Chapter Text
Faifa
“You need to stay away from Wine.”
Faifa had been reaching for his wallet when his elder brother’s words froze him mid-movement. He turned towards Yotha, who was staring him down with a hard and unwavering stance.
Had he heard him right? He double-checked his ears, just in case. Maybe he was going deaf at nineteen. It wouldn’t surprise him, his luck was that bad. Seeing the exasperated expression on his brother’s face, Faifa suddenly wished he was. His brother’s scrutiny only confirmed the very awkward and unavoidable conversation heading his way.
“I’m sorry. I need to do what, now?”
“You heard me,” Yotha replied.
Faifa snickered. "Did you just say 'stay away from Wine'? Have we fallen onto the set of a romantic comedy? Are you about to break into song?"
“Cut the shit, Fai.”
Faifa blinked, casting a glance around them. Parked on one of the university side streets, the modest coffee stand was quickly building up a long queue, students shuffling impatiently as they waited their turn. It was early morning, but the midsummer climate still saturated the air in a cloud of wet heat, the onslaught sticking without mercy to every surface, whether skin or cloth.
“Can I at least pay for my coffee first?”
“No, you’ve avoided me long enough. Wine is my mentee, and I have a duty of care towards him. Adjusting to freshman year is hard enough, not to mention dealing with raging testosterone. I know you. I don’t want you coming onto him and messing with his head.”
Oh boy, here we go.
Faifa looked behind him again at the silent queue of students. More than one grouchy, heat-flushed face stared back at him. He smiled at them apologetically, and some gave him a pitying half-smile, while others just crossed their arms and narrowed their eyes.
He turned back around. Tough crowd.
“I didn’t realise you’d become Wine’s father,” Faifa replied with a shit-eating grin. “Congratulations. When’s the adoption party?”
“You’re hilarious.” Yotha appeared far from amused. “Fai, everyone can see how you treat him. You don’t think Wine can too? This isn’t the first time you’ve thoughtlessly played with someone’s feelings and taken things further than you should have before leaving them hanging.”
Faifa considered his options: fire back with something childish or just avoid answering like the mature adult he clearly wasn’t. He went with option B, if only to rile Yotha up further.
The woman behind the counter cleared her throat, eyes darting around the stand, searching for anything to focus on other than Faifa and Yotha. A desperate attempt to pretend she couldn’t hear every word of their conversation. But there was no fooling anyone. She had a front-row seat to this whole circus. There was a reigning silence around them, and no wonder. The conversation was loud enough to echo down the entire line of caffeine-starved students.
Faifa wanted to shrink into the sidewalk. Or, better yet, slap his brother upside the head for his horrific timing.
He fished a fifty baht banknote from his wallet and handed it over. The lady behind the counter jumped to prepare his coffee, grateful for having something to do other than listen to Yotha’s extremely awkward scolding.
“Fai, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, yes, I hear you, oh wise one,” Faifa groaned, waving dismissively in an attempt to shut him up. “Are you done?”
“I’m serious about this. Wine isn’t some full-grown adult who’s seen it all and knows what’s waiting for him out there. He’s still a kid stumbling through a world he barely understands. Against someone like you, he is defenceless.”
Faifa felt his chest tighten.
The last thing he wanted to talk about with his brother was Wine.
Visions of the night before had tormented his thoughts all morning. Those doe eye looking up at him, so innocent, so sweet and tender. Every time Wine looked at him, Faifa became lucid in his own body, like stepping into a hot spring and feeling every tight muscle unfurl. Being around Wine was a spiritual experience. His soul entered a space where time slowed. There, and only there, could he breathe again. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like. Those moments in Wine’s safe haven wrapped him in a warm blanket, soothing the piercing, restless corners of Faifa’s mind that he fought tooth and nail to bury.
But it didn’t matter how Faifa felt. Not when Wine had long since set his heart on Tor, his ex-girlfriend's brother and his own first love. Not when Faifa had his own demons to battle with.
He recalled last night’s conversation as clear as day.
