Chapter Text
Every night, Thame crawls into bed, dials P’Po’s number by heart… and doesn’t call. He stares at the dimly lit display on the hotel room’s landline, tracing the edges of each number with his gaze, and wishes he could hear Po’s voice, even just for a moment or two. A single “hello” from Po, he thinks, might solve everything that’s wrong with his life.
But he knows that P’Po doesn’t want to hear from him, so he eventually hangs up and stares at the ceiling until morning, only occasionally slipping into a fitful sleep.
He doesn’t get any rest, not really, and he doesn’t call.
They’ve put him in a hotel a few blocks from the Oner building. Initially, when Khun Pemika told him that he couldn’t stay in the MARS house anymore, he wanted to go back to his own condo (which is probably coated in an inch-thick layer of dust at this point, given how little time he’s spent there over the past few months). But no—that isn’t allowed, either. His members all know how to get to his condo, and he has a hunch that Pemika is worried Po might have the address as well.
No need to worry, he wants to tell her. P’Po doesn’t know where the condo is, but even if he did, he wouldn’t come—of that, Thame is certain. He doesn’t want me anymore.
Instead, he’s been living out of this damned hotel suite, with a balcony he’s not allowed to use and a rotating detail of handlers from Oner’s security team who never allow more than a single closed door to come in between them and their charge, not even at night. They’re always just outside the room, checking in on him at regular intervals, close enough to hear if he cries himself to sleep.
He tries not to cry.
After all, everyone else is happy, right? Sure, maybe it’s not ideal, with Thame still leaving the group to go to Korea and with both his and Pepper’s relationships ended, but… At least everyone else got something that they really wanted. Oner is finally supporting his members’ other dreams, helping Jun to book bigger acting gigs and letting Dylan train under famous producers, allowing Per to shadow managers as well as MCs and giving Nano extra singing lessons. And Po—well, P’Po has been promoted to creative director, and even through his heartbreak, Thame is so proud of him, so glad that people are recognizing Po’s talent and allowing him the creative freedom he deserves.
They all deserve it—to be happy, to follow their dreams, and who is Thame to resent them for it? Who is he to complain about how things turned out? All the bits that aren’t ideal are his own fault, anyway. He failed as group leader to make MARS successful enough that Korea would take all of them. His carelessness is what got him and P’Po caught, which is why Pemika leaked Pepper’s photos instead of his and why P’Gam ultimately ended their relationship. Thame is the one who couldn’t find the words to convince P’Po to stay—not on the rooftop and not in his letter. He can’t fault Po for leaving, not when he was the one who couldn’t figure out how to be someone worth staying for.
Everyone else is happy, and they deserve to be. If Thame doesn’t like the outcome, he has only himself to blame.
Besides, isn’t he also getting to pursue something he’s always dreamed of? Debuting in Korea, becoming an international star, getting to share his music with an ever-larger crowd that spans the entire globe? Even if he has to go alone, shouldn’t he still find some way to enjoy it?
He feels stupid and selfish for wishing things could be different.
Sometimes, Thame gets so lonely that it hurts to breathe, his lungs full of sharp edges instead of oxygen. He goes days at a time without talking to anyone who isn’t Oner staff—his handlers, the choreographer, the vocal coach—and he can’t remember the last time he touched another person. His skin crawls with the memory of hugs he can no longer have, like phantom pains that prick against his limbs. He misses the smell of P’Po’s apartment and the sound of Jun and Dylan bickering. He misses having to be quiet when he goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night so as not to wake Per, who’s always been a light sleeper. He misses the way Nano drapes himself over whoever’s closest, always hanging onto Thame’s shoulders or flopping dramatically across his lap.
As the day of the concert draws near, Thame feels like he’s stumbling through a dark tunnel, not towards a light at the end but rather towards an even darker void, a hole that he’s bound to fall into the moment the concert is over. The world has narrowed down to this path, and despite fighting for so long to cling to other futures, other choices, he’s ended up here anyway, staring at a life he’ll have to live without any of the people he cares about most. If he tries to turn back now, tries to fight one last time, he risks destroying the fragile happiness that those people have somehow carved out for themselves in the midst of an otherwise shitty situation—and that on top of all the other ways he’s already failed them. How can he ask them to give up their dreams just to make him feel less lonely, less trapped?
He can’t, and he can’t cry, and he can’t call P’Po.
In fact, he doesn’t expect that he’ll ever see P’Po again, given the way Khun Pemika has Thame on such a tight leash right up until his departure for Korea, forbidden from going anywhere unaccompanied and forced to do as many of his meetings as possible via video call instead of in person. The company sends people to his room to finalize the concert costume fittings, and he does all of his practicing and photoshoots in event rooms rented from the hotel. Even when they start doing the blocking rehearsals at the venue, he knows that Pemika and her people will be there to watch him closely, keeping him from interacting with anyone outside of his carefully choreographed movements on stage.
But about a week and a half before the concert, representatives from the Korean company schedule a last-minute meeting with Pemika and ask that Thame be there, too, presumably to talk about branding and training and logistics. (Thame feels sick at the thought.) So, for the first time in weeks, he is allowed to physically go to work, accompanied by a pair of handlers as he walks the three blocks from his hotel to the Oner building.
And suddenly, there is P’Po, waiting at the crosswalk with several other pedestrians, only a few hundred meters away. He looks the same as ever, still Po—blue overshirt, brown canvas bag, headphones in, glancing down at his phone. Beautiful.
Thame’s heart constricts so hard that he almost trips and falls, just barely managing to keep himself walking normally. The pedestrian crossing signal comes on, and as P’Po glances carefully to either side, nervous as always, Thame desperately wants to run to him, take ahold of his elbow, guide him across the street. He wants to make Po feel safe, wants to care for him the way he deserves. He wants a hug, wants to know how Po could read his letter and still break up with him, wants to grab his hand and run away together forever.
He wants and he wants, but he already knows that the universe won’t let him have anything he wants, and certainly not P’Po.
By the time Thame and his handlers make it to the crosswalk, the cars are rushing past again, and Po is already nearly at the Oner entrance on the other side of the street, looking not back at Thame but forward, towards a future full of joy and possibility and choices.
Choices that Thame won’t ever have again.
The walls of the tunnel are closing in on him, making it impossible to breathe. If he waits for the crossing signal to give him permission to move, if he goes into this meeting to smile and nod at his new owners, if he allows himself to go down this path that Khun Pemika has forced him to take—alone—he knows that he will be doing so as a ghost of himself. He won’t be Thame anymore. He won’t ever breathe easy again, and he will dance and sing for his supper in front of crowds of adoring fans who will never know—and maybe never care—that he’s nothing more than a glorified puppet.
Thame can see it now: sleepwalking through his own life, working himself to death to fulfill the demands of an industry that doesn’t give a shit about him beyond the money he can make for them. He won’t have friends, not really, and he definitely won’t have a boyfriend ever again. He’ll shrivel up inside, his skin and his heart slowly turning into ice through years and years of isolation.
The future spreads out before him like some kind of nightmarish hallucination, and Thame knows he cannot do it. He can’t make himself go through that, and perhaps the universe has taken away all of his options to stop, to turn around, to go in a different direction, but he still has one choice left, the only one, really: to move first.
He doesn’t need to wait for permission, doesn’t need to hold himself back. He can just… take the first step, go of his own free will.
And so he does—stepping straight into Bangkok traffic.