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merryfuture2023-07-11 05:19 pm
staygame) wrote in merryfuture2023-07-11 05:19 pm
Entry tags:
3 will be free: need something bigger than the sky (2019)
need something bigger than the sky (ao3 link, see original work for author's notes) | 3 will be free, neo/shin/mew, mature, 4.5k words
tags: post-canon, feelings are complicated, no archive warnings apply
written for: yuletide 2019
---
On his second trip to the island, Shin manages to make it out of the boat and down onto the dock without immediately puking into the ocean. He doesn't quite have his sea legs, though, and he has to close his eyes as soon as he's on the solid ground, head spinning as phantom waves continue to rock him.
"Still sick after one little boat ride?" Mew's gentle mocking cuts through the rising nausea.
She is waiting at the ticket booth, leaned against the wooden beam with her arms folded across her chest. It's been almost a month since Shin has been back and he takes her in, familiar denim cut-offs and black eyeliner, hair whipping wildly around her in the sea breeze. She is fighting a smile.
"What, you're not going to call me a sissy?" Shin teases, pulling his duffle over his shoulder. With his free arm, he reaches for Mew, tugging her into a firm hug.
"I'd say you've proven yourself to be pretty badass since then."
They walk together, flip flops slapping against the ground in unison as they dodge the mingling groups of visitors and children chasing each other through the crowd. The monsoons have given way to hot, dry weather and it means the island is preparing for its peak tourism season. "Where's Neo?" Shin asks.
"What? I'm not good enough for you?" Mew says, blinking up at him with faux innocence. Shin plays along, shrugging as if to say well, now that you mention it. "The roof is leaking, so he and P'Gear are attempting to patch it themselves."
"Does P'Gear need money to hire someone? I can help," Shin asks. He's already running mental calculations between his bank account and the funds he has left until he can touch the rest of his father's money.
"It's not about the money. It's about the need for men to prove their masculinity by wielding tools." She hooks her arm around Shin's. "Let's go see if they've made the problem worse."
The bar looks the same as the last time Shin was here—bright blue doors and cheap tiki decorations, the picture from their first day on the island still tacked up on the board next to snapshots of drunk tourists. Not that Shin had it expected it to look any different, but between the drug-induced haze of that night and the kidnapping, those few days seem more like the memories of a fever dream than a lived experience.
It's Gear who spots them first as he rounds the corner with Neo. "Khun Shin!" he calls out. "Welcome back!"
If Shin was finally feeling steady on his feet, the wattage of Neo's smile, dimpled and genuinely thrilled, threatens to knock him back. For a moment, Shin's body feels weightless, like the moment a boat rises up to meet the wave's crest, his heart suspended mid-air. Then Neo closes the distance between them, his presence solid, and Shin remembers that his feet are on the ground.
Neo's hug is full-bodied, damp with sweat. Shin tries to wriggle away, mumbling gross into Neo's chest, but this only encourages Neo more and he reaches for Mew, pulling her in under his arm. The three of them sway under the force of the hug, until finally Mew taps out, claiming suffocation.
"I'm glad you're here," Neo tells Shin, then releases him with a pat on the back.
They make their way out onto one of the fishing piers, walking down to the end before they sit down, letting their feet dangle over the edge. It's a small island, more fishermen and jungle than sandy beaches. Shin looks out over the houses on stilts, small and colorful, so different from the family vacations at lush resorts. He likes it better here.
"How are things in Bangkok?" Neo asks.
"Fine," he says. Then he revises, "I mean, there's still an active investigation but no one is talking and they don't- they don't suspect Mae."
"I meant how are you," Neo says, touching Shin's knee. His hands are big, his palm entirely covering Shin's knobbly bones and the scars of bruises he'd picked up on the run.
Shin just shrugs. When he doesn't expand on it, Mew shifts closer, hooking her ankle over Shin's. He'd missed this, the way that, by the end, their bodies naturally intertwined like this, overlapping until Shin could no longer tell where his ended and theirs began.
"Don't say you're fine if you're not fine," Mew says.
"I am fine," Shin says. He changes the subject. "How are things here? You feel safe?"
Most of Shin's own money—the trust fund he'd been given access to at eighteen, the allowance he'd saved—went to ensuring their protection. Boss John may be dead, but the conflicts on the island didn't go to the grave with him. Fortunately, most of his men on the ground are more money hungry than outright evil, and a lump sum to keep quiet seems to have settled their differences. Still, Shin worries.
"We're good," Neo says. "I like it here."
Shin looks down at the water, shards of sunlight reflecting off the blue-green. "I know you want to buy the bar, but I don't have the money to give you yet."
"Is that what you're frowning about?" Mew asks. "We don't care about the money."
"The money is what's keeping us alive," Shin points out.
"Up until now, we were the ones keeping ourselves alive," Mew says, jabbing one finger into Shin's chest for emphasis. "The money is good, but don't think that that's all we need you for."
"What she means," Neo says, more gently, "is that you don't need to be self-sacrificing on our account. We can get the money to buy the bar another way. You can walk away from it all, if you want."
The thing is, Shin isn't sure if he can walk away from it. His father's business dealings, both legitimate and criminal, are far too tangled a mess for Shin to be able to extract himself without repercussions. He's not like Neo or Mew. He can't disappear from his old life, not if he intends to stop running. "I don't want to. I want to give you the money to buy the bar and pay off however many people it takes for me to get out," Shin says.
