Chapter Text
"I'm your boyfriend."
"...Pardon–?"
The man standing in front of Porchay, a breathtakingly-handsome and dripping-wet vision in black jeans and a studded leather jacket, is Wik, and he is most definitely not Chay's boyfriend.
Chay doesn’t have a boyfriend. Never has.
Wik’s befuddling declaration registers as something like TV static in the space between Chay's ears, where his brain would be if it wasn't still lagging behind back in his apartment’s living room, frozen in the moments before he heard the insistent pounding of a knock on his door. At two in the morning, no less! But the time isn't important. Chay has much bigger problems—blessings?—that trump the indignation of being bothered at such an ungodly hour by far.
Wik is standing in his doorway. Talking to him. Wik is here and Wik is speaking to him and he's not dreaming. He’s mostly sure of that, anyway.
He'd been hunched over his latest music theory assignment for hours that evening–the remnants undoubtedly still scattered all over his coffee table—and he isn't the type to fall asleep with a looming deadline and work yet to be done. Alas, he doesn't have the wherewithal to slap his cheeks to be sure, and anyway, he doesn't want to look like a complete fool in front of Wik.
He's almost certainly making a complete fool of himself regardless. Typical.
Chay stands stock-still in the entryway to his apartment, mouth gaping helplessly open and closed, staring blankly at the space where he imagines those nonsensical words would float in bold, colorful lettering between him and Wik, were they in a cartoon or an anime or something. His shoulders were still warm and tingling where Wik had gripped them after Chay opened the door to find him standing there, drenched and shivering.
I'm your boyfriend.
Unfortunately for Chay, this is no cartoon—though he hasn't entirely ruled out a dream, many of his dreams follow similar storylines—so he rallies himself to the best of his abilities and resolutely lifts his eyes from the empty space near Wik's chest to somewhere between his eyebrows, which are dark and furrowed in concentration. His pupils are pinholes in his dark irises when Chay dares to dart up for a glimpse.
He's so beautiful, backlit by the fluorescent hallway lights of Chay's condo, staring at him with such intensity that it makes him shiver. He feels trapped, held in place by the weight of his idol’s attention, leveled solely on him.
Chay lets out a shaky exhale, and Wik's eyebrows draw into a peak that morphs his chiseled face into something that looks like desperation. The expression punches the remaining air from Chay's lungs like a fist to the chest.
“You don’t know me, do you?” Wik murmurs, something in his gaze cracking down the middle and shattering onto the damp hallway tiles.
Chay’s lips fall open again, but he doesn’t know what to say. Of course I know you, I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with you for like 3 years now? Or, your music saved my life, you’re practically a part of me? Or the most reasonable, I don’t believe we’ve met before, I’m so sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong guy?
Taking in his hesitation, Wik’s eyebrows squeeze together further into an expression Chay can’t interpret, and then smooth over into the cool self-assurance Chay is used to seeing on him in a blink.
Chay has always thought that Wik's strong eyebrows are one of his best features. In his opinion, they make him look both fearsome and somehow tragic, like the weathered statues of ancient demigods that sit within glass cases, doomed to be fleetingly admired by a shifting crowd of vaguely-interested museum-goers, when what they really deserve is a magnificent gilded temple full of devoted worshippers to leave offerings at their marble feet and fall to their knees before them in prayer.
Now though, for some reason, he finds himself a little nauseated by the sight. He doesn’t know why, but he wants Wik to stop making that face. It feels wrong all of a sudden, practiced and plastic—a gleaming mask of ice caging in the furious storm of emotion that Chay can see in Wik’s eyes, can feel humming in the humid air between them. His fingers twitch where they rest near his hip, the urge to run his thumbs over Wik’s brow-bone and cheeks until he relaxes making them tingle.
He startles out of the ping-pong volleying of his thoughts at the sound of a throat clearing softly in front of him. Right, he can worry about Wik's eyebrows later.
Wik's eyebrows. Wik, his idol, rising youtube star and nation-wide pop music sensation. Wik, the reason he even applied to this university at all. Wik, the sole reason he stayed even as his life fell apart all around him.
Wik, who is standing in the doorway to Chay's apartment. At two in the morning. Claiming to be his boyfriend. Asking if he knows him.
Genuinely what the hell is happening.
