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daswarschonkaputt · 2 years

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The chair when Porsche breaks is beautiful and heart rending and so true to form for what he was going through. For DVD commentary though, what was Kinn doing during this time? What was he thinking? Did Khun come and yell at him? What was his response?

i'm assuming you mean chapter instead of chair? i'm guessing autocorrect reared its ugly head here.

i'm so glad someone asked about this, lol. one of the real struggles of this fic has been knowing what kinn's thinking at all times and not ever really communicating it, beyond what porsche picks up. there's actually quite a lot going on with him this chapter, so i'll pick apart a few moments:

After months of casual touches and thoughtless displays of ownership, there’s something deeply uncomfortable about sitting next to Kinn, each of them wooden and unmoving, an inch of obsessively-maintained space between them at all times. Porsche is furious at it, and all it represents – and simultaneously pathetically, painfully grateful for it.

okay so this is one of the first scenes in the chapter: the car ride back from the hotel to the compound. we've cut straight to the aftermath, and we don't really hear much about the immediate morning after they had sex whilst porsche was drugged. i wanted to convey palpable awkwardness with this scene.

what's going through kinn's mind right now? well, kinn is very aware he crossed a line with porsche. he's aware he's done something wrong, and feels a fair bit of guilt for it -- but he's pushed that down in favour of being functional. he doesn't know how to position himself in the light of what happened, especially because porsche's reaction upon waking up was just to sort of sit there, incredibly traumatised.

kinn spends a lot of the two earliest chapters shamelessly inserting himself into porsche's space, and putting his hands on porsche. i mentioned a few times in the comments section that this was about power. kinn felt that by controlling the ways that he and porsche touch (being the one to touch, being the one to move porsche, always being the aggressor) he could hide the power porsche already unknowingly held against him. but here, kinn's realising that his quest to make himself feel more secure has come at the price of some fundamental part of porsche.

so, he retreats. he doesn't touch. he doesn't invade porsche's space. he doesn't look at him.

this is very much the start of kinn attempting to respect porsche's boundaries, which becomes foundational to their relationship as it progresses.

There’s a moment, over the car, where their eyes meet. Kinn breaks first. “Pete,” he says, turning to the two bodyguards climbing out of the front of the car. “Have a doctor sent up to my rooms in an hour.” [...] The word bursts out of Porsche’s mouth with unexpected vehemence. “ No.” Kinn turns to him, eyes glinting dangerously. “Excuse me?”

of course, it wouldn't be kinn/porsche without some give and take. respecting porsche's boundaries also means respecting when porsche says no to things involving his body -- not just not touching him. kinn isn't so great at that yet. as you can see, he's fully prepared to force the issue of the doctor. kinn doesn't fully get the extent of porsche's issues with him yet. he still sees porsche as a subordinate, who should do as he's told.

he'll get there.

“Okay,” Porsche says, voice twisted with sardonic bitterness. “If it’s for intel.” He fists his hands in his shirt, still stained with his drink from last night, and wrenches it open. Buttons fly. Pete flinches. Porsche rips the item off his torso, and throws it at Kinn. “Run your tests,” he says. “And leave me the hell alone.”

man if i could write one bit in kinn pov from the earlier chapters, i'd want it to be this scene. because porsche has been so quiet, so withdrawn, in the aftermath of the night they spent together, this is the first time he's really gotten angry with kinn, and really pushed back hard. this is one of the first glimpses kinn gets of how fucked up porsche is by what happened.

kinn's pretty affected by this, although he doesn't really show it openly. i think at this at this point, he decides that he's going to respect porsche's wishes here. that it's important that he does respect porsche's wishes here. porsche asks to be left alone -- so kinn leaves him alone. for the entire chapter.

