Now for the question of the chapter :)
Who is your favorite cinematic gay couple?
Mine is Kongpob/Arthit (Krist/Singto) from the Thai bl, Sotus
If you have not already watched Sotus I highly reccomend you watch it 100%. Although it is not a steamy show, there is a lot of fluff/angst and the plot is truly captivating and beautiful.
The full series is available on youtube with English subtitles! (there are two seasons, Sotus and Sotus S)
- It is currently after 1 am so this chapter is not very edited :)
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Kai's POV
I pushed my key into the hole of my front door, unlocking it. Lucas and I both shuffled inside, slipping our shoes off near the door.
As I moved to set my keys and wallet on my desk, emptying my pockets, Lucas jumped on my bed so that he was lying on his stomach, facing me.
He was propped up on his forearms with his phone in his hands. "Damnnn," he let out a long whistle.
"Whats up?" I asked as I turned around to close the door.
"You don't have snapchat right?" Lucas asked.
"No, I don't have any social media. I never saw the point, I have my own shit to deal with. I dont give a fuck about what Bethany had for lunch or random petty drama." I paused, moving to sit on the bed next to him so I could see what he was doing on his phone, crossing my legs into a pretzel shape and placing my hands in my lap.
"Well, I didn't get a chance to check it Friday since you came over and same with today, but I was going through some peoples stories and literally all I'm seeing is people freaking out about what happened after our fake fight," Lucas laughed.
He moved to show me his phone, "Check this out," I took the phone from his hands and turned the volume up.
It was a video of us starting from when Lucas whispered in my ear and then helped me off the ground, both of us were laughing but our voices were too quiet to hear what we were talking about. Then the next clip was of a random guy freaking out over our non hostile interaction, captioned, "HOLY SHIT BROOOOO WHAT IS GOING ON????"
I moved to the next story and it was very similar, "Is their feud over after three years?"
"No way! Did that actually just happen?"
"I think I'm imagining things, Lucas and Kai getting along??"
"When did they even become friends?"
"I thought I was going to be able to get some popcorn out and enjoy the show, but there basically wasn't even a fight. WTF is this?"
"I thought it was hot when they were fighting, but they are 100x hotter when they are laughing!"
"OMG guyyssss I got some TEA for youuu!!"
"Nah, I bet they were faking it. No one can go from being that hostile with someone to being chill like that."
"Wait does this mean we don't get to see Friday fights anymore? Damn that's kind of disappointing."
I kept tapping and tapping from one story to the next but they were all the same. Every single person was talking about us, some were videos of what happened, and others were people's reactions.
I wasn't expecting it to blow up this much, although I can't say I don't like the shocked reactions. It gives me a buzz.
I felt a smile creep up on my face. I handed Lucas back his phone and plopped down on the bed lying down so I was face up with both hands resting behind my head.
I was satisfied, "Not gonna lie, I do like the attention."
Lucas didn't reply, he looked focused on his phone.
I rolled over so I could see what he was looking at, I was practically on top of him at this point.
"What's that?" I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion, looking at what seemed to be a picture of myself.
"I don't think Joon was kidding when he said you were popular." Lucas stated.
"What do you mean?" I was confused.
"I mean, just look at this," he moved his phone so it was pointed towards me. "You don't have instagram, but this account is of you."
He swiped to the right and started scrolling down a search list for my name and there were countless accounts with images of me as profiles and with Furiae in the username.
"The fuck is this?" I asked, snatching the phone from Lucas's hands. I clicked on the first one I saw.
The account name was Furiae.Forever and the profile picture looked like it was taken at one of my fights at Mad Dog. And the bio... I don't even know what to think of this.
"Furiae official fan account?" I read outloud. "30K followers??"
I turned my head to look at Lucas and the second we made eye contact he started cracking up, rolling around on my bed.
"Oh my god your reaction is priceless!" He was wiping tears from his eyes. "T-there's so many of them!"
Lucas grabbed his phone out of my hands and checked another account, he burst out so loud that he started choking, "K-Kai," he was wheezing, "look at this one!"
I looked at his phone, the name under the account was "Furiae's Wife" and there were several poorly photoshopped images of me and what looked like a 12-year-old girl.
"Damn Kai, you're even pulling little kids."
"Oh shut up, I'm not a pedophile, and how the hell does someone that old even know me? Hell, how do this many people know me?"
Lucas calmed down a bit, still smiling to himself while going through different fan accounts.
