body is tense like a bowstring and it hurts, sending bolts of pain through his inflamed joints. 

 

Black’s expression shutters. "Is that what you think," he asks, unreadable, "that I feel sorry for you?"

 

"I don't care about your feelings," Todd says quietly, turning away. "You wanted me to leave you alone and I did. Give me at least the same courtesy."

 

Black doesn't try to follow him when he goes inside. The nurse tuts over his elevated heartbeat when she hooks him up to a monitor but for the most part, he’s left alone, with only the steady drip of the IV. This is his fourth treatment, and the doctors had assured him that after this he’s going to start getting better. After the first time, he’d tolerated it with a comforting sort of detachment, but today for some reason he can’t seem to reach that state.

 

He’s uncomfortable and the chair keeps digging into his back. His arm hurts where the IV is hooked up. The walls seem to be sinking in on him. He can’t stand the sound of his own heartbeat from the heart monitor.

 

It strikes him how unfair this feels. Most people his age get the luxury of parents to rely on, of the security of someone telling them it’s going to be okay no matter what. They get friends, who call in and care. They get a significant other to hold their hand so they don’t feel alone.

 

All Todd has are employees, obligated to care about him until their next paycheck, and business partners who could go back on their word any time. He supposes he has some tiny part of White, who in his infinite kindness still has some care to spare for his old childhood friend even after all the trouble he’s put him through. And then there’s Black, who Todd probably never had in the first place, and never in the capacity, he would have needed him. 

 

Still, Todd wishes he’d have let him stay, even with the fear of looking at him and seeing pity in his eyes. He’d welcome a fight, or a beating, or a list of all the crimes he committed, just to have someone there in the room, breathing. He looks at the veins in his wrists, as blue as the sky outside the window, and thinks he’d give up anything just to have someone hold his hand.

 

It’s humbling. It’s devastating. It’s the lowest he’s ever been. Not his best friend pointing a gun at him - hell is this tiny room, his body withered away by an illness that feels inevitable in hindsight, and with no control over his own life anymore.

 

A few hours pass in a haze until a nurse comes to unhook his IV and send him on his way. He feels a little shaky, and unsteady on his feet but it’s hardly the worst he’s ever felt, after. He fumbles with his phone a little, intending to call his security, hoping that they’re at least semi-functional by now, as he steps through the door and into the hallway.

 

And stops.

 

“You’re still here,” he breathes. Black looks up from his phone from where he’s sitting curled up in a pretzel on the uncomfortable waiting room chairs. “It’s been three hours. I thought you left.”

 

“I just went to get coffee,” Black says, nodding to the empty cup next to him, “I wasn’t sure if you’d want something. Caffeine might be too much for your stomach.”

 

Mortifingly, Todd feels his eyes prick with tears. He blinks a few times to chase them away. “Probably,” he says. It feels like conceding a defeat but he’s not upset at all.

 

Black’s expression doesn’t change except for a small quirk of his mouth. “Alright. Ready to go home?” he says.

 

Todd closes his eyes and has to swallow a few times around a dry throat. “I’m ready,” he says. A moment later, he feels Black grasp his elbow, his touch shockingly warm even through his jacket. Without opening his eyes, Todd lets himself lean into him, feeling the strength in his wiry body as it props him up. Warmth spreads through him from everywhere they’re touching. 

 

"Are you dizzy?" Black whispers and Todd nods. "I'll just carry you then."

 

That gets Todd's attention. "No, you fucking aren't," he hisses at Black who's already bending over, presumably to throw Todd's body over his shoulder and drag him out of the hospital. There's a strip of skin exposed between Black's shirt and his neck. That's where Todd clamps his fingers down in a pinch. It's not incapacitating but it's painful and Black goes down with a shout. The whole thing backfires because Black takes a hold of Todd's knees and they almost both go tumbling.

 

"It'll be so much faster if I carry you!" Black insists. Todd gives in to his baser impulses and tries to kick him. Black snags his foot out of the air like it's nothing. Todd struggles to get out of reach, trying to ignore how it makes him feel to experience Black's strength, and how easily the other man pins him in place. He considers himself too much of a control freak to get turned on by manhandling but it seems that, as with everything else, Black is an exception.

 

"What's going on here?" Todd hears a thunderous voice ask behind him and sees Black's eyes widen minutely. It makes him even more aware of the slightly compromising position they're in.

 

He turns around with the sweetest smile he can muster. The older nurse standing behind them visibly softens at the sight. 

 

"Oh, I'm sorry, nurse," Todd says, as innocent as he can manage. "My friend was just helping me tie my shoe. I'm actually feeling a little dizzy, should I be worried about that?"

 

Her stern face melts into a sweet smile. "It's perfectly normal, but if the feeling persists or worsens, you should return for an evaluation," she says before her smile turns conspiratorial. "I'm glad you've brought a friend with you this time. It's good to have someone looking out for you, after."

 

Todd opens his mouth to argue but Black steps closer, pressing a warm palm to his lower back, and that effectively derails his thoughts. "I'll take very good care of him, ma'am," he says and sounds sincere.

 

The nurse beams happily at them. Todd steps on Black's foot as hard as he can, disguising it as a stumble. Black doesn't even flinch. Tough bastard.

