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chapitre7 · 3 months

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eye of the beholder

แฟนผมเป็นประธานนักเรียน | My School President fanfiction

Tinn Tinnaphob Jirawatthanakul/Gun Guntaphon Wongwitthaya

8k words

Rated M for sexual content

Crossdressing Tinn

An ode to queerness, beauty, freedom, truth and first love

For @silverquillsideas ❤ Happy birthday, beloved

Read on AO3

Gun thinks he misheard at first. Suddenly everything around him is too loud, both the sound coming from the speakers around the massive hall and the sound coming from those surrounding him. It’s Tinn that grounds him to the present; his hands on Gun’s neck and his lips covering his face with kisses.

He can only hear Tinn’s giggles because they share no space between them. He sees the joy reflected on Tinn’s face, radiant and honest and full of admiration and love. There’s no one Gun can read better than him, and among all the people that Gun has known and loved all these years, there’s no one whose thoughts and feelings are as transparent to him as Tinn’s. He feels like a winner for that smile alone, for the pride that Tinn so easily carries for him. He loves him so much. But he can only look at Tinn for a few beats, before his bandmates are pushing him off his seat and towards the stage.

“Um,” Gun starts at the microphone, but for the first time in many years, he’s at a loss for words. There are so many people he knows in the audience, and so many other people that he has only heard of, but doesn’t know personally. All the other artists in the category are also there, looking at him, waiting for his speech.

Desperate for an anchor, Gun searches the crowd until he finds Tinn. He’s smiling broadly, his beautiful teeth in full view, unlike the shy smiles so characteristic of him that Gun can see even with his eyes closed. The one dangling earring he’s wearing catches the stage lights in the single gem that balances at the end of the thin, gold chain that tickles down to his neck. His hair is tousled to the side unlike his usual style, and he fits right in with the artists in the room, charming and expensive. He’s mouthing something that seems like “Speak,” but Gun can only look at him, trophy in hand.

Gun thinks he might do something embarrassing like cry. Sound has an arm around his shoulders before that emotion is realized, and he’s lightly pushing Gun aside to talk into the mic and start their thank you speech.

Gun gazes back into the audience, his eyes naturally falling back on Tinn, as if magnetized.

He tries to think of who he wants to thank, of how to put his whole trajectory into just a few precious seconds without forgetting a single thing, but his whole mind is an ecstatic blank.

***

Singing had always been a passion, yes. Inherited, like the best of passions, the type that lasts longer than a teenage dream. Passion enough to make him ditch university when he started getting more gigs, and enough to last several changes in the lineup of his band. “I’m sorry, Gun,” so many of his friends had said before leaving to pursue more regular, tangible dreams. Some of them didn’t even apologize, but those weren’t his friends. Sound stayed, though. Despite his dreams being bigger than the stage Gun could provide him, Sound stayed.

And that’s how, on one night that had everything to go wrong, Gun met Tinn. Because Tinn wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for Sound, and Tinn wouldn’t have gone to Gun if Gun wasn’t a massive fucking idiot.

Who trips over their own equipment? Who sprains their ankle on the way down a stage?

Sound had already been drilling him about how little sleep he got every night, and the incident would make him no kinder. If he somehow had broken his neck on that fall, Sound would probably have looked for a way to resuscitate him just so he could kill him again. Gun was doing his best, but between anxiety, fatigue, too much caffeine and post-performance buzz, it was only a matter of time before something stupid happened. And like a self-fulfilling prophecy, it did. But then there was also —

In the middle of his embarrassing incident and cries, there was Tinn running up to him, all nerdy glasses and ironed clothes with angular patterns, saying, “Let me see, I’m a doctor.”

Sound had helped Gun sit down on the steps down the side of the stage and stood hovering around like an overbearing mother. Gun didn’t know where the rest of the band was, but given the bad mood they were in all evening, he wouldn’t be surprised if they had left altogether. Tinn was probably the first person Gun ever saw Sound look relieved upon seeing.

Tinn removed Gun’s right shoe delicately, and then his sock. His hands were cold but kind, moving Gun’s foot from one side to the other. He looked up when Gun made a pained sound, and that’s when Gun took a proper look at him. He didn’t think Tinn fit very well in that bar. He seemed too... neat for it.

“It doesn’t appear to be broken, but it’d be better to take an x-ray,” Tinn said then.

“But what if it’s broken?” Sound said, hand on Tinn’s shoulder. “It could be broken, right?”

“Nothing’s broken, I can stand just fi— ah!”

It’s interesting how memory works. More than the first touch between them — Tinn’s grip on his arms, keeping him from falling ungracefully back down — what comes to Gun every time he thinks about that moment is Tinn’s scent. Something floral, fresh but not extravagant, that Gun had never smelled before. The girlfriends he had had before had always smelled too sweet, and his bandmates all smelled identical, possibly the same brand of cologne.

