Kunpimook’s a little relieved when Yugyeom doesn’t contact him for the next few days after that. They both need time apart, time to struggle through figuring out whatever had been done to the comfortable relationship they’d both once known, time to determine if it’s a good or a bad thing. And Kunpimook, for one, is tipping dangerously towards deciding on the former.

He goes about work as usual, talking with Jackson occasionally over texts and calls, and laughing over inside jokes with the boys in his department, and for a moment it’s easy to believe the fantastical night at the hotel had been nothing but a dream.

That is, until Wednesday afternoon during lunch, when a soft hand curls around his elbow and pulls him away from his usual lunch crowd.

Kunpimook thinks he loses whatever appetite he has then.

“Bambam, d’you wanna have lunch together?” it’s Youngjae, all bright eyes and cool breath, smile as radiant as the sun as he tugs on his arm, speaking like they’ve been friends all their lives. Then, to his friends: “Do you mind if I borrow him, just for today?”

Kunpimook hopes to convey his desperation to please, come up with something, say no but apparently none of his colleagues are as perceptive as Yugyeom, because they amble off obligingly, amused and congenial.

.

“We have loads of things to talk about, don’t we?” Youngjae links his arm with Kunpimook’s, dainty and sweet, as he practically drags him from the complex, to one of the cafes that line the streets of the business district.

The eatery is crowded with the lunchtime crowd, but Youngjae manages to snag a little table near the back easily, guiding Kunpimook to his seat with a steel in his grip that somehow feels like cotton and iron at the same time.

“Order whatever you like,” Youngjae singsongs, as the waiter comes by with the menu and slides one in front of each of them. “It’s my treat today.”

“Uh, it’s okay, actually, I’ll pay-…”

“You have to try the salmon, it’s gorgeous,” Youngjae gushes, manoeuvring the menu with an effortless flick of his wrist to open it to the page in subject. “It’s so rare to find good seafood anywhere these days.”

If Park Jinyoung’s voice were to be described as crystal, alluring and beautiful, Choi Youngjae’s would be described as sunshine. Soft, brilliant rays, incandescent and sweet and blinding, like a breeze through a field of flowers on a hot day, filling you with the desire for the overwhelming, but not particularly unwelcome, saccharine secrets that the world holds.

Kunpimook doesn’t know who to be more afraid of, one whose heart and mind could slice you into neat, clean pieces, or one whose soul could burn you alive.

“About that night,” Kunpimook cuts in, not pandering to any of the games Youngjae seems so intent on playing. He inhales deeply. “What is it you want to speak to me about?”

The light behind Youngjae’s eyes seems to dim- not like it’s been extinguished, particularly, but like the sunshine in it had gone behind a cloud, the light meting itself out with a quality bordering on severe, and Kunpimook finds himself wondering if he should’ve just gone along with the whole act.

“Excuse me,” he calls out, in a sweet, clear voice that gets a waiter to their table at once. “Could we have two passionfruit carafes, please?”

He rests his chin on his hand once the waiter’s gone, head tilting in a natural dreamy sway that shows Kunpimook immediately how he’d managed to lure both Jaebum and Jackson into this desperate chase for him, one that would, in Jaebum’s case, last for a year, even. It’s the way he gives off this air of the need to be protected, secured, what would invoke the need for men like them to control him.

“Bambam, isn’t it?” he says, a thoughtful roll to the syllables of the nickname, almost like he’s tasting it. Kunpimook feels uncomfortable just hearing it like that. “Jackson’s friend from Stanford?”

“Yes,” Kunpimook shifts in his seat. “Look, I already promised Jaebum I wouldn’t say a word-…”

“I don’t think a promise to him can be counted, can it?” Youngjae says sweetly, leaning forward by barely an inch. “Not when he can’t keep an eye on you all the time. Not when you know something he doesn’t, right?”

The younger man thins his lips. “What are you saying, exactly?”

