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The interview room is cold, the nauseating flicker of fluorescent lights above lending the space a dizzying, time warp feel.
Jihoon hates it on sight, about as much as he hates the two agents that usher him in and direct him to take a seat.
They’ve been following up with him every few days since he got back, under some misguided notion that he wants to be kept in the loop, kept updated on how the search was going.
Jihoon’s run out of ways to tell them he really doesn’t—he’s got bigger things to focus on right now—but they were waiting for him outside the hospital this time, asking too many questions, and it was easier to just come in for a little chat than get grilled on the side walk.
It’s possible they think he knows more than he’s letting on. That they’re looking for a way to pin the fallout of this whole shit show on him, but that suspicion is a fleeting, fickle thing. An emotion he suspects stands defensively in place of something else. Regret, perhaps. Anger.
He shrugs both off like a heavier coat he wishes that he was wearing and sits, wrapping his arms around himself.
“He’s really giving you guys a run for your money, huh?”
He can tell the answer's not good by the noncommittal look they share, and has to bite back the first thing that comes to mind—good.
“No, we haven’t. But we’re hoping you can help change that.” Agent Yoon says, unfolding his hands as if to implore him to relax.
“I’ve told you everything I know. It’s all there, in my statement. I have nothing more to add.” Jihoon says, confident and unflinching.
“But that was only the abridged version, wasn’t it Mr Lee.” The man parries, clearly concerned that he isn’t following. “We want the whole story this time. We want to know everything that happened on that Island.”
Jihoon stares ahead, processing the words.
Everything?
He feels uneasy at the thought of sharing everything. So much happened in those nine months, and so much if it was intensely personal. Yet underneath it all there’s also a spark of – relief? Excitement?
It comes as a surprise to realise that he does want to tell this story. Treat the interview a bit like a therapy session—you know, really let it all out.
It can be the first step in putting this whole mess behind him.
DAY 0
To say the memo had been vague is something of an understatement.
There had only been an address, a time, a simple instruction ‘pack light’, and the Director's initials. If it hadn’t arrived in his personal inbox seconds before he logged off for the day, Jihoon couldn’t even be sure the memo had been intended for him, but he took the initiative to find out and found himself pulling up outside the gates of a private airfield that seemed strangely busy for two in the morning.
Direcor Kim Soobin had met him outside, and asked him to relinquish his cellphone and laptop. Then he'd led him to a tiny waiting area next to the flight control tower and told him to wait.
That was three hours ago.
Jihoon hasn’t seen a soul since, and it’s gone quiet enough outside that he’s beginning to wonder if whatever highly secretive op they’ve been working on here has been cancelled and someone has forgotten to tell him.
He honestly wouldn’t put it past Director Kim to waste his time like that; the man has some very backward opinions about Omega’s being unsuited for ‘dangerous’ field work, and during their last little in-person review six months ago, he all but told Jihoon if it was up to him, Omega’s wouldn’t be allowed in the Bureau at all.
But then, just as Jihoon’s gathering himself to leave, the Director reappears and invites him into a small office just off the main building. The command centre it would seem—except there’s nothing here. No computers or case files or people, even.
No one but them.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. I don’t like leaving my people in the dark, but I had to get clearance to tell you what I’m about to, and before that I had to convince my superiors you were the right person to lead this mission.”
Jihoon finds that hard to believe. He’s been pushing for a field assignment for years, and it’s the Director who keeps putting him behind a desk. He still nods though, trying hard to keep his face plain and unreadable as he asks, “And what mission would that be? The memo was vague.”
Director Kim pulls a file out of his briefcase, then pauses, deliberate and performative.
“Are you familiar with the man known as Choi Seungcheol?”
Jihoon feels his heart rate begin to race. The name alone has him wide eyed and alert, more effective than a dozen cups of coffee because who hasn’t heard of Choi Seungcheol?
The Alpha is infamous in all the worst ways—bloodthirsty and flamboyant in his outsized criminality. He has over two dozen high-profile assassinations under his belt, and that’s before he went into hiding. Who knows what he’s done since.
Among his lesser sins he is rumoured to have dabbled in counterfeiting and money laundering, and has a rotating ensemble of drug barons and arms dealers at his beck and call.
Even if Jihoon’s cubicle wasn’t situated right across from the most wanted bulletin board, that insufferably smug face has been long been etched into his memory.
“Yes, of course. I haven’t had access to his file though, if that’s what you mean. I never got the appropriate clearance.”
Director Kim waves him off, unbothered by his lack of intel.
“No matter. The less you know of him the easier this should be.”
Worry starts to gnaw its way up Jihoon’s gut, but he dismisses it, goes with the first thing that comes to mind.
“So you’re assigning me a field mission? I’m actually going to be heading into the field?”
“Not as such, no.” Director Kim hedges, giving him as close as he can manage to an easy smile. “Officially, this mission hasn’t been sanctioned by the Bureau or any government body, and likely never will be until it’s complete. Until that happens, it has to stay off the books.”
Jihoon shifts forward in his seat, uncomfortable with this turn of events. It’s like there’s a warning siren blaring somewhere and he’s just an inch away from being able to hear it.
“Why?”
Director Kim drops his gaze to scan through the folder in front of him, dodging the question with the practiced dispassion of a Bureau strategist.
“A private aircraft carrying Choi Seungcheol is expected to land within the hour. Once it does, it will be refuelled and prepped for the next stage of the journey. Three of our agents are to accompany it and the prisoner, and they are to ensure he remains in custody for the entirety of the flight, until he is handed off to the relevant authorities waiting on the other side. I want you to be one of those agents. I want you to take the lead.”
A thousand and one questions spring to mind, including ‘How the hell was he captured?’, ‘Just three agents? Shouldn’t we have an armoured escort for this?’ and ‘You told me to pack light you son of a bitch—if I had known Choi Seungcheol was involved, I would have packed a grenade launcher’.
He focuses on the most pressing concern.
“Where will we be taking him? Why isn’t he being held for questioning here?”
“I wish I could disclose more, but it’s complicated.” Soobin warns in that soft voice that invites patience and trust when Jihoon knows very well that the man can be ruthless, sometimes. “Even I don’t know where you’ll be going, and I doubt many in the agency will until the handover is made.”
Jihoon’s gut instinct tells him something is not right about this, but he squashes the feeling down, dismisses it as his usual early-assignment jitters.
“And how long will I be gone for?”
“I don’t have enough data to make an educated guess.” The Director makes an elusive gesture with his hand, turning it mid-air. “Could be a few hours. Could be weeks.”
Jihoon’s brows tilt doubtfully.
“With all due respect sir, I can’t just leave—”
The Director waves a hand, cutting him off.
“I appreciate how unorthodox this all seems, but you have to understand, Choi Seungcheol is one of the most wanted men in Asia. We’ve been trying to smoke him out for years, and we only managed to capture him in Singapore through sheer luck. He knows that. His associates knows that, and they will be coming for him. If a flight plan or a telephone number or even the name of your 4th grade pet hamster falls into the wrong hands, they’ll follow that teeny tiny detail right to him and that’s the last thing any of us want. The specifics of this handover must remain strictly need to know, and if you can’t handle that—”
Jihoon lifts his chin defiantly.
“I can handle it just fine. I was only trying to say I can’t leave without asking someone to look after my cat. He’s an indoor cat. He has to eat special hypoallergenic food. I keep the bag under the sink.”
“Right, I see.” The Director sighs, with his usual impatience for personal grievances. “We’ll take care of it. I’ll pick it up tonight on my way home.”
The plane lands thirty minutes after the Director takes his leave, and takes its sweet time taxiing down the runway. Jihoon makes a point of being down at the private hanger to greet it, just so no one can accuse him of not running a tight ship.
He hasn’t even been told what he’s agents he’ll be working with, but he’s excited to see who else the Director handpicked for such a high level mission, maybe make some new contacts in the Bureau. Then the airplane door swings open, and Kwon Chul-Moo comes traipsing down the steps, and his eagerness takes a sharp nosedive.
“Agent Kwon—” He greets, just managing to hold back a disbelieving what the fuck are you doing here?
Kwon Chul-Moo isn’t qualified to escort a little old lady across the road, never mind a threat to national security. What the hell was Director Kim thinking?
“Where’s the Director?” Chul-Moo asks, looking just as surprised by Jihoon’s presence as Jihoon is of his.
“He’s busy. Pet sitting.”
Chul-Moo gives him a strange look at that, but doesn’t seem too bothered to remark on it otherwise.
“How was the flight?” Jihoon asks, compelled to move things along. “Did the prisoner give you any trouble?”
“No, no trouble.” Chul-Moo says, quiet and blinking, like he’d expected different. “He kept running his mouth though, got Sehun worked up pretty bad. But other than that, I suppose you could say he’s on his best behaviour.”
Jihoon doesn’t even bother to disguise the incredulity in his tone.
“Sehun? As in, agent Chun Sehun?”
Chul-Moo bobs his head and reaches inside his jacket pocket to retrieve a set of keys. “Yeah, he’s inside. He’s on cuff duty. You worked with him before?”
“Unfortunately.” Jihoon mutters, moving past him to enter the plane.
There’s no crew on-board expect for the pilots—as per the Director’s instructions—and the plane seems huge without them milling about even though it’s one of the smaller aircrafts outfitted for official use; just enough capacity for forty passengers and a few shipments of high-security cargo.
There are no compartments to store his luggage, so Jihoon nestles his bag under the netting of some nearby crates, checks his watch, then makes his way down the aisle towards the only other passengers.
The most recent photograph the Bureau has of Choi Seungcheol is over five years old—captured in an airport by an Interpol CCTV camera. The higher resolution mugshot they have tacked to the most wanted bulletin board is even older, a photocopy of the forged passport he used to flee the country. Neither of them look much like the Alpha sitting there in reinforced cuffs and a murderous expression.
It seems time has not softened Choi Seungcheol; like some sort of coveted blood diamond, he has only hardened. Even in the soft overhead lighting, his eyes are as dark as pitch, cold and unbending, and while a neon orange jumpsuit is hardly flattering attire on anyone, there’s no disguising the guy’s broad shoulders, the heavily inked arms thick with muscle.
As Jihoon moves down the aisle towards him, he glances over, a sneer pulling at his lips—only for that expression to flip, crumpling into something pinched and confused the moment their eyes meet.
The change is startling, but Jihoon doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know what must be going through the guy’s head.
What’s this? An Omega? Working in the field? And an unmated one at that?
The audacity.
Granted, those opinions are dying out now, but who knows what backward hell hole Choi's been laying low in all these years. Besides, nobody gets to the top of the food chain by embracing equal opportunities; this Alpha is probably as backwards as they come.
Even as Seungcheol cocks his head and considers him with a deceptively friendly eye, Jihoon is pretty sure it’s only because he’s mistaken him for one of the flight crew, come to freshen his drink and offer a moist towelette.
Still, Jihoon is nothing if not good at defying people’s expectations.
He may not cut the most intimidating figure, but he likes to think he carries himself well, and so does not hesitate to come right up to where Seungcheol is seated and introduce himself.
“Hello Mr Choi. I’m Agent Lee Jihoon, from the Bureau of Special Investigations. I’ll be taking custody of you today. Do you have any questions before we go through the pre flight security checklist?”
Seungcheol just stares at him, kinda amazed, then flashes a smile, wicked fast and charming.
“Wow. So polite and professional. I’m impressed. You could learn a thing or two from Agent Lee here.”
He aims this last bit at a scowling Sehun, tugging sharply on the chain connecting them.
Jihoon feels his mouth twitch, torn between smiling and saving face; Seungcheol has already managed to unbalance him, and not for the reasons he expected.
He fights for professionalism, keeping his expression neutral as he asks, “Would you mind holding out your hands for me, Mr Choi. I need to check your restraints.”
Seungcheol pushes up to his feet instead, leaning forward as far as the restraints will allow so he can get a good nosefull of Jihoon’s scent.
As alarmed as he is, Jihoon anticipates his movements and moves with him, tilts his head just so as Seungcheol noses up the line of his neck— not fearful exactly, but wary of the man in such a confined space.
The Alpha seems pleased by his reaction. He’s less pleased about the electrified cattle prod that’s jammed roughly into the side of his ribs a moment later.
“Sit the fuck down or you’ll get 10,000 volts where the sun don’t shine.” Sehun snarls, dragging him down by the back of his jumpsuit.
Seungcheol slumps back into his seat, his jaw outlined sharply as he grits his teeth through the pain. He offers his cuffed wrists up for examination without complaint, but only a fool would take that submission at face value.
The potential for violence shimmers around him like a heated wire, dark eyes promising a world of pain if anyone should lay a hand on him again.
Jihoon considers how badly this could turn out, for all of them, if Sehun isn’t brought to heel, and determines pre-emptive action is the wisest way forward.
“Agent Chun, I think I’m right in saying an electrified cattle prod is not a containment measure sanctioned by the Bureau. If we’re doing this mission by the book, which we are, I’m going to have to remove it from the plane before we can proceed.” He says, holding out his hand.
Condescension curls Sehun’s lip. He says something that is mostly a sneer, “Since when do I take orders from you?”
“Since Director Kim put me in charge of this mission.” Jihoon claps back, not missing a beat.
Sehun’s face twists, acknowledging that news with renewed sourness.
“Don’t believe me?” Jihoon says, offering up a placid smile. “You’re welcome to go ahead and give him a call. Tell him you’re questioning his decision.”
Land yourself another suspension—he doesn't say it, but there is a neat little silence afterwards anyway.
Sehun looks pissed, but sheathes the cattle prod and slaps it into his outstretched palm.
Jihoon tucks it under his arm and proceeds down the aisle towards the cockpit. He’s just raised a fist to knock on the door, when Seungcheol’s voice rises unevenly behind him.
“Since you’re the one in charge, I take it Director Kim won’t be joining us?”
Jihoon turns to look at him, his mind a perfect blank. He sees no reason why he can’t answer truthfully.
“That’s correct. He has other business to take care of.”
Seungcheol seems to chew on this piece of information like a particularly bitter pill, then he sighs, long-suffering, and bows his head in assent
“Figures.”
Even seated at the far end of the plane, ten feet between them, Jihoon can detect a change in the Alpha’s scent, his displeasure at this change of plans a bitter tang at the back of his throat.
DAY 1
The plane ride is long, uncomfortable, and turbulent from the get go— bad enough for the fasten seatbelt sign to stay on and for a less travelled man to turn a little green around the gills.
If he’d been seated by the window, if he had his phone, if he wasn’t so fucking tired, Jihoon might have been in a position to make some educated guesses about where they’re going. But he isn’t, and he doesn’t, and he is, so he’s got nothing to do but hide behind a magazine, matching each one of Seungcheol’s lecherously charming grins with a mildly confused one of his own.
It’s not exactly the in-flight entertainment he’d been expecting, but he can’t deny that he’s enjoying the way the Alpha insists on watching him— like he’s intriguing, capable of holding his attention. The power of it thrums pleasantly in the pit of his stomach.
Shame the man is going out of his way to live down to his expectations—a walking, talking cliché of the Alpha who can’t keep it in his pants.
Unobserved, Jihoon imagines he would have tried to catch some shut eye, perhaps used the time to hatch an escape plane. Under scrutiny he slouches aggressively in his seat, repeatedly adjusts himself—charming—and offers Jihoon a rotating menu of excessive winks, blatant onceovers, and what he must foolishly consider attractive “bedroom eyes”.
It’s almost funny how provoking he’s trying to be, but Jihoon’s determined not to take the bait and lash out.
Ferrying prisoners isn’t his usual beat, sure, but unlike his colleagues, he’s not stupid enough to think they have the upper hand here just cause the man’s in cuffs.
He’s going to handle this mission by the book; remain professional, strait-laced, unemotional, while treating Seungcheol with just the right amount of respectful caution the most wanted gun-for-hire on the planet deserves.
Thankfully the Alpha seems to come to this realization eventually.
After a few hours of behaving like a total ass, he dials back the flirtation a bit and simply studies Jihoon instead, looking for something. Weakness most like.
“Agent Lee, do you mind me asking how long you’ve been working for the Bureau?”
Jihoon lifts his head, blinking in some mild surprise at the polite phrasing.
“Oh, uhm, six years this November.”
“And they usually recruit straight outta college, so that must make you twenty-six.”
“Twenty-seven actually.” Jihoon corrects. "I took a year out after my second year.”
Amusement shifts his face into something interesting though hardly friendly.
“Yeah? Lemme guess—you went backpacking around Europe.”
Jihoon can’t help but make a face at that. Of course everyone just automatically assumes he’s lived a privileged life; born gumming the proverbial spoon like the rest of his peers— given the best education and connections to land a cushy government desk job with all the trimmings. Nobody ever assumes he earned his scholarship fair and square, or that he spent his weekends helping his dad run their small back-alley ramen shop, or that he had to take a year out to care for him when he was dying of cancer.
The urge to leap to his own defence however, is stymied by the fact that this lie serves him just as well. After all, when dealing with the likes of Choi Seungcheol, you never show all your cards. You kept that hand close to the fucking vest.
“Yeah, something like that. If you’ll excuse me—"
He unbuckles his belt and pushes up out of his seat, deciding a pretend trip to the restroom is in order. Maybe a coffee while he’s at it, to keep him alert.
He doesn’t get more than a step away before Seungcheol’s speaking up, drawing him short.
“Woah, hey, where you going?”
Jihoon turns his head to look at him, and feels a warning churn in his chest.
Seungcheol is still watching him with that feline, lazy blink of his eyes, still smiling in that lewd way Jihoon would never know how to describe or recreate, but his entire body is primed in a way he recognizes as dangerous. The preparation for fight or flight.
Jihoon licks his lips, trying to ignore the nervous drop in his stomach.
“I... need to use the rest room.”
Seungcheol’s mouth lifts in what he supposes would be called a smile for most people. On him, it looks like just another weapon.
“That can wait. You need to sit back down.”
When Jihoon fails to comply, he leans in, his face twisting into something a little conspiratorial.
“I’m not fucking with you man. You really should sit down. And buckle your belt too. This ride is about to get very bumpy.”
“W-what the fuck are you taking about? What’s he talking about?” Sehun stammers, on edge now, his fear shining through.
Jihoon ignores him, but slides back into his seat, very weirded out, and yet, compelled by some unknown force, something deep inside him that understands self-preservation far better than the rest of him does.
When he clips the belt in place and pulls the strap taut, Seungcheol resumes his slouch, seeming to decompress a little.
It’s a minute change but Jihoon has always been excellent at reading people.
He’s up to something. He’s planning something—he barely has time to think, before an explosion rips out the back half of the plane.
Jihoon doesn’t know where he is, when he wakes.
His hands are in the air. That alone takes him some time to understand; his body feels heavy, slow, tingling with lingering numbness, somehow far away from him. But the reality of it begins to settle in around him soon enough, and he is—he is hanging upside down, he grasps dimly. Still strapped in his seat, in the plane, his shoulders stiff and uncomfortable where the belt is crossing tightly over his chest, cutting off his circulation.
He tries to flex his hands a little, and finds that he can; tries to draw them up to unfasten his seat belt, and finds that he can’t, his ribs clenching up tight, aching muscles knotted up around a sharp pain on his right side. He tips his head against the side of his arm, works a hand up, and then tries again. And this time he manages it, a ragged unsteady inhale as his hand finally pulls on the tab.
He isn’t ready for it, the way it makes everything spin; he screws his eyes shut as he lands with a thump, keeps them closed as he tries to work out how to get his feet under him, pressing a hand over the right side of his stomach, where it hurts the most.
The hand comes away tacky, sticky, red.
Well. That can't possibly be good.
He can’t tell how much blood he’s lost, but he has all his limbs, as far as he can tell, and he isn’t dead, either. That’s something.
He shuts his eyes, breathes in deep and focuses on one foot and then the other, forces his weak wobbling legs to listen to him until he has both feet flat against the floor, just about under him.
The first thought he has when he emerges from the wrecked fuselage, is that it’s a fucking miracle he survived.
The plane—or what’s left of it—has carved a path through a dense forest of trees, leaving splintered wood and chunks of metal in its wake. A mountain crowds in at the edges of the crash site, the frenetic chlorophyll of the jungle filling the gaps, thick vegetation woven together and strangled.
It seems impossible, unbelievable, that someone could survive this, and that seems to be the case for at least one of his companions.
He finds Chul-Moo first, still strapped in his seat, eyes wide open and fixed on the sky. Seemingly alive and well at first glance, but it’s just a bad angle. For reasons he doesn’t have the stomach to examine too closely, Kwon Chul-Moo is most definitely not walking this off.
The sound of exertion, of rock repeatedly striking metal, draws his gaze further away from the wreckage, towards a rocky outcropping to his left. There’s are drags marks in the sand leading right to it, and strikingly visible smear of blood further around the corner.
Jihoon follows it hazily, clutching at his side, until he spots Sehun lying face down in the sand.
His head has been caved in, and his right hand is missing, severed at the wrist bone. Choi Seungcheol is standing over him, a bloodied rock held tight in his bloodied fist.
If nothing else, it’s this that knocks the last fuzziness from Jihoon’s head.
He feels awake, now, everything brought sharply into focus at last, and he reaches for his side arm, flicking off the safety and aiming just as Seungcheol brings the rock down on the hinge of his cuff.
“Drop the rock.”
Seungcheol jerks his head up, and smiles just a little; coldly pleased.
“Oh good, you made it. I was hoping you would.”
He lets the rock slip from his hand and it tumbles to the ground, only the barest distance away, the threat of it looming unmistakably.
Jihoon breathes carefully in and out, eyes darting between it, Seungcheol, and the dead body of his colleague lying between them. He can feel his nostrils flaring, his teeth clenching as the tension builds within him.
He had his reasons to despise Sehun, but he wouldn’t have wished that kind of violence on anyone.
Before he can decide on how to proceed, Seungcheol clears his throat and says carefully, intentionally:
“Not that it matters at this point, but I can assure you he was already dead when I cut his hand off.”
“It matters,” Jihoon starts, his voice rough with emotion; he clears his throat, though it doesn’t do much to help, “Unless of course, you’re the one who killed him in the first place.”
“I didn’t, swear to God.” Seungcheol says, hands held out and open, peace treaty-style. “Some debris must have flown right into his face during the crash. All I did was drag him over here so I could free myself, but he didn’t have the keys on him, so you know, I took the initiative.”
He says it all so effortlessly it’s hard to say where the truth ends and the lies begin. It doesn’t matter right at this moment, Jihoon supposes.
He cocks his pistol and takes a step forward.
“Turn around and get down on the ground.”
Seungcheol complies, looking bemused and indulgent.
“Execution style. Gotta say, I didn’t think you’d have it in you Agent Lee.”
Jihoon breathes out a sigh, switching the gun to his other hand so he can retrieve the key from his pocket.
“I’m not going to shoot you. I’m going to cuff your hands behind your back. I was tasked with handing you over to the relevant authorities and I’m going to do it. This is all just a minor set back.”
Seungcheol turns his head to look at him over his shoulder. His smile is razor-edged and dangerous, egging him on.
“You mean the plane crash and the demise of your colleagues? That’s the minor set back?”
“Yes, “Jihoon winces a bit as he tries to shift and catches something in the wrong way. “That.”
Seungcheol laughs through his nose, an undignified sort of noise.
“Wow. Why do I get the feeling you’re kind of an over achiever?”
Clapping the second cuff in place, Jihoon braces his hand on the centre of the man’s broad back—to push himself back onto his feet, he tells himself, not because his side is throbbing hard enough to make him a little woozy.
“Alright, here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to follow the debris this way, until we find the cockpit. You’ll walk ahead of me and stop when I tell you to stop. No funny business. Are we clear?”
Seungcheol jumps up onto his feet, loose and relaxed and remarkably agile despite having his hands secured behind his back.
“Sure Pigeon. You’re the boss.”
The jagged rocks give way to lush, dense forest the further they travel, but that does little to temper the ungodly heat. Even in the relative shade, the humidity assaults them from every angle, like a gigantic hand pressing down.
Jihoon’s already loosened and abandoned his tie, but he stops short of taking off his jacket.
He can’t risk Seungcheol seeing his injury, can’t risk tending to it either, even though they’ve managed to collect a few useful items along the way, including the flight crew's first aid kit and a few dozen miniature liquor bottles salvaged from the drinks cart.
He can however, make Seungcheol carry it all.
“You know, this would be easier if my hands weren’t cuffed behind my back.”
“It would, wouldn’t it.”
“I’m not saying you should uncuff me—”
“Good. Cause I’m definitely not doing that.”
“—but if my hands were cuffed at the front, I could carry more stuff. And I could help you search for whatever it is you’re looking for.”
“Or you could pick up a rock and bash my head in like you did with Sehun.” Jihoon offers tersely.
Seungcheol looks over his shoulder at him, bright mockery shining in his eyes.
“Ah now, I told you I didn’t do that.”
Jihoon tries to shrug and winces in pain when the gesture pulls at a few bruises.
“And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?”
“Why would I lie?” Seungcheol asks, eyes widening in contrived innocence. “You already have me in cuffs, and according to your bosses, they’ve got enough evidence to put me behind bars six lifetimes over. Murdering a fed is...well, it’s small potatoes for a guy like me. I mean, why shy away from taking accountability for something I’ve already done before?”
Jihoon chews on that for a moment, breathing shallowly through his mouth because his side is fucking killing him. The words do not benefit from the reflection.
“Noted. Now shut the fuck up and keep moving.”
Seungcheol starts walking again, albeit reluctantly, his brow pinched in something genuine.
“There’s no need to be like that, you know. I had a real soft spot for the polite boy scout who introduced himself back on the plane. When’s he coming back?”
Jihoon flushes hot with something he doesn’t know how to categorize, so he doesn’t.
An idea has started to crowd in the back of his mind as they walked. An idea he doesn’t like one bit. He doesn’t know what else to do with it other than say it, out loud.
“How’d you know about the bomb? Did you see who planted it?”
That earns him a smirk, a flash of white teeth.
“I’m touched you didn’t immediately assume it was me.”
“You couldn’t have.” Jihoon allows, swiping an arm across his forehead. He wished he'd remembered to pack sunglasses; his eyelids feel melted. “You lacked the means, motive and opportunity. And I doubt you would have endangered yourself so willingly either. Which means you must have seen someone else plant it.”
He watches as Seungcheol’s face does something complicated. It flits through several emotions, an internal dialogue that moves too quickly to keep up with.
“I didn’t know it was there,” He says after a moment, tone odd. He turns to keep moving, then adds, confoundingly: “I’m just familiar with how underhanded the Bureau can be.”
Jihoon shakes his head in a way that feels as helpless as it does tired.
“If you’re implying the Bureau had something to do with that explosion, you’re wrong. That’s not how they operate. They dont...”
Dizziness clouds his senses for a moment and he stops, measures his breathing until the wave of vertigo passes and tries again. “We don’t harm prisoners in our custody.”
The Alpha laughs, a dry, mirthless sound that is just this side of hysterical.
“You’re an idealist, huh? That’s cute. How’d the Bureau get their grubby little hands on you?”
He doesn’t seem to be expecting an answer; he turns his attention to the path of debris up ahead, squinting through the sun soaking across the forest like oil.
Jihoon mistrusts the silence, stays on edge for the next few minutes, expecting more, but Seungcheol appears to be done prodding him for now. There is a distant concentrating look on his face, a philosopher expression that makes him look older and wiser than any tattooed thug has a right to be.
Gradually the turquoise blue of the ocean comes into view, the sun glittering over the waves. Then, as they clear the line of trees, a thick black cloud of smoke.
It’s coming from a fire, originating from the nose of the plane, which has come to it’s final resting spot wedged between two large boulders.
Jihoon can barely see anything through the smoke and flames, except that one of the pilots has managed to drag himself out, and is laying prone on the ground, half way towards a shallow puddle.
Holstering his pistol, Jihoon drags him the rest of the way there and splashes water over his burns. There’s little else he can do for him. Not when there is a hunk of bone growing out of his leg where his femur used to be.
Jihoon stares at it helplessly, knowing the man’s not going to make it, but still needing to reassure.
“Hang in there, okay. Help will be here soon.”
The Pilot states up at him blankly, his lips parted slightly as he struggles to suck in a breath.
“N-no. No...body coming. No one knows we’re here.”
Jihoon frowns, anxiety beginning to climb his throat like the worst sort of bile.
“What do you mean? How far off the flight path were we when we crashed?”
“We weren’t following a flight path.” The Pilot chokes. “Ordered... not to. We were s’posed to fly blind, and wait...for instructions. They...disabled...GPS. Didn’t want...n'yone tracking plane.”
Jihoon’s heart thumps uncomfortably under his ribs, and he rubs his gritty, tired eyes. He tries to speak lightly, as if he hadn’t just reached a terrifying realization. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
The man doesn’t answer, eyes gone glassy and vacant. It takes Jihoon a long moment to realise he’s already gone.
“Shit.” He hisses, tear tracks mingling with perspiration on his cheeks, his worry morphing into panic.
The scrape of boot sole against the sand draws his gaze up then, and he comes face to face with Seungcheol’s variation of a ‘well— shit’ expression, and a smile that is not actually amused in the least.
“Looks like it’s just us now. What’s it to be Agent Lee?”
Jihoon squints up at him, swallowing, trying to force his dizzy muddled brain to come up with something useful. He can brainstorm with the best of them, but not like this, when he can’t even think, when he can barely even stand. Shit.
“We should find something to cover him, then put out the fire.” He finally says, getting to his feet. A slight sense of dizziness creeps over him, but he pushes through it, retrieving his pistol as he glances around. “The radio might still be intact, and it’s our best hope of signalling someone.”
Seungcheol mumbles something under his breath, sounding disgruntled, then a little louder, says, “Sure, say we do that. Then what? Didn’t you hear what the guy said. Nobody was tracking the plane. The GPS was disabled. Even if by some miracle the radio is not a scorched mess, what are we gonna say? Oh hi, our plane crashed and now we’re stranded on a deserted island. We don’t know where though—maybe you could just do a couple fly-bys and we’ll wave if we see you.”
Jihoon rubs at his forehead, at the headache building between his eyes.
“Do you have a better plan?”
“Uh, yeah. We stop exhausting ourselves walking around unfamiliar terrain and find shelter for the night. Then in the morning, once we’re sufficiently rested, we can catalogue our resources and plan our next move.”
Jihoon’s sorry he asked. He wasn’t expecting the guy to suggest anything remotely sensible. It’s more than a little annoying he has.
“No, we’re not doing that, and this isn’t up for debate. Turn around and start walking towards the beach—right now.”
He puts the snarl in his voice as he cocks his pistol, trying to exude an ‘or else’ aura without having to say so explicitly.
This effort must fall flat however, because Seungcheol just smiles at him, in the same way a veterinarian would smile at injured, hissing kitten. Helplessly amused and not the least bit threatened.
“Or what? You gonna shoot me? Seriously? I wouldn’t have put it past your colleagues, but you... I think you’re smarter than that.”
Jihoon’s not usually a man prone to violent outbursts; when you’re on a career path that constantly surrounds you with big, dumb, trigger-happy meatheads, you tend to avoid looking for solutions fist-first. But he’s pretty tired right now, and injured, and not to mention kinda hangry too, and Seungcheol treating him like he’s so fucking predictable is just adding insult to injury.
Punching him in the face feels like the least he can do.
His fist lands at a slant, a glancing blow along Seungcheol’s cheekbone that hurts his knuckles more than anything. Still, Seungcheol fixes him with a look. Dark eyes sharp as anything, the humour in them gone.