“The man I had a crush on… my ex-girlfriend’s brother, broke up with his girlfriend.”
“And?”
“He’s not into women.”
Faifa stiffened. “Are you still into him?”
“I guess I am.”
Faifa barely heard the words come out of Wine’s mouth. Static noise blared in his ears like that of an old, discarded radio. In the darker recesses of his mind—that place where he stored echoes of the time his mother forgot Faifa’s parent-teacher conference to take his half-brother for ice cream, or where his father chuckled with Yotha and Newton over a memory Faifa had no part in—the voices resurfaced at full throttle. The warnings they spoke all too familiar: Don’t forget yourself. You know you can’t keep him.
He barely recognised his own voice when he spoke the next words on autopilot. “If you still like him, then I’ll help you.” He really hated himself then. The force of it nearly knocked him down with nausea. “I’ll make it work.”
The startled look on Wine’s face, obscene lips parted, nearly destroyed him. In the ensuing silence of Wine’s confession, Faifa had almost given himself away. But he maintained his cheery demeanour through it all, even when his smile was far too brittle and the heart in his chest caved in with suffocating finality.
He drew himself back to the present. Yotha’s comment bounced back and forth in his head.
Against someone like you, he is defenceless.
Faifa deflected the barb by shooting Yotha a raised eyebrow. “Like Gun, you mean?”
His accusation hit its mark.
Yotha recoiled visibly, a hard look on his face. “That was different.”
“Was it?” Faifa countered.
He wouldn’t easily forget the disaster that was last year. Gun had soaked several of Faifa’s shirts with the floods of tears he’d shed over his idiot brother. Granted, Yotha had been struggling with some considerable issues of his own. Though it had all worked out between them, Faifa had been the one cleaning up the mess left behind by Yotha’s destructive spiral.
“Yes. I’m Wine’s mentor. It’s my job to take care of him.”
“And Gun is my friend. It was my job to take care of him too.”
Finally—fucking finally—his black iced coffee was placed in front of him. Praise the heavens. Faifa thanked the lady, seizing his cup and taking off without a backwards glance, desperate to put as much distance as possible between himself and his brother.
Yotha didn’t back down as he followed Faifa down the street. “Fine. Look, I made a lot of mistakes with Gun, I admit that. You defended him when I was behaving like a dick. You know me better than anyone else and you had every right to call me out.”
Faifa ignored him and charged ahead silently. He took a sip from his drink to avoid Yotha’s expectant stare. The chill offered temporary reprieve from the suffocating heat and the din rising from the colourful stalls selling fresh fruit and pork skewers down the packed street. They narrowly avoided rogue scooters and tuk-tuks that zoomed in and out of traffic and nearly careened into pedestrians.
Yotha sighed. Exasperation rolled off him in waves. On any other day, Faifa would have laughed.
He didn’t get much further with his silent treatment before Yotha stepped into his path with a hand to his chest. His elder brother was a couple inches shorter than him, and Faifa could have easily swooped past him, but he indulged him this once.
“Now it’s my turn to do the same for you,” Yotha said. “You know I’ll always have your back, even when you’re wrong. But I don’t want you to add fuel to the fire and hurt him—or yourself—if you can’t follow through again.”
The look in Yotha’s eyes hit him like a physical blow.
Faifa looked around him. People circled past them, too wrapped up in their own heads or their phones to take any notice of him. A world in movement. He took comfort in the noise and chaos. If only he could disappear into it, be swallowed by the crowd until he couldn’t think anymore.
Solitude had always been his enemy. He hated being forced back into his own head. It was a place he avoided visiting. The self-contemplation Yotha demanded of him made his skin prickle. Faifa had already made up his mind before this conversation had even started. His brother had nothing to worry about. Wine wasn’t in any danger from him. He would guarantee Wine’s happiness and help him land the guy of his dreams. After all, making others happy was what Faifa did best.