 

He ignores how good it feels to have Black's arm around him, his strong body steadying him because he does feel a little dizzy, and really exhausted. Black steers him out of the hallway. Todd follows because, despite the fact that he keeps a gun in his office drawer and 8GB worth of blackmail on him at all times, he's still just a person too. 

 

Being cared for by someone he loves feels good.

*

The man in charge of Todd’s propaganda machine must be flabbergasted at the things he’s made to do. He signed up for the job to topple governments, not to uplift single mothers and sanctify prostitutes. But money is money, and Todd pays him well.

 

They dress Milk up in sheer white, not exactly the Virgin Mary but maybe Mary Magdalene. Her childhood, so tragic but so common, gets twisted into something that draws attention, draws sympathy from the rich masses so willing to consume poverty porn, only to never wonder about all the ways their safe and plentiful lives contribute to it. That’s what Black would have said anyway.

 

Todd has the satisfaction of watching the members of parliament passionately argue the rights of sex workers as soon as they realize the public opinion has changed. Obscure law drafts, thrown aside because they’re too liberal, get unearthed and ratified. Violence against sex workers gets harsher penalties, making the streets feel safer.

 

The chief of police is forced to publicly apologize once multiple accounts of misconduct are blasted across the airwaves for months. Thousands of cases are reopened, and hundreds of victims are given justice.

 

Tawi’s government is in shambles as multiple members of his cabinet are accused of sexual misconduct. Meanwhile, his drug operation takes a hit as the drug dealers who double as pimps get rounded up and put in jail. He’s losing money and he’s losing support, and the best part is that no matter how much he scrambles to find the culprit, Todd isn’t even on his radar.

 

ROL drew first blood, and Todd widened the wound, but the riotous mobs of good people seeking justice will finish the job. It’s a revolution, and there’s blood in the water.

 

Todd watches the chaos unravel with a curious sort of detachment. His plan had always been to topple Tawi and watch him crawl around in the ashes of his empire, then install himself or someone loyal at the helm of a nation built in his image. But whatever is left of Todd’s image is gone, stripped away from him by an illness he could never hope to control, and in the aftermath, he finds that the things he wants now are much simpler.

 

Tawi is holding onto power with whatever strength he has left. It’s still a considerable amount, buoyed by old money and older vices, but the nation has gotten a taste of justice. Worse yet, it’s gotten familiar with compassion.

 

Tawi’s days are numbered. So are Todd’s maybe, and so are White’s father’s and Black’s mother’s, and all of their rich friends, who have relied on money and reputation and hierarchy to get ahead. 

 

He’s not as afraid of that as he used to be.

*

After the hospital, Black stays.

 

He still disappears for days, leaving Todd staring blankly at his work and convincing himself he’s not worried. He’s almost always back in time for dinner, coaxing cautious smiles from the housekeeper and piling more food on Todd’s plate. At night he goes to sleep in the guest bedroom, the previously minimalistic shelves steadily filling up with dog-eared books and little trinkets. White and Sean have taken over the lease at his apartment, Todd has gathered as much.

 

It doesn’t explain why Black is sleeping at Todd’s house again, but Todd doesn’t want to ask him in case he decides to stop.

 

He doesn’t come to Todd’s room anymore so it’s the only time he allows himself to miss him, lying in the dark and losing sleep, and trying to forget the way it felt to be held like he means something.

*

Black is out when the doorbell rings. The house really doesn’t get visitors and Black has finally figured that his old door code still works, so there’s really no reason for the doorbell to be ringing unless the neighborhood kids are playing a prank, which is also unlikely because security would tackle them the moment they stepped on the perfectly manicured lawn.

 

Todd looks at the security feed and almost curses. White and Sean are standing on his doorstep. They’re not exactly holding hands but their bodies are close, leaning into each other. They look like a headache waiting to happen.

 

Todd buzzes them in.

 

By the time they reach the office, helped along by the staff, Todd has changed his shirt into something more expensive, and poured himself a glass of whiskey, affecting an air of normalcy, even though his weight loss and his new haircut are fairly obvious indicators that something has changed.

 

Sean walks in first, glaring at him, and then at the modern minimalist decor of the room, probably already formatting some sort of comment about performative bourgeois frivolity. There’s not really anything he can say that Todd hasn’t already heard from Black. He mutters a sort of greeting through gritted teeth and Todd gives him his best, most innocent smile.

 

“Hi!” White chirps from behind his boyfriend’s tall frame. There’s a gentle smile on his face when he looks at Todd, and a wealth of sadness in his eyes. Todd can’t meet his gaze for more than a second. There’s a quality the twins share, an ability to look at Todd and make him feel exposed. “Black said you’ve been sick, so I made you some soup.”

 

He’s got a cloth bag slung over his shoulder, and he opens it up to put a couple of clear containers on Todd’s office chairs. Behind him, Sean is making cutting motions across his throat and mouthing ‘Do Not Eat’.

 

“Um, I’m not that good at cooking yet,” White confesses sheepishly. Todd looks at the container. Somehow, the soup manages to look both burnt and radioactive. “But Sean ate it and said it was good. Right, Sean?”

 

“Oh, yeah, it’s great,” Sean says, and then mouths ‘No’ when White turns away.

 

“That’s very kind, White,” Todd says, even if he doesn’t intend to touch the soup, “I appreciate it.”

