Santa’s car pulled up outside the high-rise, the engine idling for a moment too long. Phuwin’s hands were shaking in his lap. He hadn’t realized he’d been gripping his own thighs until Santa reached over and touched his wrist.
“You okay?”
Phuwin nodded. He wasn’t. But nodding was faster than explaining.
Santa killed the engine. “I’ll wait here. Take your time.”
Phuwin got out. The lobby’s automatic doors slid open like they’d been expecting him. He crossed the marble floor to the elevator, pressed the button for the forty-fifth floor, and watched the numbers climb in silence. His reflection in the mirrored wall looked pale, eyes too bright, jaw set too tight. He looked like someone about to break something open.
The elevator chimed. The doors opened onto a silent hallway, carpeted in a deep gray that swallowed every footstep. He’d walked this corridor before — after the mall, after the first night, after every time Pond had pulled him through that door with that hungry look. But this time felt different. This time he was coming because Pond had disappeared, not because Pond had called.
The penthouse door loomed at the end. Dark wood. Gold handle. Phuwin stopped in front of it, lifted his hand, and knocked.
Nothing.
He waited. Counted five heartbeats. Knocked again, harder this time.
A shuffle from inside. Then the lock clicked, and the door swung open.
Pond stood there, shirtless, wearing only loose gray sweatpants, his hair mussed like he’d been sleeping — or hadn’t slept at all. His eyes were dark, shadowed, hollow in a way Phuwin had never seen. And his face: a bruise blooming across his right cheekbone, purple-black, spreading toward his jaw. The corner of his lip was split, a dark red crescent sealed with dried blood. His chest — Phuwin’s eyes dropped — was a map of damage. Bruises in purple, black, and sickly yellow-green scattered across his ribs, his collarbone, his stomach. Finger-shaped marks on his biceps where someone had grabbed him too hard.
Phuwin’s breath stopped.
Pond looked at him, and something in his face cracked — not anger, not surprise. Resignation. Like he’d known this moment was coming and had just hoped it would wait another day.
“Baby,” he said. His voice was rough, scraped raw. “What are you doing here?”
Phuwin’s eyes burned. He felt the tears coming before he could stop them, hot and sudden, blurring the bruises into watercolor. He lifted his hand — his fingers trembled — and reached up, brushing the pad of his thumb across Pond’s bruised cheekbone. So gently. Like Pond was made of glass.
“Babe,” Phuwin whispered. “I missed you so much. I was so fucking worried something happened to you.”
Pond’s jaw tightened. His hand came up, wrapped around Phuwin’s waist, and pulled him closer. The other hand slid down, palm flat against Phuwin’s lower back, fingers grazing his ass through his jeans. A familiar gesture, but slower now. Tender. Like he was remembering how Phuwin felt.
“I’m sorry,” Pond said. “I just — I had things to do. Busy.”
The word hit Phuwin like a slap.
He pulled back. Stared into Pond’s eyes. Dark and tired and evasive. The same eyes that had looked at him in the art hall and said I love you. The same eyes that had promised they’d talk about everything.
“Things to do,” Phuwin repeated. His voice came out flat. Then it cracked. “You had things to do.”
Pond’s hand on his waist tightened. “Phuwin—”
“I don’t like this.” The words broke out of him, hot and shaking. “I don’t like when you don’t talk to me. When you disappear for two days and I have to hear from someone else that my boyfriend is getting beaten by his father.” His voice rose, loud in the silent hallway. “You promised we’d communicate! You promised you’d tell me things! But instead I have to fucking find out — I have to drag it out of your best friend because you won’t pick up your phone and you won’t come see me and I’m left here thinking I did something wrong!”
A tear slipped down his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away.
“I love you,” he said, quieter now, his voice breaking. “And I had to find out that the person I love with all my heart got hurt — and he chose not to tell me. Chose to shut me out. And I had to come here and see it with my own eyes, and I’m so fucking angry at you, and I’m so scared, and I don’t know what to do with any of it.”
Pond’s face had gone still. The muscle in his jaw jumped.
“Who told you?” he asked, his voice low.
Phuwin’s hands fisted at his sides. “Does it matter? Does it fucking matter who told me? What matters is that you didn’t. What matters is that I had to hear it from someone else, and now I’m standing here looking at your bruised face and your bruised chest and you’re still trying to pretend everything’s fine.”
Pond didn’t answer.
His eyes were wet.
Phuwin saw it — the shimmer, the barely-held line — and something in his chest cracked open. The anger drained, leaving only the ache underneath.
“You promised,” he whispered. “You said we’d talk. You said I could help. But you didn’t let me. You didn’t let anyone.”
Pond’s voice broke. “I didn’t want to be a burden.”
“You’re not a burden.” Phuwin stepped closer, hands coming up to cup Pond’s face, thumbs brushing the unharmed skin beneath his eyes. “You’re my boyfriend. The person I love. The person who makes me feel safe and free and alive. Don’t you get it? The only thing that matters to me is knowing you’re safe. That you’re happy. That our love —” His voice caught. “That our love only grows stronger. But I can’t do that if you shut me out.”
Pond’s arms wrapped around him, pulled him tight against his bare chest. Phuwin felt the bruises beneath his palms, the heat of Pond’s skin, the trembling in his shoulders that he was trying so hard to hide.
“I’m sorry,” Pond said into his hair. “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll tell you. I just — I didn’t want you to see this. I didn’t want you to carry it.”