When he snaps his wrists free from the cuffs, and grabs Jihoon by the lapels, he’s as serious as Jihoon has ever seen him. Deadly.
It makes the hair on the back of Jihoon’s neck stand on end, makes him drop his gun even as he’s shoved roughly up against a tree.
“Listen up you little shit, I’m gonna let that pass because I was being a dick on the plane and kinda had a slap coming. But I’m an equal opportunities kinda guy, so I don’t care if you are a tiny Omega—you ever punch me again and I—”
Jihoon never gets to hear the end of that threat. He only has a moment to register the heaviness in his limbs, and the surprised, curious expression flashing across the Alpha’s face before the world fades to black.
Jihoon wakes slowly; eyelids hot and heavy, peeling open bit by bit, like an envelope before the glue dries. His mouth is fuzzy, and he feels like he has a swarm of bees have taken residence in his skull. He tries to roll to one side, but he just as quickly slumps back, gravity working against him.
He’s alive at least, which is confusing as fuck.
Someone got a fire started at some point, and a good thing that is too. Out of the circle of firelight, he’s never known a darkness so perfect. He can barely see his hands inches from his face, never mind the treeline around them or anything that may be lurking beyond it.
Then he slowly begins to take note of his surroundings—the shelter over his head, the makeshift hammock he’s resting in, and the fresh bandages on his stomach, and he’s thrown for another loop.
“Welcome to the party sleeping beauty.”
Adrenaline spikes at that, and he tries to turn his head to look around, but his field of vision is reduced by the hammock and the ache in his side limiting his movement. There’s a rustle of leaves from somewhere up above, and that’s when he suddenly realises Seungcheol’s not even on the ground.
He’s perched up in the tree right above him, an ill-defined smudge against the blue-black sky.
Jihoon carefully tips his head back, squinting, but he’s almost impossible to pick out, only visible when he moves.
“What are doing up there?”
“Keeping watch.” Seungcheol’s voice filters down after a beat, tone thoughtfully hushed. “I don’t know what’s out there. Until I do, I figure higher ground is the safest place.”
Jihoon licks the backs of his teeth, swallowing hard.
“What does that make me down here? Bait?”
The Alpha chuckles in the dark. “Now, why would I go to all that trouble of stitching you up and tying you a comfy little hammock just to let some animal gnaw on your innards?”
Jihoon doesn’t really have an answer for that. Some men are keen with patience. They will lie in wait like a coiled serpent, waiting for the best, not the first, chance to strike. He always figured Seungcheol fitted that description, but the best chance to kill Jihoon has come and gone.
What’s he keeping him alive for? It can’t be anything good, not if he decides to toy with him first.
The Alpha shifts then, the menacing spark more evident in his eyes as he manoeuvres down the branches, down to Jihoon’s level.
Jihoon tries to sit up to intercept him, but he’s weak as a kitten. The only way he can think to defend himself is to reach a hand out, press it firmly to the centre of the man’s broad chest to hold him off, if only for a moment.
“Just—just make it quick. Please.”
Seungcheol’s eyebrow rise sharply. “Make what quick?”
Jihoon avoids his gaze, nodding instead over to where his tattered jacket hangs off the edge of a branch.
“Cover my face with that if you’re going to shoot me or bash my head in with a rock. I don’t want to know when it’s coming.”
Seungcheol gives him an odd considering smile, like he's halfway to amused but not sure if it's worth the effort.
“Okay, so your imagination runs decidedly dark. Good to know. But I actually just came down here to check on your bandages Pigeon, so do us both a favour and try not to move; you can’t really afford to pop these stitches.”
That stuns Jihoon into stillness for a moment, long enough for Seungcheol to flick the blanket aside and hike his shirt up.
It’s not looking too bad under there, actually. Someone clearly knows there was around a suture kit.
The bandages wrapped around his stomach are clean and dry, and he can feel the wound beneath throb faintly in time with his heartbeat, but as long as he doesn’t move too much or breathe in too deeply, the pain has subsided into an uncomfortable pinch.
He’ll live to die another day it seems, but more astonishing than that is that he has Seungcheol to thank for it.
“No fever,” Seungcheol says after pressing a wrist to his forehead. “Good. Cause we don’t have any antibiotics, and only a couple strips of ibuprofen. Let’s hope you have a good immune system, eh?”
Jihoon feels much of the tension drain from his shoulders in relief, only to surge back up again once he remembers who’s tending to him. He thinks he’d prefer a festering wound over the emotional turmoil this interaction is putting him through.
“Why are you doing this?” He finally summons the nerve to ask.
Seungcheol tests the bandages one more time before shooting him a grimace. “Because I usually have access to better equipment when I have to stitch myself up. I wanted to make sure your stitches will hold up.”
“No, I mean—why did you save my life? Why didn’t you just... leave me to bleed out?”
The Alpha’s distracting mouth curls up in a deliberate smile, very different from his genuine grin, yet laden with so much hidden meaning Jihoon begins to feel uneasy.
It’s disconcerting, being around the man without a firearm acting as a buffer between them—like walking into a lion feeding enclosure wearing a meat suit.
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you are easily the most adorable guy I’ve ever met in my life. If we ever get back to civilization, I think I might have to take you home with me.” Is what Seungcheol finally settles on, tucking the blanket up around Jihoon’s shoulders again.
Then he’s off, disappearing up into the tree again, like he hasn’t just shaken the very foundation under Jihoon’s feet.
DAY 3
It’s a remarkable thing, survival instinct. Even with the odds stacked against you, even after you’ve convinced yourself there’s no hope, it’s human nature to find a way.
In their case, it’s left to Seungcheol to do most of the work those first few days to ensure their survival, and it comes as no surprise that he excels at it.
He lays out the rocks spelling S.O.S on the beach. He fortifies their shelter and gathers every morsel of food he finds on the wreck. He keeps the fire lit to ward off insects and animals and alert any planes flying overheard to their whereabouts. He even develops a rudimentary way of fetching and sterilising water from a nearby river that Jihoon will admit is rather ingenious considering their limited resources.
He’s so adept at surviving under extreme conditions in fact, Jihoon doesn’t feel at all guilty about sleeping through most of it.
In truth, it’s all he’s fit to do those first few days, partly because of his injury, but mostly because of the goddamn heat.
Winter was just setting in when they’d left Seoul, and he likes winter. He’s a winter child after all; he prefers it cooler so he can snuggle under a blanket and layer up or down as he pleases. This island though—it feels worse than Busan at the hottest point of summer, and during the day, the intense humidity combines with the salt air and the sand to deliver his closest approximation of hell.
When he’s not lolling about in his makeshift parachute hammock, whining about the heat, he just has enough energy to roll into his side so he doesn’t melt into the fabric. At one point he wonders if he might be running a fever, but how can he tell when everything feels at least one million degrees.
Sleeping through the discomfort seems like the wisest thing he can do, for both their sakes, and if the Alpha has a problem with that, he certainly doesn’t show it.
If anything, he seems to be encouraging Jihoon to move as little as possible.
He swings by at regular intervals to bring Jihoon water, check his bandages and toss him a snack bar. He even—god, it’s so fucking embarrassing—carries him to the rest room, such as it is.
By the third day though, Jihoon’s acclimatised well enough to sit upright and watch as Seungcheol ferries supplies between the crash site and their little camp.
It’s mostly junk from what he can see—dented sheets of metal and the foamy padding they stuff seats with, but Seungcheol has clearly deemed it useful for one strange reason or another.
When the guy returns with a selection of clothes, totting a familiar looking pair of sunglasses and a pair of heavy duty combat boots however, Jihoon feels it necessary to ask: “Did you bury them?”
Seungcheol pauses in his inspection of the sunglasses to quirk an eyebrow at him, as if to say ‘Like fuck I did.’
“Why should I bury them? Did they ever bury me?”
“A dead body is going to attract wild animals.” Jihoon points out, aiming for strategic reasoning because he’s pretty sure Seungcheol's not going to be a convincing arbiter of ethics.
Whether Seungcheol goes along with his suggestion is anyone’s guess, but the next time he leaves camp he’s away for longer, and when he comes back he’s carrying the plane’s emergency crash axe.
“Look what I found. A motherfucking axe. Can you believe they just had this hanging near the emergency exit? Isn’t that just asking for trouble.”
Jihoon pulls a faux-impressed face and lifts his eyebrows before reluctantly pointing out, “It’s a crash axe. Every passenger aircraft will have one, so crew can cut their way out of a wreckage. It’s standard equipment.”
Seungcheol hefts it up, testing it’s weight with a practice swing.
“Well, this standard equipment is about to save our asses. Just you watch,” is all he says, before he starts hacking away at the nearest tree.
Two hours later Jihoon has watched him swing and chop and climb and carry and curse every God in existence, and he’s still no closer to figuring out what he’s trying to do.
After he watches him struggle to heft a large branch up the length of a tree for the fifth time, he feels compelled to intervene.
“What exactly are you trying to build?”
“A tree house, obviously.”
Jihoon eyeballs him and says, without trying to keep the exhaustion from his voice. “Do you have any tree house building experience? Or, better yet, any building experience at all?”
Seungcheol’s face takes on a quiet look of reminiscence.
“Not really. But I remember this episode of the Swiss Family Robinson—”
“Oh Jesus.”
“—they built this huge ass tree house with some logs and those ropey looking vines. They made it look so easy.”
Jihoon moves to climb out of the hammock but rethinks the motion when his side gives a foreboding throb.
If he’s going to stage an intervention, he’ll have to do it lying down.
“How about you start with a simpler blue print and work your way up. Maybe try and build a ladder first, using those bamboo poles and those ropey looking vines, so you can reach higher up the trees without having to shimmy up.”
Seungcheol just stares at him, mouth moving, eyes inscrutable behind his shades. For a moment Jihoon is sure he’s about to die—because of course nobody can get away with giving Choi Seungcheol orders.
Then Seungcheol nods and says, “That might actually work. And then I can reach those delicious looking coconuts. I like your thinking boy scout.”
The ladder takes a few hours to build, and several noteworthy comments from Seungcheol, including, ‘Fuck this ladder and fuck you for suggesting it’, ‘Fuck the Swiss Family Robinson—lying bastards’ and ‘If I get one more splinter, I’m going to cut off my hands with the crash axe.”
The end result seems to be worth it though, especially when Seungcheol immediately puts it to the test to climb up a tree and fetch them three coconuts.
“Can you believe I built that? I built a ladder, with my own two hands. That might just be the most badass thing I’ve ever done.” Seungcheol remarks, hours later, lying stretched out atop his dismantled airplane seat.
Jihoon rolls his eyes where no one can see.
He’ll admit it’s a fine looking ladder, but the man’s self-congratulatory air is a little overdone, like he’s somehow fashioned them a long-range radio out of chopsticks or something.
“It’s a nice ladder.” He says out loud, somewhat dismissively.
“Nice?” Seungcheol echoes, aghast. “That all you can say? I built something that will singlehandedly ensure our survival here. I’m like...Moses or something, when he turned those fishes into wine.”
“That was Jesus. And it wasn’t fish, it was water. He turned water into wine. Moses’s miracle was parting the red sea.”
Seungcheol rolls over, half up on his elbow.
“I didn’t realise you were so religious.”
“I’m not. I’m not religious at all. I just have a rudimentary grasp of biblical miracles, and not stupid enough to think Jesus turned fishes into wine.”
Seungcheol frowns and collapses back into his bed.
“Alright, alright, don’t get your panties in a twist. I was just looking for some validation for my efforts man. Would it hurt you to say I did good?”
“You did well.” Jihoon corrects.
“Thanks.” Seungcheol breaks into a grin. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”
Jihoon bites his tongue so he doesn’t give into the pressing urge to ask Seungcheol whether he was dropped on his head as a child. Possibly frequently.
DAY 5
As wonderful as it is to just reach up and pluck a mango off a tree or break into a fresh coconut, Jihoon knows fruit can only nourish you to a certain degree.
If they’re going to survive out here for any decent length of time, they’re going to need a regular source of protein, and what better source than the abundance of aquatic life all around them.
He says as much to Seungcheol over breakfast, using a twig to draw out a diagram in the sand of how he could potentially catch some fish using the ladder and some of the netting they’d salvaged from the parachutes.
He doesn’t expect Seungcheol will go along with it of course, so he throws it out there somewhat half heartedly, anticipating a snort and middle finger for good measure. Except, an hour after Seungcheol trudges off towards the beach, he returns carting a massive red snapper, and just about the cockiest grin you could imagine.
“Looks like meat’s back on the menu boys!”
Jihoon sits forward, eyes wide. The beginnings of a disbelieving smile already making itself felt at the corners of his mouth.
“Holy shit. How did you catch that?”
“With the ladder. Like you told me to. I tied the netting between the last two rungs and dunked it in the water. This fat son of a bitch swam right in.”
“That worked?”
The Alpha slings a grin across his face. “Uh, yeah. Were you not expecting it to? You seemed so confident when you were sketching out your adorable little diagrams.”
Jihoon blinks at him, bemused.
He’s been drawing adorable little diagrams for years, but he can’t for the life of him recall a time anyone took them seriously. None of his moments of ingenuity made it past the drawing board back at the Bureau.
He shoos that maudlin thought back to the recesses of his mind and turns his attention back to Seungcheol—who is still standing there, fish in hand, smiling like he’s waiting for his picture to be taken.
All that’s missing is the thumbs up and a local news reporter.
“Uhm, what are you waiting for? A medal?”
That big dumb smile falters.
“That would be nice, yes, but I was actually waiting for you to show me how to gut and clean this fish, so we can eat.”
“And why should I know how to gut a fish?”
“Didn’t you say you were a boy scout?” Seungcheol asks, a slight questioning lift of an eyebrow as accompaniment.
“What? No! I never said that. You just assumed I was.”
“Did I? Huh.” The Alpha frowns, kinda hesitant but stubborn too. “Well, in my defence, you do look like the kind of guy who took part in organised activities after school. Boy scouts. Junior debating. The science club.”
“You’re making me sound like a total dork.”
Seungcheol sets the fish down on a rock and turns to look at him fully, mocking inquiry across his face.
“Look, I just says it as I sees it, and you’re the one who willingly took extra science lessons outside of mandatory learning hours. I think that constitutes pretty dorkish behaviour pal.”
Jihoon’s hands flutter briefly, sculpting frustration out of the air.
“Oh my god, I was not a member of the science club! I wasn’t part of any after school clubs. My parents couldn’t afford them. We owned a crappy little ramen stall, and I had to help them out every spare second I had.”
The words are out before he could think better of them, and he watches as Seungcheol’s face lights up with dark delight. As if Jihoon has just proven something he had long wondered about him.
“Helping out mom and dad, huh? Man, did I have you pegged wrong. I thought you were just another one of those privileged shitheads who got a job handed to them after graduation. But you actually had to work for it like the rest of us.” He shakes his head then, rueful. “I bet it wasn’t crappy. I bet it was a cute little stall, and you were responsible for prepping and adding the garnishes. You seem like the kinda guy who’d be great with those little details.”
Jihoon finds that his throat hurts oddly, and has to look away.
“Yeah, I was.” And because Seungcheol is now watching him with the same sort of quiet but sustained curiosity he doesn’t know what to do with, he adds, “It was a cute stall. I loved working there.”
The silence that follows is too heavy and contemplative for Jihoon’s liking, and he has to resist the urge to elaborate just to hear something other than nothing.
It’s a situation too complicated and personal to explain to a guy he barely knows, never mind the hitman he’s supposed to be babysitting.
Seungcheol seems to appreciate that, moving them swiftly on with a pointed clearing of his throat.
“Alright. I suppose I should head to the river and figure out how to prepare this thing.”
Jihoon swings his legs over the edge of the hammock, and gingerly lowers his feet to the ground.
“Wait, I’ll come with you. We can figure it out together.”
Seungcheol gives him a lingering look, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“You sure? I mean—I could probably manage by myself. You shouldn’t exert yourself too soon.”
Jihoon gives him a faint grin, trying for upbeat even though his bones feel like lead in his body. “I need to stretch my legs anyway, and two heads are better than one.”
Seungcheol’s eyes flash brightly. Pleased.
“Alright. Let’s go little man. Team work makes the dream work.”
Catch in tow, and a new understanding between them reached, they head down to the river in hopes of conquering this new obstacle together.
Luckily for them, the whole process turns out to be far simpler than they’d expected.
They manage to gut and clean the fish in less than an hour, then get it barbecuing on a bed of banana leaves before the sun sets. Not bad for two guys who could probably recite the ingredient list on a packet of instant ramen blind folded.
Even though he volunteered himself for ‘gutting’ duty, because he’s the ‘knife wielding expert’, Seungcheol bitches loudly about it the entire time.
“Oh god, this is so gross. There’s fish guts everywhere. Eugh. There better not be a baby fish in here or I will cry!”
But he’s quick to seek praise once they’re sitting side by side, digging into their respective portions.
“Not to blare my own horn here, but this isn’t half bad. Sure it could use a few spices and a squeeze of lemon, but considering our limited resources, I don’t think Gordon Ramsey could do better.”
Jihoon grunts in agreement. He wants to tell Seungcheol he’s had nothing to eat but coconuts and a couple protein bars for the last three days, and this is literally the best meal he has ever had, but he’s too busy stuffing his mouth.
DAY 10
Sometime around their second week on the Island, Jihoon feels recovered enough to join Seungcheol on one of his expeditions through the untamed jungle.
It’s much larger than he expected. Up until today, his world was narrowed down to the short few metres between his hammock and the nearby river. Now it’s like a whole new world has opened around him, and he’s the smallest, most vulnerable person in it.
The further they venture from the beach, the wilder everything seems to get. Sand and surf give way to acres and acres of overgrown plant life, stretching up and up and out and around. There are so many trees they’re indistinguishable from each other, and the soil below is rich black, almost completely untouched by the sun.
Seungcheol has wisely left markings on the trees so he they can orientate themselves and find their way back to camp if they get separated, but he doesn’t seem inclined to rush on ahead.
He keeps a leisurely pace, happily giving Jihoon a tour of all the areas he’s already scoped out and deemed noteworthy—the waterfall, the larger waterfall, the rock formation shaped like a giant penis—before directing them towards the mountain ridge in the distance.
“It’s a bit of a hike, but you can get a decent 360 view of the island from up there. You feeling up for it?”
“Of course. I go hiking all the time back home. This shouldn’t be any different.” Jihoon huffs, mildly irritated by the Alpha’s gently-gently tone and the sweat he can feel beading on his temple.
An hour later, he’s wondering if there’s a way to persuade Seungcheol to turn back and convince him it was his idea. Better yet, trick him into offering a piggyback ride the rest of the way, because this hike is turning out to be nothing like the leisurely hikes he enjoys back home.
There’s no trail or well-worn paths to follow. They have to devise their own path, climbing through dirt and over jagged rocks, and around spindly trees that snag at his clothing and hair.
“How much further?” Jihoon pants, one hand resting over the wound on his belly, the other splayed against the nearest tree.
It’s a pose that bespeaks exhaustion, and finally what convinces Seungcheol they’ve come far enough. There was never any hope of reaching the summit anyway, not without some actual climbing gear, and they’re already high up enough to see all there is to see.
Shading his eyes, Jihoon scans the horizon, his eye catching on nothing. Nothing at all.
There isn’t a single speck or landmass to be seen, just the enormity of blue ocean stretching out before him, a blunt penetrating force on the mind. He suspects if he stares at it long enough he’ll forget what other colours look like.
Easing himself down to sit on a rock, Jihoon lets his weary gaze wander down to the river that can be seen below, picking up the slow and steady rumble of the waterfall Seungcheol had shown him earlier.
“You seem disappointed.” Seungcheol says, looking at him askance. “Were you expecting to find something else?”
Jihoon regards him for a moment and then sighs.
“Honestly? I was hoping we’d stumble across a luxury beach resort, and realise that we’d just been languishing in the tourist free, conservation side of the island.”
Seungcheol uncaps a bottle of water he’d had the foresight to bring and takes a long swig before handing it over.
“I know what you mean. I was hoping to see Amelia Earhart’s plane when I first climbed up here. That would have been cool.”
Jihoon exhales, and it nearly sounds like a laugh.
Sometimes talking to Seungcheol feels like navigating a maze that changes with each turn you take. You just never know what he’s going to say next.
“What were those pills you gave me earlier?”
Seungcheol pauses, startled into concern.
“Ibuprofen. Why? You feeling funny?
“Yeah, I feel like I just had a very vivid hallucination where you admitted to being a giant nerd. Amelia Earhart? Seriously?”
Seungcheol scoffs.
“Hey, nobody knows what happened to her. She vanished into thin air and they’ve never been able to find any definitive trace of her or her plane. It’s like, one of the most fascinating unsolved mysteries. A guy’s gotta have hobbies outside of maiming and killing.”
“Oh wow, it’s happening again.” Jihoon says drily.
Seungcheol stares at him sullenly for several seconds before he huffs, “Alright. Tour’s over. I’m going fishing, you can find your own way back to camp you judgemental little dick.”
Jihoon straightens up at that, withholding a wince from the pressure it puts on his side. As much as it pains him to admit, he doesn’t think he’ll make it back to his hammock unassisted.
“You know, I’ve always thought the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle were far more mysterious.”
As stalling tactics go, it’s pretty obvious, but Seungcheol’s back at his side in a flash, gesturing animatedly.
“I have a theory on that actually. It might sound a little far fetched at first, but just picture this— a giant, alien squid.”
Again, Jihoon almost laughs aloud, except Seungcheol sounds deadly serious. Worse, he looks deadly serious too. Almost endearingly so.
“Okay, I’m picturing it. Where did the giant alien squid come from?”
He startles when Seungcheol’s hand settles at the small of his back, steering him firmly back the way they came. “From space obviously. But that’s not even the best part. It’s got it’s own field of gravity.”
DAY 13
Jihoon has no idea what he should be doing here.
If the Bureau has a Standard Operating Procedure in place, to direct him on what to do in the extremely unlikely event he crash lands on a deserted island with a highly dangerous criminal, he’s never read it.
Other than sit tight and wait for rescue (and keep an eye on Seungcheol in case he somehow succeeds in building a raft and rowing away) he’s at a loss.
It certainly doesn’t help that Seungcheol doesn’t see himself as a prisoner, and thus fails to subscribe to any of the typical prisoner behaviours one would expect. Sure, he might fashion himself a wicked looking knife out of scrap metal and leather, spend an hour sharpening it while he stares menacingly into the middle distance, but then he’ll go use that knife to make Jihoon a parasol out of palm tree fronds and insist he sit under it because—
“No offence, but you’re paler than a daikon radish. Until we get our hands on some sun block, you need to stay in the shade. In fact, here, take my shirt.”
It seems stupid to stay on your toes around a guy who is literally prepared to give you the shirt off his back. Who seems to be treating this whole surreal life or death experience like some kind of tropical island adventure, living his best life each and every day, not the least bit daunted by the idea that rescue may never come.
It’s a reckless sort of positivity that could start to grate on you after a while, Jihoon thinks, if he lets it. Instead he allows himself to adopt a similar mind-set, looking for ways to keep himself busy and useful, and most importantly, sane.
“You got any clothes that need washing? I’m doing laundry.”
A flash of startlement crosses Seungcheol’s face. He drops the coconut he was inspecting to squint over at Jihoon, like he’s not sure he heard that right.
“Dude, usually people in this situation would hallucinate a ship on the horizon, or an all-you-can-eat buffet. If you’re hallucinating a laundromat I’m genuinely concerned about your mental health, and your priorities.”
Jihoon flicks his eyes up at the Alpha, aware he’s taking the piss, but unfamiliar with him enough to still be a little hesitant.
“I’m not losing it, okay. I was just going to use one of those little soap bars we salvaged to wash my stuff in the river. It’s important we keep our clothes clean.”
Seungcheol offers up one of those trademark smirks of his, that always seem to be open to interpretation. If you want to see amusement, you can. If you want to see derision, that works too.
“Why? So we’re photograph ready when rescue comes? No, it’s okay, I get it. Can’t have anyone thinking we were slumming it on this deserted island.”
“We shouldn’t let basic hygiene slide just cause we’re stuck here.” Jihoon argues. “It’s not good for morale. We’re not cave men. We’re humans. Only an animal would walk around in sweaty, filthy clothes.”
“What animals have you seen walking around in clothes? I must have been sleeping when that happened.”
The first comeback that spears through Jihoon’s mind—‘I’m not used to slumming it like you. I have hygiene standards’—has to be swallowed back from the tip of his tongue, because he’s actually not sure it’s true.
The guy still manages to shave every other morning, and he’s done a remarkable job of keeping his jumpsuit clean. A life on the run has clearly made him resourceful.
Instead, he asks caustically, “Doesn’t it bother you that you don’t have clean clothes to wear? Cause it bothers me. A lot. I like to stay clean, and it’s hard to do that with only one change of clothes under these circumstances.”
The Alpha snorts lightly and nods.
“Well, you could have had more clothes to wear if you were more open minded—”
“No.” Jihoon interjects firmly. They’ve already been through this. “I refuse to wear a dead man’s clothes. It’s deplorable.”
The other man grins easily, and drawls, “You know, somehow I don’t think they’ll mind.”
Blowing out a frustrated breath, Jihoon turns away to look out at the sea, eyes squinting in the late angled sun.
He didn’t expect Seungcheol to understand, and of course he doesn’t. He’s probably the type of guy who would pull things back out of the laundry hamper than put on a wash. Or worse, voluntarily wear the same pair of underwear two days in a row. Disgusting.
“What are you planning on doing while you wait for your clothes to dry?” The Alpha asks then, snagging his attention.
Jihoon scowls a bit. He hates to admit he hadn’t really thought that far.
“I was just gonna sit around and wait. It can’t take them long to dry in this weather.”
Seungcheol’s eyebrow lifts.
“You mean you were gonna sit around, in the nude?” He tsks. “Some might call that deplorable.”
“I was gonna cover myself in palm tree fronds.” Jihoon mutters, feeling himself blush.
“Like a cave person? Really?”
Jihoon sighs and throws out a hand. “Fine, okay, yes. You made your point. I’ll take whatever spare clothes you have.”
The man grins and waves him over to the stash of clothing he’d pinched off their deceased travel companions.
It’s not much. Two shirts, two undershirts, and two pairs of pants that have been cut off at the knee because Seungcheol clearly couldn’t be bothered with rolling the leg up. There’s still spots of dried blood on all of it, which Jihoon really hopes will come off with a good scrub. If they don’t—he supposes desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Here, take this too,” Seungcheol says then, stopping him as he stoops down to gather the bundle in his arms.
Jihoon looks up at him curiously, just in time to watch him unzip the front of his jumpsuit, letting the sides hang open as he pulls off the t-shirt underneath, and, just—
Goddamn.
Jihoon’s mind hits a wall at a frantic speed, eyes dancing frantically from Seungcheol’s well defined abs, to his wonderfully broad shoulders, to the biceps tanned so dark his white T-shirt practically glows. His mouth pops open slightly, something he’s pretty sure should only happen in stories but is most definitely happening now because he was totally unprepared for how arousing this entire spectacle was gonna be.
It feels like he’s in heat, though he knows that can’t be possible, not with a three-monthly dose of suppressants still coursing through his system.
“What?” Seungcheol says then, sounding concerned enough to snap him out if it. “You’re the one who asked if I had stuff that needed washing. You changed your mind now?”
Jihoon shakes his head to rid himself of the image, his shoulders high and tense. “Yeah, no, that’s fine. Hand it over.”
He scurries away before Seungcheol can mistake the blush on his cheeks for anything other than sunburn, and stays away until he’s sure he can look at the guy without wanting to skate an open hand over his chiselled torso, find out if it’s just as firm and warm as it looks.
DAY 16
Over the course of the rest of the week, Jihoon goes about his days as if there isn’t a countdown to his time here.
He fetches, he forages, he fishes. He learns how to build a fire, how to dry fruit so he has enough food for three days, not just one. He does laundry, and he wears a dead’s man clothes while doing it. Perhaps most significantly, he stops patroling the beach on the look out for ships.
It’s hard at first, accepting rescue isn’t around the corner. He's not used to not knowing what comes next, having so much unregimented time on his hands, but waiting around for something he’s not sure will ever come makes the hours pass very slowly.
“What’s that you’re doing?” Seungcheol asks, coming to loom large over him, blocking the sunlight.
Jihoon looks up from the task at hand and finds the Alpha smiling a little bit. Not unkindly, but conspiratorial enough to make him bristle.
He’s probably gonna be a dick about this regardless of what Jihoon tells him. Might as well get the teasing over with.
“I’m just using this grass to weave a little basket, to collect stuff I forage. When I store fruit in my rucksack, it always gets bruised.”
Seungcheol hunkers down close to watch him work, seemingly captivated.
“That’s a nifty little skill. Where’d you learn that?”
It’s not the reaction Jihoon was expecting, and it takes him a stunned second to orientate himself, find the words.
“Oh, uhm, my roommate in college. He was really into his arts and craft, and he was good enough to teach me the basics. He had this pretty lucrative side business selling handmade shit online, but for me it was mostly a therapeutic way to kill time.”
A grin spreads slowly across Seungcheol’s face, knowing and secret, though it’s solely directed at the basket in Jihoon’s hands for now.
“Arts and crafts huh? That’s wild. Weren’t there any frat parties and beer pong at your college, or was that kinda shit not cool anymore?’
Jihoon shakes his head, the corner of his mouth twisting up in a reluctant smile.
“I wasn’t really one for parties in college.” He says, weaving another length of straw through.
He doesn’t say that he tried to rush for a few, and got turned down for every one, even the Omega-only frats that were supposed to admit everyone.
Jihoon didn’t drink enough or party loudly enough to be a part of any in-crowd, especially during his first year, when he was still struggling to understand how he was supposed to study and eat and sleep and attend parties without any of these activities impeding the others.
For the same reasons, he didn’t make many friends. Even the roommate he shared a room with him for two semesters didn’t really acknowledge his existence outside the dorms.
It sucked, but sometimes it felt like it was easier to be alone than to reach out and realise nobody was interested in reaching back.
In the end, he had graduated with a distinction, a mountain of student debt and a feeling that he hadn’t left a single impression on anyone. To have Seungcheol’s undivided attention on him now—a hand, finally, tentatively reaching out—is more than a little unnerving.
He searches for a point of conversation, something to pull him from his small, self-destructive thoughts.
“I can show you, if you like.” He gestures with the basket. “It’s not so difficult.”
Seungcheol blinks at him in surprise, then bobs his head gamely and sits down next to Jihoon, in the sprawling way he has that brings their legs and elbows in close proximity
Jihoon plucks a few long blades from the patch of drying grass next to them and shows him how to get started; crossing them together and weaving a longer piece around the centre.
Seungcheol tries to follow his lead, but his attempts are clumsy at best. He keeps pulling too tight and snapping the strands, forcing him to start over. He keeps at it though, stays patient, happy to learn. Doesn’t lose his shit and stomp the basket into the sand like you’d expect.
Jihoon’s monitoring his progress so intently, he doesn’t realise he’s been asked a question until the Alpha pauses to look at him, eyes bright and searching, dark brows faintly furrowed.
“Huh?”
“I was just asking, what made you decide on a career in Special investigations?”
Jihoon shrugs, resisting the urge to fidget.
“Oh, you know, the usual. Good salary, good pension, steady progression. And I suppose I wanted a career that would get me out of my comfort zone. I wanted a challenge.”
Seungcheol tilts his head to the side as though he were thinking, as though he is rifling through a mental box of questions, careful to select the right one, and speaks again.