 

He does actually appreciate it. There’s something he and White share, and that’s an upbringing where gifts from visitors are judged by the money they cost and how useless they are to the hosts. In their world, bringing a container of homemade soup to a person of higher social standing is unthinkable. 

 

Unfortunately, as a consequence of always growing up with staff in the house, he and White also share terrible cooking skills. Black has banned Todd from the kitchen altogether even when the housekeeper is away on vacation, ever since Todd had somehow managed to burn rice, which was weird because it was in the rice cooker.

 

White is making a statement, in a language, only Todd can understand. He can’t help but appreciate it. 

 

There’s a moment of awkward silence. White fusses with the containers while Sean looms over his shoulder, trying not to glare too obviously at Todd. Looking at them, Todd has no idea what he’s supposed to do or say. 

 

“Are you looking for Black again?” is what he decides on in the end. He doesn’t know how often Black has been in contact with his brother and his friends, and if he’s told them where he’s been staying.

 

“Oh,” White looks startled, “no, he came by yesterday, I know he’s doing alright.”

 

“We’re actually here because of something my boss said last week,” Sean says, and his glare has transformed into something slightly confused. He’s working for Gan at the law firm, Todd remembers, handling their more political cases. He stays quiet, unsure of where this is going. “That you’ve been fueling money into the recent legislation changes.”

 

So that’s what it’s about. “I make a lot of investments, I can’t possibly know where all my money is,” Todd says, and Sean snorts, obviously disbelieving.

 

“I’m having trouble believing in your change of heart too but White seems to think that somewhere underneath your psychotic behavior there’s actually a good guy,” Sean says and White turns to smile at him softly.

 

“That’s…” Todd says, utterly flabbergasted. White thinks he’s a good guy? Do the twins just not have any self-preservation at all? “I’m not a good guy!”

 

It comes out high and a little insulted, and White hides a smile behind his hand. It’s a gesture his brother would never make.

 

“Gumpa is organizing a gathering on Friday,” White picks up the thread, “in support of marriage equality. We’d like it if you could join us.”

 

Back when Todd was still mostly free to do whatever he wanted with his time, he used to go to gay bars. Sometimes Black went with him. Mostly Todd went alone. There was something that felt weird about picking up guys while the boy you loved watched over your drink, so Todd tried to avoid it. 

 

In those years, Gumpa’s was a name you’d hear often. Both he and his boyfriend were prominent queer activists. Gumpa organized protests and stood at the forefront where the tear gas and smoke bombs dropped. There was talk of a Pride parade then, cautious whispers growing into ecstatic laughter. The community was given hope. It felt like things could finally get better.

 

Then Gumpa was found beaten within an inch of his life and his boyfriend disappeared without a trace, dragged into the night by masked men. New, more conservative governments did their best to push them further into the dark.

 

Until now.

 

It’d been a strange feeling, realizing that it was Gumpa that Black was hanging out with. Todd had recognized the danger right away because Gumpa was charismatic and singularly driven, even pushed aside and silenced. Black hanging around someone like that, someone who could recognize and bring out his talents, was a dangerous notion. And yet, some small part of him had wondered. Birds of a feather, and all that.

 

“...and you’re sure you want me there?” Todd asks, forcefully brought back to the present because of the suddenly awkward silence. Both Sean and White are looking at him expectantly.

 

“We think it would be lovely if you could come,” White says, smiling as he turns to his boyfriend. “Right, Sean?”

 

“Sure,” Sean says, and he sounds resigned more than anything else.

 

“Um, actually,” White says, and his smile seems to turn into something a little shyer, “we have some other news to share.”

 

Todd narrows his eyes, taking him in. There’s nothing especially different about White at first glance. He’s still wearing pastels that his brother wouldn’t ever touch, his hair fluffy and brushed away from his eyes. He fixes his glasses in a nervous fidget, and the sunlight from the window hits the small ring on his hand, making it sparkle.

 

“Oh,” Todd says, blinking, “congratulations on your engagement.”

 

“Thank you,” White says, beaming, “we want to get married as soon as the legislation passes.”

 

And it will. Todd has to see to it now. If only for the absolute hilarity that will be Black at his brother’s wedding.

“See, he got it right away,” Sean says, sounding a little petulant even as a smile steals over his face at his fiance’s obvious joy. “Unlike your brother, who practically needed a PowerPoint presentation and several keynote speakers.”

 

“It’s normal to be shocked when you receive terrible news,” Black says from behind him, silhouetted in the doorway. “Didn’t I tell you to keep your grubby paws off my brother?”

 

“Hi, Black,” White says, smiling softly at his twin. He gets a twitch of lips in return. It’s more than anyone else would have gotten. 

 

“Hello, brother-in-law,” Sean says, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Hope you’re having a wonderful day.”

 

Neither of them looks surprised to see Black.

 

"It's gotten worse now that I've been forced to look at your stupid face," Black replies.

 

 From the slightly long-suffering expression on White’s face, he’s got a feeling that this is a familiar scene. Sean looks like he’s gearing up for another comeback, but Todd breaks in before he can speak.

 

“Where’s my pa tong go?” he asks, frowning. Black’s cocky expression immediately drops.

 

“Uh,” he says. Todd’s frown deepens. 

 

“You said you’d get me pa tong go from Yaowarat market while you were there today,” Todd says, consciously pursuing his mouth into a pout because the way it makes the muscle of Black’s jaw spasm is frankly fascinating.