Caught between pain and a boy who smelled really good, Gun’s mind was white noise. He looked up at Tinn but Tinn was looking at Sound.

“Help me take him to my car,” Tinn said, and Gun frowned, protested, but Sound sounded remarkably like Gun’s mother when he was nervous, so it was a battle lost before it even began.

Minutes into a car ride with Tinn, Gun said, “I’m sorry.”

“Hmm? What for?” Tinn asked him, while slowing down to a stop at a red light.

“For ruining your night. It’s still early but instead of enjoying your Friday night, you have to take the band’s stupid singer to the hospital.”

Tinn gave him a pretty smile and shook his head.

“I was only there for your band anyway. Sound invited me, I’m— Oh I’m sorry, I never introduced myself, did I?” He grimaced, and Gun couldn’t look away from all of Tinn’s little expressions that he could catch with the city night lights. “My name’s Tinn. I’m a friend of Sound’s.”

“Sound has friends?” Gun quipped, partly genuinely impressed and partly to see if it would make Tinn laugh. It did.

“I’m the only one, I’m afraid.”

“Sound has a doctor friend.”

“We go back to a time when I hadn’t made such big life decisions and he was a little cuter.”

“Must be before I met him then.”

They both laughed at that, the car shifting back into gear as the light turned green. Gun’s phone rang with the ringtone he set just for Sound, as if he could hear them. He picked it up and sent Sound short replies, quickly ending the call, and then muted his phone. He didn’t want to get stuck in a back-and-forth with Sound and get himself motionsick, but mostly, he wanted to focus on Tinn.

“I’m Gun,” he said after putting his phone down on his lap.

Tinn smiled before he said, “I know,” and Gun didn’t know why it made him feel shy. Gun was the leader and singer of the band Tinn had come to watch, and Tinn was friends with Sound, so it was only natural that he’d know who Gun was. Plus, Gun had been singing for many years at that point, so he had already met people who recognized him before. He could look at so many different people every day and not see them, but he was seen. Perhaps he even meant something to them, which was something he dreamed of.

But something about the way Tinn said it — confident and a little proud — made Gun pause. He wouldn’t really be able to put into words why.

Gun’s mother always said he was perpetually stuck at five years old when he got sick, and injured Gun wasn’t much different. He would have preferred to cling to Tinn as they entered the hospital so he could smell his perfume again — a normal thing to do to a guy you just met — but Tinn got him a wheelchair. Maybe Gun did pout about it, or maybe something else showed on his face as the wheelchair gave him an unpleasant, queasy feeling, because Tinn crouched beside him and said, “Don’t worry. I won’t be your doctor but I’ll stay here, okay?”

The LED streetlights cast Tinn in much clearer light than the neon lights at the bar and the partial darkness inside his car. Now that he didn’t have to move, that he was being so kindly gazed at, he could look at Tinn. At his dark hair styled away from his face save for a few strands falling near his left eye; the beauty mark under said eye; the touch of pink dusted high on his cheeks; and the sheer gloss over his lips when he smiled at Gun.

Why the fuck did Sound never introduce Tinn before?

***

“Ow, fuck, stop pinching me, Gun!”

Sound deserved it, even if he did help Gun into his apartment after Tinn dropped him off, and even after he helped Gun shower and dress back up. He rolled his eyes when Gun still glared at him from the comfortable bundle he made under his bed covers.

“Look, Gun, Tinn is— It’s annoying, okay!”

“What is? He is?” Gun frowned, having seen exactly zero things annoying about Tinn.

“No— well, yes, he can be, I just mean—” He huffed and Gun raised a perfectly skeptical eyebrow at him. “Look, Tinn was very quiet in middle school, and then in high school it was like— everyone wanted to talk to him, to whisper about him and get his attention. They’d leave him letters in his notebooks and backpack.”

“So you’re saying he’s too hot.”

“I’m saying he doesn’t like it,” Sound said, rummaging through Gun’s wardrobe for worn-out pieces he could wear. “Having all that attention, I mean. He ran for school president so it’d look good on his curriculum and he had girls following him home. And guys.”

“Oh.”

Gun liked attention, but he wouldn’t like anyone following him home.

“Yeah. So he doesn’t get out much. I’m taking this, by the way.”

“So how did you get him to come to the bar tonight?”

Gun picked at his cuticles on his left hand, curious as to why the question made Sound pause.

“He asked to come,” he said. He held Gun’s gaze for a few seconds before finally leaving with a, “I’m going to shower, good night.”

***

It turned out that Tinn, who didn’t like attention but wanted to watch Gun’s band play, was not so bad at texting. A few exchanged messages with Gun asking about his condition and then offering to accompany him to the hospital for another check-up turned into whole conversations, which led Gun to see him again.

“I can’t believe you just want me for my body,” Gun joked out when Tinn inspected his ankle himself, even though Gun had told him he was feeling much better and didn’t need another trip to the hospital.

