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Despite having been a bartender, as well as a general, overall passionate advocate of the bar-hopping, club-frequenting life, Porsche makes for a terrible drunk.
Pete has never fully realized how terrible a drunk Porsche is until Pete himself stopped drinking with Porsche, and began simply being with Porsche while Porsche, and only Porsche, drank.
When he tries to recall the last time he saw Porsche drunk, the only instances that come up are the same instances when Pete’s own memory would fade to black unceremoniously before the end of the night.
Tonight, however, due to the unforeseen circumstances of Pete still sporting a hangover from over twenty-four hours prior when Vegas lured him into breaking open a positively ancient bottle of whiskey from Kan’s vaults (an entire can of worms in and of itself), Pete has been nursing a sickeningly sweet and non-alcoholic lychee monstrosity for the majority of the night.
Porsche, on the other hand, has been alternating between shots and beer, and it has come to the point where even Yok has muttered under her breath to the poor new temp that has been saddled to serve Porsche for tonight to escape to the other side of the bar. Pete estimates it’ll be at least another round before Yok officially caps Porsche’s access to drinks for the night.
Pete has no confirmed idea as to why Porsche called him out so spontaneously, and insistently, tonight, but he has an entire laundry list of possible reasons and at least three-quarters of that list center around Kinn.
This means that Pete does nothing short of spitting out lychee syrup and soda water all over his sleeve, and the bar top, when Porsche finally gets onto the matter for the night by opening up with a slurred, “Is Vegas clingy?”
Despite himself, Pete gives a furtive glance over his own shoulder—both shoulders, and also towards the entrance of the bar. There’ll always be a chance that Porsche has found some sort of spare time in his otherwise new, exciting, and busy life as the head of the minor family and pseudo-spouse of the major family heir and decide that the time has come to prank Pete with Tankhun.
Only when a full thirty seconds have passed and Arm and Pol have yet to jump out from beneath a barstool does Pete say, quite calmly, “Porsche, you’re drunk.”
Porsche’s drunken gaze narrows. “Yeah,” he nods, as if this is a conversation that’s going to happen one way or another. “But is he?”
Pete sighs.
Even after being formally discharged from the hospital, Vegas is in no way fully recovered. He still has to return to either the hospital or a clinic for physical therapy, and he still has an entire pharmacy’s worth of painkillers and antibiotic courses to keep up until each of the bottles run out.
He also, Pete has observed, sleeps far more than he did at the hospital—once he left his coma for good.
Pete attributes it to being back in his own bed, in his own home, surrounded by at least some of his own men, once again, even if they no longer quite belong to him in the same way anymore—those guards of the minor family who either remained behind to watch the compound along with those who survived are all the sort that weren’t bought by money.
Macau tells Pete, on one of the days that Pete is driving him to school, that Pete’s theory is absolute horseshit, no less.
“Hia sleeps better because you’re sleeping with him,” Macau says casually, like Pete is stupid, as they pull up to the gates of the campus grounds.
Pete brakes a little too abruptly, and Macau makes a face from the passenger’s seat. “Gross, not like that,” Macau clarifies, and Pete hurriedly unlocks the doors.
“Don’t skip physics again or we’ll throw your PS5 in the pool,” Pete says faintly, as his daily send-off, his heart stuttering for some reason.
Macau rolls his eyes. “I’m right, by the way,” he says, as he gets out of the car. He slings his backpack straps over one shoulder and adds, right before slamming the door, “Try heading to the kitchen after he’s asleep or something—phi will see then.”
Pete drives back in a daze, after that, and then confuses himself in circles as to why this is information that he couldn’t conclude on his own. Then, he confuses himself further in an attempt to figure out why his heartbeat hasn’t returned to normal since dropping Macau off in the morning.
Even by dinnertime, Pete can barely look Vegas in the face without his face growing warm and while Pete’s entire body can flush hot just by seeing Vegas, usually Vegas is looking back at Pete with some sort of intent for that to happen in the first place.
Pete’s cheeks and neck shouldn’t be burning just watching Vegas pick out the chili seeds from his noodles.
Admittedly, Vegas looks good even while picking chili seeds out of food, especially nowadays, as he’s gaining back all of his weight—as the color in his face seems to be returning day by day. Picking something as small as seeds with chopsticks requires focus, and whenever Vegas is focused, his eyes go keen and feline, even more so than when his face is simply resting. As a result, the strong structure of his bones appears even more razor sharp than usual.
“Pete,” Vegas says, in a tone that makes it clear this is possibly his second, or third, or fourth time trying to grasp Pete’s attention.
Vegas’s expression is curious, once Pete comes back to himself. With one glance around the table, he realizes Macau has already finished eating and cleared his plate. He hears footsteps pitter-pattering in the hallway towards the kitchen, then near the stairs, signifying that the boy has most likely gone up to his room to play video games under the guise of doing his homework.
Pete meets Vegas’s gaze and raises his own eyebrows in acknowledgment of his name being called. He ducks his head in apology, and then waits expectantly for Vegas to repeat whatever it is he said while Pete was otherwise distracted in his own thoughts.
“He said he didn’t skip physics today,” Vegas says, his eyes still equal parts curious and amused at the daze Pete seems to be in this evening. “But he ran out while you were daydreaming.”
“I wasn’t daydreaming,” Pete says, making himself look intensely immersed in the last few tangles of noodles in his own bowl. “I was trying to decide how to hijack your car on the way to that merger this Friday.”
“No one’s getting killed on Friday,” Vegas snorts, the curiosity giving way to his full amusement, “least of all me—but you can hijack Porsche’s ride instead if you don’t believe me.”
Pete points both of his chopsticks towards Vegas’s face. “I don’t believe you,” he states firmly, around a mouthful of noodles and meat. He doesn’t mention that he’s most likely already decided on which method to use for sneaking into either Vegas’s or Porsche’s car for Friday, and that the majority of his mind is far more occupied with how to appear convincingly asleep tonight to put Macau’s claim to the test.
Vegas smiles, unfairly handsome and stunningly warm all the way to the narrow corners of his eyes. Pete is grateful that they both finish the rest of the meal in comfortable silence. That way, Pete can focus on quieting down the incessant fluttering in his stomach enough so that he can swallow down the remainder of his food.
By the time they’ve both climbed into bed, and they have both flicked off the lamps on their respective nightstands, Pete has settled on simplicity over security in regards to tonight’s plan. He turns into Vegas’s side, the way he always does, one arm thrown across Vegas’s waist, face buried over Vegas’s heartbeat.
Now, Pete waits.
With Vegas’s arm warm and heavy around Pete’s own waist, holding him against Vegas’s body, Pete tries not to think about how the fact that Vegas’s breathing evens out within moments of them assuming their usual sleeping positions already might confirm Macau’s bold theory.
Pete has purposefully not begun to feign sleep himself, just to see what will happen, and Vegas allowing himself to fall asleep first, clearly feeling Pete’s body against his still conscious, it already doesn’t bode well for whatever has taken up habitation in Pete’s stomach since Macau’s words this morning.
It’s only seconds more until Vegas’s breathing deepens, until his mouth parts in peaceful slumber, and Pete begins slipping himself downwards on the bed, towards the footrest, out of Vegas’s hold. He sits there, for a short moment, to watch Vegas’s sleeping face. Perhaps he will never be as skilled as Vegas, but Pete himself also knows the tell-tale signs of someone faking unconsciousness, even if that someone is Vegas.
There were instances during the late period of Vegas’s hospitalization that reaffirmed to Pete not even Vegas could fully escape at least a few of those signs, even if infinitesimal and otherwise mostly sufficiently hidden.
Pete knows this might make the entire endeavor moot, but he can’t help but lean in, right before he leaves the bed, to press his mouth lightly over Vegas’s forehead. Pete’s heartbeat has lost all rhythm once again, gazing at Vegas’s face for this stretch of time, even in the darkness. He doesn’t even know why he’s doing this—Macau clearly meant that suggestion rhetorically.
Vegas has given Pete evidence in both actions and words that Vegas cannot, and has no desire to, live without Pete.
Why Pete wants to see proof that is even more concrete—something like sleep, something that can be overcome eventually were Vegas to decide he can live without Pete—is absurd even to himself.
“I’m never driving you to school again, Macau,” Pete mutters to himself, as he pads down the dark hallways of the minor family compound. After all, if he left Macau to the usual bodyguard driver, Pete would be happily ensconced in Vegas’s arms at this very minute, as deeply asleep as the latter in their large bed.
Instead, he’s skulking towards the kitchens in a way that is unfortunately very reminiscent of his first time ever walking through these halls at night, alone.
He situates himself on the floor beside the refrigerator that holds more of what the inhabitants of the house come to grab for a quick drink or snack, rather than the industrial-sized one on the other side of the counters that stores mainly ingredients. He only leaves one light on, content instead to let a small wave of nostalgia brush over him—Tankhun had insomnia for the entirety of Pete’s first six months employed to him.
Often, Tankhun would tire being in his own room, and he’d pester Pete to bring him somewhere else in the major family’s building. The kitchens were the only place Pete could ever imagine being the safest—being somewhere where Pete also wouldn’t get in trouble for bringing Tankhun to in the middle of the night. Pete could dredge up bags of sweets and snacks there, from the abundance there always was, and Tankhun would be calm for once, and quiet, there on the floor, sitting together.
It was a little habit Tankhun grew out of swiftly, once Korn brought in doctors to prescribe sleep medication that Pete was fairly certain was the human equivalent of a horse tranquilizer. Then, after Tankhun quickly realized he was being drugged to sleep every night, he moved onto simply embracing his insomnia—dramas every night, with alcohol, until the sleep-deprivation caught up to him at least every few days, knocking him out for the cycle to repeat again.
Pete turns his phone in his hands, hesitating for only a moment, before he types out, chewing his bottom lip against his teeth, Khun Noo, what are you watching tonight?
The reply comes immediately. Pete smiles.
Not telling. Escape that cretin and come see for yourself.
“Is phi telling you to spirit yourself away for a movie again?”
Pete jumps so high that he’s honestly impressed the top of his head doesn’t hit the bottom of the refrigerator’s handle. “Vegas! ” he yelps in shock—he isn’t sure whether, at this point, he should be familiar with the sensation of being surprised to death or whether he should expect to be surprised to death by Vegas’s ungodly ability to approach without sound.
Vegas folds himself onto the floor beside Pete, no robe, only the same t-shirt and loose pants Pete himself is wearing—that they both sleep in whenever they aren’t engaging in any activities prior to bed. “Can’t sleep?” Vegas asks, nodding his head at Pete’s phone. Both Vegas’s expression and tone would be read as neutral by anyone other than Pete.
Pete lets his gaze wash over Vegas slowly, his hand already angling his phone screen towards Vegas. “Just wondering what they’re all up to,” Pete says, and notes the way Vegas doesn’t reach out to actually touch Pete’s phone. The disinterest Vegas appears to be attempting to mask onto himself makes Pete smile all over again.