 

“The line was too long!” Black bursts out, waving his hands like it’ll impress the exact length of the line to Todd. “And actually, aren’t you rich? Can you just order them delivered if you want them so much?”

 

“I would have,” Todd says, and only like half of his upset is pretend. He’d really wanted that doughnut, “but you said you’d get it because you were in Yaowarat anyway, so I didn’t!”

 

Black rolls his eyes. “If I’d stayed in that line I would have been there for an hour at least, which means I would have missed dinner, and then you’d be upset about that,” he says.

 

“Upset? I’m never upset,” Todd says, even though he’s in fact, a little upset right now. “Why didn’t you at least text me?”

 

Black draws himself up, visibly gearing up for another argument. “I-” he starts.

 

Sean interrupts him.

 

“Actually, maybe we don’t need new legislation,” Sean says, looking between them like they’re a particularly fascinating tennis match, “since you two already bicker like an old married couple.”

 

Maybe Todd should have tried harder to get him shot back when White wasn’t in love with him yet.

 

“That’s ridiculous,” Black says flatly.

 

“What, the notion that anyone could ever want to marry an asshole like you?” Sean asks, and it lacks acidity but Black visibly bristles in return. White’s expression is a little worried as he looks between them, seemingly realizing that his fiance has crossed over some invisible line. 

 

Maybe that’s what makes Todd say it in the end.

 

“Actually, I asked him to marry me when we were four years old,” Todd tells Sean, smiling slightly at his surprised expression.

 

He chances a look at Black and finds him gaping. “You what?” Black asks, sounding faint.

 

“I think I remember that actually,” White pipes up, smiling from where he’s leaning into Sean’s side, “Black got upset because you called dibs on me being your bridesmaid and he wanted me to be his best man, and I obviously couldn’t be both at the same time.”

 

Sean disguises his laugh with a cough, as Black looks incredulously between them. “Are you making fun of me?” he asks. “I don’t remember this at all!”

 

“Really?” White says, grinning in delight. “I remember it really clearly - Todd even brought you some flowers he picked from the garden. It was very romantic.”

 

“What…” Black splutters, looking entirely out of his depth.

 

Todd decides to put him out of his misery. “It was just some daisies,” he says, “I hope Sean at least brought you roses.”

 

He sends a meaningful look at Sean over White’s head and watches in satisfaction as he turns a shade paler. 

 

“Actually, he asked me while we were doing surveillance,” White says dryly, and Todd grimaces in commiseration. “There was a sunset, so I guess it was a little romantic.”

 

“I guess you’re an easier customer than your brother,” Todd says dryly. Across the room, Black chokes on his own spit. “Anyway, I’ll come to your gathering. I’ll bring some people, and some security. Just in case.”

 

White nods, and tugs on Sean’s cuff. Sean looks at him, and their eyes meet. They smile at each other softly, caught up. It’s almost disgustingly sweet. Todd can’t wait for their wedding. Black mutters angrily under his breath. Todd glares at him to keep him from saying anything and ruining the moment.

 

Sean and White break apart, their cheeks rosy. “We’re looking forward to your presence at the rally,” Sean says to Todd, very formal and polite for someone who’s probably cursed his name hundreds of times. 

 

“I’ll text you the details!” White chirps, and then they’re both turning away. Sean grabs for White’s hand without looking and finds White’s palm halfway out to meet it. Todd smiles to himself. 

 

There’s a momentary silence as the two leave the room. Black starts to pace, circular patterns across the carpet like he’s desperate to convert his thoughts into kinetic energy. Todd’s not too worried, content to wait for him to talk. Sometimes Black needs this, a little bit of time to organize his thoughts before he feels like he can form a solid argument. 

 

He doesn’t quite know what to expect. Black has been absent more the last few weeks, so it could be that the event clashes with some plans he has. Or maybe he doesn’t think Todd should be at an event ROL is organizing, even an explicitly queer one, since he’s still so visibly the face of his corporation. Or, maybe Black just wants to rant about Sean some more. 

 

He definitely doesn’t expect what Black actually does. 

 

"You've liked me since we were kids?" Black says, pausing in the center of the room to meet Todd’s gaze, catching him staring. 

 

“We were kids,” Todd says softly. 

 

Black won’t stop looking. "Still, that's a long time," he says.

 

Cultivating a faux coolness, Todd just shrugs. "It is what it is," he says. He doesn't want to have this conversation, not now and not ever. "They looked happy."

 

He nods towards the door that Sean and White disappeared through, and chances a look at Black's face. He has a hard time deciphering the expression on his face. If anything, it looks thoughtful.

 

"I'll never understand what he sees in Sean," Black says, and he still grimaces around Sean’s name. He rocks back on his heels for a moment, before resuming his pacing. "But I suppose love can be found in the unlikeliest of places."

 

Todd snorts, surprised. "Look at you, quoting romance dramas," he says and allows himself to sink deeper into the armchair, awkward conversation momentarily averted, "since when are you such a cheesy romantic?"

 

"You started it," Black says blithely. His silhouette casts a shadow across the floor, his body backlit by the afternoon sun. "How long have you been in love with me?"

 

He’s not letting go. There’d been times in the past where they’d almost talked about it, the elephant in the room between them that’s now dressed in tassels and pretending to be a lamp. Every time, Todd has been able to steer the conversation to something else, but evidently not this time. 

