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After it all went down, Kinn could try to justify it by reminding himself that Porsche had agreed. In a way, Porsche had almost suggested the plan, drawing the connection to that first meeting with the minor family, joking that this time circumstances had them both by the throat.
But it wasn't much consolation as Kinn choked him out, the lithe, loved body under his hands fighting hard this time. The struggle was for show, but Porsche's hands clawed at his wrists, his teeth bared and snapped. For their hostile audience, Porsche's hips twisted against him and he raised a knee for a clumsy blow blocked by Kinn's thigh. Porsche's eyes were wide and wild, his body jerking hard against Kinn's merciless grip. Kinn thought he could see Porsche trying to say something, and he hoped it was forgiveness. He imagined it was curses.
Their enemies in the room behind them gave Kinn the excuse to look away from Porsche's darkening face, his eyes rolling up white, his body twitching then falling lax. Their opponents might expect this Family altercation to end violently, but they'd understand a desire for quiet, too. Propping his hip and knee between Porsche's legs, he gave Porsche's body one more shake for show, held up him against the wall for a long, fraught moment before releasing his grip, the muscles of his fingers and wrists aching with sudden release.
Kinn lowered Porsche's body, not indulging himself with a hand behind his head, but not dropping him like a broken toy, either. Porsche fell limply to his side, legs splayed awkwardly, eyes still half-open even in unconsciousness.
"Next?" Kinn growled, and the room emptied quickly, no one willing to risk the wrath of the Family as embodied in its new boss. Kinn watched them leave through a thin veil of red: his rage was real, even if his act with Porsche had been premeditated and fake.
When the retreating footsteps had moved away into silence, Kinn took a deep breath, forcing himself to find his clear, cold center. Now he could let himself kneel down beside Porsche's crumpled figure. With a gentle hand he patted Porsche's cheek, his other hand roving down to shift Porsche more comfortably onto his back. "They're gone," he whispered softly, unwilling to give their bodyguards a reason to come in. Let Porsche wake up to only the two of them. Let him have that comfort, even if the guards would see the redness around his throat. Let them have a moment, just a moment...
"Come on, now," the words were just as soft but the hand on Porsche's cheek a little firmer now, "no rest for the Family." Porsche's head rolled slightly toward him with the strongest tap. "Don't be mad at me if the guards come in and see you like this," he tried to joke. "Did I put my hands to the cobra's throat, love? Will you punish me?" The question was almost a provocation, a challenge, something between them and the night, but Porsche didn't rise to the bait.
Kinn leaned in closer suddenly, throat tightening.
"Porsche? Wake up!" He slapped Porsche's cheek one more time, gaze darting from the slack, graying lips, to the slit of white beneath eyelids at half-mast, to the loose roll of head and neck. "Porsche!"
His fingers shook when they fumbled to find the pulse-point, and Kinn's hands never shook, this didn't happen. But then, this didn't happen, either: Porsche never refused to answer him in a crisis. Porsche didn't lie still and silent, not breathing, not—
Kinn recognized the lack of heartbeat at the same time he screamed for their guards. He had barely leaned forward to lift Porsche's chin, breathe into the mouth he had kissed a thousand times, when the first of the guards posted in the hallway burst through the door.
"The AED, now!" he heard shouted behind him as he breathed deeply into Porsche a second time. He didn't look up, not waiting to watch the order as it was relayed into the hallway. It was one of Porsche's guards; Kinn couldn't remember his name, but he remembered watching him train with Porsche, watching the guards laugh and joust with his partner. Kinn hadn't made time to meet all of the minor family's new guards, but Porsche had bonded with them all.
When Kinn was young his father warned him not to let the staff get too close. Later Kinn worried less about insubordination than he did about his own compromised judgment, having learned from painful experience that any friendship he offered his guards could end in bloody sacrifice. But Porsche played by different rules.
