Chapter Text
Porsche looks down at the outfit laid out on the bed before him. White shirt, black slacks, trim waistcoat, jacket. Shoes so well polished, he can see his own reflection in them. A fucking tie. A gold pin with the family crest engraved in the shiny metal.
Considering what he’s signed up to do, it all feels a bit excessive.
“And I can’t just wear my own clothes,” he half-asks Pete, who’s loitering in the doorway behind him. The doorway to their shared room, in their shared apartment, in the bodyguard quarters of a fucking mafia complex, because apparently these kinds of people can’t just get him in on one job, give him the cash, and let him live the rest of his life like a normal person. Because apparently no one in this household comes even close to resembling “normal”.
To avoid suspicion, Big had told him, when Porsche had questioned the somewhat lengthy portion of the contract that stated he would have to work undercover as a bodyguard for the Theerapanyakul family, just so that he could work undercover as a bartender for a certain member of the Theerapanyakul family, so that certain family member could pull off some dodgy undercover job, and give Porsche the cash he needs to keep the house. Because, of course, nothing is ever simple.
“No,” says Pete, entering the room. “All bodyguards must wear the uniform. It’s protocol.”
Pete wouldn’t know about the real reason Porsche was here, Big had told him. As few people as possible would know, so that the job would go as smoothly as possible, with no risk of anything getting out that would give it all away. If Porsche was going to be spending time with Kinn to plan the job, then he had to have a valid reason outside of “random person with high potential of untrustworthiness entering the mafia complex to partake in plans that will benefit him personally”, and apparently Kinn spontaneously hiring him as his new bodyguard was the perfect path to that. Sure. Okay. Porsche is not here to question the ins and outs of the choices of the mafia. He’s here to get Chay out of the shitty situation the mafia got them into.
Porsche sighs, and strips off his shirt. “Fine, whatever. When’s dinner?”
Pete grins and sits down on the bed. “Ah, not for another three hours. I’ll take you down to the canteen when it’s time. Did Big give you a tour of the bodyguard complex? There’s all sorts of stuff here, if you want to get training right away.”
Porsche does not have any particular interest in training as a bodyguard when he’s only here to make pretences and be available for discussions with Kinn and Big about how the job’s going to go. He shrugs, changing into the slacks and stuffing his shirt into them messily. Pete is politely looking at the wall. “Sure.”
“Okay.” Pete stands up, and turns to him, conspiratorial. “By the way, I know this place can be… a lot, at first. But if you have any questions. Or like, need someone to talk to. Well. We’re roommates. I’ll be around.”
Porsche huffs a laugh, nodding. “Cool. Um.” He picks up the tie. “Don’t suppose you’ve got experience with these, then?”
It turns out, Pete is not bad company. He takes Porsche around the bodyguard complex, even though Big had given him a brief tour—shows him things that Big definitely hadn’t, like the comfy seating area tucked away behind a fancy wall decoration that Porsche had definitely thought was only decorative, or the secret door to their own personal outdoor balcony. By the time they make it down to the canteen for dinner, Porsche is perhaps revising his initial impression that no one in this household is normal. Pete seems like a pretty chill guy. Pretty normal. All things considered.
The food is awful, bland and under-portioned and clearly focused on the most basic level of human nutrition and nothing resembling taste. Porsche finishes his meal with a hankering for something hot, greasy and with plenty of spices. Ideally finished off with a beer or two. Or more, if he’s going to survive two weeks of this place.
He’s complaining about this to Pete on their way back to their room when Kinn appears around a corner in front of them. He stops immediately at the sight of them, all deeply unbuttoned shirt and stern jawline and hands on hips, and Porsche trails off in his description of how unfair it is that they don’t even get dessert.
“Porsche,” says Kinn, in the same unequivocal tone that he used when he had Porsche tied to a chair after a cold night on a boat in the middle of the river, and tilts his chin at him. “We need to talk. About…” His gaze drifts to Pete, who is standing with his head obediently dipped. “Your hours. Join me in my office.”