“You must have wanted it pretty bad. The acceptance rate of Omegas at special Investigations is around point five percent. You would had more than a few obstacles thrown your way.”
There isn’t any real recrimination in it, just a statement of fact. Jihoon averts his gaze all the same, feeling uncomfortably warm, as if caught and seen.
“It’s a two percent acceptance rate actually. Things have improved; equal opportunities and all that.”
Seungcheol’s mouth cracks into a soft smile and he releases a small breath of laughter. He turns his sloppily constructed basket in the palm of his hand.
“So my stats are a little out of date, still, you must have made quite the impression to get accepted. A poster boy for those Bureau recruitment campaigns I’ll bet.”
Jihoon has never known how to take a compliment, so he tries for a nonchalant shrug
He doesn’t think any of his superiors would agree with that flattering assessment either. He had a reputation for being too ambitious and uncompromising, and for being “something of a competitive asshole”. Qualities that would have otherwise seen an Alpha soar through the ranks, left him to stagnate.
“I ruffled a few feathers more than anything. It didn’t do me any favours in the long run.”
Seungcheol narrows his eyes, thoughtful, then gives Jihoon a companionable little nudge.
“Their loss.”
It’s not true, almost absurdly so, but Seungcheol’s smiling and Jihoon can’t help but smile back.
“What about you?” He asks, earning himself another narrow-eyed stare, until he adds, “What made you decide on a career in international criminality?”
Seungcheol shrugs the question off affably.
“Oh, you know, the usual. Good salary, good pension, steady progression. And I suppose I wanted a career that would get me out of my comfort zone. I wanted a challenge.” He says, parroting Jihoon word for word, with a cheeky smirk thrown in for originality.
He then proceeds to change the topic entirely by producing two large clamshells out of his pocket, and asking whether they could use them to fashion a ‘mermaid bra’.
Jihoon can’t recall how he answered that, but he recalls wondering, with an idle curiosity he knows better than to presume will ever be answered, if the goofy persona is all just an act, to trick him into letting his guard down, or if this is how Seungcheol truly behaves in private. Like a giant, hyperactive moron.
DAY 24
Jihoon expected one of them to be dead by now, if he’s being completely honest.
He expected they’d be at each other’s necks all the time about stuff, like how to split their supplies and who’s turn it is to fill up their water bottles. He expected Seungcheol to bully him into doing the menial jobs he didn’t feel like doing, use his superior strength to declare himself King of the island, and for the resulting fallout to culminate in some kind of Lord of the Flies standoff, complete with conches and tribal dances around a fire, and one of them decapitating the other with the emergency crash axe.
But none of that happens because Seungcheol is weird. He’s literally the weirdest Alpha Jihoon has ever met.
They argue about lots of dumb shit, sure, but Seungcheol’s always quick to back down when he sees how distressed Jihoon is becoming, which is almost as weird as the strange compromising sort of attitude he has about everything. Quid pro quo, or whatever. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Oldest fucking currency in the world.
He'll haul water from the river if Jihoon agrees to boil it. He’ll collect wood for the fire if Jihoon does it the next day. He’ll share his catch of fish and salt-water crab if Jihoon helps him cook it. And if Jihoon’s moving a little slow on a particular day, because his side is bothering him, or because it’s too warm and he hasn’t slept well, he’ll do it all himself. No questions asked. No scores kept.
Under different circumstances, Jihoon might have been tempted to think of these gestures as friendly overtures, maybe, if Seungcheol was the kind of guy who wanted to be friends with him, or if indeed he himself still believed in such luxuries as friends and friendship. But it would be naive to simplify their relationship into such terms.
What they have is more symbiotic than intentional. They comprise because they need each other, to survive. To stay sane.
The things they can’t reach a compromise over, they settle with a civil game of cards. Rummy, poker, war, go-fish. It tends to go in Seungcheol’s favour more often than not, because the guy’s obviously an expert card sharp, while Jihoon possesses no poker face whatsoever.
Even then though, Seungcheol’s still unexpectedly accommodating.
“You can keep those. I’m not much of a coffee drinker.” He says, collecting his bounty of scavenged provisions but leaving behind the freeze-dried coffee and creamer sachets.
Jihoon crosses his arms over his chest, the line of his body tensing like it does when Seungcheol does something unexpected.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And you might as well have some of these soap bars too. I don’t need them all.” The Alpha goes on, tossing a couple of the bars down.
Even though Jihoon’s learnt not to question these seemingly random acts of kindness, he can’t help but ask this time, “Are you sure? I mean, you won them fair and square. I won’t be mad if you want to keep them.”
Seungcheol raises his eyebrows as he gathers the cards into a neat pile. “Funny you should say that now, when you accused me of cheating not even five minutes ago.”
Jihoon gives a little shrug, stiff with resentment, and looks down at a tiny rip on the leg of his shorts.
“I was just pissed that I was losing. I know you don’t have to really cheat to win. I’ve always been shit at poker.”
Seungcheol flashes him a smile, then tosses over a few more items his way—suncream, lip balm, and two plastic wrapped toothbrushes with miniature toothpastes.
“How mature of you to admit it. Just for that, you can have those too. I still have plenty from our last game.”
Jihoon laughs and shakes his head, delighted and frustrated in equal measure.
“I feel the need to point out the futility of playing cards for stuff when you just end up giving me half your winnings anyway. I mean, most of this stuff is what I wanted—we could have saved a lot of time if you just let me have it in the first place.”
Seungcheol leans back, gesturing vaguely as he begins to shuffle. He takes the ritual far too seriously for someone who all too often refuses to abide by the rules.
“Where’s the fun in that? Besides, if we never played cards, I wouldn’t get the chance to show off my superior poker skills.”
Jihoon smiles faintly, watching his hands, how he splits the deck and shuffles them back together again, so fast it’s impossible to keep track. An idea lights up in his head; like most moments of insight, he speaks before he examines it further.
“I think you just want to save face. So can can pretend you’re more of a selfish jerk than you actually are.”
Seungcheol falls quiet then, hands stilling mid deal, the patter they’ve established dissolved, the atmosphere suddenly tense.
He hadn’t been expecting that, or maybe he had. Maybe he was just waiting for Jihoon to get comfortable around him and slip up.
Jihoon certainly feels like he’s missed a step here, dropping down into dangerous unknown territory, and that’s even before Seungcheol smirks at him, liquid and slow and dirty as anything directed at Jihoon in his life.
“You think you got me all figured out huh?” he says archly. “You think cause I’m smart enough to keep you sweet, I’m actually a really nice guy deep down, and the whole killer for hire thing—that’s just a big misunderstanding?”
Jihoon feels a wild kickback in his gut, same as the recoil from a fired gun.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Seungcheol says, that smile still hanging in the air like a mocking threat. “Cause I had you pegged as a smart guy Jihoon, and that would be a fucking juvenile way of judging another person. Dangerous even. I sure hope the Bureau teaches you to profile targets better than that.”
Jihoon feels the knot in his stomach tighten, but bites back, “The Bureau taught me jack shit about profiling. I follow my gut instinct.”
“And what does your gut instinct say about me?” Seungcheol asks, in that curious tone that makes it sound like Jihoon is a puzzle that confuses him, but that he’s not given up on solving.
“I already told you.” Jihoon snaps, equal parts unsure of himself and irritated with the Alpha. “And now it’s telling me you’re trying to intimidate me cause I was probably right, or close enough to the truth that you’re feeling threatened.”
Seungcheol redirects his eyes to the fire and nods his way through that. His face is closed off, the humour gone.
He doesn’t look particularly upset or impatient with this assessment of things, just thoughtful.
Eventually he says, “How can you be so sure you’re not just developing Stockholm syndrome?”
A prickle of discomfort registers as Jihoon tries to work out the guy’s angle.
“Because our circumstances are wildly different to any case of Stockholm Syndrome on record. The situation just doesn’t fit; you’re not my captor, and I’m not your hostage. Besides, I’m not feeling particularly sympathetic towards you. In fact, right now, I’m strongly resisting the urge to punch you in the face, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fucking patronise me.”
Seungcheol is giving him that look again, the one he usually follows up with a shake of his head and the sudden announcement he’s going for a swim.
‘One of us needs to cool down, and I don’t suspect you’ll be volunteering.’
Except it’s too late, the sunlight already dying around them, so he just tosses the cards down and lies back, arms crossed behind his head.
“Whatever makes you sleep easy at night Pigeon.”
Despite the heat coming from the flames and the ambient warmth of the late summer night, Jihoon feels almost chilled. Exposed.
When the silence between them stretches on, conversation clearly over, he collects his pilfered winnings and makes his way over to his hammock, trying to shake the impression that Seungcheol’s eyes are following him.
DAY 32
It’s been raining for a week now.
Raining quite literally non-stop.
Jihoon couldn’t find it in him to mind at first; rain was a pleasant change from the constant sweltering heat they’d had to slog through, but when everything is wet, all the time, it starts to grate on you a little.
It’s worse at night, keeps him awake for hours even though the patter on the tarpaulin drowns out the eerie jungle noises – the jittering, chattering, skittering of strange animals, the rustling of things in the undergrowth, and the occasional rumble of thunder in the distance. It also covers the sound of anyone moving around camp, rifling through his things—which is why he’s quick to point an accusing finger when he wakes up one morning and finds his wristwatch is missing.
“Give it back.”
Seungcheol cracks his eyes open and squints up at him. He doesn’t say anything for a beat, his face drawn with casual annoyance.
“Excuse me? Give what back?”
Jihoon fixes him with a plaintive glare.
“Don’t play dumb, Seungcheol, I know you took my watch. Just give it back now and we won’t have a problem.”
“I didn’t take your watch. I haven’t moved from this spot since last night.” Seungcheol answers, rolling his shoulders, twisting up to make his back crack.
He doesn’t seem to appreciate the urgency of the situation.
It’s annoying as fuck.
“Well then who else could have taken it?”
Seungcheol yawns wide, stretching his arms above his head. When he folds them against his chest, he asks, “Have you ever watched that TV show Lost?”
Jihoon, briefly derailed by that non sequitur, can only speak honestly.
“Uhm, yeah, actually. The one where those Americans crash-land on a deserted island and unexplainable events start happening all around them, but then it turns out they’ve been in limbo the entire time because JJ Abrams wrote the script as he went along?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Seungcheol grins. “Great show. I didn’t know about the limbo thing though—I stopped watching after season 2.”
“I think everyone did.” Jihoon drawls.
“Okay but, remember in the first season, when the pilot gets killed by some invisible force, but then you see it in season two, and it’s like this black, smoky cloud?”
Jihoon narrows his eyes as he considers where this conversation is going. He can’t tell if the guy’s fucking with him or not.
“Are you trying to say the smoke monster stole my watch?”
Seungcheol’s brows beetle together.
“What? No. I was just wondering what the deal was with that. Were the origins of the smoke monster ever explained? Why did it kill the captain and leave the others alone? I need to know; it’s been eating away at me since we crashed on this island.”
A muscle in Jihoon’s face twitches involuntarily
Yeah, he’s definitely fucking with me—he concludes, overcome suddenly with a stifling rage that keeps him still and silent, hands in white-knuckled fists.
“Seungcheol, if you don’t give me back my watch in the next ten seconds, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.” He says through gritted teeth, something wild and unwieldy beginning to rise up in him.
But Seungcheol just cuts him a glance from out the corner of his eye, and says, sounding as unbothered as always, “Jihoon, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’ve got Jungle fever.”
Jihoon’s eye starts to twitch.
“Jungle fever?”
Seungcheol waves a hand. “Yeah, you know—when a person becomes unexpectedly moody and irritable from being cooped up in the same place for so long?”
“That’s cabin fever you idiot!” Jihoon snarls, and then lunges at him.
He does that. He lunges at Choi fucking Seungcheol.
It’s crazy.
The craziest thing he’s ever done.
He’s acting like a crazy person, he’s dimly aware of this, but he can’t help it. He’s fuming and Seungcheol’s the only one around to take it out on.
Unfortunately for him, there’s a significant size difference to contend with here, not to mention superior combat skills, so Seungcheol has no problem countering his moves and using his sheer strength to over power him.
In less than five seconds, Jihoon finds himself pinned face down in the wet sand, his side aching, anxiety welling up with each laboured breath. He tries to push himself back up, but Seungcheol presses a knee against the back of his thigh, applying pressure without aggravating his wound. Careful and considerate, even now.
“Look, I get it alright. You’ve survived a plane crash, you nearly died of your injuries, and you’re stuck on an Island with the last guy you’d wanna be stuck on an Island with. I’d be pissed off too—but you can’t accuse me of doing shit I didn’t do.”
Jihoon shakes his head roughly, his eyesight hazing.
“I want my watch.”
Seungcheol leans over him, hand coming down to cover the nape of his neck, heavy and hot, the way you might try and calm a wild animal.
“I get it, I hear you, but I don’t know where your fucking watch is. I don’t recall you even wearing a watch.”
“You’re lying.” Jihoon croaks, a thing that is more a whisper than anything else. “I’ve been wearing it the whole time. I always keep it with me. I keep it tucked under my jacket when I sleep.”
The Alpha’s hand tightens, briefly, on the back of his neck; testing his grip, or considering the delicacy of his neck. How easily it would break.
It’s hard to say which, but Seungcheol sounds oddly subdued when he asks, “Why is it so important to you?”
“It was...it was my father’s.” Jihoon says, his voice cracked and warbling with the grief. He his eyes shut tight, willing himself not to fucking cry right now, not after everything else.
Above him, Seungcheol sighs and shifts position, not lifting off entirely, but easing the pressure a little.
“Is he not...around anymore? Is that it? It that why it’s so special to you?”
Jihoon draws in a shuddering breath and nods, cheek scraping against the damp sand. He focuses on breathing for a moment, trying to slow the frenzied race of his heartbeat.
Seungcheol’s gone quiet behind him, but Jihoon can feel his gaze fixed intently on the side of his face, thumb drawing small circles under his ear.
“What happened to him?” he asks, once Jihoon’s breathing begins to soften and level out, his tone almost soft. Encouraging.
“Cancer.” Jihoon answers simply, voice gone low and gravelly in his throat. “It was cancer.”
There’s another quiet sigh, before the Alpha’s leaning down to rest his forehead against the back of Jihoon’s neck.
It’s a patient, near tender thing. More tender than he probably deserves. Jihoon feels suddenly warmer, despite the wet earth soaking through his clothes.
“I’m sorry man. That’s sucks. But I didn’t take your watch. I swear. I will help you find it though. We’ll look for it together, okay?”
Jihoon nods, blinking his eyes back open, and lifts his head long enough to get a look out at the forest beyond the tarp.
It’s stopped raining.
DAY 36
Jihoon’s always been a worse case scenario kind of guy.
Ever since he was little he’d over analyse things, worry about things he didn’t have to and picture increasingly unlikely situations that would leave him wide awake at night, his mind ticking. He’s tried to curb that habit several times over the years, but it always rears it’s ugly head in particularly stressful situations, and crash-landing on a deserted island is definitely on that level.
What if we run out of food before rescue comes? What if we run out of water? What if rescue never comes?
These are the thoughts that plague him each moment of the day, eating away at him.
Seungcheol has been doing a damn good job of wallpapering over their circumstances—catching fish, picking fruit and improving their shelter—but each achievement still spells out F-U-T-I-L-E clear as day, and that only becomes more apparent when they find the second plane.
“Aw fuck. This is just fucking fantastic. I can’t believe this shit.” Jihoon snarls, ripping his backpack off and hurling it at the nearest tree in a fit of helplessness.
Seungcheol stops clearing the vines away with the axe to look at him.
“Looks like someone needs to get down to McDonald’s and buy themselves a happy meal.”
Thoughts of impending doom, of what could come if they never make it off this Godforsaken island, tires Jihoon enough that he doesn’t snap at Seungcheol’s droll tone. He merely turns his head to give the Alpha a wordless look out of the corner of his eye.
“What’s there to be happy about exactly? Finding out another plane crashed here and that nobody found it does not bode well for us Seungcheol.”
Seungcheol gives an easy shrug, unfairly composed, or merely better at hiding his mounting dread.
“Maybe not, but we can raid it for supplies. You never know, it might even have a working radio.”
He hefts his axe again and continues slicing away at the thick vegetation that is attempting to swallow the plane whole.
Jihoon watches him for a moment, before stepping over to help.
The plane does not have a working radio, no surprises there. In fact, it has very little in the realm of salvageable anything, even though it still sits largely intact, only it’s right wing and the tip of its tail lost in its decent.
Even in the cockpit large chunks of equipment have been removed; it’s hard to say what, exactly. Jihoon flicks a few switches anyway, out of habit, unsurprised when nothing flickers to life.
Making his way through the galley, he tries to think back on all those Air crash Investigation documentaries he’d binged once, in hope of maybe matching one of them up with the faded logo he can barely make out on the filth encrusted napkins and utensils, but his mind keeps drawing a blank.
All he knows is, whatever happened to this plane to make it crash, it happened a long time ago, and at a low enough altitude for the pilot to attempt an emergency landing. Which begs the question—
“Where are the bodies?”
Seungcheol remains unnervingly calm as he flicks through a very old, very tattered magazine that caught his eye. He even has the gall to sound wry as he says, “It has been here for some time Jihoon. Decomposition doesn’t take that long when a body is exposed to this level of humidity. Trust me, I would know.”
Jihoon fixes him with a flat look.
“Yeah, but—shouldn’t there be like...bones or something? Bones take longer to decompose, and this can’t have happened more than a decade ago.”
“So an animal moved them. That’s hardly surprising.”
“Or, maybe someone else did.”
Seungcheol notices his tone, and drops the magazine to cut his eyes towards him.
“What are you getting at exactly?”
Jihoon shrugs. “I dunno. Just that...maybe someone survived this crash, and moved the bodies. That maybe we’re not as alone here as we thought we were.”
A slow, easy smirk spreads over Seungcheol’s features.
“Ooh, spooky.” He hums thoughtfully, tapping his lips before snapping and pointing at him, “Oh shit. Do you think whoever it was, saw us crash here, and has been following us around everywhere? Staying just out of sight. Watching us when we poop?”
Jihoon grimaces at the thought.
“No, but now I am.”
They head back to camp empty handed for once, the sun setting fast behind them, though that doesn’t stop Seungcheol from wasting what precious time they have. He keeps stopping every few minutes to look around and whisper shit like ‘Did you hear that?’ and, ‘Please hold my hand, I’m scared’, and ‘I can’t shake this feeling we’re being followed.’
If he wasn’t wearing that trademark shit eating grin each time, Jihoon might’ve fallen for it. As it stands, he’s just pissed off enough to thump him in the shoulder and storm off.
“Hey, would you lighten up.” Seungcheol calls after him, jogging to catch up. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about. I think you’re forgetting the most dangerous thing on this island is me, and you know I won’t lay a finger on you.”
Jihoon feels himself smiling at the thought, a knee-jerk reaction that he can’t rightly explain. He keeps walking, until a firm hand at his elbow bids him to stop.
“Look, if somebody did survive that crash, they’re long dead now. I haven’t seen any recent signs of human life.”
That piques Jihoon’s interest enough to bring an abrupt end to his tantrum. He spins to give the Alpha an inquiring look.
“Wait, so what you’re saying is, you’ve seen some old signs?”
Seungcheol rubs at the back of his head, a hesitant look in his eyes.
“I didn’t really want to say anything before I was sure, but, yeah. I’ve noticed a few things.” He looks far-off to the side, not lost but momentarily deserted in a place Jihoon can’t picture. “You know that SOS signal I laid out on the beach? Well, I can’t really take credit for it. Most of those rocks were already there, in the right place, they’d just gotten covered in sand.”
Jihoon takes a step back, processing that, turning it over and over in his mind like a rubix cube. A plausible explanation has barely started to take shape, before Seungcheol chimes in with:
“Oh, and I also found a tattered looking rucksack hanging from a tree a few days ago. It had some dude’s private journal inside.”
Jihoon eyeballs him so hard he feels his neck twinge.
“Oh my God—are you fucking kidding me? You found a fucking diary and you’re just telling me about it now. Where? Where the fuck is it?”
Seungcheol shrugs dispassionately.
“I left it where I found it.” He holds a low-hanging branch aside for Jihoon before adding. “I didn’t think it would be useful.”
“You didn’t think it would be useful?” Jihoon echoes in a fraught whisper. He can’t believe what he’s hearing. “How could you possibly have come to that conclusion?”
“I dunno. You were giving me the cold shoulder when I found it, and I didn’t want to bother you. It was just a journal full of the ramblings of a lonely man.”
“A man who lived on this island!” Jihoon intones, stepping closer and bringing his hands up as if to shake some sense into the other man. “Who probably documented his life here, who might have alluded to the location of this hell hole. It might have contained some information crucial to our survival.”
Seungcheol waves him off, like he’s being dramatic.
“I dunno about that. I had a flick through it, and it was mostly a lot of ‘Dear Diary, I’m sick of eating mangoes and I really miss my mommy. P.S, it’s really hot out today’.”
Jihoon pinches his temples between thumb and forefinger.
“Not everything has to have a practical application to be useful, Seungcheol. Please tell me you are least remember where you found it.”
DAY 39
The journal belongs to a man who identifies himself as Hansol.
He shares very little about himself, expect for the fact that he’s an engineer and avid outdoorsman, and that he marooned his sail boat near the island in 1998.
In Seungcheol’s defence, approximately two thirds of the entries are dedicated to how lonely he is, and how much he hates mangoes, though Jihoon supposes that can’t be blamed.
The rest of the book is filled with page after page of drawings— trees and leaves and undergrowth, herbs and plants and landmarks all sketched out in black ballpoint ink. The tissue-thin paper has ripped and smeared in the jungle damp, but a lot of it is still legible enough to actually be useful, and Jihoon is determined to make use of it every chance he gets.
“According to Hansol, those mushrooms you foraged earlier are hallucinogenic.” He shares aloud one evening, after he’s deciphered some of the writing.
“Awesome. I know what I’ll be doing later.”
“And according to these maps, Hansol thinks we’re somewhere in the Pacific ocean.”
Seungcheol makes an amused sound low in his chest. “Great. That really narrows it down. Thanks Hansol.”
Jihoon rolls his eyes and turns the page to the next set of notes he’s made.
“Oh, here’s something you might find interesting. Hansol says those red berries we’ve been avoiding have antiseptic properties. We can mash them into a paste and smear them over a wound to prevent infection.”
Seungcheol whistles low and thoughtful. “That’s... rough. Poor guy must have been in a pretty desperate situation to figure that one out.”
Jihoon looks up from his notes, his cheerful mood evaporating with that sudden, sobering assessment of the situation.
Poor guy indeed.
As difficult as this ordeal has been for him, it must have been a hundred times worse for Hansol, who seems to have spent years here, lost and alone with nothing but an ocean to yell at and a journal to air his grievances to.
Just thinking about what he must have gone though makes Jihoon’s chest contract and his head pound, and he looks away at the crackle of the fire for the sake of his pulse.
“We should...we should leave some food out for him.”
Across the fire, Seungcheol snorts indelicately, then replies, in an entirely deadpan manner.
“You’re funny Jihoon. You’re such a funny guy. How are you so funny?”
“What, I’m being serious.” Jihoon frowns. “I want to leave food out for him so he knows we’re safe to approach.”
Seungcheol laughs a little, off-key. “Sure, let’s do that, and while we’re at it, why don’t we slaughter a goat and leave it near the shrine we build for the jungle gods.”
Jihoon throws a hand up, “Alright dickhead, can you stop being sarcastic for ten seconds and just explain why you’re objecting to my idea? What’s wrong with leaving some food out for Hansol.”
Seungcheol sighs, loudly and theatrically.
“Well for starters, we don’t have that much food to spare. Leaving food out for someone else will mean one of us gets less, and it might even attract some unwanted attention from animals. And secondly, I don’t think the guy even needs our food, cause he’s clearly dead as a fucking doornail.”
Jihoon’s brains short-circuits for a second, his face a comic portrait of surprise. The second stretches into a lengthier measure of time. His face must’ve done something else—his face is always doing things he doesn’t want it to—because Seungcheol snickers at him.
“Aww, look at you. Getting all misty-eyed over the death of some stranger you’ve never met. That’s fucking adorable man. You’ve got a real heart of gold under all that spiciness, huh.”
It’s the same old argument, same teasing tone Jihoon’s heard a hundred times before—but anger and defensiveness prickle at him anyway, and he doesn’t care for either.
“It’s called having empathy, asshole. Though I suppose I shouldn’t expect a murderous psychopath like you to understand.”
He regrets his words immediately, especially when the line of Seungcheol’s mouth turns down on one side and wavers.
“Woah, hey. Let’s dial it back a bit judgey judgerson. Just cause I kill people for a living doesn’t make me an unfeeling sociopath.”
When Jihoon interrupts him with a disbelieving laugh, he frowns, taking another vicious bite of his dinner.
“Fine, don’t believe me, but it’s true. I don’t just go around killing people indiscriminately. I have a strict honour code I live by. It’s why I spared you.”
Jihoon lowers the book; humour foregone, his curiosity taking the helm. His irritation too.
“What did you just say?’
Seungcheol pauses mid chew to blink up at him. He says, a tad blankly, “Nothing to get your feathers in a ruffle Pigeon, that’s for fucking sure.”
Tossing the journal aside, Jihoon pushes to his feet and stalks over to stare him down with narrowed eyes.
“You just said you spared me. Why?”
The question sobers Seungcheol, amusement falling into pinched confusion. It’s exactly the reaction Jihoon wants. Something inside him wants to push Seungcheol, wants him to push back. Maybe he’s gotten bored. He doesn’t truly know or understand his own motivations.
“I have a multitude of reasons I’d prefer not to disclose,” Seungcheol says, eyeing his disgust with something like bemusement. His brow crinkles a bit. “Surely you don’t disapprove of me sparing your life.”
“Of course I do.” Jihoon snarls, his mind awhirl. “Why should I be given special dispensation? Is it because you think I’m weaker than you or something? That I’m too small and helpless to pose a threat to a big bad Alpha like you? Is it because I’m an Omega?”
Seungcheol shakes his head, holds up his hands like he thinks Jihoon might hit him, which is a fairly reasonable thing to think.
“Hold on now, I never said anything about that. Don’t put words in my mouth. But—since we’re on the topic, I’ll admit Omegas are kind of a grey area for me. I rarely come across one that poses a threat to me, especially when it comes to face-to-face combat. Call me chivalrous or whatever, but it would be kind of a dick move to target someone who has no hope of defending themselves.”
Jihoon squeezes his hands into fists, biting hard on the inside of his lip.
“Take that back.”
“Or what? You gonna lunge at me again? Remember how well that worked out for you last time?” Seungcheol says, plastering on a cocky, go-ahead-and-try-motherfucker look on his face, his eyes narrowed, his smirk insufferable.
Jihoon had merely been planning to kick some sand in his face and call it a day, but that taunt slides right under his skin, riles him up. He launches himself at Seungcheol without hesitation, intent on redeeming himself.
Unlike last time, Seungcheol doesn’t immediately swat him down like a pesky fly. Worse, he actually lets Jihoon push him to the ground and get in a few punches, laughing all the while like it’s just a game.
It reminds Jihoon of those lions in the nature documentaries he flips on when he can’t sleep. How they'll just sit there while one of the cubs gnaws on their ear and terrorises their tail—lazy, indulgent, all that strength lying in wait, never needed.
The parallels between that image and what’s happening now infuriates him so much he does something stupid. Stupid and reckless. He pulls out the knife tucked in his belt loop and holds it against the Alpha’s throat.
“Still think I’m not a threat?”
Seungcheol’s mouth quirks, but it isn’t a smile, exactly.
“So you managed to outmanoeuvre me. Congratulations. The difference is, you were trying to gain the upper hand, and I was enjoying a friendly tussle.”
He proves his point moment later, disarming Jihoon with a too fast to follow flick of his wrist. The knife goes skidding through the dirt, out of reach, before he clamps his hands around Jihoon’s forearms, dragging him down even closer.
“You see, that’s your problem Jihoon—you’re angry that the system fucked you over, but you’re taking it out on me cause I’m an Alpha, and you’re just assuming I’m like every other Alpha you’ve met. But I didn’t fuck you over. I haven’t even tried. You can’t see the forest for the trees, and it’s going to get you killed.”
Jihoon's stomach clenches, a brief tremor through his thigh, and for one perilous heartbeat he fears where this is headed. But then Seungcheol’s letting him go, hands skidding down to catch him by the hips.
“And for the record, I never said you weren’t a threat. Maybe you’ll never best me physically, but you’re definitely smarter, and emotionally you’ve got me at Defcon 1. Nobody has ever held a knife to my throat and lived to tell the tale. You should feel very fucking privileged.”
Jihoon—pulse still pounding and eyes slitted against the dirt and debris caked onto his face by their ungainly scramble – finds he has absolutely nothing to say. Doubt and confusion have swallowed even his fury.
He can only stare down at the Alpha as he catches his breath, feeling a shivery wave of oh fuck go through his stomach when he notes the highly questionable position they’ve ended up in, the spread of his thighs around Seungcheol’s hips.
It’s a good fit.
They’re a good fit.
Seungcheol’s mouth stretches into a smile, lopsided and pleased, as if he can see straight into Jihoon's head and, as a result, every dumb thing that lives in there.
“As much as I’m enjoying this position, do you think you could let me up? I wanna finish my dinner.”
Jihoon blushes and swallows and scrambles to let him up, resisting the urge to beat a hasty retreat into the forest in favour of grabbing Hansol’s journal and retaking his seat by the fire.
Running away would be an admission of something. Something he’s definitely not ready to admit to.
DAY 44
Jihoon adapts to life on the island in ways he could never have tolerated back in Seoul.
He learns to keep time with the sun, waking when it rises, sleeping when it sets. He adjusts to having just one cup of coffee a day, the long laborious process of preparing it; fetching water, starting a fire, rationing those tiny sachets from the plane so he can keep having it. A man has to find his pleasure somewhere, he figures, even out here. Especially out here.
He gets used to having sand everywhere, in his hair, between his toes, under his fingernails. Even the sound of the surf crashing against the beach stops being a sound at all, just becomes a sort of pressure in his skull.
Seungcheol adapts too, and seems to adapt faster, though Jihoon suspects that’s because he’s always been a man of immensely simple comforts. He seems to be happy as long as he has something to eat and somewhere dry to sleep. Everything else is a bonus.
His latest way of acclimatizing to island life however, is perhaps a step too far.
“That’s an interesting clothing choice you’ve made today. Or should I say, lack of clothing choice.” Jihoon comments after he returns from the river and finds Seungcheol cracking open a coconut, buck naked.
The Alpha doesn’t bat an eye, doesn’t have the decency to look even a little abashed. And why would he? He’s got the body most men would spend years in the gym toiling away for; all tanned skin and corded muscle, an ass you could probably crush soda cans with.
Even soft his cock is thick. Big, and that doesn’t come as a surprise either. When a man struts around like he is packing a prick large enough to bludgeon someone to death with, he better have the merchandise to back it up.
Jihoon sets the bottles of water he’d recently filled down on the large flat rock they use as a table and makes a show of inspecting them so he has something else to look at. After a few minutes, it becomes impossible to ignore Seungcheol standing there, all naked and sweaty and glistening, and he feels compelled to ask:
“Do you plan on getting dressed at all today?”
Seungcheol tilts his head, eyes him like he’s just asked him for a huge favour, completely out of the blue. Are you doing laundry? Can you do mine too? Oh, and file my tax returns while you’re at it.
