Chapter Text
Porsche goes from essentially a lifetime of perfect health to crippled by migraines in just a few weeks. He never had time to get sick before, so he didn’t. He still doesn’t have time to get sick, so he doesn’t understand why it’s happening now.
He was supposed to go to a gala tonight, but he spent a couple of hours on the bathroom floor, and then dragged himself to bed to sleep for a couple more. He still feels woozy and the room is shimmering weirdly, but he’s also very thirsty.
He feels strange about it, but he doesn’t think he can get out of bed to go wander the tower and find sustenance. He grabs the house phone. “Auntie?” he says. “Can someone bring me some sprite?”
“Of course, sweetie,” the kitchen auntie says. “Right away.”
The person who brings the sprite, and a whole tray of other things, is P’Chan. Porsche is a bit confused about why he’s even in the compound when Kinn is at an event. Shouldn’t he…
“Big is with Kinn,” Chan says, and sets the tray down on the bed. “Anything here smell offensive to you?”
Porsche shakes his head. There’s a few bland options on the tray - bread, rice porridge, some fruit and some steamed egg. He grabs a slice of watermelon. His mouth and throat are so dry.
“I’d like to have Lina come up and see if there’s anything we can do for these headaches,” Chan says, after waiting for Porscbe to finish a few bites of watermelon and a spoonful of rice and push the tray aside. “Is that okay?”
Porsche wants to say yes, but he feels kitten-weak and the idea of a stranger touching his hips and ass, and especially the faint scarring on his back… His hands clench in the big sweatshirt he borrowed from Kinn and he stares down at the bed.
Chan squats down next to him. “It was a genuine question, Porsche. The answer can be no. But she’s, uh… Sensitive to your soft spots.”
Oh god, she noticed how uneasy he was. That’s humiliating. Porsche feels his cheeks start to burn.
“Hey, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Chan says softly. “You’re okay, kiddo. We’re just trying to get you feeling better. Do you want to say no?”
Porsche doesn’t know. He’s thirsty and nauseous and his jaw is killing him, and this is his fifth migraine in three weeks. He’d like help. But he doesn’t want to throw Kinn under the bus to get it.
“Here, drink your sprite,” Chan says, and uncaps it for him. “Take a sec and we’ll talk. Do you mind if I sit down? My joints aren't what they used to be.”
“Sure, of course,” Porsche mumbles, and takes the bottle.
Chan lets him drink for a minute. “Do you want me to propose a full plan and then you can decide?”
Porsche nods, miserably. He still feels foggy and awful, and he’d like relief, but not if it means being naked on a table again. He feels guilty that he can’t just tell Chan what he wants, but he has no fucking idea what will fix this.
“It might be easier to explain any… issues you might have to me and I can communicate with Lina for you,” Chan tells him. “I’m aware of what happened that night. I figured it was easier than fully reading in a new player. What we’d like to do is have you sit up in a chair, and she can work on your head and neck and maybe some trigger points in your hands and feet. You can stay upstairs. Would that be…”
“Okay,” Porsche croaks, and then, in for a penny, in for a pound… “Can you tell her I want to keep my pants on?”
“Yes, of course,” Chan says, very gentle. He sounds like he does sometimes in meetings with just Kinn and Porsche, asking Kinn if he’s eaten, making sure he’s had enough to drink. “Can I ask her to come upstairs? Would you like me to stay during the procedure?”
Porsche hesitates. It’s stupid, but Chan feels safe, like Dr. Suva. And he offered. “Yeah,” Porsche says, and his voice wobbles. “Thanks.”
Chan types a brief message on his phone. “I noticed that evening events seem to be a trigger for these,” he says. “I know Kinn gave you shit a few weeks ago. Are you still…”
Porsche’s whole face and neck flush red and he hides his face in his knees. “I’m not making it up,” he tells Chan. He hates the idea that Chan might think this isn’t real. It’s not related to anything, Porsche is just feeling deathly ill two evenings a week for no particular reason.