“Uh,” responds Porsche. He’s not happy about his obligation to Kinn. He’s also very aware of how necessary that obligation is for Chay’s wellbeing. “Well, I’ve only just—”
“I don’t have all evening,” Kinn says impatiently, and Porsche shuts his mouth. Kinn shakes his head and brushes past him, Big and Ken at his shoulders. Porsche meets Ken’s filthy glance glare for glare and sighs.
“Well. Have a nice evening, I guess,” he tells Pete, and turns on his heel, and follows them.
They go back to the same room he’d signed his contract in when he’d first arrived this afternoon, which at the time had just seemed like any other room, and which he now suspects to be one of Kinn’s rooms, specifically. The city lights twinkle in a kaleidoscope of yellows and golds and greens on the other side of the windows, but Porsche barely has time to stop and admire them; Big opens a door just on the other side of the bar and gestures them through into a personal office. There are windows in here too, but the view doesn’t quite compare to that from the main room. Kinn goes to sit behind a large wooden desk that almost certainly cost as much as Porsche’s bike, and Big gestures to Porsche to move up and stand in front of it.
“Uh,” Porsche says again. He knows that they will need to plan the job at some point, but he’s only just arrived, and it’s still two weeks away. “My hours?”
Kinn doesn’t even look at him. He gestures a finger at Big and Ken, and they nod and leave the room. The shut of the door behind them is incredibly loud. Porsche feels incredibly awkward. Kinn looks incredibly bored.
“You said you wanted to talk to me about my hours,” Porsche ventures, and Kinn leans back in his chair, finally affording him a somewhat sidelong glance. “I assume that you actually want to talk about the job. Seeing as that’s why I’m here. And all that.” He punctuates it with an insistent little chin jerk.
Kinn sighs, and shakes his head. “Actually, I do want to talk to you about your hours.”
Huh. “I thought the whole bodyguard thing was a cover.”
“It is. But in order for it to be an effective cover, you will actually need to do some work.”
Porsche rolls his neck in frustration. “Look, Ai’Kinn, I get that you have a reputation to uphold or whatever, but you know very well that I’m literally only here for the cash at the end, and all this in between stuff? Irrelevant to me. I mean, for fuck’s sake, come and be my bodyguard for two weeks just so no one suspects anything? Dude, that’s like. Way more suspicious than if we just met up the night before, or whatever. You sure there aren’t ulterior motives going on here?”
Kinn stares at him, then leans forwards with measured restraint, elbows on the desk. “You’ve certainly got a mouth on you, huh.”
Porsche groans in frustration. “Come on, and with those shitty dinners? And having to wear a suit the whole time? And now you want to talk about hours? Honestly, I’m really not convinced, I can make the money another way—”
Kinn tilts his head, and the danger in his eyes is enough to shut Porsche up on the spot. “Careful.”
The silence that hangs between them is loaded. Porsche wonders if Big and Ken are standing outside the door, if they would hear if Kinn decided that he didn’t need Porsche anymore after all, and decided to end things himself. If they would even bother to do anything, if they did.
He shouldn’t have signed that fucking contract.
Kinn leans back again, easy power in every line of his body, the confident tilt of his chin, the spread of his fingers on the desk. “You knew what this would entail when you signed the proposal,” he says lightly. “Two weeks of preparation, followed by the job at the diamond auction, and a thirty-five percent cut of the profits. Plenty to cover the rent on your lovely family home. Plenty to ensure your little brother has the most comfortable track to university as possible.”
Porsche bristles at the mention of Chay. The knowledge that Kinn knows where he lives—could probably find out, right now, within only a couple of hours, exactly where Chay is and what he’s doing—it’s enough. It’s terrible, but it’s enough.
He unclenches the muscles of his jaw, and rolls his shoulders. He’s fine. He can pretend to be a bodyguard for two weeks. He can eat the shitty canteen food and wear the too-tight uniform, and follow Kinn around and be all nice and obedient all while planning a job that he still doesn’t fully understand, but requires his special skillset of bartending and fighting dirty, whatever combination that is. He can do it all for Chay. He will make himself do it for Chay.
Porsche exhales deeply, and meets Kinn’s steady gaze, expectant. “Okay,” he says. “What are my hours?”