“No, I don’t actually. I decided I’ve had enough of clothes. They’re too restrictive for life on an island, too confining. Like a cloth prison. It’s time we shed those materialistic shackles and embrace nature.”
Jihoon frowns, still not meeting his eyes.
“What if rescue arrives, and they bring cameras, and the first photograph they capture is you hanging out on the beach...hanging out.”
“I’m okay with that,” Seungcheol says, quite cheerfully. “I don’t get embarrassed about people seeing me naked. I mean...if you were me, would you be ashamed of this body?”
Good point—Jihoon thinks, then following closely on the heels of that thought—cocky bastard!
“But you’re so exposed. What if...what if you come across an animal when you’re out foraging, and it mistakes your low hanging fruit for some...low hanging fruit and tries to... you know...eat it.”
Seungcheol’s mouth cracks into a grin, slightly disbelieving.
“I don’t think there’s any genuine risk of that happening Jihoon, but I appreciate your concern for my private parts. My penis thanks you.”
They lapse into an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the periodic sound of birds chirping in the trees above and water simmering gently over the fire.
Jihoon tries to focus on the task at hand, but as he continues to measure out freshly boiled water into their empty bottles, he is acutely aware of Seungcheol’s massive dick looming in his periphery, and growing acutely irritated by this awareness.
He’s thought about it on and off before, but it hits him square in the face right then, the fact that Seungcheol is actually ridiculously handsome, with the sort of good looks that grow on you until it’s too late, and you can do little but admit that—yeah, I’d let him fuck my brains out.
He squeezes his eyes shut, beating back those thoughts wilfully. It’s been too long. He’s just horny.
“So listen, I’m gonna need you to put on some pants.”
When he finally brings himself to face the Alpha, Seungcheol’s eyes have gone dark—knowing, maybe. A soft start to a laugh leaks from him.
“Seriously dude. Why are you getting so worked up about this?”
“Because you’re but naked Seungcheol! You can’t walk around the island butt naked.”
“Why the hell not?” Seungcheol shoots back, snide. “There’s nobody here. Who cares?”
Jihoon makes a face.
“Uhm, excuse me? I’m here, and I care. Your nudity is making me uncomfortable.”
“Why? How is this any different to seeing other men naked in a jjimjilbang, or the locker room at the gym?”
Jihoon shakes his head, that same angry anxiety he feels around Alphas reasserting itself.
“That’s totally different. Besides, I only use Omega specific jjimjilbang. And I always take my stuff to a private changing cubicle at the gym.”
There’s no response on Seungcheol’s face for a moment, nothing to interpret. He’s just a blank, except for his clever too knowing eyes, scanning through this.
“So your problem isn’t seeing other dudes naked, it’s being around naked Alphas. Is that it?”
That same heat, that same pinned-down seen-through feeling, trickles through Jihoon, but he doesn't even pretend that it isn’t making him angry any more.
“If I say yes, will you put some pants on?”
Seungcheol grins, unbothered.
“No, but I find that very interesting. Let’s unpack that for a second—”
“Let’s not.”
“—Is it because you’ve had bad experiences with Alphas in the past, and you’re getting bad vibes off me? Or are you just one of those new age Omegas who thinks society isn’t changing fast enough for your liking, and you need to take it out on every Alpha you meet.”
“I just want you to put some fucking clothes on.” Jihoon says, biting off the words, but Seungcheol goes on like he hadn’t heard him.
“You know, you really didn’t strike me as the latter. You weren’t nearly stuck up enough. But maybe it was just hard to see with us being trapped on this island and you being so dependant on me for your survival.”
Jihoon shakes his head, quick and unhappy, “Oh shut the fuck up Seungcheol. So you stitched me up and caught a few fish—big fucking whoop. It doesn’t mean I have to tolerate the sight of your fat ass in my face all day long. I’ve been looking after myself since I was fifteen. I do not need you or anyone else to survive this.”
Seungcheol looks taken aback for a moment, on the verge of apologetic, perhaps, until his expression does a complete 180 and he croaks out, “Fat? What do you mean fat? Hey, that’s not nice. My ass isn’t fat.”
Jihoon’s too pissed to hear what he has to say. Grabbing his rucksack and a bottle of water, he gives Seungcheol the middle finger and heads off in a random direction, spends the afternoon having angry conversations inside his head and throwing rocks at slightly larger rocks.
By the time he’s exhausted himself, he’s beginning to realise he’s perhaps blown things out of proportion again.
There was probably a better way to deal with the situation then throwing around insults and storming off. Probably a better way of dealing with Seungcheol in general so that every disagreement between them isn’t destined to feel this way, like a storm in a teacup.
Normally he has a better handle on his emotions around people, but there’s something about Seungcheol in particular that speaks directly to a visceral part of him he keeps carefully locked away. A part that wants to snap and snarl and lash out, just as much as it wants to be coddled and cared for.
When he returns to camp, he’s surprised to find Seungcheol wearing clothes again, looking more or less presentable as he sets a fish to roast over the spit. When he spots Jihoon, he frowns a bit, but budges over to make room by the fire.
Neither of them speak as they sit down to eat, and Jihoon distantly laments the absence of Seungcheol’s usual directionless chatter, as well as the Hawaiian shirt he’s decided to wear.
It should be some kind of crime against nature when a body that fine is covered up in something so hideous.
“For your information, I didn’t put my clothes back on for your sake.” Seungcheol says later, as they settle down for the night in their respective beds, “I did it for me, because I was getting kinda chilly, and also because I may have gotten smacked in the nuts with a swinging branch earlier, and it really fucking hurt.”
Mirth bubbles up unexpectedly in Jihoon’s throat, and he has to roll over to stifle a snicker into the sleeve of his shirt.
He almost gets away with it, until suddenly Seungcheol’s head appears from the underside of his hammock.
“Hey—you don’t get to laugh at my expense. My ego is still bruised from your fat ass comment earlier, and now, so are my balls.”
Jihoon shakes the head, but he makes the mistake of looking at Seungcheol, at his mildly indignant expression, and in the next second he’s laughing—senseless, irrepressible laughter, the type that goes on forever and makes your stomach hurt.
He can’t seem to stop.
Seungcheol, for one, looks like he’s suffering from whiplash. He shakes his head, mouthing words that aren’t quite making it past his lips. Unbelievable, and some people, and honestly.
“And people call me sadistic,” He finally says out loud and scathing, but there’s a smile to accompany it, and nothing but warmth in his eyes.
DAY 51
Something has changed between them. What exactly and when, Jihoon can’t tell, but it’s somewhere around their 7th week on the island that he’s given cause to notice.
He spots the cargo net from their plane when he’s out scouting for birds nests along the mountain ridge. It’s still intact, just dangling there off the side of the cliff, too heavy to haul up but nestled too high that there is no hope of ever reaching it from the ground, even with use of the ladder.
He’s certain he can still retrieve it through the application of some sturdy rope vines and brute strength, but to actually get down there and secure the net to the cliff face, he’s going to need the Alpha’s help.
Seungcheol however, isn’t sold on the idea, but not for any of the reasons he expected.
“It’s too dangerous. That ledge could give way at any second, and then where would you be? Falling to your death is what.”
“If the ledge gives way, you can just pull me back up with the rope. I’ll secure it to my waist.”
“The rope? You mean the veiny plant I used to build the ladder? The one I have to keep replacing every few days because it keeps snapping? That’s what you want me to dangle you over the edge of this fucking cliff with?”
Jihoon turns to look at him, distantly but sincerely surprised at the concern he sees on his face.
That he wouldn’t want to risk his own neck makes perfect sense. The fact that he’s reluctant to endanger Jihoon’s—that’s kinda hard to internalise.
“I’m...I’m lighter than you. And it’s not that far of a drop if I fall.” He offers weakly.
A grim line forms between Seungcheol’s eyes. He scans the ledge below, jaw working through some unaccountable tension.
“What’s down there that’s worth risking your life for?”
“My suitcase. I placed it in that net when we boarded, and I packed some really useful stuff in there, like deodorant and shampoo and razor blades—”
“So we’ll be neatly groomed when they find our rotting corpses. Awesome.”
Jihoon’s jaw clenches with impatience. “There will be other stuff too, there’s bound to be. The plane was outfitted for a military supply run before the Bureau re-routed it to transport us. Those crates could be full of very useful military grade provisions.”
Seungcheol gives him an expectant smile, humouring him.
“Or, another bomb.”
Jihoon exhales, loud and rough, aware that any protest, any response will be met with either mockery or irritation. That seems to be all you can except from Seungcheol when he doesn’t want to do something.
“So that’s it. We’re just leaving the crates down there. You’re not going to help me.”
Seungcheol’s cocky grin sags into something more tired and genuine.
“I didn’t say that, Pigeon. I just said I don’t like your plan. Your plan is too dangerous. I’ll come up with a new plan—but I need to sleep on it first. We should both sleep on it.”
“But—”
“We’ve been here for seven weeks Jihoon,” Seungcheol interjects, spreading his hands with a harried expression. “I think the crates can wait one more day.”
Jihoon reluctantly follows him back to camp, but stews silently all evening, replaying the entire conversation in his head until he’s worked up one bitch of migraine.
That Seungcheol can so easily dismiss his idea as reckless, and yet claim he can come up with one better has him determined to prove the man wrong. And to do it without his help too.
He sets out alone early the next morning, ignoring the little voice in the back of his head that says maybe he should just wait for Seungcheol to wake up, or at least leave a note to let him know where he’s going.
Scaling the rock face down to the ledge turns out to be the easy part, even though nearly loses his footing twice skirting a steep incline. Getting the crates secured and pulled back up though—that’s the gruelling work.
The vines support the weight of the crates no problem, but they have a tendency to splinter and shred when manipulated into certain angles, and so Jihoon is forced to keep climbing down and up again to secure new ones. He keeps at it though, ignoring the ever-present throb at his side, and manages to haul up two of the four crates before—snap.
The vine he’s been using to scale the cliff face suddenly gives under his weight, leaving him trapped on the ledge with no way back up.
Okay, it’s okay. Don’t panic—he tells himself, frantically looking around for another way to ascend and finding none. Seungcheol will be awake by now; he’ll notice me missing and come looking for me.
After an hour of thinking along these lines however, a new fear begins to surface.
What if Seungcheol finds him, but decides not to pull him back up? What if he takes the crates Jihoon has already hauled up and just leaves Jihoon here, trapped on the edge of a cliff face.
Is there really anything stopping him from doing that?
That wave of paranoia just swells and swells as he waits, leaving him a nervous wreck by the time Seungcheol’s head appears over the edge of the cliff.
“Well, well—what do we have here? A silly little Pigeon gone and clipped his own wings. I shoulda known you wouldn’t even wait for me to wake up, but I gave you too much credit. I thought you were smart.”
Jihoon finds he can’t look at the other man in this moment, doesn’t want to show the Alpha the fear in his eyes. Instead he keeps his head down and bites out something that is half bluff, half a grimace.
“You made your point Cheol. Are you gonna pull me up or not?”
“I dunno,” Seungcheol drawls. “Maybe I should leave you down there. Teach you a good lesson.”
Jihoon doesn’t like the calm, measured way he says that, like it’s of no consequence how long he rots down here.
He feels his heart falter for a second, the blood draining from his face as he murmurs, “Please don’t.”
Seungcheol stiffens, his eyes narrowing as he frowns. He wouldn’t have looked more outraged if he’d caught Jihoon setting fire to his bed with him in it.
“Jesus, you’re a real piece of work, you know that.”
He disappears without another word, leaving Jihoon wondering and anxious for another handful of minutes, then returns with a long, sturdier length of rope—three vines plaited together, and tosses it down.
“Grab hold of that. I’ll pull you up.”
Jihoon hastens to do so before he can understand what he’s done wrong, so eager to get off the ledge he doesn’t even spare a thought for the last two crates. It’s only once he’s on firm ground again, clambering to his feet, does he spare a look at his companion.
“What about the rest of the crates?”
“Fuck the crates!” Seungcheol growls, fury sparking in his eyes.
When he stalks forward, Jihoon has to stop himself from jerking back. The instinct to flee is overwhelming; he’s never seen the Alpha so angry.
That banked violence he fears doesn’t surfaces however. Instead, Seungcheol palms uncertainly over his shoulders, his dusty hair, before venturing down to his waist, his grip firm but gentle as he hikes up his t-shirt to inspect his wound.
“See, see how the skin is warmer here.” Seungcheol is saying, smoothing an open palm across his stomach. “It’s because your wound is still healing, and you’ve just gone and aggravated it.”
Jihoon tolerates this all with a half-assed scowl, wrung dry and exhausted. An expression he quickly wipes off his face when Seungcheol’s eyes snap up to meet his, searching and almost incredulous.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is my concern for your health inconveniencing you? Or are you just so used to jumping through hoops for the Bureau for a little pat on the head you’re willing to put your own life at risk?”
That hits a little too close to home. Something catches in Jihoon's throat and he has to look away, or at least tries to.
Seungcheol grabs his chin and wrestles his gaze back before he can manage it.
“Hey, I get it, okay. The Bureau doesn’t like it when you put yourself first; they want you to give it your all,” He says, sharp. Concern is still obvious in his face, but he’s massively pissed off too. “But they ain’t here, and nobody is going to thank you for playing fucking martyr, least of all me.”
He turns and starts heading back towards camp without another word, but not before shooting Jihoon a forbidding look over his shoulder—like he half expects to catch him abseiling down the cliff the moment his back is turned.
Jihoon follows him after a moment’s hesitation, feeling awkward and stupid and more confused than he’s ever been in his life.
He knows how to handle abuse from jerk head Alpha’s who think they’re better than him. He’s used to being looked down on, taunted and teased for the hell of it, having to fend for himself because nobody else was going to stick up for him. But this, this genuine concern for his safety is something else entirely, and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to react.
DAY 53
The contents of the crates receive mixed reviews, much to Jihoon’s chagrin.
In his defence, the first one they crack open is packed full of the military provisions he promised, it’s just that they are clearly supplies destined for a military operation in colder climes. Jackets, gloves, snow boots, tactical thermal gear in varying shades of grey and white —it’s hardly stuff they can make use of on a tropical island, but Seungcheol, surprisingly, doesn’t hold it against him.
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up. We can still this stuff—we just need to repurpose it a little. Maybe use those fleecy thermals to pad out our beds, and those jackets are waterproof; we can clip them together and make a tent or something.”
Jihoon doesn’t want to discourage his positivity, but he can’t help but look on glumly as he starts prying open the second crate.
It seems to be no better, at first. Filled with what appears to be stack and stacks of personal correspondence for soldiers stationed abroad. It’s only after Seungcheol starts sifting through the pile, reaching his hand down to the bottom, do they realise there are packages in there too. Military care packages to be precise, filled with all manner of supplies a soldier missing his home comforts may want.
“Dibs on any shaving kits we find.” Seungcheol announces, tipping the crate onto its side so they can get to the good stuff.
Jihoon makes a face at him as he tears open another parcel.
“All of them? That’s hardly fair.”
“Sure it is. We’ve been here almost eight weeks and you’ve yet to show anything that even remotely resembles a five o’clock shadow. I grow a beard when I just look away from the mirror. It’s only fair I get the razors.”
Jihoon rolls his eyes, but obligingly tosses over a pack of razor blades he’s unearthed.
“Fine, you can keep the shaving stuff, but only if I can call dibs on any novels or puzzle books we find. I feel like I’m losing brain cells listening to you talk shit all day.”
Seungcheol squints at him, seemingly unoffended, just confused.
“Sure thing Rain Man. The books are yours.”
By the time they’ve emptied the crate, they’ve amassed a sizeable collection of toiletries, snacks and multipacks of underwear and socks, as well as a few travel broad games, one eye sore of a Hawaiian print shirt, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a large, 7-setting silicone vibrator. Batteries included.
They divide everything evenly amongst themselves, with the exception of a few items they can’t agree over.
“I want you to have this. You look like you need it more than me.”
“For the last time, I don’t want the vibrator!”
When the sun finally departs and takes the worst of the heat with it, they decide to celebrate their haul by splitting the bottle of Jack between them, passing it back and forth where they’re huddled around the fire.
It’s not enough to get drunk, but Jihoon’s never needed much alcohol to loosen up.
Seungcheol winds down too, talking (very) freely about an apartment he keeps in New York, the one above the vape shop he uses as cover for his money laundering operation, and the supposed “best deli in the world.”
That he makes no effort to withhold the details that could potentially give this place away is a little confounding, but no more so than the fact he actually seems to be encouraging Jihoon to visit him there.
“I know you’ll want to order the hoagie like everyone else, but I’m not gonna let you. You have to try the pastrami Reuben first.” he says at one point, as if there is any chance Jihoon might be considering a trip to New York in the near future, so they can eat sandwiches together.
And okay, for a minute, maybe Jihoon does.
It’s insane, sure, but watching Seungcheol gesture expansively as he describes his favourite sandwich order, it’s easy to imagine he’s somewhere else, with someone else. Someone under different circumstances he wouldn’t have minded getting to know over a couple beers. Laughing at his dumb jokes and terrible dress sense. Someone he probably would have—dare he say it—gave his number to?
Not that he thinks they’re on the same level or anything. Nothing like that.
He’s well aware that there isn’t a single scenario where an Alpha as good looking as Seungcheol would stoop to chatting him up. Multiple arrest warrants notwithstanding. It would be a chance meeting if it was anything; a quick blow job in a bathroom stall, and then Jihoon would head back to his sad little apartment in Banpo-dong that he never bothered to properly occupy and tell his cat all about it.
Thinking about the little calico waiting for him back home has him reaching for his rucksack and the wallet he keeps tucked in the side pocket. The picture inside is old, but it’s his favourite, filled with a wealth of positive feeling to drive back the distress that plagues him sometimes.
He doesn’t realise he’d been staring at it quite so fondly, until the Alpha leans forward to brush the fringe from his eyes, and says, soft but conversational, “You got the sweetest little smile on your face Pigeon. Who’s picture you got in there? Someone special?”
Heat rises to Jihoon’s cheeks with a sudden, surprising ferocity. He jerks away; startled and confused by his own reaction.
“It...it’s my cat.”
Seungcheol arches an eyebrow, somewhat predictably, and says, with no small amount of suppressed laughter, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that. I swear I just heard you say you have a picture of a cat in your wallet.”
“Hey, fuck you.” Jihoon huffs quietly, but he can already feel his own mouth bending into what feels like a smile. “Lots of people keep pictures of their pets on their phones and key chains and shit. I keep one in my wallet, it’s not that lame.”
Instead of teasing him, there’s a huff of kind-hearted laughter.
“I never said it was lame. Here, hand it over, let me see.”
Jihoon hands him the wallet to admire the picture tucked inside the clear sleeve, worn and soft from being handled.
Seungcheol stares at it for an age, tilting the bottle in his hand this way and back, liquid sloshing, the idle movement of someone thinking. The small faraway smile on his face, eyes bright, says he likes what he is thinking. That he is maybe, a little taken by how cute Jihoon's cat is too.
“His name is Minestrone.” Jihoon offers up after a moment, then gets absurdly defensive by the grin this summons. “Hey, don’t laugh. It’s a good name for him, okay. I found him in the alley behind my apartment block when he was a kitten. He was rummaging through the trash and he’d gotten his head stuck in a soup can.”
Seungcheol flattens a hand on his chest, makes his eyes go big.
“I wasn’t making fun, I swear. It’s a good name, very original. I was just amused by the little sweater vest he’s wearing in this picture. How’d you find one that fits him so perfectly?”
Jihoon sighs with loud exasperation that is mostly for show.
“I knitted it for him, obviously. But you knew that already; stop fishing for things to tease me about.”
Seungcheol’s eyes crinkle a little as he smiles ruefully.
“He’s a very cute cat. I definitely see the family resemblance.” He folds the wallet over and hands it back. “You got anyone besides a pet waiting for you back home? Extended family? A boyfriend perhaps?”
Jihoon lifts one shoulder, turning his head to gaze out at the darkness beyond the fire.
“Not really. I lost touch with any family I had left once my father passed away, and work never left me with much time to sleep most days, much less socialise.”
Seungcheol chews his lower lip, eyeing him thoughtfully for a second.
“So, no family, no boyfriend, no one to report you missing outside the agency.” His right eyebrow arches and lifts as he speaks. “Now it makes sense why he picked you.”
Jihoon pauses, taking a long assessing look at the man in the flicker of the fire. He’s almost afraid to ask.
“What do you mean by that?”
He watches with faint apprehension as Seungcheol caps the bottle and sets it aside, letting silence re-enter the space between them, patient the same way a hunter waits for a trap to spring.
“For your mission.” Seungcheol finally says, somewhat reluctantly. He pauses, seems to be choosing his words with care. “Your director made sure to pick agents that wouldn’t be missed if things went wrong. So he could quickly brush the mess under the carpet without anyone asking questions.”
The words unsettle something in Jihoon he had thought was firmly slotted in place.
He takes a deep breath and makes himself hold the Alpha’s gaze, even though he wants nothing more than to desert this confrontation.
“That’s not true. That’s not how the agency operates.”
Seungcheol leans forward, giving Jihoon a skeptical look under which Jihoon shifts uncomfortably.
“Oh? So you’ve been on field missions before, have you? Or did they pluck you out from behind a desk and shove you on that plane?”
A moment’s silence, to allow the words to land, to allow Jihoon to answer; then a soft, disapproving click of the tongue.
“I didn’t think so. You didn’t look like an experienced field agent to me Jihoon, and neither did those two idiots we shared the ride with. You looked green, you smelled fresh as a fucking daisy. That’s why you were given this mission—not cause you’re good at your job, but cause the director thinks you’re dispensable.”
Something stutters within him, his chest clutching both hollow and too tight. Fear, maybe. The fear that comes after you flay open a wound and you’re waiting for the salt to burn.
“Fuck you.” Jihoon rasps, stumbling to his feet.
He dodges the hand that reaches out to steady him and steps around the bewildered looking Alpha, making a beeline for the entrance. He doesn’t know where he’s going, he only knows he needs to get out of here.
“Wait—where are you going?” Seungcheol asks, clambering to his feet too.
“Away from you.” Jihoon croaks, shoving the tarp aside and rushing blindly out into the darkness of the forest.
“What are you getting angry with me for? Cause I dished you out a slice of reality pie?” Seungcheol calls out to his retreating back. “Open your fucking eyes Jihoon, I’m not the one who put you on that plane.”
DAY 54
He spends the night sitting perched high up in a tree near the shore, freaked out and paranoid, telling himself that Seungcheol was talking out of his ass, just doing what a guy like him does best—finding a weakness and exploiting it.
Round about sunrise though, he’s gone over the facts in his mind enough times to think—shit, maybe things weren’t so clear cut.
Once upon a time, he would have told anyone who asked that he was happy enough at work. He rolled with the punches, he worked hard, he kept his head down, got the job done. Was he occasionally overlooked for a promotion? Sure. Was he side-lined during missions? Yeah, but it was nothing personal. It wasn’t because he was an Omega treading on marked territory. You had to do your stint of grunt work before you could play with the big boys—everyone knew that.
Now though, all he can see when he looks back is seven years of working his butt off and not a lot to show for it. No praise, no validation or recognition. He wasn’t even shortlisted for the most recent promotion he put himself forward for, even though he was the most senior candidate applying and the most deserving by far.
He’d been afraid to question why, afraid to hear the truth, but there’s no running away from it anymore. He needs to get to the bottom of this once and for all.
His decision to climb down from the tree and face these fears head on however, is temporarily delayed when he catches sight of something moving through the trees towards him—Seungcheol, carrying a net of freshly picked fruit.
The Alpha looks unhappy about something. He doesn’t seem to have noticed Jihoon’s stake out spot yet, so Jihoon sits tight and watches him approach the beach a handful of times, only to turn back at the last second, shaking his head like a horse shrugging off a fly.
After about five minutes of this back and forth, Jihoon decides an interruption is in order.
“What do you want Seungcheol?”
Seungcheol jumps a mile, then stares peevishly up at him, clearly annoyed to have been caught off guard.
“I picked too many mangoes for myself. I figured you might as well have these extra ones for breakfast.”
Jihoon shakes his head, folding his knees up against his chest.
“No thanks. I’m not hungry.”
“Are you sure? They’re the small orange ones. Your favourite. I...I kept them aside just for you.”
The last words are said with enough awkward reluctance to be endearing in a different situation. But their conversation from last night is still agitating his peace of mind, destroying any feeling inside him that isn’t uneasiness and confusion.
He sighs, looking away.
“I’m good.”
Instead of turning and walking away, Seungcheol sidles up that much closer, pausing to hang the net off a low branch.
“Alright, look, about what I said last night. I was just fucking with you man. I was just feeling restless and blowing off steam, and you’re the only one around, so...anyway. Forget I said anything, just come down so we can eat these mangoes together—”
“I failed my last three psych assessments.”
Jihoon lets the words rush out, well aware that exhaustion has loosened his tongue, but thinking it might not be so bad, to speak his mind on this subject for once.
When Seungcheol gives him a squirrely look in response, he begins to clamber down from his perch, waiting until he’s got his feet firmly on the ground again before elaborating.
“Agents get a psychological evaluation every six months; it’s a requirement to remain listed as an active agent. I failed the last three, but the director never said anything. I kept thinking he’d call me into his office to discuss it, but he never did.”
Seungcheol looks thoughtful for a second before his features turn glum.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
Jihoon laughs, head dipping as he does. “Doesn’t it?” he says, pressing his fingers into his eyes. “Before that, I was overlooked for a promotion six times. I’ve been with the agency seven years and I’ve never been promoted once. Whenever I bring it up during my reviews, the Director always blows me off, says he doesn’t think I’d ever be field worthy. That some agents are just not cut out for it. When he picked me for this...I thought I’d finally done something to make him change his mind.”
“You probably did.” Seungcheol says, looking away. A muscle ticks in his jaw. “I was just talking out of my ass earlier. Just forget what I said.”
Jihoon shakes his head.
“No, you were right. Sehun and Chul-Moo didn’t have any relatives either. They’re just blunt tools the director always had to keep on a short leash. I overheard him calling them an embarrassment to the agency once, and how he wishes he could send them on job they’d have no hope of returning from. He must have thought the same about me too.”
“C’mon man, don’t do this to yourself—” Seungcheol murmurs, reaching out to touch his shoulder.
Jihoon shakes him off with a rough shrug. He feels flayed open, like one large open wound that might start bleeding all over everything if anyone so much as touches him.
“I realise now this mission was never sanctioned by a government agency because it was never a real mission, off the books or otherwise. That’s why there was no mission brief, or flight plans or GPS trackers. Kim Soobin wasn’t planning to hand you over to some secretive government agency for questioning, was he?"
Seungcheol’s mouth crooks slightly upwards, a small broken smile.
“No. I mean—I don’t know for sure what his plan was, but with how this all went down, my best guess is he saw an opportunity to take me out before the handover could happen, and he took it. The plane ride was the only part of the transfer he had control over, so he must have planted some kind of explosive on board to go off mid-flight. It was just our blind luck that we survived the crash.”
That sinks into Jihoon’s stomach like a stone, and he feels sick because the ring of truth is undeniable.
“But why would he do that? Why does he want you dead? Surely you’d be more valuable to the Bureau alive.”
Seungcheol throws his hands up, seemingly out of answers for him.
“Who doesn’t want me dead? Last time I checked, the price on my head was a hundred billion won, and that’s before I was captured. A hitman in government custody is a liability to anyone he’s ever worked with. My own mother, God rest her soul, would probably want me dead.”
Jihoon sags where he stands, reaching up to push a shaky hand through his hair.
“So Sehun and Chul-Moo and me, were we just supposed to be collateral? The garnishing to make the whole shit show authentic?”
Seungcheol shifts uncomfortably.
“I guess he figured if they ever did find the plane, and decided to investigate, the first thing they’d see is a roster of the secret services least inspiring agents and suddenly the catastrophic failure of the op won’t be out of the realm of possibility.”
Jihoon’s throat cramps painfully, and his eyes sting, and he realises, to his own personal horror, he’s going to cry. He wants to run away again, and he would have, given the space and energy to do so. Instead, he turns away with as much intention as he can muster, pouring all his discontent into his body language.
“I tried so hard to be good at my job. They never gave me a chance.”
Seungcheol looks vaguely startled when he begins to cry. Not big, heaving sobs—nothing that dramatic— but silent tears that leak from the corners of his eyes and fall over his cheeks. It doesn’t send him running though. He looks uncomfortable as fuck, but he’s still human under all that badassery, still knows when to open his arms.
Jihoon folds into them, collapsing against Seungcheol’s chest, crumbling, crying, shaking with anger and the injustice of it all.
“It’s not fair.”
Seungcheol squeezes him tight, rocks him and whispers, “I know. I know Pigeon. I’m so sorry.”
DAY 60
Things are a little weird between them after that.
Better in some ways, because they’re arguing less, more patient with each other, but infuriating in others because Seungcheol seems to think he needs to be handled with kid gloves for a while. Probably terrified that he’ll cry again.
He dials back the sarcasm by about 90 percent, snappy comebacks swiftly replaced with a bitten off hum or a blank smile. He backs down from every argument before it can even take flight, ceding to Jihoon’s superior judgement like he doesn’t have a single thought it in his head.
He even starts losing to Jihoon at poker, and badly too. He throws exactly ten games in a row, lets Jihoon clean him out, and makes out like it’s totally coincidental. Coming out with stuff like “Damn, someone’s on a lucky streak”, and “Guess I’m losing my touch” which is such unvarnished bullshit, but Jihoon’s too amused to call him out on it.
He’s also taken to—it’s rather sweet actually—asking Jihoon about what new stuff he’s learned about Hansol through his journal, because he knows how much Jihoon likes discussing it. Where before he would roll his eyes and stare dispassionately into the fire like some kind of jealous boyfriend, now he’ll sit and listen to Jihoon rattle off what he’s read recently, offering his own insight like he actually gives a fuck.
It’s cute.
It’s the cutest thing anyone has ever done for him.
Jihoon doesn’t think he needs to be coddled, but God does it feel good sometimes.
DAY 67
Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be much in the line of native wildlife on the island. There are plenty of exotic birds and fish of course, and they’ve seen some tortoises, and frogs and snakes lurking about, but the largest mammal they’ve come across are these Marmoset looking monkeys that come up to about knee height and are roughly the size of a watermelon.
They wisely shy away from them at first, until Jihoon makes the mistake of feeding one of them, and then suddenly it’s Marmoset central, and every fucking monkey on the island is swinging by to welcome them to the neighbourhood and steal their mangoes.
Soon, they can’t leave their belongings unattended for more than a few seconds without something getting swiped, or shredded or shat on, and it’s practically impossible to get any sleep with all the hooting and hollering that happens above their heads at night.
As frustrating as it is however, it actually brings them closer as a team, forces them to set aside their differences and pool their intelligence to tackle the issue.
Or to put it more accurately, Jihoon offers some sensible solutions to the problem while Seungcheol throws out crap like:
“They’re hazing us. These fucking monkeys are hazing us cause we’re the new guys. We gotta retaliate like they do in prison— find the biggest guy in the cell block and kick his ass. That’ll teach them not to fuck with us.”
Jihoon gives the guy a minute to hear himself talk, perhaps acknowledge the absurdity of that statement and swiftly retract it, before offering up the slowest slow blink in the history of sarcasm.
“By all means Seungcheol, go fight a gorilla. But if it’s all the same to you, imma stay here and not get ripped limb from limb.”
Seungcheol cuts a sleepy look from the corner of his eye and almost smiles.