Mew tilts her head down, resting her cheek against Shin's shoulder. "Don't forget," she says, "you're part of this too. You're not on your own."
Shin closes his eyes. The sun is warm on his face. He's a part of this, he reminds himself.
☼
Shin hasn't been back to his house since the week his father died.
When the police had dropped him off the day after, Shin had only stuck around long enough to throw some clothes in his backpack and dig out the sketchbook stuffed under his pillow, unable to handle the suffocating emptiness of the mansion any longer.
Three weeks later and it feels no less oppressive. Shin almost wishes that the housekeepers had left behind a coffee cup in the sink or that morning's paper still spread out at the dining room table, some lingering sign of life. Not that it would have made a difference—the house had been devoid of life long before Shin's dad died.
In his bedroom, Shin packs up the rest of his things. The framed photo of him and his mother that had been removed from the mantle only days after his mother's funeral, an unopened box of his favorite drawing pencils, his Walkman and the cassette he'd gone back for after Mew returned his wallet. In his desk drawer, pushed to the back behind old game cartridges and scraps of paper, he finds the gun his father had given him on his eighteenth birthday. Shin considers leaving it there, to be found and disposed of by whoever will be cleaning out the house, but he ends up shoving it into his duffle. He'd given his other gun to Neo, just in case. He might come to need this one.
He takes a taxi back to his new apartment. Immediately after, he'd stayed with his mother's parents, but being around them only made Shin feel more isolated. He couldn't look them in the eye knowing what his father had done. His grandmother had rubbed his back, comforting him, and all Shin could think of was the picture of his mother slumped over in a car seat, blood staining her white blouse.
Shin can't explain to anyone why he feels guilty for his grief over his father and then guilty that he doesn't feel sad enough. He can't tell anyone that he also pulled the trigger that night, though it wasn't the fatal shot, that he'd intended to kill his father to protect the people he loves. He can't stand the sympathy from his friends, but the only people who could grasp how he feels are hundreds of kilometers away and Shin is here, alone.
He'd been lonely the whole time. The only son of the most notorious businessman in the entire country, the closeted gay, the mama's boy without his mom—how could he not feel alone?
The difference is that now, he has to live with knowing that it doesn't have to be like that. Shin has touched belongingness, held it in his hands, and then had to let it go, so that one day he can maybe hold it again.
☼
Shin returns to the island just three weeks later. It's a spur-of-the-moment decision. Shin's been in meetings with lawyers and businessmen and probable ex-henchmen all week. He's tired of being looked at like the kid in the room, but he also very much feels like the kid in the room—naive, clueless, and unable to answer any of the hard questions.
They end up drinking on the patio with Gear that night, who promises that there is nothing unusual in the cocktails he's serving. "Just lots of whiskey," he says, grinning as he slides a glass to Shin.
Some tourists, a couple visiting from Chiang Mai, join the four of them for some game involving dice that Shin forgets the rules to only minutes in, along with the names of their new friends. At some point PP shows up uninvited, having heard that Shin is in town, and Gear breaks out a pack of cards for Pok Deng. No one has any real money to bet, so they play with shrimp crackers. By the time PP and Gear leave them, Mew has amassed a small fortune in front of her.
It's late and there's only a six pack of beer remaining, but Shin doesn't feel like turning in for the night. Underneath the blur of the alcohol, there's another sensation, something like desperation coursing through his blood, like if he goes to bed now, he'll be missing something important. "Let's play something else," he says.
Mew chews thoughtfully on a shrimp cracker. "Let's play 'Never Have I Ever'."
"That's not fair," Neo protests. "I've done too many things."
"And you think I haven't?" Mew asks, raising her eyebrows.
"Shin wins by default," Neo says, and clinks his bottle against Shin's.
The claims start off mostly innocent—never have I ever cheated on a test, never have I ever broken a bone, never have I ever sent a sexy picture to anyone. It's Mew who breaks the trend, leaning across the table to look Neo straight in the eye as she says, "Never have I ever fucked anyone's mom."
Maybe it's a testament to what they've been through in the last few months, or maybe he's just drunk, but Neo only laughs. "Step-mom," he corrects, and then takes a swig of Singha. "Never have I ever worn eyeliner."
Shin and Mew both have to drink to that.
"Really?" Neo asks.
"Sixth grade play," Shin says. "I was a pirate."
A few more hyper-specific rounds pass. Shin gets both of them with never have I ever stolen someone's wallet (an ahem aimed at Mew) and then Neo challenges him back with never have I ever lived in a mansion, until finally Mew says, "Never have I ever danced topless for anyone."
The look on her face when Shin drinks is enough to have him choking on beer. Mew isn't surprised often and she has, as the mountain of shrimp crackers on the table is a testament to, a decent poker face. To see her eyes wide and mouth hanging open is immensely satisfying.
"I'm guessing he has something to do with it," Mew says, pointing at Neo.
"What happens at a bachelorette party stays at the bachelorette party," Neo says.
"Well, well, well," Mew says, craning her neck back and eyeing the both of them. "How do I get a repeat performance?"
If Shin ends up giving an awkward, uncoordinated lap dance to Mew, set to a Tata Young song blasting tinnily from Neo's phone, then no one outside of the three of them can prove it.
☼
Shin stopped listening five minutes into the meeting. There's a table full of men in stuffy suits talking about zoning regulations and proposed luxury housing developments, while Shin's brain is an ocean away, operating on island time.