Pete pockets his phone. “Can’t sleep?” he echoes back, bumping their shoulders together. He squeezes Vegas’s thigh, right above the knee.
At this proximity, once Vegas turns his head to face Pete, their noses are nearly touching, and Vegas’s dark eyes take up Pete’s entire field of vision. “Without you, no,” Vegas says quietly. “I can’t.”
The creature that lives in Pete’s stomach migrates into his chest, and it roars in satisfaction. It’s a proud being, whatever it is, and Pete suspects that there is one fairly similar that resides within Vegas as well. He’s seen its fangs reflected in Vegas’s eyes often, but tonight, he sees its ears, its tail, its soft underbelly turned up in a show of vulnerability.
Pete inches ever closer, until their hands, palms down against the floor, also touch. He brings his face closer, as well, so that he can kiss Vegas long, slow, and deep—perhaps with some amount of hope that he can swallow Vegas whole like that, create a space between Pete’s ribs for Vegas to rest so that he never does have to sleep without Pete.
“Me neither,” Pete says, after they’ve drawn apart. Vegas’s eyes are glazed over, shining in the dim light with wetness that Pete hopes he’s only imagining. He squeezes Vegas’s leg again. “Let’s go to bed.”
Nights are kind of tricky now, Khun Noo. I’ll come by for your morning dramas, okay?
Nowadays, if Pete is at the major family building, it’s most always either to see Porsche for business, to accompany Vegas for business, or accompanying Vegas to see Porsche for business. He surprisingly comes to the major family rarely to see Tankhun. In retrospect, Pete should have known that Tankhun would come to Pete first if he ever wanted to see him, metaphoric guns blazing, this season’s neon-colored leotards literally blazing.
All of this to say that Pete is hard-pressed to find time to see any of the remaining bodyguard friends he has left in those early months after Vegas’s discharge and while Vegas and Porsche are still shifting between them which responsibilities, accounts, and clients will belong to who (the pattern has generally been established that anything Porsche doesn’t want or doesn’t know how to do will fall to Vegas).
With the decrease in manpower after the shootout, the few living and employed bodyguard friends Pete has left are also busier than ever in the hiring and training of new recruits to quickly fill in the gaps. It’s past the half-year point following that fateful day that Pete can even catch Pol for a long enough interval to actually speak with his friend.
Naturally, it only takes another minute before Pete is reminded of Pol’s most outstanding ability to eat his own foot within just the preliminary stages of a conversation.
“What?” Pete says, delicately, because sometimes the trick with Pol is to act as if he didn’t hear correctly and Pol will change the entire question upon being given a second chance not to swallow his foot whole.
Today, apparently, is not one of Pol’s better days.
“Is Khun Vegas, you know,” Pol repeats, word for word, brazenly, out in the open, like this is a question that sane people ask, “romantic?”
Pete wonders if it’s worth acting as if he didn’t hear correctly a second time.
On a breezy night when there are neither clients nor enemies to entertain, and Macau is on a sleepaway school trip, Pete finds himself pulled off of their bed rather than pressed down into it. It’s late enough to sleep, but neither of them felt the tug of weariness yet, and Pete rather thought that they had been about to start a scene.
He blinks with bemusement as Vegas begins rummaging in their closet, pulling out two leather jackets from his side. Vegas slips into one of them, and uses the other to sling around Pete’s shoulders, clearly indicating that he do the same. “It’s a little cold tonight,” Vegas says, before taking Pete’s hand, his eyes shining the way Pete imagines a wolf’s would, in some fantastical tale of full moons and monsters. “I’m taking you for a ride,” he adds, not in Thai.
Vegas leads him through the halls, through the courtyard, and Pete feels an odd lurch in his stomach when he realizes he cannot locate the ever-familiar vibrant red amidst all of Vegas and Macau’s shared vehicles. The next sensation comes from his chest, one of surprise that synchronizes with a skip by his heartbeat when Vegas eventually brings him to a black motorcycle that Pete has only seen twice before—once at the safehouse, and once hidden in a corner of the main family’s entryway.
“Where’re we going?” Pete asks, as Vegas hands him a helmet.
Vegas adjusts the lapels of the jacket he lent Pete, leaning after Pete has already worn the helmet so that he can peer into the space of the open visor. Not for the first time, Pete wonders absently what Kan had Vegas fed with when he young—it might’ve been the only thing Kan ever did right in his life, making Vegas so unnecessarily good-looking.
“Does it matter?” Vegas counters playfully, putting his own helmet on and pinching Pete’s hip. He jerks his head. “Get on.”
Pete straddles the bike, only hesitating for a second before deciding to share Vegas’s seat rather than sitting above on the actual space meant for a passenger. The choice brings Pete’s chest flush with Vegas’s back once he wraps his arms around Vegas’s waist. Vegas will be able to feel the thunder of Pete’s heart along with the thrum of the engine beneath them.
“You’re really not telling me where we’re going?” Pete says, his voice muffled in his helmet as Vegas kicks off and starts bringing them both first down out of the minor family’s driving lot.
The moment they finish curving in and out of the small roads that lead into the hidden, gated neighborhood where the minor family compound is located, Vegas accelerates into a speed that brings them onto the highway in record time. There’s still light traffic even at this time of night, unsurprisingly, but Vegas is taking full advantage of being on a motorcycle and the comparative lack of cars.
Vegas’s eyes remain on the road, apt driver as he is, but he speaks easily over the sound of the wind rushing past them. “We’re going somewhere I like,” Vegas responds, his tone soaked and dripping with affection that Pete can hear even through the walls of their helmets and the cacophony that accompanies racing through the roads on a motorcycle.
Pete tightens his arms around Vegas, wishing that he wasn’t wearing any sort of headgear at all so that he could press his face between Vegas’s shoulder blades and inhale lungfuls of Vegas’s scent.
They could’ve ridden through one night or a thousand looped together. Pete loses himself in the feeling of Vegas’s body heat contrasted with the cool night air whipping past him. It reminds him of the evenings when his grandfather would take him back to his father’s home using the longest route there was in the small town, winding through the homes and shops with Pete cocooned at the front of the scooter.
Pete only vaguely notices that the longer they are on the bike, the darker their surroundings become—the highway lights fading to the sparser lights from the late night food stalls and bar fronts lining the streets.
Vegas finally brings them to a stop near the underpass of a bridge that somehow manages to look private without looking like there’s a possibility of getting knifed beneath it at this time of night. Pete is actually genuinely impressed by how not murderous the spot manages to look—there’s only a single street stall some ways away that looks to sell mostly beer and not much food.
“This isn’t where I take people I need to kill, by the way,” Vegas says, taking off his helmet and running fingers through his hair. He looks unjustly attractive while doing so, and his tone conveys how thoroughly amused he is at whatever expression of Pete’s has just been revealed by the removal of his own helmet.
Pete considers where the emphasis was in that statement. “Where do you bring them, then?”
Vegas gives Pete a smile full of teeth, his hair jet black in the warm light emanating from the bridge above. The strands fall in perfect curtains from the crown of his head, artfully tousled, as if he’s just gotten it blown out at Tankhun’s favorite salon during an appointment booked six months ago rather than shaken out of a motorcycle helmet.
“I should still have some secrets from you, right?” Vegas asks, in a way that Pete can only describe as devastatingly flirtatious, and yet, it is entirely different from the way Pete has seen Vegas supposedly attempt to seduce others before, in front of Pete. It feels like another lifetime, when Pete thinks of all those instances that they knew each other before but didn’t.
“You can try,” Pete raises his eyebrows, shaking his own hair out in what is most likely a futile effort to revive his hair to a state anywhere close to Vegas’s.
Vegas’s breath audibly hitches, at that, for some reason. His eyes bear into Pete’s the way they did in that small, windowless room—on that narrow, cramped bed surrounded with chains and rope—the night Vegas became the only person to ever see through Pete’s skin down to his very organs, down to his blood and bones.
Pete looks back.
“Why’re you so pretty?” Vegas asks, once again, in the language he and Pete don’t share. Pete is fairly sure this is a rhetorical question, another one of Vegas’s strange attempts at flirting as if Pete hasn’t already given his entire life into Vegas’s hands. Pete is mostly certain there isn’t meant to be an answer to this question, but Vegas sounds and looks so genuinely puzzled.
Pete is mildly miffed.
“I can’t be?” he shoots back, plopping himself down on the grass. He faces out towards the river, since there’s a high probability that this is what Vegas has meant for them to do—sit romantically facing the water at night. It sounds about right in Pete’s books.
“You can,” Vegas says, lowering himself onto the ground beside Pete. It only takes Vegas a single blink, gauging which sitting position Pete has chosen, before the bastard is sprawling himself across the grass with his head in Pete’s lap. “Just not so much,” he says, while looking up at Pete, the bridge lights glinting mischievously in his eyes. “It makes things hard for me.”
Pete strokes Vegas’s hair away from his face. He uses his other hand to dance its fingers along Vegas’s jaw. “What does it make hard?” he inquires casually.
Vegas rolls his eyes, but there’s laughter in his gaze and heat as well. “Idiot,” he murmurs, reaching up to squeeze Pete’s face, fingertips digging lightly into his cheeks.
Pete grins. “That’s not an answer,” he says, barely managing to finish the sentence before a hand is snaking into his hair and bringing his head down for a kiss that makes him feel like he’s hurtling down the roads on that motorbike all over again—this time, without a helmet, no brakes, nothing to save him if he crashes nor anything to stop him from flying through the night.
Following the absolute chaos of the hospital visits, Vegas has been discharged back to the minor family home for all of one week before Tankhun felt it appropriate to barge in, metaphoric guns blazing, lime green jumpsuit glittering, and an extremely real, weather-inappropriate fur coat shedding copiously into Pete’s new entryway.
After establishing some vague ground rules that Pete knows Tankhun will not abide by in the least, Tankhun continues to visit at least once a week. In the rare cases he’s deemed himself too busy to do so, he will send something extravagant and useless to Pete, but that Macau will end up pilfering for himself—including, but not limited to: a flame-throwing backpack, VR games that would inspire nightmares, and, on one memorable occasion, a flying skateboard that Pete confiscated immediately.
This week, however, Tankhun has decided to grace Pete with his presence, and since it’s been a quiet week otherwise, Pete is glad for it.
Currently, Tankhun is going on about how one of Kinn’s friends has a birthday approaching, and, for some reason, this year he’s requested that Porsche hold it for him at Yok’s bar rather than any of the usual Theerapanyakul sanctioned locations that all of his previous birthdays within working memory had been held.
“Khun Noo likes that bar,” Pete says mildly, unable to hold back a sincere smile. He doesn’t know why they slip out more easily these days, and he doesn’t know why he’s been allowing them to. “Khun Noo likes je Yok, too.”