Tinn’s response was a much more amused smile than Gun had expected, but Tinn couldn’t maintain eye contact without blushing.

“It was the music, at first, but I didn’t think you’d fall for me so easily.”

Gun could never really anticipate Tinn’s responses, it seemed. Sound had led him to believe that Tinn was just a shy nerd, but he was the one who initiated contact and kept it going. By all means his flirting was silly, but still Gun couldn’t help letting out a startled laugh, louder than he had anticipated, and it, coupled with Tinn kneeling before him in a simple neighborhood café, rendered them more than a few stares. He paid it absolutely no mind when he had Tinn at ease around him. Perhaps because he hadn’t met anyone new in a while, or perhaps because Tinn was so naturally charming, but he found that Tinn was a company that he wanted to keep.

He also wanted to kiss him senseless.

“Why didn’t you tell me Tinn was so cute?” he’d ask Sound.

“Don’t say that shit to me,” Sound would reply, making sure to increase the volume in his headphones, loud enough for Gun to hear, which could not be healthy but Gun valued his life enough not to comment on it.

And Gun did know Sound since he graduated high school and formed his first fraught band. Though Sound still had odd acting jobs during the day, he still met Gun for band practice during most of his evenings and he took every opportunity seriously. He wasn’t afraid of talking Gun out of slumps, because their drive to carry on, despite their difficulties, matched like letters in a scrabble board. Years passed, Sound stayed, they knew the code to each other’s homes, and still it took so long for Gun to meet Tinn.

Not that he blamed Sound for being as reserved as he was. Sound had plenty of colleagues, all with his modeling, acting and singing careers, but he didn’t have many friends. If Gun himself was a reference for Sound’s friendships, then they would be steadfast and loyal to him and Sound to them. Of all people Gun knew, who’d lie to please him or simply take him for an idiot, Sound was the one no-nonsense bastard he trusted above all. However, the longer he spent with Tinn, the more Gun wished he had met him sooner.

Midnight walks with him weren’t boring or awkward, but rather occupied with the serene sound of footsteps and unimportant questions such as, “Did you have a pet as a child?” or “What’s your favorite childhood memory?” or even “What place would you like to visit?” They would walk side by side, shoulders brushing occasionally, fingers drawing close to each other like magnets eager to find their opposite. Gun would talk about obscure Japanese bands, Tinn would talk about dishes he wanted to try, and though they both needed to rest before long days, neither wanted to admit the night had to end.

Did kisses before Tinn taste as sweet? Gun remembered liking a girl in the student council back in high school, and he remembered writing music about her, of the way she could make a rainy day sunny when she walked into the room, of the lighter color in the tips of her hair, and the freckles that looked hand-painted on her cheeks. He more or less remembered his first kiss, because he was nervous, afraid of going at it wrong and becoming a joke in someone’s story.

And yet, the story of his first kiss with Tinn was a funny one.

Tinn had been sick at the time. A yearly cold, he had said, looking every bit like a soaked dog, miserable and sad and with eyes that begged you to pick him up. “Leave, Gun,” he told Gun from his sullen spot on the couch when Gun entered his apartment.

“You know how I am with authority, Tinn,” Gun said, taking the containers of food he had brought to the kitchen to arrange them in Tinn’s perfectly matching kitchenware.

“I’m serious, Gun.” Tinn’s voice from the living room barely carried over. “You know you can’t get sick.”

“You know my mom used to be annoyed at how I never got sick?” Gun said as he walked back into the living room, and Tinn looked at him every bit like he was an idiot. Gun was immune to it. “No, I mean, like, she would get sick and have to stay in bed and I’d man the shop and wouldn’t even get a runny nose. I’d wake her up to give her her meds and she’d call me a butt.”

Tinn cracked a laugh at that, which instantly turned into a coughing fit. Gun rushed to get him some water, which he took, looking deflated and flushed and extraordinarily adorable.

That was precisely why Gun leaned in to peck him on the cheek. Tinn, for his part, sick and probably not even especially aware of his surroundings, turned to talk to him, and the kiss landed on his lips instead, just like in a scene from a drama. Gun was surprised and Tinn was a little scandalized, trying to lean back from him and actually making whiny sounds in his throat, which was honestly a bit too much, so the only thing Gun could do was cup his face with both hands and lean for a kiss he actually meant.

It was brief and unromantic. Tinn’s face was hotter than usual, not in the pleasant way, and he was supposed to lean into it, which he wasn’t keen on, but still — still his lips were plush and soft against Gun’s, moving ever so tentatively as if it were a first kiss. Gun didn’t know if it was Tinn’s first kiss, and he wasn’t going to ask Tinn, because he didn’t want to know and it didn’t matter. He could ask him later if he had dated anyone before, or kissed, or slept with anyone, but those were faraway thoughts to Gun. There were only Tinn’s warm hands resting on his chest, his hair tickling Gun’s cheek, and his sticky, sweet lips.