 

Todd sighs, rubbing a hand over his face.

 

There are a lot of things that he could say. That he doesn't remember or that he doesn't know. Maybe being in love with Black is an integral part of his being, like opening his eyes in the morning, or breathing. Maybe there's a twisted, broken part of him that's always going to be in love with him. No one else compares and never will.

 

Instead of saying that, he shrugs, avoiding Black's eyes to look at the patterns on the carpet. He’s so viscerally uncomfortable that the skin of his face feels too tight and his clothes feel too warm, even though there’s nervous sweat soaking the back of his shirt.

 

“Does it matter?” he asks finally. He has a brief flash of memory, of Black’s body plastered against his back in bed, their legs tangling between them, fitting together like puzzle pieces. The answer to his own question -  it matters, but only to Todd, and that’s always been the problem.

 

Black doesn’t let up. “Are you still?” he asks. Todd chances a look at him, and finds him leaning on the window, Bangkok’s skyline behind him. The afternoon is steadily bleeding into early evening, the clouds a pink cotton candy against the wildfire orange of the sky.

 

Black’s face is shadowed, but the light shines golden across his skin, hitting the copper highlights in his hair, softening the moody cast of his pouty mouth. He’s gorgeous, golden, and unreachable despite the short distance between them. Todd swallows around a dry mouth. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, decisively.

 

Black snorts derisively, mouth twisting. “Yeah, because you’re going to marry a woman and get her pregnant any day now. Get yourself the perfect nuclear family, right?” he says, and it takes a lot not to flinch away from the resentment in his tone.

 

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Todd adjusts in the chair, uncomfortable. The ice in his drink has melted, diluting the whiskey. It doesn’t look appealing but he takes a sip, grimacing at the taste. It’s not the first time he’s regretted what he said back then. “I don’t exactly have candidates lining up.”

 

“You could,” Black says, still looking at him. He hasn’t looked away from Todd once, his dark eyes flickering over Todd’s face like he’s trying to read his expressions as much as Todd is trying to read his. “CEO of an international company and you don’t even want to have sex with them. I bet there’s plenty of women interested.”

 

Todd sighs. “I don’t want that anymore,” he finally says, and it hurts, tight in his chest, at the admission. “It feels dishonest. And I think I don’t want to bring a child into this world anyway.”

 

Black stills. “What about the company?” he says quietly. Todd doesn’t know what to make of his tone, he just knows that it makes goosebumps prickle up and down his arms.

 

“I can just adopt later, I suppose,” Todd says, and then just keeps talking. “Or not. I don’t think I’d make a very good parent anyway. You know what my father is like.”

 

He smiles at Black wanly, hoping to include him in the joke. Todd’s father is an asshole, the whole country knows it, cue the laugh track. Black’s expression doesn’t change.

 

“You’re nothing like your father,” Black says, still quiet, still with that same intensity that makes Todd’s skin prickle. The words echo in Todd’s head. “You’ve changed.”

 

“Not that much,” Todd says, laughing quietly to himself. It comes out bitter.

 

“Not much?” Black laughs incredulously, and it draws Todd’s gaze back to him, moth to a flame. “You’re the patron saint of sex workers, you’ve changed international legislation to benefit single mothers and with you lobbying for it, marriage equality seems achievable. And you say you haven’t changed?”

 

Black has definitely been keeping tabs on him. Having his actions laid out so frankly doesn’t really give Todd any comfort though. They might have resulted in good things, but, “I did all of that for selfish reasons. I did it because I wanted to protect my investment, or because someone told me it couldn’t be done. There’s no altruistic motive.”

 

“And marriage equality?” Black asks quietly, and something like mischief glitters in the depth of his eyes. “Is that just for fulfilling your childhood wish?”

 

He’s teasing but Todd doesn’t feel much like laughing. It needles the vulnerable thing living in his chest. He smiles anyway. “I don’t know about that,” he says, “I don’t have a lot of candidates for that either.”

 

It’s more self-deprecating than what he would usually allow slip in front of anyone. But his body is still lacking muscle mass, and working for it again might be more than he can handle. His hair’s grown back, but patchy, no longer the long thick mane he’d been so proud of. He even looks older, his dark circles permanent, and wrinkles where there only used to be glowing healthy skin. 

 

“What about me?” Black asks and brings him out of his reverie. Todd blinks at him.

 

“What about you?” he says. Black smirks slightly. He tilts his head slightly, studying Todd like he’s a particularly interesting specimen. Todd’s eyes linger on the exposed skin of his neck, but only for the barest of moments.

 

“Am I still a candidate?” Black says, and Todd’s world drops out from under him. The tightness in his chest is making it hard to breathe, and all he can do is stare at Black incredulously, trying to corral his brain into working.

 

“Black, you’re straight,” is what he manages to say in the end. Because Black has always dated women, has always loved women, and has never given any indication of looking at any guys that way, no matter how many times Todd had wanted to wistfully pretend. It’s too much, too fantastical, too impossible. Todd pinches the thin skin of his wrist to make sure this isn’t a nightmare. It hurts but not as much as his heart.