Decisions were a funny thing. He’d spent his whole life pleasing others. For a long time, making everyone happy had filled him with a sense of triumph. It was a worthy, noble purpose to have, one he prided himself on every day. But lately, that purpose was making him increasingly weary. He felt like a poorly rendered NPC in a video game of his own life. Yet those negative feelings were giving rise to something else entirely: guilt.
“Alright, alright,” Faifa said, flashing a smile that was more for show than reassurance. “I won’t go there. Whatever you’re thinking of, it’s not like that. And it never will be. I won’t hurt your precious mentee.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
The words felt like lead on his tongue.
Wine
Wine sighed for what felt like the millionth time that morning.
He twirled the pen between his fingers, trying and failing to wrangle his focus onto the jumble of equations sprawled across his homework. He narrowed his eyes at the textbook, as if sheer willpower could force the formulas into submission. But they just sat there, taunting him, staring back in accusation.
His chest gave way to frustration as the effort to concentrate slipped away entirely.
Deciding to give up, he turned his gaze to his friends sitting across the table. Ben had suggested an outdoor study session on campus before their morning classes, but Wine knew the real reason. Ben hadn’t done his homework. And his excuse? Streaming on his social media account the night before which, unsurprisingly, had stolen all of his time. Copying off Wine or Jay was his go-to solution for each and every crisis.
Jay and Ben were caught in an animated conversation about the latest fantasy RPG release, yet another topic Wine couldn’t quite bring himself to care about. Their homework lay equally untouched and forgotten on the table.
Unlike his friends, however, Wine’s lack of focus was for an entirely different reason.
“If you still like him, then I’ll help you.”
Was he serious? He couldn’t have been.
Wine had tossed and turned all night, tearing those words apart, dissecting them and turning them over in his mind. For hours, he analysed every flicker in Faifa’s eyes, every shift in his movements, and the too-perfect smile that never seemed to leave his obnoxiously handsome face.
Inevitably, Wine’s mind had drifted into more shameless territory. Towards the silken strands of Faifa’s hair and the way they fell across smooth skin. He replayed the flex of tendons beneath taut muscle, the subtle power of Faifa’s arms, or the quiet intimacy of their personal spaces overlapping in the solitude of Faifa’s room, bodies just a breath apart, much closer than what could be considered normal.
He’d been forced to look away. Somehow, he could never allow himself to stare at Faifa for long. His sanity could only take so much.
So, Wine had spent the night writhing against his bedsheets. His skin tingled, both wired and intoxicated by the direction his thoughts had taken.
“I’ll make it work.”
Wine sighed again.
The memory had haunted him all morning, tearing his nerves to shreds.
He could hardly explain it to himself, let alone anyone else. Faifa’s offer should have felt like a lifeline. After all, Tor had long since been the object of Wine’s childhood fantasies. Last year, whenever he’d stayed at Toey’s house, his eyes would drift towards Tor and his heart would flutter every time their gazes accidentally met. Those moments dulled the edges of the never-ending loop that made up his empty days. Wine could pretend, just for a moment, that he wasn’t a lost cause.
In theory, Wine should’ve been relieved to have Faifa’s help. But if the bone-deep irritation and hollowness in his chest were anything to go by, he was anything but grateful. No, Wine was annoyed. Unsettled. Disorientated. His melancholy was a living, breathing thing, and he was drowning beneath emotions he couldn’t quite untangle.
Wine let his gaze wander.
Despite the balmy day, the open-air quad on the east edge of campus boasted a lush scenery of palms and ferns courtesy of Thailand’s monsoon season. Paths of rough-hewn grit wound through the manicured lawns towards the university buildings, the gentle hum of nature punctuated only by students flocking in pairs or small groups towards lessons.
Wine haphazardly scanned the crowd of faces.
He hadn’t known what he was looking for until his eyes found him. The person who encompassed his every waking thought.
Wine’s chest tightened.