The guards were all fond of Porsche, and Kinn could only be grateful as this one, this nameless semi-friend of Porsche's, fell to his knees beside his body and seamlessly began chest compressions. The first downward fall of his body, arms held rigid, forced a near-silent puff of air from Porsche's chest. He counted off each downward thrust out loud, looking up only to order Kinn to continue mouth-to-mouth. "And breathe," he said again, and Kinn forced himself to focus on the task, to breathe air past Porsche's cooling lips, to ignore the audible creak of his ribs and the jerk of the body against the concrete floor.
The body. Porsche's body.
Bile rose in the back of his throat, but he fought it down, breathed on the count, listened for salvation past the sound of more feet rushing into the room. Someone was on the radio; someone else dashed in then ran out down the hallway again. Their teams were working together, and Kinn was working with Porsche's nameless guard. Kinn could let go of command, focus on the only thing that mattered right now, whispering encouragement and curses raggedly in between breaths.
Someone slid in beside the nameless guard, and Kinn didn't look up as the voice of the count changed. The compressions remained strong and even. They'd all had the training, and he knew how exhausting it was to give firm, deep chest compressions. Rescue breathing was hard work, too, and he braced himself to be pushed aside, but no one interfered. Only when he realized he was getting lightheaded did he look up, jerking his head at yet another of Porsche's dedicated guards. He remembered this one's name: Porsche had commented wryly that a man named Wit should make better jokes. But Porsche had no complaints about his work, and neither did Kinn as Wit nodded sharply, moving into position to take over the breathing. Kinn fell to the side, hand over his mouth to keep himself from retching or screaming.
The AED arrived with Card, Arm's newest trainee. The steady piston of movement over Porsche's body stilled as she applied pads and waited for the machine's decision.
Shock advised.
They all pulled back as Card pushed the button, and Kinn's heart skipped a beat in time with the slight jerk of Porsche's body. The machine's voice, hateful in its calm, advised them to resume chest compressions.
Please. Please...
"Dammit, Porsche!" Kinn twitched to hear his own thoughts coming from behind him, one of Porsche's guards suddenly looming over him, leaning in to whisper-shout at his boss. Kinn looked back to snarl a threat, but the sharp sound of breaking bone snapped his gaze back to Porsche.
"It happens," Card muttered. "Keep going."
The man giving compressions didn't hesitate, and Kinn forced himself to keep his hands away from his gun, his mouth shut. They were trying to—they were saving Porsche's life. They didn't need any interruptions. He didn't think about sharp ends of rib moving up and down, lungs expanding with artificial depth. He didn't think. He couldn't.
The machine ordered them to stop, measured again. "Shock advised."
Porsche's body barely moved in time with the shock, not a twitch of his face or fingers to give any hope.
Kinn found himself praying, fists clenched on his knees, eyes trained on Porsche. He didn't really believe in anything; Porsche was the one who dragged him to temples every now and again. But in this moment, every part of his soul was focused on one fervent plea, one prayer to the only god he worshiped regularly.
Please, Porsche. Please, please, please—
"Stop CPR. Analyzing heart rhythm," the machine's mechanized voice ordered. The room fell silent, Wit holding awkwardly motionless, braced over Porsche's body. Kinn almost shook his head, sure for a second that panic had shut down his hearing. The guard behind him leaned forward, leg touching Kinn's back, and no one spoke.
He understood the change in the group's tension before he understood the machine's words.
"Shock not advised."
Wit's fingers shook slightly on Porsche's reddened throat, but his smile was blinding when he looked up at the group, nodding to confirm the machine's analysis. A pulse.
"Oh, fuck," someone whispered like a prayer from the doorway, and Kinn dragged in a stuttering breath, praying in turn.
Thank you. Thank you.
A moment long enough for a heartbeat. Another. Wit whooped, sagging forward to gasp for breath, and the man who had been giving compressions fell back on his hands, face split with an exultant grin. Wit kept his fingers at Porsche's throat, just where the skin would soon turn red and bruised. He nodded to Kinn, then grabbed at someone behind him. "Keep breathing for him if he needs it. The AED will let us know if there's a problem with his heart rate."
Another of Porsche's guards moved in beside Porsche's head, carefully watching his breathing while using his hands to brace his neck.
One of Kinn's own guards spoke from behind him: "Sir, we need to move you—"
"I'm not leaving without him." Kinn didn't recognize his own voice, the snarl of something feral and wounded.