Kinn doesn’t come to the room that night. Porsche lies on their bed, surrounded by the scent of him, and doesn’t sleep a wink.

things would have gone very differently, i feel, if kinn had come to the room that night. i actually think they maybe would have talked earlier, but i don't think it would have been good for their longterm relationship development. longterm, porsche needed to know that kinn would respect his autonomy. he needed to know that kinn was capable of listening when he said no.

anyway, kinn spends the night elsewhere, probably in a guest bedroom. he drops by early in the morning, quietly, and leaves the test results from the drink-on-shirt spillage on the dresser.

and we get this:

There’s a sheet of folded paper on the dresser. Porsche frowns. He hadn’t heard anyone come in last night, but then again, he wasn’t really in the best place to notice an incursion. He looks around for some other sign of disturbance, and finds none. Porsche picks it up, and unfolds it. His hands falter. Sample tested positive for gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB). Negative for all other substances.

so obviously, kinn isn't intending for his little paperwork drop off to trigger an incident where porsche covers himself in hairdye and strangles himself, but that's obviously one of the effects. he drops the paper off without talking to porsche because he's trying to keep porsche appraised of what's going on, without porsche having to talk to him. (because porsche told kinn to leave him alone.)

this... well. you know. porsche doesn't respond well to this.

Tankhun’s head appears in the doorway. “Come tell Hom which products are yours.” “Oh. None of them,” Porsche answers. Tankhun makes a face. “Fine. We’ll just take Kinn’s.” Then, darkly, “Serves him right.” He ducks back into the bathroom.

tankhun! my former favourite character! so obviously, here, tankhun is pretty upset with kinn, because to him, porsche just got almost kidnapped? and kinn's just sort of left him there to struggle? and clearly porsche is struggling a lot. the blue hairdye meant that tankhun could see pretty clearly porsche had tried to strangle himself, and tankhun put that together with the bruising on porsche's neck when they first met, and now he's just really upset with kinn.

following this, tankhun does go and read kinn the riot act, and kinn sort of takes it before telling him to stay out of it. it's not a great feeling to listen to tankhun's rant, because tankhun is laying the blame at kinn's feet a little, like this is your boyfriend, why aren't you looking after him? and kinn's not arguing back because he knows what's wrong with porsche is his fault, but tankhun is wrong because the one thing that would make it all worse is kinn showing up and trying to make a production out of taking care of porsche.

Tae’s gaping at him. “Keep your bike,” Porsche spits, “and stay the fuck away from me.”

tae ends this encounter by immediately going and talking to kinn, like, "hey bestie i think i really upset your boyfriend," to which kinn replies, "it's not you he's upset with."

essentially, kinn spends the week after the diamond auction with everyone around him in his life telling him that something's wrong with porsche, like, hey maybe go fix your boyfriend, and kinn's unable to tell them that he can't, because he's the one that broke him to begin with. and with every new story he hears, the guilt worsens.

because porsche isn't getting better. if anything, it seems like porsche is just getting worse and worse and worse.

“I’ll let you go,” Khun Korn says. He stands. “Kinn’ll be in his rooms, at this hour.”

okay, so the khun korn chess conversation happens immediately after porsche nearly drowns himself in the pool. what we don't see as a reader is what happens behind these two scenes.

by the time he's fishing porsche out of the pool, chan has received porsche's report on the diamond auction, kinn initiated a sexual encounter with me and all. he's already concerned, and then he finds porsche in the pool, and that concern becomes a pressing matter.

he leaves porsche with khun korn, and goes to find kinn, who, like khun korn says, is in his rooms at that hour. chan tells kinn that he wants to put porsche on psychiatric leave. kinn pushes back against this for a variety of reasons, but chiefly, because if porsche goes on psychiatric leave, kinn has to confront the fact that he's done something irreparable to porsche, that the burgeoning whatever they had between them can never be regained, that he's completely and utterly fucked everything up.

and he's not ready to grieve that, quite yet.

kinn finishes this conversation with chan, and finds porsche in his rooms.