“I can see you’re not,” Chan says, and shifts until his arm is touching Porsche’s. “I don’t think you’re faking. I think you’re really stressed, Porsche. Would it help if I was on your detail at these galas? I have some sway with Kinn that Big doesn’t.”
Just the idea makes some of the pain in Porsche’s head recede, which Porsche doesn’t like. This is a physical problem with his physical body. Porsche isn’t crazy.
But… The idea of Kinn yelling at him again has been making him sick to his stomach. He knows Chan’s right, he can shut Kinn down in ways Big would never dare. If Chan had been there the night of the diamond auction, maybe Porsche wouldn’t…
“Okay,” Porsche mumbles into his knees.
“Good lad,” Chan says, and presses a little more firmly against Porsche’s arm. “Let’s get you set up for this in the study, alright? Neck and shoulders only, I was very clear with Lina.”
The massage helps. Some of the aura from the migraine dissipates and Porsche stops feeling so queasy. “Can you eat a little more?” Chan asks him after. “Would you like anything more substantial?”
“Pizza?” Porsche asks. Kinn eats really clean and the kitchen at the minor family grinds out an enormous banquet every night with no input from Porsche. He hasn’t had anything greasy or snacky for… a long time.
Chan’s face goes a little soft at that. “Sure,” he says. “Hang tight.”
Porsche gets set up on the couch with a cheese pizza and another sprite. His stomach has hurt too much to eat properly for a while, and this is… good. He feels weirdly like a child being supervised on a sick day, but, well, he’s open to new experiences.
Chan is sitting on the other end of the couch with his phone. “I’d like to get you in for an ultrasound of your knee,” he says, flipping through his calendar. “Is it alright with you if I find a time in your calendar and schedule it?”
“Sure,” Porsche says, not sure why Chan is asking. Everyone else just throws things in there - Porsche swears it changes minute by minute sometimes. And he’d like to get his knee unfucked, if it’s possible to do that.
“Is it bothering you?” Chan asks, and then rephrases the question immediately to “Does it hurt you?”
“Not really,” Porsche says. It bugs him when he stays in one position too long, which he does almost every day in the back of the car. But it’s still better than when he was bartending and standing all night on concrete.
“That’s not a no,” Chan says, and makes another note in his phone. “Would seeing a physiotherapist be comfortable?”
Porsche wants to tell Chan that all this gentle attention and careful choice is unnecessary. Porsche is tough and can handle a fucking physiotherapy appointment.
Except he doesn’t feel like he can. One more thing, being asked to fully disrobe or being touched the wrong way, feels like it will break him. He’s not sure of his own reactions right now and that scares him a lot.
Porsche isn’t used to being uncomfortable in his own body. As long as he can remember, he’s been tall and athletic. As a little kid, he could run as far and as fast as he wanted, beating big kids two grades older. As a teenager, he had enough control he could put out a candle with a flick of his foot, and enough power to become the national taekwondo champ of Thailand. As an adult, he could work all night, fuck on all his smoke breaks, and then kick ass as the sun came up.
He can still fight if he needs to, but that confidence in his own invincibility was destroyed as he walked through the tower past rows of bodies to get back to the elevator. The aches and pains he’d barely notice seem crippling these days. And he never feels confident in who, or what, might touch his body next.
He…
The door swings open. Porsche jumps, almost knocking the pizza onto the floor, which would be bad because everything here is white or cream or beige. Chan catches the box and sets it on the coffee table.
“Hey,” Kinn says, tossing his jacket on the lounge chair. “Feeling better?”
Porsche freezes. He doesn’t want to say yes, partly because he still feels like shit. Part of it is that he doesn’t want Kinn to think he’s faking it to get out of work. He can’t…
“Lina worked on him for about ninety minutes to get him upright and on the couch,” Chan answers for Porsche. “And he's eaten about a slice and a half of pizza in an hour. I don’t think we can call him good quite yet. Let him sleep it off.”