“That’s true,” Tankhun says, without missing a beat. “I do. So does Tay, I guess. He said if the party’s held there, he doesn’t have to invite Time.” As he always has with words that should otherwise shake the earth, Tankhun makes this statement offhandedly, only wrinkling his nose and brow when Pete sputters around his cigarette.
“Khun Tay and Khun Time are—” Pete breaks off, pausing, cigarette held uncertainly in his hand. He settles for not finishing that question at all, settling for widening his eyes at Tankhun in anticipation, waiting for the elaboration.
Tankhun snatches the cigarette out of Pete’s hand and stomps on it under his red-soled heel. “See!” Tankhun points a finger at Pete’s nose. “This is what happens when you never come home!”
Pete smiles again. “Of course, Khun Noo,” he says. “It’s been busy.”
“What’s been busy?” Tankhun demands with the sort of affront that makes it so that Pete bows his head reflexively, out of habit, and perhaps to hide his mirth. “Is he making you work? You’re retired! Wasn’t that the whole point? What’s the point if you’re still working—might as well come back home and work, then! I have plenty of work for you, Pete—Arm and Pol are slacking after you left.”
“It’s not so busy anymore, Khun Noo. I’ll come by this week,” Pete says complacently, fishing another cigarette out. He lights it once it’s placed between his lips, fingers lingering around the lighter that he was lent nearly half a year ago now—the lighter that he still uses to this day, even though he never truly lost his own to begin with.
He feels Tankhun’s gaze focusing on him from the side, but Pete continues to look out into the distance. The hedges surrounding the minor family’s courtyard are going to need trimming sooner than Pete expected, which means they probably will need to fire the current gardener. Porsche is going to be devastated but the hedges are what they are.
“So he’s making you work,” Tankhun mutters under his breath with the same level of disgust and outrage that normal people would say so he hooked your genitals up to a car battery. “Why’re you even still here, Pete? The sex?” Pete’s former charge demands of him, in the same way that normal people might ask is his curry that good?
Pete is not one to claim that he himself is anywhere near normal, but he’s also not yet quite on the same level as Tankhun, which means that his own personal reaction is to promptly spit out his second cigarette until it lands on a nearby uneven hedge, still lit and nearly about to set the entire bush on fire.
“Exactly, Pete,” Tankhun says proudly, with eyes only for the budding flames and not on Pete scrambling around for the garden hose. “You read my mind.”
The first time they are ever physically intimate with each other after the safehouse is two weeks following Vegas’s release from the hospital.
Neither of them last long, but Pete feels tears hot and wet behind his eyelids all the same, constantly threatening to overflow but somehow managing not to. He sees the same emotions that are choking him from the inside out reflected in Vegas’s own gaze.
They go on like that for some time.
It’s good.
It’s never not good, especially as both of them build their stamina up against each other into teasing and foreplay that lasts hours rather than desperate minutes. Pete becomes exceedingly familiar with all the advantages a bed as large as Vegas’s provides, and they eventually master how to have sex even with Macau playing video games until late at night just down the corridor.
Pete knows that they remain like this forever, if Pete tells Vegas this is what makes him happy—if Pete tells Vegas that this is how Pete has decided he truly likes it, if Pete tells Vegas that what happened at the safehouse should remain at the safehouse, much like everything else that transpired between them.
Someday, Vegas will have to trust enough that Pete meant it when he said he would never leave again. Someday, Vegas will have to be courageous enough to himself let Pete know what Vegas wants and needs. Until that day, for now, Pete is willing to be brave for both of them.
A little over a month since Vegas came home from the hospital, Pete puts a bundle of rope back into Vegas’s hands and kneels at his feet.
Vegas shakes, from head to toe, holding the rope and staring down at Pete for what feels like centuries. The carpet has already begun to scratch at Pete’s bare knees, regardless of how expensive it must have been. Eventually, Vegas asks in English, on a trembling exhale, “How are you real?”
It isn’t a question Pete is meant to answer, so he doesn’t. Rather, he wordlessly places his wrists against each other and offers them up to his owner.
Five months from that day, and Pete has been bound with more than just rope—he’s had more done to him than the Pete who’d gone into the safehouse could have ever dreamed about or hoped for.
A week ago, Vegas told Pete that he wanted to renovate their bedroom, previously Vegas’s, and that it would take enough time that they’d need to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms until it’s done. Vegas refused to tell Pete how the room was going to be renovated, and seemed to have forbidden any of the workers to give Pete any concrete answers about what they were doing. The entire area was roped and tarped off to anyone other than the workers and Vegas himself.
Tonight, Vegas brings Pete into the room to show him the supposed results and Pete, after squinting around for a solid ten minutes like someone who’s got the wrong glasses, announces, incredulously, “Vegas, this room is the same.”
Vegas’s expressions have been odd all throughout the evening, and the smile he now directs to Pete is odder still. It’s somehow simultaneously shy and sharp all at once, like a baby lion about to stalk its first prey. He comes into kiss Pete once, on the cheek, and then he’s stepping away to a light switch that wasn’t there before—that Pete wouldn’t have even noticed until Vegas approaches it and flicks it on.
Nothing happens.
Or, at least, nothing happens by way of lights. Pete feels something happen, the floor seems to vibrate slightly, the entire room does, and then Vegas is taking a small remote out of his pocket and after a few buttons are pressed, the ceiling opens up, sliding tiles that looked like smooth white plaster just seconds ago.
Pete watches, head tilted upwards, transfixed, as Vegas holds down on another button entirely and chains with links of varying sizes—with varying ends, some with hooks, some with metal balls, some with leathering—rope of all sorts of material, begin to fall from the gaping maw in the ceiling, like serpents from the sky. Pete can only guess that there is some sort of fusee and barrel for both installed up above, as nothing falls immediately, but rather slowly, like the morning-alarm triggered curtains of Kinn’s bedroom.
After everything has finished unwinding, their bedroom looks like and, yet, somehow also completely unlike the basement room in the safehouse once did.
Pete reaches out to grasp the chain with the smallest links, wrapping it around his knuckles once. He still hasn’t met Vegas’s eyes yet. He feels his own breath coming out short, already, and he needs to steady himself before he can look at Vegas.
It doesn’t occur to him that Vegas wouldn’t be able to read Pete’s reaction to all of this. He would’ve thought it obvious, but perhaps not. Vegas’s voice sounds strangled and nervous when he calls Pete’s name. Vegas sounds anxious, in that one, singular syllable, and it makes Pete snap his head up instantly to look. Vegas should never sound like that—not in front of Pete.
Vegas looks like he’s holding his heart in his mouth, his soul in his hands, prepared for Pete to shoot at them both with bullets.
Pete doesn’t let go of the chain in his hand. “Is this why you sent Macau on that campus visit this weekend?” he says, with a smile.
Instantaneously, Vegas seems to swallow his heart back into his chest. He steps forward to close the distance between them. His hand joins Pete’s on the same chain, taking some of it and looping it around Pete’s wrist. “No, that’s where he’s going if he fails his exams. He should go look around so he’ll be motivated enough to pass them.”
Pete’s breath catches in his throat, heartbeat hammering the way it never fails to do, even months later, when Vegas’s face is this close to his. “So your renovations just coincidentally finished the same weekend?”
“Perfect timing, right?” Vegas murmurs in English, as his hands stroke down from Pete’s shoulders all the way to his wrists, gripping them lightly and bringing them behind Pete’s back. He holds them there in one hand and then uses his other to cup Pete’s cheek. Their eyes bear into one another’s. Pete feels Vegas releasing the chain and reaching for something else behind Pete. He suspects it’s rope, and receives his confirmation when he feels it touching at the skin of his arms a moment later.
Is this why you brought me out here before I could get dressed from my shower?
Pete doesn’t ask aloud questions he already knows the answers to.
“Safeword?” Vegas whispers with his mouth beneath Pete’s ear.
“Blue,” Pete breathes, and moves his waist to shake off the towel still wrapped around it.
Vegas’s hands begin to work—forearm, elbow, rope, wrist, rope, elbow, forearm. “Good boy,” he says softly, again in English, his smile ravenous, as if he hasn’t had Pete nearly every night since their first in this room—as if he hadn’t had Pete the entirety of the previous day, the moment the car holding Macau and his overnight bags left the minor family compound.
Pete’s last true coherent thought, as Vegas brings him down—Pete falling to his knees and the rope being drawn forward now around his torso, beneath his nipples, around his pelvis in neat crisscrosses—is that this can’t possibly be a coincidence.
It can’t possibly be a coincidence, Pete continues to think, no longer coherent at all but because it was his last thought going down, it’s the current thought he uses to entertain himself simultaneously blissful and on the brink. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Vegas trussed him up in rope (red, his mind provides vaguely, and lined with silk), patterned all over his body, tight enough so that there will be marks tomorrow.
However long it’s been since Vegas finished his handiwork on Pete, it’s been precisely that long since Vegas kissed Pete on the mouth and murmured against it, “I’ll be working, right there, where I can hear you, all right? Don’t come until I let you, Pete.”
Pete can’t feel his knees anymore, where he’s been placed on the part of the bedroom floor that the vast rug doesn’t cover. His cock is straining against his stomach, framed by the red, silk rope, and maybe it’s started leaking onto himself—Pete can’t be sure, he doesn’t dare look down. He doesn’t want to look down. He’s perfectly content the way Vegas has placed him, back pushed into an arch by the way the rope has been tied around him, and with how Vegas hooked four chains strategically onto Pete’s bindings.
One each at the knots on his elbows, helping to hold his arms behind his back, and one each at the knots tied against Pete’s hips. The ceiling source of all the chains can be adjusted and Vegas pulled them both back behind where Pete was told to remain kneeling. For his owner, Pete won’t let himself fall backwards along with the force. He’d sooner let his spine snap.
The aching strain in his muscles, the sting in his eyes as the perspiration brought on by the effort to keep this position drips into them, would all be enough to make Pete come untouched. In addition to all of that, because Vegas doesn’t do anything by halves, and Pete is greedy for everything Vegas is willing to give, there’s a vibrator, thick and large and pulsating inside of Pete. His thighs quiver along with it, his stomach feels like there are vultures swooping around for carcasses within him—the vibrator has been lodged deep inside of him, at Pete’s own behest, because he hopes that Vegas will be able to feel the mechanic convulsions just by pressing his hand over Pete’s soft, lower belly.
A few lifetimes pass before Vegas returns.
Pete is certain he died, was born, then died, then born over and over again before Vegas finally returns, kneeling in front of Pete and bracketing Pete’s face with his hands, fingers reaching all the way back into Pete’s hair. “Good boy,” Vegas whispers like a prayer against Pete’s lips. “Such a good boy.” To Pete’s ears, he sounds so far even though the heat of him is close enough to burn.
