Chapter Text
[Song: Paradox — Aek Season Five]
“I trust no one.”
They weren’t alone. Porsche could not say all the things he wanted to say.
Kinn, remember the forest? he pleaded with a look. You know what I would do for you. You know what I have given up. I would sooner die than betray you.
Hands tightened around his arms and Kinn’s expression barely changed.
“Kinn,” he urged, out loud.
This isn’t you. I know you, remember? I came back. I chose you. My life is yours.
But there was no flicker of recognition in Kinn’s eyes. They were flat and dark, like the eyes of a shark. Porsche hadn’t seen those eyes in many months.
Now, all he could think of was Kinn’s face when he’d said, I like it when you’re happy.
In one day, they were strangers again.
“Lock him up.”
If Porsche was smart, he would have anticipated this.
He shook off the firm hands. He knew the way to the cells.
—
“Run away with me, Porsche.”
Porsche looked into Vegas’s eyes and saw nothing but hunger. He had never trusted the man and would not start now. But Vegas was offering something nobody else had ever given him: A chance.
“Okay,” he replied, and ignored the look of pleasure on Vegas’s face.
Vegas produced a key. Porsche did not ask. As Vegas led him out, Porsche could not help but look back at the familiar building once more.
Kinn was in there somewhere. Tawan was probably beside him, rubbing his shoulders. Porsche did not feel anything but a cold numbness that spread through his chest. He had stopped feeling days ago. Now, as he looked up, the tears that pricked his eyes were for a time that never existed.
In that brief moment, he mourned for what he almost had. For what he’d lost. For what he couldn’t save.
He left.
He did not turn back this time.
—
Porsche knew one thing now. He should have left for good when Kinn offered it to him. He should have put Porchay first, as he’d been doing his entire life. He should never have risked everything by going back for Kinn.
This was what happened when he didn’t think. Porsche knew better than to make the same mistake again.
His eyes were dry from the cold. He blinked fast.
Vegas’s hands were light on the steering wheel. He looked at them so he didn’t have to look at Vegas’s face. There were no rings on his fingers.
“Vegas,” he said. “Thank you for breaking me out.”
There was a smile in his voice when he replied. “It’s okay, Porsche. I know what it’s like to be betrayed by those closest to you.”
Porsche watched the red and green lights flicker on the long, pale fingers. “But I don’t want to run away with you. I want you to help me disappear.”
The hands tightened. He was sure the leather would break at any moment.
Vegas’s voice was tight when it came. “Porsche, what do you mean?”
He had been in that cell for days. Nobody had come for him. Porsche had since decided something.
“I mean, I want you to help me fake my death. I don’t want anything to do with the mafia world any longer.”
He finally lifted his eyes to Vegas’s face. It was harsh in the streetlights. He seemed to be working his answer around, and did not show anything on his face.
“Why not work for me? You would be protected, and you wouldn’t have to do anything you don’t want.”
Porsche shook his head before he finished. “No. As long as I’m alive, Kinn will find me. And my brother will always be in danger.”
Finally, a crack in Vegas’s veneer appeared. He gave a snide grin. “You’re not afraid of Kinn’s ex, Tawan, stealing him away?”
“No,” Porsche replied, without thinking. “Kinn made his choice. I’m not it.” The cold in his chest seemed to expand. “He never trusted me.”
Porsche wondered if any of it was real. It sure seemed real at the time, when Porsche chose scissors to Kinn’s rock, when Kinn looked back at him with such devastation. Such love. It felt real when he’d looked up from the fish they’d caught and said, So kind. Why do you keep your smiles to yourself?
Now, Porsche wore handcuffs again. He left them lying alone in his cell. He could barely look at them.
Perhaps, Porsche had only seen what he wanted to see. Perhaps, he had only ever been a replacement to Kinn. Until the real thing came along.
“I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago,” he said. “But I need your help. Will you give it?”
Vegas smirked.
—
“Khun Kinn,” said Arm, hurrying into his room with an iPad in hand.
“What?” he snapped. He was sitting with his head in his hands, an open bottle of bourbon beside him.
The fear on Arm’s face said enough. “It’s Porsche, Khun Kinn. His cell is empty.”
Kinn shot up, spilling his drink. “What?” he said again. There was rage in his voice, but his fingers shook. “What are you waiting for? Find him!”
Arm almost tripped in his haste to leave.
Kinn glared out the window. He could see his reflection among the city lights. He turned away from it.
—
Porsche had been missing for three days. The security footage seemed to be intercepted, a trick that could have only been done from the inside. It was as if Porsche had vanished into thin air. As if he’d never existed.
He was on his way to Porsche’s house himself when he got the call.
—
“—it was a fire. Nobody knows how it started. They were sleeping and couldn’t make it out in time,” he heard as he ran past the police tape. They let him pass without question.
“Khun Kinn,” he heard, past the ringing in his own ears. “It is dangerous. We don’t know yet if this was an accident or not. Khun Kinn, please come this way.”
“Let me through!” he screamed. Everyone seemed to shrink away.
He came to a stop in the wreckage. The whole house was rubble.