“Well, then what do you want, Porsche?” Kinn asks. “Because I sure as hell can’t figure it out. You ask me to stay away from you, and then you show up here. You don’t want me to apologise, but you’re clearly pissed at me. Your motives are a fucking mystery to me, right now, and I don’t have time to play your little mind games and figure them out.”

hmm, i wonder what previous relationship kinn could have had that made him think he had to play mind games with porsche to figure out what's going on in his head? hmm, i wonder where we might lay that blame. truly, a mystery for the ages.

jokes aside, i'll draw your attention to this paragraph from a later chapter:

Kinn can guess at what Tae wanted to say. “Tawan and I fought,” he says. “I just didn’t talk about it, much.” It upset Tawan, the idea that Kinn would badmouth him to their friends every time they had a disagreement. It made the experience of fighting with Tawan feel—isolating, sometimes. He didn’t even like it if Kinn talked about it with his family. At the time, he thought it was because Tawan desperately wanted to be liked, approved of, by Kinn’s loved ones. He thought a lot of things at the time.

the tawan/kinn past relationship was incredibly dysfunctional, and i would probably class as vaguely emotionally abusive on tawan's side. tawan cut kinn off from his support network very effectively, to the extent that kinn ended up lashing out at kim, when he came to kinn with concerns about tawan. i didn't end up going into too much detail here, but kinn's obsession with maintaining power in his relationships is entirely due to what happened with tawan, and the way tawan played games during their time together.

when tawan was upset, kinn wasn't allowed to talk to his family about it. kinn had to guess what he'd done and make amends.

so, he's reactionary, when he sees porsche as doing the same.

Kinn looks up at the ceiling, and then looks down at Porsche. “Khun is pissed at me because he thinks I broke you,” he says. “After your stunt today at the pool, Chan wants to put you on psychiatric leave. My father – and for the record, every other functioning member of our family – is breathing down my neck because the attempted kidnapping of a major family member has every one of our enemies convinced that now is the right time to strike – and on top of all that, the Compound laundry girl is refusing to service my room, and when pressed for an explanation she simply told me that I should ask you. You won’t let me apologise, you won’t sleep in our rooms, you threw Tae’s gift back in his face – so Porsche, I mean this wholeheartedly: what the hell do you want from me?”

every time kinn hears from someone about how he's messed up porsche, he feels guiltier, and every time he feels guiltier, he also feels angrier. because what can he do? how can he make it right? he's trying to do what porsche wants, but everyone around him is yelling at him telling him that he's being a bad boyfriend for doing so. the dam bursts here, and he finally says what's going through his head.

he's as lost as porsche is.

Porsche lowers his hand, hooking his fingers into Kinn’s belt loops, and that’s when Kinn pushes him away.

kinn kisses porsche, but when porsche moves to initiate something sexual, kinn backs off. he doesn't want to push porsche too far. he doesn't want porsche to do something with him he'll regret.

He’s breathing through his nose. Porsche feels a little thrill of victory at it – the knowledge that Kinn isn’t nearly as unaffected as he likes to pretend. He tilts his head. Curls his lip. “What?” he asks, a vicious kind of dare. “Too lucid for you?” Kinn’s face twists. Porsche thinks for a second he might hit him, and in that moment, he almost wants him to. Go on Kinn, Porsche thinks. Prove yourself as awful as I know you are. But Kinn doesn’t. He just closes his eyes, and breathes. Porsche looks at him, and thinks that he’s never hated anyone as much as this.

this is bait from porsche. he's trying to get kinn to do something to him, so kinn will prove himself the monster in his head. and kinn knows that. and he just can't. so even though he's furious with porsche, furious at the barb (too lucid for you? ouch) he visibly reins himself in.

Porsche’s hands go slack in Kinn’s shirt. “I’m sorry,” he says, uselessly, reflexively. He moves to step away, to put the distance back between them, to try and return to whatever tortured stalemate they had before he fucked it all up. Kinn stops him. The hand in his hair curls around his cheek. Kinn’s looking at him. “Do you want this?” he asks.

this is the moment when kinn realises how he can make it better. he makes it better by letting porsche have control. he makes it better by finally letting porsche take the role of the instigator, the aggressor. he lets porsche figure out what he wants.

if porsche wants something from kinn, kinn gives it to him. he gives up control, just this once.