“Poor thing,” Kinn says, and gives Porsche's foot a friendly shake as he lands on the arm of the couch. “Did the massage help?”
“Yeah, kind of,” Porsche says, not sure what Kinn wants him to say.
“Good to hear,” Kinn says, and helps himself to a slice of pizza while he gives Chan a rundown on the event.
In the middle of Porsche’s migraines, he shoots the leader of the Red Diamond gang in what is unquestionably cold blood. In the moment, it feels like he’s playing a video game. Everything he’s scared of at night, the guns, the men, the sheer number of people out for his head, it all fades into the background. He can almost hear theme music playing.
He’s killed people before, which is a new thing he has to live with, just like after he started street fighting he had to live with breaking bones and jaws. But never like this, never execution-style like Kinn does. It feels like a bad line to have crossed.
In the car home he feels like he’s the one who died. Porsche Kittisawat can’t have been the man who just did that. Porsche Kittisawat must be somewhere else, helping his little brother with his homework or slicing lemons for a Thursday evening bar shift. The man in this body must be someone different.
Porsche has heard of people suffering from rejection sickness after a transplant. Upstairs in the bathroom after the meeting, he thinks this body must be suffering that too. He pukes and pukes and pukes until the toilet water is murky with bile and he can’t see his own blood-splattered face in the reflection of the bowl. That’s good. It's wrong to see his own body housing someone else.
Big seems sorry for taunting him into it after, but Porsche can’t even look at him. He’s not angry with Big. He was right. It was the best thing to do in the situation.
It’s just too much of a reminder that there’s another Porsche somewhere, the real Porsche, who doesn’t have to live with the weight of all of this. It’s too much to see Big and think that there’s a possibility that Porsche could have bled out on the floor of that warehouse a few months ago. It’s too much for Porsche to think that might have been better for all of them.
He’s supposed to see Chay a few days later, which should be long enough for the strangeness to dissipate but isn’t. They’re trying once a week, but seeing each other hasn’t been that frequent. Chay’s busy with something, even if he doesn’t want to explain to Porsche what it is.
Porsche arranged for them to meet at a very fancy restaurant, the kind they never would have been able to afford when he was a bartender. He made the reservation before he shot that guy, not thinking of anything beyond the food being good. Chay’s already there when he arrives after a meeting that refused to end on time.
Now, being escorted through the lacquered hallway to a table by the window, the location feels like a bribe, like Porsche is trying to dazzle Chay with fancy surroundings to keep him from noticing that Porsche is falling apart. The cocktail by Chay’s elbow seems like the same; as Porsche’s brother, no one bothered to ID him. For a second, all Porsche can see are the price tags on his offering: 700 baht for the cocktail, 5,000 for the designer steak knife sitting by Chay’s plate, 20,000 for the meal.
Porsche wants so badly for everything to go back to normal that for a few seconds, he hopes that it’s a bribe Chay will take. He just wants to sit with his brother and eat and not have anyone ask him questions he can’t answer. Can’t he have that for just one night?
“Hi Hia,” Chay says, making no attempt to disguise the fact he’s drinking. Porsche wouldn’t even let him have half a beer when they were at the house together. He was a strict parent. “How are you?”
“Good,” Porsche says, which isn’t true. “You?”
“Fine,” Chay says, cataloguing all of the little tells Porsche knows he has when he’s in trouble. Porsche would like to try to hide them, but he can’t. He’s just too fucking tired.
They make it through the first course, stilted, and then Porsche starts telling Chay how great the restaurant is supposed to be. It isn’t even really that he thinks it is so great. He’s mostly just repeating what Time said to him the last time they all had dinner together. The silence has filled the room to it’s very high ceilings and is threatening to crush Porsche.
“Just like the compound,” Chay says, flat. Porsche can’t read him when he’s in a mood like this. He doesn’t know if that’s earnest or sarcastic.