When Gun broke the kiss, he licked his lips and touched them with the tip of his fingers. Tinn seemed to flush darker.

“M-My lips were chapped, I just—”

“Strawberry?”

Gun gave him a quick peck again and Tinn did a little jump in his seat. Gun wanted to eat him.

“I like it,” he said. Before Gun could kiss him without warning again, Tinn pushed him away and picked up his bowl of Tom Kha Gai, mumbling something unflattering about the guy he had just kissed.

But despite how much of an idiot Gun was that night, despite the nasty cold he got afterwards, despite Tinn’s whining about how their first kiss was supposed to be different and under the stars or something equally sappy and planned down to the phase of the moon, he always seemed to wear the strawberry lip-gloss after that. Like his perfume, Gun found himself developing a strong preference for it. He liked how it matched Tinn’s words and gestures, so caring and sweet. The scent of gardenias, as he learned was the predominant fragrance of his perfume, soothed Gun’s insomniac nights, filled his lungs as Tinn leaned over him, his strawberry lips leaving trails down his neck and chest, before Gun demanded to taste them again.

All the intricacies of Tinn delighted Gun. His straight posture and pristine white coat; the tilt of his head when he was noting something down. If Gun stayed out of town for a few days, he liked visiting Tinn at his clinic upon his return, completely unannounced, just to see his benevolent doctor smile turn into the Tinn smile that Gun liked to see directed at him, pretty like a star on a summer night.

No one seemed to notice but Gun, why was that? Gun could recognize Tinn from the back just by the way he walked, elegant and poised but not aloof, not putting on airs. There was the way he would have to bend to hold Gun, and the look in his eyes when Gun looked at him from above, from his stage, the two of them pretending there was only them under the stage lights; or when Tinn was on his knees, between Gun’s legs in the living room of his blue apartment, the lamp casting shadows on his red cheeks, his red lips. No pretense in his eyes, in his fingers that closed around Gun’s wrists and brought them down to kiss his pulse there, leaving heart-shaped lipstick marks there.

Tall and reliable, timid and shy, eager and passionate, all so easily given. Was Tinn just like this, terribly and achingly open, or was Gun just so damn lucky?

***

Gun was standing in front of his mirror, eye pencils and powder puffs on the bed close to him, wondering if he should attempt a rocker look for his next performance, when Tinn walked in.

“Dinner’s ready,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. Gun’s chest filled with countless emotions upon catching Tinn gaze in the reflection. Years of sharing dorms with people he could barely call acquaintance or sleeping by himself, and now his moments between events were graced with homemade food again. “What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking about being a rock star,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows, just to make Tinn laugh.

“You’re already a rock star though?”

“I’m thinking of early 00’s rock star,” he said, waving an eye pencil at Tinn, and Tinn hummed.

“Let’s see,” he said, moving towards Gun, sitting on the bed and motioning for Gun to sit with him.

Gun had noticed light make-up on Tinn before. Not just the healthy red of his lips, but a hint of brown eye shadow when they went out, his well-defined eyebrows and the thin outline of his eyes. Tinn’s hand held the pencil like a fine surgical instrument, firm and precise, with just the right amount of pressure. Gun liked his breath fanning on his face, and opening his eyes to Tinn’s focused expression. He was ruined for any future make-up artist. He should just snatch Tinn away and take him on every tour, his patients be damned.

“Where did you learn this?” Gun asked, his hands comfortable on Tinn’s knees.

“My mother taught me,” he said.

Gun hummed and closed his eyes, feeling like a flower basking under the sun of Tinn’s attention.

“What else did you learn from her?”

He felt Tinn’s huff on his face, and it made him smile.

“How to debate,” he said, and Gun grinned.

“Is that so? Why do you always lose arguments against me then?”

Like when he said he wanted to see Tinn, and Tinn would apologize, tell him he couldn’t make it, but he showed up late anyway.

“You have very strong arguments.”

“Can I call my old class president so you can tell him that? It’ll be just a minute—”

Tinn tapped him gently on the shoulder and Gun opened his eyes to see him giggle and shake his head. He wanted to kiss Tinn then, but he was reaching for the lip tint, and Gun held off.

“My mom should get along well with you,” he said. Gun looked at him in a way that seemed to amuse him. “It’s true. She’s strict but she loves authenticity. I... There were some things in high school that made her really sensitive to lies.”

Gun’s grip on the fabric of Tinn’s pants tightened slightly, and he scooched closer.

“You’re... wholly you, though,” Tinn finished, hesitant, as if unsure his words truly conveyed everything he was thinking.

It was funny. That was the one thing Gun would always think about Tinn.

