Chapter Text
1
Yunho stares down at the photos on the table in front of him. They’re high quality, glossy, and incredibly disturbing. After a moment he uses the tip of a finger to separate them into two piles: one large and one small.
The larger pile consists of several outdoor shots; some at a rooftop party in what looks to be LA, some at a little sidewalk trattoria in Venice, one or two of a crowded street in Paris. The smaller pile consists of darker images of far lower quality, the subject blurred as if he’d been in constant motion. Or the photographer had been.
Not so unlikely, considering the setting had been a nightclub.
“These are bodycam shots,” he murmurs, gesturing to the smaller pile without looking up at the man whose desk he is bent over to study the images. “Whoever took these was actually close enough to touch the subject for at least the length of a song, maybe longer.” He tilts his head, studying the man in the slightly blurred photos in the smaller pile. It’s obviously the same person as the one in the larger pile of pictures, but there is an elegance, a polish to the outdoor shots that is missing here, both in the subject and the composition of the photo itself.
His eyes keep drifting back to one of the darker images in particular; in it, the subject is smirking a little, one eyebrow raised. His eyes are smoky with shadow and even with the poor resolution and questionable lighting, Yunho can see the flirty challenge in his expression.
“Glasses,” he corrects himself. “Not a bodycam.” He flicks his eyes up to Hongjoong, who is standing at ease on the other side of his desk.
“Why?” Hongjoong asks. His tone isn’t one of genuine curiosity; Yunho knows the Captain had already reached this conclusion and probably several others before he’d called Yunho in to look at these photos.
He’d kept his own counsel, though, and that is something Yunho has always appreciated about his superior in the time he’s worked for Mars, Inc.
“The eye contact, for one. If it had been a button camera or even part of the suspect’s jewelry, the subject's gaze would have been directed above it.” He studies the last image again, catalogs the small mole beneath one eye, the disparity in his eyelids, the slope of his nose and the curve of his mouth. Pretty, he thinks absently, then dismisses the thought as quickly as it had come. “How tall is he?”
Hongjoong makes a sound between a huff and a grunt. He could be pleased at the question or annoyed, or neither. “About 173cm.”
Yunho hums, picks up the picture. “Suspect is probably between 178 and 182.” He tosses it down to rest on the top of the smaller pile. “Young, or young appearing, at least moderately attractive. Most likely male.”
“Why?” Hongjoong asks again, and Yunho can hear the smile in his voice.
“Average height for a woman in Seoul— a Korean woman, anyway —is between 157 and 161cm. She’d have had to have been on stilts to get this kind of shot. Besides the fact that a woman that tall is rare as shit, it’s improbable for another reason.”
“Which is…?” The sound of Hongjoong’s smile is gone, replaced by an interested tone.
Yunho shuffles through the smaller pile until he finds the picture he wants. In it, the subject is looking away from the suspect, the line of his jaw and the chords in his neck clear even in -12k resolution of the shitty pics. Beyond him, just visible on the far wall by the bar, a neon sign reads Django. Yunho taps the photo, then spins it so it’s facing Hongjoong. “That’s a club in Itaewon; that might increase the presence of taller women since foreigners are more prevalent there than elsewhere, but in this case that’s still unlikely. Django caters almost exclusively to men who prefer the company of other men.”
He sits down in the chair he’d ignored in favor of getting a good look at the photos. “Is that what finally made the subject come to Mars? Worried about publicity?”
“His name is Jung Wooyoung, and he didn’t actually contact us. His father did.” Hongjoong sighs. “From what Jung Senior told me, his son isn’t convinced he needs our services at all. But, to answer your question, no. It wasn’t the worry about his son’s, ah, preferences, that forced Jung’s hand.” He slides another photograph across the table. “It was this.”
Yunho leans forward to examine the photo. In it, the subject— Wooyoung, his mind offers —is sprawled beneath a soft white comforter, one bare arm bent so that his cheek is pillowed on the back of his hand. There’s no trace of the makeup that had sharpened his features in the photos from Django. His lashes lie in dark fans on cheeks that look softer, rounder in sleep. He looks lovely, and peaceful, and very, very vulnerable.
