Chapter Text
And today, just when I
could not stand myself any longer,
a group of field sparrows, that were
actually field sparrows, flew up into
the bare branches of the hackberry
and I almost collapsed: leaves
reattaching themselves to the tree
like a strong spell for reversal. What
else did I expect? What good
is accuracy amidst the perpetual
scattering that unspools the world.
- It’s the season I often mistake, Ada Limon
“What were you talking to Macau about?” Kinn asked, still simmering with irritation after another needling, unproductive monthly meeting with the minor family. Porsche was right there, and entertaining, in how he would jab back at Kinn, wasn’t silent and respectful like the rest of the bodyguards, and it was an easy thing to poke him about. He’d escorted Macau back into the room as they’d finished up; Kinn wasn’t sure where Porsche had found him, or how long they’d been alone.
Porsche was also very, very good-looking, and so it was a pleasure to watch the frustrations Kinn couldn’t show chase each other across his expressive, pretty face. Like now, rolling his eyes as he said, “What, don’t any of you people talk to the help?”
There was something off in the way he said it, even more bitter than Kinn would have expected for someone so new to the job, someone who’d walked in of his own free will. Porsche had used his ill-gotten gains from Kinn’s watch to pay off a sharked loan on his house, clear the gambling debts of some wastrel uncle, and pay the rest of his little brother’s fees for the same snooty school Macau attended as well as opening a new account with enough in it to cover a year of a good university.
As far as Arm’s research could tell, Porsche didn’t strictly speaking need a Theerapanyakul wage, and Kinn didn’t really understand either why he’d presented himself at the door to ask for one or why Pa had insisted they take him, even after Chan had make clear that Porsche barely met the lowest standard required of the bodyguards who never got near any of the family, never mind close protection detail.
Tankhun had evidently heard it too. He could be exceptionally sensitive to emotional undercurrents and how far people could be pushed, for reasons Kinn didn’t like thinking about; he hadn’t always been. He said, “Where did you say he came from?” to Kinn like Porsche and Pete weren’t in the room.
“Pissing in bottles behind a cocktail bar,” Kinn said. “But Pa gave him to me, so I’m stuck with him.” To a visibly furious Porsche he said, “You don’t know the minor family? Never come across any of them before?”
“How would I know the fucking minor family?” Porsche snapped.
“Pete!” Tankhun shrieked, offended.
Pete said, “Porsche,” softly and reprovingly.
“All right,” Kinn said. He slammed his book closed and said to Porsche, “Get me a drink. At least that’s something that should be in your skillset. And stay away from the minor family. There’s no need for you to speak to them.”
Porsche sulked over to the bar and poured Kinn a whisky with horrifically bad grace and a filthy expression, probably not realising he was standing in front of a mirror and Kinn and Tankhun were watching the whole thing. Kinn chose to ignore it and instead watch his spectacular arse in motion, and it didn’t occur to him until much, much later, that Porsche’s answer to whether he knew the minor family wasn’t actually a no.
/
A few days later Chan pulled Kinn downstairs to watch the bodyguards shooting.
“He’s really improved,” Kinn said, surprised, accepting the folder Chan handed him. It wasn’t just the marksmanship: when he looked at the papers Porsche had pulled his performance up on everything aside from his already excellent hand-to-hand from certain to die on any mission to respectability in around a week. It suggested less that he was some bodyguarding wunderkind and more that he’d been deliberately lazing the initial tests, which seemed strange because Kinn knew for a fact that Chan had let at least one person drown in that pool, and, after all, Porsche had come to them. There was no reason Kinn could think of why he would have thrown the assessment, or why he would have decided to abandon the pretence already.
“He works hard,” Chan said, with the very faintest note in his voice of approval. Hard work and smoking were Chan’s only hobbies.
Kinn hesitated, then said, “p’Chan?” and Chan turned to look at him, giving Kinn his full attention. It was like a codeword between them, between Chan and Kinn’s brothers too: Chan had always been there, their whole lives, since they were young and didn’t differentiate between people who were always around because they were paid to be and people who were always around because they loved them. It meant Kinn was asking for the real truth, and that as far as he could, Chan would give it to him.
He said, “Why was Pa so keen to take him?”
Chan paused. He pulled out his smokes and offered Kinn one.
Kinn had given up, or at least he’d cut down and was trying to keep it to highly stressful occasions only: it was starting to look more likely he’d make it to thirty than he’d once expected and his doctor had told him if he kept it down to either smoking or drinking he might even make it to forty, at least on natural causes. But something about being offered a cigarette by Chan would always have the pleasurable little streak of being treated like a grown-up, an equal, and he accepted it and bent his head for Chan to light it for him, the expensive ridged gold of his lighter reflecting dizzyingly in the cold blue light of the bodyguard quarters.
“He sees potential in him,” Chan said. “Your papa thinks you found him for a reason.”
That wasn’t very like Pa, who kept to a ruthlessly correct Buddhist schedule and as far as Kinn knew believed in absolutely nothing. But then Pa was getting older now, changing with it. Before he’d stepped back from the business Kinn hadn’t thought he would ever do that. He certainly hadn’t thought Pa would take up pottery.
“What do you think?” Kinn said instead.
Chan blew out a precise, expansive smoke ring. He said, “I think he works hard.”
/
The conversation settled Kinn enough that the next night he asked Porsche to go and fetch Marsh for the evening, which was a task he saved for more trusted, less feral guards. Marsh was an absolute wonder in not seeing or understanding anything that wasn’t for him to see or understand - all Kinn’s boys were - and Kinn respected that, and sent men who would look more at home behind the greeting desk of a good restaurant than bouncing the door of a dive bar.
“I thought you were going out,” Porsche said, more accusingly than Kinn felt was really warranted. “I thought this,” - he waved a hand at Kinn, fresh out of the shower and getting ready for the evening - “was to go out.”
“No,” Kinn said, and Porsche trailed his gaze up and down Kinn’s body in the half-steamed-up mirror; it looked like it was supposed to be insulting, and Kinn hoped he’d been briefed properly. It was a long long time since a bodyguard had openly expressed judgement of Kinn’s being gay, but it had happened, and Kinn hadn’t enjoyed it. “It’s called looking nice. Is there a problem? You get the night off.”
Something in Porsche’s eyes flickered, a spark Kinn recognised very well, but had never expected to see in Porsche. His checks had revealed an enthusiastic and not very salubrious taste for women, no boyfriends, but plenty of the men who fucked men in Bangkok were discreet about it, if not outright closeted: from the way Porsche was looking at Kinn he clearly knew what he liked.
“Maybe I don’t want the night off,” Porsche said, in a throaty voice that still ended on a squeak, and lunged for him.
His mouth collided with the corner of Kinn’s before Kinn fended him off, less out of instinct and more out of overriding it, as his body was giving a wholly approving yes to the feel of Porsche on him, different to his usual lovers, tall and lean and strong.
“I don’t kiss,” he said automatically, rather than what he should have said, which was you’re fired. He blamed the shattering lushness of Porsche’s lips; unfortunately, he suspected, memorised in that millisecond they’d brushed his.
“Why not?” Porsche said uncertainly. He was visibly sweating. It looked amazing on him.
“I just don’t,” Kinn said, annoyed, and, again, instead of what he should have said, which was still, you’re fired.
“Well,” Porsche said, looking lost. “We could do… other stuff?”
“I don’t do anything,” Kinn said, slowly and patiently, “with bodyguards.”
If Porsche said, but they told me - he definitely was getting fired, Kinn told himself, something hard and bitter sitting in his chest. He knew what people thought, what people assumed, when they saw Kinn surrounded by hot young things in immaculate suits, but Kinn knew better. Yes, he paid for it, but he didn’t have to pay for it.
“It’s not part of your job,” he added, just to make it as clear as he could.
“It’s someone’s job,” Porsche mumbled. He was looking pale now, almost ill.
“That is none of your business,” Kinn snapped. “Are you that hard up? Did you used to get off at work?”
Porsche flushed bright red, from his throat up, and probably down as well, and Kinn belatedly realised why he’d been in that alley, looking as he did, loose and louche, throat bare and long and smooth as he tipped his chin up to smoke, post-coital -
“Tell Ken to go and get Marsh,” Kinn ordered him, and turned back to the mirror. It wasn’t fogged up from his shower anymore and he could see himself now, looking sharp and tired. Porsche was lingering behind him, his reflection looking bullish, and Kinn said, “You’re dismissed for the night. This conversation never happened,” and turned deliberately back to his preparations.
/
Marsh was as good as ever. As obedient, as pliant, as providing of charmingly simulated affection and divertingly light conversation.
