Chapter Text
Saturday is for family dinner, always has, always will be, someone informed Macau of this two or a thousand years ago. Saturday is for all Therepanyakuls and Khun Porsche and his brother, to sit together and eat and talk so nothing like that awful day ever comes to pass again.
Not all Theerapanyakuls, Macau keeps thinking; not my father, who is lying in his casket with a bullet still in his skull. My brother neither, though he is alive unless something changed between that last phone call and now.
That wasn't even the end of the lies in that statement it turned out. On the very first Saturday night, Macau was standing over a chair along with all life-long and newly adopted cousins, waiting for Korn to grace them with his presence, Tankhun shouted "What the hell is this thing, since when do we need to do this?"; until his brothers daggered glares shut him up.
Regardless, ever since then every Saturday Macau showers, gets dressed, and walks three stairs down to be served a meal he never eats. To listen to tense conversations he never participates. To give one-word answers to questions his uncle asks.
Every week it's the same, except the menu changes sometimes. Today it's a good cut of steak. Vegas would have liked it.
"Veal is baby cow," He had told Macau once. "They don't say its true name so they can stomach eating it." There was a subtext to his words - they can't, but we? We don't need cheap word games to hide our cruelty. -
Veal is younger than beef and more tender for that reason and when Korn cuts into the piece of meat, it's red inside.
They're probably easier to kill too, Macau imagines, and for that he relates to a freshly cut carcass hanging from the ceiling of a fancy butcher shop downtown.
He swallows, looking at his barely touched plate. The smell of iron fills the large dining room. His uncle is silent now, so everyone around the table is silent also.
Macau takes a deep and slow breath. Vegas walks in from the gold-plated doors, as he often does, more real than he was before he disappeared. A red velvet shirt hides the blood oozing from his wounds. "Be careful, little brother," he says. "You have to be very careful. I wasn't and look what happened to me."
Macau breathes out, blinks and his brother is gone.
***
Chay understands time in a way that is different to others. It's still the downright flow of a river but different sections of it are marked with the Porsche's, not Chay's, life. If someone asks him how old he was or when this specific thing happened his mind goes to Porsche - he was 20 then so I must have been 13-.
He told this to Kim once, thinking he must be doing the same thing and his silent confusion told Chay that this isn't a little brother thing, it's specific to him alone.
Chay is 19 now, he knows that because Porsche, sitting across the dinner table, joking with P'Kinn a minute ago, now somber with fidgeting eyes since Khun Korn entered the room, turned 26 this year. And he has everything, every big and small thing, he ever wanted, even his mother back, and he never felt so empty.
It started slowly, the side effect of talking to and hugging a woman that doesn't seem to even recognize him week after week, calling her mom, begging for her to say one word, just one. It was like a contagion leaking from her blank gaze, unable to be fought off by Porsche's unwavering optimism.
Now it's everywhere, all the time. He eats and it falls down a bottomless pit, he tries to play his guitar and gets no satisfaction from it; Kim's touches that would have set him on fire before almost pass through him, inciting little to no reaction.
When dinner ends, Kim proposes Chay to come home with him, which he rejects making an excuse from a visit with his mother. Then he looks at Porsche again as he asks the servers for another plate to be set up, two steps and kilometers away. He wants to tell him these things, to talk about the anxiety that has been building up in his chest and the hollowness too, wants to be assured he still has, always will have, Porsche in his corner. He wants to ask, “Do you see me, Hia? Are you still there?”
Instead, when Porsche implores Chay to go see their mother, he gestures at Kim and his brother smiles openly. “Oh, okay. Don’t have too much fun now.”
It’s not a lie if Chay doesn’t actually say the words, right?
Right.
At least, there is the garden, the endless patch of dark and light green which when Chay lies on it, the stars above are the same as they were in his parent’s home. He walks the memorized route towards a particularly secluded part but at his destination, he finds that it’s already occupied.
Chay knows, no, he knows of Macau. He knows that he is the brother of the guy that was involved in his kidnapping and that Tankhun doesn't like him. He has been warned to steer clear of him by pretty much everybody. It was an easy task, since the boy was barely there, always turning his gaze to his own shoes or empty walls. He isn't sure, Chay realizes, that he even heard Macau's voice.
But he hears it now, in the form of stifled sobs and intelligible murmurs. It's obvious Macau is not aware of Chay, courtesy of his head buried on his raised knees, but his tears are still quiet enough to be overlooked.
Chay cries like that too, sometimes. It wasn't something he used to do, now it's necessary.
"Hey. Are you okay?" He asks which is something he probably shouldn't do, maybe the best course of action would be to leave this stranger to his sadness and slip away; for Macau's sake and his own too.
Macau recoils in response, as he quickly gets up, snot and tears are erased by the sleeve of his shirt. He doesn't say anything but he doesn't run away also so Chay, thinking a kindness should be owed if you interrupt someone's ritual of pain, sits down next to where Macau was a minute ago.
Some time passes before Macau places himself back down, without looking at Chay. The wind makes the tall trees above sing.
"Are you missing your brother?" Chay speaks in a hushed tone. Years later he will look back at this moment and realize that there was no indication of this, nothing to prompt his question other than an unrecognized instance of projection. The only information he had at that moment was that Macau had an older brother once who no longer held him close since he was far away due to some business stuff. But for now, it remains a genuine inquiry.
Macau's face contorts, his mouth a thin line to keep something inside. There is a long bout of silence again until somehow a whimper escapes from Macau.
Chay turns to him then, trying not to stare at his wet eyes. "Do you know if he will come back soon?"