A tongue slips into Pete’s mouth, searing against his teeth like a brand. Pete strains forward for more. He thinks he might be crying, and hopes he is. He hopes Vegas sees that Pete has been taken apart at the seams, left without bones, without organs, without blood or skin on the floor of their bedroom.
Distantly, Pete hears the rustle of clothing and then warm skin is being pressed soothingly all around him. “C’mon, Pete,” he feels more than hears, spoken against his collarbone as the vibrations filling him are suddenly removed. Pete is abruptly emptied out, a gaping void within him that is soon filled with something better—something alive, something hot, something will turn him into scorched earth on the inside. “Come for me.”
Pete knows he’s crying now, tears catching on his lashes and cheeks as the chains holding him up are released and he’s caught by strong arms, fingers hooking themselves into his ropes in place of the chains. Vegas thrusts up into him, keeping Pete upright with his own strength because Pete is truly boneless at this point. The only thing he can do is come, and come, and come again—it feels like his cock will never stop, releasing in small spurts at every violent rock of Vegas’s hips.
Pete doesn’t know when Vegas comes. After Pete’s final orgasm ends, at last, and his body announces that it is actually tapping out for the night whether Pete likes it or not, he quickly begins to lose track of time. It doesn’t matter to him anyway. This is one of his favorite parts, after all, floating with satisfaction in nowhere at all, the throbbing pain that runs through his body as well as within it. He could stay here forever, and maybe he would, were it not for Vegas. He would miss Vegas, if he remained here too long.
“Pete,” Vegas’s voice is close, so near that maybe Pete could swallow Vegas up into his own body if he wanted to, merge them into one so that they wouldn’t have to be apart for even a moment in this life. “Safeword.”
In the far recesses of his mind, where everything inconsequential to the present is stored, Pete registers that he’s currently horizontal now, and he has also been untied—his limbs feel too loose, too free, and so does he. “Blue,” he mumbles, turning his face towards where he senses the warmth is—a heart beats beneath his cheek.
“Thanks,” Vegas says, voice as soft and as content as Pete feels. The arms around Pete tighten, firm and secure, and he no longer feels too loose or too free anymore. He feels tethered, kept, and, slowly, he rises back up above those tempting dark waters.
He surfaces in increments, and it’s another while before he can finally feel the actual water around them, against his skin, soaking the edges of his hair where his head is pillowed back on Vegas’s bare shoulder.
When Pete raises his head, Vegas turns his. Their eyes meet and Vegas’s gaze relaxes. If Pete felt split open before, it’s nothing compared to how raw and exposed he feels now when Vegas is looking at him like that, with an expression so tender that Pete nearly looks away. He doesn’t think he will ever get used to this part of Vegas.
“Back?” Vegas asks gently, one finger crooked beneath Pete’s chin to tip him forward for a careful kiss.
Pete regards him steadily in silence, blinking as he tries to find his voice again. Vegas continues to rhythmically card his fingers through Pete’s hair, pausing every now and then to scoop some of the warm water over Pete’s shoulders and chest so that no part of him gets too drafty in the cavernous bathroom.
When Pete’s voice eventually returns to him, and his thoughts catch up through the hours-long pause they’d been put on, the first thing that comes croaking out of him, triumphant for no reason, is, “Macau is away and neither of us have anything to do tomorrow for the first time all month—this was not a coincidence.”
Vegas’s laughter breaks out of him so suddenly that Pete jumps a little in the bath, some of the water splashing around them. Pete has to stare, just a little bit, because while he’s seen Vegas laugh before in this past half a year—a fair number of times, even if not often—he has never seen it bubble out of the other man with such little restraint.
“I might’ve added something on top of their commission to motivate them into finishing before the weekend,” Vegas admits, once his laughter has died down to a quiet smile. He flicks a bit of water at Pete’s face. “That’s all you have to say about it? Really?”
Pete tilts his head up to connect their gazes again. He grins, and watches Vegas’s eyes drop to his cheeks. Unbidden, Vegas’s thumb digs into one of Pete’s dimples. “Tomorrow morning, let’s test the chains?” he asks. Then, he adds, just in case it wasn’t clear, “Without the rope.”
“I love you,” Vegas says, tone solemn, eyes playful, and it’s Pete’s turn to laugh this time.
Pete was never Kinn’s bodyguard, not directly.
If not Tankhun, Pete has even guarded Korn more times than he has ever guarded Kinn. Until Tawan (part one, that cockroach) and his brutal aftermath, Pete only ever saw Kinn from afar—playful, warm, and while occasionally quiet, still far more sociable and less terrifying than Kim, on those rare occasions the youngest brother decided to grace the family with his presence.
Following Tawan (part one), Kinn began requesting more and more bodyguards to accompany him wherever he went. He began taking missions rather than deals—began putting himself in situations that normally Chan would take, leading his personal squad of bodyguards trained specifically for instances that were too dangerous for any actual member of the family to place themselves in.
Tankhun was none the wiser when Kinn began asking for Pete consistently after taking him on one meeting-gone-rogue. There was a silent tacit agreement that Pete had no problem complying to between himself, Arm, Pol, and Kinn when it came to explaining what exactly sort of event Kinn wanted Pete to accompany him to along with Big and Kinn’s actual assigned squad of bodyguards.
The tantrum Tankhun would’ve thrown if he knew that each of those times ran a real risk of Pete never returning would have been insurmountable and unstoppable.
Pete, for all of his own intents and purposes, couldn’t have continued in a position of constant security and minimal risk. He wouldn’t have lasted all this time at Tankhun’s side if it weren’t for Kinn taking him out every now and again to breathe in lungfuls of blood and gunfire. Pete needed to shoot and be shot at—he needed to beat into submission a debtor or a traitorous client from time to time, needed to hear their screams and feel their bones breaking. He needed to have a bruise or ten planted on him once in a while to stay sane.
When it was all over and done with, he could think of nothing better than to brush by the infirmary to pick up a cold compress and settle in beside Tankhun, stealing Pol’s popcorn, and avoiding Arm’s knowing gaze—as if Pete had done nothing more than help Kinn move a heavy bookshelf.
It was a time in Pete’s life during which he truly thought he’d struck the most optimal balance possible for someone like him. Perhaps he had. The only downside to this entire arrangement, in retrospect, is that Kinn was privy to all of it.
Or, rather, Kinn thought he was privy to all of it.
This is an adjustment to the actual reality that Pete is only made aware of when Kinn approaches him for the first time since The Day They’ve All Collectively Decided to Never Mention Directly. Up until today, Pete has only ever seen Kinn in passing, or when Kinn comes to pull Porsche away out of conversations he attempts to have with Vegas, Pete, or Vegas and Pete.
Kinn hadn’t visited Vegas even once in the hospital, and, in all truthfulness, Pete hadn’t expected him to and was relieved reality finally met his expectations. While Pete had no way of knowing precisely what sort of first post-calamity meeting Kinn and Vegas would have, he certainly had every way of being fairly certain that it wouldn’t be something that anyone would want occurring in a hospital with Vegas hooked up to his myriad of monitors and drips. Their actual first meeting after that cataclysmic day happened beneath the dim lights of a Theerapanyakul benefit gala, and considering no one was shot—not even non-fatally—Pete considered it a rousing success.
“Pete,” Kinn says, yanking Pete back from where he was beginning to idly reminisce on the reward Vegas demanded that night after making it through the encounter with a lack of shootout. “Is he?”
Pete blinks. “Is he what?” When Kinn’s eyes narrow in confusion, Pete feigns a cough, and ducks his head in polite apology.
“Is Vegas,” and Kinn lowers his voice even further, to the point where Pete has to lean in to hear him, “using you?”
This is really something Pete thinks every Theerapanyakul brother should work on—elaborating upon their initial statement so Pete isn’t left to ask for clarification after every phrase. “Using me for what, Khun Kinn?” Pete asks, keeping both his tone and expression neutral. He prays, honestly, to every god he believes in and some he doesn’t, that Kinn isn’t about to answer this question in the same vein that Tankhun had.
Kinn seems to square his shoulders, drawing himself to his full height and towering over Pete. Pete, in turn, braces himself to hear something that will elicit as much secondhand embarrassment as his conversation with Tankhun last week.
“Is he using you for missions?” Kinn demands. “Dangerous ones. Without paying you. Porsche told me about last month.”
Once again, Pete’s brain draws up a complete blank as he stares into Kinn’s determined, and concerned, eyes for a considerable length of time. It takes him a sincere moment to page through the events of the preceding month, before he finally arrives on the most likely possibility to what Kinn is referring to.
It brings with it a realization that sheds a brand new light on at least three-quarters of his and Kinn’s entire relationship.
“Khun Kinn doesn’t need to be concerned,” Pete says, solemnly. “I was the one being done the favor.” He bows his head lightly to punctuate the end of the statement, and then walks off before Kinn overcomes his bewildered silence enough to begin asking further questions.
By no means is it their first fight nor their worst.
It is still, however, a fight, and while it involves less blood and bullets compared to its predecessors, it is no less ugly when it comes to a head.
The episode commences some time before dinner, when Pete states that he’ll also be joining the errand Vegas will be running on Friday, and Vegas turns the stovetop off and says, as if Pete asked a question rather than made a clear declaration, “No.”
Pete isn’t sure exactly when Macau leaves, but he suspects it’s around the time that both Vegas and Pete stopped eating and began to, instead, hold their cutlery like short-range weapons. He vaguely remembers hearing Macau mumble something about staying over at a friend’s for the night, which, in retrospect, became possibly the best decision Macau could have ever made for himself in self-preservation because Pete is fairly certain no one in the minor family home slept that night—including, and especially, the bodyguards.
It isn’t so much that he and Vegas ever truly engaged in anything like a screaming match at each other, and there are no actual guns drawn this time. Rather, all of the other inhabitants of the compound seem to understand that even if Vegas will never physically harm Pete, regardless of how outraged he is towards Pete during an argument, anyone else is still fair game as collateral damage.
The denouement takes place well after midnight—the departure time for the errand itself will be in just a few hours. Neither of them slept—they hadn’t even made it out of the kitchen after dinner. Pete is still seated at the table, and Vegas has been gripping the same glass of whiskey at the counter since he poured it for himself after Macau excused himself from the entire compound.
They aren’t facing each other anymore and Pete hates it. He wants to splash Vegas’s whiskey into the man’s face, break the glass over Vegas’s head, and then grasp his face in Pete’s hands. He wants to yank Vegas towards him and scream at him until he’ll listen. Either way, Pete is going, so Vegas might as well not try and stop him.
“You’re not going, Pete,” Vegas says, voice hoarse. They’ve sat in silence for some time now, but when the fight just began—when each of them plunged into this with energy and the full-blown belief that the other party would listen—they both were stumbling over each other to get out what they wanted to say. At that point, it felt as if Pete would speak until his throat was sore, and his heart sorer. “I’ll break your legs, if I have to.”