“I didn’t say we should fight a gorilla.”
“Yeah? Cause it kind of sounded like you did.”
“I said we should find the big monkey boss and whoop his ass, and those monkeys aren’t gorillas. They’re chimps or baboons or something.”
“And what? You think that’ll make it easier to kick their asses?” Jihoon breathes out through a laugh.
Seungcheol bobs his head. “Of course. We are their evolutionarily superiors, aren’t we? That means we’re smarter.”
“Not all of us evidently.” Jihoon mutters.
Seungcheol turns his head to look at him straight on, a rueful grin stretching his face. “Alright then smart ass. What’s your bright idea for dealing with them?”
Jihoon catches his tongue between his teeth, thinking it through.
“We don’t.” He says with a wave of his hand. “I think the best thing we can do is scout for a new location to set up camp, one with less trees and a larger water source, and more favourable terrain for building so we can actually have shelter than doesn’t blow over when a storm hits.”
“Huh,” Seungcheol rumbles. But he doesn’t say it in a tone that suggests a difficult puzzle to be solved. He says it with a steady comprehension that tells Jihoon he already has something in mind.
This proves prescient a few minutes later, when he suddenly announces, “How do you feel about bats?”
Jihoon clears his throat and tries to look serious despite where this conversation is headed.
“I like bats. They get an unfairly bad rep, but I think they’re actually kinda cute.”
“Great—”
“—I am however, far less enthusiastic about caves.”
Seungcheol pouts.
“But you haven’t even seen it yet!”
DAY 69
Even though he agrees to hike across the island to check it out, Jihoon has a few reservations about making a cave his home for the foreseeable future, or even just exploring one for any amount of time, actually.
Some of that hesitation stems from a completely rational Omega fear of enclosed spaces, of being trapped in a tight spot with no way out, but most of it comes from watching The Descent, because being chased through a decrepit cave system by a group of primordial cannibals is just...yeah.
It’s going to take a lot more than a few thieving monkeys for him to sign up for that.
Seungcheol assures him it’s not that kind of cave— that it goes into the side of the mountain as opposed to down into the ground, but he holds tight to his doubts until he actually sets foot inside.
It’s dry and reasonably spacious, despite the various large boulders scattered about that seem to be a permanent feature, and it’s not completely dark either; some light stretches in from the mouth of the cave, as well as higher up, where a small crevice in the roof allows water to trickle down into shallow pond. And most importantly, it doesn’t go on forever; there are no hidden cracks or crevices in the walls for any primordial cannibals to lurk in, which has Jihoon sold on the whole idea even before Seungcheol launches into his estate agent spiel.
“I know it’s a little out of your budget, but for a beach front property with an indoor water feature, it’s practically a steal, and you won’t find these rustic character features or open plan layout on the market for anything less.”
Jihoon can’t help but crack a slight smile at the sales pitch.
“Sounds great, but I wasn’t really in the market for a fixer-upper, and as charming as these character features are, I’m not convinced these walls aren’t just going to collapse and bury me alive.”
Seungcheol heaves a put upon sigh.
“Look, Jihoon—can I call you Jihoon? I’m not your typical estate agent. I’m an honest family man, just like you, so I would never sell you a cave I wouldn’t feel comfortable moving into myself. See these walls here? They’re naturally crafted Grade A limestone, the finest you’ll ever see. If there was going to be a cave in, it would have happened by now. But don’t take my word for it—there’s a family of friendly bats living in the corner. Talk to them. I think you’ll find they won’t have a bad word to say about the place.”
Jihoon covers his mouth to stop himself from laughing.
“Okay, you’ve sold me. Where do I sign?”
DAY 74
It takes them about eight trips to relocate their stuff across the island. Eight trips because they have to make their way across a river and up a hill and the weight of a full rucksack makes the trek cumbersome enough even before they start hauling the crash-site junk Seungcheol insists they take with them.
Jihoon is already lagging far behind with his share of the load, because he’d naively hoped waiting till after midday to begin moving stuff would make the whole thing easier, and well—for other reasons.
(‘Let me get this straight. You want to draw a map, and leave it behind?’
‘Yeah, for Hansol.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ—'
‘So he knows where to find us, if he wants to.’
‘Fine. Whatever.’)
But then, just when he thinks he’s been through the whole rainbow of shitty possibilities already, a tropical storm hits the island as he’s making his final trek to the cave.
With how hard the rain’s lashing down, Jihoon can’t see more than a few feet ahead, so he loses sight of Seungcheol pretty early on. It’s not possible to call out to him, because the rain is coming from every direction, trying to drown him every time he opens his mouth, and there’s no point in turning back and heading to the old campsite because the river has flooded its banks behind him, blocking his retreat. There’s nothing there anyway; the shelter has been dismantled, the tarpaulin and chutes already carried away on Seungcheol’s back hours earlier.
When he stumbles and falls, dropping the suitcase he’s been dragging, it’s enough to disorientate him completely.
He has no idea which direction the cave is from here. Everything looks the same, and the rain has effectively obliterated the boot prints he’d been trying to follow.
Helpless, he crawls towards the nearest tree and hunkers beneath it, squeezing his eyes shut as thunder cracks overhead, loud enough to make his ears ring.
Just as he resigns himself to waiting there until the rain stops or sweeps him away, a strong hand grabs his shoulder and hauls him up into his feet, begins to pull him forward. He goes willingly, unthinkingly, eyes squeezed shut against the rain. When he opens them again, he’s standing in the shelter of the cave with Seungcheol, water dripping down from their faces as they pant.
“What the fuck man. Why’d you stop?” Seungcheol asks him, voice raised a little so it may be heard over the wind howling just outside.
Jihoon passes a hand over his eyes. He is shaking, never a good sign.
“The rain. It was everywhere. I couldn’t see where I was going, and then I fell—”
Suddenly Seungcheol’s all up in his space, his face creased with unvoiced concern. He checks him for injuries, his hands gentle in a way that would normally make Jihoon want to lash out.
This time, for some insane reason, he feels a sudden warmth pool in his stomach, a sensation that rises up his spine like a slow, hot tide.
He shakes his head to clear it, and succeeds only in getting raindrops and his own hair in his eyes.
“I’m fine. I’m not hurt, just cold. I—my suitcase. I dropped it. I need to go back—"
Seungcheol catches him by the arm before he puts that plan into motion, steering him firmly but gently away from the cave entrance.
“Forget about that for now. We can go back for it when the weather settles. We need to dry off and warm up first, before we catch something.”
When he starts to peel out of his soaking wet clothes, Jihoon almost follows suit, before he remembers all his spare clothes are stuffed inside the suitcase he’d inadvertently abandoned.
Seeing him hesitate, and putting two a two together, Seungcheol rolls his eyes and steps closer to speed things along.
“Aw Jesus, c’mon man, don’t go shy on me now.”
Jihoon finds himself unceremoniously stripped of his clothing before he can think to protest, and handed a towel to dry himself off, before being gently nudged towards the bedding set up by the fire.
“Get in. Warm yourself up.”
Again, he hesitates, feeling oddly detached from the moment. Surely Seungcheol isn’t going to let him take the only dry bed when it’s his fault the other one is probably floating out to sea right now.
“But that’s your sleeping bag.” He keeps his voice even, does not let his expression betray his sudden turmoil.
Seungcheol makes some kind of snickering noise that Jihoon supposes passes for a laugh, and comes up close to push his damp hair from his face.
“Yeah, so? You want me to tuck you in? Read you a bedtime story?” He gives him another gentle nudge, his gaze solid and beyond challenge. “Stop overthinking and get in the sleeping bag Jihoon.”
Jihoon does, eventually, disgruntled and confused as he watches the Alpha move through the darkened cave, figure large and looming in the shadows, but comforted by his presence nonetheless.
They say kids grow up fast when they lose a parent, and he had lost two before he’d even turned eighteen. He’s gotten used to relying on himself, on not expecting a damn thing from anyone for free, least of all an Alpha. But here they are, on the very edge of survival, and Seungcheol’s just giving him the only dry bed like that was the plan all along.
It’s not a favour, he doesn’t expect anything in return—it’s just what’s happening.
What does he get out of it? What does he gain from this? Jihoon can’t help but wonder.
The ever-present throb in his side says there’s always something at stake, but the unfolding feeling in his chest as he watches Seungcheol humming to himself as he feeds kindle into the fire begs to differ.
DAY 76
The living arrangements in the cave are definitely a step up in terms of comfort. It’s like moving from a closet-sized studio above a crack den to a luxurious penthouse suite.
No more rain pounding overhead. No more insects getting in the blankets. No more hauling water from the river. It’s dry, it’s secure, and there’s plenty of space to mark out designated living and sleeping quarters.
At first, they stick to sleeping in their own sides of the cave, cause it’s a luxury to sleep on a flat surface again, to have the room to stretch out horizontally without the threat of toppling over the edge. After the first couple of days, the luxury is gone. Any distance between them feels wrong.
Seungcheol must feel it, too, because on their third night in the cave he lays his sleeping bag out in front of Jihoon’s, putting himself between Jihoon and the entrance.
“Just in case a wild animal comes snooping around. I look less delicious.”
Jihoon can’t argue with that logic. He doesn't particularly want to, besides. Nor does he argue a few nights later, when the Alpha rolls his sleeping bag out right next to his, and they sleep side by side. It might be an entirely unforeseen sort of transition, between their first chance meeting and where they’re sitting now, but fuck all if it doesn’t feel right.
By the next week, they’ve migrated into the same sleeping bag, and—okay, that is weird.
That’s definitely weird, but for none of the reasons he expects.
It should alarm him, how suddenly he finds himself tucked in the crook of Seungcheol’s arm, how naturally they fit together. It should make him question his sanity at the very least, because it’s the kind of unflinching closeness Jihoon could never bear with another person, and it’s just sort of happening here. But with the thunder growling in the distance, and the oppressive darkness outside promising the arrival of another ferocious storm, he finds he’s more than happy to curl into Seungcheol’s warm bulk and switch off the part of his brain that’s saying ‘are we really not going to talk about this?’.
The weird part comes later, when the storm has settled, and they’re both lying there, listening to the rain.
Jihoon’s drowsy and content and close to drifting off when Seungcheol suddenly shifts from dozing to alert in a heartbeat. He curls his hand under Jihoon’s neck, rough fingers pushing his hairline against the grain as he holds his head still, before he leans over and sniffs him.
For a disorienting moment, all Jihoon can think about is arching up into it, maybe pulling down the neck of his t-shirt to give the Alpha better access. Good sense prevails in the end however, and instead he holds himself very still, Goosebumps flickering wildly across his skin as Seungcheol noses at his neck, the spot behind his ear, chasing his scent.
When he shows no signs of stopping anytime soon, Jihoon plants his hands hard on the guy’s broad chest and shoves him off, levelling a scowl at him for good measure.
“I appreciate we’re not living amongst civilised society right now, and you’re not one to follow the rules at the best of times anyway, but it is still considered impolite to sniff an Omega without his permission.”
Seungcheol doesn’t look awkward in the slightest as he leans back to stare at him with flat, dark eyes.
“Uhm, Pigeon, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you did give me permission. Like, the most blatant permission an Omega can give. Hell, if we were back amongst civilised society, nobody would bat an eye if I mounted you right now—that’s how much permission you gave me.”
Jihoon sits up, feeling a stirring of irritation.
“Look asshole, I’m not sharing a sleeping bag with you because I’m horny and I want to have your babies, it’s because we’re both cold, and there’s a storm raging outside, and we’re stuck on this island together, trying to survive. It’s called an exceptional fucking circumstance. It does not give you permission to do anything to me. Get that through your thick fucking skull.”
Seungcheol blinks at him in bewilderment, as if contesting the entire thing. Then, as Jihoon watches, something dawns on him, like he’s found another card he forgot he hid up his sleeve.
“Jesus, you don’t even know what you did,” he murmurs, quiet and devastatingly effective.
Jihoon opens his mouth to say he didn’t do anything, then it hits him. His own scent, his pheromones, wafting through the cave like the most damning beacon.
In the charged pause that follows, panic comes crashing down, and Jihoon scrambles to put some distance between them, not stopping until his back hits the cave wall. He can hear his blood pounding in his ears, and he’s afraid to even breathe, waiting for whatever fallout he deserves for letting his guard down so shamelessly.
Across the cave, Seungcheol holds himself very still. It’s a near commendable thing, that he can just sit there, with Jihoon’s pheromones blasted in his face, seemingly as unconcerned as anything.
He doesn’t even seem angry, even though he has every right to be.
“I take it that was your first time baiting an Alpha.” He finally says, mouth twisted up in an almost smile.
Jihoon manages to nod, swallowing past something thick and sharp in his throat.
“I—I didn’t mean to, I swear. I’ve never done anything like that before. I didn’t even know how to—” He says on a rushed breath. He wrenches his hands together in front of him and stares down at his knees.
It seems important that he doesn’t look at Seungcheol, the reasons why not a hundred percent clear.
“Well, it happens. It happens a lot. Exceptional circumstances or no, so let’s not make a big deal about it, okay.” Says Seungcheol eventually, and Jihoon thinks he must have passed out, this must be a dream, because the guy’s waving it off now, just acting like it was nothing.
Biting the inside of his cheek, he asks, “You’re not angry with me?”
Seungcheol lifts his eyebrows.
“No, of course not. You didn’t mean to, I can see that. Just...come back to bed.”
That sounds like a piss poor idea as far as Jihoon’s concerned. Especially when his scent is still thick and cloying in the air.
He sneaks a nervous glance at the other man, and chickens out again, fixes his eyes firmly to the ground.
Seungcheol says nothing for a few seconds, then he sighs, a heavy weight-of-the-world and well-burdened thing.
“This isn’t my first rodeo Pigeon. It’ll take a lot more than a waft of pheromones to rile me up. Trust me. You’re safe.”
You’re the last person I should trust—Jihoon is tempted to say, but he doesn’t. With every second that ticks by, he’s not sure he can do anything but trust this man.
He takes a deep breath, and makes his way back over.
DAY 78
Once they start exchanging information of a more personal nature, it’s doesn’t take Jihoon long to realise that thick-ass case file they have about Seungcheol back at the Bureau is highly inaccurate. In all the ways that matter, at least.
None of the stories he shares match up with what Jihoon knows—those insightful details he’d gleamed from sharing a desk with the loud-mouth agent permanently assigned to monitor Seungcheol’s activities.
Seungcheol could be making things up of course, to throw him off, but the offhanded way he shares these little tid-bits, casually dropping them into conversation, seems too natural to be fabricated.
Besides, the guy has absolutely no problem admitting who he has and hasn’t been responsible for killing, and if he’s not going to lie about that, why would he lie about anything else?
“Boo-sik Hwang?”
“Yep. Him too.”
“Ken Adachi?”
“Oh yeah. Good old Ken.” Seungcheol cocks his head in fond reminiscence. “He never saw me coming.”
“What about Park Chung-Hee?”
“Uh, the name sounds familiar, but I can’t picture a face. Remind me who that is again.”
“Controversial politician. Was trying to root out corruption in her party when she was found decapitated in her pool?”
Seungcheol lifts one shoulder in a shrug, bone-chilling in its casualness.
“I don’t think so. That reeks of amateur hour if you ask me. I don’t do decapitations, or torture, even if I’ve been paid to send a message. It’s unnecessarily flashy, and takes up way too much time. Me?” He mimes a gun; a bullet though the temple. “I like to keep it nice and clean. Though I did once accidentally kick a guy out of a 16-story window. I was only supposed to interrogate him, but I didn’t know the glass wasn’t reinforced. I was surprised as he was, honestly.”
Jihoon bites back a laugh. In its place, he smiles hard up at the midnight sky, safe in the darkness and in the painful corners of his mouth. He doesn’t know why he is so delighted—much of it is surely disbelief from the sheer level of tactlessness Seungcheol is demonstrating. But it’s so perfectly, genuinely Seungcheol that it's either laugh or be overwhelmed.
“God, everything we knew about you was so wrong.” He finally says, quiet, mostly to himself.
“What do you mean?” Seungcheol asks, propping himself up an elbow to get a better look at him. He sounds uncertain, looks it too. It’s an odd expression on his face, one Jihoon’s rarely seen and hardly recognizes.
“What do you know about me?”
“Practically nothing, by the sounds of it.” Jihoon shrugs off his questioning look. “Everything the Bureau had on you was just...their best guess. Even the physiological profile they put together with the help of this highly respected psych professor is just way off. I guess that’s why you were always one step ahead of them. You’re impossible to predict.”
Seungcheol shakes his head slightly, and yawns into the curve of his arm.
“I don’t think I’m that hard to figure out, it’s just that the Bureau are so damn predictable. They haven’t changed their tactics at all in the last decade. It’s embarrassing to think they’re responsible for national security.”
Jihoon doesn’t know how to feel about that. It’s true, at any rate, but of no current interest to him. His mind is already pushing ahead, picking out the next question he’s been dying to ask.
“What I’d really like to know is how you got to where you are now. What’s your origin story?”
Seungcheol grins at him, but it’s his fake one, his conman grin. Apprehension curls around the base of Jihoon’s spine at the sight of it.
“Are you saying you accepted this mission without doing a basic background check on me? Rookie mistake Pigeon, rookie mistake.”
Jihoon smiles and flicks his hand abstractly.
“I spent most of my career behind a desk. I was never given the clearance to access high-profile cases like yours, but I’d heard stories about you from other agents.”
“Oh? What kinda stories?”
Jihoon gives an impatient shrug, unable to shake the feeling Seungcheol is prevaricating; finding out what he knows first before he deigns to fill in the blanks.
He obliges him anyway.
“I heard your father was an enforcer for the Jo-pok, and that your mother was a high-ranking lieutenant’s daughter, so you grew up surrounded by the glamour of it all. After your father was... killed, someone took you under their wing and trained you up to follow in his footsteps. They say you were the best, then they say you got too big for your boots; started branching out and doing your own thing. The Jo-pok took umbrage with that. That’s why your persona non grata with them now, why you fled the country.”
In response, Seungcheol hmms something that admits to nothing.
Jihoon turns his head, half-expecting to find him sacked out, actually asleep or feigning it to get out of further conversation. But the Alpha’s eyes are open and he's looking at Jihoon, like maybe it’s Jihoon who is inscrutable and impossible and not the other way around.
“Well?” Jihoon huffs. “Help me out here. Was any of that true?”
Seungcheol tips his face up, aiming a tired thoughtful look up at the stars. His mouth moves wordlessly for a moment, like he doesn’t have the words, or perhaps he doesn’t trust Jihoon with the ones he has.
“Let’s put it this way—it matches the sob story I’ve told a few psychiatrists. It’s the story that makes the most sense.”
It’s the vague sort of non-answer that Jihoon’s come to expect, in keeping with Seungcheol’s personal motto—If you can't beat them, confuse them.
“So it’s not true?”
Seungcheol doesn’t answer for a moment, his face drawn, still and listening. When he does speak, it’s abrupt and quick, as if interrupted from some deep reverie.
“Did you know I have an older brother? His name is Seungmin. He’s a high school physics teacher.”
Jihoon sits up slowly, shocked, almost aghast but hiding it well.
He feels as though he’s reached a particularly delicious passage in a novel; the kind that ignites your interest over something unexpected.
“Really? I never knew that.”
An unhappy smile hitches Seungcheol’s mouth. Jihoon isn’t sure he’s ever seen it before.
“Yeah, I know. Hard to imagine. But it’s the truth. I haven’t seen him in ten years, but I follow him on Facebook. It’s a fake account of course, and I don’t keep a profile picture up, but I think he knows it’s me. Every time I leave a comment, he always likes it. He doesn’t like any of his other comments.”
A heavy kind of heat aches in the back of Jihoon’s throat and he has to swallow to try and knock it loose.
“It’s nice that you’ve managed to stay in touch. Maybe you’ll get to see him again, one day.”
Seungcheol blinks away the far-off expression in his eyes until all that’s left is his smile.
“Nah, that’s not going to happen. I always knew I’d be coming home in cuffs. That anyone who mattered would deny I existed for their own good. I’ve made my peace with that now. I’d be a fool to try and salvage any part of my old life.”
He sounds so convinced of what he’s saying that Jihoon doesn’t know how to take it. He immediately wants to tell Seungcheol he’s wrong, that there’s still a way—he shouldn’t give up on living a rich life just because he’ll probably spend the rest of it behind bars, but as someone who’s been on the receiving end of his fair share of empty platitudes, he knows how little it will mean.
“I’m sorry Cheol. I really am.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry about,” Seungcheol says gruffly, shaking his head. “It’s just the way it is.”
He looks so tired sitting there, so world weary it’s almost painful to look at.
Jihoon searches in quiet desperation for something to say, some way to lighten the mood, but then Seungcheol’s pushing himself up to toss another log in the fire, and in the brief flare of the flames, he’s once again the formidable figure Jihoon was in equal parts eager and terrified to approach.
It’s hard to say which side is real. Maybe they both are.
DAY 83
Seungcheol sleeps like the dead at night. Impossible to rouse from the moment his head hits the pillow—such as it is—to the moment the sun creeps up on them.
It’s a relief in some ways, to know he’s too dead to the world to witness some of Jihoon’s more theatrical dreams, but it can be a real pain in the ass too, especially when he snores, or when Jihoon thinks he hears something moving outside the cave, and his attempts to alert the Alpha with a gentle shove end in Seungcheol rolling over and spooning him to death.
It’s not the worst habit a guy could have, all things considered. It’s just another thing he learns to expect and work around. Which is why he knows something’s wrong when he wakes in the middle of the night and finds himself alone in the cave.
He can’t put his finger on what woke him; the cave is quiet all around him, nothing but the trickle of water through the rocks and gentle susurrus of the sea further beyond. But then, from somewhere outside comes an odd groan.
A general feeling of unease crawls into Jihoon’s stomach. He wriggles out of his sleeping bag and steps out barefoot on the damp grass, scanning and listening hard.
There’s nothing for a moment, then, there is movement; it catches his somewhat sluggish attention and turns his neck just enough to see. The sight is not rewarding one.
Seungcheol is hunched over in the sand, groaning quietly, his head in his arms. Jihoon approaches him warily, not sure what’s happening until the Alpha turns away and hurls the contents of his stomach in a nearby bush.
“Is this your not so discreet way of telling me my cooking sucks?” Jihoon asks shortly, ill-tempered and numb from interrupted sleep.
Seungcheol looks up, giving him a sheepish once-over as he approaches.
“Sorry, I was trying not to wake you.”
Jihoon sucks in a short breath, feeling, for the third, fourth, fifth time in as many weeks, repentant and lousy.
“Dude, I got all day to catch up on sleep. If you’re feeling sick, I want to know. I want to help. Especially if I’m the one who’s responsible.”
Seungcheol shakes his head, wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. Though he no longer looks like he is about to throw up, he doesn’t seem particularly perky either.
“If you’re feeling fine, it probably wasn’t the fish. It was probably the berries.”
That gives Jihoon pause.
“Berries? What berries? We didn’t eat any berries today.”
Seungcheol sighs and then mumbles something at the ground that sounds like ‘I sorta did’.
It takes Jihoon a few minutes, but he gets an explanation out of him in dribs and drabs. He got hungry as he was exploring the west coast of the island, and like an idiot, decided to snack on some berries he found growing there. Berries that kinda looked like blueberries.
The birds were pecking on them apparently, and they seemed fine, so why the hell not. Didn’t Hansol mention some kind of berry in his journal? What harm could a taste test do?
Jihoon doesn’t shy away from sharing his thoughts on the matter.
“You fucking idiot! Who just eats some fucking berries they found? Even a child would know better than that! Do you eat gum off the floor too? Do you stick your tongue in plug sockets cause you wanna know what electricity tastes like? How can you be this fucking dumb and evade capture for so long? How are you still alive when you’ve only got two brain cells and they’re both fighting for third place!”
Seungcheol looks up at the dark sky, runs his hand through his sweat-damp hair again. When he looks back at Jihoon, he’s got a goofy grin on his face that he’s trying unsuccessfully to suppress.
“I’d appreciate it if you stopped yelling at me. I think I’m dying.”
Panic kickstarts in Jihoon’s chest. He doesn’t mean to think it, but there it is: I can’t do this alone. It horrifies him as he realizes just how true that is. He has prided himself his entire life for his independence, his ability to go it alone, and now, here he is, facing the exact opposite as the truth.
“Come on, let’s get you back into bed.” He rasps, stooping down to get an arm under Seungcheol’s
Seungcheol makes a pained sound as he uncurls from his crouch, his empty stomach no doubt protesting the sudden movement, but with Jihoon’s help, he manages to traverse the short distance back to the cave and into his bed roll.
It’s not long before he’s groaning again, assuming the foetal position in some attempt to lessen the cramps. It reminds Jihoon of his worst heats, when it feels like every fibre of his body is rebelling against him, and sympathy compels him to offer comfort anyway he can.
He wipes the sweat off Seungcheol’s brow, rubs his back in soothing circles, and feeds him little sips of water, but he doesn’t think it’s really helping.
He doesn’t really know what he should be doing here to alleviate the symptoms. What’s that old saying? Starve a fever, feed a cold? Does that even apply to the situation?
In the end, he does the only thing that makes him feel better when he’s poorly. He makes soup.
Instead of his regular chicken-noodle recipe though, he has to improvise with the limited provisions he has at hand— a few plants and herbs they’d deemed edible, some crab meat and seaweed and a woody plant that reminds him of Cassava. The end result is more of a stew than a soup really, but it’s not half bad. Seungcheol downs a bowl in record time and keeps it down, though it seems the hallucinogenic effect of the mushrooms is not eradicated through cooking cause the guy is clearly on one hell of a trip.
“You’re beautiful.”
Jihoon bites his cheek, tries to keep his expression serious.
“Uh huh. Sure.”
Seungcheol rolls onto his side to look at him; his stare is very dark, almost feverish in its intensity.
“You’re like...the loveliest Omega I’ve ever seen in my whole life. And I’ve seen a lot of lovely Omegas.”
“You know, I think I preferred it when you were throwing up.”
The Alpha frowns, annoyance surprisingly plain on his face even through the delirium.
“I’m being serious Jihoon. When I first saw you on the plane, I was thinking—wow, he is fucking gorgeous, and he’s got sweet ass too. But, but now I know you’re more than that. You’re funny and clever and sweet, and really brave. You’re the whole package man. I wish you could see that.”
Jihoon finds himself frozen between denial and sheer awkwardness. He doesn’t know what to say. He can feel a blush building in his cheeks, and tries vainly to conceal it under his fringe. When that fails, he shoves gently at Seungcheol’s shoulder until he’s lying flat on his back and draws a hand over his eyes.
“Thank you. I’m very flattered, but I really think you should shut up now, and try and get some sleep.”
Thankfully, Seungcheol’s in a highly complacent state of mind at present; he lets his eyes fall shut as he nuzzles into Jihoon’s palm, and Jihoon’s relieved enough by the silence to allow it.
When he’s sure Seungcheol has finally succumbed to sleep, he stretches out next to him, bringing a hand up to the back of head to gently card through his sweat-damp hair.
He’s close to falling asleep himself when he hears the Alpha speak again, a faint mumble.
“I’m so happy the plane crashed. I don’t think I could have gone through with it.”
Jihoon snaps his eyes open, jerks his head up.
Next to him Seungcheol still has his eyes closed, fast asleep; it doesn’t look like he’s moved an inch. Barring auditory hallucinations, though, Jihoon knows what he heard.
He cocks an eyebrow, leaning in close to whisper:
“Gone through with what?”
He hears nothing but the quiet in and out of Seungcheol’s breathing, how own heart is thundering in his chest.
DAY 87
Jihoon had his last three-month heat suppressant injection a week before he’d arrived on the island, and if the small writing on the Patient Information leaflet is to be taken at face value, he has a grace period of a week at most, before it will wear off completely.
He’s always had a pretty regular cycle, so it’s easy to predict when his heat will hit him, and for once his confidence in his calculations does little to assure him. Whether he likes it or not, he will go into heat in two weeks time, and there’s simply no way he can keep it a secret from the only other inhabitant of the island.
It’s not really a conversation he’s looking forward to if he’s being honest. Nor is it one he’s ever had to have before.
Most people he interacted with on a regular basis just assumed him to be infertile and thus, completely immune to an Alpha’s charm, and he never really saw a reason to correct them. The reality was, he’d been on heat suppressants pretty much back to back for the last three years, and didn’t share his heats with anyone but himself. A hand on his dick and a few high quality butt plugs were all that was necessary to keep him happy, and he had too much awareness of his surroundings to allow himself otherwise. Besides, sharing your heat with someone always brought with it a whole social labyrinth that he’d never really learned to conquer, so it was just easier to keep himself to himself.
With his suppressants due to wear off any day now, he has no choice but to be upfront with Seungcheol about it and just accept that things are about to get awkward between them.
Seungcheol, however, clearly lives to confound him.
“Say no more. Just tell me how you like it—slow and gentle or fast and rough. I take it you want me to refrain from knotting, right? Unless...oh, do you have one of those contraceptive implant thingies? Please say yes, cause I would love to knot you.”
Jihoon goes still. He should have expected this turn, but for some reason it’s taken him completely by surprise.
“I’m not asking you to fuck me.” he manages after a stunned beat.
Seungcheol draws his eyebrows together, looking a little put out.
“You’re not? Then what was the point of that little PSA?”
Jihoon tries to think of a way to answer this that isn’t ‘cause I’m fucking terrified, and you’re good at calming me down’. The only thing that comes to him is hardly better.
“I needed you to know so you could prepare accordingly, so you could keep your distance when I inevitably get...clingy.”
Seungcheol clears his throat with some difficulty.
“Ah, right. So you’re not looking for someone to ride it out with. Cause...you know... I got plenty of time on my hands right now. I’m happy to offer up my services.”
He sounds ridiculously confident, like he’s already seen the future and it’s Jihoon on his knees begging for his cock.
Jihoon tries not to dwell on the thought.
Once planted though, the image sticks, till it’s all he can think of.
“I...I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He finally manages, pressing both palms flat on his thighs to hide the faint tremble there.
“Cause you think it’ll make things awkward between us, or cause I’m not your type?” Seungcheol asks, a slight frown on his face. He doesn’t give Jihoon a chance to answer before he’s barrelling ahead with, “Or maybe it’s cause I haven’t shaved in three days and I’m wearing a Hawaiian shirt? Cause I was just about to shave, and I have other clothes I could wear. I know you hate this shirt.”
Jihoon eyes the shirt in question with mild distaste.
“I do loathe that shirt, but it’s by no means a deal-breaker. If anyone has the body to make that pattern look good, it’s you.”
The Alpha quirks an eyebrow at him, smirk full of some latent appreciation he wasn’t expecting to find there.
Jihoon blushes again, working hard to sidestep that for the time being.
“Anyway, I just don’t like sharing my heats with anyone. I never have. I prefer to handle them alone when I am allowed to have one.”
“Allowed?” Seungcheol repeats with narrowed eyes.
Jihoon flicks a quick look at him and away again. He suppresses a sigh.
“My job isn’t exactly Omega friendly. I’ve been on suppressants for the last three years.”
“Three years?” Seungcheol gasps, smile widening even as a flush spreads across Jihoon’s face. “Oh shit. You’re going to be horny as hell.”
“Yeah, I guess”
“Like crazy, rip your clothes off, fuck anything that moves horny.”
“Well—”
“—on all fours, begging to be bred, hungry for dick horny.”
“Yes, thank you, Seungcheol. I think we get the picture.” Jihoon huffs, though as often when Seungcheol is talking away, it’s hard to keep the smile from his face.