He hasn't been sleeping well lately. There are nights where he sees his dad bleeding out on a warehouse floor every time he closes his eyes, and then other nights, usually when he's half-asleep and dazed, where, as though looking down from above, it's his own body instead. That's usually when he bolts upright, checking himself for blood or bullet holes, heart racing.
All three of them have their own versions of those dreams. At first, it wasn't uncommon for Shin to be startled out of sleep by Neo or Mew jerking awake beside him, if he wasn't the one causing the chain reaction in the first place. There are more restful nights now, but Shin always sleeps better when he's with them. His bed in his Bangkok apartment feels too big without two people lying next to him.
"Khun Shin, do the terms of the contract seem reasonable to you?" one of the lawyers asks.
Shin knows more about pottery in the Ayutthaya Period than he does about contract law or tax regulations. The week trial run as his father's apprentice didn't teach him much in the way of legal business dealings. He nods, feeling very much out of his depth. The meeting goes on.
☼
The moment when Shin delivers the money to Gear is almost anticlimactic. He feels like he should be holding a giant check, the kind they give to sweepstakes winners, or a briefcase full of neatly bundled cash. Instead, it's with a bank transfer, sent through the air over invisible wires. The only tangible part of it is Gear's hand in his, firm and slightly sticky with sweat.
"What are you going to do now, P'Gear? Are you going to move to Germany?" Mew asks. She is giddy, flinging her arms around Gear, half-hugging and half-shimmying against him. Shin can't help but smile at her delight and the dazed, content look on Neo's face.
"Visit? Yes. But move there? I'm not built for the cold," Gear says. "I want to buy a house in Thailand and move my wife here."
Gear looks over Mew's shoulder to Neo. "And you, you better not come asking me to buy this place back when you realize that running a bar isn't as easy as you think it will be."
Neo covers his heart with his hand. "I promise. You've fulfilled my dream, P'."
That night, high on the enthusiasm, they tumble into bed, a mess of limbs and clothes being tugged off. Mew's hair ends up in Neo's mouth as she kisses Shin, and Mew takes an elbow to the face as Neo attempts to maneuver Shin onto his hands and knees. As Neo stretches him open, Shin can feel the press of Mew's slender finger alongside Neo's and he nearly comes from that, their attention jointly fixed on him. Neo fucks him hard and fast, then when they've both come, he eats Mew out until she's shaking.
It's a good night.
☼
Mew and Neo video call him one night. No one ever FaceTimes him and the unfamiliar ringtone startles him in the middle of chopping cucumbers, the knife narrowly missing the skin between his thumb and index finger.
When Shin takes the call, Mew's face fills the entire screen. "Hello, Shin?"
Before Shin can say anything, Neo says, "Mew, you're blocking me." One of his hands appears on screen to push lightly at Mew's shoulder.
"Okay, okay," Mew says. There is a shaky transition as Mew passes the phone to Neo and Shin hears her say, "Maybe he would rather look at me than your ugly mug."
With Neo holding the phone, his arm fully extended, Shin can see the both of them, standing in front of the bar. The golden hour light is softly diffusing their faces—the warmer brown streaks in Mew's hair, Neo's suntanned skin—and Shin has the immediate urge to pick up his pencil and sketchbook.
"Hi," he says, holding his own phone out at arm's length, trying to figure out a flattering angle.
"Hey baby, what are you wearing?" Mew asks, wiggling her eyebrows.
"I could show you, but it doesn't come free," Shin says. "Did you call me to hit on me?"
"We called you to show off the bar's renovations," Neo says. They're a week and a half into the updates to the bar and the bungalows. Nothing major, just fixing old plumbing and giving the rooms a minor facelift, but Shin can tell that Neo is eager to make the place his own.
They take Shin on a phone tour of one of the larger bungalows. The walls have been freshly painted, a bright orange that reminds Shin of a sunset over the ocean, and crisp, white linens have replaced the faded bedspread that Shin remembers. The kitchenette has been upgraded with a new sink and new counters, making the room feel more like a hotel than some backpacker's lodge. Outside, the deck's old finish has been stripped and re-varnished with a darker brown stain, something Neo is especially proud of, bragging about his manual labor. "Meanwhile, she's just here for moral support."
"Excuse me," Mew says. "Who smoothed things over with Luong so we would stop being blacklisted from every contractor on this island?"
"That does sound worse than painting a deck," Shin says. If not harder, certainly more annoying.
Neo asks to see Shin's apartment, and he takes them on his own tour. He'd chosen this particular building largely for its proximity to the Skytrain and the impressive looking security team in the lobby, but, although it doesn't quite feel like home, Shin likes the space. It's only a studio apartment, so the space is cozy, just enough room for his bed and the kitchen nook. He shows them some finished sketches he's tacked to the walls, the pictures of the three of them from the bar hanging over his table alongside a Polaroid of him with James and Touch from a reluctant night out. Shin moves out onto the narrow balcony where he sits often, sketching and looking out over the view of the neighborhood.
Back inside, Shin sets his phone on the bed. "I'm going to the bathroom, I'll be right back."
He's only gone for a minute. He steps back out of the bathroom, shaking out his hands to dry them, and stops when he sees the phone screen. From the angle, he can see Mew and Neo, but the phone's camera doesn't reach him. Neo's arm is still extended, holding his phone upright, though Shin can tell that he's forgotten about it. The two of them are curved into each other, Mew with her hand on Neo's chest, Neo with his face tilted down to look at hers. Neo teases Mew and she teases back, chin jutting out in challenge, and then Neo leans down to kiss her on the mouth.