It wasn’t his fault Kinn had to flip him onto his front and take him on his hands and knees, so Marsh wouldn’t see his face and he couldn’t see Marsh; or that when he came he bit down on the soft skin between Marsh’s shoulderblades, so he wouldn’t even think Porsche’s name.
/
Chan signed off Porsche for full fieldwork. Three days after that Kinn was in much the same situation he’d been in when they first met: on his arse in a wet alley, wearing what had been a very nice dinner jacket when he left the house, watching Porsche elegantly and efficiently beat the living shit out of yet more fucking Italian thugs.
He slouched to the wall to watch the end of the show, protecting his back; they’d lost the rest of his detail running. He held his gun loosely, ready, but Porsche was too fast to risk firing, too on top of the fight for Kinn to need to.
There were two left. Porsche took out one with a deftly spinning kick, getting an impressive amount of air, his foot to the Italian’s cheek with the audible crack of bone.
The last one, he tried to do the same. This one was wilier, smarter, grabbed Porsche’s foot in the air and heaved, arresting Porsche mid-flight, a cruel shock to Porsche’s deadly, graceful movements like Icarus dropping out of the sky, dumping him on his back in a puddle hard enough to leave Porsche wheezing on the ground.
It hurt Kinn to watch, but there was, after all, a reason why they looked for gun skills ahead of brawling, for every bodyguard before Porsche. Risk of shooting his own man lost, Kinn raised his gun and took their attacker out with a neat shot to the head.
Porsche hadn’t killed any of the others, or Kinn assumed so, but the rest of them were wisely staying on the floor. Even silenced, and in this part of the city, they couldn’t hang around after a gunshot, and Kinn could hear squealing tyres somewhere in the distance: an escort coming to pick him up.
Porsche was still lying in the puddle, shaking his head weakly. Kinn reached down for him and Porsche stilled, looked up at him for a long moment before he reached up. Kinn looked behind him as he dragged Porsche up - he was heavy, all muscle - and saw only the dark blur of Porsche’s hair in the rippling reflection in the puddle, no blood.
Porsche swayed a little as Kinn got him on his feet.
“You did well,” Kinn said. Porsche was soaking, the neatly besuited figure from the start of the night bedraggled and sad. It had only been supposed to be an appearance at a dinner honouring the interior designer who had overseen the last refurb of the resort hotels. Kinn wouldn’t have minded the disappointing ending to the evening so much if the food had been better.
The Theerapanyakul men hadn’t been the only bodyguards there, but they’d mostly blended into the background, as they were supposed to. People had looked twice at Porsche, though. He was that good-looking.
He still was, unfortunately, even wet and starting to shiver, his gaze a little hazy. Kinn gestured to him to take off his wet jacket, stripped off his own and handed it to him in exchange.
Porsche stared at it for a moment, then back up at Kinn. He took the jacket slowly, put it on. “Really? This is what did well looks like?”
It was a self-deprecating joke, but Kinn heard the unspoken moron at the end of it perfectly. It made him happy, that Porsche was aware enough to make light of the situation. The sound of the cars was getting closer and he started to guide Porsche down the alley.
He and Porsche were similar in height, but Kinn was broader enough that it was clear Porsche wasn’t wearing his own jacket, the shoulders drooping on Porsche’s lithe figure. It was surprisingly satisfying to see Porsche in his jacket, warm and safe. Kinn pretended not to notice Big noticing it, and helped Porsche into the car ahead of him.
/
“Come in, come, you’re just in time,” Tankhun said, shoving Pol off the couch onto the floor. “Porsche! You come too.”
“Porsche is off duty,” Kinn said, falling onto the couch next to his brother, grateful for once for the overstuffed pillows and the cashmere blanket Tankhun threw over him. It had been a long day, full of spreadsheets and video conferences with the accountants who were still combing through the casino books trying to find any other embezzlement or other issues from Prayut’s betrayal, and his head was aching.
“If he’s off duty he can watch the show with us,” Tankhun said imperiously. “What could be more fun? What better plans could he have? Porsche! Sit down!”
Porsche looked down at Kinn and Kinn shrugged up at him. He didn’t especially want Porsche to stay, but he didn’t mind if he did.
“Thanks, Khun Noo,” Porsche said. Tankhun patted the seat on his other side and Porsche went obediently.
It was some show about cakes and Kinn closed his eyes and put his head back against the couch. “Aren’t you watching a series?” he said. He made sure to spend time with Tankhun regularly, but at least it was usually a show he could follow without much effort, a brief solace in his week Pa wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at when he reviewed Kinn’s schedule.
Tankhun hit him. “It’s English practice. This is Arm’s favourite show.”
Kinn lifted his head up and cracked an eye at Arm, who did not look like he was watching his favourite show. However, accidentally catching his eye, Arm did dutifully say, “It’s my favourite show, Sir.”
“Well, if it’s Arm’s favourite,” Kinn said.
Pete was whispering something to Porsche and Kinn remembered they were roommates. He picked his head up to watch them, trying to be subtle. Porsche looked softer, talking to Pete; comfortable. It filled Kinn with a wistfulness for easy companionship. He was close to Tae and even Time, but their families had professional ties as well as personal, and he’d known them forever. He hadn’t made a friend for years. Not many people got to be comfortable around Kinn, and anyone he actually liked he wouldn’t want to be. People were safer far away from him.
It might have been good practice, but Kinn barely followed the programme, other than watching the pretty cakes slide by. Porsche seemed to get bored even more quickly; as far as Kinn knew he didn’t have much more than basic English.
Luckily it must have been a weekly show, because they only had to sit through one episode before Pete adeptly acquired the remote and switched it off. Pol kicked off the chatter about it, which Tankhun always enjoyed, and Kinn let it wash over him, covertly watching Porsche’s face slightly blurry in the blank TV screen.
The conversation turned from cookery to eating out to the bar Porsche used to work out, and from there to Porsche energetically trying to convince Tankhun to let Porsche escort him on a night out, the other bodyguards joining in with unseemly enthusiasm. Tankhun seemed at one point to be wavering but then he slid quickly into anxiety and Kinn tore his mind off contemplating exactly Porsche might mean by promising to thrill Tankhun and glanced at Pete, who shut the conversation down smoothly.
“You won’t be able to take my brother out of this house,” Kinn said, when they’d left Tankhun’s rooms and were standing around outside, as awkward as if they weren’t still actually in Kinn’s home, Porsche’s accommodation. “You do know that?”
He should have been saying it to make sure Porsche wouldn’t push Tankhun into anything he wasn’t comfortable with, but disquietingly he found he was saying it because he didn’t want Porsche to be disappointed when Tankhun never followed through on saying he’d leave.
Porsche was back to being guarded, and Kinn missed the sweeter boy he’d seen in the smiles to Pete and Pol and Tankhun. “No? When was the last time you tried?”
It had been over a decade. Kinn had asked him often, when they were young, when this was still new; when they’d still been feeling out the boundaries of Tankhun’s pain and fear, and found they followed the solid walls of the tower more closely than any of them had hoped. Kinn had stopped asking quickly. It wasn’t his hia’s fault he couldn’t go out and it upset all of them when he did try, and failed.
He didn’t say any of that. He said, “A while ago.”
“I will take him out,” Porsche said, with more than a hint of the careless, brilliant fighter who’d smoked his cigarette and bargained with Kinn for help to save his life. “You’ll see. You’ll come?”
“If you can take Tankhun out,” Kinn said, and he stepped closer to Porsche on impulse, guiltily enjoyed the way he breathed in and shifted, “I’ll come anywhere you like.”
/
Kinn didn’t know why he was roaming the house, restless, until he found Porsche stashed in one of the staff kitchens and trying to treat his own fucking bullet wound. His nerviness quieted instantly, like his soul breathing out. Porsche had been shot, but he was well - mostly well, if he didn’t get septicaemia from his clumsy attempts to doctor himself - and safe. He didn’t know when Porsche had gone from being one of the blank men guarding the doors to someone it helped to know was behind them, guarded.
Porsche was cursing softly, trying to hold a mirror onto the wound where the bullet had grazed him with the hand of the injured arm so he could dab at it with saline solution. Golden light was refracting around the room as his hand shook, gilding the smooth brown skin of his muscled arm and shoulder, the five o’clock shadow on his sharp jaw. He looked tired.
Kinn went to him and took the mirror away firmly, dropping it face-down on the table. “Give it here,” he said. “Why didn’t medical do this for you?”
“I didn’t want them to,” Porsche said defensively, but he let Kinn take his arm and rotate it gently, examining the wound. It wasn’t too bad at all, more gory-looking than serious, a dint in the bicep sluggishly bleeding. Kinn had seen many much worse injuries, on his bodyguards, on himself, but it made him unhappy to look at this one on Porsche.