For his gig, he did wear eyeliner, and Tinn’s red lip tint, and a red jacket tied around his waist. His sleeveless shirt showed off his arms, and there was glitter in his hair and rings on his fingers. Tinn was there, looking up at him in a way that reminisced of their first meeting, but Gun was more aware now. He could see the awe in Tinn’s eyes, the slight parting of his lips, and Gun would sing the bridge on one knee, looking straight at him. The whole concert house sang along to his song, and that should thrill him, but it was Tinn, legs crossed, eyes barely blinking, that gave him energy to sing himself almost hoarse.

“Tinn used to get bullied,” was a confession Sound made not many days later, after one too many of Gun’s inquiries. “I told you he got too much attention.”

“What? Wasn’t he—”

“He never told his mom.” Sound wouldn’t look him in the eye, but he could see the anger set in his jaw. “And it was never physically violent, not too many people knew about it, it was just... Mean.”

Mean.

Tinn would squirm when Gun touched his sides while they kissed, so Gun would do it all the time. He would break into giggles, and Gun would kiss his neck and cling to him as he tickled him more and Tinn would laugh and say his name breathlessly. He preferred to make love to him face to face, so he wouldn’t miss the way Tinn looked at him, open and direct and a bit unbelieving, his hand firmly gripped in Gun’s, mouth opening but he was never loud. When they finished, he liked to lay still for a bit, still connected, his breath in sync with Gun’s, and his hands, tired and awed, traced the lines of Gun’s face, the fast beating of his pulse on his neck, before he pulled Gun down for a new kiss, one that lingered, like a blessing and a promise and grace, all at once.

People were mean. To Tinn?

Tinn with messy hair and Gun’s red satin shirt on him, lipstick smeared on his lips and cheeks and neck, sleepy but not asleep, hands in Gun’s hair as Gun bit a new bruise on his collarbone and his hand moved down to fully awaken him and continue the dance from the night before. Tinn, who looked at him like he could see all of him and wanted him more for it, as if he could reach into him and pull from Gun a lifetime of longing finally fulfilled, as if Gun didn’t understand the meaning of the songs he sang until he talked to Tinn that first night in his car. “I’m a friend of Sound’s.” He had been so close and Gun had never seen him and now Gun didn’t want to look away again.

How could they be mean to him?

Gun didn’t have to ask anything of Tinn. Just like in their early conversations, where they could talk about anything to chase the loneliness away, Gun didn’t have to gather the courage to tell Tinn his worries about recording his first album, or how he missed his mother after going months without seeing her. Tinn could see his tells as clear as day. In return, he tried to take care of Tinn as much as he could. Carrying him to bed when he fell asleep in the living room, reading. Cooking for him, because he so often forgot. Singing to him as he dried his hair, or as he called from two towns over and Tinn had to stay home.

Mean for what? None of the answers he could easily think of could justify it. He knew exactly how teenagers were, he remembered them well. Because he was too smart, too soft-spoken, non-confrontational? Because he was the principal’s son and the school president? For completely arbitrary reasons, for petty reasons, just because?

It was an unremarkable day when he came home and saw Tinn preparing dinner in a dress. It hadn’t been any harder than any other day, and the sun hadn’t set completely, not a cloud in the sky. The skirt was long and pleated, unpatterned, and the cuffs were white, carefully pulled up as to not get in the way of his cooking. The color was just like many of his shirts, a familiar lavender.

Seeing the color pulled Gun from any pause he might have felt. It was Tinn. It was just Tinn, the man he had been living with and whom he had known for so long now. They had shared more than one anniversary. His hair was still the length Gun enjoyed — not too long that it looked unkempt, but long enough that Gun could run his hands through it. Artist-like. When Gun circled his arms around Tinn’s middle and breathed in, he smelled the familiar gardenias, and nothing had changed. Nothing except his heart, falling in love again at being trusted with something new.

“You stink,” Tinn said, but didn’t make any movement to pull away from Gun’s grasp.

“You smell good,” Gun said, knowing Tinn would roll his eyes at him.

“You should shower.”

“Hmm. Five more minutes.”

“Did that ever work with your mom?”

“Yes.”

And it worked with Tinn too.

After dinner, there was no rush to the bedroom. They walked in, hand in hand, and laid in bed, facing each other. Gun let his hand touch the collar of the dress, sharp and long and elegant, down the buttons at the front, and then rested his hand on Tinn’s waist.

“They didn’t like me,” Tinn said, because he knew. He barely saw him talking to Sound, but he knew they talked all the time. “They didn’t like what they saw, but I don’t know what it was.”

“They were fucking stupid.”

“There was a teacher who didn’t like me either.”

He pulled Tinn closer, grip firm. Tinn smoothed a thumb over his frown.

“He didn’t do anything to me.”

“But also didn’t do what he should have done.”

Protect you. Shield you. Support you, when you needed.

“Sound was there. We knew each other for a long time. It wasn’t so bad.”

There was always a reason why Gun liked Sound even though his bandmates kept getting in conflict with him. Perhaps he also saw something that others couldn’t see.