Pretending to be a bodyguard—being a bodyguard, technically, according to the contract Big won’t stop reminding him of—involves a lot less fighting than he would have expected. In fact, Porsche has been at the complex nearly a week, and he still hasn’t even hit anyone outside of sparring in the gym, which is almost fewer physical altercations that he gets into in his normal, non-mafia-bodyguard life. He’s fired a gun, sure, but only inside the firing range, and only while there’s only been Big or Ken there sneering at his terrible aim, and none of the other bodyguards around. It’s a fine line to walk. Kinn barely takes him on missions outside of the complex, and Porsche isn’t allowed out without him. It’s actually a very tiny, very sucky, very frustrating line to walk. He needs freedom.
But a week has passed, and he hasn’t got himself thrown out yet. Yes, there was the incident with the sprinkler, and the accident with Tankhun’s fish pond which nearly got him fired—the mermaid costume had been humiliating, but it had been less painful than the torture he’d expected—and there was of course the minor incident when he had gone on one mission with Kinn and ended up nearly getting shot, but he’s been doing fine. Absolutely fine. Kinn hates him, Tankhun seems to want to yell at him one day and spend the entire afternoon talking about his favourite series with him the next, and Korn is a fucking enigma, but Pete is great. And as long as he’s got one friend, Porsche will be fine. And he is. Perfectly fine.
He reloads his gun, and fires at the target again, hitting it in the lower left corner, about the least useful place possible. He hears Ken snicker behind him and mutter something in English, muffled by his ear protectors. Whatever. Porsche is pretty sure he’s not getting any percentage of the cut from next Saturday night.
There’s the dull sound of footsteps, and voices, and the feeling of someone standing at his shoulder. It’s probably Big, come to critique his technique and throw him off course. Porsche won’t let it affect him. He shoots again.
This time he hits slightly closer to the centre of the target, which is marginally better, but still not quite good enough. He lowers his gun enough to roll his shoulders, take a deep breath, and fire again.
The bullet slams into the wall behind the target. Porsche groans. For fuck’s sake.
He wrenches off his ear protectors and turns to chew out Big for standing too close to him—only, it’s not Big loitering at his shoulder.
Kinn arches one impressive eyebrow. “You’re not going to be much use if it comes to arms, are you,” he says flatly, and Porsche scoffs and puts his ear protectors back on and starts lining himself up for another shot. Kinn’s arm on his elbow stops him. “Your stance is all wrong. That’s why you keep hitting off to the left.”
Porsche lowers the gun fully and rounds on him. “You hired me to be a fucking bartender for this job, right? I don’t see why it’s so important I need to know how to fire a gun. You said there wouldn’t be any use of firearms. And now here you are, getting your cronies to mock me while I’m practising completely pointlessly—”
He tilts his head to see past Kinn, intending to throw a dirty look at Big or Ken, but to his surprise, the rest of the firing range is empty.
“They weren’t helping,” Kinn says, hands on his hips. “And it’s important you know how to shoot a gun, if not for this job in particular. It helps maintain the facade that you’re—”
“One of your bodyguards, yeah,” Porsche finishes for him. He can feel exasperation starting to creep across his face and lazily attempts to reign it back. “I know.”
Kinn’s lips twitch in something like amusement, and he drops his hands from his hips, picking up another pair of ear protectors from the table. “You can at least correct your stance,” he says, and before Porsche has time to protest, he’s slipped on the ear protectors, and started nudging Porsche into position. He’s not careful or delicate with it either; he knocks Porsche’s foot back with his own, grabbing his arm to raise his gun, and pulls his shoulder back, tilting his head until it’s straight. He’s standing very close to him, holding him in place. Porsche tries not to think about it, and lines up the shot. He takes a steadying breath, finger over the trigger.
Kinn’s fingers brush his waist. The shot goes wide.
Porsche glares at him. “Hey dude, c’mon, what the fuck.”
“Concentrate,” Kinn says, face impassive, and turns him back to face forwards. The hand on his waist plants itself there more firmly, keeping him faced towards the target. “Line up the shot and fire after you’ve released your breath.”