Seungcheol screws his mouth up at that, clearly supressing a laugh, and then slowly lets it relax into a sheepish smile.
“Well, it’s your heat at the end of the day. If you wanna handle it by yourself, that’s cool. Just let me know when you feel it starting, and I’ll move out of the cave for a few days to give you some privacy.”
Jihoon had something he planned to say, something important he’s sure, but that statement takes him by surprise, and instead he lapses into a confused silence, cheeks tinged a bright pink.
“I don’t expect you to do that. It’s my problem—there’s no reason for you to be inconvenienced too. I’ll leave the cave.”
He isn’t looking at Seungcheol, but he can hear his facial expression in his voice: high incredulity and raised eyebrows.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be in some strange place when you’re in heat. You need to stay somewhere safe, comfortable; somewhere you recognize so you’re less like likely to wander. The cave is ideal for that, and it’s really no hassle for me to uproot for a few days. At least that way I can keep tabs on you.”
Jihoon feels a rush of gratitude and has to swallow back a smile.
“Well, if you’re sure.”
DAY 96
Jihoon has never forgotten how awful heats could be, and how could he? Sweats, mood swings, light headedness—those were just the symptoms they tell you about in sex-ed, the tolerable symptoms that don’t make it seem so bad. Nobody ever bothers to tell you about the pain or the blackouts, or the unhinged behaviour— you never hear about the fear that sets in when your entire body rebels against you, pushes you to do things you would never dream of in the light of day.
When you’re an unmated Omega, trying to control your natural born instinct to be fucked and bred and taken by an Alpha is a constant struggle. Doing that without any help from friends or family, while trying to strive in a Omega-unfriendly workplace, was next to impossible. Jihoon had resorted to suppressants within four months of joining the agency because there was no such thing as heat leave, and his supervisor had been distinctly unimpressed when he dared enquire about it.
‘Is this gonna be a regular thing? How are you gonna manage when you’re in the field.’
He tried to plan work around his heats to the best of his ability, but sometimes his body didn’t want to play ball, sometimes the stress of being overworked and underappreciated meant going into heat when he was 6000 miles away from home on a surveillance mission, going hungry for three days because he was too scared to order room service up to his hotel room.
Suppressants did give him some control of his life back, but nobody really knew what the long-term side effects were. They still don’t. What they do warn you about though, is how intense your first heat off them will be.
This time, there’s nothing Jihoon can do but face it head on, so as the days tick by and he feels the first stirrings of warmth in his belly, as Seungcheol leaves the cave with a ‘Good luck Pigeon’ tossed over his shoulder, he prepares himself to ride out the most uncomfortable experience of his life.
It’s as bad as he remembers. It’s worse.
Everything hurts.
Everything aches.
At turns he is restless with energy and weak with fatigue; hungering for stimulation and yet too distressed to do anything about it, and on top of all that, he’s burning up, blood pumping like molten lava through his veins.
He’s not sure how many hours he’s spent curled up in his sleeping bag, trying to hold in his animal-pained noises, when a rustle of movement draws him out of bed and over to the entrance.
Seungcheol is already long gone by the time he teeters out there on shaky legs, but his scent still lingers on the offerings he’s set out. Some fruit, a bag of pretzels, a few extra bottles of water, and a scrap of paper with the words:
‘What works faster than a calculator?
A calcu-now.
If you found that funny, you’re severely dehydrated. Remember to eat and drink every few hours. I’ll be back to check on you soon. Hang in there :)’
Jihoon can’t help the sound he emits, a broken mewl. He can’t help the breach of tears, even though they exhaust him, and he can’t help it when he starts laughing either, even though that joke wasn’t funny in the slightest.
That Seungcheol has come to his aid, even though he never asked him to, never expected it, fills him with a warm, sustaining glow.
He can’t think of anyone else who’s ever had the least protective instinct toward him. It feels ridiculously nice.
DAY 98
When it’s all over, and he takes his first tentative steps out of the cave, he finds a note speared on a stick in the sand outside.
‘Come to the beach. I caught some crabs!’ it reads.
He quickly washes up in the river and heads over, finds Seungcheol tending a large bonfire. He’s got some yellowfin fish wrapped in banana leaves cooking on one of the flat rocks nestled close to the flames, and is using another smaller rock to break into the crab he’s already prepared.
He smiles at Jihoon when he spots him, waves him over with quiet delight, and Jihoon finds himself smiling back. Seeing him again is like breathing deeply after being underwater, or maybe sliding beneath the water after too long baking in the sun.
“So uhm, how was it?” Seungcheol asks as he settles down, pushing his share of the crab towards him.
“It was fine.” Jihoon says, realizing abruptly that it’s true.
Bodily discomforts aside, he’d had plenty of food and water and the surety that there was someone out there who gave a shit about him. That’s more than he’s had in years.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not exactly counting down the hours to the next one, but compared to how my last heat played out, this was a far more pleasant experience. I actually had food to eat this time.” Jihoon mumbles, mouth full.
When Seungcheol’s expression shifts, ever so slightly, from amusement to concern, he shakes his head.
“I was on a mission in Montreal at the time, and it hit me a week early, totally out of nowhere. I didn’t even have time to stock up on food or pheromones or anything. I just had enough time to make it back to my hotel and barricade the door. I couldn’t ask anyone for help either, cause I was supposed to be laying low and the agent I was partnered with had conveniently switched his phone off.”
The Alpha frowns at him across the fire, eyes clear and too perceptive by half.
“This agent wouldn’t happen to have been Sehun, would it?”
Jihoon swipes his forearm across his mouth and meets his gaze thinly, intrigued.
“How’d you figure that out?”
The Alpha snorts, taking a long drink from his water bottle, head cocked back. Jihoon eyes him patiently, fixated on the taut line of his throat, the stumble along his jaw, feeling that strange curling sensation in his stomach that he’s learned to ignore.
“I sensed some history between you two back on the plane.” Seungcheol tells him, smirking a little. “With how violently he reacted to me scenting you, I figured it was romantic in nature.”
Widening his eyes, Jihoon looks for signs of joking and seeing none, immediately rushes to dismiss the notion.
“Oh God no, no—that’s not what I meant at all. I wouldn’t have asked him for help in that way. We weren’t like that. Ever. I couldn’t stand the guy actually, and he had some pretty weird ideas about me."
Seungcheol grimaces, awkwardly palming the back of his neck.
“Sorry, I thought by help you meant—”
“Ew no.” Jihoon laughs. “I only meant he could have helped by bringing me food and stuff. I would have never let Sehun fuck me, and he damn well knew it. That’s why he’d switched off his phone, cause he offered once and I turned him down, and he saw it as a chance to get back at me. I heard him bragging about to another agent once.”
Seungcheol’s lips quirk humourlessly. “What a prick. I feel less guilty about bashing his face in with that rock now.”
Jihoon stops chewing to give him the smirk he was fishing for.
“Yeah, right. Like you have the capacity to feel guilt.”
They eat in companionable silence for a while, splitting another crab and a few yellowfin tuna between them, before breaking out a mango for dessert. The sun has set, leaving the sky a fading periwinkle. The scorching dry heat of the day is already fading into the humid evening.
Jihoon sucks the juice of a mango off his fingers, feeling full and content now, faltering a little when he looks up and sees Seungcheol watching him with quiet amusement.
He blushes, and the Alpha’s mouth twists, his grin almost fond.
“I got some more in my backpack if you’re still hungry.”
“No that’s okay, I’m pretty full now.” Jihoon says, digging his toes in the sand. Glancing up at Seungcheol again, he speaks haltingly, uneasily. “Thanks for leaving stuff out for me by the way, and checking up on me. You didn’t have to do that, but I appreciate it.”
Seungcheol gives him a weird look, like he begrudges the gratitude.
“Course I did. We’re a team.”
Jihoon can tell he means it; even more, he can tell Seungcheol wants him, more than anything, to understand it.
DAY 116
Hansol’s sailboat seems to just appear one day, literally out of the blue, it’s broken white sail twisting in the wind like a flag of surrender.
Based on its current condition, it must have been anchored on a distant reef for some time, left to bash against the rocks, and was only recently dislodged and swept ashore during a storm. There’s nobody on it, but for a few seconds when he’d first spotted it, Jihoon got so excited at the prospect of being rescued, he’d actually thrown himself into Seungcheol’s arms and kissed him on the cheek.
He’s pretty fucking embarrassed about it now of course, now that they’ve actually had a chance to look around the boat and realise it’s taking them exactly nowhere, but his humiliation is made all the worse by Seungcheol, who keeps re-enacting the moment with random objects he finds in the wreckage.
“Look Jihoon, it’s a rusty spoon. We’re saved! We’re fucking saved. Come here you beautiful bastard.”
“Will you shut up about that already!”
There’s no hope of repairing it—they don’t have the tools or expertise, and neither of them knows their way around a boat anyway—but Seungcheol still insists on towing it to shore to salvage the undamaged sail.
“I want it for something.” Is all he says.
Jihoon pays it no mind at first, because Seungcheol’s always finding ways to repurpose the junk they find, and the final reveal has always been worth the wait. But then the Alpha starts spending all his free time down at the beach, crafting something in secret and acting pretty shifty anytime Jihoon asks him about it, and Jihoon can’t help it if his thoughts take a more intrusive turn.
When he wakes to find Seungcheol gone one morning, the ladder and his rucksack gone too, he freaks out a little.
He sprints down to the beach, heart in his throat, expecting to see a lone sail on the horizon, the dark dot of Seungcheol’s head bobbing alongside it—except he ends up running right into Seungcheol instead, coming in the opposite direction.
“Jesus, what’s lit a fire under your ass,” Seungcheol laughs, stumbling back a step, Jihoon in his arms, before his face takes on a more sober expression. “Oh shit! Is there an actual fire?”
Jihoon shakes his head, both too winded and relieved to speak.
Up this close he can make out the faintest little scar just above Seungcheol’s upper lip, unseen until this very moment. He doesn’t mean to stare at it quite so intently, but it’s safer aspect than staring into the dark eyes boring into him.
“Then why were you running like the devil's riding your ass?”
Jihoon stiffens even if there’s no real need to, maybe only in light of his own paranoia.
“I thought you might—I don’t know,” he says, and then babbles out the rest of his theoretical anxieties when Seungcheol only arches an eyebrow and waits. “I thought you’d repaired the boat and sailed away without me, and I guess I kinda freaked out a bit.”
Seungcheol blinks slowly at him, and then drags a hand down his face with a groan.
“Jihoon, man, what the fuck—" he says, shaking his head like he can’t believe it.
“I know. I know it’s stupid. I know the boat’s not even sail worthy—"
“It’s stupid because I wouldn’t do that to you.” Seungcheol interrupts, looking stricken. “If I had a way off this island, I wouldn’t just leave you behind. Fuck, I know I’m not a model citizen, but I was hoping your opinion of me wasn’t that fucking low.”
“It isn’t.” Jihoon says, the start of a sob that never comes catching in his throat. He drops his head. Nodding into his hands. “I know you wouldn’t do that to me, I just—I panicked, okay. Ever since we found that boat, you’ve been acting kinda shifty; you disappear for hours at a time, to work on something you don’t want to talk about. You’ve never been like that before, and I guess my imagination went into overdrive.”
To his surprise, Seungcheol looks almost caught out. There’s something guilty in the bob of his throat as he swallows, the way his gaze shunts away from him, downward, for the barest moment.
“I—I know. I know I’ve been acting weird. But it’s not cause I’m planning anything underhanded. It’s just that, what I’m working on is kind of...embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing?” Jihoon echoes disbelievingly. He watches Seungcheol palm the back of his neck, kinda amazed by how quickly the sunburn is spreading across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, before he realises, “Oh my god, are you blushing?”
The Alpha’s cheeks only flush darker, and he quickly ducks his head, shying away from him for the first time ever.
It’s ...it’s sort of amazing to watch. Jihoon can’t take his eyes away, a stupid grin on his face.
“Oh wow, you are!” He laughs, regretting when Seungcheol physically recoils. “Oh no, no. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just...this is huge. You’re always so...forthright about everything, I didn’t think embarrassment was an emotion you could experience.”
Seungcheol shrugs a little, still not meeting his gaze.
“Neither did I. But this thing I’m building... it’s making me second guess a lot of stuff I thought I knew about myself—” He blows out a frustrated, brings both hands up to cover his face. “I want to show you, but I honestly think you’ll laugh at me, and I don’t think I could handle that right now.”
“Hey, I won’t laugh.” Jihoon gawps.
Seungcheol grumbles something in dissent, not believing a word of it, but he doesn’t resist when Jihoon reaches up to pry his hands away from his face, threading their fingers together in a clumsy tangle.
“I promise I won’t laugh Seungcheol, but you’re not obligated to show me anything if you’re not comfortable. It’s okay. Everyone is entitled to their secrets. Hell, you’ve already shared more with me than I would expect you to.”
Seungcheol shrugs, sneaking looks at Jihoon through his eyelashes and rubbing at his own shoulder.
“I don’t like keeping secrets from you.” He says, quiet, serious, though there’s gratitude there too, if the smile that lights up his face in the next second is to be believed.
Jihoon steps over to pick up the discarded net of crabs, choosing not to dwell on the moment for too long.
Seungcheol falls into step with him as they make their way back to camp, throwing his arm around his neck in a gesture that is more chokehold than embrace.
“So, on a scale from 1 to 10, how sad were you when you thought I was gone?”
“Too soon Cheol.”
DAY 145
Seungcheol heads off early one morning without announcing where he’s going. He just says he’s going to check something out, and that Jihoon should stay close to camp to keep an eye on things.
Jihoon does as he’s told. Not because he’s been told to, not really; he doesn’t think he’s that obediently brain-damaged by a career in the Bureau to just follow orders blindly. It’s that Seungcheol has a way of phrasing demands like he’s actually doing you a big favour. Like Jihoon’s more than welcome to come along, but it’s going to be a long, boring trek, and wouldn’t he prefer to stay behind and have a little nap?
It’s hard to say no to that kind of logic, manipulative as it is. Or, maybe it’s just hard to say no to Seungcheol. Regardless, Jihoon finds himself alone at the cave for the day, with a lot of time on his hands.
By midday, all the essential chores are completed and the collection of paperback novels he’d meaning to read aren’t appealing to him in the slightest. He does nap for a while, but it’s hard to have a truly good nap when he knows Seungcheol’s out there somewhere, probably doing something idiotic.
This concern proves true when the Alpha finally returns, limping into the cave with a tear down the back of his shirt and various cuts and grazes over his arms and shoulders.
“What the hell happened?” Jihoon croaks, throat clenching as he tries to keep the distress from showing on his face.
Seungcheol waves him off. Even with the rough, reedy scrape of his voice, he still somehow manages to sound unflappable.
“It’s nothing. Just had a little tumble down a ravine is all.”
Jihoon scowls, marching away to the other side of the cave to fetch the first aid kit. Seungcheol tries to wave him off again when he produces some bandages and a tube of Neosporin, but Jihoon manages to bully him into taking a seat by the fire so he can at least clean some of the bigger cuts.
As usual, Seungcheol huffs and whines like a little bitch whenever the antiseptic is dabbed on, making more noise than he probably did during his ‘little tumble.’
It’s easy to forget he’s a dangerous man when he’s acting like this. Too dangerous for Jihoon’s thoughts to dwell on him, too dangerous to hold so close to his heart—but it’s also way too late to keep the guy at arm’s length. They’ve been living in each other’s pockets for months now, growing into something more than friends, yet still less than lovers. Jihoon doesn’t know where that leaves them exactly, but he’ll be damned if the man dies cause he’s too stubborn to disinfect a few cuts.
“You need to be more careful Cheol.” He chides, tilting the Alpha’s head towards the light to dab at the gash on his forehead. “What if you had broken something? I had no idea where you were; you could have been badly injured, bleeding out somewhere, and I would have never known.”
Seungcheol winces at the press of the peroxide swab, fingers drifting up to prod at the cut
“I wasn’t swinging from the tree tops Jihoon. I just went back to the crash site to salvage some more padding from the plane seats.”
Jihoon efficiently swats his hand away from his forehead and sets about applying a plaster.
“Well I don’t like you going back there. It’s too far away, and we have everything we need here.”
Seungcheol blows out a breath through his nose, quick and almost derisive, but there’s a pleased smile taking shape as he reaches for his rucksack.
“I’m gonna remind you of that when you complain about how hard the cave floor is again. Besides, if I hadn’t gone back, I would never have found this.” He says, then draws his hand out to reveal a watch dangling from his fingers.
Jihoon lets out a choked up gasp, scrambling to grab hold of it. Amazingly, it’s still just how he remembers it last, still ticking away. He runs a finger over the battered leather strap, the scuffed watch face, suddenly and purposelessly overwhelmed with melancholy.
“Where’d you find it?” He asks, watching Seungcheol get to his feet with shambling care, like a full-body collapse in reverse.
“It was in one of the cabinets in the galley. Tucked right at the back. Wonder how it got there.” The Alpha says, voice lilting in clear amusement.
“Oh fuck. That...that was me. I put it there for safe keeping. I remember now.” Jihoon says honestly, and breathes through a smile when Seungcheol only laughs in response.
Once such a laugh might have made him bristle; the fact that it now only elicits a feeling of warmth in his chest is the source of no small amount of wonder. Out of everything that’s changed between them, this might be the most pleasant.
“Thanks for bringing it back to me. I guess I owe you an apology.”
Seungcheol plays it off, waving his hand dismissively with a pfft sound.
“It’s cool. Just put in a good word for me with the Bureau when we get rescued. Maybe they’ll go easy on me.”
Jihoon’s eyebrows shoot up, his brain freezing for a second.
There’s nothing serious about the request. It’s meant to be a joke, that much is obvious, and yet, Jihoon finds himself blurting out, quite earnestly, “I was planning on doing that anyway. They’re wrong about you, they need to know that.”
Seungcheol pauses, turns, looks at him like he’s a pet that’s just done an unexpected trick.
The moment stretches, something unspeakable building between them, and then Seungcheol says, sounding more hesitant than Jihoon’s ever heard or thought him capable of, “Don’t say that man. You can’t—you can’t do that Jihoon. You can’t show any sympathy towards me. When, if we ever get off this island, you have to tell them I was a complete asshole the entire time, and you barely survived the experience.”
Jihoon’s stomach knots unpleasantly with the thought of lying about Seungcheol like that.
“I’m not going to do that. Why would I?”
Something crosses over Seungcheol’s face, some deeply dredged emotion that he immediately tries to bury. It’s still there though, barely visible around his mouth, his eyes.
He grits his teeth. “Cause then they’ll have something against you; they’ll say you’ve been compromised. Your career in the Bureau will be over.”
Jihoon’s mouth catches on a laugh, half-exasperated.
“My career is already over. Why the hell would I want to go back to working for the Bureau when Director Kim tried to kill me.”
There’s a sharp noise, irritated and impatient. A quick headshake, like he’s proven himself predictable once again.
“And you definitely can’t go around saying shit like that. Hand in your resignation if you want to, but you tell them it’s cause of some PTSD shit. This experience has taught you life’s too short or whatever. If you tell them there may be some interdepartmental corruption afoot, you’ll be on their watch list faster than you can say conspiracy theory.”
Jihoon doesn’t quite look at the Alpha when he next opens his mouth, tries and finds he can’t trust himself to get the words out in one piece if he does.
“I can’t do that Seungcheol. I won’t lie about you, and I can’t just stay silent and let Director Kim get away with this.”
He falls silent as Seungcheol closes the distance between them, clasping a hand along the length of Jihoon’s neck, his forehead bumping against Jihoon’s own.
They’d never really interacted like this, and it is surprising enough for Jihoon to feel lost in a small state of shock, even as Seungcheol whispers low and sweet, like a vow.
“He won’t get away with it. He’ll get what’s coming to him sooner or later. But you don’t have to be the one to set it in motion. Let me take care of it. My hands are already plenty dirty.”
Jihoon can only nod, struck dumb by the realisation he completely trusts this man. Trusts him with his life, trusts him to keep them both safe long after they leave this godforsaken place.
It’s a tender sort of intimacy he’s never felt with another person before.
DAY 169
It’s their sixth month on the island by the time his heat rolls around again.
Jihoon estimates that he has 24 hours left at the absolute most before it hits him, and he’s kinda dreading it, aware that there's no way his body is going to settle for a quick fingering when it knows there’s a suitable Alpha in the vicinity. An Alpha that—despite his better common sense—he really wouldn’t mind getting fucked by.
He tries to put off the conversation for as long as he can, but 24 hours is already cutting it pretty fine, and when asking for a favour, it’s best to give as much advance warning as possible.
“So, uhm, I’ll be due some time in the next day or so.”
Seungcheol glances up at him from under lowered eyelids, expression unreadable. He’s been watching him weave baskets again, threading one blade of grass with another, working outwards and pulling them taut.
“Due?”
Jihoon bites his lip.
“Yeah, you know. For my heat?”
Seungcheol’s eyebrows ticks up, the tip of his tongue darting across his lips.
“Right. Yeah... I was wondering why you smelled so fucking good just now. Can’t believe it’s already that time again.”
Jihoon lets his eyes fall shut. God, maybe twenty-four hours was too generous. Even that, hearing Seungcheol say that, voice low and a little rough—the simmering itching warmth just under the surface of Jihoon’s skin, the sneaking urge of his thighs to part, the pooling want low in his belly that won’t leave him alone, it all heightens at once.
At least he isn’t aroused enough to be wet. Not yet.
“So anyway, I was thinking,” He makes himself go on before he can reconsider, “Maybe instead of leaving the cave for my next heat, maybe you should just... hang around.”
It takes Seungcheol a minute to absorb this information, which is a sure fire sign he’s already succumbing to the effects of his scent because he usually takes everything in quickly, in the blink of an eye most of the time.
“Hang around? Like...to watch you writhe in pain?”
“I guess you could do that, but I was thinking more along the lines of you hanging around so you could give me a helping hand.” Jihoon says, looking directly into Seungcheol’s eyes so his meaning cannot be misconstrued.
The Alpha just stares silently at his mouth, looking dumber than Jihoon’s ever seen him before.
Christ. Why did he leave it so late to have this conversation? How is he supposed to get the Alpha to listen when the guy’s already thinking with his dick.
Jihoon makes himself breathe, and looks away again. His pulse is already rapid in his throat—he can barely speak over it.
“What I’m trying to say is, I want you to fuck me during my next heat Cheol. If you’re still interested, that is.”
Something finally flickers down in Seungcheol’s eyes, like a pilot light of engagement clicking on. For a moment he looks like the cat who caught the canary, but it’s a flash come and gone in an instant.
“Right. Sure. I can do that.”
They don’t talk about it again that day. There doesn’t seem to be a reason to. Jihoon isn’t in heat quite yet, and he’s sure planning out how things should proceed would just be awkward as fuck.
Come night time however, he’s wondering whether they should have agreed upon some sort of signal, so Seungcheol would know it was okay to get the ball rolling. A thumbs up or a wink or a pat on the shoulder. Though, judging by how loudly the Alpha is snoring into the bend of his arm, a foghorn would be more appropriate.
Seriously, the guy’s liable to sleep through the whole fucking thing.
When the ache starts building low in Jihoon’s gut, he perserveres in silence for a while, rolling onto his side to muffle his discomfort. If he’s too embarrassed to wake Seungcheol up, he’s probably still got a way to go.
But then the discomfort swells, intensifies, and he’s still too mortified to do any thing about it, and just when he’s sure he’ll writhe here in agony till morning, Seungcheol’s suddenly there. He’s there, taking hold of him, taking control. Helping him out of his clothes and gently rolling him over onto his side to grind and rut against him, pressing up against him like he can’t wait.
The fingers of his left hand push lightly but insistently between Jihoon’s thighs, rubbing at the slickness gathered there, while his right hand slides under him to cradle his cheek, thumb his jaw and tilt his head back.
Jihoon only has a moment to wonder why the Alpha wants to look him in the eye so badly, before a hot open mouth skids across his cheek and captures his own in a searing kiss.
Something a lot like shock uncoils fast and brilliant inside him, and it’s near enough for Jihoon to forget himself. Forget where he is, who he’s with, why he feels like he’s boiling alive in his own skin.
He kisses back, a gasping, unpractised thing, but hungry and eager all the same. Kisses until his neck protests the angle and he has to break away to catch his breath.
Seungcheol mouths at his cheek, the hinge of his jaw, teeth and tongue seeking something that feels a lot like approval.
“You’re still okay with this, right? You still want me to fuck you?”
Jihoon’s nodding before he finishes the sentence, urging him on with a huffy “Yes, Jesus, hurry the fuck up.”
He feels more than a little pride that there is still a bit of snappy indignation left in his voice, beneath the pleading edge that dominates. But all that is lost the moment Seungcheol hitches his leg up and starts pushing in, a slow slide that is a strange counterpoint to his prior brief and brutal efficiency.
Jihoon makes truly ridiculous sound, a sob like he is gut shot. His overwhelm feels a lot like hysterical relief. It makes his mouth crack open as he tries to breathe, say something unnecessary, but Seungcheol’s mouth gets in the way.
“It’s okay, I got you. Just relax.” The Alpha tells him between each searing press of his mouth.
He doesn’t stop until he’s bottomed out, until Jihoon is clenching tightly around the thick base of his cock, breathing in unsteady shivers of air. Only then does he press up against his back again, hooking his elbow under Jihoon's knee to hold him open.
It stuns him how quickly things happen after that.
He remembers feeling frightened of Seungcheol, once. The memory is clear but the feeling itself is vague, woolly. It’s hard to imagine, now, that he ever felt that way. Not when Seungcheol is fucking him so good, the feel of his cock inside him equal parts foreign and mind-numbingly good. Nor after, when he’s lapping up the mess of slick between his thighs, petting and stroking him to relax because he’s managing to be shy about this, even now.
“So…uhm…how was that for you?” Seungcheol asks, when they’ve separated and relocated to a slightly less damp patch of bedding.
It comes out sounding stiff and awkward, but Jihoon supposes it’s hard for the guy to summon his usual jokey bravado when Jihoon is clinging to him like a barnacle, one hand wrapped in a death grip around the base of his cock.
Even with his head strange and fuzzy and full of want, Jihoon is vaguely aware of how unreasonable he’s behaving, just as he’s vaguely aware of how embarrassed he’ll be when he looks back at this moment, but for now all that matters is keeping tabs on Seungcheol’s dick—just in case it disappears when he’s not looking.
That cock is very important to him.
He has to keep it close.
“You don’t have to keep holding that, you know. I’m not going anywhere.” Seungcheol says then, as if reading his mind and every ridiculous thought in it.
Jihoon’s mouth opens in a quiet hiss, grip tightening, making the Alpha grunt in discomfort and then—astonishingly—smile down at him.
“Alright, okay—we’ll do it your way Pigeon.” He whispers, eyes brimming with affection and amusement.
When he leans down to nuzzle their heads together, Jihoon instinctively stretches up to meet him halfway, a contented purr bubbling in his chest.
DAY 171
Jihoon’s amazed how quickly his heat passes after a good fuck, how much lighter he feels.
Physiologically it makes sense—he’s given his body the intimacy it craved so desperately—but to have his heat over and done with in less than twelve hours feels like nothing short of a miracle.
It’s still light out when he wakes, around late afternoon though he doesn’t bother to check his watch to confirm it. He just extracts himself from under Seungcheol’s arm, collects a few things and and makes his way out to the river to wash up.
The water is cool and glistening, a welcoming reprieve from the afternoon humidity, but he doesn’t trust himself to wade in and not inadvertently drown himself in his weakened state. Instead, he circles around to where a cluster of large rocks have ebbed the current.
The rocks are covered in moss, slippery under his feet. Before he can venture across them, a hand clamps around his hip, steadying him.
“Easy now, you shouldn’t be on your feet so soon.” Seungcheol says, stooping down to pick him up. He carries him the rest of the distance with ease and sets him down gently on the flattest rock nearest the water.
Jihoon isn’t feeling so washed out that he doesn’t experience an intense surge of shame at the thought of someone, anyone helping him bathe. Yet he barely puts up a protest when Seungcheol takes up the washcloth and soap bar he brought with him, and begins to rub them together to form a lather.
“You don’t have to “
“I want to.” Seungcheol insists, encouraging him to lie back.
He takes to the task the same way he does everything else: with great enthusiasm and without an ounce of self-consciousness.
His eyes never leave Jihoon’s, not even when he stoops down to work the cloth gently over his thighs, between them. Jihoon can’t look away either, and the intensity of the moment makes his skin prickle.
Maybe this is how couples behave after they’ve slept together for the first time. Watchful and curious and considerate, trying to acclimate themselves to the newfound intimacy.
Except, they’re not a couple, are they. So where does that leave them?
He tries not to dwell on how soothing it is to be cared for, on how long it’s been since he hadn’t done something by himself—insisted on it, because self-reliance was a quality he’d praised himself for. Being stripped of that prideful nonsense by Seungcheol of all people, gives him a rush not unlike the excitement he’d felt the first time the Alpha had given him his undivided attention, as well as a fear that he might end up liking something far too much for his own good.
“How are you feeling? You hungry? Want me to get you anything?” Seungcheol asks, helping him back up onto his feet and onto dry land again.
He might’ve sounded casual, conversational, if it weren’t for how his voice had dipped down, husky and low, or how he takes Jihoon by the waist, slowing pulling him in.
“I’m fine.” Jihoon huffs, stunned by how turned on he’s getting over a simple gesture.
Seungcheol must misinterpret his alarm as irritation, because he begins to pull back until Jihoon reaches out, grabbing his wrist and holding fast.
The Alpha doesn’t react for second, doesn’t say a word, and then he’s dipping down to bring their mouths together.
His mouth is surprisingly soft against Jihoon’s own, slow and then searching, as if trying to draw him out.
Jihoon kisses him back, his own trembling anxiety escalating into something needier. Even then, the kiss between them here is nothing like the one they shared last night, in the throes of his heat. It feels like continuing a conversation they’d started ages ago but never finished. It’s still hungry and perfect, but gentled and near cautious too, and Jihoon knows all the reasons why.
Their plausible deniability is gone.
If they do this now, they’re doing it. If they take it any further, it’s because they want to. There’s no blaming it on his heat, the instinctive reaction to a rush of pheromones bouncing between them. It’ll just be them kissing and fucking for the sake of it, and Jihoon finds he’s perfectly okay with that.
Grasping fistfuls of Seungcheol’s hair, he kisses him again, harder this time, slotting his mouth over Seungcheol’s in unmistakable invitation.
Seungcheol groans into it, let’s the kiss go wide and sloppy, licking at Jihoon’s mouth and holding him close as he levers them both down to the soft, mossy ground.
Jihoon can’t remember the last time someone looked at him like this—so adoringly. No one has ever touched him like it was a treat, played with his cock as if they enjoyed it, nuzzling and suckling, speeding up and slowing down, prolonging it for his enjoyment. And there was definitely never a moment he felt safe around an Alpha either, comforted by their presence. That Seungcheol manages it all while he’s boxing him in and holding him down in nothing short of amazing.
His heat may be over, but his body is burning with an entirely new desire. Closeness, intimacy, connection. He’s not even embarrassed to ask for it this time, and of course Seungcheol delivers.
He fucks Jihoon right there on the forest floor, and when they’re done, he knots him so full and for so long, Jihoon cries. Actually cries with how fucking good it feels.
DAY 189
Now that the damn has officially been burst, Seungcheol seems to be a lot bolder about taking liberties.