“I want you to promise me,” Youngjae’s voice tips over the edge of saccharine persuasion- something sharper, deadlier, cuts through Kunpimook’s façade of cool professionalism. “Neither of them will ever know more than what they’re supposed to, understood?”

Their carafes arrive, but Kunpimook barely notices. He honestly thinks he’d feel too sick to drink a sip.

“Why are you even doing this?” he says, wincing a little at the doe-eyed look of innocent confusion Youngjae flashes him. “Just one of them would be enough to-…to support you- why both?”

He thinks of Jinyoung for a moment, thinks of the worry that flashes through his eyes whenever Jaebum’s not around, and feels a stab of uneasy pity despite the manipulative nature of the other man. But he’s long trained himself to refrain from taking sides- besides, once you know everyone’s secrets, you’ll realise there isn’t quite one particular side you’ll be completely willing to take.

Youngjae thinks about Kunpimook’s question for a moment, a pale finger pressing against his plush lower lip in contemplation, before he smiles like a light bulb’s gone off in his head, lifting his right hand and pointing to the gorgeous diamond-encrusted ring on his forefinger that must’ve cost a bomb.

“You see, this is from Jaebum,” he says primly, before pointing to the slender silver watch on his wrist, glinting softly. “And this is from Jackson,” then to the Dolce and Gabbana fall edition leather wallet tossed carelessly on the table near his elbow, “Jaebum,” then he flips open the wallet, revealing a black and silver American Express credit card, “Jackson,” before finally gesturing to the rest of himself freely. “And everyone else,” he shrugs, beaming. “Why only have one when they can fight to adorn you with their money? You think they don’t have a clue about what’s going on? They know I don’t belong to them entirely, but I just might, and they’ll just keep giving me more until I do. But, of course, you already knew all this, didn’t you?”

It’s a little unfortunate that Kunpimook’s only caught one thing in that entire mini monologue.

“Wait, you have more?” He can’t help the hint of disbelief that betrays him in his voice this time. Youngjae smiles again- and Kunpimook notices, then, that while his smiles always reach his eyes, pretty and sincere, each and every one of them is eerily identical, like he’d spent ages in front of a mirror determining which one looked best on him, before finding this one and memorising the way it felt on his face.

“Kunpimook-ah,” he says finally, and the younger man jerks a little in shock at the use of his real name- no one besides Yugyeom has called him that in a while. “I understand you’re probably thinking I’m some kind of now, aren’t you?”

Kunpimook doesn’t respond to that. It doesn’t need a reply, in his opinion.

“Don’t,” Youngjae lets out a little laugh. “Hypocrisy looks bad on someone as smart as you.”

“Hypocrisy?” Kunpimook smiles listlessly, trying not to spit the words out. It pisses him off, a little, that Youngjae’s trying to manipulate him this way, as if he thinks the younger man’s stupid, or something. “I don’t quite see how we’re alike.”

“Oh, but we are,” Youngjae nods importantly, taking a sip from his carafe, and Kunpimook wonders how long it’d taken him to perfect lying with eyes as deceptively wide as his. “You and I both understand men like them,” he makes a magical little twirling motion with his fingers. “Our methods of ah, working with them, are just a little different, that’s all.”

“Having with them and being friends are two different things entirely,” Kunpimook has to struggle to keep the derogatory bite out of his tone.

“And I bet you think you’re so noble,” Youngjae snarls all of a sudden, without missing a beat, a cruel tilt to the edge of his pretty mouth, possibly the first real expression Kunpimook thinks he’s seen on his face. “You’re just like me, Kunpimook-ah. Whatever happened to that insecure, adoring little hero-worshipper you become every time Jackson’s around? Just like the adorable, innocent secretary that can’t believe someone as amazing as him would ever want someone like me, don’t you think?” it’s amazing, how smoothly the venom from his voice disappears, replaced by a honeyed, uncertain undertone. “You’d be every bit as detestable in society’s eyes as I’d be if they knew our secrets, Bambam, so don’t pretend to be above me. We know what we want and we know how to take it, and that’s who we are.”

