Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Episode 1
Porsche wishes Karl Marx was alive and throwing punches

“Porsche, you look absolutely disgusting.”

The grin immediately slipped off Porsche’s face and he frowned up at Yok. “In a good way or a bad way?”

Yok rolled her eyes, leaning over the bar to grab her bag. “What the fuck is disgusting in a good way supposed to mean?” she said, using wipes from her bag to gently remove Porsche’s foundation - which had been fucking expensive, by the way, and had taken forever for Porsche to be able to set into his skin without it looking patchy.

“I don’t know, Chay’s going through a phase right now, where he will say something nice to me and then immediately follow it up with an insult,” Porsche said, hissing when the wipe went over the cut on his eyebrow. “Yesterday, he called me cute and then when I said thank you, he was all, ‘hia, that was derogatory.’ So I’m questioning the meaning of everything nowadays.”

The comment didn’t make Yok laugh the way that it was supposed to. Her mouth remained pursed in disapproval and concern as she continued wiping Porsche’s face down.

Admittedly, Porsche definitely wasn’t looking good. Yesterday’s fight had been brutal and Porsche had walked away with his right eye swollen shut, half his face bruised and the other half swollen - but his wallet was ฿9,000 heavier, which was significantly more money than he would’ve earned in three weeks working at Yok’s club.

The end of the month was always a stressful time for Porsche because all his bills had to be paid at the same time, including the huge loan he was still trying to repay. But after poring over his bank statements and budgeting plans for hours the week before, it had become clear to Porsche that after paying his rent, the interest on his loan, his utilities and his phone bill, he would not have enough money for his college tuition, which was also due in a few weeks, so the street fight had been his only option.

“This foundation is at least five shades lighter than your skin tone,” Yok said over the thrum of the loud conversations happening around them, running the wipe carefully over his bruised cheekbone. “Are you wearing blush?”

“It’s lipstick! The lady on YouTube suggested using it as blush to give myself a pop of colour. Don’t I look adorable?”

“You look like you escaped clown academy.”

Porsche huffed, leaning back against the bartop and letting Yok do her thing.

The club was busy as it always was on weekends, just like the other clubs and bars in the area. Porsche was fairly certain that he hadn’t been knocked around enough to have a concussion, but the flickering green-red-blue-yellow strobe light was giving him a headache just beneath the cut on his eyebrow. As Yok continued to wipe his face clean, the ache of his face only worsened - it didn’t matter that she was trying to be as gentle as possible, each swipe dragged across his skin, pulling at all his little cuts and bruises.

“Your opponent must have really hated your face,” Yok said, balling up the used wipes and throwing them in the bin beneath the bar. 

“Jealousy is a disease,” he said, intentionally cheeky as he grinned at her.

Yok gestured at Flame, who was working both his and Porsche’s counter behind the bar, before she sat down on the bar stool next to him with a heavy sigh. “Porsche, you are going to get yourself killed one of these days.”

She had said the same line to him so many times that Porsche had it memorised down to the intonation, but he still hadn’t figured out how to respond to Yok’s sincere concern, so he just shrugged. Yok’s words may one day come true, or maybe not, but he didn’t really have any options that would guarantee his safety.

“I’m giving you a raise,” she said suddenly, “and you are going to move in with me.”

“Absolutely not!” Porsche said, and this was another conversation that they had had many times before. “You already pay me way more than anyone pays their bartender, and I do not want to live with you and P’Mew. I already know way more than I want to know about your relationship.”

“Hayi!” Yok exclaimed with a slap to Porsche’s shoulder. “Our relationship is wholesome.” 

“And overtly sexual,” he replied, shuddering. He had walked in on the two women in way too many compromising positions in public, way too many times, to even try imagining what they were like in private. “I’m okay, I promise. And I like street fighting. It’s fun!”

Yok squinted at him in a way that Porsche was sure Chay would classify as ‘derogatory.’

“Maybe you should stick to things you’re actually good at,” she said after a pause.

“Hey!” Porsche protested, genuinely offended. He had been a revered fighter back in Chiang Mai and his mother assured him that tales of his bravery and skill were still sung at every street corner. “I am a fantastic fucking fighter! I just shouldn’t have fought while sleep-deprived.”