The threat is empty, and they both know it.
Pete should leave it be, because he knows why Vegas is saying what is saying, but Pete doesn’t. Contrary to popular belief of everyone who thinks they know him, and thinks they know Vegas, in some ways, Pete is worse than Vegas. A thousand times worse.
“Then, do it. I know you can,” Pete says, staring at the wall. He hears the sharp intake of breath before it’s muted, muffled. “You almost broke my ribs, before, did you know?”
The next thing Pete hears, after a deafening silence, is the sound of the barstool’s legs scraping against tile. Vegas’s footsteps are brisk as they fade out from the kitchen.
These are the sounds that announce to Pete that he’s won, tonight, even though the last thing he feels like right now is a victor.
He doesn’t sleep.
Pete remains in the kitchen until the sun rises, sitting in the very same seat that he sat while eating dinner the night before. Everything has bled together—it doesn’t even feel like the next morning, but rather one, long hell that won’t end until this mission does.
He waits until he can hear the bodyguards assigned for the task rustling to life, if any of them slept at all to begin with, as well. It isn’t until Pete knows Vegas has gone out to the courtyard, most likely to begin rallying his men as well as deciding on vehicles for the trip, that Pete himself heads into their bedroom to change.
He puts himself on autopilot the way he has so many times before, even if it’s been nearly a year since he’s had to. He tells himself that the reward will be waiting for him at the end of all this and that, no matter what, Vegas will be alive because Pete will make sure of it.
It’s as relieving as it is utterly bizarre to head in for this kind of mission wearing whatever he himself deems appropriate for it. He straps on more firepower than he’s had to carry in at least two years, after Kinn stopped taking him on the sorts of missions Pete actually preferred because Tankhun was growing suspicious.
Pete waits just out of sight behind one of the courtyard pillars until the two cars’ worth of minor family men, and Vegas, leave the compound driveway. He knows they’ll first be headed to the major family first to pick up additional manpower, and weaponry, there. Pete takes his time strapping on a bulletproof vest, and taking Vegas’s helmet and motorbike keys.
He knows precisely the location where the errand will take place because Porsche being a terrible drunk consequently means that he is an extremely informative one.
Because the cars will make a stopover at the major family first, Pete can reach the predicted point of contact sooner. He’s able to arrive at the container park well before the Theerapanyakul party, and squirrel himself underneath a raised platform—close enough to watch the reportedly traitorous associates make their own arrival.
Even if Vegas had agreed to have Pete officially part of the job, Pete would’ve remained hidden anyway—out of sight and out of mind until he’s needed. He does just that now, even after the major and minor family guards arrive with Vegas—even as the supposed ringleader of the group, who attempted to run after standing Porsche up with the promised product drop, begins posturing at Vegas.
Pete remains crouched and unmoving beneath the ramp of a sea container even after the shooting begins. He simply tightens the straps of his gloves, flexing his fingers as he takes his first gun out, clicking off the safety and cocking it as he keeps his back against the underside of the ramp and his eyes on the deep emerald of Vegas’s jacket.
As he predicted, even though the opposing group’s men are getting taken out slowly, but surely, one by one—so are their own men, particularly most of the major family guards. Pete recognized nearly none of them, meaning they are all relatively new, possibly the lowest rung on the ladder as of now—disposable labor at best.
Pete’s original plan was to only make an appearance once every other guard, whether major or minor, was taken out, leaving only Vegas and the ringleader. That quickly ends up scrapped when it becomes clear that even the minor family guards recruited by Porsche are proving useless—some as dead as the major family ones, and some knocked out by less fatal wounds.
The first bullet that leaves his gun feels uncannily like how it felt when Vegas first wrapped a length of rope tight around Pete’s wrists—like he was taking his first breath of air all over again.
“Pete? ” Vegas half-shouts, only able to spare a quick glance before he himself is ducking behind another container, back to the wall, shoulder to shoulder with Pete.
There’s only the ringleader and what appears to be his right-hand man, the second best shot in the group, left. They’re not worse off than Vegas and Pete are, technically, but the only living guards that remain are all unconscious, scattered and slumped all over the gravel of the container park. Pete knows that the other two men must be regrouping, catching their breath, and hiding behind a container nearby as well.
Vegas, beside him, is covered in blood that isn’t his own. His jacket won’t be surviving this job, and there’s some spotting his face as well. His hair is windswept from running around and perspiring, and Pete wants to run his fingers through it. He wants Vegas to bite at Pete’s neck and sink himself to the hilt inside of Pete—plunge into him while he smells like blood and sweat.
When he brings his gaze upwards to meet Vegas’s, Pete is given a sharp reminder that although Pete has learned to see through Vegas like gauze, Vegas falls not so far behind in the same regard. “Why’d you come?” Vegas whispers, his gun held up near his face in the anticipatory position. His eyes manage to flicker easily and equally between the corner of the container, cautious in case of a sudden attack, and Pete’s expression.
Pete parts his lips, his own gun held in the same manner. Vegas’s eyes are knowing, and Pete feels heat flushing his cheeks—a warmth that has nothing to do with the danger they’re in nor the physical exertion of the situation. “To protect you,” he tries, first, because even though it isn’t the entire truth, it’s still a sizable chunk of it.
“And?” Vegas murmurs, his eyes shining like a predator’s. Pete becomes all too aware of how close their faces are, and how he can smell Vegas’s cologne alongside the blood, the dust and smoke that lingers near these sorts of warehouse plants.
A rain of bullets comes right as Pete feels himself mustering the courage to admit what needs to be admitted. Naturally, he and Vegas fire simultaneously, running out from opposing ends of their container. Pete doesn’t know who made the killing shot for either of their opponents, just that neither he nor Vegas stop until both of their guns are empty—long after the bodies stopped twitching.
They’ll have to call for medical for the remaining guards who are injured, but still breathing, even if barely. They’ll have to call to alert about the completed job, and to report that they themselves are alive—and that Pete is here at all. They should likely do it soon, as well, since this area is deserted, more often than not, but not so isolated that nearby construction workers couldn’t have alerted any authorities. In order for the Theerapanyakul strings to be pulled, Kinn needs to know that the firefight even happened.
They need to do all of these things listed above in Pete’s head—as someone who was once not just a bodyguard, but a head bodyguard, often for errands just like this, as well, Pete absolutely knows what needs to be done right now, at this very moment, and not later.
“Pete,” Vegas says, breathing hard and sweating even harder, hair damp against his temples, the blood of the ringleader splattered onto his clothes and face and hands. He put enough bullets into the man’s head that it now reminds Pete of whenever his grandmother used to bring him to the market—of the fruit that would fall onto the ground and get crushed beneath rickshaw wheels.
Pete unfastens his vest and throws his gloves to the ground, letting them soak in the pooling blood. He gestures at his own target—at the ringleader’s partner. Pete shot him everywhere but the head and the heart—had left those for last. Vegas had long since silenced the leader by the time Pete finally put an end to the screaming of the man’s partner. “I need it as much as you do,” Pete says quietly, after he’s had a moment long enough to figure out exactly how to string the words together.
He steels his shoulders, preparing to have his turn at being seen as a monster.
When he does eventually look at Vegas, Pete finds instead that he’s being stared at as if Vegas is seeing him for the first time all over again—not their first meeting ever, as people, but as like knowing like in the safehouse. “God,” Vegas hisses through his teeth, in English. His hands seize Pete’s face, fingernails digging into the soft, thin skin of Pete’s cheeks. The sting is enough that Pete hopes Vegas will draw blood. “You sure you’re real?”
Swallowing, Pete nods, and Vegas’s mouth is pressed over his before Pete gets the chance to take his next breath.
Usually, wherever Vegas and intimacy are concerned, Pete’s head always becomes soft and hazy around the edges—his awareness retreats to somewhere warm and sweet, even while his body is pushed to its limits. The scent of viscera and bullet smoke in the air prevents that from happening, and somehow, Pete wants this just as much. His legs wrap themselves around Vegas’s waist upon Vegas hoisting Pete up against the ridged wall of a container.
They’re out in the open, surrounded by bodies that have been shot open, some to a point where their identities are now unrecognizable, and Pete is so hard that even Vegas unzipping his pants for him hurts. Vegas smears some of the blood on Pete’s face around further, thumbing beneath Pete’s eyes, up along his cheekbone.
“I don’t have lube on me,” Vegas says. There are teeth in his smile, and there’s hunger in his eyes. His hand wraps around Pete’s cock like a vice, tight enough that it’s more pain than pleasure as he begins to stroke.
Pete’s breath hitches, butterflies in his chest, heat in the pit of his stomach. Vegas is beautiful. “Good,” he says, and reaches down to unfasten Vegas’s pants, as well.
Arm is the first person Pete messaged, upon being able to type at all, fingers shaking with blood, adrenaline, and shock. He is the only person Pete messaged, continuously, and he’s the one Pete talks to the most regularly even now.
Although Pete corresponds with Arm the most frequently, he’s the one Pete has seen in person the least since that fateful night. More responsibilities have fallen onto Pete’s old friend as a result of the intra-clan clash—bringing the trainees up to speed, continuing to accompany Tankhun, more closely assisting Kinn and Porsche, and occasionally Korn—all of these are now Arm’s burdens to bear as one of the few upper guards left.
Therefore, tonight is an occasion that has been a long time in the making—Pete has been waiting literal months for a time when it wouldn’t be a terrible inconvenience for Arm to pop out for more than just a brief moment, without Tankhun hot on his heels, insisting to also come and see Pete.
There’s nothing remarkable about the evening in particular, but they do everything Pete has missed about the life he led just over a year ago—before the arrival of a new roommate would set the gears in motion for events that changed everything—for all of them, whether for better or for worse.
They hit all of their old haunts—food stalls and back alley bars that they’d frequent whenever they were permitted the rare opportunity to leave the major family’s grounds—where they would take Pol to once he joined their batch as well, and where they once went alongside Big before he accepted his promotion—before the walls went up around his heart in order to protect it.
Their final stop for the night is one that Pete didn’t even know was still around. It’s a small streetside bar that Big discovered, and far out enough from all Theerapanyakul territory that none of them ever made it back out after they all gradually began to rise through the ranks.
He and Arm settle for just a beer each, after already having had their fill of food from a nearby night market. Despite how lighthearted their conversations had been throughout the evening, Pete knew from the intent in Arm’s expression when they met up with each other at the major family gates that Arm isn’t letting Pete go tonight without asking the sorts of questions that from a lesser friend or colleague Pete would’ve simply smiled and deflected.
From the look in Arm’s current expression, as he watches Pete take a long drag from his beer, it seems that Arm knows it as well.
Pete sets his gaze expectantly on his friend, and waits.