Porsche shakes his head minutely, and raises the gun. Why is Kinn even bothering. It’s not like Porsche is going to need to shoot a gun at a real person, next week or ever, if he can avoid it. There’s something about it that sets him on edge, tickles some deep-seated discomfort. The knowledge of how much power is contained in the cruel metal and quick, clinical click of the trigger, probably. Porsche doesn’t have any desire to kill anyone.
He exhales, and shoots. It hits the centre right of the chest. Much better.
Kinn’s heat at his back suddenly gets very noticeable, and his fingers gently grip Porsche’s wrist, helping him line up the gun. Porsche can feel the soft brush of his breath on the side of his neck. Can smell the slightly-too-strong scent of his eau de cologne. It’s distracting.
He drags his focus back to the weapon in his hand, and shoots. It hits the target directly in the heart. The knockback bumps his back into Kinn’s chest, and Kinn’s hand on his waist steadies him. “Good,” says Kinn, close enough to his ear that he can hear that it’s soft even with the protectors on. “Now get a headshot.”
It should be easy enough to get a headshot, right? If he got one right in the heart? Kinn’s right behind him now, shoulder pressed to Porsche’s, hand steadying his elbow, chin touching Porsche’s neck. He’s sure Kinn is an excellent shot, and if he’s helping him aim—
He fires. Headshot, perfectly central. Something like pride erupts in his stomach, and he lowers the gun to look at the damage properly, and it’s only then that he thinks—isn’t it a bit—isn’t Kinn standing a bit too close, what the fuck is that about—
He steps forwards and turns to face him. Kinn is watching him with something between a smirk and contempt. Porsche suddenly feels very aware of his body, of the way his pulse is quite loud in his ears, the slight headiness of blood making its way south—the adrenaline of firing a gun, he tells himself, and hitting the target—
“See?” asks Kinn, and takes off his ear protectors. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Porsche snaps the safety on and takes off his own ear protectors, dropping them and the gun onto the table with a clack. “There’s no need to be condescending,” he says, and makes his way towards the door.
“My office at 8:30,” Kinn calls after him. “I’ve got an update on the situation.”
Porsche throws him a glance over his shoulder—he’s watching him with his hands on his hips again, smiling that awful rich boy smile, and Porsche has to physically resist the urge to throw him the finger. Instead he makes himself nod, lips pressed together, and leaves the room.
Big and Ken are loitering down the hall, and they look up as soon as he emerges, with the exact expressions that let Porsche know they’ve been talking about him—he doesn’t care, he just doesn’t want to talk to them right now. Or anybody. He turns and heads down the corridor away from them.
He’s yet to learn all the intricacies of the complex, but he manages to find his way to a quiet corridor between the laundry room and staff kitchen. He leans back against the wall next to a stack of empty plastic crates, head tilted up, and closes his eyes, and breathes.
What the fuck was that? Kinn’s hands on him like that—Kinn standing so close to him, murmuring instructions in his ear, Kinn’s smile at Porsche’s fluster—that’s not normal, right, between a boss and employee—
Kinn is fucking weird. That’s clearly the main conclusion of this experience, and certainly concurs with the week he’s just had in this complex. It doesn’t mean anything other than that, it’s just Kinn being rich and entitled and thinking he can control anything under his command, including Porsche, and taking it maybe a step too far. It’s fine. Porsche only has to deal with it for another week.
He exhales, and pushes himself off the wall, heading back towards his room. He very much does not think about the blood still rushing to his ears, or the heat still lingering at the bottom of his stomach. It’s adrenaline. That’s all.
Porsche gets to Kinn’s office at 8:43, mostly because he’d sat on his bed after dinner just for a moment, but had accidentally fallen asleep, and hadn’t woken up again until Pete had started singing in the other room, already six minutes late. Whatever. Kinn could do with relaxing a bit, especially when his house is so fucking huge it takes a full five minutes to get from one side to the other.
Everyone’s eyes fall on him when he enters—and it’s a larger group than just Kinn and Ken and Big: Arm has a laptop out and is peering at him over his glasses, three more bodyguards whose names he doesn’t know are standing to attention near the window, and Korn is sitting comfortably in the armchair in the corner, Chan at his shoulder. He raises an eyebrow at Porsche’s futile attempt at punctuality, but doesn’t comment otherwise.