Flame pushed two negronis towards them, pausing when he caught sight of Porsche’s de-makeuped face before pouring a shot of tequila for him too. Porsche grinned in thanks, even when the act made his lip start bleeding.

“Porsche, honestly, you have two part-time jobs and I know your mom sends you money,” Yok said after slamming Porsche’s tequila despite his attempts to stop her. “As far as I know, the money from the bartending should be able to easily cover your rent, utilities and food. If I’m doing the math right, you should be saving money, not throwing yourself into street fights that could seriously fuck you up just for another pay cheque.”

Porsche bit the inside of his cheek, staring resolutely across the dance floor where a black-haired woman in a tiny, sequined dress was trying desperately to catch his eye. Clearly he didn’t look disgusting in a bad way.

“What am I not seeing here?” Yok continued when he didn’t answer.

Porsche shrugged, pressing the cool glass against his throbbing cheek as he smiled at Yok. “I told you. It's fun.”

*

As Porsche’s high school English teacher had put it, he wasn’t ‘academically inclined,’ but he had lived with Chay long enough to understand the basics of the conflict theory. Karl Marx may have been an academically inclined asshole who decided to come up with words like the bourgeois, a word that Porsche only knew because he hated it so much, but Porsche didn’t need a PhD in Sociology to know that the world was unfair.

Porsche worked a little over twenty hours a week at Yok’s club while being a full-time student, part-time model, and a once-a-month street fighter, and yet, he had forgone all his meals that day because his portable cooler had racked up quite the electricity bill that month. His stomach was slowly eating itself and there were spots dancing in front of his eyes, but Porsche’s fury kept him standing.

It was a weekday, which meant that the bar was mostly empty, and nearly all of their patrons were either seated in their booths or on the dance floor. It meant that he wouldn’t be able to earn enough in tips to make a dent in his growing pile of unpaid bills, and Porsche was starving and angry.

Look at these rich assholes grinding on the dance floor on a Wednesday evening, he thought, lip curling in annoyance. He wondered what it felt like to be so carefree that you could spend the equivalent of Porsche’s monthly income on a single drink and then have the audacity to still have a good time. Did they not care that most of the world was living in poverty and that Porsche hadn’t had a single meal since he woke up at 7am that day?

“Could you make me an Old Fashioned.”

It wasn’t a question.

Porsche carefully hid away his feelings and smiled at the jackass now sitting to the left of the bar, tilted sideways to have a good view of the dance floor and not even bothering to spare the bartender a glance. He was wearing an obnoxious burgundy suit with a black shirt opened to his navel underneath. His dark hair was artistically gelled back, and the single strand of hair draped over his forehead made Porsche want to punch him in his stupid, smug face.

“Of course, right away,” he said, smiling winningly and thinking viciously, When it is finally time to eat the rich, I’m coming for this dude first.

When Porsche placed a glass on the counter with a clink, ready to start making the drink, the man finally turned to give him a close-lipped, I-have-to-be-polite-to-the-working-class-to-not-become-a-victim-to-cannibalism smile. But as soon as he caught sight of Porsche, his eyes widened and the smile turned more genuine.

“Porsche!” he exclaimed, white teeth glinting in the strobe light - teeth that had probably been cared for by a dentist at least once in the last six months, the rich jerk.

Porsche smiled back, cocking his head in confusion. “Hi?” he said, leaning forward on the bartop to be heard clearly over the music.

The only thing that kept Porsche calm was the fact that this wasn’t the first time he had met a familiar stranger - being a bartender meant that he cycled through hundreds of people a month, a majority of whom would either try to drunkenly get into his pants or drunkenly spill their life’s sordid secrets to him. So while they were just drunk, rich assholes to him, at this point, he was someone special to possibly half of Bangkok’s young and affluent. 

And then there was Porsche’s shitty memory. He could barely remember to feed himself semi-regularly, surely he couldn’t be expected to remember every single person he ever served at Yok’s club!

But alas, in Porsche’s experience, the creme de la creme of Bangkok’s bourgeoisie did not take well to being forgotten.

“I thought you only worked over the weekends,” the man said, smiling. He shifted on the stool until he was properly facing Porsche, somehow managing to make even that seem like a suave move in his tight, burgundy suit.