And actually, Porsche does like living at the compound. They still have their house and can go visit whenever they want. He likes sleeping in a bed with his boyfriend and knowing there are a minimum of five armed men between him and trouble, instead of their easily-opened front gate. For a second, he thinks maybe Chay does too. He had it worse with the loan sharks than Porsche did.
“Are you liking the compound more?” he asks, hopefully. He understands Chay’s ethical concerns with the mafia, but if he’d just accept that this kind of stuff makes life nicer and easier, Porsche could…
Chay’s eyes flash. That was the wrong thing to say. “Yeah, this soulless place for rich assholes is great,” Chay says, his voice getting breathy with anger. “I love it as much as I love our soulless house for rich assholes. I don’t want to fucking be here, hia!”
Porsche still has the reflexes to catch the napkin Chay throws at him, and the poker face to ignore all the rich assholes staring at him as Chay storms off.
Big is at his elbow, solicitous, which is good because Porsche can feel a headache building. “Can you ask them to bring the bill?” he asks, and focuses on not throwing up on the waiter Nop runs off to find.
Massage helps at least a bit with that headache, and physio the next day helps too, and the ultrasound Chan scheduled for him is of interest to the doctors. That’s good. Porsche would like to get better. But it makes him feel so uneasy to have people touching his body all the time.
“You okay?” Kinn asks him, when he crawls into bed after a late-evening physio appointment two days after his fight with Chay. Porsche wanted to ask Chan to come with him again, but that's stupid, and beside, Chan is Kinn's weird uncle guy. Porsche can't have him too.
Porsche nods. The physio tried something with his IT bands, and it hurt so fucking much. It’s better now, but Porsche is caught in the memory of how overwhelming it was, and doesn’t know why.
Kinn puts his tablet down and takes off his glasses. “How was your appointment?”
“Mmhmm,” Porsche says. He had a shit day. Last week he shot a guy in cold blood and he keeps having nightmares (and daymares) about it. Chay yelled at him in a restaurant. His meetings all ran rough. And then the IT band thing, and the horrible anticipation of knowing it would happen on both sides of his body.
“Do you want a hug?” Kinn asks.
Porsche really, really does. He's so fucking tired. And he feels so unsafe. He nods.
Kinn scoops him close and holds him really tight, and Porsche starts to feel settled again. It registers how much everything hurts in his body and he shifts, trying to get comfortable.
“I can hug you to sleep,” Kinn offers. “Come lie down.”
“Aspirin,” Porsche mutters, because he's going to need it to go down. He can…
“I've got it,” Kinn says. Porsche has barely figured out how to get under the covers before Kinn is back with cold water and three aspirin. “Was it a bad session?”
Porsche shrugs. It wasn’t, he’s just being a pussy about a little bit of pain in his leg, and the physio’s hand on his ass. He’s fine. He’ll be fine after the aspirin starts working.
Kinn helps him lie down, and Porsche tries not to cling on too tight. He doesn’t need to be clingy. He needs to sleep this off and get more organized so his meetings run smooth.
“It’s okay,” Kinn encourages. “You can hold me too. You look like someone turned you upside down and shook you. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Ha,” Porsche says weakly, “No.” And then he shakes himself to sleep.
He doesn’t really feel better the next morning, but he does feel like he owes Kinn for spending forty minutes spooning him to sleep. “You okay?” Kinn asks, bringing the breakfast tray into the bedroom. “You were rough last night.”
“I dunno, my leg hurt,” Porsche lies. “It’s okay now. Are we both home tonight?”
“Yeah,” Kinn says. “You need a night in? You feeling okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Porsche agrees. “Hey, you remember that thing you were saying about chasing me? Do you want to try that tonight?”
Kinn’s face goes from tight with concern to tight with horniness. “Fuck, yeah,” he says. “I’ve got a dinner but I should be home by eight. I’ll text you to prep?”
“Sure,” Porsche agrees. What other fucking things in his life could go wrong?