Kunpimook is speechless, both from the audacity Youngjae has to speak to him like that, as well as the extent of the infection in his voice, the poison that just drips from it, like syrup, almost. In the flare of vicious triumph that spikes in Youngjae’s voice, too, Kunpimook thinks he sees the shutters behind the windows of his eyes open, revealing something horrifyingly decayed and grossly virulent in the place where people’s souls usually exist.

It opens something other than the silent distaste he’d had for the other man, something that feels a little like fear and an awful lot like pity, because there’s a part of him that what on earth could have happened in his life to drive the other man to such twisted extents, and another part that’s afraid as anything that Youngjae’s telling the truth, that if he stares himself straight in the mirror and systematically tears down every wall he’s built around his mind, he’ll see the same infected, mutilated creature he’d glimpsed in Youngjae looking right back at him.

“Men like them deserve to be taken from,” Youngjae says, the poisonous tint to his voice mellowing to an unmistakeable bitterness, as he runs a listless finger along the moist sides of his carafe. “Yugyeom, you and I, we’re the one and the same.”

For a moment, that makes Kunpimook wonder, almost, if Youngjae did have a heart of gold, once, a smile as bright as his is now, except it’d been as warm as it was beautiful, until something had happened, someone’d come along and made the angel go to bed obediently, only to wake up a monster.

Something hits him then, too, as that sinks in- rings a hollow, dead little bell in his head that echoes in a numbing sort of way.

“And it would do for people like us to stick together,” he echoes flatly after a moment, and Youngjae looks up.

“Yugyeom said that, didn’t he?” he stirs his drink with his straw indifferently, before taking a sip. There’s a pause as he considers his next words, an ellipse they’re all used to now, being in the business for so long. “What an idiot.”

“Don’t call him that,” Kunpimook says sharply, before he can rein himself in, and he sees Youngjae catch the reckless display of emotion easily.

Instead of turning it against him, though, like Kunpimook had been bracing for him to do, the older man thins his lips. “You’re one too, and so am I. We’re all sick, greedy, idiots.”

This is a little unexpected, so Kunpimook just sits and stares across the table in a silent, albeit grudgingly curious, rebellion, until Youngjae speaks again, this time like he couldn’t care less.

“He told me to leave.”

Kunpimook presses his lips together, uncertain of what to make of this revelation.

“Why didn’t you?” He supposes the question’s useless, now, but he can’t help it.

“Why?” Youngjae lets out a laugh that sounds more like a deadened exhale. “Why don’t you leave and stop letting Jackson degrade you in front of everyone? Why doesn’t he leave so Jaebum can’t push him around any longer?” he sips from his drink, eyes holding something that looks a lot like anger, except darker and colder. “We’re stuck, Kunpimook-ah, stuck in this grave we’re digging for ourselves, and stuck here we’ll die.”

*

It’s nearing midnight when Kunpimook emerges from the shower, collapsing straight onto his bed, indifferent to the way his hair leaves wet patches on the sheets as he grabs his phone from the dresser.

met youngjae 2day.

He buries his face in his pillow, rubbing his eyes to keep the sleep out of them as he waits for a reply, wondering if he’ll get one at all, for that matter. He doesn’t have to wait for long, though, because his phone vibrates almost immediately.

What did he say?

It’s just like Yugyeom to say that, to be honest. No explanations needed, no hovering uncertainty, like he knows the effects that meeting Youngjae might have on Kunpimook, and he doesn’t think he can ever be more grateful. Especially considering that this is the first time they’ve spoken after that night at the hotel.

i can’t tell jaebum or Jackson anything, etc.

Anything else?

dunno. maybe.

He waits expectantly, and as predicted, his phone vibrates with a call moments later.

“How was it?” Yugyeom’s voice is soft, comforting, at this hour, and Kunpimook drinks the sound of it down like a man lost in the desert. He wonders when he’d become so dependent on the younger man, when he’d needed to hear to sound of his voice to ground himself, delude himself into thinking everything would be okay.