He feels a weight on his cheek. Porsche looks up to see Kinn looking down at him, a soft hand on his cheek. He can read the unspoken question in Kinn’s eyes, Do you want to stop?

i think the fun thing this chapter is that porsche characterises giving someone a blowjob as an example of taking control -- in his mind, it isn't submissive, it's dominant, because you are giving someone else pleasure -- you are in control of them. kinn doesn't really see it the same way, necessarily -- he doesn't understand why it's important to porsche that porsche does this.

do you want to stop? because kinn doesn't need porsche to return the favour. this is about porsche.

the other fun bit about the blowjob scene is that kinn is completely unaware of porsche's relative inexperience. this is one of the things i really want to be clear about: kinn thinks porsche has experience with men.

it's not, like, an unreasonable assumption. porsche was hired to be kinn's fake boyfriend, and porsche has expressed no discomfort whatsoever about this, or about what it will say about his sexuality, or even about being touched by another man to sell the ruse. kinn knows porsche has been with women, but he thinks porsche is an established bisexual.

so kinn is really oblivious, during this part of the fic, to the fact that the diamond auction was essentially porsche's first time with a man. if he knew then, he would have had all sorts of feelings about it, i think.

it's really funny to me, because kinn is a super slut. he's slept with so many guys. and he gets his entire world rocked by a guy who's never given a blowjob before.

they're so fucking gone on each other it's insane.

Later, lying in Kinn’s bed, staring up at the camera lens in the ceiling, Porsche finds the strength to speak. “I want to hear it.” He feels Kinn shift next to him. “Hear what?” Porsche swallows past the lump in his throat. “Your apology.” “Oh,” Kinn says. “I’m sorry, Porsche. About that night, at the hotel. There was a line, and I crossed it. I wish—I wish I hadn’t done those things to you, when you were like that.”

apology scene my beloved! i really, really like this scene. one of my favourite bits of the fic.

a few things about this one: kinn's apology is short, and to the point. he has been thinking about this all week. he has been waiting for a chance to say these words to porsche for a long time -- waiting for the moment porsche comes to find him. and the words held a lot of weight for him, before he and porsche slept together. now they're easier to bear.

the other thing is that i struggled with the wording of it a lot. i wanted it to be clear what he was talking about, but i didn't think kinn would be like. super specific. i knew he would use euphemisms. "a line, and i crossed it."/"when you were like that."

i also thought it was important to qualify the statement -- when you were like that. kinn doesn't deny that he wanted to have sex with porsche. he specifically identifies the issue: porsche was drugged.

Porsche stays there. “I want to wear my own clothes,” he says, when he’s built up the nerve. “And a phone. And I want to see my brother.” Kinn presses his lips against Porsche’s nape. “Okay,” he says.

kinn would have given porsche literally anything he asked for in that moment. he's indulgent with the people he loves. and i think it settles something in him, that what porsche chooses to ask for, with his new power over kinn, are simple, easy things. his own clothes. a phone. a visit to his brother. it makes the fact that he's given up his power over porsche, that he's let porsche see how much he cares back -- it makes it all less terrifying.

he can trust this one.

tawan would have taken so much more from him. and i think that's one of the important things about kinn, and his relationship with porsche: realising that the things that came from tawan, mean different things coming from porsche. kinn trusts that porsche won't ask for more than he can give. and porsche never does.

in later chapters, there are echoes, between porsche and tawan. but kinn never puts them next to each other, never compares. because he knows that they're completely different.

#fic: between the sheets #kinn pov is so hard for me but writing sheets i always knew what he was thinking in scenes #ALWAYS #there was a whole bunch of tawan stuff that didn't make it into the fic #but it's there #lurking in the background #it made sense not to spell it out in detail tbh #bc i don't think kinn really identifies just how fucked up everything with tawan was #tawan lives in a box inside kinn's head labelled ''regret''#and that's about all he does with it #dating porsche helps him realise that it wasn't necessarily the things tawan did that was the issue #(e.g. kissing him; pulling secrets from him; demanding trust and honesty)#but what he did with them when kinn gave them to him #god i could write a separate novel all about kinn and the echoes of tawan but i don't want to right now #i need to rest #dub con cw #date rape cw #ghb cw #drugs cw #abuse cw #other canon typical content warnings for kinnporsche apply as always

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