"We need to move you both, sir. A doctor is on the way with a medical team. They'll need room to get a stretcher in."
Somehow Kinn was standing, and then moving, and then clutching a blanket over his shoulders. He watched from the far side of the room as one of the compound doctors and two medics moved in, stabilizing Porsche's neck with a brace, checking him over before moving him carefully onto a stretcher. Kinn wanted to be the one to carry Porsche, no one else deserved...
Kinn didn't deserve. Fuck, fuck. What the hell did Kinn think, what he deserved...
Pol was there beside him, moving him toward a car in front of the unremarkable white van that hid a state-of-the-art ambulance behind its bulletproof doors. Pol hadn't been on the roster, wasn't part of this fiasco, how...?
"Your brother sent me, when the news came in. Come on, Boss Kinn. Please get in the car." Pol was guiding him like a working dog, moving him gently the way he had learned to do with Kinn's brilliant, broken older brother.
Was Kinn broken now? The world was flashing in and out, some pieces sharply clear—the doctor's voice briskly commanding the medical team, Porsche's hand half-off the side of the stretcher, Pol's hand at his back—some pieces swirling like the lights at Porsche's favorite bar.
Porsche was alive, breathing. The doctor's voice was calm, a little urgent but with no hint of panic. Porsche would be fine. Porsche would kick his ass, but he would be fine, right? Porsche was resilient. Porsche was always fine.
Kinn could never be broken as long as that was true.
Their head doctor wouldn't let Kinn into Porsche's room. Kinn arguably owned the building and, to some extent, every person in it, and yet Dr. Lek stood in front of him, barely five feet of immovable intensity, and stared him down every time he tried to loom. "I seem to remember giving you a talk about the risk of intentionally non-lethal injuries."
Kinn seemed to remember it, too. He had been in his late teens, infinitely cocky, and Dr. Lek was already, by conservative estimate, three hundred years old and stodgy. He had shown respect, he was sure, but he remembered the lecture mostly as a warning to make damned sure to take a kill shot when needed, to make every shot count. Somewhere behind that he remembered some irritable rambling about how any gunshot wound could prove fatal, a map of the body and the story of a "disabling" leg shot that hit an artery, of a patient who bled out before even reaching their facility. It hadn't registered deeply, because Kinn didn't expect to need to shoot anyone non-fatally. There wasn't much call in their line of work to not kill.
Why was Porsche the exception to all of Kinn's rules?
"Doctor, is he—" Interrupting was unwise, but Kinn knew he risked personal retaliation only. Dr. Lek's patients only received her ire once they were discharged.
"He's unconscious but breathing well. Heartbeat is steady. That cracked rib will be painful but should heal fine. We've got him on monitors, and we won't know about possible brain damage until he wakes up for tests. He will—oh, for god's sake, sit down before you fall down."
There was a chair suddenly behind Kinn's legs and a firm hand pushing him into the seat and then guiding his head between his knees. The clean white floor of the medical suite swirled like eddies in the shallow water by a dock, and Kinn closed his eyes to focus on not vomiting. The doctor's voice seemed very distant. Time counted itself in the pounding in his ears for an unknowable period before the world steadied.
When he could lift his head, he found an arm still over his shoulders, a warm mug being pressed into his hands. Porsche might be this close to his guards, but Kinn definitely wasn't. As sharply as he could manage, he turned his head to the side, ready to freeze out this unwanted contact.
Tankhun returned his stare with level calm. His older brother, broken and rebuilt from jagged fragments, with an arm firmly around Kinn's shoulder as if to hold him together. Kinn's eyes squeezed shut, and he breathed carefully through his nose, fighting back the heat beneath his eyelids. He let himself lean, gently, so gently, into his brother's embrace, and Tankhun leaned back, holding him up. The shattered pillar of their family. How far had Kinn fallen, that Tankhun had to step up to provide a support?
"Drink some tea," Tankhun murmured, nothing like his usual operatic drama.