"He's not allowed," Macau whispers hoarsely. "Uncle won't- mm," he shuts up quickly, his gaze full of fear, which is the thing Chay didn't know he was searching for this time. A simple confirmation of his suspicions about this not-so-newly-found paternal figure.
He feels jolted at that, intoxicated by the possibility of being right all along. "I will tell you my side. My truth," he states clearly, "Then you will tell me yours." He unboxes every little conspiracy theory that was collecting dust in his brain, lays it bare for Macau’s intent eyes.
I think he keeps my mother, if she really is my mother, sick. I don’t trust him. I think he made Porsche the head of the minor family to control him and P’Kinn, I worry he would get rid of him if that stopped working at some point. I think he is not happy about me and Kim. I don’t trust him. I think he has people spying on us all.
I think he killed my father. I don’t trust him.
When he is finished, he gestures at Macau for him to hold up his end of the bargain that wasn’t actually struck. Still, Macau looks around to see if they’re still alone and brings his head closer to Chay. “My brother did not go away voluntarily. Uncle must be making him do some terrible stuff; he sounds more and more broken every time we talk. He moved me back here from the university dorms because it was harder to keep an eye on me there.” Chay shakes his head in acknowledgment, awed at the breathless but matter-of-factly summary Macau gave him.
“And I know he killed my father,” Macau adds with the ghost of a smirk at the end. “But that’s not really a bad thing.”
In the simplest of terms, they become friends after that. It would be very hard, Chay figures, to share fears with someone you don’t admit to the mirror and then just keep pretending to be strangers. Of course, their relationship quickly develops into an “if you see one, the other one is close” dynamic, because of the feeling of safety it brings, the intense loneliness it staves off, and the shared hatred. Makings of a great friendship.
For everyone else, it’s harder to understand. Tankhun screams bloody murder when he brings Macau to a series-marathon but Chay still has his boyhood eyes and knows how to use them. Kim, ever the silent judge, shakes his head when he hears of it but then moves his hair off his eyes and shrugs, “Not the company I would keep but you’re your own person.” Porsche goes around trying to get a feel of what Macau is actually like but gives up when the answer keeps coming back as “Just some kid, did nothing wrong. Maybe a little spoiled.” - which is what Macau said it would be. -
So, they’re friends. So, they talk, too much perhaps. Chay is glad of it because Macau feels like the only person he can be fully honest with. He sometimes gets the sense that is not fully reciprocated but it doesn’t bother him; he’ll learn whatever Macau is not telling him when it’s time.
Chay asks Macau eventually if he also does the time points of his life based on his big brother. “Not exactly that,” he answers smiling. “But when I used to try to figure out how I was feeling, I'd think about whether Vegas was having a good day or a bad one.” It would be endearing if Macau’s face didn’t drop so suddenly. “I doubt he has any good days anymore.”
"I fucking hate this," Macau growls from where is seated on the couch six months later, surrounded by textbooks, pushing his glasses back on his face. Chay checks the time on his phone. 2.37. Macau has been at this for five hours now, a break surely is in order.
"Should I remind you that you, by your own volition, chose to study electronics what's-its-name?" He mocks from the floor. He was also trying to be productive which amounted to time wasted staring at his guitar but at least he kept Macau company. That’s good enough for tonight.
"It's computer science," Macau says, annoyed. which is the reaction Chay is aiming at. -Of course, he knows what Macau's programme is, it's the scowl he gives that makes Chay act like he doesn't- "And it's not the studying, I could do these in my sleep."
"Back to being an arrogant dick," Chay says with exaggerated gestures and gets bickering back. "As the guy that will take a gap year for the third year in a row, you have no right to speak about no one's confidence to do their damn homework." They giggle for a while, Chay throws a pillow toward Macau’s face, he catches it and places it on his belly, and sighs woefully.
"Whatever I learn he'll be the one to put it to use, you know. All these, it's gonna benefit him."
Chay doesn't need to ask who Macau is referring to, it's a silent agreement between them. They never say Korn's name, out of a mixture of fear and disdain. Macau made a Voldemort joke about it once, Chay stared at him in fake disappointment.
He doesn't say anything in response also because that’s their deal, because every attempt to lighten the mood feels like a lie, yet one more thing to invalidate their truth. Instead, he nods and goes to grab two beers. As he said, a break is in order.
Not long after Macau slides down the couch, the textbooks and stationery scattering to the floor, and without saying a word, he dozes off.
He looks so young like this, Chay thinks, without the pretense of the "don't fuck with me" look in his eyes which is diminished when he is alone with Chay but still visible if you know to look for it. Now his expression is similar to the photos Chay had seen of him with Vegas a while back; vulnerable and content.
"There was a time," he had mused, "when you ate ice cream and played video games and under your brother's protection you were allowed to be a child. That's what Korn took from you." Chay had to close his eyes at that thought, because it had felt too close to home.
He reaches forward and removes Macau's glasses from his face, careful not to wake him up. His fingers brush the cheeks all the same, Macau releases a pleased hum before folding into himself even more.
“I too, was a kid,” Chay says to Macau in his own head. “I played the guitar and took long naps in the yard in summer afternoons. Sure, life was tough but I had my brother and we did fine. Now I'm here where I can't trust anyone like you are.”
With that familiar camaraderie a different feeling blooms under the surface. A new want, to squeeze himself into the narrow space on the couch next to Macau, to learn how his neck smells like.
Chay presses down on it with a steady hand until it feels as if it's not him that this is happening to, he is only hearing about the experience of someone else far away. He turns off the light and quietly steps into his own room. He sits on the floor and rests his head against a wall staring at the nothingness in the dark until the longing is all but gone.