Chay sucks in a breath, silently praying to whatever sadistic—or shockingly benevolent?—god is inflicting this absolutely baffling cosmic joke on him that he doesn't stutter too much.
"U-um..." he blinks hard, his brain—which seems to have finally joined the party—stumbling over itself to both process what's happening, and stay aligned with his mouth. He dips into a hurried wai, remembering his manners. "P-P'Wik! What are you doing here…? I–um, I didn't even know you... knew my name, or anything."
Wik offers him a slow, intentional blink, as if he's the one being obtuse in some mysterious way, and then snorts under his breath, the corner of his pulling up into the ghost of a smile. Chay blinks in utter bewilderment, and then winces as it hits him that he never answered Wik’s question.
"I'm your boyfriend, of course I know your name," Wik intones meaningfully. “Though, judging by your gaping and staring, we’re not… the same. Here.” He gestures slightly toward himself with his hands like he doesn't quite know what to do with them. It's then that Chay notices the blood splattered across his narrow chest, painting his white t-shirt with patches of brown-ish crimson.
His vision zeroes in like the scope of a sniper on the dark blotches and he yelps in alarm, scanning Wik quickly from head-to-toe with such fervor that his whole head moves along with his eyes.
Wik looks—rough. There's white gauze wrapped around his head, soaked through with blood, which Chay has no idea how he didn't notice before. His clothing is soaked through from the storm outside and his hair is dangling in damp ropes. He has dark bruises under his eyes, and the sheen of sweat on his pallid skin gives him a sickly glow in bright white lighting. His knuckles are a raw, angry red and un-bandaged.
He looks like he just got jumped, or decided to brawl with an angry storm god. Chay can’t even begin to guess who won. He doesn’t know if Wik can fight, but his knuckles are so obviously busted that it’s kind of undeniable that he’s been punching things. Or people.
He wonders, in the slightly hysterical corner of his mind that his friend Ohm calls his ‘nerd freak-out zone,’ if this is how Penelope felt, when Odysseus returned home from the war. He wonders which of the two of them is more surprised in this moment—Penelope, who was fortuitously aware of her own marriage to Odysseus, or Porchay?
He doesn't know what to do with this. He’s never seen Wik appear anything less than perfect. No one has. When Wik appears in front of the cameras, or—rarely—when he is spotted sauntering to class or wandering around campus with his gaggle of ‘friends’, he is always perfectly healthy, perfectly happy, and perfectly put-together. At least on the outside. He wears stylish clothes, drapes himself in silver necklaces and rings and dangling earrings, and applies just the right amount of makeup to appear airbrushed and striking, yet still effortlessly masculine. Not that Chay cares about that sort of thing, really, but the effect is respectable nonetheless. It’s a hot topic on the Wik subreddit.
By contrast, seeing him this way is—shocking. And yet, he's still so unfairly beautiful, with his hair curling around him like a halo as it dries and the scent of petrichor clinging to his leather jacket, and he’s standing so close that Chay can't catch his breath.
It feels like an honor, in a way, though Chay isn't sure it's an honor he wants if it means Wik ends up like this.
"You're injured!" He yelps again. "What in God's name are you doing here, like this–!?" He darts out a hand unthinkingly and snags Wik's left wrist where it is dangling at his side, holding it up to eye level when he catches a glimpse of shiny blue plastic.
"Is this a hospital bracelet!?"
Wik flinches at the sudden contact and something flashes across his face, his arm and shoulder muscles tensing and locking in a way that looks almost painful—his captive hand twitching in some aborted movement that Chay can't place. Maybe to jerk out of his hold, maybe to curl into a fist. Or maybe just the twitch of someone injured and disoriented who just got grabbed out of the blue, Chay doesn't know.
He kicks himself. He keeps forgetting that this isn’t Porsche, that he doesn’t know Wik like that, despite knowing a lot about him. Despite Wik’s perplexing claims.
Before Chay has time to react to his own error, Wik visibly forces himself to relax in Chay's hold, his expression smoothing over from the brief flash of wide-eyed... whatever that was, that had overtaken it. Alarm? Hostility?
"...Yes," Wik answers stiffly as Chay hurries to drop his wrist, dipping his head in a quick apologetic bow. His arm falls idly back to his side, bumping against his hip. "It is. Don’t be upset, it’s not a big deal."