 

Black shrugs, like it’s nothing like he hasn’t upturned Todd’s whole world. “Sexuality is fluid, I guess,” he says, smiling slightly. He looks a little shy, a little embarrassed to be talking about this. “I read all the queer theory in high school, you know? Foucault, Jagose and Judith Butler. I even went to listen to a couple of prof. Jackson’s lectures in Bangkok.”

 

Todd remembers. It was after he hooked up with a guy for the first time, and had gone to Black’s dorm room instead of staying the night. He’d recounted the whole thing to Black in a whisper, spread out across the bed of his roommate who was never there. Black never told him to stop or commented in any way except to ask him to be careful, but after that books on queer identity had started quietly appearing in his rotation of reading material. 

 

It made Todd feel both comforted, and upset. Especially since Black hooked up with a girl the next weekend.

 

“I reread all of it recently,” Black says, slouching on himself, his fringe covering his eyes, “but none of them could explain why I kept coming back to you.”

 

Todd stares at him. He swallows around a suddenly dry throat, feeling the cold sweat trickling down the back of his neck. Black keeps watching him, steady, expectant. “It’s because we were friends,” Todd says finally. “Best friends.”

 

He’d been counting on it in his plans. That Black would hesitate just that slightest moment after Todd got the first punch in. He hadn’t counted on his own feelings, hadn’t realized how Black’s blood would feel coating his hands, how his throat would feel under his grip. That the feeling would haunt him in his nightmares.

 

“We used to be that,” Black says, and he’s watching him. Anticipating. Todd wracks his brain, trying to figure out what he wants. He comes up empty, but it might just be because every gesture Black makes feels distracting. “Is that why you never told me that you loved me? ”

 

Love. Todd closes his eyes quietly, just for a moment, to hide from Black’s expression, to be alone in his own mind. It’s a complicated question. Being rejected would have hurt his pride, never mind his feelings. But also: “It would have made things awkward between us,” he says, almost in a whisper, without really thinking it through. “I didn’t want to lose you.”

 

And then he’d lost him anyway. 

 

He opens his eyes to see Black unwind from his slouch against the windows. He stretches, rolling his shoulders and loosening up his hips. Like he’s winding up for a fight. Todd had always liked watching him fight, even though he rarely got the opportunity because he was usually also in the middle of the fray. Black’s movements are so smooth, so deceptively light. It’s like watching a big cat go after its prey, something almost delicate in his movements as he crosses the few paces between them to stand in front of Todd. 

 

And then he climbs onto the armchair and seats himself in Todd’s lap.

 

Todd gapes at him. His brain feels like it’s gone offline, trailing off mid-thought. Black’s legs are bracketing his thighs and his hands are pressing onto his shoulders. It’s like the sun has given him some of its warmth because he feels like a furnace, radiating heat that seeps into Todd’s body, thawing his defenses. 

 

Todd knows he’s breathing too quickly, short little gasps like he’s run a long way. His heart is beating a riot in his chest, and Black is just watching him, eyes dark and expression smooth except for the smug little smile on his face.

 

“What are you doing?” Todd whispers then bites his tongue. He almost sounds scared. Black is so close, enough that Todd can see the freckles on the bridge of his nose, and the tiny mole just underneath his left eye. 

 

One of Black’s hands stays pressing him into the chair, but he moves the other. Some primal part of Todd’s brain readies itself for a punch. Instead, Black touches his fingers to his cheek in a caress. Todd’s eyes slip shut and he leans into the touch instinctively, almost desperately. He hears Black’s breath hitch.

 

The pads of Black’s fingers press to his cheek gently, then slip down to trace his jaw. It’s the gentlest he’s ever touched him. Black is so close that Todd can feel his lips move when he speaks, his breath stirring the short hairs on his forehead.

 

“You held my gun to your head and dared me to shoot you, and it was the worst thing anyone had ever done to me,” Black says softly and his hand tightens on Todd’s face for a moment, almost painful. Todd just leans into it further.

 

“That was it?” Todd says, and his voice is shaking. “Not when I pointed that gun at you or choked you, or beat you into a coma?”

 

“Honestly, I expected those things from you,” Black says softly, the barest hint of a smile in his voice.

 

“I think I thought it was romantic,” Todd tells him in a whisper as Black resumes his touches, tracing up the bridge of his nose, and brushing the hair away from his forehead. “Dying at the hand of someone you love.”

 

Black freezes. “Now who’s being cheesy?” he asks softly. His forehead presses against Todd’s, so unnaturally warm. Both his palms come up to cup Todd’s cheeks, and Todd moves instinctively to put his hands on Black’s hips to stabilize him. “Look at me.”

 

Todd blinks his eyes open, and finds Black’s eyes up close, dark and glittering, deep enough to lose himself in. Black’s hands slip from his cheeks to Todd’s neck, his thumbs caressing his jugular before tightening their grip, just a little.

 

“If I ever find out that you’re doing something to hurt innocent people, or my brother and our idiot friends,” Black starts, and the danger in his voice sends Todd’s heart into overdrive. “I’ll shoot you down like a dog and I won’t hesitate even for a moment.”

 

Todd doesn’t look away from his eyes. Can’t, even if he wanted to. There’s fear coursing through his veins but there’s desire too, and the dual sensations mingle and pool in his gut. “Okay,” he exhales into the tense air between them. Black’s grip eases but he keeps staring, searching Todd’s face for something.