He fell to his knees and did not feel it. He reached out blindly to rummage through the burnt pieces and paid no heed to his hands. Let them burn, he thought. Let me burn with him.
He felt a pressure on his arm just as he saw the two burnt skeletons. One big, one smaller.
He could not tell how much time had passed. Time seemed to slow like the churning of slow gears. He saw the flashes of sound around him but could not hear it.
“They’re dead,” he remembered mumbling to himself, days later. Over and over again. “They’re dead.”
He ran his fingers over the scar on his wrist, the one that had never truly healed. It was the most precious thing he had ever owned.
People came and went but he could not see them. Could not speak.
—
The first flash of emotion came to him a few days later, when he entered his room to find Tawan standing by the window.
“You,” he rasped, and was only stopped from charging at him by multiple hands on him. “You fucker!”
Tawan stood away from him, fear and shock clear on his face. Kinn hated the sight of him more than anything in his entire life. His stomach roiled with repulsion. There was a nagging certainty that made his hair stand on end.
“You did this!” he was screaming. He thrashed against his men in a blind, incessant impulse. “You fucking did this!”
He was escorted back to his room, but not before he made one final promise.
Tawan was going to die by his hand. For good, this time.
But he would make sure he got what he needed from him first.
—
“Kinn, you have to believe me,” Tawan pleaded on his knees. “I didn't do it. I’ve given you the information. Let me go.”
Kinn cocked the gun. It was loud in the silence. “You are a good actor, Tawan, I’ll give you that.” His hand was deadly still. “It fooled me twice.”
His chest was cold. Through the numbness, an irreparable hatred persisted. Not for Tawan, but for himself.
“But you mistake me,” he laughed. “My heart is anything but soft. Not anymore.”
Anger flickered through the fear in Tawan’s eyes. “You’re just as guilty as me,” he spat. “I framed Porsche, but you’re the one who betrayed him.” A sick smile played on his lips as he tugged against the handcuffs.
Kinn looked into Tawan’s smug face and did not blink as he pulled the trigger.
—
Porsche missed the sunshine.
It was always damp in Bangkok, and even when the sun shone it was often trapped between clouds that kept in the heat. Now, sweat beaded along his temples and above his lips and the smell of sea salt carried on the wind. Porchay was asleep in the seat beside him. All was well.
Porsche checked his watch. The plan should be in motion by now, if Vegas was to be trusted. Trepidation made his stomach lurch, but it was too late to worry.
He and Porchay had escaped. That was what mattered.
He had packed their things in two small bags and explained what he could to his brother. Vegas had promised him to make their deaths look like an accident. A house fire, he’d said, as the light played on his glinting teeth. I can plant some evidence. It will look very real.
“Why are you helping me?” Porsche had asked right before he’d left. Vegas stood with his hands in his silk pockets and smiled.
“Because I’m a sucker for justice,” is all he said. “Just like you.”
Now, it was dawn. The sunrise bled yellow and purple like an old bruise. Sand was sticking to his wheels and there was a stack of money in his pocket.
We will be safe now, brother, he promised. He glanced at Porchay’s sleeping face. Nobody will ever bother us again.
He drove until the rest of his thoughts bled into one straight line.
—
“You never trust me,” Porsche had said. Kinn would never forget that look on his face; the hurt, the betrayal. Kinn had soothed his fears with firm hands and gentle kisses against a mirror, but even that was only a bandage on a bullet wound.
“Kinn,” he’d said later. There was so much in that one word. So much strength Porsche had carried without speaking, so much clarity. He had put all his faith in Kinn, had devoted himself entirely. He was always so sure of everything.
But Kinn had been blinded by familiar words and old memories. Tawan’s reassuring hands and pleads for forgiveness. All the evidence had pointed to Porsche. After everything, Kinn still had not trusted him.
He could not get the image of Porsche's unwavering face out of his mind. He'd said Kinn like it was the word of god. Like it was the only thing he had ever truly believed in.
Kinn took a swig straight out of the bottle and looked out at the skyline. It was a familiar sight that he had often enjoyed. He remembered the way Porsche looked spread open along the window as the pretty lights played on his hair. He remembered a gun given as insurance. Come back to me, he'd asked.
I promise, was the reply. I promise.
He remembered a night insulated against the world. The cold of the water around him, the warmth of Porsche’s hands. His mouth. The way he’d taken him apart with his own mouth after, as Porsche gripped his hair and whispered his name in the exact same way. Kinn.
He contemplated the skyline. It was beautiful. He walked closer to it and placed his hands on the railing. For a brief, eternal second—he let his thoughts run.
It would be so easy, he thought. So quick. He could be with Porsche again. He could make do on his promises. They had made merits together. Surely in one life out of the thousands they would meet each other again. He would do it better the second time, he reasoned. He would not let Porsche down.
But then his name was being called and the moment passed, and the air rushed into his lungs like an escaped fugitive. He stepped away and dealt with it all. Dealt with each second when it came and went. He learned how to breathe all over again.
He never learned how to sleep.
[Credits Songs:
No Time to Die — Billie Eilish
Born To Die — Lana Del Rey]