ending at the ending <3 this has been such a fun little anniversary project, it felt right to once again leave off with my favourite boys living their best post-canon life

Vegas drifts slowly into wakefulness, fighting against the haze of painkillers as he gingerly opens his eyes. Sunlight is streaming through the hospital window. Three portions of curry rice are lined up neatly on the small coffee table. Pete is throwing a blanket over a napping Macau. This doesn’t feel like fate. Fate, up until now, has meant one of two things: overthrow the main family or die trying. Vegas has failed at both.  This feels like precarious chance. Like every terrible mistake in his life had built to a concentrated mass, primed to collapse into ruin like brain matter sprayed by the side of a pool. The inevitable gravity of destruction that instead exploded at the final second, creating a new life, his for the taking.  As though sensing his gaze, Pete turns and smiles, joyfully uninhibited and breathtakingly beautiful.  If this is his fate, it is undeserved, but Vegas has never claimed to be unselfish. He smiles in return, and knows he will spend the rest of his life trying to make himself worthy of the chance he’s been gifted.

Pete runs his hands over the neat, dark suit laid out on the bed. It is crisp and pristine despite the years of wear, one of many carefully maintained by his own hands and the tailors hired to the main compound. He had tried the suit on again, just once, after the night of the coup. It was strange. Although hardly any time had passed since he last wore it, the suit felt too constricting, too plain, too formal. It was like wearing someone else’s skin who was just like him, but not quite. The material itched unpleasantly, and Pete couldn’t remember if it always had– something he had unthinkingly adjusted to over time.  “Should we burn it?” Vegas hooks his chin over Pete’s shoulder, looking down at the suit with unabashed disdain.  Pete laughs despite himself. “I’m not sure,” he pauses, swaying back into Vegas’s embrace. “It meant something to me, before.”   It sounds silly to say about an item of clothing, but Vegas nods.  “Does it mean something now?” Vegas’s voice is carefully neutral, and Pete knows he’s trying to be careful. The topic of the main family is sore for both of them, something cautiously talked around rather than addressed directly. He stares at the suit.  “I don’t think so,” he says, and he feels Vegas relax a little. “Let’s burn it.”  “Really?” Vegas perks up immediately, and Pete finds it hopelessly endearing in spite of himself.  “Yeah.” He smiles. “I don’t think it fits anymore, anyway.”  Vegas spins him around and kisses him soundly, and Pete welcomes the way it drives away all other thoughts.  “You were always more than just this,” Vegas murmurs against his lips. Pete doesn’t know if that’s true, but he’ll be happy to see it burn all the same.

Before long his eager classmates drifted away, quickly tiring of a Theerapanyakul with nothing to offer them but a scornful sneer. It was much easier this way. Quieter.

“You might not like it so much when you’re on the receiving end.”

He certainly deserves it more than Kinn. Tawan had been reluctant and— though he never admitted it aloud he thinks Vegas knew— nervous to put himself in Kinn’s path again. It had been Vegas who convinced him that not only could he do this, but also had given him the drive to succeed. Now it was like a secret game shared between the two of them, and Vegas’s confidence at Tawan’s capability was a persistent glow that lights him from within. There’s no room for fear when he keeps Vegas’s words close to his heart: It will all be worth it, because it means they can be together.

Kim balances his guitar on his knee and gently pinches the peg between his thumb and finger. He strums once, lets his ears adjust to the discrepancies in the sound, and begins to twist the peg, plucking at the strings as he does so. He breaths in and out slowly, focusing completely on his task. His fingers are slow and careful, concentrating on each string in turn. There is no room here for thoughts of young, naive boys with bright smiles and a talent for songwriting. Nor is there space for meticulous investigation, an entanglement of families and murder and lies that only muddles further the more Kim stares at it.  When he is particularly stuck, music helps him put things in perspective. There needs to be balance– enough pressure to find the correct pitch, but too much stress on your strings risks a break. And he can’t afford to break.  He tightens, and strums, and doesn't think about the polaroids Chay keeps hiding for him. The sting of love and guilt doesn’t lessen at each he finds; neither does the sick feeling in his stomach at the knowledge that he doesn’t deserve them and yet, selfishly, wants to keep them anyway. He has to remind himself it is necessary, though the excuse grows more hollow each time he repeats it.  He turns the peg, plucks a string and– there. He pauses. Strums again.  A perfect harmony, but the dissonance lingering around Kim doesn’t dissipate. He puts down the guitar, unable to shake the feeling that he’s running away.

She drifts around the room looking at the books that line the walls, the words written on their spines crawling like insects, indecipherable. She frowns at them and walks away, back to her easel. It’s in front of the window today, glorious sunshine filtering through the gauzy curtains. She takes a moment to look at the grounds outside. She’s allowed to do this because the glass is one-way. She doesn’t remember how she knows this.  There are new paints by her easel. She doesn’t recall when she finished the old ones. Painting comes easier to her than words, like the images are caught up in the spaces where other thoughts should be and are clamouring to get out. Her brush moves like someone else is controlling it– a ghost that lurks at the edges of her mind. Or maybe she is the ghost, an echo left over in the body she now awkwardly inhabits. The thought scares her, so she instead falls into the give and take of painting, watching distantly as she creates without quite knowing how.  She glances out of the window. There are some bodyguards outside, she can recognise their faces without ever having met them, or knowing their names. There’s a new one out there today. He’s tall and tanned, and it seems like he would be graceful if only he could control himself better. Clearly he’s complaining about something, gesticulating wildly. She smiles; it’s nice to see one of the guards so animated.   The man turns around and her expression falls, brush stuttering in its strokes. There’s something about his face that’s unsettling. Like the paintings that fight their way out of her, there’s something screaming in the back of her mind, begging to be heard, but it is just out of reach.  Unsteady hands take the current canvas down and replace it with a fresh one. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, letting the ghost inside of her pilot her movements. Before long there is a sketch– two birds facing one another, wings folded in, perched in silhouette.  She’s not sure what it means, but she knows it must mean something.  That evening, when her brother gives her the medicine he promises is necessary, she hides the pill under her tongue and disposes of it once he’s left.  There is something in her that must be let out. And Namphueng is tired of being a ghost.