Yunho’s eyes search the margins for the telltale graininess that is almost always unavoidable even with the best zoom lens and can’t find any. And then he notices the shadow, faint and man-shaped, painted over the bottom part of the bed, just slightly darker than the spill of moonlight that is the photo’s only illumination. His eyes fly to Hongjoong’s.
“He was in the room,” he murmurs. “Holy shit, he was right in the room with him.”
/
“How long is the assignment?” Mingi asks around a mouthful of honey butter chips. He’s leaning against Yunho’s door jamb, watching with mild disinterest as Yunho packs.
Yunho shrugs. “He’s contracted with Mars for six months. He pays that up front, just to be able to hire security through them. For me specifically? A month. Longer, if the cops can’t catch the suspect right away.” He zips the duffel closed and stands, reaching above his head to stretch after being crouched so long, glancing at his roommate as he does. “Why? Planning on subletting my room to your harem?”
Mingi makes a sour face, but his eyes are twinkling with fun. “They’re my boyfriends, not a ‘harem’, you intolerant shit.”
“Mhm.” Yunho smirks. “You look me in the face and tell me right now you haven’t gotten off to the idea of Park Seonghwa in sparkly Princess Jasmine pants, and I might believe you.”
“I don’t have to get off to an idea, son. I get the real thing, in the flesh.” He rolls his eyes then pauses, his gaze going a little soft, a little fond, and a lot lecherous. “Only technically it was Yeosang wearing the sparkly pants.”
“Yeosang, huh? Hmm.” Yunho pretends to think about it, letting his smile become a grin. “Yeah, I can see that.”
Mingi pelts him with a potato chip. “Stop picturing my boyfriend in harem pants!” When Yunho only laughs and turns back to his second duffel, his best friend groans in exasperation. “Are you going to make me guess, dude?”
“Guess what?” Yunho shrugs into his holster.
“Who is it you’ve been assigned to? What grimy little chaebol has his father’s panties in a twist?” Mingi flops down on Yunho’s bed and watches as he checks his weapon’s safety. “Which mogul’s precious baby boy are you tasked with keeping alive for the next thirty days?”
“Baby boy,” Yunho mutters. “You’re such a fucking perv.”
“And you’re a repressed freak,” Mingi shoots back, unruffled. “I guess we all have our flaws. Come on,” he whines when Yunho doesn’t answer. “You didn’t sign an NDA, because you wouldn’t have told me anything if you had. Don’t make me haul out the big guns, my guy. Spill that tea.”
The look Yunho sends him is unimpressed. “What are you going to do, pout?” When Mingi proceeds to do just that, complete with puppy dog eyes, Yunho casts his eyes to the ceiling and prays for strength. It’ll be a cold day in hell before he admits another weakness to his best friend because he has seen firsthand how often that knowledge will be used against him.
“Jung Wooyoung.”
The studied pout slides off Mingi’s face like wax under a flame. “Jung… as in, the son of Jung Youngjin, founder of Jung Financials? As in the company that funds the entire entertainment industry and probably half the government?”
“I guess,” Yunho shrugs.
Instantly Mingi is up on his knees making exaggerated prayer hands. “You have to introduce me. Please, as my oldest friend!”
“Why?” Yunho takes a wary step back.
Mingi gapes at him. “Have you seen that motherfucker?”
Yunho thinks of the blurry shots from Django, that arched brow and the flirty little smile; thinks of the image of Wooyoung asleep and unaware, and the barely-there shadow of the man taking his picture to send to his father. “Not in person,” he hedges. “Will you stop?” he demands, pushing Mingi’s shoulder so that he falls to the side, still rubbing his hands together. “You have a boyfriend— in fact, you have more than the average amount of boyfriend. They’re not fuckin’ Pokémon.”