"What were you doing in the hospital, P'Wik? How could the doctors discharge you like this!? Your bandages are all soaked through and you're covered in blood, something’s gonna end up infected–!" He flaps his hands helplessly in Kim's direction, trying to communicate the severity of the situation to Wik, who is, in Chay’s opinion, far too calm.
"Kim," Wik's low, smooth voice cuts through Chay's frantic babbling like a knife.
Chay freezes and raises his eyebrows, baffled. "What?"
"My name. It's Kim." He frowns, and Chay feels inexplicably like he's disappointed the man somehow.
...Now hold on a minute.
Despite the fact that Kim probably isn’t aware that Chay is—objectively, statistically—one of his biggest fans, he feels a subtle challenge to his fanboy-dedication in that frown. Against his will, he perks up, rising to the challenge even as he’s sure that’s not Kim’s intention.
"Oh, really?,” he pipes up. "So, Wik is just a stage name, then?" He resists the urge to grumble ‘I should've known that…’ under his breath. But then again, he respects the privacy of his idols, and this is presumably something Wik keeps very private, seeing as he hasn't heard a whisper about it anywhere in the Wik fandom in all the years he's been an active member.
Kim's frown deepens as he nods. He begins reaching into his back pocket for something, but Chay cuts him off before he can fish out whatever he was looking for.
"I'm sorry if this is rude, but, like–wouldn't I know that already...? If you were, um... m-my boyfriend." The word feels strange coming out of his mouth in the presence of Wik, even though Wik is the one who said it first.
Wik's—no, Kim's hands clench into fists at his sides. He's trembling, just a little. To Chay, it feels like seeing stone shake. It’s unsettling, and something yanks in his chest with the urge to cradle those fists in his hands and still them.
Kim shifts on his feet, eyes darting around Chay’s face but never quite settling on his eyes. "Look, I know this is probably really confusing for you, but could you let me inside?”
The smooth, melodic tenor of his voice is so familiar to Chay that it sends a pang flying through him, but Kim is continuing. “I don't know if you'll believe me, but at least let me try and explain.” His expression twists, and he fidgets a moment more before murmuring, “I won’t come in if you aren’t comfortable with it. I understand. Just… think about it.”
He almost sounds like he’s begging. It’s so nonsensical—this gorgeous pop star that Chay has idolized since high school asking him for anything, let alone begging him for it.
With the request now hanging in the air between them, Kim takes a subtle step forward and presses ever-so-slightly into Chay's space, that desperate look back on his face, slipping through the cracks in his mask. He can feel Kim's feverish warmth on his skin. He doesn't know what to do with that, either.
"...Please," Kim finishes weakly. It comes out gruff and unpracticed, like he isn't used to saying it.
He's famous. He probably isn't—used to it, that is.
It works, though.
Chay stumbles wordlessly backward and out of the doorway, the scent of petrichor and something deep and woody that he thinks must be cologne filling his nose, and leads Kim further into his apartment with one last harrowed look into the brightly-lit safety of the hallway. He watches as Kim closes the door behind him, but it doesn’t make a sound. Chay makes a mental note to ask him how he did that later, because the door has a rusty hinge that squeals like nails on a chalkboard usually.
They shuffle awkwardly into Chay's living room, which Chay realizes with a sharp bolt of despair is an absolute disaster. Like, a disaster.
There are piles of loose staff paper with his hastily-scribbled ideas for chord progressions lying haphazardly all over the coffee table and fanning out onto the couch and the floor. He'd kicked over the waste basket when he'd scrambled to get the door, and the evidence of his numerous discarded drafts lies in a sad little trail of crumpled paper balls leading under the couch. The bags of chips and cups of instant ramen that he lives off of are scattered in every nook and cranny of the space, and his laundry is draped over almost every available surface in the room, because his drying rack broke and he keeps forgetting to buy a new one.
He cringes and resists the intense urge to start scurrying around like a cornered prey animal, hiding all traces of his mess from the man he admires most in the world. He reveres Wik even more than his older brother, he thinks. Gosh, what would Porsche say about this mess?
Porsche isn't here, his brain reminds him cruelly.
It stings.
Because of course, right after helping Chay move into his student-housing his freshman year of university, Porsche had spirited off to some island to work as a bartender for a mysterious millionaire benefactor, or something—his task of raising Chay until he was capable of supporting himself apparently complete. Right.