“Ah, mostly, yes,” Porsche said with a smile he knew was charming as he made the man his drink. “I was called in when my coworker called in sick.”

“Oh that’s-” The man’s words came to an abrupt halt when Porsche stepped closer to push his drink towards him, sliding a coaster underneath the glass. “What happened to your face?”

Porsche stepped back into the shadow again, shrugging as he awkwardly laughed it off. “Classic boy-met-door. Anything else I can get you?”

“Porsche, you don’t have to lie to me,” the man said, and Porsche with his capricious temper felt himself prickle. “Surely we’ve…familiarised ourselves to each other enough to warrant some honesty.”

Which was rich people speak for ‘you owe me what I demand because you can’t afford to say no.’

“We’ve ‘familiarised’ ourselves only to the extent that I know your drink order and you know my name,” Porsche said, nostrils flared. “So I suggest you drink your little drink and stay quiet while you do it.”

Normally, he wouldn’t act like this because he was fully aware of how much of his life relied on the tips from Yok’s club. Normally, he made full use of his acting classes to pretend that he was a perfectly nice and well-mannered boy who was okay with being hot enough to fuck, and poor enough for his existence to be ignored outside the bounds of his dick and balls. But after getting his ass kicked so thoroughly in the ring, Porsche was wounded both physically and mentally - and he was fucking starving and he was sleep-deprived!

His anger caught up to him within a second though when he watched the concern slip off his patron’s face, his pale face going scarily expressionless as soon as Porsche’s words registered.

Porsche backtracked quickly, sighing and rubbing his hands on his sore face. “Shit, I meant…” He meant exactly what he said, but Porsche couldn’t admit that to someone who looked like he was a mafia kingpin. “I’m sorry, it’s just been a really fucking long day. I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

The man raised a brow, face still deadly blank. “No, you shouldn’t have.”

And that-

That really didn’t help Porsche reign his anger in, mafia kingpin be fucking damned.

He found himself leaning towards the man over the bartop, elbows jabbing angrily and painfully onto the marble countertop as he said, “Alright, cool it with the attitude, dickwad. I already said sorry, didn’t I?”

“And a very sincere apology at that,” came the sardonic reply.

“Want me to get on my knees for you?”

“If you feel so inclined,” the complete and utter jackass replied, a smug smirk on his lips. “Though I really didn’t take you for an exhibitionist.”

Porsche rolled his eyes. “Not an exhibitionist, and definitely not into men, so kindly take your perverse, gross ass somewhere else.”

“Wait, you’re not?” the guy asked, surprised. Porsche raised a brow in question. “Into men?” he elaborated.

“No, I’m not,” Porsche said, rolling his eyes extra hard because clearly no one had humbled Mr. Rich and Classically Handsome before. “And if you try to pay me to suck your dick, I’m actually going to deck you, I don’t care if it gets me killed.”

“Ooh, who would dare to kill my favourite bartender in all of Thailand?”

“P'Tankhun!” Porsche said, his entire demeanour changing when he came face to face with his favourite patron.

“Porsche,” Tankhun said, a delighted smile spreading across his lips. “Is this rude man threatening to hurt you, sweets?”

“P'Tankhun, I didn’t know you were coming here today! Is that why P’Yok called me in?” Porsche said, ignoring the question about the rude man and the rude man himself.

“Maybe,” Tankhun said, leaning forward to tap Porsche on the nose, who giggled because he knew his giggles got him extra tips from Tankhun. “Now, don’t you ignore me, naughty nong. Is my brother bothering you?”

The fear of God finally striked Porsche, his heart stumbling around in his chest as he looked between Tankhun and the suddenly smug jackass sitting next to him.

Everyone and their pets knew that Tankhun “Khun Nu” Theerapanyakun was not someone to be messed with. Sure, Tankhun had formed an emotional bond with Porsche in the year that he had been working at Yok’s, but the bond would definitely not hold under the weight of the insult he had just afforded Tankhun’s younger brother.

“Phi, I…” He was speechless. In all the time he had known Tankhun, he hadn’t had to apologise to the other man, and he had never felt afraid of him before. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was your brother.”