The casual intimacy makes Shin feel sick to his stomach at once. He steps back into the doorway of the bathroom to compose himself because he feels, pathetically, like he might cry. It's an echo of the sickness he'd felt when he'd seen them kissing in the forest. Rejection.
"I have to go, my delivery is here," Shin lies as he picks up his phone. He watches Neo and Mew step apart, a brief look of concern flickering across each of their faces before he presses the button to hang up.
It's not like he didn't know that they were there, together, without him. At his most self-loathing, Shin has imagined them together—kissing, touching, acting as a couple—and resented them for it.
Shin, an only child, after all, has never been good at sharing. When he was in first grade, a classmate had taken the badminton racquet he'd wanted in gym class, the only one with a red handle. Shin, in a fit of childish rage, took an inferior racquet and with it, smacked the classmate so hard in the face that his nose began to bleed. When Shin's mother arrived, she'd asked him why? and he didn't have a good answer. He wanted it, and someone else had it.
In this situation, Shin doesn't know which one of them is the racquet and which one of them is the kid who isn't meant to be holding it. Is he mad at Mew for getting to have Neo, at Neo for not having to choose, or at the both of them, for being able to walk away from their old lives and start a new one with each other, while Shin is here, alone?
Shin turns his phone off. He's mostly prepared everything for his fried rice, but jealousy has settled heavy in his stomach and he finds that he's no longer hungry. The sun isn't even finished setting outside but Shin climbs into bed, pulls the covers over his head, and closes his eyes.
🌦
Shin doesn't answer his phone for five days. This is the longest he's been without talking to either of them since that week where they'd gone their separate ways. It's not like they're in constant contact normally, just texts here and there, an unflattering picture of Neo taken without his knowledge every now and then, but Shin can tell from the increasingly worried texts that his absence has been noted. By day three, he's already irritated with his own petulance.
By day five, when an incoming call flashes Mew's name across his phone, Shin's self-annoyance wins out over his self-pity.
"Oh, so you're alive then?" Mew asks by way of a greeting.
"I'm alive," he says.
"We were worried about you," Mew says. She is also annoyed.
Shin paces the length of his room. He can cross it in a few strides, which doesn't make for optimal pacing, but he's too uncomfortable to stand still. "I'm sorry. Everything is fine, though."
"Is it?" When Shin doesn't say anything, she continues, her tone softening, "Shin, you can't keep running away from us when you're upset."
In the background, Shin can hear the faint sound of waves crashing. He imagines her, standing at the edge of the water, bare feet sinking into wet sand. He wonders if Neo asked her to call. "I'm not upset."
"I'm not stupid, you know," Mew says in a huff. Shin knows she is tugging at her hair now, the way she does when she's frustrated. "It's obvious when you're sulking. This doesn't work if you don't talk to us."
"Do you want this to work?" Shin asks.
"You're not being fair."
"It would be easier for you," Shin says, though it hurts to admit. "Without me."
"When have we ever done things the easy way?" Mew asks. "You're a part of this team. We want you to be. I want you to be."
Shin has, without realizing, stopped in front of his string of pictures. He reaches out, touching the most recent one, a candid shot of the three of them from the night they drank and played cards until dawn. In the blurry photo, Neo is kissing the top of Shin's head, at the same time that Mew presses a sloppy kiss against Shin's cheek.
"Why?"
"Do you have to have a reason to love someone?" There is a catch in her voice, and Shin thinks about her face when Neo asked her if she loved Shin, vulnerable in a way he hadn't seen before. "Because we need you to be the voice of reason around here, and because you understand us and we understand you. And because you make a much better omelette. Do you get it now?"
"Did Neo tell you to call me?" Shin asks.
"What?" Mew says. "No. I called because I missed you, jerk."
Shin's finger traces over his own smile, immortalized in glossy photo paper. He remembers Gear's voice, a moment before the camera flash, Say 'young love!' Mew's words have not entirely smoothed out the jagged edges of Shin's jealousy, but they've helped. Maybe he gets it.
☼
Neo had said, that day when Shin was ready to accept his place on the sidelines, that he loved them both, equally and at the same time. Shin knows that Neo meant it, the same way Shin knows that he loves Mew for all of her roughness and all of her strength, the same way that Shin is learning to accept that Mew loves him as well.
But it turns out there may be another competitor for Neo's love.
"It's like he thinks he birthed this bar," Mew whispers to Shin as they watch Neo fussing with the sign, going on two minutes now, despite the fact that it was already hanging straight before Neo began minutely nudging it into place. "It's his child."
"He's just proud," Shin whispers back.
"Hey, who brought you here?" Mew calls out to Neo's back. "Who introduced you to the previous owner?"
Neo turns around, shooting Mew a skeptical look. "Do you want credit? How about your name on here?"
Three Hearts. It gives Shin a rush every time he looks at the sign, the tangible reminder that he is wanted here. The three of them, a team.
Later on, Neo makes him a drink, a preview of tonight's special, a tropical cocktail made with rum with orange and papaya juices. "So," Neo says, pushing the glass across the bar to Shin. "Are you staying for good this time?"
He asks like he already knows the answer, but is hoping that asking might change it anyway.