He picked up the sterile gauze and soaked it in saline, pressed it to the wound. Porsche sucked in a breath and Kinn glanced up at him. “Be careful,” Porsche snapped.
“It’s barely anything,” Kinn said, although his hands belied him without his conscious control, touching Porsche as gently as he knew how. “Hold this against it. It’s supposed to hurt a bit, that’s how you know it’s clean.”
Porsche looked mutinous but he held the gauze against the wound. It was hurting him: he was looking pale, his mouth tight.
This wasn’t one of the kitchens Kinn used but alcohol was everywhere in this house. He found a bottle of Scotch and glasses and brought them to the table, poured out a hefty slug for Porsche and nudged it to him. Porsche looked up at him from under his long lashes and as Kinn took back over wound-tending duties he drank it in three long swallows, his throat working.
It was good Scotch, but Kinn didn’t say anything. Porsche poured himself another, poured Kinn one too, and this time he sipped it. He was already relaxing a little, like just the sharp taste of alcohol was enough.
Kinn held the gauze to his arm with one hand, droplets starting to run down his fingers cool and wet, and shuffled through the first aid box with the other, picking out dressing and medical tape. He held the dressing packet up to Porsche silently and Porsche clicked his teeth against his glass and then put it down so that between them he and Kinn could rip it open.
“Ever been shot before?” Kinn asked.
“No, of course not,” Porsche said. “Fuck me. When would I have been shot, you fucking lunatic?”
Kinn shrugged. “I don’t know what happens at those fights. Or after them.”
“Not getting fucking shot.”
“Fine,” Kinn said. He moved the gauze off Porsche’s arm. There was still some blood oozing up, but it was as clean as Kinn could get it. He went to wash his hands before he put the dressing on, and when he had his back to Porsche he said quietly, “Ever killed anyone?”
Porsche made a choked sound, and Kinn prepared to drop it.
And then - “No,” Porsche said, raw, his voice stripped of defiance and posturing, pure misery left. “No. Never.”
Kinn could have pushed him again. Those rings were brutal, and there was some chance Porsche had given more than one person an injury that had killed them, quickly or slowly. But he wasn’t here for philosophical conversation.
He shouldn’t have been there at all. He should have left then, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t think he could leave Porsche alone when he was like this, even though Porsche would probably prefer it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He came back to Porsche and bent over his arm, avoiding his face, making sure Porsche couldn’t get a good view of his. Kinn had killed his first man at fifteen. At eighteen he’d become a man, and stopped counting.
There was a silence, awkward as fuck, and Kinn made himself stay quiet, dabbing carefully at the wound. He wanted to know how Porsche was doing, but usually if he was concerned one of the guards might have their performance disrupted by a difficult day he would have Chan manage it. He didn’t have the first idea what to say to encourage Porsche to confide in him.
He didn’t have to. Porsche threw back the whisky, Kinn pausing in his work to briefly succumb to the way Porsche’s muscled shoulders moved, and said in a tone too sad for his glowing beauty, “My dad and my mum… they died when I was little. I didn’t have anyone to depend on. So I took an informal loan. Every month, they’d come to collect, and every time I heard a knock at the door, I’d be terrified it was them.”
There had been an uncle, as far as Kinn’s briefing had gone, but it wasn’t much of a surprise he hadn’t been any use. Sharked loans were one of the most effective parts of the Theerapanyakul portfolio: not high income, but consistent, and low risk. Porsche had probably paid off his principal years ago, and would have been afraid of the knock at the door for the rest of his life.
Porsche’s voice had gone small, lost. “I collected the debt today. I was… I did everything I hate. I killed a man. I killed a father. Where will his kid end up?”
Kinn had killed many fathers, in his time. Their kids usually ended up working for him.
He didn’t say he was sorry again, although he was. It wouldn’t change anything, and Porsche wouldn’t appreciate it. Some men who came to work for the Theerapanyakuls enjoyed going from the bottom of the heap to the top, exulted in it, let it make them cruel. Porsche clearly wasn’t going to be one of them.
“There,” he said, patting the last bit of tape into place. He let his fingers skim just an inch onto Porsche’s bicep, feeling him warm and alive under Kinn’s touch. “Try to sleep on the other side. And don’t get it wet in the morning.”
“You’re good at that,” Porsche said, trying to turn his arm so he could peer at Kinn’s good job, which wouldn’t be good for very long if Porsche couldn’t stop himself messing it up. Kinn took his arm in his hand and turned it back firmly.
Porsche went still under him; not in a fearful way: just quiet, relaxed. Kinn knew how men felt under his hands when they liked his hands on them, and that was how Porsche felt.
“Have you ever been shot?” Porsche said.
“Yeah,” Kinn said.
“I didn’t realise how much it would hurt,” Porsche said softly. He was breathing fast, lightly.
“That’s why you’re supposed to go to medical,” Kinn said. “They give you pills.”
“I got the pills,” Porsche said. “They must give you better stuff than they give the bodyguards.”
“I usually combine it with a great blowjob,” Kinn said, rashly, but honestly. “Natural painkiller.”
Porsche laughed, sounding scraped. “Great. If you see any cute girls around here send them my way, then.”
“I’ll do it for you,” Kinn said, on a stupid, stupid, glorious impulse.
“What?” Porsche said. He sounded shocked, maybe disbelieving; when Kinn looked down at him, found him looking back up, he looked eager. His eyes were shining.
“It’ll help. It doesn’t mean anything,” Kinn said, hearing his own voice gone low, as throaty as if he’d already swallowed Porsche’s cock down. It made it easier to decide to go through with it, to throw his rules about bodyguards away, to let Porsche be special. Had he got here in that courtyard, instinct pushing him past all his training and protocols to pull Porsche out of the path of the bullet? Or did both stem from the same place, the attraction and connection he’d felt the night Porsche had saved his life and stolen his watch?
“Are you serious?” Porsche said, but his uninjured hand had already slid onto his crotch, palming himself. Kinn’s gaze followed the motion, irresistibly, and it was easy to see that the pain didn’t seem to be stopping Porsche from getting hard, his cock swelling visibly in the loose sweatpants he was wearing. It looked nicely sized, not huge, a good mouthful of the kind Kinn liked best, could keep blowing as long as he liked without getting sore or seizing up.
“Don’t move your sore arm, okay?” he said. “But you can pull my hair if you want with the other hand,” and went to his knees.
Porsche took being sucked beautifully. He wriggled and sighed and didn’t pull Kinn’s hair at all, just stroked Kinn there over and over while Kinn bobbed his head on him lazily. Porsche didn’t need his very best work: long and slow and sloppy was best for distracting from pain anyway.
And if that only made it easier for Kinn to touch himself discreetly while he licked and sucked and moved on Porsche’s dick, while he laid the throbbing head of Porsche’s cock on his tongue and looked up at him as Porsche came into his mouth, then neither of them felt the need to mention it.
/
“Pete said Mes said someone hired him to kill you,” Chan said the next day.
“He did,” Kinn said, trying to control himself out of licking his lips, which were pink and a little tender from sucking Porsche’s cock, without thinking about needing to control himself out of licking his lips because of sucking Porsche’s cock. Chan read minds.
“It’s likely it came from someone who knows your movements,” Chan said. He sounded very calm, but Kinn could tell he was irritated: he took it personally when people in the tower let them down.
Kinn didn’t. He tried to start with lower expectations, and then it didn’t hurt when they weren’t met.
“Am I changing any security measures?” he said.
“I’m tightening the people with knowledge of your schedule down further and bringing in some different model cars,” Chan said.
Kinn said, “And the people?”
A hint of a mole not long after bringing in new senior staff wasn’t a difficult equation. Chan pursed his lips and said, “Your father wants you to keep Porsche on.” He paused and added in a low voice, “I can talk to him.”
It was a significant favour. Pa usually took Chan’s special advice, and that meant Chan very rarely gave it.
“It’s all right,” Kinn said, casually. He didn’t want to think about Porsche being a security risk. He wanted to think about the way Porsche had sighed with Kinn’s mouth on his cock, the sweet curve of his waist and hips and arse in his uniform trousers. It made him careless and he blurted out, “What did he say about what happened?”
“He said you moved out of cover when he was shot,” Chan said, very mildly, and Kinn cringed. He shouldn’t have done it, all his training since he was very small had been to let the bodyguards do their job, to prioritise himself, but it would never be his instinct to put others between himself and a gun. “He was surprised,” Chan said.
“That’s what he gets for listening to bodyguard gossip about me,” Kinn said, trying not to sound interested in what Porsche thought about him. He didn’t care what Porsche thought. Why would he?