Tinn turned shy, hid his face on his pillow.

“I... had a crush.”

Gun frowned.

“On your teacher?”

He shook his head.

“Someone from a different school.”

Gun tried to tickle him, but Tinn protected his sides. His long skirt spilled on the bed, showing off his legs, and Gun reigned his hands. Tonight, he just wanted to know Tinn. Know what he had missed this whole time.

“Who was it? Was it a girl your mom didn’t approve of? Was it a delinquent boy? Who...”

Tinn turned to look at him again and Gun stopped. He tried to remember which high school Tinn went to, and he recalled... The international school his own school would compete against. The principal had been a beautiful woman with long hair, but Gun couldn’t remember her face. Boys in blue pants and red ties. His music club performed to them during cultural fairs, and he would face them whenever he helped in sports events.

“Tinn,” Gun said, voice weak, unbelieving, “that was over ten years ago.”

Tinn’s hand played with the collar of Gun’s shirt, and for the first time, he was incapable of holding eye contact.

“The music... It didn’t make everything better, but... There was so much honest joy in it, that it made me want to feel it, too.”

Gun understood why Sound seemed so reluctant to allow Tinn to meet new people, and especially himself then. There was in Tinn a desire to be good that surpassed the bad that had been done to him. Or perhaps, now that Gun knew him better, it was in spite of it. When Gun sang, when he looked straight at Tinn, Tinn looked back at him like he was a guiding light. Gun wasn’t, couldn’t believe he was such a thing with all his failures and rejections through the years, but for a few minutes, all those years ago, he meant something to Tinn. Something that carried over, that stuck to his character, that resonated within him. He had always seen Tinn as someone similar to him, incapable of being anything but authentic, and maybe Tinn had seen that, too. Maybe he had drawn from Gun’s love for music that wish to inspire, to be there for others. And if Gun sang for an audience that looked at him the way Tinn did, then who inspired who first, really?

How much could have been dispelled that first night, if they had not been compatible? When Tinn picked him up when he fell, when he looked at Gun out the corner of his eyes in his car, carrying in his lingering gaze a number of words unspoken that Gun felt compelled to hear? Gun was not good at flirting. By every account, Tinn was out of his league. Sound couldn’t have known that it would work. Gun didn’t have a record of keeping relationships, of fighting for them. He didn’t know what he wanted out of them, just some form of — peace. Of delight, like his mother spoke of his father. Something that felt like he didn’t have reinvent himself for, just to please them.

Something like hugging Tinn in the kitchen, eyes closed, listening as he hummed a song Gun didn’t know yet. Tinn helping him with his make-up, unhurried, soft brushes and softer touches. And waking up to his lavender dress, the fabric cool and light as water against Gun as they tangled together, Tinn’s hair on his pillow.

***

Standing on that stage, with a trophy in his hand, his bandmates by his side, all of the words of thanks that Gun can think of are for Tinn, clapping for him from the audience, his earring shining like a tiny fallen star. Gun wears the other earring, matching him. When Sound finishes his speech, Gun takes the microphone, and he says, “Thank you everyone who believed in me when I was just a kid singing at school fairs. Thank you for what you saw in me then, that helped me get here today.”

Gun sees a screen with his face, his smile big and eyes so small, and he laughs when he sees the red lipstick stains on his nose and cheek. It’s too late to wipe them away, so Gun only shakes his head, and waves at Tinn. His band is led off the stage and towards a different spot for pictures and more speeches. He catches sight of Tinn in a dimly lit corner, but it’ll be hours before he can touch him again. They’re winners now. It’s the happiest Gun has ever seen Sound, and the others look happy enough that they might want to stay for a few more years.

When he has time to check his phone, he sees notifications not just from his mother, but also from his old school friends. His first little band of misfits, the ones who believed in him the most. He can’t cry. Not right now.

The night carries on in bright flashes and indistinctive chatter. Gun stays for the after-party, buzzing with an energy that feels a little manic. Every once in a while, he’ll look around to find Tinn, to ground himself. So he knows that at the end of this night, he’ll still be the same man with a home to go back to. Not just Gun, the frontman, but the same Gun that Tinn once met. The one who got grumpy and unsociable when he got writer’s block and couldn’t write a good song. Whom Tinn called “difficult” when he was sick and refused to rest.

“Are you proud of me?” he asks Tinn on the ride home, tipsy, unable to look out the car window without getting sick. He keeps his head on Tinn’s shoulder, Tinn’s arm secure around his waist, and he can only see blurry details of Tinn — the red of his lips, his long bangs framing his face, so close, too close but at the same time, not enough.

“I’m proud of you,” Tinn says, kissing his forehead, and Gun will not cry, not yet, even though he can’t name a single feeling he’s experiencing right now. “I’m always proud of you, Gun.”

“Even when I get mad at you for not replying to my texts?”

“Hmmm.”

“Even when I forget to do the laundry?”