"Not yet," Shin says. He looks at Neo and his easy, fond smile, then back at Mew, who winks when she catches his eye. "But I'm going to keep coming back until I can be here for good."
If home is where the heart is, then the signage proves that his home is here.
tags: post-canon, feelings are complicated, no archive warnings apply
written for: yuletide 2019
---
On his second trip to the island, Shin manages to make it out of the boat and down onto the dock without immediately puking into the ocean. He doesn't quite have his sea legs, though, and he has to close his eyes as soon as he's on the solid ground, head spinning as phantom waves continue to rock him.
"Still sick after one little boat ride?" Mew's gentle mocking cuts through the rising nausea.
She is waiting at the ticket booth, leaned against the wooden beam with her arms folded across her chest. It's been almost a month since Shin has been back and he takes her in, familiar denim cut-offs and black eyeliner, hair whipping wildly around her in the sea breeze. She is fighting a smile.
"What, you're not going to call me a sissy?" Shin teases, pulling his duffle over his shoulder. With his free arm, he reaches for Mew, tugging her into a firm hug.
"I'd say you've proven yourself to be pretty badass since then."
They walk together, flip flops slapping against the ground in unison as they dodge the mingling groups of visitors and children chasing each other through the crowd. The monsoons have given way to hot, dry weather and it means the island is preparing for its peak tourism season. "Where's Neo?" Shin asks.
"What? I'm not good enough for you?" Mew says, blinking up at him with faux innocence. Shin plays along, shrugging as if to say well, now that you mention it. "The roof is leaking, so he and P'Gear are attempting to patch it themselves."
"Does P'Gear need money to hire someone? I can help," Shin asks. He's already running mental calculations between his bank account and the funds he has left until he can touch the rest of his father's money.
"It's not about the money. It's about the need for men to prove their masculinity by wielding tools." She hooks her arm around Shin's. "Let's go see if they've made the problem worse."
The bar looks the same as the last time Shin was here—bright blue doors and cheap tiki decorations, the picture from their first day on the island still tacked up on the board next to snapshots of drunk tourists. Not that Shin had it expected it to look any different, but between the drug-induced haze of that night and the kidnapping, those few days seem more like the memories of a fever dream than a lived experience.
It's Gear who spots them first as he rounds the corner with Neo. "Khun Shin!" he calls out. "Welcome back!"
If Shin was finally feeling steady on his feet, the wattage of Neo's smile, dimpled and genuinely thrilled, threatens to knock him back. For a moment, Shin's body feels weightless, like the moment a boat rises up to meet the wave's crest, his heart suspended mid-air. Then Neo closes the distance between them, his presence solid, and Shin remembers that his feet are on the ground.
Neo's hug is full-bodied, damp with sweat. Shin tries to wriggle away, mumbling gross into Neo's chest, but this only encourages Neo more and he reaches for Mew, pulling her in under his arm. The three of them sway under the force of the hug, until finally Mew taps out, claiming suffocation.
"I'm glad you're here," Neo tells Shin, then releases him with a pat on the back.
They make their way out onto one of the fishing piers, walking down to the end before they sit down, letting their feet dangle over the edge. It's a small island, more fishermen and jungle than sandy beaches. Shin looks out over the houses on stilts, small and colorful, so different from the family vacations at lush resorts. He likes it better here.
"How are things in Bangkok?" Neo asks.
"Fine," he says. Then he revises, "I mean, there's still an active investigation but no one is talking and they don't- they don't suspect Mae."
"I meant how are you," Neo says, touching Shin's knee. His hands are big, his palm entirely covering Shin's knobbly bones and the scars of bruises he'd picked up on the run.
Shin just shrugs. When he doesn't expand on it, Mew shifts closer, hooking her ankle over Shin's. He'd missed this, the way that, by the end, their bodies naturally intertwined like this, overlapping until Shin could no longer tell where his ended and theirs began.
"Don't say you're fine if you're not fine," Mew says.
"I am fine," Shin says. He changes the subject. "How are things here? You feel safe?"
Most of Shin's own money—the trust fund he'd been given access to at eighteen, the allowance he'd saved—went to ensuring their protection. Boss John may be dead, but the conflicts on the island didn't go to the grave with him. Fortunately, most of his men on the ground are more money hungry than outright evil, and a lump sum to keep quiet seems to have settled their differences. Still, Shin worries.
"We're good," Neo says. "I like it here."
Shin looks down at the water, shards of sunlight reflecting off the blue-green. "I know you want to buy the bar, but I don't have the money to give you yet."
"Is that what you're frowning about?" Mew asks. "We don't care about the money."
"The money is what's keeping us alive," Shin points out.
"Up until now, we were the ones keeping ourselves alive," Mew says, jabbing one finger into Shin's chest for emphasis. "The money is good, but don't think that that's all we need you for."
"What she means," Neo says, more gently, "is that you don't need to be self-sacrificing on our account. We can get the money to buy the bar another way. You can walk away from it all, if you want."
The thing is, Shin isn't sure if he can walk away from it. His father's business dealings, both legitimate and criminal, are far too tangled a mess for Shin to be able to extract himself without repercussions. He's not like Neo or Mew. He can't disappear from his old life, not if he intends to stop running. "I don't want to. I want to give you the money to buy the bar and pay off however many people it takes for me to get out," Shin says.
Mew tilts her head down, resting her cheek against Shin's shoulder. "Don't forget," she says, "you're part of this too. You're not on your own."