 

He seems to find it because his expression eases into a smug smirk that Todd wants to immediately wipe off his face. “You liked that?” Black says, and it’s barely a question as his fingers caress the thin skin under Todd’s neck, making him shiver. “You’re a twisted bastard, aren’t you?”

 

The minute movements of Todd’s body force him into shifting positions, and it brings Black down to sit more comfortably on his lap. Todd’s expression turns smug. “So are you, apparently,” he says. 

 

“Guess we make a good pair,” Black says, and kisses him. 

 

To his credit, Todd only freezes for a moment before he kisses back. And when Black reaches up to thumb the corner of his mouth, Todd is already waiting for him because he’s watched him use that move on a hundred girls in shitty college bars and imagined it was him.

 

He licks Black’s thumb and takes it into his mouth for just a second, keeping his gaze on Black’s dark eyes, listening to his gasping breath above him. Black’s thumb slips out of his mouth, smearing saliva across his cheek. Black’s mouth is there to replace it, and when Todd tilts his head to kiss him deeper, Black is already there, mouth open and pliant, like he’d been expecting Todd to do that. Like he’d been watching him use that move on a hundred different boys in shitty bars. The thought makes Todd muffle a groan against Black’s mouth.

 

They break apart to catch their breaths, and Todd buries his face in Black’s neck, mouthing along the thin skin until he bites across his jugular. Black’s hands brush across his arms and then settle on the buttons of his shirt. Todd goes rigid, one of his hands flying up to grip Black’s, stilling them. For a moment, they just look at each other, Todd wrestling with his shame over a changing body, and Black, eyes all pupil, somehow knowing, piercing through him.

 

Todd brushes his thumb against Black’s knuckles, tacit permission, before returning his hands to Black’s waist to slip them under his shirt, raking his fingernails over his back, pleased when it makes Black's back arch and his mouth open up in a moan.

 

Black makes quick work of the buttons, ripping at least the last few, but he kisses Todd before he can protest, and his hands feel like brands when they feel across Todd’s ribcage, making him shake. In retaliation, Todd tugs his shirt over his head, exposing Black’s body to his gaze. 

 

In the fading light of the sunset, the shadows lengthen, playing across the contours of Black’s muscles, his scars standing out starkly against his golden skin. He could probably break Todd in half but his waist is tiny, and Todd’s hands look huge around it. He presses over the ridges of Black’s ribs and upwards, to press his thumbs over his nipples, dusky and already pebbling underneath Todd’s touch. 

 

Black’s perfect lips part and he makes a sound, a near-silent moan that sounds like it’s torn from him, and suddenly Todd is ravenous. He wants to ruin this man - he wants to bite him and mark him, and split him apart just to burrow under his skin, crawl underneath his ribcage and make a space for himself next to his heart where he can live forever, Black’s heartbeat loud in his ears.

 

Black’s eyes glitter in the darkness, his gaze piercing through Todd like he can tell exactly the fucked up things he’s thinking about. He smirks when their eyes meet, and then Todd presses against his nipples, harder, pinching them. Black moans again, low in his throat, and then he’s grounding down on his lap in a sinuous movement that has Todd gasping even through several layers of clothing, and-

 

Black’s phone goes off in his back pocket, a surprisingly cheerful jingle that pierces through the haze clouding Todd’s brain. Black twists to take his phone out, and Todd opens his mouth to protest, even as his hands move to grip his hips so he doesn’t slide down.

 

Black is grinning, wide, and almost manic. “It’s my brother,” he explains, “probably checking if we’re fighting.”

 

And then to Todd’s gaping surprise, he thumbs his phone open. “What?” he asks, the sharp tone at odds with the grin on his face. Todd can barely make out White’s voice on the other end of the line, gone high with worry. “No, we’re fucking. Either get out of range or find a room, I don’t care.”

 

Black ends the phone call with a triumphant expression, throwing his phone over his shoulder where it clatters across Todd’s hardwood floor. 

 

“That’s so fucking weird,” Todd says into the ensuing silence, and then Black is laughing, head thrown back and throat exposed like he’s not afraid someone will seize him by it. He’s gorgeous and he’s dangerous, and he’s finally Todd’s, and when he leans down, still laughing, for a kiss, Todd is already meeting him halfway.

 

The sun dips fully beyond the horizon, casting the room into darkness and Todd navigates Black’s body half-blind. There’s a part of him that’s desperate to memorize every uncovered centimeter of skin, more than half-convinced that this is something he’ll only get once and never again.

 

But Black’s mouth is generous and his hands reverent on Todd’s body, and somewhere between their awkwardly placed elbows and increasingly uncoordinated kisses, Todd begins to believe.

*

Todd wakes up. It’s very early in the morning and his bedroom is awash in cool blue, casting familiar furniture in shadows that are fantastical and unfamiliar. He can’t tell what woke him up at first, except that maybe he’s a little too hot and sweating. His feet feel cold when he’s kicked his duvet away in the night, and his arm feels a little numb where Black’s head is resting on it.

 

Careful and feeling stupid, Todd reaches over to pinch his own forearm, grimacing at the pain. As if feeling it, Black makes a small noise of complaint under his breath, a tiny furrow appearing in between his eyebrows.

 

Todd reaches up to smooth it away gently and daydreams about having a connection like Black and White do. About knowing, always and absolute, if Black was alive or not, if he was okay. About Black’s pain being his pain, their hearts beating in unison, their survival dependent on each other. 