Arm pushes his glasses up higher on his nose, fingertips playing in the condensation of his own beer’s cold bottle. His eyes lower for a moment, his silence considering and thoughtful. When he raises his gaze to meet Pete’s, there’s only concern in his expression—no judgment at all, none since the first message Pete shakily sent to him on that night nearly a year ago.
“What if you really wanted to leave?” Arm asks, evenly. “Would he let you go, Pete? Just like that?”
Pete smiles humorlessly, twirling the neck of his bottle between two fingers. “Yes,” he shrugs, truthfully and doubtlessly.
“Pete,” Arm says with a furrow forming between his brows. “How can you know for sure? Even if he says that—Pete, he’s told lots of people lots of things.” The names that Arm does not mention float in the air between them as loud and clear as if he did.
Pete levels one of his oldest friends a look that brooks no more argument—that states without space for objection that this is all Pete has left to offer this discussion. Pete has no other explanations or elaborations. He knows Arm still feels guilty about how long Pete was left in Vegas’s hands—how, if Pete hadn’t eventually escaped, for all they knew, the funeral Tankhun held so informally might have become a reality after all.
“I know,” Pete declares with conviction. “Trust me.”
Two days, one night.
Nine to nine, morning of the first day to morning of the second.
Two weeks ago, Tankhun proposed apropos of absolutely nothing that he’s booked out an entire, supposedly haunted, hotel for Pol’s birthday, and that they’ll all stay the night of there whether they like it or not. Pete managed, by the skin of his teeth, to talk Porsche down from fleeing the country by promising that he’d spend the entirety of the night there—specifically as Porsche’s roommate—rather than leaving after the main portion of the festivities on the first day.
“Get Porsche’s screams on video,” was all Vegas said, when Pete brought it up, two weeks ago, over dinner. Vegas’s eyes remained on his food, not even one glance up at Pete.
Those following fourteen days, however, gave Pete opposing evidence to be concerned. After that day, Vegas was as normal as he ever was—the most normal, by Vegas standards, that he has ever been since returning from the hospital. It was enough that Pete nearly felt as though it was all on Pete himself for the paranoia that Vegas wouldn’t even be able to stomach one night away from Pete since everything that’d happened between them.
Pete would be lying, after all, if he claimed that he didn’t expect Vegas, at the very least, to start an argument, to attempt to desperately request to Pete not to go for all of the two days—if not, even perhaps, for Vegas to flatly reject the very idea of Pete being away from him for the duration of one, whole, night.
Perhaps, Pete doesn’t know Vegas—this new Vegas, this reborn and resurrected Vegas—as well as he still thought he did.
Perhaps, Pete is actually the one truly worse off and is just projecting bits of himself onto Vegas. The way Pete is more than aware of how much he’s began to fuss starting the evening before—to the point of exasperating even Macau—all the way through the morning he’s due to leave, is certainly proof. Even after attempting to convince himself that, to his own credit, Macau will be leaving in the late afternoon, to go with his own friends overnight for a final project, it still doesn’t explain away the sheer amount of worrying Pete is doing over nothing.
It isn’t as if Vegas will even be completely alone in the compound, and even if he would be, Vegas is Vegas.
Strangely, nowadays, echoing to himself Vegas’s identity as a person serves to only induce further anxiety in Pete rather than security.
Even as Vegas leans in the doorway of their bedroom, watching Pete finish packing, waiting for the inevitable horn-honking and yelling that signifies Tankhun’s arrival, Pete feels insane. Vegas’s expression is calm, neutral, and sincere, even if his eyes are a little tight—that’s nothing to cause the amount of sirens that are currently blaring in Pete’s head. There’s nothing—no tells in Vegas’s body language or facially expressed emotions, or tone, or eyes, or even the way he touches Pete, that should be an indicator of why Pete feels like something is disastrously wrong.
Pete knows that he’s searching for signs when there are none—that he can’t seem to accept the steadiness in Vegas’s hands as they hold Pete’s face, the way Vegas kisses Pete just the way Pete likes—a hint of teeth and a smile that’s simultaneously sharp and soft.
“Have fun,” Vegas says, voice low and warm.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, Pete’s heart chants, as his mind struggles to search for why. No matter what Pete’s intuition insists, without anything irrefutable and concrete—something behavioral—what could he possibly do? Surely, he couldn’t just drop his bags and plant his feet in their room, refusing to go on a weeks-long planned trip and accusing Vegas of doing something he hasn’t, and feeling something he might not.
Maybe Vegas is truly healing—maybe he’s already needing (Pete’s mind unhelpfully supplies wanting as a brilliant synonym) Pete’s presence less. What would it say about Pete if he discouraged that?
“Yeah,” Pete says, around a smile that falls so flat even he himself is aware of it. The odd twist in Vegas’s eyes announces that he notices it as well, so Pete turns away more quickly than he usually would to save them both the time of having to discuss it. Only some months have passed, and Vegas already seems to be settling into his skin—his affection and fondness for Pete are constant, but Pete supposes that the fervor of obsession would abate after some time.
The idea was, anyway, as Porsche said, that Pete would make Vegas better, right? Wasn’t it? Or something like that. Pete should be glad for that then, considering the alternative is that Vegas has made Pete worse.
Pete ducks his head and swiftly steps out of the room, hoisting the strap of his bag over his shoulder and carefully brushing past where Vegas still stands in the doorway. “I’ll go wait for them outside,” he says, without glancing back. If he meets Vegas’s eyes again, he might become so unsettled that he never leaves at all. “Otherwise, Khun Noo might break down the gate again.”
On his way out, conveniently, Macau is in the entryway, seemingly trying to stuff multiple game consoles into a weekend bag. He glances up from his endeavors at the same time that Pete is about to reach out to squeeze his shoulder.
Pete’s intended words catch in his throat for a moment, upon seeing that Macau’s eyes are lacking the mischievous cheer Pete has become accustomed to within these past months. Rather, an awkward heaviness is back in them, as he stares at Pete’s bag briefly before back up to Pete’s face. “What time is phi coming back again?” Macau asks, the intentional offhandedness of his tone bringing Pete up short slightly. His eyes flicker shiftily away, and it’s times like these that it strikes Pete how successful Vegas was, truly, in protecting his brother from all the parts of this world that forced Vegas to grow up too fast too soon.
“Tomorrow morning,” Pete says, mildly bemused. He looks back towards the hallway that leads up to the bedrooms. “Might even come back earlier,” he jokes lightly, “if Porsche manages to actually fall asleep tonight.”
Macau’s jaw flexes, cheek contracting like he’s digging teeth into the inside of it, as if he’s quite literally chewing on something he wants to say to Pete, but can’t quite bring himself to or cannot quite phrase aloud. In the end, after Pete waits for as long as he thinks he can, Macau grins, stiffly and unconvincingly. “Phi shouldn’t speak too soon—there’s karma in underestimating ghosts.”
Pete roughs up Macau’s hair, dodging the boy’s hands swatting him away in response. “Probably could fit another book in there if you take a few controllers out, Khun Macau,” Pete nods good-naturedly down at the stuffed duffel bag, dodging Macau’s foot, as he makes his way out through the door.
A dark bike pulls up just as Pete walks through the gate. He lets out a breath of mild relief at the sight of it. He didn’t think he’d be spared the entire entourage, led by Tankhun, but apparently, according to Porsche, the other three had gone on first to the hotel where Pol is indeed being made to put up decorations for his own birthday party.
Porsche flips open his visor to fix Pete with a gaze that is attempting its best to be stern but Porsche being Porsche, to Pete, it simply looks panicked and somewhat sweaty. “I swear, Pete,” Porsche says, as he hands Pete his own helmet. “If you leave me tonight, if you even piss without me—”
“You’ll be fine. Remember how well everything turned out the last time you thought you saw a ghost?” Pete says, as he climbs onto the backseat. Once he’s got his helmet on, Porsche turns back and elbows it in the side. Pete smiles.
Porsche glances around briefly, even after Pete is evidently settled onto the seat. “Is Vegas sick or something?” Porsche asks, sounding genuinely confused.
Pete clutches the edge of the seat beneath him with one hand and uses his other to push his own visor down so that he has an excuse not to directly meet Porsche’s eyes even if Porsche were to turn around. “No—why?”
“He’s not out here,” Porsche says, casually, apparently deeming everything well and good enough to kick off and start down the driveway now that he’s sent Pete’s brain spiraling all over again after Pete finally managed to get a hold on himself. “Threatening me.”
“What’s the point of him threatening you?” Pete says, before he can stop himself. He’s somewhat grateful his voice is muffled hopefully through the wind rushing past them, his helmet, and Porsche’s own helmet. He meant for those words to come out far more jokingly than they did. Far less bitter and honest.
If Porsche hears it, he doesn’t change the tone of his own voice in his response. Pete’s friend continues to sound level and nonchalant, and maybe even with the hint of sarcasm that Pete wished he’d been able to pull off himself. “Has that ever stopped him before?” Porsche quips back, as he winds through the roads at a far more respectable speed than Vegas ever does when he takes Pete out.
Every reply to that Pete has in his arsenal is one that would cause truthful confrontation between himself and Porsche that Pete honestly prefers not to induce in any relationship in his life—ever—with the exception of perhaps Vegas himself. So he says nothing at all instead, and the drive to the hotel almost managed to be enjoyable. Pete almost managed to take his mind off of everything, even, miraculously, Vegas, for the solid last few minutes of the drive until Porsche being Porsche just had to get his final words in as they pulled up to the entrance.
“To be fair,” Porsche says, his tone thoughtful and his expression thoroughly ignorant of how Pete is beseeching him with his eyes not to finish whatever horrible revelation he’s about to force Pete to have. “He doesn’t threaten me, really, when it’s about you. It’s more like begging.”
Pete calmly hands his helmet back to his friend and thinks, placidly, just for that, he’s going to switch off the circuit breaker of his and Porsche’s room as soon as the sun sets.
Vegas does not call or message Pete once during the entirety of dinner or the hotel concierge’s animated ghost tour and retelling of the hotel’s history.
There’re only so many times Pete can sneak his phone out to check his notifications while it’s on silent so as to not bring any attention to it from Tankhun, and while having Porsche attached to his back like a benign but extremely sticky growth. It doesn’t help that Porsche has at least a head on him Pete in height and while Pete is used to strength training, having to piggyback Porsche through two-thirds of the ghost tour is still not ideal when Pete’s stomach is churning with warning bells.
It isn’t until well after midnight that Pete’s phone finally does show signs of life, though there is a small swoop of disappointment in his chest when he glances at the screen and reads Macau’s name rather than the one he was waiting for.
Another prick of accompanying worry follows swiftly after as Pete steps out into the bathroom to pick up the call after having sent Porsche downstairs (alone, but into the brightly lit hallway and with a wooden artifact the concierge swore would ward off any spirits they’ll encounter tonight) to get candles from the front desk since the power in their room isn’t working for the night (Pete doesn’t joke about circuitry).