Faifa stood at the farthest edge of the lawn, a black t-shirt and the navy engineering uniform highlighting his enticingly wide shoulders. As expected, the campus star was surrounded by people. Though Wine was too distant to catch their words, he could see the older man speaking animatedly, his laugh painting the air with sunshine as he waved his iced coffee around. Many stopped to greet him as they passed. Faifa waved back with a smile and a hello.
Wine frowned. Why couldn’t everyone stop bothering him all the time? How was he supposed to get to class if they were all gagging for his attention? As he watched Faifa light up without a care in the world, he couldn’t help thinking how exhausting it looked.
He spotted a disgruntled Yotha standing off to the side. Yotha had placed himself just far enough to avoid being dragged into the conversation. His mentor’s social aversion and Faifa’s outgoing temperament were glaringly obvious, and Wine could guess Yotha was waiting for his brother to stop chatting to everyone that crossed their path. After a while, his patience ran out, and he strode off.
Wine found himself drawn back to Faifa.
Most people considered him a chaotic force of nature. A whirlwind of energy that wrung joy and laughter wherever he went. But there was a gentleness in him too, hidden between his gestures and expressions. Wine noticed it every time Faifa’s eyes watched him closely. Beneath the boisterousness, Faifa held a quiet, protective strength. Unspoken, but palpable. He could sense it in the rare moments when he slowed down. To Wine, it had become a safe harbour, something he found himself drawn to instinctively, desperate for a glimpse of the comforting presence that only Faifa seemed to offer. His very own balm for the soul.
Suddenly, Faifa’s gaze turned and found Wine unerringly in the crowd.
Wine held his breath.
For a brief moment, neither of them looked away. Then, the smile on Faifa’s lips took on a different edge. Softer, more gentle.
The sight sent his pulse into overdrive.
A snap of fingers broke the moment. “Wine!”
Wine started. His focus snapped back to the table. Jay and Ben were both staring at him with searching expressions.
“What?”
“We’ve been calling your name since last year,” Ben said. “Looking at anything interesting?”
“No,” Wine answered far too quickly.
In a synchronised motion that could’ve come straight out of a comedy sketch, his friends pivoted to scan the quad and the scores of people congesting the paths.
“Uh, guys-” Wine tried again. But his attempts to draw their attention were in vain.
Jay’s eyebrow shot up, a sure sign he’d found the source of Wine’s distraction. He circled back, his expression one of shrewd amusement. A devious smile split his face. “Oh, I think he’s found something interesting alright…”
Wine made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a wince. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do.”
“I really, really don’t.”
Ben squinted at the crowd, getting to his feet and scanning the campus with the quick, darting motions of a meerkat. “I’m lost. What are we looking at?”
Jay chuckled, not passing up the chance to relish in Wine’s mortification. “Just someone’s newest hyperfixation.”
Wine scurried to pack away his things with unparalleled speed.
“Class is starting soon,” he said.
At that, both of his friends checked their phones in unison.
Jay turned his screen towards Wine and tapped the time with a knowing expression. “Saved by the bell.”
Wine refused to show his relief.
As they gathered their homework, Ben carried on pushing for an explanation. Though neither of his friends obliged him, Wine was grateful when Jay deflected by steering the conversation onto safer topics.
Of their own volition, Wine’s eyes strayed back over the lawn. The spot where Faifa had been standing in was now vacant, and he tried to look around around discreetly. But the man was nowhere to be found.
He fought against the anxiety that bubbled in his chest. Why he cared so much about seeing his mentor’s brother, Wine didn’t know. But there was a record player in his head broadcasting every word he’d ever exchanged with Faifa on repeat, the chaos of his mind humming with need and sliding further and further into feverish frustration the more Wine turned a blind eye.
Something had to change, and quickly.
Restless thoughts stirred within him, demanding solutions to a string of questions Wine couldn’t even spell out.
One way or another, he would need to answer them.
For the rest of the day, he saw nothing but the spectre of Faifa’s smile, its outline imprinted like a brand beneath his eyelids. The vision inflicted upon him a feeling of torment, and, unexpectedly, euphoria. That last one, he tried his best to ignore—and failed spectacularly.