/
Kinn had his speech prepared, memorised and practised, but it threw him off badly when Porsche disappeared. He’d been focused on the auction, although the other bidders had dropped away quickly; he’d had some concerns about Vegas trying to bump up the price, but his cousin seemed to have attended purely to irritate Kinn and then leave, the visual pollution of his white suit out of Kinn’s eyeline a couple of lots ago.
“Kinn,” Tae bit out quietly, and Kinn blinked, made sure his smile was still respectably sized and bright, and carried on, stumbling over his words as he watched Arm carry on a quiet argument with the rest of the team, fingers on his earpiece.
He managed to get through his pleasure at supporting charity, his family’s pleasure at supporting charity, how much the Theerapanyakul Corporation enjoyed supporting charity, and was just onto their plans to support more charity in the future when Arm straightened up, looking relieved.
Porsche slid back into the room, looking surprised when Arm and Pete converged on him, and Kinn lifted his chin and finished his speech with sprightly energy.
/
“Come with me,” he said to Porsche, clipped, when he was escorted back to his rooms. “You and I need to have a talk.”
Porsche looked resentful. The rest of the team abandoned him ruthlessly, clearly grateful they weren’t the ones being punished, and Porsche slouched after him into Kinn’s living room.
Kinn had stayed around to network, accepting congratulations, speaking to magazines and filming a couple of spots for the news and the socialite websites. He’d picked up a lot of business cards, but other than that he didn’t really know whether it had gone well. He didn’t know how to be the centre of attention in a room he wasn’t controlling through also being the centre of everyone’s fear.
Somehow in that time the necklace had already been delivered. Pa must have been the one to order it placed up here - it was his idea of motivational - on what looked like one of Tankhun’s custom dress forms, shaping out a tall and thin and bright pink figure in the corner of Kinn’s living room, draped in an excess of diamonds.
Kinn poured himself a drink and seated himself on the couch, crossing his legs. Porsche was fidgeting, and Kinn shook his head to dispel the sudden vivid sense memory of those long slim fingers in his hair.
“Where the fuck did you go?” Kinn said. “Do you realise you being derelict from duty almost fucked up the whole purpose of the night?”
“I was pissing,” Porsche said, looking sullen. “Why the fuck do you care, anyway? Did you need me to watch your stupid fucking speech that badly? What would you have done if I’d been gone, run out to save me?”
It was a fair, startling question, and Kinn found himself flushing. It shouldn’t have made a difference to him at all, one of his bodyguards not being at his post. The teams practiced for that. The family did understand that even bodyguards needed to piss and they were trained to notify everyone else so the rest of the team could smoothly shift to cover a brief or even prolonged absence. Kinn shouldn’t have cared. He shouldn’t even have noticed.
He’d left the silence too long. Porsche was watching him, something in his face soft and open and seeing him, and then he saw Kinn looking back. He looked briefly guilty before his expression smoothed out.
“You’re supposed to tell people,” Kinn said weakly. “You’re unprofessional, you’re-”
Porsche wasn’t listening to him. He’d wandered away, over to the necklace. “How much did you pay in the end?” Porsche asked.
Kinn considered telling Porsche to drop and give him one hundred, but he wasn’t totally sure Porsche would; actually it seemed more than likely Porsche definitely wouldn’t, and not giving the punishment seemed better than giving it and having it ignored.
He gave up. He got up and went over to where Porsche was looking over the necklace with his hands in his pockets. He reached out to touch the diamonds, feeling their cool surfaces and sharp-cut facets, to show he could. “Forty million baht.”
“Bastard,” Porsche muttered, but there was no heat to it. “You know what that could buy?”
“Yok’s bar, the block Yok’s bar is on, and everything in it?” Kinn said carelessly, but despite pretending insouciance, he thrilled to it, to this proof that Pa’s plan was working: the Theerapanyakuls were moving up, out of the blood and shit they’d waded in for generations. Kinn himself was already lost, of course, and neither he nor Tankhun would carry the family on, but Kim’s children, maybe even Kim himself - they could be more. They could, maybe, be safe.
“Everything and everyone,” Porsche said, and the look he turned on Kinn was like diamond itself, hard and sharp and full of fire and brilliance, and Kinn grabbed him and pulled him in and kissed him.
Or tried to kiss him. He didn’t know which of them avoided it - whether he remembered his own rule, or whether Porsche moved - he didn’t know, it didn’t matter, because he didn’t need kissing, not really, not with Porsche’s body up against his, his breath ragged in Kinn’s ear, his hands on Kinn’s hips and arse, hot and hungry. He shoved his leg between Porsche’s, giving him something to grind against, latched his mouth onto Porsche’s throat and felt Porsche’s racing pulse with his lips and tongue, tearing at Porsche’s waistcoat and the shirt beneath to get his hands on Porsche’s skin.
“Kinn,” Porsche groaned in his ear. “Ah, Kinn, I don’t -”
Kinn didn’t want to hear what he didn’t. “Tell me this is okay,” he said, bit at Porsche’s neck and licked him there and blew on it to feel Porsche shiver in his arms, so responsive, perfect. Porsche was hard and so was he, aching he’d got so hard so fast, and he rubbed his hands over Porsche’s amazing round arse, pressed in between his cheeks as much as he could with Porsche’s trousers pulled tight from the way they were dry riding each other. Porsche made a noise in his throat and shoved back, and Kinn didn’t know if Porsche was fucked usually, but the way he tried to move back against Kinn’s hand said he’d take it like he was made for it.
He was starting to sweat, Kinn’s forehead getting wet with it where he was pressed so tight into the crook of Porsche’s neck, and he smelled good, the chemistry between them like nothing Kinn remembered for - years. It had been years since he’d needed somebody so badly, and he said Porsche’s name, followed the clean-salt taste of his sweat down the open vee of his ruined shirt. He’d somehow backed Porsche up, against the floor to ceiling window of his living room, and he pushed up against Porsche, flattening his hot palms against the cool glass, the prickly possessive part of him soothed at having Porsche safely held between himself and a conveniently flat surface.
“It’s okay,” Porsche said breathlessly, and Kinn nudged at his chest with the tip of his nose, over Porsche’s heart, and found one cute flat nipple with his tongue.
The noises Porsche made when he licked it, sucked it, bit at it were indescribable. Kinn had never spent more time than the necessary at temple, but he assumed this was how people sounded when they were having a religious experience. Kinn had looked into it, swearing Arm to stolid-faced secrecy about the instruction, and confirmed that most of Porsche’s lovers, maybe all the recent ones, were girls at the bar: Kinn had successfully and blissfully ignored any education on straight sex for his entire life, so he wasn’t sure if women just ignored men’s nipples, but Porsche was certainly behaving like he had no idea how good it could feel. His fingers were at the nape of Kinn’s neck, holding him in his position working Porsche’s tits gently but firmly, which was just fine with Kinn. He could feel that Porsche was trembling and it made something within him feel devastatedly tender and peaceful.
Whatever else they were - boss and bodyguard, an annoying little bit of his brain whispered, wow, there’s the line, back there in the distance - right now Kinn was just a man getting a very attractive man hot, and everything else could be quiet. It was just him and Porsche, and how their bodies could make each other feel.
Him and Porsche and a very, very expensive diamond necklace. Kinn was still almost fully dressed, just his tux jacket abandoned on the couch, but between them he and Porsche had managed to wrestle Porsche out of everything on his top half while Kinn was attending to one now reddened hardened nipple. The other one was looking a bit lonely, which Kinn promised himself he’d remedy later.
But in the meantime he had miles and miles of soft skin over hard-work muscle to play with, which was a much better backdrop to Kinn’s tastes than the starlet who’d worn the necklace in the auction’s advertising materials.
He tangled his fingers with Porsche’s. Porsche’s hand felt limp in his at first, like he didn’t understand how to hold hands, and then all at once he squeezed Kinn’s hand hard enough to hurt, their hands falling into a natural, comforting grasp. He let Kinn tug him the couple of steps back over to the dressmaker’s dummy, let him stand Porsche in front of it and hook his chin over its shoulder from behind and stare at him.
“What?” Porsche said, and he sounded peeved, but oh if he didn’t really like being looked at, posing for Kinn without seeming to realise it, preening, his back straight and his hip cocked and his throat long and bare. Kinn had marked it up, which he probably should have felt worse about. It just gave him a slow lazy satisfaction, seeing where his mouth had been all over Porsche’s neck, hickeys as proud and obvious as teenagers just learning to make out.
The necklace was heavier than he’d expected, the skillful setting draping the fall of diamonds over his fingers as he lifted it off the dummy.