Shin closes his eyes. The sun is warm on his face. He's a part of this, he reminds himself.
☼
Shin hasn't been back to his house since the week his father died.
When the police had dropped him off the day after, Shin had only stuck around long enough to throw some clothes in his backpack and dig out the sketchbook stuffed under his pillow, unable to handle the suffocating emptiness of the mansion any longer.
Three weeks later and it feels no less oppressive. Shin almost wishes that the housekeepers had left behind a coffee cup in the sink or that morning's paper still spread out at the dining room table, some lingering sign of life. Not that it would have made a difference—the house had been devoid of life long before Shin's dad died.
In his bedroom, Shin packs up the rest of his things. The framed photo of him and his mother that had been removed from the mantle only days after his mother's funeral, an unopened box of his favorite drawing pencils, his Walkman and the cassette he'd gone back for after Mew returned his wallet. In his desk drawer, pushed to the back behind old game cartridges and scraps of paper, he finds the gun his father had given him on his eighteenth birthday. Shin considers leaving it there, to be found and disposed of by whoever will be cleaning out the house, but he ends up shoving it into his duffle. He'd given his other gun to Neo, just in case. He might come to need this one.
He takes a taxi back to his new apartment. Immediately after, he'd stayed with his mother's parents, but being around them only made Shin feel more isolated. He couldn't look them in the eye knowing what his father had done. His grandmother had rubbed his back, comforting him, and all Shin could think of was the picture of his mother slumped over in a car seat, blood staining her white blouse.
Shin can't explain to anyone why he feels guilty for his grief over his father and then guilty that he doesn't feel sad enough. He can't tell anyone that he also pulled the trigger that night, though it wasn't the fatal shot, that he'd intended to kill his father to protect the people he loves. He can't stand the sympathy from his friends, but the only people who could grasp how he feels are hundreds of kilometers away and Shin is here, alone.
He'd been lonely the whole time. The only son of the most notorious businessman in the entire country, the closeted gay, the mama's boy without his mom—how could he not feel alone?
The difference is that now, he has to live with knowing that it doesn't have to be like that. Shin has touched belongingness, held it in his hands, and then had to let it go, so that one day he can maybe hold it again.
☼
Shin returns to the island just three weeks later. It's a spur-of-the-moment decision. Shin's been in meetings with lawyers and businessmen and probable ex-henchmen all week. He's tired of being looked at like the kid in the room, but he also very much feels like the kid in the room—naive, clueless, and unable to answer any of the hard questions.
They end up drinking on the patio with Gear that night, who promises that there is nothing unusual in the cocktails he's serving. "Just lots of whiskey," he says, grinning as he slides a glass to Shin.
Some tourists, a couple visiting from Chiang Mai, join the four of them for some game involving dice that Shin forgets the rules to only minutes in, along with the names of their new friends. At some point PP shows up uninvited, having heard that Shin is in town, and Gear breaks out a pack of cards for Pok Deng. No one has any real money to bet, so they play with shrimp crackers. By the time PP and Gear leave them, Mew has amassed a small fortune in front of her.
It's late and there's only a six pack of beer remaining, but Shin doesn't feel like turning in for the night. Underneath the blur of the alcohol, there's another sensation, something like desperation coursing through his blood, like if he goes to bed now, he'll be missing something important. "Let's play something else," he says.
Mew chews thoughtfully on a shrimp cracker. "Let's play 'Never Have I Ever'."
"That's not fair," Neo protests. "I've done too many things."
"And you think I haven't?" Mew asks, raising her eyebrows.
"Shin wins by default," Neo says, and clinks his bottle against Shin's.
The claims start off mostly innocent—never have I ever cheated on a test, never have I ever broken a bone, never have I ever sent a sexy picture to anyone. It's Mew who breaks the trend, leaning across the table to look Neo straight in the eye as she says, "Never have I ever fucked anyone's mom."
Maybe it's a testament to what they've been through in the last few months, or maybe he's just drunk, but Neo only laughs. "Step-mom," he corrects, and then takes a swig of Singha. "Never have I ever worn eyeliner."
Shin and Mew both have to drink to that.
"Really?" Neo asks.
"Sixth grade play," Shin says. "I was a pirate."
A few more hyper-specific rounds pass. Shin gets both of them with never have I ever stolen someone's wallet (an ahem aimed at Mew) and then Neo challenges him back with never have I ever lived in a mansion, until finally Mew says, "Never have I ever danced topless for anyone."
The look on her face when Shin drinks is enough to have him choking on beer. Mew isn't surprised often and she has, as the mountain of shrimp crackers on the table is a testament to, a decent poker face. To see her eyes wide and mouth hanging open is immensely satisfying.
"I'm guessing he has something to do with it," Mew says, pointing at Neo.
"What happens at a bachelorette party stays at the bachelorette party," Neo says.
"Well, well, well," Mew says, craning her neck back and eyeing the both of them. "How do I get a repeat performance?"
If Shin ends up giving an awkward, uncoordinated lap dance to Mew, set to a Tata Young song blasting tinnily from Neo's phone, then no one outside of the three of them can prove it.
☼
Shin stopped listening five minutes into the meeting. There's a table full of men in stuffy suits talking about zoning regulations and proposed luxury housing developments, while Shin's brain is an ocean away, operating on island time.