"I'm sorry, it's a total mess in here. I'm still not really used to living alone and I-I wasn't, um, expecting company..." He fidgets with his fingers, cheeks flushing in mortification. It’s been over a year since he moved out of the family house, so the excuse is flimsy at best, but despite all the practice he’s had, Chay has always struggled to adjust after the people he loves most in the world inevitably leave him. Sue him.
He knows Porsche raised him better than this, though, even if he did up-and-leave at the very end. Until now, the only witnesses to Chay’s newfound state of perpetual disaster have been himself and his small group of friends, and it’s never bothered them, so he had allowed it to continue without much thought. It makes Chay feel childish, knowing that Kim is now aware of the fact that he can't even properly take care of himself when left to his own devices, despite being nineteen. Shame creeps into the perplexing flurry of emotions that swirls behind his ribs.
"It's fine, I’m used to it by now," Kim murmurs absently, looking to Chay like he genuinely means it. Chay finds that hard to believe.
Abruptly, Kim frowns again, his eyes sweeping the room.
"...Do you eat anything besides cup noodles, Porchay?"
He lets out an indignant squeak, flush burning up to his ears. "Yes–! …Sometimes! Look, it's almost exam season, and I don’t really work, and I don't have a full kitchen so my options are kind of limited–" His words are jumbling together in his rush to defend himself. Mysterious payments are transferred to his checking account monthly—presumably from Porsche and his ‘island bartending gig’ or whatever the fuck, though they’re a far greater sum than any bartender salary he’s ever heard of—but he uses that to cover rent and tuition and then refuses to touch the rest. He doesn’t need handouts.
If Porsche wants him to live a high-quality life, all that would require is his presence. Chay thought he had made that clear to Porsche throughout their tumultuous shared childhood, but here they are. Or rather, here Chay is and here Porsche is not.
"Hey, hey. I'm not judging you. I promise," Kim cuts in gently, making a placating motion with his palms, like Porchay is a skittish horse or something. Honestly, it sort of works, though that could just be the effect of Kim’s achingly familiar voice as he tries to soothe him. "I was just wondering. It's not healthy, you know? I want you to be healthy." He levels that intensity on Chay that makes him feel pinned in place again.
Chay blinks in helpless confusion, biting down the vaguely snarky, deflective comment that it sounds a bit like judgement in favor of something that will hopefully get him answers. One of them needs to be direct, and evidently it is not going to be Kim.
"...And, why is that?", he begins, tentatively. "I mean—it's not that I don't appreciate it or anything! I just can't imagine why you would care about me, of all people." I mean, no one else seems to be able to manage it.
He quashes the bitter thought as it surfaces, blaming it on the maelstrom of conflicting feelings currently raging inside his head and loosening the iron grip he usually has on his unfortunate tendency toward spite and self-loathing. In his defense, he feels like he's been thrown into a box of a hundred mismatched jigsaw-puzzle pieces, hopelessly trying to fit them all together while some crazy kid shakes the box around like a maraca.
Kim just stares ponderously at him for a moment, then folds his lips together and shakes his head in frustration, which is quite possibly the least helpful thing ever. After another hesitant breath where he is clearly engaging in some sort of furious internal debate, Kim lets out a huff and forces out an answer.
"Because… I care about you, Chay. More than I've ever cared about another person." His hands are curled into tight, trembling fists. He stuffs them into his pockets, pink dusting his chiseled cheekbones.
Chay feels like he’s been slapped. He pinches the inside of his wrist between two fingers, wincing at the sting. This is—for some reason that Chay can’t even begin to guess at—really happening.
He fights to keep his jaw off the floor. The rush of euphoria triggered by Kim's words leaves him lightheaded and tingling all over. He can't decide if he feels delighted or a little bit nauseous, unable to escape the nagging thought that this is some sort of truly evil prank. He doesn't think Wik would do something like that, though, despite it being the most logical conclusion.
However, he doesn’t have the slightest clue what this could be, otherwise.
If Kim would just suck it up and explain himself—but the man seems to be floundering now that he's found himself in Chay's living room, for some reason.