“What,” Porsche said again, starting to look alarmed. He wasn’t moving, though, even as he said, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing with that,” even as Kinn slid his foot in between Porsche’s and nudged him into a turn, stepped up behind him and laid the cold metal over Porsche’s collarbones. Fastening it was difficult, less because of the complexity of the catch than the temptation of the nape of Porsche’s neck, vulnerable to Kinn’s mouth and teeth, soft fine hair catching on Kinn’s tongue.
He turned Porsche again when it was on, his hands on Porsche’s shoulders, and if his gaze dipped to Porsche’s mouth at least he didn’t actually fucking lean in this time, not even when Porsche’s gaze locked onto his mouth too, not even when Porsche swayed into him and said in a low voice, “Yok’s bar and everything in it?”
“No,” Kinn said, except yes, but not just that, not really that at all, because he wasn’t buying Porsche but he didn’t know how to make Porsche understand what else, what it fucking did to him to see Porsche stripped to the waist and ragingly hard in his trousers, big brown eyes melting, fresh from a night protecting Kinn and dressed up in the diamonds Kinn would use to protect his family -
There was a mirror over the bar at the side of the living room and he dragged Porsche to it, their hands fitting together easily and quickly this time, already used to it, and he put Porsche alone in front of it, nothing to do but confront how he looked dressed in Theerapanyakul trousers and Theerapanyakul diamonds - Kinn’s diamonds, at least for tonight, Pa had wanted him to savour his victory with them tonight, a sign of every fucking thing Kinn could give to Porsche, if Kinn wanted to, and Kinn was starting to feel horribly like maybe he did.
“You’re gorgeous,” he said instead, softly, and brought their joined hands to Porsche’s cock, massaging him gently, watching the way Porsche reacted, his reflection broken up into a thousand points of light when the city lights outside shone in and caught the diamonds.
Porsche stared at himself for a moment, fingering the diamonds around his throat gently. Kinn couldn’t tell what he was thinking, although, unusually, he wanted to: it wasn’t usually his business, it would be nice to think his partners were overcome with lust for him, but he was paying for their bodies; if they wanted to go through their shopping list mentally while he fucked them that was their right.
He wanted more from Porsche. Porsche was his, Kinn owned him, his life was Kinn’s, and he had to stop himself from demanding Porsche tell him what he was thinking, partly afraid Porsche wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear, partly afraid he would.
He could tell from Porsche’s body, anyway. Porsche was fucking yearning towards him, as sweet and pliant as he’d never been in any other context, and Kinn felt a moment of furious jealousy for the men before him, everyone else who’d got to see Porsche this way, acting helplessly desperate for cock.
Probably only Kinn had ever put him in diamonds. He leaned in, bit at the nape of Porsche’s neck around the cool metal of the platinum clasp, following the setting across Porsche’s shoulders with his tongue delving between the stones. He kept groping Porsche’s cock as he did it, feeling him throb and twitch under Kinn’s greedy palm, feeling up Porsche’s nicely-built chest up with his other hand, pinching at his nipples. He wanted his mouth where it was, drifting across the taste of Porsche and jewels, he wanted it on Porsche’s nipples, he wanted it on Porsche’s cock, to feel that again, desperate for everything in a way he hadn’t been for years, and he groaned against Porsche’s skin, undid Porsche’s trousers and gripped his cock with nothing between them but the flimsy white cotton of Porsche’s regulation underwear.
Porsche swayed into him, his knees all but giving out, and Kinn caught him, automatically. What wasn’t automatic, was was completely fucking unexpected, was the tenderness he felt as he did it, the way he so naturally pulled Porsche close, cradled him protectively. Porsche was big and tall and strong, different from Kinn’s usual; that was supposed to be his appeal.
Not that he turned in Kinn’s arms, shaking, hid his face in Kinn’s neck, pulling Kinn’s mouth back to the curve of his shoulder. Not that he stuttered to Kinn to take it off, off, and Kinn had both of them mostly naked before Porsche’s fumbling hands guided him to the diamonds, which Kinn left on the floor like mere costume jewellery, too busy with Porsche to pay it any attention. Not that he jumped up on Kinn like it hadn’t even occurred to him Kinn might not be able to take his weight, not that Kinn could, and did, pure easy strength that had nothing to do with a gun in his hand and fear in people’s eyes, carrying Porsche to bed without so much as an invitation, a conversation, a hesitation.
Porsche was beautiful on all fours on Kinn’s bed, Kinn kneeling behind him three fingers knuckle-deep and working hard, enchanted. Porsche probably didn’t need preparing quite so thoroughly, and Kinn wasn’t usually so inclined to spend so long on it, but it was easy to ignore the demands of his cock, so hard he was aching, to enjoy anticipation even more of how good Porsche would feel. He was tight, hot inside in a way that melted Kinn’s brain, and the way he was moving on Kinn’s hand, begging with his body so obviously, so eager.
“You love being fucked,” Kinn said approvingly, leaned over the broad gleaming flex of Porsche’s back to brush kisses against his shoulders, licking the curving lines of the phoenix on his shoulder, bursting out of the flames. He added, “Can you come like this?” out of some foolish, blazing instinct.
“I don’t - I’ve never -” Porsche said, barely coherent, but he writhed on Kinn’s fingers as he did, fucking himself back on them with powerful thrusts of those long shapely thighs, and some part of Kinn noticed it and thought complacently if not now later, like there would be a later, like he was ever guaranteed, or even deserved, a later.
“I bet I could make you,” Kinn said, feeling absolutely crazed about it. He’d bet anything, the house and everything in it, and put in the time and dedication to win, just because Porsche was so fucking hot: the way he sounded, the way he felt, and Kinn added another finger just because he thought Porsche could take it, would fucking love to take it.
Porsche wailed when he did, trying to muffle himself in Kinn’s thick soft pillows like he was ashamed of how well he took it, because he did, Kinn had been so right about him, he loved this. Porsche was gasping, wetly, his shoulders trembling as he tried to push himself up on his arms and ground out, “Just - just the tip, okay, just -”
“Just the tip,” Kinn agreed, willing to sign over every property and car and watch and every single baht just for that, “okay, Porsche, just the tip,” and Kinn flipped him over and pulled him up onto Kinn’s thighs and onto his dick as smoothly as if Porsche really were made for this, made for him.
As noisy as he’d been before, Porsche went quiet when Kinn put it in, his mouth open and nothing coming out, like it felt so good he’d forgotten how to breathe. That tenderness filled Kinn up again and he leaned forward, licked at the salt taste of sex tears and sweat on Porsche’s cheeks and temples, brushed their noses together as he fought to stall out with just the tip inside, like he’d promised, although it was a fucking struggle. Porsche felt as good to be inside as he’d thought, hot and tight and fluttering around the agonisingly sensitive head of Kinn’s cock like he wasn’t used to it, and that was when Kinn realised he’d gone in raw. He hadn’t meant to, exactly, he hadn’t meant not to - he was clean, he knew Porsche had been poked and prodded and fully tested when he took the job, so there were no worries there, not to mention Porsche hadn’t even been polite enough to warn Kinn before he came into his mouth, but it was messy not to.
But then there was the feeling of his bare cock inside Porsche’s perfect hole, even just the tip, knowing Porsche was feeling him, that Porsche would feel it when he came, that Kinn would be able to watch him dripping with Kinn’s come.
“I forgot the condom,” he said anyway, his hips grinding him in just a little deeper as he said it anyway, and Porsche groaned, his head tipping back on the pillows, baring his neck already marked up from Kinn’s teeth, clenching down like he liked that -
“Let me fuck you,” he said, wild with it, ready to beg like he hadn’t for a very, very long time, not since the last time there’d been someone who mattered, someone he’d wanted for more than a quick fuck, and he shook his head wildly like the memories could be got rid of so easily. “Ah, Porsche, you’re taking it so fucking beautifully, it’ll feel good, I swear, I’ll make you feel so good, just let me.”
Porsche was staring up at him, his eyes glazed, his pretty mouth parted, and it hurt almost as much not to simply lean down and kiss him as it hurt to keep his cock austerely shallow. Kinn twitched his hips, sending just another inch into Porsche’s sweetly grasping hole, needing it, and groaned when Porsche whined under him, indignant and frantic.
“Is there a lot more?” Porsche said, colour standing high and red on his cheeks, and Kinn nuzzled down to him, lapped pooling sweat out of the gorgeous hollows of his collarbones and pushed back into the soft feeling of Porsche slipping his hands into Kinn’s hair. “I don’t think I can take more, fuck, you feel - I’m so full, I never -”
“There’s a lot more,” Kinn said, raggedly, too desperate to be smug. “You can take it, I’m sure you can take it, just let me.”