He touches Jihoon freely now, on and off his heat. Comes up behind him when he’s in the middle of something, anything— washing up or having a nap or just standing around enjoying the view—and crowds him against whatever surface is available, ruts lazily against his ass until Jihoon, aroused and impatient, shoves his shorts down and reaches a hand behind to guide his cock in.
He’s bolder about the shit that comes out of his mouth too. Loves whispering filthy nonsense in Jihoon’s ear—about how bad he wants it, wants him. How good he feels around his dick, how he’s going to knot him for hours, breed him nice and full. Loves it even more when Jihoon snaps and snarls and scratches his back up in retaliation.
He doesn’t seem to care that Jihoon is no one’s picture of the ideal omega, that he’s grumpy and bitter and relentlessly uncooperative. If anything, he seems to get off on it.
When he pushes, he expects Jihoon to push back. He doesn’t expect submission; and for some reason that has only makes Jihoon more recklessly desperate to give it to him. Makes him want to ride that cock as often as physically possible—reach behind himself when Seungcheol’s fucking into him and spread his cheeks apart so Seungcheol can see where he’s stretched and sore around him.
Being the Alpha that he is, of course Seungcheol enjoys this side of him too. Nothing arouses him more than watching Jihoon come undone on his cock.
“Jesus, look at you.” Seungcheol tells him as they move together, naked and sweating in the late afternoon humidity. He pushes himself up, puts his mouth to the shell of Jihoon’s ear and whispers: “Such a good little Omega, taking my dick so well. Made for it.”
It’s degrading, it’s embarrassing, but for once, Jihoon isn’t complaining. He’s been aching to ride Seungcheol all day, and the Alpha’s voice in his ear has a depth and a timbre to it that has his whole body humming.
He closes his eyes instead and bounces a little faster, relishing the sensation of being full and sluggish and pleasingly used.
Sometimes, when they fuck like this, Seungcheol barely has to touch him. Just his length in him, his body pushing up to meet his own, that captivated look on his face as he skims his hands over Jihoon’s body, it’s enough for Jihoon to come all over himself.
This time all it takes is a hand pressed against his belly to send Jihoon over the edge. He shoots over the Alpha’s chest with a choked-out cry, cracking his eyes open just long enough to see Seungcheol reach the precipice too, a low whine tumbling from his lips as Jihoon clamps down ruthlessly around his dick.
He knows he isn’t the first Omega to let Seungcheol into his bed, but he’s probably the first to make him whine like that, and that’s going on his résumé, his proudest accomplishment.
After, they lie side-by-side, touching, kissing, their limbs uncomfortably stuck to each other.
Jihoon feels empty-headed, fucked stupid, too tired to move but too alert to sleep. He traces a tattoo on Seungcheol’s arm, more from memory than sight in the dark. It’s a wolf with its head thrown back, the moon between its jaws, and it feels strange under fingertips—bumpy where it shouldn’t be, too smooth in places—like it’s covering one hell of a scar.
He wants to ask, but something stops him.
Just cause they’re regularly having sex now, doesn’t mean Seungcheol’s going to open up about everything. This is just their chance encounter; a product of unlikely circumstance that would never have happened outside the demarcations of this island. It would be unwise to get too comfortable.
“You got a thing for ink, huh?” Seungcheol asks, misplacing the source of his curiosity. He twists his neck to look down at it, as if taking in the wolf’s ferocious expression for the first time. “That piece is my favourite. I travelled all the way to some dive in London to get it done. The artist was a hella pretentious douchebag, but I liked his work.”
Jihoon drums his fingertips over the raised, blue-black lines.
“What does it symbolise?”
The shoulder under his cheek moves in a graceless shrug.
“That I’m badass? I don’t know. It’s just a cool picture I found on Google.”
Jihoon smiles involuntarily. He almost covers his mouth with his hand, going to fake a yawn or something because he can’t be caught beaming soppily at something so patently ridiculous, but it’s too late. Seungcheol’s already grinning back at him, never happier than when he’s amused Jihoon in some way, earned a reluctant smile.
“None of my tattoos really mean anything. They’re just spur of the moment ideas.” He pauses to jerk his head towards the empty space on his left pectoral. “But I do have something really special in mind for this spot right here. I’m going to get a little Pigeon tattooed right over my heart. For you.”
The only rational response to such a bullshit suggestion is to roll his eyes, and so Jihoon does.
“I bet you say that to all the Omegas you fuck.”
Seungcheol’s mouth slides into a quick slash of a grin that looks strange and new and too fucking soft.
“Yeah, but now it’s your turn to hear it.”
DAY 194
Seungcheol almost bites him. Once.
He’s fucking Jihoon hard, legs over his shoulders, the way he likes it, but not quite so fast this time, a little less efficient. And maybe it’s a moment of madness or weakness or both, but suddenly Seungcheol’s growling and his teeth are dragging up the line of Jihoon’s throat, making his adam's apple jump and shift.
Jihoon gasps a quiet, half-surprised rush of air and then tilts his head to let him, to encourage him.
Nothing about Seungcheol changes. He doesn’t lean back to look at him, doesn't make a sound. He doesn't even ask Jihoon what the hell he thinks he's doing. He just keeps fucking into him, face buried in the crook of his neck.
It's weird to think he didn't notice—it's Seungcheol, after all—but maybe he didn't. Maybe he’s distracted, or tired. Maybe he just doesn't pay that much attention to stuff when he’s fucking someone.
If he did notice, he'd probably never stop teasing him about it, so Jihoon keeps it to himself. Thinks nothing of it until they’re lying together in the sweaty aftermath, and Seungcheol is mouthing at his neck, dragging his canines lightly over his pulse point.
“Cheol—you’re gonna break skin if you keep that up.”
A wet tongue laves over the throbbing spot where teeth had been, before Seungcheol presses his mouth there, murmuring, “You didn’t seem opposed to that idea earlier. Or did I just imagine you offering yourself up to me.”
Jihoon curls his hand under the pillow, feeling his pulse run thick and fast under Seungcheol’s lips.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I would never do that.”
Seungcheol breathes out, his chest rolling against Jihoon’s back.
“Right. I thought so.” His hand slips from Jihoon’s hip to stroke over the curve of his ass, greedy and possessive. “I thought, there’s no way in hell Lee Jihoon—the spiciest Omega in existence— just offered his neck up to me. That’s insane. There’s no way he wants an Alpha; I must be dreaming.”
Jihoon shivers, pushing back against him.
“Yes. You must have been.”
“Cause even if you did, I’m probably the least suitable candidate. I mean...can you imagine being shacked up with me, permanently? You’d hate that, wouldn’t you? You’d hate being...claimed.”
“Yeah...” Jihoon murmurs, distracted again by the feel of Seungcheol’s mouth moving across his skin.
He feels the sharp brush of teeth over the back of his shoulder, dragged up towards his neck again. He shivers. Hisses as blunt teeth dug in just a little bit and then lift away.
When Seungcheol pulls back, rolls away, he tentatively lifts a hand to the livid bruise on his neck, presses down on it.
It sends a hot shock through his body, and he bites his lip to stifle a moan.
How could he hate anything that feels so good?
DAY 222
A month passes right under Jihoon’s nose, before he knows it’s happened. A whole month all in the blink of an eye.
When he finally sits down to document it in his journal, he finds there’s nothing really exceptional in his account of events, though he will admit to omitting a few key details.
It’s not that he’s embarrassed per se, it’s just that...if he did write everything they did down, and someone happened to come across it one day, he would probably come across as some kind of sex-crazed Omega, bragging about his awesome sex life.
That’s never reads well, regardless of how true it is.
He’s still sitting there, still trying to recall stuff that’s happened that doesn’t involve extreme, athletic nudity, when Seungcheol emerges from the cave with his rucksack slung over his back, hands him a pistol and announces, “I got some stuff to take care of. See you in a few days.”
Jihoon watches him stroll off into the forest for a bewildering minute, before scrambling up onto his feet to chase after him.
“A few days?” He croaks. He can’t explain the horror rising up in him, the thought of being left alone for any length of time. “Why a few days? Where are you going?”
“Just to the other side of the island. Don’t follow me.” Seungcheol answers, not breaking his stride.
Jihoon scowls at his back.
He finds himself wanting to lunge at the man again. It’s starting to seem almost necessary, for Seungcheol’s own goddamn well-being.
“I don’t fucking think so Cheol. Last time you went on a little adventure, you fell down a ravine. I refuse to let that happen again. Tell me where you’re going. Better yet, tell me why you’re going!”
Seungcheol pauses and turns to look at him. There’s a smile on his face, but the humour doesn’t fully reach his eyes.
“I’m going into rut.”
Jihoon stiffens up even as his stomach goes into short-lived freefall.
“Oh. Ohh.” He blinks, then blinks some more, at a loss on how to proceed. “Okay, I understand, but—do you really need to relocate to the other side of the island for that? I mean, how bad can it be?”
“Pretty bad,” Seungcheol says, abruptly, “Have you seriously never been around an Alpha in rut before?”
Jihoon rolls his shoulders, cheeks flushing a bit
“No, but—moving across the Island still seems like an unnecessary precaution. I didn’t have to relocate anywhere when I was in heat.”
The Alpha’s generous lips press together, a tiny tell of frustration.
“That was different. You’re a small Omega. I could easily overpower you at your most horniest. Can you really imagine doing the same to me?”
He looks down his own body as he says it, and back up again, pointedly meeting Jihoon’s gaze with his own. They share a smile at the idea of it.
“Who knows.” Jihoon answers with a careful shrug, “I hear Alpha’s are pretty dumb when they’re rutting. I could trick you into cuffing yourself, and then suspend you from a tree so I can pleasure you when I feel like it and spank your ass when you growl too much.”
A measured blink makes Seungcheol look like a particularly slow dog. Then he smiles, full of heat.
“Sounds like fun. We should try that sometime.”
Jihoon can’t help but stare at him dumbly for a moment. Then a moment more.
“What? Really?”
The Alpha lifts one shoulder, his mouth curved and something like smug. “Getting dommed by a spicy little Omega? Sounds like a good time to me.” He sobers then, and gives Jihoon a narrow look. “I’d prefer not to take any chances while I’m rutting though.”
When he turns and starts walking again, Jihoon trails behind him at a more sedate pace, attention now turned to the gun in his hand. He hasn’t set eyes on it since the day of the crash; Seungcheol’s kept it carefully hidden away since. That he’s decided to unearth and entrust it to him is kind of a huge deal. Until Jihoon has a second to really think about it.
“Wait a minute... What are you expecting me to do with this gun?”
That stops Seungcheol in his tracks again. He exhales, long and careful, his head dipping low as he marshals his thoughts. When he turns, Jihoon sees his own wariness mirrored back at him.
“Look, Pigeon, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ve never gone into rut with an Omega in easy reach before. I don’t know how I’m going to react. I’m hoping I just go ape shit for a few days and jerk off non stop. But I might not. I might come looking for you, and if I do... You’re going to need that.”
Jihoon feels himself blanch at the thought, a nauseating churn in his stomach.
Seungcheol takes notice and responds with a grim smile, a hint of nerves just barely showing through his bravado.
“You can shoot up into the air first, if you like. If it’s not enough to scare me off, aim for the meatier part of my shoulder or leg. I promise I won’t take it personally.”
DAY 223
Jihoon doesn’t really know what to do with himself once Seungcheol leaves. The logical part of his brain is telling him to just go on with his day because it’s really none of his business, but a more primitive part comes to the forefront when thinks about Seungcheol, horny and lost and confused, walking off the edge of a cliff in his distressed state.
Someone that stupid really should be supervised, here, in the safety of the cave. He didn’t even take any food with him for god’s sake.
The conflicting impulses have him wandering back and forth along the same stretch of beach for an age, warring with himself, until he resigns himself to waiting it out. There’s nothing else for it.
He goes about the first day as he usually would, scouting, foraging, fishing, and spends the night curled up in front of the fire, the pistol at his side, keeping an ear out for any movement outside the cave.
He finds it harder to keep himself occupied on the second day. Seungcheol’s been on his mind since he woke up; they’ve never been apart for this long.
He’s just set the ladder up to pick some mangoes, when there’s rustle from somewhere behind him, and Seungcheol suddenly pops out from behind a bush.
“Oh, hey, you’re back.” Jihoon calls out to him.
He almost rushes over to greet him, until he takes stock of him standing there— hair mussed to hell and back, shirt missing, looking at him with all the appearance and bewilderment of a bear woken up too soon at the end of winter—and realises he’s still rutting.
Shit.
“I uhm, I was just picking some mangoes for lunch. What are you up to?” He asks, trying to keep his voice as even as possible.
He watches with a suddenly dry mouth as Seungcheol’s gaze drops to watch the nervous movement of his throat. The heat seems to have risen as they were standing here, though the sun hasn’t perceptibly moved.
Jihoon puts his hands on his hips, feeling his mouth go flat and firm as he stares the other man down. He forces himself to stay quiet as he waits him out.
When Seungcheol takes a step towards him, Jihoon’s gaze darts over to where he’s abandoned his backpack, where he’d left the pistol, not at all surprised when the Alpha’s eyes follow the movement.
Even now, out of his rutting mind, he’s observant as all hell. Knows not to come any closer while Jihoon’s within grabbing distance of the gun.
Jihoon considers lunging for it anyway, then thinks—no.
Seungcheol knew he was here.
He could have hid in the bushes and pounced on him when his back was turned. Instead he waited, made as much noise as possible to alert Jihoon to his presence.
He’s still waiting now.
Waiting for Jihoon to make the next move.
“Okay big fella.” Jihoon says, dropping his hands to his sides. “We’ll do it your way, but you better not make me regret it.”
He takes a step away from his backpack, hands in the air to signal his acceptance or submission or whatever the hell it is the Alpha is seeking from him. The moment it’s out of reach, Seungcheol bounds forward enthusiastically, catching him by the waist and pulling him tight against him.
It’s clumsy gesture, over-eager—there’s a lot of sniffling and nuzzling involved, but there’s not a hint of violence in it. If anything, it feels affectionate, full of longing. Especially the way Seungcheol says his name.
“Hoon.”
Jihoon swallows hard, and strokes his neck with his thumb, “I missed you too, you big doofus. Even though it’s only been like a day. What have you been up to?”
Seungcheol grunts something, completely unintelligible, and gestures a hand in the direction he came from, a hectic look of excitement on his face.
He wants Jihoon to come with him, that much is clear.
What he’ll find there, he can’t even begin to imagine, but he lets the Alpha take his hand and lead the way, remains obliging and patient even when Seungcheol attempts on three separate occasions to toss him over his shoulder and just carry him there.
When they finally reach their destination—another cave—Jihoon freezes at the sight of a ship’s sail hanging over the entrance.
“Is this...the thing you were building? You’re...finally going to show me?”
Seungcheol’s answering gesture is somehow both eloquent and unintelligible. ‘Yes, please, come inside already!’
This cave is not as well appointed as their own, but it’s smaller and quieter, warmer somehow, and Seungcheol has clearly gone to great lengths to fortify it, utilizing all the junk he’s salvaged to make it feel more habitable and welcoming, even.
It’s the second half of the sail that catches Jihoon’s attention the most, suspended as it is like a canopy over a crude looking structure in the corner.
It’s a bed, he realises, nestled in the bow of the sailboat, and padded out with and what appears to be all the military thermal gear they’d found in the crates.
The sight of it makes Jihoon’s blood beat faster, burning heat spreading across his face.
“I...is this a nest? Did you build me a nest Cheollie?” He asks, voice gathered somewhere in the back of his throat.
Seungcheol puffs his chest out, looking just absurdly proud of himself and all the more adorable for it.
Jihoon waves a hand uncertainly through the air, trying to swallow the clog in his throat
“Thank you, this is...it’s very sweet of you. You didn’t have to.”
The Alpha looks puzzled by his reaction, but leans down to nuzzle him anyway. When he pulls back, he gestures at the bed, and then very gently manhandles Jihoon towards it.
“Right. I see how it is. You want me to reward you with lots of sex now.” Jihoon says, obliging him for a moment. He clambers in and stretches out on the blanket, making himself comfortable with a put upon sigh. “Well, okay. I suppose you’ve earned it. Take off—wait, what are you doing? Aren’t we gonna fuck?”
Seungcheol lifts his head from where he’s rested it on Jihoon’s stomach, but only to chuff at him softly—sleep. Then he’s lowering his head again, eyes falling peacefully shut.
As he starts to purr, Jihoon can only stare at him in amazement or a moment, before lifting his hands to pet at his neck, his dishevelled hair, feeling his heart melt into a shapeless mushy thing in his chest.
DAY 225
Seungcheol sleeps well into the next morning, evidently exhausted by all that sex they didn’t have.
When his eyes finally flutter open and lock onto his, Jihoon sees recognition, shock and fear in that order.
“Relax. You didn’t do anything.” Jihoon fills him in, before he can assume the worst.
“I didn’t?” Seungcheol asks, voice a touch more gravelly than usual.
“Well, you did kidnap me and bring me here, and there was some intense nuzzling involved. But the only thing you forced me to do was nap—and I like napping so...”
Seungcheol’s face twists; he is baffled and annoyed at being baffled.
“Really? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, are you?”
“Sorry Cheol, but I think you’re just going to have to accept you’re not the big bad Alpha you think you are. In fact, you might be the only Alpha who’s less intimidating in rut.”
That seems to settle Seungcheol, just a bit, and he sits up, scrubbing a hand over his face. When he takes stock of their surroundings, realises where they are, Jihoon can feel his shoulder tensing.
“There was no need for you to feel embarrassed about this by the way.” He says, his pitch shifting to something more serious, gentler and more careful. “It’s in your nature as an Alpha to want to provide.”
Seungcheol shrugs, seems to think it over. His eyes stay on him, for the most part, only taking breaks to glance at his hands and some space above his head.
“We weren’t together when I started building it though,” he says slowly, as if testing out unfamiliar ground. “And I’d...I’d never done anything like this before. Never wanted to, for anyone before. I thought maybe, if you saw it too soon, you’d think I was being presumptuous.”
Jihoon smiles and strokes a hand over his chest, watching him with the same unfettered fondness with which he’d stared at him all night.
“Well, I don’t. I think it’s sweet.”
Seungcheol’s never been shy about accepting praise, but this time Jihoon’s words seem to sink a little deeper than usual. He straightens up a little and smiles at him, before leaning in for a drawn-out kiss.
Jihoon kisses back, heartbeat thundering in his ears.
DAY 236
He really should have seen this coming.
He should have known—give an Alpha and inch and they’ll take a mile, but it happened so gradually, so innocuously, he didn’t realise it was happening at all until it was staring him right in the face.
It’s little things at first. Seungcheol giving him a larger share of their catch; insisting he be the one to fetch and carry their day’s supply of water back to camp; offering Jihoon first pick of the juiciest, ripest fruit, and cutting it up for him because Jihoon hates getting his hands sticky.
Jihoon doesn’t bring it up at first, cause he really doesn’t mind. If anything, he thinks it’s actually kinda charming, and he’s never been so hell-bent on independence to turn his nose up at a thoughtful gesture.
But then shit escalates.
Seungcheol starts stalking him. Which, okay, might seem like a pretty intense word to throw about, but Jihoon’s not sure how else to describe it.
Whenever he ventures away from camp, however far or however long, it’s guaranteed the Alpha will never be more than a few feet away—lurking in nearby bushes or hiding behind trees. Watching him, always. He doesn’t seem to realise he’s doing it half the time, but that only makes the behaviour more concerning.
If Jihoon ever does manage to evade him, he’s treated to no small amount of petulant huffing upon his return, as well as the longest, most laborious sniffing examination, almost as if Seungcheol thinks he’s been—what? Entertaining other Alphas in his absence?
Could he really be that fucking dumb?
Jihoon knows he should confront him about it, put his foot down and redefine a few boundaries, but he doesn’t for some reason, and inevitably it comes to a head, and over the dumbest fight possible.
“Where the hell have you been?” Seungcheol says, meeting Jihoon on his way back to the cave, his face uncharacteristically stern and no good reason for it.
“I was picking mangoes for breakfast... like I do every morning.” Jihoon means to say, but doesn’t even get to finish the damn sentence before Seungcheol’s huffing and waving his arms around, like he’s conducting an invisible orchestra.
“And how was I supposed to know that? You didn’t tell me. You didn’t leave a note. For all I knew, a ship full of pirates could have come ashore and bundled you off.”
“Pirates?” Jihoon repeats, rich with disbelief. “This is 2022 Cheol. Not the 15th Century.”
“I meant Somalian Pirates.”
Jihoon squints at him.
“Why the hell would a bunch of Somalian Pirates come here? And why would they kidnap me of all people?”
Seungcheol throws his hands up again; the orchestra is in full swing.
“Haven’t you seen that very shaky camera movie starring Tom Hanks? They take over a container ship and hold a whole bunch of people hostage while they ransom it back.”
“And what would they ransom me back for exactly? Mangoes? Fish? A silicone vibrator? Cause that’s all we have to trade here.”
Seungcheol glowers at him, then at the forest at large, like he thinks the non-existent pirates are lurking just out of sight.
“The pirates don’t know that. They might think we’re wealthy tourists who just anchored our yacht here for a swim.”
Jihoon pushes his fingers into his eyes and groans.
“Oh my god Cheol, do you even hear yourself? This is actually the wackiest shit you’ve ever said, and that’s including your giant alien Bermuda triangle squid conspiracy theory.”
Seungcheol looks over at him, his eyes flashing white.
“From now on, you’re not allowed to leave the cave without my permission. I’m gonna escort you anywhere, whether you like it or not.”
That knocks Jihoon back a step, the force of his conviction as good as a slap. He keeps himself in check somehow, forcefully keeping his voice even as he asks, “What the fuck did you just say?”
Seungcheol blinks a couple times, seeming to come back to his senses a little, and more importantly, seeming to realise how badly he fucked up.
His whole body twitches, like he wants to bolt, and Jihoon entertains a momentary vision of chasing him down the beach all the way to the top of the mountain just to kick his ass.
He doesn’t though, so Jihoon launches into a lengthy, anger-fuelled rant, calling him out on all his weird behaviour. The stalking, the sniffing, the unhealthy possessiveness. He lays it all out.
Instead of snapping back at him, Seungcheol takes the dressing down like a recalcitrant pup that has been caught and shamed in 4K for chewing on the furniture.
He doesn’t offer up a single argument in his defence, merely stares at the ground until Jihoon says his piece and storms off.
He spends the rest of the day awkward and uncommonly sullen, keeping his distance and reluctant to meet Jihoon’s gaze. When it comes time to sleep and he rolls out his sleeping bag on the far side of the cave, Jihoon finds himself even angrier than he was before.
“Oh my god, you are an actual fucking baby, you know that? I have every right to be pissed off with you, and you’re making out like you’re the victim here. You are not the victim Seungcheol.”
Seungcheol looks down at his hands with an apologetic frown.
“I know that.”
“Oh yeah? Then why are you sitting their, sulking? Why’d you move your shit to the other side of the cave?”
The Alpha shrugs lightly, still avoiding his eyes.
“You’re angry with me. What else did you expect me to do after you yelled at me for ten minutes straight.”
“I expect you to apologize for being an idiot and grow the fuck up.”
“Apologize?” Seungcheol echoes, confusion crumpling his brow. “What the hell for? I didn’t do anything wrong. I was just trying to protect you.”
“No, Seungcheol, you were trying to control me.”
Seungcheol looks away, off towards some empty corner of the cave, his expression retreating into something miserable and free of any external ire. It’s as though his anger has dug inwards, aimed at himself, which should make Jihoon feel better but doesn’t, really.
“Do you know what I was thinking when I woke up this morning, before I rolled over and saw you weren’t there? I was thinking, if we were in my apartment in Paris, I could slip away quietly to fetch you some coffee and almond croissants from the bakery on the corner.”
Jihoon blinks at him, all prior irritation melting away, cheeks warm for an entirely different reason.
“I...I like Almond croissants.” he says, thoughtlessly tugging at the hair at his nape.
“I knew you would, and the ones I’m talking about are especially delicious, but that’s not the point. The point is—a second later I thought, why the hell am I having these thoughts in the first place? Why am I feeling so disgustingly domestic? And then I realised it’s you—you and your Omega wiles controlling my mind through my penis.”
Jihoon sneers, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Oh, so this is all my fault?”
Seungcheol shakes his head sharply, biting his teeth together.
“Yes. No...I...I don’t know, Jihoon. I just know I don’t do this. I don’t care about people I fuck. I don’t build them nests, I don’t worry about where they’ve gone or what they’re doing. I don’t give a shit if they’re injured and I certainly don’t wonder if they’d like almond croissants for breakfast. This is all very new for me, and I’m sorry if I don’t have a handle on it. But if anyone has any control here, it sure as hell isn’t me. I’m pretty fucking helpless when it comes to you.”
There is a moment where Jihoon can’t quite breathe, which seems excessive considering the healthy dose of resignation in Seungcheol’s voice, the overwhelming sense that Seungcheol is more annoyed by these strange new feelings than anything else. It shouldn’t be affecting Jihoon so intensely.
He waits until his lungs are working again, and then says carefully, “Okay, I’m willing to admit I was a little harsh with my criticisms, if you can admit you were being overbearing.”
“You see, I don’t really think I was—” Seungcheol begins, crossing his arms stubbornly.
Jihoon sighs loudly.
“Seungcheol, you have to apologize, or else we can’t put this behind us and move on to the makeup sex.”
Seungcheol falls out of his defensive stance, switching tack almost immediately.
“I am so sorry. In fact, I have ever been more sorry about anything in my entire life. Please forgive me.”
Jihoon levels him a narrow look. It’s taking a monumental effort not to smile.
“What are you sorry for?”
Seungcheol flips his hand languidly through the air, as if to indicate Jihoon’s long list of grievances.
“Everything. The stalking, the possessive behaviour, the melting of the polar ice caps. It’s all my fault.”
“If you’re not going to take this seriously—”
“Oh, I am! I’m taking this very seriously.” Seungcheol agrees quickly, scrambling over to kiss him: mouth in a hurry to quash any argument before it can form.
Jihoon does smile then.
Just a little bit.
DAY 243
It’s during their eighth month on the island that Seungcheol finds the cave. The other, other cave that is.
(Yeah, there’s a lot of caves.)
(Yeah, it gets confusing.)
He finds it during one of his lengthier expeditions, and immediately Jihoon can tell something’s different about this one because Seungcheol’s moody as fuck when he returns. As if he’s stumbled across something he doesn’t want to talk about, but will be obligated to eventually cause that’s what they do now. They talk this shit out.
He doesn’t say anything until the next morning, just as they’re sitting down for breakfast.
“There’s something I have to tell you, but I don’t want you to get upset.”
Jihoon frowns down at his stomach..
“If this is about me putting on weight, don’t bother. I’m already well aware of how fat I’m getting.”
“What? No, no, that’s not—” Seungcheol cuts himself off, reaching up to pass his free hand over his eyes. He draws in a deep breath, a little frayed at the edges, and tries on a smile. “I found something yesterday. Something you really need to see. Two somethings actually. One of them...I think is Hansol.”
Jihoon gasps and jumps to his feet, a hundred and one questions dancing on the tip of his tongue, before he registers the banked worry in Seungcheol’s expression.
“Oh. He’s dead, isn’t he.”
Seungcheol nods, a certain grim practicality in his expression
“Yeah. I’m sorry Pigeon.”
Jihoon takes this in without much surprise, but disappointment sinks into his gut nonetheless.
“Can I see him? I think I want to see him.”
The cave Seungcheol takes him to is much like their own; cool and dry and sheltered from the elements, except it’s on the opposite side of the island, facing north, and nothing to suggest it’s worth exploring but for the collection of boot prints leading in and out again.
Seungcheol had the foresight to cover the body with a blanket, though Jihoon’s sure it’s more for his sake than out of respect for the dead. He’s spent the last eight months carrying this guy’s journal around after all, getting to know him, his deepest thoughts and fears, and to see him lying under a tree, clutching at pictures of his family and friends while the ants eat away at what’s left of his body—it would have been too much.
Hansol deserved to get out of here. He deserved better.
Jihoon, crouched a couple feet away from the scene, allows himself to briefly close his eyes. He says without turning around.
“I don’t know why I’m so upset. I mean, I knew he would be dead. It made sense that he’d be dead, but I guess part of me was still holding out hope that he made it out of this place.”
“Well, he almost did.” Seungcheol announces, stepping over to offer a hand up. “That’s the other thing I wanted to show you. It’s a little further along.”
At first, it appears to be little more than an vintage turntable, cobbled together with crusty busty electronics and scrapped aeroplane parts. But then he gets a closer look at it, and his breath catches painfully in his throat as his mind pieces together what it was supposed to be.
It’s a radio.
A fucking radio.
Jihoon sucks in a deep breath and swallows, practically verging on lightheaded.
“Jesus Christ. How did he...how did he manage this?”
Seungcheol laughs a little bit, sliding Jihoon a sideways look.
“Well, by the looks of it, by stripping out the electrics of anything that crash landed here and cobbling it together. That’s what it looks like at any rate. You’re the one who’s been reciting his journal like holy scripture. Did he never mention a radio?”
Jihoon shakes his head slowly, still processing it all.
“No. But then again, some of the pages are illegible. He could have been working on something. He was an engineer.”
He casts his gaze over the radio set up again, taking note of the missing pieces.
“It looks almost good to go.”
Seungcheol draws up to stand alongside him, and turns to find his eyes. “Don’t get your hopes up Pigeon. If it was almost good to go, I doubt the guy would have blown his brains out in the middle of the forest.”
Jihoon doesn’t like the bleak way he says it, the vacant look in his eyes, as if he’s already resigned himself it’s not going to work.
He’s not used to Seungcheol being the pessimistic one.
“You don’t know that’s what happened. It could have been an accident.”
Seungcheol barks a laugh, rattling and hoarse around the edges.
“Really? You think he swallowed his pistol, by accident?”
“He could have been running with it, and tripped over something, and it went off unexpectedly when he fell. We don’t know.” Jihoon counters, without putting much force into it.
Seungcheol shrugs, something of that old implacability seeping into his dark eyes.
“Sure. I guess that’s possible. Or maybe one of the monkeys did it.”
“Right. Wait, what?”
“Maybe he fought with a monkey and it wrestled the pistol out of his hand and shot him.”
“Well—"
“Or maybe he was sitting under a palm tree, cleaning the gun, and a ripe coconut fell out of the tree and landed on the trigger. Killing him instantly. That’s about as equally possible as your dumb ass theory.”
He says it like a challenge, near to a schoolyard taunt. And it’s all wrong, the way his face is twisted in a sneer. Like he’s looking for a fight.
It should make Jihoon want to flinch away, but he reaches out instead, cups Seungcheol’s jaw firmly in one hand.
“Hey, what's your deal? This is a huge breakthrough. We found something useful we might be able to use to get off this island. Why are you acting like it’s the worst thing that could have happened? Don’t you want to get out of here?”
Seungcheol sighs, the fight draining out of him, then smiles, soft and light, like he’s remembering the ghost of an old joke.
“Sure I do, it’s just—things are gonna change. Majorly. Things will be different when we leave this place, and maybe that doesn’t bother you, but it sure as hell bothers me. I like what we’ve built here.”
It’s the first time Seungcheol has ever said it so directly out loud and all of a sudden everything in Jihoon feels tight, unmanageable.
He studies the Alpha for a long moment, unsure of what the wisest next step is, of what Seungcheol needs to hear.