Aside from a brief moment at his university's open house the summer before his freshman year, where Wik hadn't been feeling well and had to end his performance shortly after Chay arrived—and of course the Wik concert Porsche had somehow scrounged up enough money to gift him tickets to for his eighteenth birthday, bless his absentee brother—Chay had never seen Wik in person. From what he'd heard, Wik rarely showed up to classes, though that didn't matter much since Wik was two years his senior. His adoration was expressed exclusively to the pixels of his phone screen that took Wik’s shape, and the occasional fan letter that he’d sent under a pseudonym.
"P'Wi-P'Kim," Chay hedges. "We've never, um... we've never spoken, have we? I mean, I know of you of course, everyone does, you're like– the campus celebrity. And a literal celebrity, of course! I didn't mean to imply you weren't, like, actually famous or whatever, sorry, I know that you are–"
Kim just stares at him through his babbling, eyebrows slightly raised.
"...and anyway, it doesn't even matter what I think, I'm nobody– but that's my point, um..." He trails off as Kim's eyebrows climb higher and higher, the corner of his mouth twitching like he's suppressing a grin. "...how do you know who I am?" Chay finishes lamely, trickling off into fidgety silence.
How can you say you care about me, Chay wants to ask. Do you really mean it?
He doesn’t ask, because he isn’t sure what answer he even wants to hear.
Kim shoves his hands in the pockets of his dusty black jeans again and gives Chay a long, considering look. His eyes are dark and weighty. Chay doesn't know what he's searching for, let alone what he finds, but he feels strangely bare before Kim's scorching gaze. He squirms under the attention, goosebumps sweeping across his body like Kim's eyes are a paintbrush and his skin is canvas bending beneath the bristles.
After a moment, Kim huffs out a frustrated puff of air and flops backward onto the couch, limbs sprawled out to imply carelessness—but Chay doesn't miss how meticulously he angles his body to avoid crushing any of Chay's papers. He feels an inexplicable rush of fondness at the subtle gesture, which he quickly shoves into the deep, dark corners of his mind. He tells himself he’s just appreciating courtesy, but he’s lying.
He takes a seat on the bean bag on the other side of the coffee table, settling down and tucking his knees up beneath him. Kim eyes him and drags a hand through his hair, inhaling slowly. It leaves a few strands spiked up around the gauze, which is for some reason incredibly charming.
"Look, Porchay..." He begins, voice gravelly and expression shifting into something more somber.
"Chay," he corrects without thinking. When Kim blinks at him, he coughs, eyes skittering down to the floor. "It's, um... what everyone calls me. You can call me whatever, though, I don't really mind.”
He means it in an accommodating way—after all, they're not close. At least, Chay has been under that impression for all of his nineteen years of life. Kim appears to feel differently, and he frowns at Chay again. It's almost a pout, Chay notes with curiosity, his lower lip pushed out just slightly and his head tilted so a wisp of hair falls over his eyes.
Oh, he should not be allowed to be this charming. Chay's reservoir of normal, dignified, un-creepy behavior is rapidly running dry. Kim's finger runs absently over the outline of something in his front pocket, his nail catching slightly on the seam of his jeans.
"I know that. Chay is fine, I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable, being too familiar," Kim mumbles, staring at a point slightly to Chay's left. So baseless dating claims are fine, but he draws the line at nicknaming without express permission? Whatever, the sound of his name in Kim's mouth is foreign and wonderful and distracting enough that he can choose to ignore that.
He hopes he gets to hear Kim say it again.
Chay tilts his head, a little smile playing on lips despite himself. He's supposed to be playing it cool—at least, that's what he had vowed to himself in the first 3 seconds after he opened the door to Kim's expectant face—but he's already been failing spectacularly, so he can't find it within himself to care.
"I don't mind if you're familiar, P'Kim," he says earnestly, and he means it. "I know a lot about you, too. I'm, like, a huge fan to be honest," he releases the confession on a gust of air, feeling lighter with it out in the open.
He'd been feeling like he was withholding something from Kim, not being transparent about being more than just a regular classmate of Kim’s, and the awful anxious feeling he'd been harboring dissipates immediately, even though he's still a little nervous about how Kim will react to the admission. He hopes he's not uncomfortable, and that Kim knows that Chay will be as normal about it as possible, of course.
Kim’s cheeks dimple a little, and Chay beams across his coffee table at him, his nervousness and confusion settling a bit to make way for his excitement. Regardless of the circumstances, meeting Wik has been his dream for years. It's surreal.