“Well, let me introduce you then!” Tankhun said, smiling pleasantly. “Porsche, this is my younger brother, Kinn. Kinn, this is Porsche, my cute, naughty nong.”

“A pleasure,” Kinn said with a lopsided smirk.

*

The monsoon rain had left the back wall of Yok’s club damp, but Porsche found himself leaning heavily against it anyway as he breathed smoke out of his lungs.

He wondered if Karl Marx had also worked day and night to afford his education as he angrily penned down his manifesto, wondered how many empty-bellied days the man had survived to hate the rich, wondered if Porsche should start writing his own manifesto.

He sighed - he could barely write his critical thinking papers for university. Maybe manifesto writing would have to wait until after graduation, when Porsche was wandering around the streets of Bangkok with his shiny Bachelor of Communication Arts degree and trying to find acting jobs to avoid getting his face bashed in in street fights.

Tankhun had thankfully taken Porsche’s misbehaviour with Kinn in good humour, most likely because Porsche had spent more than a year cultivating a good relationship with Tankhun. It hadn’t been intentional - Tankhun just had a very easy going personality, visited the club regularly, and liked to baby Porsche. Porsche’s general dislike of people that lived lives of excess aside, he genuinely did love Tankhun, because he was polite, treated Porsche like a real human being with feelings, and because he tipped really well.

It probably wasn’t wise of Porsche to befriend Tankhun, given the man’s fearsome reputation, but Porsche never claimed to be wise. Plus, Tankhun’s bodyguard, Pete, had assured Porsche that the Theerapanyakun family had left their mafia days behind after the death of the family’s patriarch some ten years ago and Pete had a really honest sort of face. Now, the Theerapanyakun only lightly threatened and maimed people, and only if they dared to interfere with their flourishing import and export business.

The backdoor into the alleyway opened and Porsche breathed in a calming breath when Kinn stepped into the damp and stinky alley.

“What did I say about trying to pay me into sucking your dick?” he asked, staring at the sky as he continued smoking.

“Not asking you to suck my dick,” Kinn said, smiling softly as he walked to stand next to Porsche.

“But?” he prompted because rich people don’t go to stinky, dingy alleys to talk to grumpy bartenders, at least not without an agenda.

“But I do have a proposal.”

Porsche huffed. “I think I’ve seen this porno before.”

Kinn rolled his eyes, getting his own cigarette out. “God, you’re difficult. I’m not trying to get you to have sex with me. I have never had to ‘get’ people to have sex with me.”

“And that’s where your life went wrong,” Porsche said, jokingly. “You missed out on so many important life lessons.”

Kinn gave him an appraising look, starting from his face, all the way down to his thighs, and something about the appreciative look on Kinn’s face made Porsche feel like a god. “Haven’t you missed the same lessons?”

“Nope. Had braces and a fugly haircut all throughout high school,” he replied.

Kinn hummed, leaning his head back to breathe thick, gray smoke out of his mouth. Porsche watched him as he smoked, watched the way the red and green signs of the Chinese restaurant next door made the pale skin of Kinn’s throat glow enticingly, watched how vividly pink Kinn’s lips looked wrapped around the butt of the cigarette.

Kinn took up space like it belonged to him - his posture easy and comfortable as he stood there with a hand in his stupidly tight, tailored pants, the other holding his cigarette to his mouth. Porsche memorised tiny details about the man’s behaviour, fascinated by him, and decided that he could use him for his next acting workshop.

“So then,” Porsche said when his cigarette had turned to ash. “What’s your proposal?”

Kinn took a second, like he was trying to string together the right words, before he said: “How would you feel about earning a hundred thousand baht per month to pretend to date me for at least six months?”

Porsche blinked a couple of times, frowning as he repeated Kinn’s words in his head, trying to figure out if he heard them right.

A hundred thousand baht a month would solve all of Porsche’s problems. That type of money would mean that Porsche would never have to get his ass kicked in street fights, that he could dedicate his time to looking for well-paying modeling jobs instead of soup advertisements, that he could actually aim for getting good grades.

It would mean that he’d be able to pay off his loan within the year, that he would be free.

“You don’t pay people to fuck you but you pay them to date you? That’s somehow sadder,” he said because he didn’t want to sound as needy and desperate as he felt, and because his experience with Gun had taught him what it meant to owe something to a rich guy. To trust a rich guy.

