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Kinn forces himself not to rush forward when he sees Vegas next to Porsche. Porsche, who is once again shirtless, and drinking wine while with his conniving cousin. He can barely hear the murmur of their voices from the doorway, or at least Vegas’ - but he can see Porsche is being unnaturally still. The kind of stillness he’s learned comes from tensing up while trying not to show it. The same stillness he remembers from shooting the apple. And when he can just barely see the carefully blank look on his lover's face as well, he slowly relaxes. From the looks of it, Vegas has probably surprised him by showing up out nowhere.
Porsche finally drains the last of the wine in his glass and sets it aside, murmurs something short, and then slips back into the pool. Kinn loses sight of him for a few seconds as he goes under, then the shape of him can be seen swimming deeper into the center of the pool. Vegas correctly interprets this as a dismissal and gathers both glasses and bottle before strolling out of another door on the other side of the pool. The fact that Vegas was here at all worries him though. The fact that he found Porsche so quickly when Kinn himself had to go ask Pete, and that he could be here and gone without he or his father ever knowing.
Two minutes later finds Kinn cross legged in almost the same spot Vegas was, and starting to worry if Porsche is coming back up. Just when he’s about ready to strip and jump in after his wayward lover, Porsche decides to slowly surface. The younger man still seems subdued and doesn’t even look up as he swims back to the edge, but Kinn can tell the second he realizes he’s not alone by the way he tenses. He also gets the pleasure of seeing him sag with relief and the formation of a small smile when their eyes finally meet.
”Oh, good. It’s you this time,” Porsche says as he reaches the wall. Kinn holds out his hand palm up and Porsche easily slips his on top from the water, then turns their hands presses a kiss to the back of Kinn’s hand. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
Kinn grins. “Looking for you.” His lover grins back and looks down shyly for a second before rolling his eyes and releasing their hands to pull himself out of the pool. Once Porsche is sat perpendicular to the pool, with his left leg still dangling in the water and his right folded underneath him, Kinn asks, “What was Vegas doing here?”
Porsche startles, but when their eyes meet he doesn’t look guilty. Instead he can see that Porsche is searching his face for something - maybe trying to figure out if he’s angry or just curious. He lets Porsche look, trying not to get impatient.
”How long were you watching?”
”Long enough.” The slight anger in his tone makes Porsche raise an eyebrow.
”I’m surprised you didn’t storm in, then.”
”I thought about it.”
The younger man looks down and picks at one of the seams of his wetsuit bottoms. “I wish you had.” Kinn stills. Porsche glances back up at him with one of his nervous smiles, shaking his head. Then huffs and meets his eyes again. “Just being in the same room with him makes my skin crawl.”
Kinn reaches out to take his hand again, stopping the nervous picking. “What did he do, Porsche? Why was here?”
He takes a deep breath then releases it with a heavy sigh. “To apologize… apparently,” he says shaking his head. “And to ask for a quick death, should you ever order it.”
The thing is, Kinn has had the last few weeks to learn a lot about Porsche’s body language. Both as lover and as employer. While Porsche usually wears his heart on his sleeve, he is -to some extent- capable of hiding his emotions. No doubt something he learned partially from his childhood dealing with debtors, and partially from his job as a bartender. But even so, his mask wasn’t able to completely form until Kinn’s father hired him as a bodyguard. The way he reacted to Mes being beat in front of him, and the way he wasn’t quite able to hide how much it was affecting him comes to mind now. Because Porsche looks even more unsettled now than he did then. It makes Kinn simultaneously nauseous and pleased at the fact that Porsche is feeling like this and that he’s trusting Kinn by not hiding it at all.
The older man tugs gently at their hands. “Come here,” he says, nodding at the space beside him and tugging again.
Porsche looks at him skeptically. “Are you sure? I’ll get you wet.”
”Do I look like I care?” He asks tugging again. The younger man rolls his eyes and pulls his leg from the pool, scooting over until they sit side by side, then lays his head on Kinn’s shoulder.
They sit in a semi-comfortable silence for a few moments, Kinn relishing in their closeness despite the water from Porsche’s hair soaking into his shirt, and Porsche relaxing incrementally until most his his weight is supported by his older lover. Then Porsche sighs and straightens.
”So are you taking me or Tawan to collect the evidence?” And now it’s Kinn’s turn to startle.
He can feel himself getting angry, and so isn’t surprised when “How did you know about that?” comes out a little sharper than he meant.
But Porsche only looks a little bit resigned, and maybe slightly exasperated. “I may have bugged his room,” he admits without meeting his eyes.
”Porsche.”
And yeah that’s exasperation. “Don’t you ‘Porsche’ me. I’m still your bodyguard. And was that not the reason you came looking for me in the first place?”
Kinn grins and shakes his head. He’s a little proud and a little angry and a lot turned on by this side of Porsche. The younger man isn’t even admitting he mainly did it out of jealousy, but he’ll let him have it anyway.
”Alright, so what are you thinking?”
”Oh? You’re actually asking now?”, he says teasingly.
Kinn sighs and squeezes his hand around Porsche’s. “C’mon, tell me.”
Porsche nods, taking Kinn’s hand into both of his and rubbing his thumbs over both the ring and Kinn’s knuckles. When he starts talking it’s with a contemplative expression as he looks out over the pool. “Well, first of all, you should’ve threatened to take away protection if he didn’t hand over the evidence. That was the whole reason he’s being kept around anyway. But I find it highly suspicious that the same night he offers this ultimatum, Vegas seeks me out with a supposedly authentic apology and a bottle of wine.” He looks over at this with a raised eyebrow. “Right? Kinda feels like a set up to me. Especially given recent events.”
”You think they’re trying to frame you.”
Porsche shrugs and looks back across the water. “Makes sense. I’m the newest, and somehow the closest to you in that short period of time. In addition, the way I was hired was not the norm.” Seeing Kinn’s face, he continues, “ Don’t look at me like that. I’m fully aware that most of the others had military or law enforcement training before they were ever considered. We do talk to each other, you know.
”Not only that, but the attacks on you ramped up significantly after I started. Including being kidnapped from my house, lost in the woods for three days, and shot.” Porsche holds Kinn’s gaze with all the seriousness he can muster and hopes he’s understanding. From Kinn’s expression, he does.
“You want to go along with it.” It’s as much a question as statement, and said so softly that Porsche can hear the way Kinn aches at just the thought.
”The mole, Tawan, and Vegas all know your history, they all know all of your insecurities, and they’re going to continue to play into them. So they’re going to try to sideline me anyway. If we play along, Tawan and the mole will have a false sense of security and they will slip up. And I’m sure Vegas won’t miss an opportunity to steal me away, most likely posed as my rescuer from the unfairness of it all. And then I can investigate from that side.”
Kinn was silent for a long moment, tensely clenching his jaw. Porsche continued stroking his knuckles occasionally pressing a kiss to their combined grip. Finally, he looked up with a huff saying, “I don’t like it.”
The younger man snorted. “I know.”
”Porsche.” Kinn used his other hand to gently grip his chin and force their eyes to meet. “I don’t like it.”
”I know,” he said softly, leaning their foreheads together.
Kinn sighed and gripped the back of his lover’s neck tightly. “Just make sure you come back to me.”
Porsche smiled and kissed him softly, whispering between their lips, “Don’t I always?”