Chapter Text
Joe had never been the lead in his own life story, and in all honesty, that was how he preferred it. He had everything he needed, he was the textbook definition of just fine. Average.
(An average Joe, if you will).
His world was small and manageable, predictable and routine, just like he liked it.
He lived alone in a small studio apartment that always smelled like basil, fresh paint and Icy-Hot. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was clean, affordable, and well-maintained. He made his living by being invisible, as a stuntman, he was a professional ghost. He was the person that dive bombed through glass, set himself on fire, and tumbled down concrete stairs so someone else could take the bow. And he loved it. There was a quiet, physical pride in knowing what his body could endure, in taking a hit and getting back up again.
His life was made up of small joys: teaching stunt classes to wide-eyed juniors that thought he was superman, cheap beers after long days on set, friends and coworkers who were there for him. He didn’t have a legacy to live up to or an empire to inherit, when he closed his apartment door at night, the world stayed outside.
He didn’t think about happy endings or destiny or forever, because he was already content with right now, and he assumed that it would always be that way.
Until Ming.
*
It was just another day on another movie set.
This one was Dark Investigation, a spy thriller full of shadowy conspiracies, explosions and fights.
He’d just finished one of the big climactic scenes, a leap from a 30 foot ledge onto a crash pad below. The jump hadn’t exactly gone wrong, but it hadn’t really gone right, either. His shoulder was dislocated, and a couple of assistants hovered around him in a panic, calling the on-site medic as they dabbed his forehead and pressed ice packs to the wound, herding him towards a shady place where he could sit down.
The set continued to buzz with the usual chaos, shouted instructions, footsteps, the rolling of cameras and flashing of light, until suddenly, it didn’t. Conversations stalled, people stopped in their tracks, even the assistants with ice packs seemed to suddenly freeze.
Ming Kiragun had arrived on set.
He was the epitome of old money luxury, with effortless composure and unhurried confidence that only comes from generations of wealth smothering any real type of ambition. He was dressed simply in black slacks and a black button down that was open down down to his sternum. His outfit was nothing flashy or particularly impressive, but Joe could tell from the way it fit his body and the quality of the fabric that it probably cost more than a year’s rent for him.
Ming was the financier of the film and the owner of the studio, a man that was whispered about like some sort of enigma, stories stacking on stories until he was practically part of modern-day folklore.
His gaze swept over the high-tech cameras, the nervous director, the controlled disorder of the set, and then it stopped, completely fixed on Joe.
The director quickly apologized for nothing and offered a tour, but Ming just ignored him, walking towards Joe, his spotless shoes crunching against the dirt and gravel until he was right in front of him.
“Does it hurt?” His voice was low and smooth and rather quiet, but he wasn't a man who needed to raise his voice to be heard. Joe wiped a mix of sweat and dust from his forehead and let out a breathless, uneven laugh. “It’s my job to hurt, Mr. Kiragun.”
Ming’s gaze didn’t waver. “What’s your name?”
He blinked, caught a bit off guard. “Joe. I’m the stand-in.”
“Joe,” He paused for a moment, then followed up with, “I'll call my personal doctor.”
“Oh, ah, that's really not necessary.” Joe said, popping up to a stand, “I'm sure the medic will be here soon.” He frowned as he moved his injured shoulder. Ming was already on the phone, though, and by the end of the short phone call, the doctor was already on his way.
“That really isn’t necessary,” Joe said a little awkwardly, but Ming just looked him up and down with a neutral expression.
"Come with me to dinner.”
“Pardon me?”
“I’m taking you on a date.”
*
This was never supposed to be about love.
To the Kiragun Group, Joe wasn’t a person; he was a marketing strategy.
The “Cold Prince” persona was no longer an asset. Ming’s emotional distance read as arrogance now, his polished composure as inhumanity, internet forums going so far as to define his emotional detachment as sociopathy and speculating that he moonlighted as a serial killer. The rumors seemed to grow daily. The press alternated between calling him elitist and replaying footage of his spectacular crashout after his breakup with Tong some years ago, and the board was determined to erase both narratives entirely.
They needed a rebrand. Proof that the heir to the Kiragun empire possessed a beating heart beneath his tailored outfits and passive stares. Something the public could relate to. They needed a romance, with smiling photos, “secret” kisses, holding hands in public, a syrupy, over the top love story people could believe in. They needed Ming Kiragun looking soft, approachable, and in love. Human. Something to sand down the sharp edges and humanize him.
And then Ming found Joe.
The narrative practically wrote itself.