“I’d carry anything for you,” Phuwin said. “That’s what love is.”
Pond held him tighter.
They stood like that for a long moment, breathing together, Phuwin’s face pressed into the curve of Pond’s neck, feeling the pulse there, strong and alive. The door was still half-open behind them, but the hallway was empty, and the world outside had stopped mattering.
Phuwin pulled back just enough to look at him. At the split lip, the dark bruise spreading like a storm across his cheekbone, the tired circles under his eyes. He lifted his hand again, traced the edge of the bruise with his fingertip, featherlight.
“Does it hurt?”
Pond shook his head. “Not anymore.”
“Liar.”
Pond almost smiled. Almost. The corner of his mouth twitched, then stopped, like even that motion cost him something.
Phuwin leaned in and kissed him.
Soft at first — just the press of lips, a question. Pond answered by tilting his head, deepening it, his hand sliding up into Phuwin’s hair. The kiss tasted salt and copper, a little of blood, a lot of longing. Phuwin’s tongue traced the seam of Pond’s split lip, gentle, tasting the wound, and Pond groaned into his mouth.
“Come inside,” Pond breathed against his lips.
Phuwin didn’t answer. He just stepped over the threshold, and Pond closed the door behind them.
The penthouse was dark, curtains drawn, the city lights a muted glow through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The air smelled like sleep and something stale — like Pond hadn’t eaten properly in days. The coffee table had a half-empty glass of water and a phone face-down.
Pond grabbed Phuwin’s hand and pulled him toward the bedroom.
Phuwin let himself be led, but he was looking at everything — the unmade bed visible through the open door, the discarded shirt on the floor, the way the shadows clung to Pond’s shoulders. He looked smaller somehow, even though he was still the same broad-chested, muscle-ridged man who made Phuwin’s heart race.
In the bedroom doorway, Phuwin stopped. He turned Pond to face him fully, hands on his chest, palms flat against the bruises. He felt the heat of them, the tender swelling beneath his fingers.
“I need you to promise me something,” Phuwin said. His voice was steady now, though his eyes were still wet.
“Anything.”
“Next time — if something happens, if you’re hurting, if you need to disappear — you call me. You text me. You let me know you’re alive. Even if it’s just one word. Even if you can’t say anything else. You don’t leave me in the dark.”
Pond’s throat worked. He nodded. “I promise.”
“And you let me help you. However you need. Even if it’s just sitting next to you in the dark.”
Pond’s eyes glistened. “I promise.”
Phuwin leaned up and kissed him again — harder this time, more desperate, pouring everything he couldn’t say into the press of his lips. Pond answered with the same hunger, his hands finding Phuwin’s hips, pulling him flush against his body. Phuwin felt the hard length of him through the sweatpants, felt his own body respond, a shiver running through him.
“I missed you,” Phuwin said between kisses, the words tumbling out. “I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too, baby.” Pond’s hands slipped under Phuwin’s shirt, fingers spreading across the bare skin of his back. “So much.”
Phuwin tugged at Pond’s sweatpants, and Pond kicked them off. Then Phuwin was being lifted, legs wrapping around Pond’s waist, and Pond was carrying him toward the bed. Phuwin laughed — a breathless, relieved sound — and hit Pond’s chest playfully.
“You’re insane,” Phuwin said, but he was smiling, his face flushed.
“You love it.”
“I love you.”
Pond’s stride faltered. He looked at Phuwin, something raw and open in his bruised face, and then he kissed him again, deep and claiming, as they tumbled onto the bed together.
Pond’s weight settled over him, familiar and grounding. Phuwin’s hands roamed his back, careful of the bruises but needing to touch him, needing to prove he was here, real, alive. He traced the ridge of Pond’s spine, the dip of his waist, the curve of his ass. Pond groaned into his neck, teeth grazing his pulse point.
“I love you,” Pond said against his skin. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Just don’t do it again.” Phuwin’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I won’t. I promise.”
Phuwin arched up into him, and whatever else needed to be said dissolved into the press of bodies, the rustle of clothes being pushed aside, the quiet sounds of two people finding their way back to each other.
The bed creaked as Pond rolled his hips, and Phuwin gasped, hands fisting in the sheets. He called Pond’s name, called him babe, called him mine, as the world narrowed to the heat between them, the weight of Pond’s body, the desperate rhythm of their reunion.
Pond moved inside him with a hunger that said I almost lost you and a tenderness that said I love you more than anything. Phuwin took it all — the fast, the hard, the soft, the words that spilled from Pond’s lips like prayers. His own voice broke on a moan, cursing, calling out, his nails raking down Pond’s back as he came apart beneath him.
Pond followed, groaning Phuwin’s name into the curve of his shoulder, his body shuddering, his arms tight around him.
Afterward, they lay tangled together, slick with sweat, breathing ragged. The city lights painted soft stripes across the ceiling. Pond’s hand rested on Phuwin’s stomach, thumb tracing lazy circles.
Phuwin turned his head, pressed a kiss to Pond’s bruised cheekbone.
“We’re going to be okay,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Pond’s arm tightened around him. “Yeah. We are.”
Phuwin closed his eyes, listening to Pond’s heartbeat slow beneath his ear. The bruises were still there — on his chest, on his face, on the places Phuwin couldn’t see yet. But they would heal. And next time, Phuwin would be there to help them.
He felt weight on both their bodies — his own held-up love, and now a new knowledge between them.