“I get it,” Kunpimook says into the receiver, half his face in the pillow. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I understand him. I understand you, me, everyone.”

Then, “I hate it.”

Yugyeom lets out a sigh that rustles over the phone like a blanket, one that seems to envelop Kunpimook like one of his embraces, despite the distance. He understands the younger man doesn’t convey his concern through words or promises- he does it through actions, through sacrifices, and this makes itself clear when he speaks next.

“Do you need me to come over?”

It’s a simple phrase, but it means the world to Kunpimook, and he pulls a watery smile though he knows Yugyeom can’t see it.

“That’d-…that’d be nice.”

The knock comes on his door fifteen minutes later, and Kunpimook opens it, a little relieved, mostly embarrassed, but the way Yugyeom wraps his arms around him in a literally breathtaking hug, warm hands coming to smooth down the nape of his neck and between his shoulder blades, makes every regret fade instantly.

*

He dreams of home for the first time in the five years since he’d left to study overseas that night, arms and legs tangled with Yugyeom’s on his bed. He’s walking down a street, in a ratty old t-shirt and a pair of jeans, the heat and the smells and the sounds all back in full force but muffled. He realises some time later it sounds like a loop, repeating the experience of walking until he’s lost in wretched, disgusting familiarity.

Kunpimook doesn’t know when, but he ends up at his own school, a pretty, pristine little building beside a gorgeous park and a huge shopping mall, only attended by the offspring of the influential and filthily affluent. He manages to dream up the playground, too, with its expensive mini tarmac for the kids to drive the motorised little cars around during recess, and the imported trees planted around too, specially brought in for teachers to teach students about nature and science.

He’s suddenly cramped into the tiny desk in the classroom in a blur of movement that passes in the blink of an eye, legs drawn up to his chest, watching the teacher ask everyone what they want to be when they grow up.

“I want to be a lawyer!” a boy near the front suddenly shouts out, voice startlingly clear despite the general haze that surrounds everything else, his hand confidently in the air. “My big brother’s going to be one too!”

“I want to be a doctor, just like my daddy,” a girl in the centre of the classroom preens. “And earn lots of money just like him.”

“My mommy’s an actress,” a boy at the corner of the classroom challenges.

“My dad’s a diplomat.”

“My daddy runs the biggest business in the country!”

“What about you, Kunpimook?” the teacher asks kindly, and 22-year-old Kunpimook feels oddly compelled to answer. He can’t, though, because the boy on his left cuts in.

“His daddy drives mine to work every day!” he volunteers the information.

“His mommy makes sure my mommy looks good for every com-mer-shal,” the son of the actress says proudly. “He’s only here because my mommy helped him get in.”

“His daddy thanked me when I tipped him yesterday!”

“His mommy cuts my hair every week! She always cuts it weird, she’ll never get it right!”

And everyone in the classroom laughs, the teacher especially, before she carefully guides the topic back to careers and how important considering your future one is.

And Kunpimook lets his eyes sweep across the classroom of stupidly rich children, like the moment he’d been seven, sitting in this same classroom back in Thailand, and had found a certain solace in disassembling each and every one of their spoilt, sorry minds, an escape from the constant choking anger that he’d been forced to swallow for ten years, until the day he learned that he could take them apart in a way that just might benefit himself along the way.

Unfortunately, like every other time he’s dreamt of this, he wakes up before he can get to that, and the bitter, bottled taste of silent fury that’d been tattooed into him since his childhood stays burning at the back of his mouth, tightening his throat till it feels like he’s choking, unable to breathe. He’s writhing, almost, squeezing embarrassingly hot tears out the corner of his eyes, fists clenched and muscles tensed in an uncontrollable, helpless anger.

That is, apparently, until the arms wrapped loosely around his waist start into motion, the owner of them having been awoken by his movements, and a hand reaches to drowsily rub smooth rhythms along his back, repetitive and soothing.