“A little less then.”

Gun whines but he’s also laughing into Tinn’s neck, where he kisses Tinn, just because he can. Tinn tries to argue, to push him back a little, saying something about “Not in the car,” but Gun doesn’t care about his surroundings or the time or anything at all at that moment. The car jolts, running over some irregularity on the road, and Gun clings to Tinn. Always his safe port. He breathes in and out, through his mouth, and Tinn’s perfume fills him. City lights flash outside, a reminder of the night and the outside world, but Gun thinks only about Tinn’s skin, soft underneath his touch, underneath his lips. How long has it been since he kissed Tinn? Hours.

It’s so long still until they’re climbing the steps to their home — a home that is technically only Tinn’s but that has Gun’s shit everywhere. His favorite guitar, the clothes he’s been wearing since college, shampoo from a brand that’s sponsoring them, alongside Tinn’s things. Gun’s boots are in the same wardrobe Tinn keeps his dresses, some of which Gun bought himself, because now, he sees Tinn in everything beautiful. Not high heels, no, Tinn doesn’t like those, but discreet rings with a single gem; dangling earrings like the ones they wore that night, that suit Tinn’s hair nicely; and red lipstick, with all different kinds of finish, none of which Gun understood until he applied them to Tinn himself and ran his thumb over his lips.

Gun pins Tinn against their front door as soon as they’re inside, asking, “What do you want?”

Tinn’s breath leaves in a surprised huff. Gun can see him clearer now that they’ve stopped moving, the entrance light shining above them until the timing goes off and they’re left in the dark. Still, Gun sees him, and he brushes Tinn’s hair away from his face. He leans closer, lips close to Tinn’s ear.

“Should we find another house to live in? Open a new clinic for you?”

He kisses a trail down Tinn’s neck, his hands pulling Tinn’s shirt from inside his pants and going underneath, fulfilling his desire to feel the skin there. Tinn’s arms circle his neck, fingers tangling with his hair, making Gun latch onto his skin, right where his shoulder meets his neck, lips and teeth and tongue and a pressure that steals Tinn’s breath.

“Come to Milan with me next month,” he says, and he feels more than hears Tinn say his name. “Tinn.”

He takes a step back and the light goes on again. Tinn’s pupils are blown wide, and his eyes are round and dark and seeing only him. Good.

“I want to give you everything,” Gun says.

“You’re drunk,” Tinn says, and his smile is a little weak, a little uncertain.

Gun shakes his head, not because it’s a lie, but because it’s not the whole truth. He wants to say it. He’s wanted to say it for a long time.

He steps closer again. Nose to nose, lips millimeters apart. Tinn leans down to touch his forehead to Gun’s and Gun smiles at that.

“I want you to be there for me, and I want to be there for you,” he says as the light goes out. “Whatever you need, would you tell me what it is?”

All this to say, I want you to tell me all about you. All this to say, I want to know your dreams. All this to say, talk to me about anything and everything. All this to say—

Tinn’s kiss falls on him like an unexpected downpour. It’s not usual for him, who’s timid, always setting the pace when they make out. Maybe he’s drunk on whatever it is that takes the inhibitions out of Gun tonight, that makes them stumble on the way to the bedroom, tripping over discarded clothes. They’re giggling and kissing and falling askew on the bed. Gun should be holding his weight away from Tinn as he falls on him but they’re not graceful tonight. Tinn has lost his jacket but Gun kept his white shirt on, though fully unbuttoned, because he liked the way the silk felt to the touch. They’ll probably find lipstick on it in the morning, but it would be far from the first time it’s happened. Gun’s not even embarrassed to bring Tinn’s clothes to the cleaners anymore.

He finally stops kissing Tinn long enough to pull himself up, hands on either side of Tinn’s head, to look at him. Hair mussed, lipstick smeared, eyes shining and dark. His hands lay on the bed, just beside Gun’s, palm up and waiting. Open. Trusting.

Tinn once told him that he decided to become a plastic surgeon not to take up expensive jobs for celebrities, but to help those who wanted to feel better about themselves. He always chose every job very carefully, working together with the patient for a healthy mindset, and he said there was a special type of joy about looking in the mirror and liking the person you saw there.

Gun was so proud of him. He wished he could go back and meet Tinn in high school, to hold his hand, and call his name there. He wanted to give him happier memories on his own stage. He wanted Tinn to see how Gun saw him, inside and out.

“You’re so beautiful,” is all he can say.

He sees Tinn’s eyes water before Tinn pulls him back down to kiss him again. That’s when he lets himself cry, and laugh, and touch Tinn all he wants. His mind is still hazy, and Tinn is overwhelmed, so it’s far from being their best night. But Tinn keeps his legs wrapped around him, and Gun takes them both in hand, trying so bad not to fall into Tinn, wanting to make him feel good. He whispers nothings that are everything, and he hopes Tinn believes them all, because even if he’s a little drunk on alcohol and very drunk on happiness, he means it when he says, “You’re good, you’re so good, you’re perfect, I love you.” The sleeves of Tinn’s shirt feel like being touched by seafoam, and the bed dips as he thrusts. Tinn hands on his back feel like dragging him down and down, falling into his kiss until they’re both struggling to breathe.