The liquid was only warm, not hot as a few drops splashed over his hand with his shaking. Tankhun moved his own hand back to the mug, steadying it until Kinn could take a drink, leaving warmth against his cold fingers when he finally drew back to let Kinn drink alone.
Dr. Lek was still standing in front of him, and her professional mien hid nothing of her ongoing judgment. When she saw that she had his attention, she resumed her lecture. "There's no 'safe' place to shoot someone. If you point a gun, be ready to kill, because even the best doctor can't save your victim from your mistake or the overwhelming power of the guns you all use here."
Her voice was measured, grim. Kinn had a sudden flashback to an apple exploding over defiant eyes. Another warm wave of tea sloshed over his fingers, and Tankhun took the mug away.
Dr. Lek hadn't paused, "In the same manner, there's no 'safe' way to strangle someone. The human neck and throat—"
"Thank you, doctor." The voice that interrupted wasn't Kinn's, to his own surprise. Tankhun's manner was respectful but final, and Doctor Lek tilted her head. She had already been head doctor when they were children, and Kinn remembered her from after Tankhun's kidnapping, brusque but infinitely caring. She had never been deferential. She had always been an asset.
Now she looked from one brother to another, assessing and cool. "I'll let you know when you can sit with him," she said finally, turning back toward the door, and this time Kinn managed to force himself upright in the chair, his shoulder barely brushing his brother's.
"Thank you, doctor."
She nodded over her shoulder, and Kinn knew better than to think that the discussion has finished. She doubtless had more to say, and it was needed. Time to schedule some more medical training—for everyone—once Porsche was back in action.
It took far too long before Kinn was allowed in to see Porsche, but somehow the endless hours of shoulder-to-shoulder silence with his brother seemed too short when Dr. Lek stepped back out, her face carefully neutral.
The brothers both stood, but Kinn's voice lodged in his throat, and Tankhun again took the lead. "How is he?"
"So far, so good. He was awake briefly and able to answer questions. Nothing is certain until further testing, but right now I see no lasting damage." She was professional enough to ignore the sudden rush of tears that shocked Kinn almost as much as Tankhun, who fumbled behind them for a box of tissues and then complained when Kinn wiped his eyes on his extravagant scarf. It was good to be shoved off, scolded, and Kinn took the opportunity to level his breathing and force his emotions back under control.
Dr. Lek had returned to giving terrifying descriptions of possible brain damage—probably, luckily avoided. Responses were up to Tankhun as the fragility of the human body battered at Kinn like the waves of a distant storm. He knew now. He knew so much more than he had known just that morning.
When the doctor turned to him again, Kinn nodded, chastened by how much he owed to her, to their guards, to sheer undeserved and unearned good fortune.
When she finally thought Kinn was aware of his fundamental stupidity (or perhaps when she realized his eyes had never left the door to Porsche's room) the doctor stepped aside, and finally, finally he could go to Porsche.
Kinn was sitting beside Porsche's bed somehow without having crossed the distance from the door and with no memory of moving a chair or leaning over the bed.
Porsche's hand was clutched between Kinn's shaking palms, and then Kinn's forehead was against their joined hands, all without any conscious movement. Porsche's skin was slightly chilled, the way he never was when awake. Kinn slowly chafed his fingers, breathing heat into Porsche's skin as if they were trapped in a cold mountain stream instead of a well-appointed, climate-controlled hospital room.
He had almost lost this. He had almost killed...
His mind stuttered again.
He had killed Porsche. His one love. His partner. For however many terrifying seconds, he had stopped Porsche's heart.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
The room swirled sickeningly around him, and Kinn forced himself to lower his head between his knees again. His hands still clutched at Porsche's, now above his shoulders like a supplicant at a shrine. He would not pass out and miss any moment with Porsche or, worse, take medical attention away from where it was needed. He breathed deeply, turning Porsche's name into a mantra until the world steadied and he could lift his head again. Cold sweat prickled under his arms and down his back, but his hands were still warmer than Porsche's.
He sat for a long time, feeling the slight coolness of Porsche's fingertips against his forehead, his cheek, his lips. He traced the fine bones of Porsche's wrist, the strong muscles and tendons of his forearm. He counted Porsche's breaths, watched the blanket's slight rise and fall. He thought of plans, dangerous and hopeful.