He jerked out, just a little but that was all the way, and when he pressed back in Porsche opened up for him like the most experienced paid fucks Kinn had ever had, like he was made for it, like Porsche had probably got any number of girls opening up for him. “Okay,” Porsche said, barely audible, staring up at him, his nails digging into Kinn’s back and adding a delicious edge to the need in his balls, but Kinn was so focused on him he heard it like a shout, and he shuddered and pushed in and came softly to rest as deep inside Porsche as he could get, watching the way Porsche reacted to every single moment of being fucked.
Porsche very much could come without his cock being touched, it turned out, and it was all Kinn could do to fuck him up to it and into it and through it, absolutely dying with determination to make it good, his body prickling all over with how into it he was, clinging to the last shred of sense he needed to get Porsche off. And then finally Porsche was whimpering, shaking with oversensitivity, his stomach wet with his own come, pushing his own fingers through it and watching himself smear it on Kinn’s tongue, and Kinn tasted him and watched him back and let it all go.
Porsche said after, “I should - should I go?”
He sounded dreamy, maybe even spacy; he was still twitchy with pleasure, draped over Kinn, clinging.
It felt nice, being clung to, although ordinarily it irritated him. Kinn kept his arm around Porsche’s waist, stroked his hair with his other hand, everything in him feeling soft.
Porsche should go. He would have to go; Kinn didn’t let anyone stay the night, and it would certainly be noticed if Porsche weren’t in his assigned room overnight.
But it felt nice. “In a minute,” he said, kept stroking Porsche’s hair, his thumb rubbing gently against the smooth skin of Porsche’s hip, and Porsche sighed and turned his face into Kinn’s chest, relaxed.
/
The next day was Porsche’s scheduled day off, which was fine; good; probably for the best. As Pa had once told him, once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, but three times was enemy action. His two encounters with Porsche were definitely just coincidence, and there wouldn’t be any more. Kinn was very happy for there not to be any more.
He flicked through the photo roll on his fuck phone again, feeling oddly dissatisfied. Every photo on it represented a pleasant evening, a good screw, most of them well paid to go away nicely at the end of it. Any of his favourites could be here within half an hour.
Maybe he needed someone new. He drafted a tersely polite LINE message to the director of his main agency, asking if they had anyone fresh on the books who fitted his usual tastes. Short and slender, suave, with well-trained holes: that was what Kinn liked to have delivered to his door. He wasn’t going to think about anything else.
It was shift change time and Kinn lifted a hand to acknowledge More as he left for the evening. There was a brief muttering in the hallway as he reported to his replacement, and then -
“It’s your day off,” Kinn said, instantly wishing he hadn’t more or less admitted to having checked.
Porsche sidled into the room, his gaze fixed on Kinn. “I switched with Ken.”
Kinn swallowed. “Did you?” he said, stupidly. Obviously Porsche had. He was right here. He was right in front of Kinn, ready for a shift, uniform pressed and clean, hair combed, tie knot perfect -
The marks Kinn had left on his throat were dark, dark smudges above the white collar of his shirt. There was a buttonhole on his waistcoat with no button under it, probably because it was under one of the couches in this very room. There was a bulge ruining the line of his trousers.
Porsche didn’t look neat and tidy at all. He looked fucked, and well.
Porsche was staring at him. He shifted his hips like he’d wriggled on Kinn’s dick, he opened and closed his fists like he’d scratched at Kinn’s back while Kinn thrust into him, he licked his mouth and parted his pretty pink cocksucking lips -
“Come the fuck here,” Kinn said, as calmly as he could considering he was almost choking on how much he wanted this fucking beautiful idiot, and Porsche came.
/
“I understand nobody’s been required to drive one of your friends home, the last week or so,” Pa said, taking Kinn’s queen with a pawn Kinn probably should have seen coming three moves ago.
Kinn got so hot, so fast he considered flinging himself into the pool immediately. It was the infinity pool and he briefly fantasised about letting himself be carried over the edge, falling and falling and falling, existing in some paradise blue space that would be far away from this conversation.
“Uber’s service in the city is really improving,” he lied, carefully avoiding looking at Chan, in his usual position five paces behind his father’s right shoulder. “Do you think we should consider an investment?”
Pa gave him a long look that said he knew Kinn was full of shit and was banking it for later, but he let Kinn shuffle them into a discussion of taking small stakes in global businesses versus being a major backer of national competitors.
Kinn got out of the game alive, but he’d taken some damage. He was going to have to find a hundred million baht to acquire a stake in Grab, which he could put on the top-end hotel books if they’d agree a contract for guests; and Chan almost certainly would not be authorising any more shift swaps that put Porsche alone in Kinn’s rooms for the night.
/
He wandered the compound for a while after the chat, sinking into a vague sense of dissatisfaction. Porsche was only a fuck - an excellent fuck, the way he felt on Kinn’s cock, the way he gasped, the way he looked when he came -
Kinn sat down on a bench in the gardens and forcibly rearranged his thoughts. Porsche had been only a fuck, an ill-advised one, and Kinn was lucky that Pa had corrected him so gently.
He was in a foul mood by the time he got up, and desperate for a cigarette. He didn’t have any in his room, he’d have to borrow one: he headed down to the garages, where at every moment of the day there tended to be multiple staff chain-smoking their way through their breaks.
Inevitably, one of them was Porsche.
Less predictably, he was with Vegas.
Kinn ducked back into the doorway to watch them. Chan had got his new cars, as promised, although still black, so highly polished that doubles of Porsche and Vegas in the hood of the car they were standing in front of were practically high definition.
They spoke for a few minutes, too far away for Kinn to get much sense of what they were saying. Vegas looked amiable, which he never did around Kinn: it was strange on his face. But he was clearly in charge of the conversation, Porsche wary. At one point he shook his head, looking agitated. Vegas rested a hand on his shoulder, and Kinn’s impulse to go out there and rip it off was almost overwhelming.
Eventually, after about a hundred years had passed, Vegas smirked his last smirk at Porsche and wandered off, presumably to crawl back under the rock he occupied whenever he wasn’t torturing uninnocent people for fun and profit. Porsche slumped down to sit on the edge of the car, where he’d probably leave a nice arse print, and lit up another cigarette, sucking on it like it was his last and only comfort.
Kinn wanted to give him something else to suck on. His anger was briefly washed away by a wave of simple, stupid grief that they’d never kissed, and never would: Kinn had stuck to his rule so faithfully after that one slip-up, been so careful. But he’d wanted it, wanted to know how Porsche kissed, how he tasted, how he would feel cuddled in Kinn’s arms.
It didn’t matter. He slipped out of his hiding place and went out.
Porsche smiled when he saw him, brightening, and a silly little part of Kinn’s heart sang.
He squashed it, stalking up to Porsche with a straight back and clipped steps. Porsche drew back when he noticed the way Kinn was approaching, his smile fading, his eyes going tight and shadowed.
“Haven’t I told you to stay away from the minor family?” Kinn said. He meant it to be sharp and even threatening but it came out softly, disappointed.
Porsche shifted on the car, then stood up, stamping his cigarette out on the garage floor. “It was just a smoke,” he said, not meeting Kinn’s eyes. “Am I supposed to be rude to your cousin when he speaks to me?”
“You’re not supposed to be anything to my cousin,” Kinn said snappishly. Even as kids Vegas had always liked to play with Tankhun’s and Kinn’s toys rather than his own. And he’d been cute then, although he’d always had a mean streak in him, nothing like what he’d become as their grandfather died and he and Tankhun became the direct heirs, as Uncle Gun got more jealous and cruel, as their mothers were lost too. “He hurts people. Don’t talk to him again,” Kinn ordered, almost panicky at the thought of Porsche disobeying him, and he stepped forward, grabbed Porsche’s tie and made Porsche look at him, trying to make him listen.
Porsche knocked his hand away, contemptuously, squared up to Kinn in a way that made Kinn fall back a step, less out of submission than surprise. “Does anything happen in this fucking house that isn’t hurting people?” Porsche said bitterly.
Kinn froze. Although Porsche wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t unfair; Kinn tried to tell himself it wasn’t unfair. At least it made what he had to say easier, even worthwhile, because either Porsche thought Kinn was hurting him or what they’d been doing simply didn’t even matter enough to him for it to come to mind when he spoke to Kinn about his house, his job, his family. It made it even more clear than Pa had managed to that stopping was best, necessary.
“You’re on duty for the meeting about the Khan Na Yao gambling circuit this afternoon,” Kinn said thinly. “Then you’re off.”
Porsche straightened up. He said cautiously, “I switched with Max for tonight.” His glance at Kinn’s crotch was obvious, obscene; overconfident.