"Yes, I know that too." Kim's barely-there grin widens into something more substantial, taking on a smug edge. His voice is tinged with what Chay thinks might be mischief. "Did you think you were being subtle? You have an awful lot of pictures of me on your wall..."
He dips his head meaningfully toward that spot to Chay's left that he had been staring at earlier, and Chay feels his heart jump up into his throat.
He whips around, almost falling off the bean bag in his fervor, a tidal wave of sheer dread traveling through his body with such astounding force that it leaves him feeling raw and buzzy, like he’s been scrubbed down with sandpaper.
This can't be happening. Thiscantbehappeningthiscantbehappeningthiscantbehappening.
Above the side table, warmly illuminated by a string of cheerfully blinking fairy lights, is his sizable collection of Wik candids plastered all over his wall, no longer safely tucked away within the four walls of his bedroom—a decor choice which had seemed like a good idea at the time of move-in, since it felt a little weird to put them so close to his bed when he had the whole apartment to himself anyway. His friends all knew how weird he was, it’s not like he could hide that from them at this point, so he had decided not to bother.
But that foolish, foolish choice had left the photos in full view. Of Kim. This entire time.
Chay needs to be shot and killed. It would be a mercy. His life is over.
He leaps to his feet, face burning with a blush so vibrant that it actually stings, and scrambles over to the corner with the photos, desperately trying to throw himself in front of them to shield them from Kim's eyes.
Kim's eyes, which are shining with mirth now as he watches Chay trip over his own feet in his haste, murmuring squeaky apologies and unintelligible excuses as he—quickly, but carefully, they're his prized possessions after all—scoops them up and tucks them safely away within the side-table drawer.
He flops back down onto the bean bag and buries his face in his hands, winded.
"That's so unbelievably mortifying..." He groans after a strangled breath, words muffled by his palms that remain pressed to his face, shielding him from his mortification. “Please kill me, I’m serious.”
Kim chuckles—the first real laugh he’s heard from Kim, he realizes—and Chay hears the faux-leather creak as he presumably stands up from the couch. There is silence.
A moment later, the bean bag dips down next to Chay with the added weight of another body.
There's a brief pause, like Kim is debating his next move, and then Kim's velvety voice is murmuring, "I'm going to touch you now. I hope that’s okay."
Chay doesn't even have time to register his own alarm before warm fingers, rough with calluses, wrap around his own hands, where they’re pressed into his face. Barely-there pressure and gently coaxes them down and into his lap. He moves willingly, stunned and slack-jawed.
Kim is mere inches away from him, perched on the bean bag to his right and still cradling Chay's hands in his own. Chay's heart stutters out a frantic, fluttering rhythm as he stares down at where their fingers intertwine.
He doesn't want to know if Kim is looking at him or not—doesn't want to meet his eyes.
Kim's hands are bigger than his, just barely, and the calluses on his left hand are so deep that there's a slight, permanent divot in the tip of each one from the press of a guitar string. Chay has calluses too, but it's evident that he doesn't play as often as Kim, because his are just a smattering of rough skin on the pads of his fingers. Chay watches as Kim runs his thumb over one–Chay's pointer finger–and Chay can't unpack the swell of emotion that overcomes him when he sees something like a shudder run through Kim, up through his arms and then down his shoulders and back. A warm, shivery feeling bleeds into Chay.
They are very close together. Chay both loves and hates the anticipation that grips his lungs and squeezes. His eyes fall of their own accord to Kim's lips, plush and pink and a little chapped. He's never even kissed anyone before, but he wants, he wants, he wants.
For a moment, they bask in the charged silence, hand in hand. Chay's fingers suddenly itch for his guitar.
"...Do you believe in parallel worlds?," Kim rumbles into the space between them, blindsiding Chay for the hundredth time tonight. It’s suddenly hard to breathe in the narrow space between their bodies. He blinks hard and looks up, unsure how to react.
Kim is looking right at him. His face is serious, but tense, like he's expecting a negative reaction from Chay and is bracing himself against it. His eyes, though, are imploring. Chay inhales shallowly.
"Sorry...?" His voice is unsteady, warbling a little.
"Like, alternate universes parallel to our own. With... other versions of us. Different versions." He speaks slowly, enunciating his words with care. Like he knows he sounds crazy. And he's asking Chay anyway.