“Not usually, but, well, you know my brother,” Kinn said with a casual shrug, and Porsche personally felt like Kinn should be more embarrassed about his proposal. “He’s been on my ass about dating and settling down, and I just need a breather. He already likes you so that’s one of my concerns dealt with. I just need you to act like we’re in love with each other for a few months before you break my heart amicably and leave me too sad to date for another few years.”

“Break your heart so your older brother can break my bones in retaliation? No, thanks, I’d rather stay poor.”

Kinn turned fully to Porsche, shaking his head as he did. “I'm not gonna let that happen. My brother is fully aware that I can take care of myself. If you agree, I promise you that no one will hurt you,” he said, gaze settling meaningfully on Porsche’s bruised cheek.

Which was clearly the wrong thing to do, because it only made Porsche angry. He scowled as he stepped into Kinn’s space, making the man lean back in surprise. 

“And I should take your word for it since we’re so familiar, huh?” he said, voice cold. “Like I said, no, thanks. I don’t need a guardian or a protector or whatever. Least of all, a snotty-nosed, old man with a wrinkly dick.”

With that, he turned around and walked away.

*

By the time Porsche finally returned to his off-campus dorm room, his stomach had given up on grumbling.

His hunger may have disappeared, but Porsche felt so weak that he barely managed to open his front door, which was so water-damaged and old that it only opened if you ran into it shoulder-first.

He headed straight to his kitchenette and hungrily chowed down on a banana as he poured water into some cup noodles and stuck them into the microwave. There was a piece of chocolate lying wrapped in its wrapper on top of the microwave and Porsche didn’t remember where it had come from or how old it was, but he stuck it down his throat anyway.

Five minutes later, he had eaten two cup noodles, one banana, one piece of chocolate, and drank half a jug of orange juice. Satisfied that he had managed to feed his stomach a somewhat balanced meal, he flung himself into his bed, still in his work clothes.

He groaned when his phone started buzzing in his pocket and fished it out to find an incoming call from his agent, Sunny, which usually made him happy because it meant new work but he was exhausted beyond words.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Porsche,” Sunny said, and her voice sounded strange. She was usually more excitable. “Are you home?”

“Yes, I’m home.”

“Listen, I have some bad news,” she said, and Porsche immediately sat up. He really hadn’t thought that his shitty week could get any shittier. “I don’t really know how to…”

“What is it?” he demanded because the wait was making his insides clamp up.

“You know we haven’t been getting new jobs recently,” she said, which he did know. They were going through a dry period, she had reassured him that it was okay and normal, and that since Porsche was just starting out, dry periods were expected. “And it isn’t looking too good, for me or for you.”

“What are you trying to say?”

Sunny sighed heavily at the other end of the line. “Listen, Porsche, I don’t think I’m the right agent for you. In fact, I don’t think this is the job for me. I’m letting you go, Porsche. I think it would be best if you looked for someone else to represent you.”

“B-but…” Porsche felt as if his stomach had dropped down to his ankles, as if the world was pressing in on him from every direction.

The truth was that it was difficult living his life - it was difficult for him to go through days without even a single proper meal, it was difficult for him to drag his broken body to the university, to Yok’s, to the fucking street fights. It was difficult to live in deprivation all the time, but his acting classes and his stupid, humiliating ad jobs made everything worthwhile.

Even though the ad jobs paid nothing and even though they were humiliating to the point of becoming dehumanising, at least they gave him a taste of what he craved. They were his reassurance that everything would work out one day, because despite all his difficulties, at least he was working towards his dream of being an actor.

“I’m sorry, Porsche,” Sunny said in finality, and she actually sounded sorry.

Porsche sat there in shock, unsure of what he was supposed to do now as his fingers went numb in anxiety. It was stupid of him, but for some reason, he had never thought that his modeling gigs would get taken away from him.

His phone buzzed again, and Porsche looked at it eagerly, hoping it was Sunny, calling to tell him that she had been playing a particularly cruel prank.

Instead, his screen read, Mae.

Sighing, Porsche turned his phone to silent and decided to sleep it off.

He would figure it out in the morning.

*

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