And for the first time in Kunpimook Bhuwakul’s life that night, something manages to lull the ache of injustice that blocks out his airways and his veins slowly to nothing but a dull, numb throb. Something that feels a lot like reassurance and security (but which might not be, because he hasn’t felt that since he was three and has long forgotten the cool relief it had once brought to his soul) ebbs in, painless and faint, like the embrace of an infant, and it resounds in a soft lullaby that fills his heart from the inside out. For once the wound feels like a scar, rather than an infection, his breathing calming itself down, and it’s finally enough for him to drift gradually back into a now dreamless sleep, his nightmares put to rest.

(Temporarily, of course, but if he’s to be honest (and he rarely is), that’s infinitely more than he could ever ask for.)

*

“It’s wonderful that you’ve finally come to visit,” Jinyoung smiles radiantly as he leads Kunpimook through the hallway of the three-storey bungalow from the front door. “Jackson and Mark-hyung should be over soon, and Jaebum-hyung’s coming back from work any moment now, too. Can we have the drinks over now?” he says, aside, and the staff standing not too far away drifts away to the bar, so Jinyoung turns back to Kunpimook with an apologetic expression, “I’m sorry if I sounded a little too excited over the phone, the dinner won’t be for another hour, at least. Unless you’re already hungry?”

Kunpimook shakes his head politely, feeling a little oppressed, if he’s to be honest. Jackson had forwarded him a message from Jinyoung, casually inviting him for some high-end dinner over at their place (their entertainment venue, Yugyeom would correct him, because Jaebum and Jinyoung had many properties and actually properly lived in a stylish studio apartment nearer the business district) and Jinyoung had called a few minutes later, earnestly asking him to come. It’s a little odd, being the only one under Jinyoung’s rapid-fire line of attention (for these few minutes until Jaebum apparently comes, at least), but he guesses he’ll have to get used to it.

“Of course, Yugyeom will be here too,” Jinyoung takes a sleek remote from the coffee table and presses a button, and the television comes to life as the maid glides silently over with the tray of wineglasses. The thought of Yugyeom being here calms Kunpimook inexplicably, as he takes a sip from the flute that’d been offered to him, the sound of some local drama on television playing over the silence.

It’s been a few days since the night Yugyeom had come over, and to Kunpimook’s relief, the other man hasn’t brought it up once. They’d gone back to the mellow, safe relationship they’d worked so hard to establish, except Kunpimook knows something’s different, something innate and set so deep within the two of them he can’t even begin to decipher it.

(But then again, it’s not that he’d dare to try even if he could.)

Just then, on the coffee table, Jinyoung’s phone, the latest model in the Samsung series, or something, buzzes, a call flashing on the screen, and he reaches for it eagerly. “Oh, that’ll be Jaebum-hyung!”

Kunpimook purposefully looks away to give him privacy, taking another drink from his glass, as Jinyoung almost skips back into the hallway, a spring in his step. Every meeting just makes it more obvious- the way Jinyoung seems to have this obsessive need to have Jaebum in his sights all the time, like he’s afraid the older man might slip away if he doesn’t drag him back first. Of course, those worries aren’t unfounded, and Kunpimook feels guiltier than ever that he’s got a part to play in that.

Jinyoung, however, comes back a few minutes later, looking a little deflated, regarding his phone with an uneasy frown. Kunpimook pretends not to notice the dire state of his emotions as the other man takes a seat on the neighbouring sofa, still absorbed in his phone.

“Where is he,” he hears the older man mutter under his breath, barely audible over the sound of the television, and there it is, Kunpimook’s feeling another twist of guilt and a little pity.

“Bambam-ah,” Jinyoung begins hesitantly, after a while, and Kunpimook turns obligingly to him, immediately apprehensive at the look in his eyes. “I-…I feel a little embarrassed asking you about this, but you have to understand I’ve no other way,” he looks so genuinely pained for a moment, lips bitten red with worry and eyes darting in shame, that Kunpimook almost feels obliged to at least confirm his worries. “Have you-….have you noticed anything, uhm, strange, about Jaebum-hyung, lately?”