He hasn't been sleeping well lately. There are nights where he sees his dad bleeding out on a warehouse floor every time he closes his eyes, and then other nights, usually when he's half-asleep and dazed, where, as though looking down from above, it's his own body instead. That's usually when he bolts upright, checking himself for blood or bullet holes, heart racing.
All three of them have their own versions of those dreams. At first, it wasn't uncommon for Shin to be startled out of sleep by Neo or Mew jerking awake beside him, if he wasn't the one causing the chain reaction in the first place. There are more restful nights now, but Shin always sleeps better when he's with them. His bed in his Bangkok apartment feels too big without two people lying next to him.
"Khun Shin, do the terms of the contract seem reasonable to you?" one of the lawyers asks.
Shin knows more about pottery in the Ayutthaya Period than he does about contract law or tax regulations. The week trial run as his father's apprentice didn't teach him much in the way of legal business dealings. He nods, feeling very much out of his depth. The meeting goes on.
☼
The moment when Shin delivers the money to Gear is almost anticlimactic. He feels like he should be holding a giant check, the kind they give to sweepstakes winners, or a briefcase full of neatly bundled cash. Instead, it's with a bank transfer, sent through the air over invisible wires. The only tangible part of it is Gear's hand in his, firm and slightly sticky with sweat.
"What are you going to do now, P'Gear? Are you going to move to Germany?" Mew asks. She is giddy, flinging her arms around Gear, half-hugging and half-shimmying against him. Shin can't help but smile at her delight and the dazed, content look on Neo's face.
"Visit? Yes. But move there? I'm not built for the cold," Gear says. "I want to buy a house in Thailand and move my wife here."
Gear looks over Mew's shoulder to Neo. "And you, you better not come asking me to buy this place back when you realize that running a bar isn't as easy as you think it will be."
Neo covers his heart with his hand. "I promise. You've fulfilled my dream, P'."
That night, high on the enthusiasm, they tumble into bed, a mess of limbs and clothes being tugged off. Mew's hair ends up in Neo's mouth as she kisses Shin, and Mew takes an elbow to the face as Neo attempts to maneuver Shin onto his hands and knees. As Neo stretches him open, Shin can feel the press of Mew's slender finger alongside Neo's and he nearly comes from that, their attention jointly fixed on him. Neo fucks him hard and fast, then when they've both come, he eats Mew out until she's shaking.
It's a good night.
☼
Mew and Neo video call him one night. No one ever FaceTimes him and the unfamiliar ringtone startles him in the middle of chopping cucumbers, the knife narrowly missing the skin between his thumb and index finger.
When Shin takes the call, Mew's face fills the entire screen. "Hello, Shin?"
Before Shin can say anything, Neo says, "Mew, you're blocking me." One of his hands appears on screen to push lightly at Mew's shoulder.
"Okay, okay," Mew says. There is a shaky transition as Mew passes the phone to Neo and Shin hears her say, "Maybe he would rather look at me than your ugly mug."
With Neo holding the phone, his arm fully extended, Shin can see the both of them, standing in front of the bar. The golden hour light is softly diffusing their faces—the warmer brown streaks in Mew's hair, Neo's suntanned skin—and Shin has the immediate urge to pick up his pencil and sketchbook.
"Hi," he says, holding his own phone out at arm's length, trying to figure out a flattering angle.
"Hey baby, what are you wearing?" Mew asks, wiggling her eyebrows.
"I could show you, but it doesn't come free," Shin says. "Did you call me to hit on me?"
"We called you to show off the bar's renovations," Neo says. They're a week and a half into the updates to the bar and the bungalows. Nothing major, just fixing old plumbing and giving the rooms a minor facelift, but Shin can tell that Neo is eager to make the place his own.
They take Shin on a phone tour of one of the larger bungalows. The walls have been freshly painted, a bright orange that reminds Shin of a sunset over the ocean, and crisp, white linens have replaced the faded bedspread that Shin remembers. The kitchenette has been upgraded with a new sink and new counters, making the room feel more like a hotel than some backpacker's lodge. Outside, the deck's old finish has been stripped and re-varnished with a darker brown stain, something Neo is especially proud of, bragging about his manual labor. "Meanwhile, she's just here for moral support."
"Excuse me," Mew says. "Who smoothed things over with Luong so we would stop being blacklisted from every contractor on this island?"
"That does sound worse than painting a deck," Shin says. If not harder, certainly more annoying.
Neo asks to see Shin's apartment, and he takes them on his own tour. He'd chosen this particular building largely for its proximity to the Skytrain and the impressive looking security team in the lobby, but, although it doesn't quite feel like home, Shin likes the space. It's only a studio apartment, so the space is cozy, just enough room for his bed and the kitchen nook. He shows them some finished sketches he's tacked to the walls, the pictures of the three of them from the bar hanging over his table alongside a Polaroid of him with James and Touch from a reluctant night out. Shin moves out onto the narrow balcony where he sits often, sketching and looking out over the view of the neighborhood.
Back inside, Shin sets his phone on the bed. "I'm going to the bathroom, I'll be right back."
He's only gone for a minute. He steps back out of the bathroom, shaking out his hands to dry them, and stops when he sees the phone screen. From the angle, he can see Mew and Neo, but the phone's camera doesn't reach him. Neo's arm is still extended, holding his phone upright, though Shin can tell that he's forgotten about it. The two of them are curved into each other, Mew with her hand on Neo's chest, Neo with his face tilted down to look at hers. Neo teases Mew and she teases back, chin jutting out in challenge, and then Neo leans down to kiss her on the mouth.