Please, Porsche. Please, please...
Kinn wanted so many things, and yet everything now came came down to a few core needs. He needed Porsche. He needed Porsche safe. He needed a job—a life—where strangling his partner, business or otherwise, was never a reasonable, agreed-upon plan.
He needed a life with Porsche.
There was no one to beg, plead for this fundamental need. Kinn didn't believe in answered prayers, unless he fought for them and answered them himself. He had been blessed, undeservedly, with Porsche, but then he had fought for him, for them. He knew how the world worked. He knew, now, he knew.
Please, Porsche...
Porsche's breathing shifted its pattern, the soothing in-out speeding up slightly. The hand in Kinn's twitched.
"Porsche?"
Porsche squinted his eyes shut, the way he did when they'd had a particularly good night and he didn't want to wake up. He licked his lip, grimacing at some feel or taste.
"Come on, Porsche. Wake up for me." It was more a plea than an order. Kinn leaned forward, releasing one hand to brush the hair out of Porsche's face. Porsche's eyes blinked blearily, but he turned his head into Kinn's hand on his cheek.
Kinn's world shattered and was rebuilt on the strength of Porsche's hand gripping his.
"Kinn?" Porsche's voice was rough, and he winced as he spoke, but his eyes were clear and bright. "Kinn," he said again, like he had answered his own question. Like Kinn was the answer.
Again without conscious movement, Kinn found himself standing, braced over Porsche's pillow. Their lips met softly, and Kinn licked away the taste of plastic until he felt Porsche's smile against his mouth. He pulled away to reach for the plastic cup of water with a straw, and Porsche hummed with pleasure at the first sip. When Porsche pushed away the straw with a pout, it was only to lean back for another kiss, and Kinn almost dropped the cup on the beside table, reaching both hands back to cradle Porsche's face.
A long time—or maybe only moments—passed before Porsche made the effort to break their kiss, glancing around the luxurious but still-medical room. "Guess that wasn't our best plan, huh?" He cracked a shaky grin, and Kinn's heart broke along old, barely-mended fractures.
"I've got a new plan for us," Kinn said, and Porsche blinked up at him, open and willing. "Or rather, I'm moving up the timeline of an old plan."
It took a moment for Porsche to understand, but only a brief one. Kinn buried any doctor-inspired fear of brain damage at the sudden, intent brilliance of Porsche's expression.
"Moving up—"
"We're not waiting any longer. We're going legit, starting now."
Something fine and tenuous vibrated in Porsche's voice: "Losses—"
Every time they had revisited this argu—discussion—Kinn had come back to losses, risks, and Porsche had eventually given up. Kinn was the expert in their business. Kinn knew about risk-reduction and loss-minimization.
Kinn had been so sure that he knew and knew best.
Now Kinn could go back and kick himself, younger by a few days and an eternity of hell.
What had he known about loss before desperately forcing air into his lover's lungs? What tiny false glimpse of fake-loss had he thought he understood before facing the loss of everything that mattered, at his own hand?
Kinn had known nothing.
"We can handle them." Kinn willed Porsche to hear everything he wasn't saying, to recognize the soul-deep wound that Kinn had taken that day and the revolutionary changes it required. They might lose some assets, weather a shift in power and prestige. They would lose midnight meetings in secret rooms, desperate plans with near-tragic endings. But some day, sooner now than they had dared to dream, they would gain sunlit days and long, safe nights. Open-mic nights at Porsche's bar. A life together.
Kinn tried to put all of that into his smile and the steadiness of his hands on Porsche's body. It wasn't the time to go into details. Let Porsche have a few more days of miraculous revival before they began their revolution. But Porsche needed to understand that financial losses were no longer an issue.
Financial "losses" didn't count as loss at all, anymore.
"Yeah," Porsche rasped, then cleared his throat and repeated, "Yeah. We can handle them."
"We can handle anything," Kinn said, flashing his cockiest grin, and he was rewarded by the blinding sunshine of Porsche's smile.
"Anything," Porsche repeated. "Together."
Thank you. Thank you.