The billionaire and the stuntman. The man who owned the world and the man who took hits for a living. It was a modern Cinderella story, polished to a shine for maximum public engagement: The classic, cliché, cold-as-ice billionaire having his heart melted by a sweet, poor lover. The public devoured it; social media, internet forums, and fanfiction wrote tales of their love. Every carefully staged “candid” photo of Ming shielding Joe from rain or lacing their fingers together sent the Kiragun Group’s stock climbing. Joe became the perfect visual counterpoint to Ming’s high-society image- sweet, kind, rough around the edges. The perfect happily ever after. (For the Kiragun group, whose income had tripled).
But rebranding was not what Ming had been thinking on that dusty set the day they met.
When he’d stood over Joe and asked, Does it hurt?, he’d expected awe, a nervous laugh, a stammer, maybe even a flirtatious grin, like what he always received from everyone else in the universe. Everyone who saw him as the billionaire, never actually as a person.
Instead, Joe had looked up at him with clear, unguarded eyes and laughed because he truly didn’t mind the pain. Because getting hurt was part of the job, and he was at peace with that. Joe was a man who knew, without question, that his worth had nothing to do with how he looked or how much money he had.
For the first time in his life, Ming Kiragun felt genuinely curious about another person.
The whirlwind romance began as a performance. Paparazzi appearances, extravagant gestures, and expensive gifts meant to photograph well. It was all planned, curated, approved.
And yet, without intention, without permission, it started to bleed into something real.
Behind closed doors, away from flashing cameras and watchful eyes, they talked. About nothing and everything. They shared cheap packaged noodles eaten cross-legged on the floor, long conversations that wandered without an agenda. Joe didn’t perform for Ming, he didn’t polish himself down or try to fit the shape of a perfect boyfriend. He opened himself fully, unapologetically, offering exactly who he was and nothing more. He didn’t care about Ming’s stock prices; he cared whether he had slept well the night before. He didn’t care about the Kiragun legacy; he cared whether Ming was wearing himself out at work. He didn’t understand the complicated business that his company did, but he listened anyway. Didn't understand the nuance of his high society politics, but he still nodded along, asking thoughtful questions.
Ming fell hard because Joe was the only person who didn’t see him as a prince, only as a man.
And the deeper Ming fell, the more dangerous it became.
Desperation crept in quietly, disguised as generosity. He tried to drown his fear in excess: lavish gifts, truck beds overflowing with flowers, jewelry that shined like stars in the camera. Trips across the world on private jets, candlelit dinners staged like scenes from a romance series. He knew Joe didn’t need any of it. Joe had never wanted Ming’s gilded world. He had been perfectly content with cheap beer and food stall dinners and a world that fit neatly inside his hands.
Ming couldn’t let him see past the veneer. To let him see how selfish, how wicked he actually is. He was a shit person behind the money and fame, he didn’t really have something to offer a man like Joe, not really.
“Let me be the only thing you see,” Ming would whisper, and he meant it.
It was devotion. Love. Obsessiveness. Posessiveness.
But it was flawed.
Lurking in the back of Ming’s mind was a ghost he had never properly laid to rest. Tong, his ex, the unreachable ideal, the person Ming had loved more than anything, was still there.
Now Ming had Joe: real, warm, loyal in ways that didn’t demand performance. And yet, without meaning to, Ming kept trying to shape him to fit him into the empty space Tong had left behind.
He was falling in love with the man in front of him, and measuring that love against an old wound that had never healed. He was building a future with Joe while still following blueprints drawn for someone else.
And he didn’t realize yet that this was how everything would break.
*
Six months later, they married. The wedding wasn’t just a ceremony, to Ming, it was an extraction. He was pulling Joe out of his small, ordinary life and anchoring him permanently into the Kiragun world, keeping him, possessing him, with vows and silk and a spectacle watched by millions. To Joe, it was a dream that kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
The estate in Chiang Mai barely looked real. White roses were on every surface, on tables, along railings, woven into arches, the scent thick in the hot breeze. Pearl-threaded ribbons caught the light when the breeze moved through them, and layers of pale silk draped the grounds. Everything shimmered, glowed and sparkled.
They said it was a private ceremony, but when Joe glanced past the gates, he could see the crowd pressed together beyond them, people standing shoulder to shoulder, phones lifted high, shouting whenever a flicker of white fabric appeared or someone whispered that Ming had just passed by a window. News helicopters hovered, small drones buzzing around that security was constantly chasing away.
It was strange, being this visible.
Joe had spent his whole life learning how to disappear. Now there was nowhere to hide. Even here, even in this carefully protected place, the world leaned in close, watching, waiting. And yet, standing there, surrounded by all of it, he felt warm inside. A quiet disbelief haunted him, that this was his life now. That he, of all people, was the one Ming had chosen to stand beside.
He told himself the noise didn’t matter. That the cameras didn’t matter. That the scale of it all was just decoration.