Kim's hands twitch around Chay's like he expects him to pull away, and isn't ready to let him go.
"...I don't know, I-I've never really thought about it," he begins carefully. He doesn't know what Kim is looking for here, but he's not going to lie. "I don't think I do? I wouldn't be entirely opposed if I saw evidence, I guess. There are lots of movies about stuff like that." Chay shrugs. "But I've yet to see anything that makes me believe they're real."
Kim's face is unreadable, but his hands tighten around Chay's again. He levels Chay with a somber look, taking a slow, deep breath. "And if I told you I'm from a parallel world? That I got transported here, somehow, and woke up in the hospital?" He pauses, his lips pressing together like the confession is forcing its way out of him against his will.
"...If I told you that in my world, you and I have been dating since your freshman year? What would you think?"
Kim is so tense, he's barely moving at all—barely breathing, even. He looks as if he's coiled tight, prepared to spring up and sprint out of the room at the slightest trigger. His face is a stony mask again, but Chay finds himself marveling at the fact that Kim is still capable of somehow looking so afraid.
"Well...", Chay begins gently, looking him in the eye until Kim's eyes skitter back down to their hands. "I honestly don't know. I want to believe you, really," he says emphatically, squeezing Kim's hand in his own, "it's just—that's a lot, you know?"
Kim jerks his chin in acknowledgement and says nothing. His thumb is running over Chay's pointer finger again, though Chay thinks it may be an unconscious gesture this time. …Out of habit?
Chay sucks in a breath and releases it slowly. As absolutely outlandish as this whole experience has been, he adores Wik, and he hates seeing him like this: tense and unsure and poised to run from some nameless danger that Chay can't identify but yearns to protect him from. He wants desperately for that teasing, self-assured Kim from a few minutes ago to return, comfortable and warm.
He thinks of Porsche, and how he would behave sometimes after returning home from a particularly vicious fight at the underground ring Chay wasn’t supposed to know about—tense, withdrawn, paranoid. He remembers sitting with him on the bathroom floor, patiently trying to coax warmth and calm back into his brother’s body when it was forced into fight-or-flight for so long that it got locked down like that, the need to survive, survive, survive, turning him into something Chay barely recognized.
After a moment, he lifts his wrist and slowly presses the back of Kim's hand to his own cheek, turning his face into the touch but keeping his eyes locked on Kim's expression the entire time. In the minute flashes of emotion visible beneath Kim's tense mask, Chay registers shock, confusion, and then... the tiniest spark of delight. Kim remains wary, but the lines of his shoulders relax just slightly.
To Chay, it's such a profound win that he feels the urge to jump up and dance. Suddenly, he feels confident that he can figure this out. He isn't sure why.
"Could you tell me about your world, P'Kim?" He prompts softly, "About... about your Chay? How we met, maybe?"
Kim's eyes flick back up to him, a glint of hope within them so raw that Chay feels his heart clench. When Kim opens his mouth to answer, Chay finds himself leaning forward—not just to appease him, but also because he genuinely wants to hear Kim's answer.
Surely it couldn't be true, he reasons with himself. Kim has a head injury, after all. His pupils had been needle-thin, drowning in the warm brown of his irises when Chay had answered the door, and he was clearly still disoriented. He probably had a concussion, maybe even a severe one judging by the blood caking his bandages–
But still.
But still, something deep in the back of Chay's brain—the part of him that adores Wik with a fanaticism that can't be helped when a musician saves a young boy's life—wants desperately for it to be real. He knows he's naïve. He knows he's too trusting, too optimistic, too willing to project his own tendency toward heartfelt honesty onto others. Painfully so, at times. He knows. His friends would skin him alive if they could see him right now. Ohm would never let him hear the end of it, if he knew. And Chay is sure he'll find out, eventually. He always does. But the thing about naïvety is that being aware of it doesn't make it any easier to avoid. Not when, deep down, he doesn't even really want to.
There's probably something wrong with him.
He doesn't dare acknowledge that part of himself fully, yet. But it's there, undeniably. And Kim is very convincing, especially when Chay is perched on a bean bag, warming Kim's rain-chilled skin with his own, their hands intertwined and one pressed into the soft skin of Chay's cheek.
He can feel Kim's heartbeat, very faintly. It races in time with his own.