“Why do you think I want to meet Jung Wooyoung?” Mingi huffs. “He’s both my boyfriends’ celeb hall pass. Do you have any idea how many boyfriend points I would get for introducing them?”
Yunho stares at Mingi for a full minute. “I… I don’t even know where to start unpacking any of that.” He throws a hoodie on, checking to make sure his Sig is actually concealed beneath it along his right flank. “He’s not a celebrity. His dad’s rich, that’s not the same thing as a celebrity.”
“Tell that to the Kardashians,” Mingi replies, but he stops doing prayer hands in favor of pouting again. “Please, Yuyu?”
“Remind me again why we’re friends?”
Mingi rolls his eyes. “Because I’m hapless and you have a hero complex. Hence your choice of occupation, which correlates directly to not having anyone to save you as a child, and so you grew up into the kind of adult you needed back then. As a character arc, it’s a classic for a reason.” Brushing away an imaginary tear, Mingi taps a fist twice over his heart. “I’m proud of you, my guy.”
/
The Captain picks Yunho up outside his apartment building later that afternoon. Changbin’s driving, which is no surprise; when Kim Hongjoong goes out on work business, Binnie drives. Yunho has never been in a situation where it’s been otherwise, and he doubts he ever will. It’s probably written into the bylaws of Mars, Inc. He helps Yunho load his bags in the back, then opens the rear door of the SUV for him to climb in.
“Sir.”
Instead of answering with more than a terse nod, Hongjoong hands him the dossier on Jung Wooyoung and Yunho scans it as they drive. Twenty five, graduated from Hanyang, though it doesn’t list a degree. There are pictures, and plenty of them; Wooyoung and his father at various black tie functions— the younger Jung looking either bored or stoned or both and the elder Jung looking grim and stoic —Wooyoung at Fashion Week, Wooyoung on at least four different red carpets. Yunho doesn’t bother to wonder what the events had been. He doesn’t fuck with shit like that unless he’s part of the security team, and the last time the Captain had assigned him to that detail he’d seriously considered trying to contract Ebola to get out of it.
He hopes to Christ he won’t be expected to accompany this vapid little nepo baby to anything even remotely resembling whatever these events had been. He shuffles quickly past the remainder of the photos— the guy is pretty, he gets it, damn —and runs an eye down the stat sheet; blood type, star sign, MBTI, enneagram, allergies, height and weight, fitness level, blood pressure and pulse at his most recent visit to a doctor. Yunho has to hand it to the Captain; when he gathered intel, he could find out what someone’s seven-times-great Auntie had for lunch on a random Tuesday in November of 1863 if he thought it would help one of his guys protect a mark.
His eyes zero in on the bloodwork. Marginally low iron is the only thing that pops on the CBC. He skims over the results of the STI screen as nothing’s flagged there either. “Either very careful or very lucky,” Yunho mutters to himself. On the next to last page he finds what he’s been looking for: the illicit subs panel.
The guy is clean.
You thought Miko was clean, too, a nasty little voice whispers in his mind, and Yunho bites down on the inside of his cheek hard to stave off the downward spiral of thoughts that often still follows any reminder of that long ago job. He’d done everything he could to keep the kid safe from his father’s shadier business partners, but in the end Miko had done their job for them, whether he’d intended to or not. Yunho will never be sure if it had been unintentional, and because of that he can never fully absolve himself of that failure.
Yunho closes the dossier.
Hongjoong is watching him intently. “Mr. Jung will see us in his office,” he says. “His son is… reluctant to take the threat seriously, and is currently resisting his father’s wishes in the matter.”
Yunho manages not to roll his eyes, but barely. Great. “Has Mr. Jung given any indication as to whether this person has threatened him with anything? Blackmail? Extortion?”
Hongjoong shakes his head. “The pictures have come via email, text, and actual mail. Once, when Jung was at a conference, one was airdropped to his phone. The messages began as vague, but have since become more…. specific. Jung now receives three to four death threats against his son per week. There has never been a demand for money or anything else. There’s no signature, just the same sign off every time.”
