Caught in Possession

Atlas and Adonis

AN: Just wanted to make it clear that this story will not aim to glamourise the mafia. The character's motives - and their loyalties - will become clear in time!
- Lore 🦋💗

Between uneven spurts and gushes of barely tepid shower water, the heavy, metallic slam of the changing room exit door reached Gulf. He smiled wryly at the predicted victory, twisting fingers through wet hair to lather shampoo, cleansing furiously as always - almost as if trying to remould himself anew.

"Villain successfully defeated" - the young footballer's voice had a hollow ring to it as he congratulated himself aloud.

'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen' had always been one of his Mae's favourite admonishments, and felt particularly apt for the events that had unfolded there: Gulf hiked up the Celsius, and the Jongcheveevat heir hopped out of the flames accordingly, before his expensive looking suit could be singed a jot.

Gulf knew who he was. Recognised him the minute he'd breached the room with cocky alpha pick-up lines and self-assured Instagram poses. Did he think he didn't know?

Gulf was Thai, not English krub. He'd seen the headlines about Suppasit Jongcheveevat and his links to that other family lineage that ordinary people dared not to name in their country. There were the disappearing family members, the rumoured gun showdowns, the narcotics cases. The man was fucking mafia. All of the Jongcheveevats probably were. In league with that nameless dynasty of fear - a sudden shudder overcoming Gulf's body, as fingers unconsciously touched to the back of his own thigh, tracing...

So, much as Gulf would have loved to have been thrown up against the shower room tiles and taken mercilessly from behind by the handsome bastard - because, my God, he was unavoidably a pure Adonis to look at, and well knew it - a mafia Daddy was not on his 'to do' list.

Because wasn't it due to the Jongcheveevat family that he was even marooned in London in the first place? Gulf shook his head bitterly at the reminder, crouching to spit out the cloying shampoo suds that had invaded his mouth - watching with sinister pleasure as they disappeared helplessly down the shower drain, spinning to their fate in an unstoppable, nauseating whirlpool. Yes, it was all their fault - that clan. That he was there, alone, with a familiar, oppressive, suffocating weight that seemed to be the whole world on his shoulders. As it always was.

He was Atlas of the Titans, bearing punishment to hold sky and earth apart - since life had become so easy to analogise to the melodrama of Greek mythology.

It was the worn, faded, magical old book of myths and legends that Gulf's fascination stemmed from - the one his Phor had lovingly leafed through at every bedtime with him and his elder sister Bow. At least that was how he remembered it now, through the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia, as he dreamily rinsed transient bubbles of cherry blossom scented shower gel from long, glistening limbs.

Memories, distant, of them together: Phor, Mae, Bow and Gup. On the farm, underneath the hopeful, warm caress of Thai morning sunshine before the bicycle ride to school, butterflies fluttering hither and thither across surrounding mountainside meadows of pastel, delicately aromatic wildflowers. Four sets of eyes gazing up at the stork's nest on the roof of the barn, wondrous at the graceful elegance of the majestic white and grey birds - their newest neighbours.

It replayed over and over in Gulf's mind, that single, evocative memory. A torturous cinematic loop. His heart swelling at the happiness of the little boy that had been him. Yet aching and gnawing at his soul, the recollection of that joy and innocence. Completeness. The assumption that life would always be that way - the four of them together, safe on their ancestral land, under dancing, dappling golden rays, as they watched the storks gather twigs to construct their own family home.

A year later the lovebirds would return, as was habitually storks' way, to discover that their graft was all to waste. There was no nest to renovate, there was no barn, there was no farm, there was no family, there amongst the charred, black, silent wood that scarred melancholic fields.

And it was in those twelve short months that Gulf had metamorphosised, forcibly, into Atlas - the God from his Phor's lively narrations and those ethereal illustrations. The man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

//

Mew tilted his face upwards to welcome the stream of warm water cascading in soothing caress from the rainfall shower head of his apartment's wet room. It wasn't the shower he had wanted to take, but...

Every part of his body had strained to follow the footballer, the brat, Kanawut, into the team shower room. The younger man's ass as he had walked away - well, Mew could go to war for an ass like that, he mused, a soft sigh of frustration escaping his lips.

He was suddenly reminded of Helen of Troy - Marlowe's 'face that launched a thousand ships' - though in this case it would very specifically be an ass, not a face, to ignite the wars of his childhood's beloved, epic tales of Greek mythology.

It seemed fitting though. Bacchus - or should that be Dionysus? - would approve, Mew glinted wickedly.

And it wasn't just the ass - there was the confidence too. The fronting. The sass. It was seductive. Mew wanted it - wanted him. And Mew Suppasit was a man who was very much accustomed to getting what his heart, or cock, desired.

But he couldn't follow, could he? Not once he'd seen it: The 'Lang mark'. The boy had been branded by them - it was right there on the back of his smooth upper thigh. The dragon. Not a tattoo, but a branded mark to his flesh, a reminder to its owner that he was...owned.

So Mew held back, his chest constricting just a little - unfamiliar, fleeting, empathy - understanding then that Gulf Kanawut was surely, in some way, fatefully trapped, in the sticky, tangled, poisonous web of that family.

But it wasn't Mew's fight, he warned himself - he had his own web to escape from. And he had to think of Paithoon. It was all for Paithoon.

His hands slid across slippery skin as he showered, a sponge scrubbing harshly at his own body - needing, always, to wash it all away: The dirt of the past, the shame of the dirt, the hurt of the past. Mew gasped as the scourer assaulted his scars - a familiar jolt of electric sensitivity from the shiny white marks left as parting lipstick kisses by the two bullets that had torn into the flesh of his left shoulder.

And the realisation - as he ran a forefinger gently over the scars to recreate that tingle of almost pleasurable pain - that he and Kanawut had both been marked by the Langs in their own way.

Mind drifting indulgently back to the other man then, Mew allowed his hand to roam southwards. Over the rippling, wet muscles of his chest, past the tautness of abdomen and hint of an inguinal crease, following the happy trail down, down, until he reached his own impatiently stiffening erection.

He may not be able to shower with Gulf Kanawut, but what was to stop him from summoning those lips to help him out a little now? Tul had been right on the money, they would look damn good wrapped around his...

Mew closed his eyes, leant back against the ivory hued tiles, licked his lips with a frisson of heated anticipation, and began to play.