“Porsche,” says Kinn, not getting up from his seat at his desk. “Glad you could make it.”
Porsche tries to shove down the sense of self-consciousness threatening him. “Um, sorry.” He wanders over to stand with the guards by the window. Silence continues to reign through the room. He forces a smile and nod at Kinn and Korn. “You can carry on.”
Kinn gives him a long, sideways glance, and turns back to the iPad in front of him. “Yes. Arm, your report on the access issues surrounding the venue.”
“Of course,” Arm says, also glancing at Porsche, then back to his laptop. “The floorplans show a potential security threat by the eastern window on the second floor above the bar room where the auction will be held, where there’s a staff access door onto the balcony. We’ll need to consider that there could be a potential angle on guests in the bar from this doorway, and have it covered.”
Kinn jerks his chin at the guards standing next to Porsche, and they nod. “We can bring more men, sir,” one of them says. “No questions asked.”
“Good.” Kinn’s eyes land on Porsche. “And the bar?”
“Visible from Ken’s position on the stairs. And I’m to understand Porsche is trained and able to be of use as well?”
Porsche feels the gaze of everyone in the room on him again, but Kinn’s is the one that pins him in place. He thinks about the hand on his waist in the shooting range earlier that afternoon. He wonders if Kinn is thinking about it too.
“To an extent,” Kinn says, and turns back to Arm. “Thank you, Arm. Have the floorplans sent over to me as soon as possible, and draw up the list of equipment we’ll need. I assume the applications have all gone through?”
“Yes, sir. With no trace back to us, of course.”
“Excellent.”
Porsche has no idea what they’re talking about. Hell, he doesn’t still even know the full extent of what he’s meant to be doing on this job, only that Kinn had kidnapped him onto a boat in the middle of the river, told him he needed a bartender who could fight, and promised to give him enough of a cut that Chay would have a very comfortable career all the way through university, provided the job all went to plan. It had taken the very real threat of ending up penniless on the street to convince Porsche to take the offer, and he’s still not sure if he’s glad he did.
Kinn stands up. “Good. In that case, I think we’re done here.” He looks at his father. “Did you have anything you wanted to add, Pa?”
Korn shakes his head and gets out of his chair. “It all seems to be going to plan. Good work.”
Porsche doesn’t miss the minute shift in Kinn’s shoulders at his father’s praise, the obedient nod of his head as Korn leaves the room, Chan at his shoulder. The atmosphere perceptibly lightens once he’s gone.
Kinn leans forward on his desk. “Everyone dismissed, then,” he says. “Except for you, Porsche.”
What now? Porsche sighs, rolling his head back in annoyance as the other bodyguards leave, Arm the last to go. The heavy door clicks shut behind him. Kinn beckons Porsche closer to his desk. Porsche goes, reluctantly.
“You haven’t said anything to Pete?”
Huh. Porsche had expected something about his behaviour, maybe, about not causing trouble at such an important moment. He shakes his head. “As far as I know, he thinks I’m just a regular bodyguard you hired because your dad told you to.”
Kinn stares at him, quizzical. He shakes his head, dismissing the thought with a laugh. “Why would he think that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Tankhun told him something. I haven’t said anything to him, dude, honestly.”
“Mm. I believe you.” Kinn wanders over to the window and looks out at the evening view with his hands on his hips. “It’s important that this job stays confidential, Porsche,” he says. “I don’t know if I can trust you. But I’m paying you to be trustworthy. Is that understood?”
They’re in the mafia, why would a heist be such a hush-hush deal, especially within the family? But Porsche nods anyway, then because Kinn isn’t actually looking at him, adds, “Sure.”
Kinn glances at him over his shoulder. “Keep practising at the shooting range.” He does that bossy little chin-jerk thing, eyes catching the city lights. “Dismissed.”
Porsche stares at him for a long second before leaving. What does Kinn want from this, really? They have so much money already, what’s he got to heist? This can’t be about money, Porsche thinks. He saw the way he reacted when his father praised him. No. This is about pride.
He’s going to live to regret signing that contract, he knows. If he fucking lives at all.