 

“You’re thinking about something weird, I can tell,” Black mutters against the skin of Todd’s collarbone, having evidently been woken up by Todd’s touch. Since he’s awake, Todd doesn’t feel bad about pressing a soft kiss to his forehead and then taking back his poor arm, making Black’s head thump hard against the pillow. Black makes a disgruntled sound under his breath and then pinches the bruise he left on Todd’s hip in retaliation. 

 

Todd tries to get enough leverage to kick him but Black must anticipate it because he grips Todd’s thigh and flips him over, and Todd bites down on a noise, hoping that his erection will be attributed to normal morning wood, and not the fact that Black manhandling him gets him hot. 

 

Black arranges them in their usual sleeping position, Todd on his side and Black spooned up against his back. He fusses over their blankets for over a minute, his face increasingly frustrated until he gets it arranged over Todd just right. 

 

It hits Todd then, like a tidal wave, the absolute irrefutable knowledge that he’s never going to love anyone else like this. That this man, who carefully put his knife collection on his nightstand next to a slim red volume of the Communist Manifesto, is it for him.

 

“What’s that expression for?” Black asks, squinting at him. 

 

“Nothing,” Todd says, rather than tell him that he's never felt so perfectly purely happy. Black grimaces petulantly. “You don’t have to know everything about me.”

 

Black snorts and allows Todd to tug him down into a kiss, soft, barely a peck. “I know more than anyone else,” he points out and then curls up against Todd’s back, seemingly oblivious to the effect of his words. Todd hides his smile in his pillow and wraps his fingers around the hand that Black’s got over his heart.

 

He doesn’t sleep right away, drifting in and out of consciousness instead, listening to the city wake up outside his windows, and Black’s slow even breathing. He finally falls asleep, counting Black’s heartbeats, as the first rays of morning sunlight paint dawn across the sky.

 

Notes:

Notes:
1. The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles in 1848. The lines that Todd fails to quote are from the first paragraph. Somehow I found the thought of Black carrying it around just as amusing as the fact that he can quote it fully from memory. It's also funny that Todd - a self-proclaimed capitalist pig - would also know it just because I feel like he and Black have spent a lot of time discussing social science texts from wildly different perspectives.
2. Both the original story and the series have done a really good job of addressing social issues, and I've tried to do the same, much more clumsily. The first break, the one with Todd's secretary Nail refers to an issue that several single mothers in Thailand are facing. If the father of the child is a foreign national, even if the parents are married and divorced, there really is no good avenue to force the father to pay child support for the child, or take any responsibility at all.
3. I think a lot of you would have heard about the sex tourism industry in Thailand and the impact it has on the people there, especially children who often get drawn into sex trafficking rings. I would strongly recommend this article by Sze Ki Cheng if you want to learn more about this topic. It really lays it out in a comprehensible way.
4. If you're more involved with following the actors in Thai BL you might have noticed some of them tweeting in support of the same-sex marriage legislation that the Thailand government is hoping to pass soon. The bill will mean that LGBT couples who register their marriages can adopt children together, make medical decisions on behalf of their partner, and, in case one dies, the other can inherit from their partner and make legal decisions about their late partner’s assets. The current issue is that there are two bills in play, both concerning the rights of LGBT people in Thailand. The above bill is proposed by the opposition party. The other bill, called the Civil Partnership bill is proposed by the government and does not grant LGBT couples their full rights. Read more about it here
5. I referred to it ambiguously but Todd has cancer in this story. I deliberately didn't want to say what kind of cancer it was or delve into the chemo treatment in ways that would be too detailed because in this case, the sickness becomes the outside agent that Todd can't control and he just has to be okay with that. Somewhat accidentally, writing this story helped me deal with my own feelings over the cancer scare I had in 2016. It's funny how that happens sometimes.
6. Since I don't actually know Black or Todd's birth dates, the passcode is a combination of Sing and Gun's birthdays, fun fact.
7. Prof. Peter A. Jackson has written several articles about modern queer identity in Thailand. If you can get your hands on his articles, they're a very interesting read.
8. Foucault, Jagose and Judith Butler are prominent authors of queer theory books. I like to think that after Todd comes out to him, Black walks into the library and practically camps out in the LGBT aisle until he's read all that he can about it. He doesn't have his 'oh' moment until years later and by then the things between him and Todd are like, broken almost beyond repair. It's one of his big regrets though, not that he'd ever admit it, that he wonders if he could have changed the trajectory of both their lives by just realizing he also liked men sooner.
9. Yaowarat market is one of the biggest markets in Bangkok. Pa Tong Go Savoey is a really famous seller of Pa Tong Go that's stationed there. Pa Tong Go is a type of doughnut. Todd could have had it delivered or asked his housekeeper to make them, but they taste better if Black brings them.
10. Queer activist Gumpa is so important to me that I could talk about it for hours. The actual reason this fic was, conceptualized was to establish the groundwork to talk more about that, which in hindsight, after 20k of words that are totally unrelated, is really fucking funny.

Thank you so much for reading this story to the end. It's been something really close to my heart for a really long time, and posting it feels a little weird after all this time. If you liked this story, please consider leaving me a comment, it really helps. You can also help me out by retweeting the fic announcement post here. it would really help this story reach more people, since I'm not sure how many people still check the tag on ao3 these days.