“Macau,” Pete says quietly, something like dread in his stomach as he places his phone against his ear. It could be anything, and it could be nothing. He tells himself, chants repeatedly, that it most likely is nothing. “What’s up?”
The first confirmation Pete receives that every concern he’s had these past days is not unfounded is the silence on the other end. It isn’t as if this is the first phone call he and Macau have ever shared since their time in the hospital together at Vegas’s bedside—since Pete came to live at the minor family compound. Macau has seen and lived through things he shouldn’t have, but while he is older than his years in some ways, he is just like all of his civilian peers in others.
Macau always greets Pete first whenever he calls Pete. It’ll always be in English, boisterous and befitting of Macau’s age—cheerful, normally, and even when it’s to deliver the bad news that Macau stayed too late at school and missed his friend’s ride, there’s still always something boyish and brazen about it.
A wordless pause that lasts this long, while Macau is clearly on the other line—no dropped call, no breaking signal—is already enough to make Pete’s thoughts descend into chaos.
“I forgot the actual game my friend wanted to play,” Macau says, his voice distant and small. Like a little kid, Pete’s mind supplies unbidden. “I came back to get it—just now. I’m still at the house. Hia—something’s going on in your guys’ room, I think. I heard—”
The boy cuts off, another pause that skyrockets the speed of Pete’s heartbeat. “Can phi come back tonight?” Macau says, in a tone that is too reminiscent of the way Pete has once heard him ask, not so long ago at all, in a hospital waiting room, where’re you going? After hia is okay?
“Yeah,” Pete says, between one racing beat of his heart and the next. “Go back to your friend’s for tonight—I’ll head out, right now. This place isn’t far. Don’t—don’t worry,” he adds, before he can think too much of it. He wonders if Macau hears what Pete doesn’t say as much as Pete wishes he could bring himself to choke that sentiment out into the world.
Don’t worry. He’s got me now, too—and so do you.
“Okay,” Macau replies slowly, still sounding quiet and young. “Message me if anything—if he’s okay. Or,” again he fades off into silence that twists Pete’s heart.
“I will,” Pete reassures firmly. “He’ll be okay,” he states as if this is something he can guarantee, his terrible habit coming up to play again. If Macau was here in person, facing him, Pete thinks he wouldn’t be able to hold himself off from smiling for good measure—a painful, ugly curving of his mouth that resembles a rictus grin more than anything else.
“Thanks, P’Pete,” Macau says so softly that it’s almost a whisper. It unnerves Pete to hear him like this after he hasn’t for what feels like the centuries between now and the hospital. The line cuts off, and then Pete is jumping into motion. He repacks his bag, and quickly types out a message to Porsche, apologizing and letting him know that he’s taking the bike and he’ll return it in the morning to the major family’s building.
Pete takes the service elevator and the kitchens’ backdoor in order to insure that he won’t bump into any of the others if they still happen to be wandering around—and if Porsche is on his way back up after acquiring the candles.
He finds where the valet has parked Porsche’s bike, straps on one of the helmets and takes off into the night. The hotel truly isn’t far from both the main and minor family complexes—he was absolutely upfront to Macau about that, at the very least. The drive, without the earlier afternoon traffic that he’d encountered on the way with Porsche, takes less than twenty minutes, at most.
The compound is silent and still upon Pete’s arrival. The late night-to-dawn shift guards have already started their watch. He gives them a quick nod in greeting as he all but speed-walks through the main entrance and down the hall. Relief sparks briefly in him upon the realization that Macau trusted him with this enough to listen to him and clear out back to his friend’s house for the rest of the night.
The door of their bedroom is closed.
Locked, Pete corrects himself once he’s tried the doorknob.
Whatever sounds Macau heard coming from inside an hour ago are no longer coming through—not as far as Pete is able to discern with an ear pressed against the crack, and he forces himself not to vomit at the cold dread of what that could mean. He drags his breathing evenly through his teeth and out because hyperventilating will also slow him down in however quickly he needs to act for whatever might have happened.
With hands that he’s steadied through sheer force of will, Pete picks the lock with no effort at all and opens the door to a dimly lit room.
Only the lamp on Vegas’s nightstand is on, but, at first sight, from the vantage point that the doorway offers, Vegas is not here—no one seems to be.
Pete pads in carefully, his waistband and hands feeling oddly naked without a gun. He’s certain he won’t even be needing one tonight, but he doesn’t know why it feels as if he would be reassured if he did have just one on him—he’d had it going to the hotel, and had left it in his bag, in the entryway, in his rush to make it to their bedroom.
Once Pete rounds the bed, he finds Vegas.
He’s aware, distantly in the back of his mind, that this isn’t his finest moment, but where Vegas is concerned, Pete is sure no moment is. He also thinks, at the bare minimum, this is preferable to the time when Pete pummeled Vegas’s face into the cement of the major family’s parking garage.
All Pete knows is that he sees Vegas, seated on the floor of their bedroom, against the wall, knees level with his chest, hands stained with his own blood as he grips a pair of handcuffs in one and a knife in the other—both items looking so familiar that Pete sees red, redder than Vegas’s blood, and in the next instance, he’s tearing them out of Vegas’s hold and throwing them across the room.
In the moment after that, head spinning, Pete collapses onto his knees in front of Vegas.
“What the fuck are you doing, Vegas?” Pete demands hoarsely, somewhere between a whisper and a scream. It’s a question that was once Pete’s catchphrase with how often it felt like he said it, a question he thought he was done with and glad for it.
Vegas’s bowed head rises. When his eyes meet Pete’s, Vegas’s gaze is hazy, far-off, as if he isn’t seeing Pete, or this room, at all. If Pete were to hazard a guess, he would say that Vegas is in a villa, on some private island somewhere, surrounded by river water with no way back to the outside world other than across a thin bridge or a small boat.
Vegas is still wearing the clothes he wore when Pete left in the afternoon. With further certainty that sits inside of Pete like cement, he knows in that moment that Vegas has most likely not eaten or even drank water since then.
“Vegas,” Pete echoes, this time, more desperately. His hands cup Vegas’s face, a visceral attempt to bring Vegas back to the present, to this house, this room, to Pete.
“Making sure I don’t forget,” Vegas says, his bloodied hands remaining limp in his lap. They twitch, for a split second, upwards towards Pete, before something in Vegas’s expression hardens, as if he can’t bear to touch Pete back.
As always, whether for better or for worse, there is no such thing as unspoken words left unheard between the two of them. Pete hears everything that Vegas doesn’t say—Pete always has, always does, always will.
Making sure I don’t forget what I did to you—and what I almost made you do to yourself.
“Vegas,” Pete holds the other man’s face more tightly, a light squeeze that still doesn’t seem to bring the light in Vegas’s eyes back. “Vegas,” he pleads, and at the beseeching rise of his pitch, Vegas’s entire body jerks, violently, his hands spasming as if wanting to touch Pete with his entire being and still forbidding himself to. “Vegas,” Pete continues quietly, “did you not want me to go today? I mean—you didn’t want me to stay overnight?”
Pete has seen the expression Vegas is wearing before. He’s looking at Pete as if Pete is wearing the handcuffs and holding the knife that he’d launched across the room just minutes ago. “I have to let you go, Pete,” Vegas whispers, as if that counts as an answer to Pete’s question. Each English word wrenches it’s way out of his mouth like he’s spitting blood and nails.
“Did you want me to go, Vegas?” Pete repeats, less quiet this time. Steadier, and with more insistence now that he realizes what exactly has been destroying Vegas from the inside out for the better part of two weeks.
Vegas’s eyes are now beginning to look at Pete with more clarity, the fog lifting from them slowly. His hands rise enough for his fingertips to graze Pete’s elbows, dotting them with some of the blood from his cut palms. “No,” Vegas answers, confusion thick enough in both expression and voice that it nearly comes out sounding like a question rather than a response.
“Then, tell me,” Pete says adamantly. “Telling me you don’t want me to go isn’t the same as not letting me go, Vegas.”
Vegas’s smile is humorless and bleak. “What difference does it make? You’ll still go.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Pete counters right back. His chest feels like it’s on fire, flames flaring up between each one of his ribs. He doesn’t know if he’s furious or frustrated or terrified that Vegas would’ve gone to an even darker extreme in his despair and misunderstanding. “I’m not going back, by the way, after this. Do you want the truth, Vegas? I didn’t want to sleep there away from you either—not yet. Maybe I’ll want to again, someday, but not now. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? That’s what you feel, too, but you just didn’t tell me.”
The expression Vegas wears now is another one that Pete is familiar with—the same one he wore when Pete shoved him away in preparation to punch him with the metal cuffs at his knuckles. It would be funny, how utterly gobsmacked Vegas looks—Vegas Theerapanyakul—if Pete wasn’t strung high on the stress of seeing Vegas’s palms still oozing blood.
Or, the fact that Vegas kept the handcuffs and knife from the safehouse for, apparently, times like this when he had to re-traumatize himself into swallowing down all of what he believes are the emotions too frightening and ugly for Pete to see.
At last, with a shaking slowness that punctures a hole straight through Pete’s heart and drags that sword edge down the middle, Vegas’s bleeding hands wrap around Pete’s wrists, holding on as if even a breath could blow him away. He leans forward until his forehead meets Pete’s. “If you left me a second time,” Vegas says, so, so quietly, “I wouldn’t make it, Pete.”
Pete carefully takes Vegas’s hands from Pete’s wrists and holds them straight on, threading their fingers together, palms touching so that Vegas’s blood will cover Pete’s hands as well. Vegas doesn’t even wince at the pressure put on his wounds. He only holds Pete’s hands back even more tightly. “You said you’ll always remember what you did,” Pete says, looking closely into Vegas’s eyes. “I came back to you after all of it. Why would I leave you for telling me you don’t want me to stay somewhere else overnight?”
Pete presses on, because maybe he’s been assuming all this time that Vegas would naturally just know and realize how he’s been to Pete since the hospital. “If I came back, even after everything that happened before, why would I leave now with how you treat me since I came back?”
Confusion once again mists over Vegas’s gaze, and Pete simultaneously laughs and curses in his mind. He supposes, possibly, Kan is the one to thank for how acutely Vegas assesses every terrible thing he has done, past and present, but cannot understand any of his own actions when they are anything else.
“You’re good to me,” Pete says, as simply and plainly as he can. “You know that, right?”
From the way Vegas’s features crumple in on themselves, mouth tense and trembling, eyes wet, so similar to the way Vegas had looked at Pete in the alley behind Yok’s bar once upon a time, Pete receives the answer to that question loud and clear.
“I know I’m trying not to be your burden,” Vegas says, eyes glistening wetter and wetter. His nose is scrunched up the way Pete knows it to whenever Vegas is holding back tears. “I know I don’t want to be your curse, or your regret.”