All that mattered was the man waiting for him at the altar. When Ming reached for him, It wasn’t a gentle touch. His grip closed around Joe’s hand with fierce intent, fingers locking together as if afraid Joe might disappear if he loosened his hold. The possessiveness of it sent a sharp, dizzy thrill through Joe’s chest.
“You’re mine now,” Ming whispered as he slid the platinum band onto Joe’s finger.
His eyes weren’t just loving. They were victorious.
“Finally.”
Joe leaned into that intensity, mistaking it for passion, for relief, for the culmination of everything they’d built together. He thought the finally was about their journey, the obstacles, the public scrutiny, the way they’d fought to be here.
He didn’t realize Ming was talking about finally filling a hollow place that had been empty for years.
When they kissed, the crowd roared and cameras flashed until the world dissolved into white noise and light. For the first time in his life, Joe felt like the leading man.
*
The first year was a masterpiece of curated bliss.
At Ming’s request, which felt more like a plea, Joe gave up stunt work.
“It’s too dangerous,” Ming had said, his voice cracking in a way that made Joe’s resolve fold instantly. “I can’t sleep knowing you’re throwing yourself off buildings for a paycheck. Stay here, be mine. Let me take care of you.”
So Joe traded the dust and chaos of film sets for the hushed quiet of the Kiragun mansion. He traded beer with old friends for charity galas and polite conversations, bruised shoulders for silk sheets and rooms that echoed when he walked through them alone.
At night, though, Ming clung to him like a man afraid of drowning. They lay tangled together, Ming’s face buried in the curve of Joe’s neck, breathing him in as if memorizing his existence.
“You’re my anchor,” He would whisper. “The only real thing I’ve ever touched. The only thing that makes my life worth living.”
They became the nation’s darlings, the prince and the stuntman, the fairy tale everyone had watched transform into a prince and his prince. Joe was the beating heart of the Kiragun Group’s public image, and for a while, Ming truly believed he had moved on.
He loved Joe’s warmth, his loyalty, his smile. And for a while, that was truly enough. That was the happily ever after he had dreamed of.
Until the phone call.
The call came during their first-year anniversary dinner. They were dining on a private rooftop decorated with flowers, fairy lights, and vintage wine. A city skyline spread around them like a carpet of diamonds. They were talking and laughing, reliving the excitement of their first year together.
Ming was halfway through unbuttoning his shirt, planning on taking the date to the next level, when his phone rang. He usually ignored his phone when they were together, a promise to keep the office at the office.
But this time, when it rang, he froze, his hand halfway down his shirt. The color drained from his face, and the smile slowly fell from Joe’s lips as he looked at his husband, confused.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
The color rushed back in a frantic, almost desperate flush. His hand trembled as he answered. “Tong?”
The name dropped into the space between them like ice water.
Joe had heard it before, the childhood friend turned lover turned ex, the movie star, the trust fund baby, the perfect son of another prominent businessman who had gone abroad after their very public breakup four years prior. A person Ming never talked about except when the board of directors brought it up.
The man Ming had loved, and lost, was coming back.
*
When Tong returned to Bangkok, the perfect year ended as if someone had flipped a switch.
The “work meetings” began almost immediately.
At first, Joe tried not to overthink it. Ming was always busy, but he had never missed dinners, dates, or events that were important to him. Little by little, dinners were missed more often than they were kept, Joe sitting at an empty table with dishes he had made long since gone cold. There were text messages instead, brief apologies, vague promises to make it up to him.
Trips to private islands became business trips Joe wasn’t invited on. Ming spoke about them carefully, never offering details unless asked, and even then his answers were smooth and evasive. Tong’s name popped up casually, as if it meant nothing at all. He’ll be there too, Ming would say, like an afterthought.
The nights they shared began to change. Before, Ming held him tightly every night, whispering sweet nothings into his ear. Now the room felt larger in the dark, some nights Ming didn’t come to bed at all; other times he came home late, smelling of expensive liquor and cologne that wasn’t his. The unfamiliar scent lingered on the pillows after Ming left in the morning and made Joe a specific kind of sick.
He told himself not to read into it. He told himself love wasn’t measured in hours or dinners or shared beds. He adjusted. He waited.
Slowly, painfully, he stopped being the center of Ming’s world.
He became something fixed and reliable, always there, always polished, always presentable. Ming still touched him when the cameras were around, still smiled for photographs, still reached for his hand when it mattered publicly. But in private, Joe felt himself fading into the background, like a piece of furniture in a beautiful room, only taken out and admired when someone was watching.
And Joe went from being the leading man back to being invisible, afraid that if one day he stood too still, he might disappear entirely.
And the worst part was that no one would notice.