"I don't know, man. I mean, think about it a little. I know Mad Dag was an underground fight club, but even then they had thousands of people every night. Like the number of people at some crowds could fill a whole ass stadium. And as for the kids, It's probably because they had a parent or sibling take them and they thought you were cool." Lucas turned to face me.
"Yea, I get that, it's just hard to think about because no one has even hinted at me being popular outside of school. It's just a little surprising that's all."
"But knowing you, you're going to love the attention."
I paused to think for a second, "You're not wrong there."
"Plus, I think your personality is kind of perfect for being a celebrity. You literally dont give a fuck about what anyone thinks."
"Whoah woah woah, who said anything about me being a celebrity. Just because I'm a little popular at Mad Dog doesn't mean I'm famous." I stated. "And I know that we're both super popular at school, and yes I like it that way, but that has nothing to do with Mad Dog."
"Kai, you saw how many fan accounts you have, and how many followers those accounts have. Regular people don't have fan pages with tens of thousands of followers."
"Okay, but still. I don't fight because I want to be famous. I do it because of my dad, I love fighting, and not to mention, I'm making bank."
Lucas raised his eyebrows and gave me a challenging look, "I think you're just scared."
"Scared? What would I be scared of exactly?" I asked.
"I think," he paused, sitting up on the bed. I followed suit as he grabbed my phone out of my pocket and waved it in front of me. "I think you're too scared to even make an insta. I bet you're worried that no one will actually follow you.
I knew Lucas was teasing me, but if there was anything I was not, it was a chicken. "That's a load of bullshit and you know it."
"Then why don't you prove me wrong. Make an account and see how it goes."
"But I literally have no reason to do that. What good will an instagram account do me?" I asked, unaffected by his provocations.
"Just try it, I think you might like it." Lucas seemed adamant about getting me to make an account.
"Please?" He made an adorable pouting face and stared up at me with his sparkling eyes.
"Ugh, fine." There's no way I can resist a face like that.
Suddenly, Lucas Jumped off the bed and pumped his hand in the air cheering, "Whohoo! Success!" He smiled looking back at me.
I chuckled at his reaction and shook my head.
My phone vibrated in his hand, signaling I had a notification so he handed me my phone.
I unlocked my phone and saw that I had gotten an email directly from, rather than the Mad Dog email account from earlier, Song Byungjoon.
Hello, Kai,
Thank you for meeting with me today, I am pleased that we were able to come to an agreement regarding the matters of you fighting for Doubles. As I mentioned earlier, Mad Dog is no longer an underground company which means that we will be in the public eye. Please be prepared for the possibility of people taking a keen interest in you, sometimes this could mean stalkers or even people leaking your personal information.
As I have recently become aware that you do not have social media, if you ever do decide to join any platforms, I would like to ask that you would also follow the official Mad Dog account with your own. This would help with further growing our organization and would be greatly appreciated. All of our social media accounts will be listed below for future reference.
Joon.
Not only is Lucas pushing for me to join, but Joon as well? This is definitely a sign.
I quickly downloaded the app. "Okay..." I trailed off, "I need a username."
"Just use some variation of your name."
"Yeah but my name is taken." I huffed
"Try something else then. If you don't like it, you can change it later."
"Okay... now for a bio," I thought for a second, "yep," I said, popping the p, "that's good enough."
"You finished?" Lucas asked. "Okay, give me your phone."
I handed Lucas my phone, slightly confused.
He scoffed, "Your bio is stupid. Some people call me Furiae. I like to fight. Really?"
"Oh shut up. What are you doing anyway?"
"Following myself," Lucas smiled.
The 6'2 boy moved so that we were next to each other. He brought the phone up and moved his face next to mine, "Smile!" He slung his muscular arm over my shoulder, pulling us even closer together.
I straightened the light blue opened button up shirt I had on over my white tee to look more presentable and quickly fixed my hair so that it wasnt covering my eyes. Lucas didn't do anything to change his appearance. I mean the green shirt he was wearing made his eyes stand out so much that even if his hair was messed up, no one would notice.
I winked one eye and stuck my tongue out, my nose scrunching with the movement.
Lucas took one picture and then gave me back my phone, "Post that." He told me.
We both looked happy in the picture, and I don't know how he did it, but the lighting was nice too. In the background you could see that we were both sitting on a bed, but other than that the only thing visible was a wall and the opened door to my bathroom.
"What should I caption it?" I asked.
"I'm not sure, just write a quick message. Something along the lines of this is Furiae's official instagram account. Oh and make sure to tag me. Maybe I'll be able to leech off some of your followers."