Pete closes the distance between them. He slides forward, splitting his legs open so that they’ll rest on either side of Vegas’s waist, lightly over Vegas’s thighs. He leans in until their faces are separated by mere breaths. “You’re the best part of my life,” he says without hesitation. No words have ever felt more at home in his mouth. “I followed my heart—I’m not going to leave it so easily.”
It feels like years pass before Vegas finishes off the last stretch of distance left remaining between their lips. There is still wariness in the way he kisses Pete. As if he’s scared to even press forward, to switch their positions until Pete is the one pinned back against the wall. Pete knows what it means whenever Vegas kisses him like this—what it means when Vegas withholds himself in touching Pete.
Pete has changed, too, after all—not just in knowing how to handle Vegas, what Vegas needs, but what Pete himself needs.
Just as Vegas is pulling away, about to end a kiss that, in Pete’s opinion, has yet to even truly begun, Pete throws himself forward. He loops his arms around Vegas’s neck and kisses him open-mouthed and wanting.
Vegas responds almost as if by reflex. He surges forward the way a storming river does once its dam has been lifted, soaking the dry earth that has desiccated in its absence. His hands no longer just cradle Pete’s face gently, they dig their fingertips into Pete’s cheeks, until Pete can feel the ridges of Vegas’s cut palms flatten against his own skin—pressed into bleeding just that much more, smearing against the sides of Pete’s face, his jawline, just beneath his ears.
Pete doesn’t know how much time passes but it’s enough time that he’s become thoroughly breathless when he finally needs to take his tongue out of Vegas’s mouth to surface for air.
The devotion in Vegas’s eyes is nothing short of intoxicating. Pete thinks he could live his entire life without another cigarette, without another drop of liquor, as long as Vegas’s eyes followed him just like that until the day they both died.
“C’mon,” Pete says, his own hand cupping beneath Vegas’s chin and squeezing lightly. “Let me fix your hands—then I’ll go grab food. I saw the stall down the road is still open on my way back.” He brushes some of Vegas’s hair back, fingers combing backwards as Vegas closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Pete’s collarbone. “And,” Pete murmurs, “we can throw those away—for good.”
Vegas’s eyes open, his head turning so that his cheek instead is lying on Pete’s shoulder. When Pete glances down, there’s something like hesitation warring over Vegas’s features. Pete angles his own face until his mouth and nose are buried against the crown of Vegas’s hair, inhaling the other man’s scent. Pete ponders.
“If you want to keep them,” Pete says musingly. “You let me keep them—and I’ll think of a better way we can use them together.”
There’s a long silence during which all Vegas does is look up in shock from his head’s comfortable perch on Pete’s shoulder. Only after Pete smiles down at him does Vegas seem to come back to life, thawing into motion like a forest after winter has finally left.
This time when Vegas kisses Pete, eyes dark, teeth sharp—he does pin him to the wall.
After Macau’s exams, they go to Chumphon.
Pete’s grandmother pinches Macau’s cheeks between her hands as if he’s the youngest grandson she’s always had, bypassing Pete completely to tell the boy that he isn’t being fed enough—as if this isn’t the first time she’s seeing him in person. Macau takes to her like a long lost duckling to a mother duck, clearly in his element to be spoiled by both her and Pete’s grandfather.
Pete can’t find it in himself to be indignant, fully knowing that this is going to make Macau even more of a menace from now on. Pete doesn’t care at all. He wraps one arm around his grandmother’s shoulders and lets his own cheeks get kissed and squeezed as well.
Through all of this, Vegas stands at the entryway of Pete’s grandparents’ house, his hands still white-knuckling the handles of their luggage, looking so uncharacteristically petrified and frozen that even Pete’s mild-mannered grandfather seems to be hesitating in trying to take the luggage away from him.
Vegas has already spoken with Pete’s grandmother before, over the phone, at length. It began with asking for recipes, for secret ingredients and Pete’s preferences, and evolved into Pete’s grandmother continuously asking for Pete to put Vegas on the line without Pete or Vegas even instigating it at all first. If Pete didn’t know Vegas as well as he does now, he would be befuddled at why Vegas seems so withdrawn all of a sudden, just because he is now meeting the person behind the voice.
As things are, Pete does know Vegas—he can map Vegas’s soul and mind out as if they are his very own.
“I told yaai only to make the side dishes for tonight,” Pete says at large, even though Macau is already wandering around the living room and engaging Pete’s grandfather in whatever sitcom is playing out on the television. “You can cook the rest, right?” he addresses Vegas, meeting his eyes across the entryway as Pete’s grandmother begins to usher Vegas further inside. Her wrinkled hands veritably pushing him up into the actual hallway.
In the blink of an eye, in Pete’s single breath, Vegas becomes the friend that Pete’s grandmother first spoke to over a year ago. Yet, whereas there was smooth duplicity in his voice previously, earnest sincerity has replaced it. The skilled tenor with which Vegas conducts himself when addressing the elderly, however, his respectful language and mannerisms, all remain. Pete’s grandmother attaches herself to Vegas’s elbow and frog-marches him eagerly and insistently into her kitchen to use just as is own.
Pete watches Vegas graciously turn down the apron offered by Pete’s grandmother, even as she gestures doubtfully at his clothes. Vegas waves her concern away and immediately begins asking for the location of all the necessary ingredients and utensils. In the background, Pete hears Macau attempting to convince Pete’s grandfather to indeed let him have a sip of whatever he’s drinking—likely the liquor brewed specially in the bar down by the port that Pete knows could knock even Kinn out with a single shot. Maybe he’ll bring some back for Porsche to try.
He loses himself in the surreal sight of Vegas cooking in the kitchen Pete grew up eating in, helping out in, playing in—occasionally, getting a slipper thrown at him in. Pete’s grandmother putters around Vegas, checking on the state of the rest of the dishes she’s clearly already had prepared possibly since before they even docked at the port.
Vegas is quiet, like he always is while he cooks or goes about any task that requires his sincere focus. He is far from as reticent as he was moments ago, however, his expression open and at ease. He smiles at Pete’s grandmother from time to time, making light quips and bantering with her as easily as Pete himself does.
Pete’s grandparents’ house only has air-conditioning in the bedrooms. The remainder of the rooms are surrounded by decent-quality fans, but still only fans, nonetheless. Pete is used to it, but Macau shed himself down to just a t-shirt and shorts upon arriving, and Vegas has rolled his sleeves up and lost three buttons in the process of acclimating himself in the kitchen.
Inexplicable to even himself, Pete revels in the realization that he finds Vegas even handsomer, like this—sweat dampening his hair dark against his temples, perspiration beading the skin exposed by his gaping shirt collar. His cheeks are flushed pink with the heat, seemingly uncaring about it in the moment, eyes honed in on the curry simmering in front of him, even as the hot steam wafts around his face.
Vegas must feel the heat of Pete’s gaze on him because he remarks, coolly, without taking his eyes from his work, “I know you’re hungry, but staring at me won’t finish it any faster, Pete.”
Pete’s retort is already poised on his tongue when his grandmother smacks him lightly on the arm. “He’s right,” she says briskly, clearly ushering him out of the kitchen. “Don’t bother him—go unpack, do something useful for once.”
The mild sputter of amused indignation dies quickly in Pete’s throat, cut short by the single shout of genuine laughter that rings out from Vegas. Pete can count on one hand the number of times Vegas has laughed to that extent in Pete’s presence—in anyone’s presence, from what Pete has gleamed from Macau’s expressions of equal shock. He wonders if his grandparents realize that they’ve just heard in the span of mere hours a sound that even Vegas’s own blood relatives haven’t in all of the years Vegas has been alive.
Pete’s grandmother accompanies him as he carries all of their luggage into the spare bedroom across Pete’s own childhood bedroom. There are two pillows and two sets of blankets lain out on the wide floor mattress. Pete places both Vegas and Macau’s bags into the guest bedroom for the time being. His grandparents are early sleepers and early risers, meaning that most likely Vegas really will have to sleep with his brother for the duration of their stay.
Pete knows that both Vegas and Macau are particular with how their belongings are packed and unpacked, so he leaves their suitcases in the corner of the room, and makes to take his own backpack to his room. He’s packed far lighter than they are, since he still keeps a set of at least a few weeks’ worth of clothes here for just that purpose.
Pete’s grandmother stands in the doorway, eyeing Pete’s backpack with the usual amount of distaste she has for how lumpy it always is since Pete has never learned how to pack correctly in her words. “You’ve been very happy,” his grandmother states offhandedly, grabbing the backpack straight off his shoulder, “ever since your friend took you on that vacation.”
She raises her eyes to meet Pete’s gaze. Her expression is surefire certain, not a doubt in sight, and the tone of her words brooks no argument. It is the farthest thing from a question about Pete’s well-being. It’s a proclamation that she has already deemed fact.
Pete can only smile, as she makes a show of investigating the lumps before shoving the bag back into his arms. “I am,” he agrees, because she’s right, after all.
Her eyes narrow at his face for another moment, leading up to a nod that is even brisker than her tone. She bends down and scoops up one of the pillows and one of the folded blankets. “I’ll bring these, then, you bring his bag,” she says, balancing everything in the crook of one arm so her other is free to gesture imperiously towards Vegas’s suitcase.
Pete stares.
His grandmother doesn’t seem to notice, or if she does, she doesn’t seem to care. She’s already in Pete’s room across the hall by the time Pete has forcibly turned himself onto autopilot and dumbly lugged Vegas’s suitcase with him and his own backpack into Pete’s room.
“What?” Pete says, his response finally deciding to finish processing after its cognitive delay. His grandmother has already fluffed the pillow down beside Pete’s.
“What?” Pete’s grandmother echoes, having absolutely no right to sound as confused as she does. “You don’t want him to sleep here? You two had a fight?”
In the midst of Pete struggling to fish out the rest of his reaction, his mind still utterly stoppered on various renditions and rewordings of what, Pete’s grandmother sniffs the air with a satisfied look on her face. “Dinner’s ready,” she says conclusively, brushing past Pete towards the door. She smacks him under the chin on the way out. “You’re too old to be catching flies like that.”
Pete doesn’t know how long he stands in the middle of his room, catching flies, by the time Vegas finally peers through the doorway, lightly rapping his knuckles against the frame. “Let’s eat,” he says. Pete turns to face him, hoping that his expression has been sufficiently smoothed out by now. Vegas’s eyes flicker to Pete and then to the bed behind him, brows furrowing quizzically. “How’re you going to explain to your grandparents why I’m sleeping here?” Vegas asks, tipping his head at the two pairs of pillows and blankets.
Pete rubs a hand over his face, laughing soundlessly in spite of himself into his fingers. He crosses the room and smooths a few sweaty strands of hair back from Vegas’s forehead. “I’ll tell you after dinner,” he says firmly, steering a further bemused Vegas towards the dining table.