The casual intimacy makes Shin feel sick to his stomach at once. He steps back into the doorway of the bathroom to compose himself because he feels, pathetically, like he might cry. It's an echo of the sickness he'd felt when he'd seen them kissing in the forest. Rejection.
"I have to go, my delivery is here," Shin lies as he picks up his phone. He watches Neo and Mew step apart, a brief look of concern flickering across each of their faces before he presses the button to hang up.
It's not like he didn't know that they were there, together, without him. At his most self-loathing, Shin has imagined them together—kissing, touching, acting as a couple—and resented them for it.
Shin, an only child, after all, has never been good at sharing. When he was in first grade, a classmate had taken the badminton racquet he'd wanted in gym class, the only one with a red handle. Shin, in a fit of childish rage, took an inferior racquet and with it, smacked the classmate so hard in the face that his nose began to bleed. When Shin's mother arrived, she'd asked him why? and he didn't have a good answer. He wanted it, and someone else had it.
In this situation, Shin doesn't know which one of them is the racquet and which one of them is the kid who isn't meant to be holding it. Is he mad at Mew for getting to have Neo, at Neo for not having to choose, or at the both of them, for being able to walk away from their old lives and start a new one with each other, while Shin is here, alone?
Shin turns his phone off. He's mostly prepared everything for his fried rice, but jealousy has settled heavy in his stomach and he finds that he's no longer hungry. The sun isn't even finished setting outside but Shin climbs into bed, pulls the covers over his head, and closes his eyes.
🌦
Shin doesn't answer his phone for five days. This is the longest he's been without talking to either of them since that week where they'd gone their separate ways. It's not like they're in constant contact normally, just texts here and there, an unflattering picture of Neo taken without his knowledge every now and then, but Shin can tell from the increasingly worried texts that his absence has been noted. By day three, he's already irritated with his own petulance.
By day five, when an incoming call flashes Mew's name across his phone, Shin's self-annoyance wins out over his self-pity.
"Oh, so you're alive then?" Mew asks by way of a greeting.
"I'm alive," he says.
"We were worried about you," Mew says. She is also annoyed.
Shin paces the length of his room. He can cross it in a few strides, which doesn't make for optimal pacing, but he's too uncomfortable to stand still. "I'm sorry. Everything is fine, though."
"Is it?" When Shin doesn't say anything, she continues, her tone softening, "Shin, you can't keep running away from us when you're upset."
In the background, Shin can hear the faint sound of waves crashing. He imagines her, standing at the edge of the water, bare feet sinking into wet sand. He wonders if Neo asked her to call. "I'm not upset."
"I'm not stupid, you know," Mew says in a huff. Shin knows she is tugging at her hair now, the way she does when she's frustrated. "It's obvious when you're sulking. This doesn't work if you don't talk to us."
"Do you want this to work?" Shin asks.
"You're not being fair."
"It would be easier for you," Shin says, though it hurts to admit. "Without me."
"When have we ever done things the easy way?" Mew asks. "You're a part of this team. We want you to be. I want you to be."
Shin has, without realizing, stopped in front of his string of pictures. He reaches out, touching the most recent one, a candid shot of the three of them from the night they drank and played cards until dawn. In the blurry photo, Neo is kissing the top of Shin's head, at the same time that Mew presses a sloppy kiss against Shin's cheek.
"Why?"
"Do you have to have a reason to love someone?" There is a catch in her voice, and Shin thinks about her face when Neo asked her if she loved Shin, vulnerable in a way he hadn't seen before. "Because we need you to be the voice of reason around here, and because you understand us and we understand you. And because you make a much better omelette. Do you get it now?"
"Did Neo tell you to call me?" Shin asks.
"What?" Mew says. "No. I called because I missed you, jerk."
Shin's finger traces over his own smile, immortalized in glossy photo paper. He remembers Gear's voice, a moment before the camera flash, Say 'young love!' Mew's words have not entirely smoothed out the jagged edges of Shin's jealousy, but they've helped. Maybe he gets it.
☼
Neo had said, that day when Shin was ready to accept his place on the sidelines, that he loved them both, equally and at the same time. Shin knows that Neo meant it, the same way Shin knows that he loves Mew for all of her roughness and all of her strength, the same way that Shin is learning to accept that Mew loves him as well.
But it turns out there may be another competitor for Neo's love.
"It's like he thinks he birthed this bar," Mew whispers to Shin as they watch Neo fussing with the sign, going on two minutes now, despite the fact that it was already hanging straight before Neo began minutely nudging it into place. "It's his child."
"He's just proud," Shin whispers back.
"Hey, who brought you here?" Mew calls out to Neo's back. "Who introduced you to the previous owner?"
Neo turns around, shooting Mew a skeptical look. "Do you want credit? How about your name on here?"
Three Hearts. It gives Shin a rush every time he looks at the sign, the tangible reminder that he is wanted here. The three of them, a team.
Later on, Neo makes him a drink, a preview of tonight's special, a tropical cocktail made with rum with orange and papaya juices. "So," Neo says, pushing the glass across the bar to Shin. "Are you staying for good this time?"
He asks like he already knows the answer, but is hoping that asking might change it anyway.
"Not yet," Shin says. He looks at Neo and his easy, fond smile, then back at Mew, who winks when she catches his eye. "But I'm going to keep coming back until I can be here for good."
If home is where the heart is, then the signage proves that his home is here.