"What followers? Right now my only follower is you." I replied.
Lucas laughed at my ignorance, "Well yeah, for now. No one knows about the account yet so how could you have followers."
"Okayyy and done." I said, having just posted the selfie of me and Lucas.
I decided to look at Lucas's account, curious as to what he's posted, "Damn you have over 3,000 followers?"
"Yeah. But thats just because I won a couple big boxing tournaments when I was younger."
"Ohhh, I see." I said as I scrolled through his feed. It was mostly just videos of either Lucas boxing or of him teaching a class at the gym.
We sat in silence for a bit, each doing our own thing. But it wasn't the kind of silence that was awkward, it was the kind that was comfortable.
Since I made an account I decided I should follow my friends as well so I went to the people following Lucas and searched for Zay and Jack's names, requesting to follow both of them.
I also decided to follow Mad Dog's instagram account. There was only one post and it's from yesterday, they probably made it the second they went legal. There were a fair amount of followers to my surprise, already 80K after just one day. The account mostly just followed people who fought at Mad Dog, and some others I didn't recognize.
Mad Dog immediately followed me back which wasn't surprising. Joon was probably expecting me to make an account.
I plugged my phone into the charger next to my pillow and yawned as I stood up, stretching my arms above my head.
"I think I'm gonna change into pajamas." I told Lucas.
He pried his eyes away from his phone and looked up at me, "Already? It's only like 7:00 pm though."
"Yeah I know, but yesterday was kind of emotionally taxing, and then today I was so anxious and now that everything's calmed down it's making me really tired."
Lucas laughed awkwardly, "Haha, yeah sorry about the whole pool thing. I didn't know it was going to turn out like that."
"Nah, it's all good. It's not like you knew or anything. And honestly I'm happy you pushed me into a pool, if you had forced me to get into a bathtub my reaction would have probably been even worse." I said nonchalantly as I took off the blue shirt, unbuckling my pants.
"I still feel bad about it though." He looked sad.
I didn't like talking about this stuff, just because I'm good at hiding my emotions and keeping myself composed most of the time doesn't make it any less difficult.
Quickly wanting to change the subject, "Are you really okay with fighting in Doubles with me?" I asked. "It's not like boxing."
I had just pulled off my white shirt, completely exposing my abs for Lucas to see.
What? Teasing him is fun.
"I know it's not boxing, and if it wasn't for you I would probably never fight at Mad Dog. It's okay because it's you, and because I want to help you end this shitty segment of your life so you finally move on." His gaze softened as he looked lost in thought.
I moved to pull my belt out of the loops of my jeans, unzipping my pants and beginning to pull them down.
"Thank you." I said, "It really means a lot to me, I don't think you understand how big of a deal it was when you didn't even hesitate to help me. If you had refused," I paused, pulling my jeans all the way off, leaving me in just my underwear, "I would have had to find a random partner, and I've never been one to work well with others, especially strangers. I'm happy I'll get to have someone I trust fighting beside me."
I moved so that I was standing closer to the green-eyed boy.
"Kai, you're worth it." Lucas looked down at the ground, averting his gaze. His voice was quieter than before, but his tone was sentimental and genuine.
I pulled my boxers down, slipping them off past my feet and then tossed them into the corner of my room.
"Lucas," I said, causing the boy to snap his head back up at the mention of his name. His eyes went wide when he saw me standing before him completely nude, his mouth parted slightly as he released a deep breath.
"It means so much to me." My hand found its way to Lucas's head and brushed his fluffy brown hair back.
My voice came out as a breathy whisper, "You mean so much to me."
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A/N - (This is long, sorry. Some comments just made me kind of upset and uncomfortable)
Hi I just wanted to say something real quick in light of some recent comments regarding how my book is too "eurocentric" and has a lot of racism.
For starters, I have absolutely no clue how my book is racist or where the racism is. If anyone sees something that may be offensive or racist please leave a comment and I will fix it immediately as it was not my intention.
And if my book is just being called racist becuase Kai and Lucas will be an interracial couple than that sounds more like a you problem than a me problem.
Secondly, I am aware that my book is eurocentric. This is not to offend anyone, it is simply becuase I live in America so the book is heavily influenced by western culture and I created the characters based off of my ideal type. This is not to say that men have to look a certain way to be handsome or beautiful, as beauty has no true standard. Also, beauty standards are different everywhere you go and differ from person to person.
I hope this clears up any misunderstandings.
Also, based off of the end of this chapter I think you all know where this is about to go *insert smriking emoji*