Kinn never should have allowed him so close, and the coldness in his voice was real as he said, “Ken’s back on. I’m having a guest tonight. Ken will collect him and take him home.” Maybe some part of him even enjoyed the cruelty, making Porsche look the way Kinn had felt, watching Vegas chat him up.
He didn’t know what he expected. Some of his casual lovers had got unfortunately possessive and it had been hard to shake them off: it was one of the things that had pushed Kinn more and more towards his escorts in recent years. Like showing up at a meeting with half a dozen dressed to the nines and armed to the teeth bodyguards, it was a lot easier when everyone knew exactly what was on the table, understood the nature of the transaction. He didn’t think that would be Porsche.
He was right. Porsche looked relieved, like he hadn’t knelt on Kinn’s bed last night and spread his cheeks with his own hands and begged freely for Kinn’s tongue, like he hadn’t come sobbing as soon as Kinn finally dicked in deep, like his fingernail marks weren’t still on Kinn’s arse where Porsche had clutched him to keep him inside after Kinn had come.
His expression flattened out after, but Kinn had already seen it. He lifted his chin, like Tankhun at his haughtiest, and looked at Porsche steadily.
Porsche said, “Kinn -”
“Khun Kinn,” Kinn said, disgusted: maybe with Porsche, probably with himself, whichever.
Porsche’s face went completely blank. “Khun Kinn,” he said, scornfully, made a rudely exaggerated bow. Kinn turned his face to the wall, and didn’t watch him leave.
He still hadn’t even had his fucking cigarette. He walked out of the garage, stopped the first man he saw smoking, and paid a delighted gardener five hundred baht for a half-empty pack of Gold City.
/
“I didn’t think you’d come,” Porsche said, glittering at him under the lights of Hum Bar.
“I said that if you could take Tankhun out, I’d come,” Kinn said, watching his brother down shots, a gleeful Pol and a nervous Arm on one side, Tae on the other matching Tankhun drink for drink. Next to him Time was visibly resigning himself to the fight about his lacklustre commitment to monogamy they always had when Tae drank tequila. “I keep my promises.”
“Mm,” Porsche said. “Let me make you a drink.”
“I’ll just have a whisky,” Kinn said automatically. He rarely drank when he was out, and when he did his bodyguards would discreetly ensure a new bottle, one Kinn could watch being opened and poured in front of him - but Porsche knew that. He could trust Porsche with his drinks. He just didn’t trust he wouldn’t get some horrible fruity concoction that would be deceptively dangerous.
“But Khun Noo is doing shots,” Porsche said, batting his long, long eyelashes, sounding unfairly innocent. Kinn couldn’t help wanting that attention on him, stupidly conscious - jealously conscious - that they hadn’t had the chance to clear the bar out before arriving and any of the clientele here could be regulars, women and maybe men Porsche had seduced before, rivals for Porsche’s attention.
Not that Kinn cared for himself. Porsche was on duty, technically: Kinn cared because Porsche ought to be looking after Tankhun all night, not sneaking out back to fuck. Kinn had a proprietorial interest in that back alley, even a fondness.
“Fine,” he said grudgingly, and watched Porsche vault comfortably over the bar. He looked natural behind it, content, spinning the bottles and lining up glasses with an easy smile, dressed casually in denim shorts and a half-unbuttoned white shirt that showed his taut pecs. Porsche poured three shots of tequila for Kinn, matched them with his own - Kinn pushing down the temptation to ask to lick the salt from the thin-skinned back of Porsche’s hand - and then he did start making up some terrible cocktail, the dull metal of the cocktail shaker throwing light around the room, back and forth onto the mirrored back of the bar: Porsche appeared in it in pieces, now seen, now gone, like a broken striptease.
Porsche pushed the cocktail over to Tankhun. He’d garnished it carefully with a little pink paper umbrella and a stick with two cubes of mango. Arm took a sip first, wrinkling his nose, a beer man to the core, and Kinn reached over and stole the mango, evading Tankhun’s smack to his hand. He sucked the taste of the cocktail off the fruit, tasting grenadine and lychee and rum, and grinned helplessly at Tankhun, who was exclaiming over it with a free kind of joy Kinn hadn’t seen in his brother in a very, very long time. He tried to catch Porsche’s eye, to nod his approval and thanks, but Porsche was watching Tankhun with something serious in his face, at odds with the general debauchery of the bar and the night.
Kinn wanted to ask him what was wrong, and those shots must have gone straight to his head, because he almost did, going to lean over the bar and catch the hem of Porsche’s shirt, tug him close enough to talk into his ear. And then Tae draped onto his shoulder, already drunk and unhappy, and Kinn switched his attention to his friend, and didn’t wonder anymore what Porsche was thinking.
/
Kinn had got his whisky in the end - he thought, anyway - thoughts weren’t coming very easily, just now, he wasn’t feeling very well, which was ridiculous because he had elephant tolerance and an iron stomach, he was asbestos.
“I know, I know,” someone said, and Kinn knew the hands on him, trusted them, let them manhandle him outside. “Come on.”
“Where am I going,” he said, squinting at the lights, which were whirling like one of those time lapse photos, or was it just the whole earth that was moving?
“Outside for fresh air,” the hands said shortly, and fresh air sounded nice, sounded helpful, so maybe Kinn was with one of his brothers, or one of his guards. Someone who had noticed he needed air, anyway, which was nice of them.
“I’m sleepy,” he told the voice, because the voice was being nice to him, so maybe it would be sympathetic. Kinn hadn’t rested well for a very long time: he drank the whisky to help him drift off and then the coffee to wake him up, got the doctors to give him stronger stuff with the same purposes when he needed it, but right now he felt tired in a delicious way, his limbs languorous and heavy. He leaned over the pier, staring at himself: the water looked dark and fast and dangerous, looked bloody, or maybe that was just the rushing reflection of Kinn’s red shirt. He squinted until he couldn’t see himself, just the golden lights of the temple across the river. He felt as if he could jump in and instead of falling he’d fly, join the cold white drops of the stars in the sky.
He was leaning far out, dizzy with it, and a strong arm came across his chest and reeled him back in. “Here,” the voice said, handed him a bottle of water and made him drink most of it, and there was something about it that felt practiced, like the voice had dealt with drunks many, many times.
“Porsche,” Kinn said, and then, feeling uncertain and a bit sorry for himself, he said it again, “Porsche? How much did I have to drink?”
“Too much, that’s why you feel crazy,” Porsche said, sounding unhappy, but that didn’t sound right to Kinn: he’d been drunk, yes, but nowhere near enough to feel like this, out of control and wild and like everything was so so much, the lights across the river and the stars in the sky and the smell of Porsche’s skin as he helped Kinn sit down and the dirt on the floor where his bare ankles touched it and the soft cotton of his shirt.
“My brother,” he said, and clutched at Porsche. “Where’s my brother, I want my brother, is he okay? I shouldn’t leave him, where’s my brother?”
“He’s okay, he’s fine, Arm and Pol are with him,” Porsche said instantly, reassuringly, and he sat down next to Kinn. Kinn leaned into him and Porsche put his arm around him hesitantly. Kinn snuggled up, ashamed but childishly hungry for skin and comfort; hungry for other things, not childishly at all. He wantedPorsche, simply and fiercely, and for some reason it was hard to remember why he couldn’t have him. “You’re sweet like this,” Porsche said, his voice taut. “You’re really worried about Tankhun?”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Kinn said. He turned and nosed into the softness behind Porsche’s ear, licked him there, tasting skin and hair. He felt shivery, in a way he could only just understand as arousal, full body instead of centred on his cock, which felt fat and needy, sensitive against the bare pressure of his underwear. “You have a brother. Don’t you worry about him?”
“All the time,” Porsche said distantly. He shifted a little and Kinn sighed and turned away from his pretty pretty face, sinking into the lassitude spreading through his body now he was sitting. A passing boat caught his attention, lit up in party colours, beautiful.
“Sometimes I think he’s faking,” he said, confided, too honest, for Porsche or anyone, he’d never admitted this even to Tae, not even to Tawan, but tonight felt far enough away from reality that it felt okay; not like the betrayal it was. Pa would have him killed if he heard Kinn saying such things to an outsider, a bodyguard. Kinn would deserve it, probably. “Acting crazy, you know? So he won’t have to take over the family. I wouldn’t blame him.”
Porsche’s arm tightened around him. “I heard - I thought you liked being the heir.”
“How could anyone?” Kinn burst out, feeling flayed from his heart out. Another wrong, another bad confession: he should jump into the river himself, save Pa the trouble. He wriggled out from under Porsche’s arm, drew his knees up and hooked his elbows over them, huddling into himself, too afraid of how much he liked being in Porsche’s arms to let himself stay in them. He’d been Mama’s clingy boy, the one who liked to crawl onto her lap long after he was too big and too old for it, but she’d always let him, and then she’d been gone, and nobody had touched him so gently since.