When they climax, one following the other, Gun falls heavy into Tinn, and Tinn catches him. It’s like coming back to the shore after the tide has receded. Finding the way back home, after swimming in the dark sea. But it’s only the night, giving way to the morning, and kisses that have regained their calm as dawn approaches.

***

Gun wakes hours later, with the sun already high in the sky. He can tell Tinn cleaned him up, but there’s still too much of the party the night before in him, so he takes a shower before he looks for Tinn.

He finds him in the living room, his tablet in his hands, and silver glasses on his face. His skirt is a deep navy, and Gun knows he has a tie that matches it perfectly. He can see his own marks on Tinn’s neck, imperfections on the otherwise smooth skin that Tinn makes no attempt to hide with a scarf or a high collar. The button-up he wears has the first few buttons undone, showing the marks off. It’s just the two of them, after all. Just like he can be messy and forgetful and capricious sometimes, Tinn can also show his flaws, his temper, bare it all. When they disagreed or had fights over banal things, Gun could never be mad at him for more than a couple of hours.

Gun looks at those marks, at the column of Tinn’s neck, all of it calling for him like a mirror of Gun, of their mutual desire. But he also looks at Tinn’s eyes and sees him squinting at the screen despite his glasses. He’s still sleepy, even though he’s usually the one who wakes up early between the two of them. He tries to suppress a yawn, and Gun doesn’t even know if he’s making a sound or not for how endeared he feels. Intimacy felt really fucking good bathed in sunlight.

“Milan is on the fifteenth, right?” Tinn asks, taking his teacup from the coffee table.

“Yeah,” Gun answers, walking towards him. Tinn frowns.

“Do you think they can get me a seat in your flight? I don’t think— Gun, I’m still talking!”

But Gun only gives him more sniff kisses that evolve into pecks that evolve into him sitting on Tinn’s lap, arms around Tinn’s neck.

“Are you really coming?”

“Hmm,” Tinn acquiesces, setting the tablet aside on the couch in favor of holding Gun back. “That’s what you— I mean.” He gives Gun a smile that makes him look younger, full of light. “That’s what I want.”

How could anyone be mean to him, ever? All Gun can see is a beautiful boy, putting himself in Gun’s hands.

“You two are so gross, I’m never staying in the same room as the two of you ever again,” Sound had said once when they went out on a double date, Sound’s boyfriend laughing silently, and what Gun heard was, “You’re perfect for each other.”

He takes Tinn’s glasses off, folds them and places them on Tinn’s tablet.

“Okay,” he says, cupping Tinn’s face, void of any make-up but flushed and radiant all the same. It’s the sun, shining on the couch from the open window. But Gun hopes he can be that light, too. “Although I’ll probably have to hide you or they’ll think you’re a celebrity.”

“Aren’t I?” Tinn asks, tilting his head to the side and adopting a contemplating expression. “I am your boyfriend, after all. Isn’t that a kind of celebrity?”

Gun hums, nodding.

“I should dress you up and show you off,” he says, but freezes, thinking well about what he just said. His eyes must show his sudden panic, because Tinn is patting the back of his head and kissing him before he’s saying,

“Okay. Speak well of me, will you?”

It gives him pause for a few beats. He looks between Tinn’s eyes, as if expecting him to take it back, but he doesn’t. Gun has wanted to talk about him publicly for so long, but he didn’t know the right timing. He didn’t know where, in the long time he had been dating Tinn, their feelings had finally aligned perfectly. He’s admired and loved Tinn for some time now. Was it enough, for all the years Tinn had liked him before he was even in Tinn’s life? Would Sound hate him for exposing Tinn, who kept so much of himself to just a few select people, of which Gun has been so lucky to be included in?

But the night before, with Tinn’s gaze on him as he finally felt at the top of his world, Tinn’s earring clipped on his own ear – a part of Tinn always with him – he understood what it was like to speak of someone like they’re the world, just like his mom would do for his dad. It came out of him every time he thanked those that supported him, his eyes on every camera but his heart set on Tinn. Did it reach him?

Gun looks at Tinn until his vision gets blurry and Tinn’s smile fades, replaced with concern. Tinn asks, “Are you okay?”, but Gun only hugs him, hiding his face on his neck. He breathes in the scent of gardenias, and with the sun and Tinn’s warmth covering him, he doesn’t think about Milan, he thinks only,

“Mom is going to love you.”

Perhaps it’s time to plan a different trip.

#My School President #TinnGun #gun guntaphon #tinn tinnaphob #GeminiFourth #Alternate Universe: Different First Meeting

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