Even though it’s only just them here, and he’s already made a fool of himself in front of Seungcheol enough times to be immune from embarrassment, it still feels like the bravest thing he’s ever done when he reaches out to grasp Seungcheol’s arm, and says, almost gently:
“Things don’t have to be different. I like what we’ve built here too.”
Seungcheol draws back and considers him, his face carefully blank.
“Yeah?”
He looks stupidly happy when Jihoon nods, all your Christmases at once kind of happiness, but there’s a gentler pleasure in his eyes when he leans down to press their heads together.
“I’m gonna buy you so many almond croissants.”
DAY 246
The plan Jihoon draws out is breathtaking in its ambition, but not impossible to see through. Hansol’s radio is well constructed and fit for purpose, he’d just failed to get his hands on a few key pieces of equipment to get it up and running, namely an antenna and a power source.
They have both in their possession, more or less. The tactical headgear they found in the military shipment crates are already designed to receive short wave radio signals, and only require a few minor adjustments to increase their wavelength and Jihoon is sure he can modify the radio design to utilise the batteries that came with the vibrator.
Whether someone will be flying low enough or sailing nearby to receive their signal is another matter entirely, but Jihoon doesn’t let that discourage him.
Unfortunately he can’t say the same about Seungcheol.
The Alpha is at his side the entire time—helping him run tests, salvaging more parts from the crash site. He even builds a sturdy shelter for the transmitter they must haul half way up the mountain for a better signal—but he remains indifferent to it all. The entire time he’s toiling away, he has this hunted look to him that Jihoon can’t be sure is new or has always been there, lurking behind his eyes.
It’s as if—Jihoon hates to entertain the thought—he never planned to come back from here at all. He plans to stay on this island, even if rescue comes.
Are you planning something, Jihoon wants to ask him a hundred times a day, but then each night they’re back in their cave together, Seungcheol is himself again, and Jihoon allows him to distract him with his mouth and his hands. Lets him press up against his back each night and gnaw at his neck, work his dick between his thighs and knot him like he’ll never get a chance to again.
“I think we should get our story straight, before we turn that radio on again.” He finally ventures one night, after their first successful broadcast.
The Alpha tips his chin down to look at him, a speculative, sharp look in his eyes.
“It could take weeks before someone picks up our signal.”
Jihoon frowns at Seungcheol’s chest, his finger tracing nonsense shapes over his skin.
“Yeah, it could. But it could also happen in a matter of days, or hours, and we need to be ready for possibility of the Bureau showing up here to cart you off in cuffs, don’t you think?”
A dark rumble of laughter builds in Seungcheol’s chest.
“What would you propose I do if they did?”
“I don’t know.” Jihoon grumbles, rolling onto his back. “That’s why I think we should plan something. Something non violent.” He adds quickly, before anyone can get any ideas.
He twists around and carefully retrieves his journal from his rucksack front pocket. It’s an effort. His limbs are heavy, his throat tight.
“I have to expose what Kim Soobin did. I have to expose him to the Bureau, I know that much—I just don’t know how to keep you from spending your life behind bars, and I’d really like to do that. So can we please plan something?”
Seungcheol curls his mouth a little in acknowledgement. It’s fond and heart wrenching at the same time.
“You can’t stop them from arresting me Jihoon. You know that. We just have to hope someone else will pick up on our signal.”
Jihoon looks over at him in surprise. After a moment he replies, very croaky, “I don’t like that plan.”
He doesn’t know what expression he’s wearing, but Seungcheol’s face crumple a little, and he reaches out to stroke a hand down his side.
Jihoon isn’t in the mood to be consoled; he rolls onto his other side, sniffling quietly into his blanket until the Alpha presses up behind him, tucking his chin over his shoulder.
"It’ll be okay Pigeon. Everything will work out. Trust me.”
He sounds sure of that much at least, and that alone makes part of Jihoon relax a little, enough to curl back into his embrace.
DAY 254
He needn’t have worried so much, it turns out.
It’s not the Bureau that picks up on their distress signal in the end, but a Micronesian fishing boat that just so happens to be sailing past, fifty miles from where it’s supposed to be.
After a tense few minutes of back and forth, where Jihoon is able to verify this is not a prank, it’s captain changes course immediately, making a beeline straight for them.
Seeing that fishing boat on the horizon, so close and tangibly real, is a strangely anticlimactic moment.
After spending the last ten months in this place, he imagined there would be some wild cheering, or a few tears shed at least, but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Even though there had been times he thought rescue might be impossible, and at least one night in particular where he was convinced he’d die before he ever saw Seoul again, he’s mostly just dreading the thought of being around other people, having to explain himself and play at being normal.
When the boat gets closer, close enough to see someone standing on the deck, waving at them, he completely fails to wave back, held back by a stupidly confusing rush of emotion he isn’t expecting and the tight expression he catches on Seungcheol’s face.
The Alpha looks primed for a fight, so on edge he’s practically vibrating with it. His teeth are clenched tight enough to make the muscle at his jaw flutter, and his hands are shaking ever so slightly at his sides.
It’s then that Jihoon realises this isn’t just anger—it’s fear. Seungcheol’s afraid of something, and Jihoon feels a matching swoop of fear, low in his gut.
“Cheol—what’s wrong? Why are you upset?”
Suddenly, Seungcheol bolts his eyes over, snagging Jihoon’s attention like barbed wire. There is no hesitance in his face now, no more glances or sidelong gazes.
“Do you trust me?”
When Jihoon fails to answer, he leans in, clapping a hand around the back of his neck to bring their foreheads together.
“Jihoon, I need to know, do you trust me?”
“Yes.” Jihoon says, easily enough, even though his stomach is knotting something awful.
Seungcheol exhales, the sound too soft and too sad and too foreign to be a laugh.
“Then just know, everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to find you.” He says, then kisses him.
Even with a mouth pressed clumsily, desperately against his, Jihoon feels himself tense all over, instincts suddenly pricked.
‘What are you planning? What are you going to do?’ he wants to ask, but a cloth covered hand clamps over his nose and mouth when Seungcheol’s pulls back, and he suddenly feels weak.
The last thing he remembers is weightlessness, lights and phantom faces bustling all around him; so much colour behind his eyelids the world feels artificial, like a dream.
“The next thing I remember, I was waking up on that boat. The fisherman who picked up on our signal were unconscious in the hold and he... Seungcheol was gone. You know the rest.”
Across the table, Agent Kang and Yoon share the same uncomfortable look of surprise on their faces.
Maybe they expected him to hold back a little, paint himself in a more flattering light—but he’s never been one for keeping secrets this huge. It wears a person out, lying all the time. It hollows you out. You have to make room in yourself, for each and every lie, and soon you run out of space for anything else.
“We appreciate that very detailed account of things.” Agent Yoon says, packing away one set of notes, only to pull out another, “But there are still a few details we’d like to clarify.”
Jihoon sighs, lifting the lid off his coffee for something to do with his hands.
It’s been three hours, and the weariness is back, wrapping familiar arms around him. He’s tired of talking, sick of staring at four grey walls and the flashing red light of the camera in the corner.
“Then I suggest you take them up with Kim Soobin. He should be able to clarify anything else. As I said in my previous statement, he’s the one who was supposed to be overseeing the entire operation.”
Agent Kang snorts, drawing attention to his presence for the first time since they’ve sat down. He clearly lacks the patience and manners of his older partner.
“So you keep telling us—but the thing is Mr Lee, none of the documents or files retrieved from Kim Soobin's hard drives suggest there was any such mission in the works. We’re literally taking your word for it.”
Jihoon feels the corners of his mouth turn sour, what limited patience he had stowed away inside him waning. He sets his coffee down a little harder than necessary.
“Well no shit Sherlock. He’s had eight months to clean up after himself, of course you’re not going to find any physical evidence. And I don’t expect you’d admit to finding any either—cause it would look really, really bad for the Bureau wouldn’t it? If it came out that one of their directors acted without their approval to assassinate a prisoner.”
There’s cruelty in the way Agent Kang assesses him, as if he has found a weakness he always suspected to be there and has only just now exposed it.
“That’s a bold claim Mr Lee. Do you have any proof to back it up, other than the delusions of a retired hitman?”
“Maybe we would if you bothered to give his account of things the same scrutiny as mine.” Jihoon shoots back scornfully, mouth twisted and shaky with adrenaline.
Agent Yoon forestalls a biting reply from his partner with a look.
“We had every intention to Jihoon, but unfortunately for everyone involved, Kim Soobin is dead. That’s why we called you in today.”
A rush of icy adrenaline floods through Jihoon, and he straightens in his seat.
On the island, he’d despised the thick humidity, but finds himself missing it now, as if it were a blanket he can pull over himself and pull everything else back into place with it.
“I don’t understand. How can he be dead? He was here just the other day, when I was being debriefed.”
Agent Yoon’s eyes flick over him, studying. He exchanges a look with his partner, who looks about as uncertain as he is.
“What were you this past Friday? Why weren’t you at your apartment?”
Jihoon blinks, muddled by the sudden redirection of his thoughts. It’s in that moment he realises the wording is deliberately vague. They’re asking him to provide an alibi, without accusing him of anything outright.
This is all perfectly understandable, he tells himself irritably. Of course they need to follow procedure.
“I uhm...I got a call from the hospital on Thursday; the doctor was worried about my iron levels, and wanted to see me. He decided to keep me in for further tests. He only discharged me this morning.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient.” Kang says, drawling low and mean at Jihoon’s expense.
He exchanges a brief look with his partner, then reaches for one of the folders at his elbow, fanning out a series of photographs across the table.
The human mind doesn’t know what to make of the familiar in new contexts. It fumbles and grinds to a halt when you see someone you’ve only ever seen at the office or the grocery store walking the other, more personal streets of your life. That’s how Jihoon feels anyway, when be looks at those crime scene photographs of Director Kim in his apartment, bleeding out on his living room rug.
Why’s he there? He keeps asking himself. He shouldn’t be there.
He doesn’t recognise the other two men in the photographs, but the level of violence of their deaths compared to the Director’s is stark. There was no suffering for them, just a point-blank professional execution. Kim Soobin on the other hand is scraped and bruised, with a deep, bloody gash across his throat. The fingernails of his right hand have been removed.
Jihoon scans his eyes over each picture carefully, feeling like he’s on a runaway train, nauseous with acceleration.
“That’s...my apartment. Are you saying Director Kim, those men, were killed in my apartment?”
Agent Yoon leans across the table to gather the pictures again into a neat pile, seeming unfairly relaxed compared to how shaken Jihoon is.
“They were discovered by maintenance yesterday morning, after your neighbours complained about the smell. Our autopsy reports show Director Kim was tortured extensively before his throat was slit, and if the trail of bodies we’ve uncovered in the last 48 hours is anything to go by, it was a successful interrogation.”
Jihoon lets a breath out slowly, trying to stop his hands from shaking.
“I didn’t know anything about this. This has nothing to do with me—”
“Then why was Director Kim at your apartment?”
“I don’t know!”
Agent Kang leans forward, his dark eyebrows furrowed in irritated disbelief.
“Look—we’re wiling to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but if Choi Seungcheol is exacting some sort of revenge here, we need to figure out who’ll be next. We need to intercept him before it’s too late, and only you have gotten close enough to know how he thinks.”
Jihoon draws a hand over his face. He can’t believe he’s survived a plane crash and eight months on a deserted Island, only to get dragged over the coals for letting the most unpredictable man in the world escape, a man the Bureau are denying was even on the plane with him. And now—now the one person who could have cleared his name has gone and gotten himself killed with entirely unearned martyrdom.
“What makes you so sure Seungcheol is responsible? What makes you even think he’s in the country? I mean—even if he is here, and he did do this, what reason does he have to target anyone else at the Bureau?”
Agent Kang studies him over the frames of his glasses.
“Because he used to be one of us, Jihoon. And he thinks we betrayed him.”
It takes a moment for Jihoon to process the words and then all the colour drains out of his face almost instantly.
It feels like a huge balloon has popped in his mind, leaving him deafened and dumbfounded, just blown the fuck away. The last eight months have taught him a lot, yeah, but nothing much about how to keep your world from being shaken to the very core.
“W-what do you mean he was one of us?”
Agent Yoon stares him in the eye, and says in a slow, careful drawl, each word given its proper time and space, “Choi Seungcheol used to be a Bureau Agent, Jihoon. Just like you, just like us. Then he went rogue, and the Bureau was forced to distance itself.”
Jihoon forces himself to breathe deeply and steadily as he process that, clawing for something, anything, that will make sense of what he’s hearing.
“No. That’s... That’s a crock of shit. Seungcheol didn’t. Couldn’t. He never said anything about working for the Bureau. His...his father was an enforcer in the Jo-pok. He—he would have told me.”
For the first time, the look Kang gives him is almost pitying, and that’s the worst part yet.
“That was just part of his cover, an identity fabricated so he could infiltrate their ranks. It was admittedly watertight—even we didn’t have access to the files until recently; Director Kim had done everything in his power to bury them. But we know now he was a successful mole in the Jo-pok for years, and Kim Soobin was his handler. When he started going off the rails, compromising the Bureau’s objectives, they had no choice but to cut him loose.”
Jihoon shakes his head, stupefied and knowing he shouldn’t be: all the clues were there, right from the start, but he didn’t want to put them together.
It must have been a protective measure, his mind shielding him.
They two agents take his reaction as an opening, a chance to wedge in with the usual off-the-record bullshit in an effort to absolve the Bureau of any responsibility.
They talk in hypotheticals, telling him the Bureau had no idea what Director Kim was planning. That if he did indeed arrange for the transfer—which they’re not saying he did— or planted the explosive on the plane, he acted alone. Likely in an attempt to remove Seungcheol from the picture in a way that would cause the least inconvenience for himself. They also try very hard to impress on him the fact that Seungcheol has managed to evade capture for years, and so the only reason he was caught in the first place was because it must have been part of his plan.
Jihoon listens to every word, but he doesn’t think he’s really taking it in anymore.
Instead, he’s thinking back to all things Seungcheol said to him—I like what we’ve built here. Do you trust me. I’ll find you—and how he should have known they were all flat-out lies, but he wanted to believe them so badly he didn’t even care.
Even now, staring down at their folder of circumstantial bullshit, he still wants to cling to those words, wants to trick himself into thinking there’s nothing in the world but Seungcheol’s hands on his stomach, the long lines of Seungcheol’s body slotted behind his own while they listen to the waves crashing against the shore
“Thanks for clearing that up for me. Are we done here?” He manages, when he’s finally given a chance to talk.
The two agents exchange a quick look over the table, clearly expecting some other reaction to the onslaught of information. They’re so surprised when he starts gathering his shit, it’s almost funny. Or would be, if he wasn’t so upset.
“I don’t know where Seungcheol is,” Jihoon tells them, chair scraping against the floor as he pushes back from the table, “So don’t call me again. I won’t help you find him.”
He’s halfway down the corridor when agent Kang catches up with him, to deliver a final parting shot of the worst sort.
“He didn’t care about you Jihoon: had that plane not crashed, he would have found a way to escape. Then he would have killed you along with the rest of the crew and I guarantee you he would not have batted an eye.”
His hand settles on Jihoon’s shoulder as he waits for the elevator and squeezes, and Jihoon barely feels it.
What he does feel is his chest constricting, his ribs collapsing over his lungs and heart. A dark haze blooms at the edges of his vision, narrowing the world to a square of blue linoleum under his feet, to the glass of tears over his eyes as he recalls something Seungcheol had once said.
‘You know. I’m happy our plane crashed. I don’t think I could have gone through with it.’
Day 1
Jihoon’s new place is the best he can afford given the circumstances.
He’s not on the government’s payroll anymore, not really on anyone’s payroll, officially—so the only place he could afford is a one bedroom apartment in a run-down, mid-century building, with no security cameras in the lobby and a permanent out-of-order sign on the elevator.
It suits them just fine though. Kinda reminds him of the apartment he lived in when it was just him and his dad, and that’s pretty fitting, he thinks.
The landlord doesn’t ask many questions—another good thing. She doesn’t care that he pays in cash, or that he couldn’t support his tenancy application with suitable references—she’s just happy that he pays the rent on time and keeps the place clean.
His proximity to the rougher side of town does have him sleeping with a gun tucked under his pillow though. He doesn’t keep it loaded of course—he’s not reckless—but it makes him feel a little safer, having it nearby.
It’s the first thing he reaches for when he awakes to the sound of someone moving around his kitchen.
Everything is dark and quiet when he steps out into the hallway, gun drawn. Nothing but the hum of the fridge in the kitchen and his own heartbeat penetrating the silence.
He keeps his footsteps light, squinting at shadows, until he reaches the mouth of the hall and the small living area beyond, and then freezes, even as his heart lurches in his chest.
Right there, drinking orange juice in the middle of his kitchen, is Choi fucking Seungcheol.
He looks good. Dark hair slicked back, clean shaven, wearing an expensive suit, tailored to fit. There’s a few more lines around his eyes, and what appears to be a new scar on his neck, but he looks happy, healthy, and his smile makes Jihoon’s stomach flutter the same as it always did.
“You’re out of orange juice,” Are his first words to him in over a six months.
Jihoon stares at him, his eyes too wide, unsure if it’s fear or relief he feels, unsure if it even matters at this point.
He flicks the safety on and sets the gun down anyway. There isn’t much distance between them; Seungcheol could be on him in five paces if he so wishes.
“How the hell did you find me?”
Seungcheol doesn’t say anything to that, just jams his hands in his pocket and raises his chin, eyes darting from the magnets tacked to the fridge, to the coffee table crowded with remote controls and sodas and a stack of books two feet high.
“Nice place you got here. Really cosy. The view could be better, but I guess once you’ve woken up to perfectly blue seas and palm trees for eight months running, nothing can compare eh?”
Jihoon covers his face, sniffles deeply, trying to breath past the chokehold his emotions are exerting on his throat.
“You can’t be here.”
There’s no anger to the words, but rather it’s like a balloon leaking air, all his bottled up despair clouding his voice.
Seungcheol doesn’t seem to catch his meaning. He steps over to the window to flick the blinds, sounding light and unaffected as he says, “Don’t worry, they’re not looking for me anymore. They’re too busy being suspicious of each other.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Jihoon huffs. He crosses his arms over his chest, embracing himself tightly. “I’m asking you to leave because I..J don’t want you here.”
Seungcheol meets his gaze, and holds it for an awfully long time, looking for something, some sort of sign. He scoffs, not unkindly.
“You’re kidding right? Please tell me this is your idea of a cruel joke, cause I might actually go fucking nuts if you tell me you actually shacked up with someone else while I was out there, planning our life together—”
Jihoon cuts him off with a strangled gasp of a laugh, head tipped back to stare blindly at the ceiling.
“There’s no one else Seungcheol. You of all people should know I don’t trust that easily.”
Silence reigns for a moment, the Alpha studying him intently, cataloguing the various changes to his body. Then he blows out an irritated breath and takes a step forward, his body tight with energy.
“Then do you mind telling me what’s going on? Why do you want me gone? What did I do?”
He takes another step closer, close enough to touch, so Jihoon does. Slaps him hard right across the face. It doesn’t stop Seungcheol from grabbing him anyway, dragging him flush against his body.
He kisses just the way Jihoon remembers it. Like that first time, his hands cupping Jihoon's face, mouth devouring his, possessive and breath-taking and perfect.
Jihoon lunges up, kissing him harder, pushing back, with body and lips and tongue. Kisses him until he feels those big hands settle on the small of his back, gentling him, soothing him.
When Seungcheol start guiding him backwards towards the bedroom, he forces himself to break away, shaking his head, his whole body trembling,
“Jesus Cheol. It’s been seven months, you can’t just walk back into my life and expect to just pick up where we left off.” He says, meaning to sound furious but it doesn’t come out like that, instead it sounds all weak and halting.
Seungcheol takes a step back, gaze lowered. The street light throws his face into harsh lines and shadows, eyes unreadable. Jihoon can’t know what he’s thinking, can only watch him rub at his jaw, the tic of muscle under his hand as he grinds his teeth.
“You said you trusted me.” He continues in a near-inaudible whisper.
“I did, and I did. And you lied to me.” Jihoon says, in stilted agony.
Seungcheol’s eyes widen, and his mouth contorts into an ugly shape.
“Is this because I didn’t let you in on the plan?” He asks, his eyes big and muddy-looking, straining to understand. “Because I’m sorry about that, I really am, but I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t just interrogate you the second you got home side, and I didn’t want to put you in a position where you had to lie. I figured I’d disappear for a few months and come for you when things cooled down. But then you—you pulled a disappearing act too. One second I had eyes on you in Seoul and everything was looking peachy, and then in the next you vanished off the face of the earth, and I had no idea how to find you. I looked everywhere for you Jihoon—literally everywhere. I even went back to that fucking island I was so desperate to find you.”
Jihoon tries not to laugh. Or cry. He gasps instead, sharp and shaky, his eyes threatening to spill
“No Seungcheol. You lied to me about who you were.”
Seungcheol’s face creases in an expression of polite incomprehension, and Jihoon knows he’s about to be lied to again.
“Don’t. Just...don’t. I know, okay. I know everything. I know who you used to be Seungcheol. They told me everything.”
Seungcheol does not react to his words save for a very quick flash of shock over his features he just as quickly buries.
“Really?” He asks, eyes wide with false curiosity. “They told you everything?”
He sounds almost cheerful, except for the way his voice has dropped low, his pulse up. Jihoon can see it thumping in his neck.
“Did they tell you about how they used me for years to level the playing field for them? That I was being asked to do shit no other agent had been asked to do? That I begged them to pull me out because I didn’t want to be undercover anymore, that I missed my family and just wanted to come home?”
Jihoon freezes in place but waits for him to keep going, heart dashing itself to death like a frantic bird against his ribs.
“Did they tell you how they deliberately blew my cover whenever I was deemed no longer useful? What about the 5 months I spent in a windowless basement, getting tortured by the Jo-pok for information because the Bureau didn’t want to admit they fucked up? Did they share that with you too?”
Jihoon swallows as some phantom ache tries to claw up his throat. “No,” he says, hardly more than a whisper. “They never told me that.”
Seungcheol affects a crooked half-smile.
“So I guess it’s fair to say we were both selective with the information we shared. But unlike them, I didn’t actually lie to your face. I may not have been upfront with you about everything, but I never lied to you Jihoon.”
“You—you never told me the truth either.” Jihoon stammers, fiddling with his shirtsleeve, smoothing his hand down over the wrinkles.
Seungcheol makes a sound that might have been a laugh or a snort, but Jihoon continues, the pressure of words rising in him. “You twisted the narrative Seungcheol. You had me convinced Director Kim was trying to have me killed.”
“He was.” Seungcheol says fiercely, the violence of it catching Jihoon by surprise. “Kim Soobin knew exactly what he was doing when he put you on that plane. He didn’t have the balls to face me himself so he put you, and Sehun, and Chul-Moo in the crosshairs instead. I know because he did it to me. He cut me loose when I couldn’t get him the results he wanted, then buried my existence so deep nobody cared who I was anymore. He was gonna do the same with you, except he wasn’t going to leave you around to talk about it.”
He laughs then, though he doesn’t sound particularly amused.
“Why do you think him and his pals were just chilling up in your apartment when I caught up with him? To throw you a welcome home party?”
Jihoon tips his head, discontented.
It’s a question that has lurked in wait for him when he tries to sleep most nights. The Bureau almost had him convinced it was just a coincidence that the Director was there that day. It didn’t necessarily mean he’d been up to anything sinister.
The explanation never sat right with him, but he didn’t have the mental space at the time to dwell on it overly long.
Maybe he should have.
“There were signs you’d... tortured him. Why? You once said you didn’t do torture.”
Seungcheol stares at him, solemn but not denying anything.
“I didn’t get a kick out of it, if that’s what you’re getting at. I just had to know who else was involved, who was working with him. I always knew the Bureau had a few of rotten eggs, but I needed him to confirm who exactly so I could bring an end to this shit show once and for all.”
There’s no remorse there. He says it easily, as though it never occurred to him there could have been another way. Jihoon wonders if there could have been, but Seungcheol’s already shaking his head, reading his thoughts like a wide open book.
“There was never going to be a peaceful resolution to this Jihoon. Even with Kim Soobin out of the picture, there were other bad players at the Bureau, and they weren’t going to sit idly by. You were destroying careers every time you opened your mouth, and someone was going to put a stop to it. It was just poetic justice that I got to them first.”
He turns fractionally away then, a little sullen.
“I know you think I did this all with revenge on my mind, and I’ll admit that was what motivated me at first, because God knows I deserved my revenge, I earned it. And I thought I’d planned it down to the fucking tee, but I just never planned on you boarding that plane.”
His hand spasms with an aborted gesture, his body tensing and coiling with something Jihoon almost wants to call grief.
“You made me want to walk away from it all. I was ready to, if I got to keep you, but then we found that radio, and you were so insistent on exposing Soobin, and I realised there was only ever one way this could play out.”
Jihoon shakes his head, off-balance and upset for some reason, his senses skewing around inside him. He snaps without thinking.
“You didn’t have to do all this. I didn’t ask you to kill anyone.”
A muscle in Seungcheol’s cheek jumps.
“You didn’t have to Pigeon. I did it because I love you.”
Jihoon can’t help but twitch slightly at the word. And judging from the oddly wounded expression that takes over Seungcheol’s face in the next second, the Alpha caught it.
“I told you I’d find you, what did you think that meant? What did you think you meant to me?”
Anything more he had to say drops off into a frustrated sigh. He scrubs a hand over his face and looks away.
Jihoon watches the line of his throat waver and bob and work around the emotion rising there, and when his voice comes back it’s rough-hewn and hoarse.
“I have thought of you every second of every day—it killed me to keep my distance, but I had to wait for the right moment. I didn’t want anyone coming after you cause of me.” he says, and then turns to finally look at Jihoon, not bothering to hide the wetness in his eyes. “I can’t force you to be with me, but I’m begging you—please, just give me a chance Jihoon. I wanna make you happy. Please just come with me. We can start over.”
Jihoon stares back at him.
There’s the sound of a car honking on the street below, a strange dog barking somewhere in the distance. The upstairs neighbours are fighting again, throwing shit and slamming doors, making the ceiling fixtures shake.
Jihoon listens to it all through the blood pounding in his ears, then draws in a shallow breath and makes a decision before he can convince himself to stop.
“Okay. But...It’s not going to be that simple.”
Seungcheol makes a mournful sound, part laugh and part moan, and rubs his hands over his face.
“Why though? Why can’t it be that simple? I’ve already got all the logistics planned out. I’ve got you all the documents you’ll need, and I’ve arranged transport. There are 125 countries out there that don’t give a shit who I am. We can go anywhere.”
As if on cue, the baby monitor sitting atop the fridge crackles to life and a despondent wail cuts through the silence.
Seungcheol startles like a sleeping horse, whipping his head back and forth between Jihoon, the baby monitor, and the softer cry coming from the bedroom. His eyes are slightly too wide, and he suddenly looks younger than his years, terrified, but Jihoon doesn’t have the mental space to explain things to him right now.
That shrill, primal sound is vibrating through the apartment and down into his bones, drawing him down the corridor without another word.
The baby’s in the middle of a red-faced squalling fit whenever he pokes his head into the crib, kicking his feet against the blankets and doing his damnedest to make his displeasure known.
Jihoon spares a second to wonder if there’ll ever be a swaddle he can’t break free from, before leaning down to soothe him.
“Hey, hey—what’s wrong little man? Papa’s right here. It’s okay.”
The crying cuts off as wide, baby dear eyes blink up at him, and then two chubby fists poke out from the loose folds of the swaddle to make grabby hands at him.
Scooping him up, Jihoon gives his diaper a cursory sniff before tucking him up under his chin and pressing a kiss to his riotous head of curls.
He’s big for an Alpha, and—bless him, on the chubby side too. So much so, the doctor at the clinic had eyeballed him when Jihoon announced he was here for his three month weigh-in.
‘Jesus, three months? His other papa must be a big fella!’
Jihoon had just smiled and nodded, and waved off the apology when the man inevitably spotted the blank space on the birth certificate.
When he pads back into the living area, a cooing, blubbering baby in tow, he half expects Seungcheol to have done a runner—but the Alpha’s still standing there, as mute and petrified as any marble statue.
Flabbergasted, is the only word that comes to mind, and that’s fair. Most people would be flabbergasted if they reconnected with an old flame, only to be suddenly introduced to a miniature version of themselves.
Jihoon sighs and crosses the room, juggling the baby around until he’s balanced comfortably on his hip.
“Turns out the contraceptive implant is only 30% effective when the heat suppressant wears off. It’s in the fine print, apparently.” He says, by way of explanation.
The words don’t come out as steady as he’d hoped, fine-edged with more weak rasp than humour, but they’re enough to jar Seungcheol into life again.
He shuffles forward, throat ducking up and down in a hard swallow, his eyes brimming with held back emotion. The baby’s got his fists full of Jihoon’s sweater, not prepared to let go, so Seungcheol reaches out and gently takes his little foot instead, holding it between two fingers and a thumb, and breathes deep, once, in and out.
“W-what’s his name?” he whispers, voice frayed underneath with something very much like awe.
Jihoon bites his lip.
“Okay, don’t be mad, but there was a lot going on at the time, and it was hard to come up with a name. I figured calling him Cheol Junior was a little too on the nose—”
“It’s Hansol, isn’t it.”
Jihoon breathes out a laugh. “Yeah.”
Seungcheol’s face splits, halfway between grinning and crying. He wipes a hand over his eyes, then ducks down to kiss Hansol’s foot in greeting, introducing himself in such a soft and affectionate murmur that Jihoon wants to cry too.
“Hello my beautiful boy.” He whispers, reaching out to smooth his thumb over the crown of the baby’s head, tracing around the tiny shell of his ear. He grins as Hansol retreats into Jihoon’s sweater with a scowl and a frustrated little grunt, “He’s gorgeous, even though he looks like he would love nothing more than to punch me in the face.”
Jihoon smiles, briefly resting his mouth against Hansol’s temple.
“He’s just due for a feed is all. He gets very grumpy when he’s hungry. Other than that, he’s always smiling for me.” He says, then demonstrates said fact by making a face at Hansol, earning a gummy smile in return.
Seungcheol stares in soft wonder, a smile spreading slowly across his face. He hunkers down to do the same, and his sheer joy when Hansol gurgles happily and reaches for him, gently bopping his open hand against his nose, is painfully sweet, does funny things to Jihoon’s heart.
“Do you think I could... hold him?” Seungcheol asks, straightening up a little to meet Jihoon‘s gaze, the air between them charged and alive.
Jihoon smiles to himself, looking down at Hansol and then back at Seungcheol, feeling his heart leap into his throat.
“Sure. Why don’t you sit down with him there over on the couch while I make up his bottle. You can give it to him.”
Seungcheol swallows hard and makes a beeline for the couch, shrugging his coat off along the way. When Jihoon sets Hansol down in his arms, he takes hold of him as if someone has just handed him a live explosive. Then Hansol squirms and he instinctively adjust his grip, gathering him close against his chest with a little puff of excitement.
“Jesus, he’s so small.”
Jihoon smiles and retreats into the kitchen, pulling the formula canister out of the cabinet and the bottle from the drying rack.
The next time he glances over, Hansol has settled in Seungcheol’s arms, hungry and grumpy but cooperative. His cupid's-bow mouth is closed in a slight pout and one little fist is wrapped tightly around Seungcheol’s thumb, and Seungcheol is examining his tiny fingers, saying to him, in the softest of whispers.
“I really hope you like almond croissants.”
Fin.