“Kinn,” Porsche said, sounding agonised. “Fuck. It’s okay, I’m sorry.”
He moved slowly, inching himself behind Kinn, his legs around Kinn’s, and when he tried to unpeel Kinn from himself Kinn was so weak, let himself be urged back against Porsche’s chest, Porsche’s arms around him. Desire flared back to life in Kinn but he ignored it to just float on the high of closeness. He ran his fingertips up and down Porsche’s calves, enjoying the silk of his skin under soft hair, smugly appreciating the feeling of Porsche’s cock slowly hardening against him where they were pressed in tight.
“Kim would have been good at it,” Kinn said dreamily. He tilted his head back against Porsche’s shoulder, feeling loose and lazy. “But he doesn’t want to. He sings, you know? I wanted to do that, once, but… he’s good at it. Better than me. I’ll show you.” He patted at his pockets, trying to find his phone, where he had Kim’s music videos saved, a couple of the fansites that collected his photos and rare videos.
“I knew you were the middle one,” Porsche said, both accusing and fond. “I didn’t know you sang.”
“Not for years,” Kinn said, giving up on finding his phone. He should be more worried it was gone, probably; it was the main way Chan and the house could track him, and he wasn’t supposed to just lose it. Maybe he’d left it in the bar, so he could just get it tomorrow: Porsche would get it back for him. It was hard to focus on, the anxiety that usually spiked most of his actions wrapped in cotton wool and slipping away from too much thought. “I can’t find my phone. Do you have yours? His stage name is Wik.”
“Wik is your brother?” Porsche spluttered. “My brother loves him, I mean, really loves him. Big fan. He’s a Theerapanyakul?”
“Sort of,” Kinn says. “No, yeah, he is, but… he doesn’t want to be. So me and p’Khun made sure he wouldn’t have to.”
“So it’s all on you,” Porsche murmured. He sounded almost pitying and that wasn’t what Kinn wanted, it wasn’t what he wanted to hear, he wanted to shut Porsche up, and he wriggled in Porsche’s arms, uncomfortable, and when Porsche’s arms loosened a little around him he twisted around, found his face in the moonlight, sweat-damp forehead and big brown eyes and such beautiful plush pink lips, thinking about kissing him.
He let it show on his face, that he was thinking about it, that he wanted it, dipping his gaze to stare at Porsche’s mouth. Porsche looked startled, briefly, like he’d fucked Kinn but hadn’t even considered kissing him, slipped his pink tongue out to wet his lips, leaving them parted, as sweet an invitation as Kinn had ever had.
He leaned in, paused just before their mouths touched, savouring the moment, and -
“Isn’t this cosy,” a familiar voice said, drawling and disdainful, hateful, and the pier, and the lost phone, and euphoria turning into nausea -
“Porsche?” Kinn mumbled, at the same time Vegas said it, loudly, peremptorily, “Porsche,” and Porsche pulled back from their near-embrace and stared at Kinn, guilty.
“This isn’t how I expected to find you, Porsche,” Vegas said, sounding annoyed, and Kinn tried to get up, fighting against his tiredness.
“You’re late,” Porsche snapped, and fuck if his arms around Kinn didn’t still feel good, were even squeezing in a way that was probably restraint and Kinn’s brain kept trying stubbornly to feel as protective, and Kinn shoved at him, trying to scramble away, fuck, he wasn’t even fucking armed, Chan would kill him, if he wasn’t dead already, but his bodyguards were always armed -
“You’re my bodyguard,” he said to Porsche, numbly, crouched near the edge of the river. He was bigger and stronger than Vegas, who was best with guns and helpless tied up people he could torture without them fighting back, but Vegas wasn’t fucking drugged, and there were four minor family men behind him. Kinn was all alone. Porsche was kneeling up, reaching for him, ignoring Vegas’ blurrily angry expression, but Kinn couldn’t trust him, he was a fucking traitor; a traitor, fucking.
Had any of it been real? When had Vegas got to him? How much of Porsche’s time in Kinn’s home, in his bed, had been to earn his pay from the minor family?
Porsche said, “Kinn.”
“Don’t fucking touch me,” Kinn spat.
“You seemed to be enjoying him touching you a minute ago,” Vegas said, like he was enjoying this, hearing Kinn betrayed again, hurt, again, and then Vegas came closer, too close. “If it helps, cousin, you can blame the drugs,” Vegas said in English, as sharp and broken as a shattered bottle at Kinn’s throat, and he nudged his toe in his shiny shoes between Kinn’s legs, up against where his cock was still halfway to hard.
Kinn made a noise he hated and hated himself for, small and miserable and scared. He hated Vegas, he didn’t want this, but the drugs he now knew were coursing through his system made the contact feel good, and more, retrogressed his response to the threat, so patiently trained into fight by Chan years ago, back into the automatic freeze of his childhood. He couldn’t move, unarmed and unabandoned, and Vegas was staring down at him with a savage grin, a bloodthirst light in his eyes.
“The fuck are you doing?” Porsche said sharply. He grabbed Vegas’ arm and pulled at him and Kinn could move again, skittered back a couple of steps that brought him hard up against the river’s edge, his mind reeling like the helpless ball in an arcade game. Something about the darkness of the water repelled him, the flowing currents making him feel disoriented and sick. He’d fallen in the main pool at the house as a very small child, familiar with the water but unable to swim: he’d been rescued quickly but he’d never forgotten it, repressed rather than overcome the childish fear of going under, the waters closing over his head, taking him away from light and family and home.
Vegas shook Porsche off, looking angry at being challenged. “You’ve been paid, what the fuck do you care?”
“You said to get him to you, you didn’t say you were going to fucking terrorise him! He’s your family,” Porsche cried, and Kinn had a vivid sensory memory of warning Porsche off Vegas, remembered Porsche’s easy acceptance of the suave image Vegas presented to the world, Porsche’s overwhelming love for his brother. Of course Porsche wouldn’t have imagined how much Vegas loathed Kinn, what he was capable of doing because of it. To Porsche Vegas was a normal man in an abnormal job; they were a normal family, not the kind of people who kidnapped their cousins at gunpoint, took them away for torture and murder, and very likely - Kinn could admit in what he now knew to be a drugged-out haze - rape. Nobody talked about it, even their criminal lives didn’t leave the words, but everyone in their family, apart from maybe Macau, knew Vegas had always been weird about Kinn. Maybe Vegas would just fuck his corpse? Kinn could hope.
Vegas barked out a laugh, an ugly, cruel laugh. “You think I take this fucking filthy family as my family? You’ve been paid, now stay the fuck out of it.”
“Just go,” Kinn choked out, because part of him couldn’t help remembering how Porsche had felt under him, around him, making him hot, helplessly, in the most stupid circumstances possible, and maybe here, at the end, he wanted to believe some of it had been real, that he hadn’t just been fooled again, that Porsche had got in over his head and at least he could end all this without having to watch someone he’d almost liked die in front of him. “Porsche, just fucking go, it doesn’t matter.”
“Kinn -” Porsche said, sounding agonised, and Vegas stepped back, and the four thugs stepped forward, two of them levelling their guns at Kinn, two at Porsche.
“He’s right,” Vegas said, softly, too softly, his gaze fixed on Porsche like he’d done something too interesting. “You can go. I’ll take it from here.”
“I didn’t know you were going to hurt him,” Porsche said, his tone almost pleading, but he was looking at Kinn, like he was talking to Kinn.
Porsche’s extraordinary face wasn’t a bad sight to die on, if he could forget the horrible betrayal. Kinn had been expecting to buy it for a decade and more, and in some ways it was a relief it was finally happening. He found his only regrets were what it would do to Kim, because Pa would privately mourn for little while but publicly name his new heir in about five minutes flat; and that he’d thrown Porsche over without one last spectacular go on the sweetest hole he’d ever had.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Vegas said, his voice dark. The world was spinning around Kinn, adrenaline fighting with the drug in his system, his body feeling far away, and he couldn’t make himself move quick enough when two of his bodyguards holstered their weapons, the other two switching their guns from Porsche back to Kinn, and stepped forward, chains in their hands instead of perfectly functional and normal ropes: Vegas was such a fucking poser, part of Kinn thought distantly, smug that Vegas might be going to kill him but at least Kinn wasn’t such an embarrassment to the family.
“Kinn,” Porsche said, raw, desperate, and then his weight was on Kinn, toppling him backwards, and all he could see was the blur of the night sky through water as the river closed over them both, cold and mean against his overwrought body, and as they were pulled under together Kinn was lost.