The sincerity in his tone makes Kunpimook stumble a little, scrabble to pull back on the strings of this elaborate mask he’s wearing, but he manages, eventually, only the thought of what Jaebum might do to him (and Yugyeom) if he spilled the slightest amount of information keeping him silent.

“No,” Kunpimook says honestly, a little puzzled, taking a sip from his glass to cover up, and guilt weighs heavy in his gut at the broken look in Jinyoung’s eyes. “What do you mean by strange?”

“Oh, never mind, then, it’s alright,” Jinyoung says hastily, gaze returning to the carpet, as he gets up, returning worriedly to his phone. “Drink up,” he waves a careless hand, mind obviously occupied by other things.

Kunpimook sinks back into the sofa, feeling worse than ever, for some reason, apprehension twisting in his gut in a way that’s so bad the numbing pain is almost physical. He tries to focus on the drama, but can’t- the people seem to go out of focus as he listens to the sound of Jinyoung pacing, trying to contact Jaebum again.

It’s weird, he can almost hear the sound of the dial tone as Jaebum ignores Jinyoung’s calls, but he can’t make out what the main lead of the drama is saying. Snap out of it. He presses a finger to his temple, alarmed when he finds the digits are trembling, weak, against his skin. He tries to get up, or straighten, even, but it’s like his body’s going into a heavy sleep.

But then the wineglass in his hand slips, like the other shoe’s finally dropped, spilling the last dregs of alcohol on the sofa and hitting the deep rug with a soft thunk.

Oh.

“I’m at a loss,” Jinyoung’s saying, but the voice sounds distant and cold, and Kunpimook has to struggle to comprehend even that sentence. It’s like everything’s slowed down, and he’s fallen into a dream, almost, unable to remember or decide on anything. He feels defenceless in a way that both unconsciously grates on him and lulls him into a blithe, clueless stupor at the same time, like all logic and reasoning’s dissolving to mush in his mind. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Can’t do what? What’s making him so agitated?

Jinyoung’s face appears in front of him, eyes wide and worried in a way that Kunpimook would be able to see through straight away if he weren’t in this state. “You’ll help me, Bambam-ah? Won’t you?”

Help him what? What does he want again?

“You have to tell me,” Jinyoung starts to enunciate everything clearly, voice changing, even in the blurred state of Kunpimook’s consciousness, to one sharper and more decisive. “Everything,” he curves a soft hand against the side of the younger man’s face, tugging his chin up at an excruciatingly slow pace. “That happened that night,” there’s a frightening quality about the way he speaks, Kunpimook thinks, that promises worlds of pain in the same way it allures people into an illusion of magic about him. “At the party, alright?”

The party…

Kunpimook feels, even in the dazed state of mind he’s in now, like there’s something he can’t talk about during that night, something he can’t put his finger on, but the way Jinyoung’s looking at him spurs him to want to just spill everything, do whatever Jinyoung wants him to do, so he can escape the jagged cruelty in that voice, escape the possibility of the suffering it holds in store.

The essence of Kunpimook Bhuwakul has been reduced to nothing but a primal, childlike fear, and it’s this fear that pulls the stopper on his lips, that lets the words spill forth in a bumbling, but overall steady stream, till Jinyoung’s every last thing he wants to know from him. The process seems to stretch an eternity, torturous and terrifying, and Kunpimook feels an odd mix of relief and shame when Jinyoung lets up, satisfied, when the younger man’s been rendered safely useless once more.

Jinyoung’s movements are increasingly blurry, but Kunpimook manages to register a slender set of fingers delicately prying his mouth open, the click of glass from a bottle against his upper jaw, dripping a bitter liquid onto his tongue that immediately feels like it’s muffling him, incapacitating his senses one by one, and finally, shivering and numb, Kunpimook loses himself to a comforting, drug-induced darkness.