“And that is?”
“‘Closer’.”
/
The meeting with Jung goes about like Yunho figures it will. They’re shown into an opulent office filled with heavy and largely unnecessary furniture and left to wait while Jung ‘finishes up a meeting’, as his assistant informs them. Yunho isn’t certain he likes the assistant’s attitude, a weird blend of snotty and subservient. There’s a word for it, he’s sure. Mingi would know.
Hongjoong paces, hands behind his back as he examines the understated artwork. Yunho flips through the dossier again, flipping past the pics and stats to the last page, where a sampling of the messages has been compiled. His eyes skate over the words, each more vehement than the last, all ending with the same single word.
Closer.
Such a pretty boy, one read. Shame, really.
He’ll never know it’s coming, and neither will you.
And the last one, the one that had come with the photo of Wooyoung sleeping in what Yunho assumed was his own bed.
Soon, now.
Closer.
“Jesus,” Yunho mutters.
The door to the office opens then, and because they’re expecting the elder Jung both Yunho and the Captain get to their feet to greet him.
Jung Wooyoung strides through, jaw set, eyes grim, and he’s so focused on the desk at the far end of the room he makes it almost past Yunho and Hongjoong before he notices them. When he does he startles and lets out a little squeak, his eyes going wide before he can recover his composure.
“Jesus!” he cries in an uncanny echo of Yunho’s earlier words. The sunglasses perched artfully in his hair to keep the dark strands off his forehead begin to slide forward and he catches them reflexively as his features settle into a neutral mask and his gaze slides dispassionately over the two men. He appears to take them in and dismiss them all in one glance, and he heaves a big dramatic sigh. “You must be the babysitters. A little obvious, don’t you think?” he asks waspishly, gesturing to Hongjoong. “The suit’s a bit much.”
“That’s a bit much coming from someone wearing Crocs,” Yunho says before he can stop himself.
Wooyoung’s gaze slides back to him, appraising and condescending at once. “Slow your roll, Colossus. These are Balenciagas.”
“They’re ugly.”
As Wooyoung’s mouth falls open in offended surprise, Hongjoong clears his throat. “Kim Hongjoong, Mars Security.”
Wooyoung’s lip curls. “Neat.” His eyes flick up and over Yunho. “And you?”
Before Yunho can decide between introducing himself and smacking this snotty little brat upside his pretty head, the office door opens again and Jung Youngjin strides in. He carries himself the way a man does when he owns a good chunk of wherever he happens to be and knows the percentage is going up every day.
“Gentlemen,” he says, inclining his head when they bow. “Please, sit. Wooyoung, perhaps you could get our friends here something to drink?”
Something mutinous dances across Wooyoung’s face, there and then gone before Yunho can decipher it. “Fine,” he grits out, and stomps over to the door.
As dramatic exits go, it’s a bit hindered by the Crocs, in Yunho’s opinion.
The meeting is short and sweet. While Wooyoung is gone, Jung lays it out for them. “He doesn’t know about most of the pictures, or any of the messages.” His eyes flick to Yunho. “It’s going to stay that way.”
“Forgive me, sir,” Hongjoong says quietly, “but don’t you think Wooyoung would be more accepting of our services if he understood—”
“He’s not to be told,” Jung interjects, his tone final. “Surely you’ve dealt with reluctant subjects before, or did my research into your firm lead me astray?”
Hongjoong sits back, his chin set at an angle that tells Yunho his temper is beginning to chafe at the restraints he keeps it under. “There’s reluctance, Mr. Jung, and then there’s outright refusal. Jeong Yunho’s the best of the best, but he’s not a miracle worker. If you can’t convince your son to accept his help, then I’m afraid Mars will have no choice but to terminate the contract. I won’t put my men at unnecessary risk because you don’t want to tell your son he’s being stalked.”
Jung studies him for a moment, face impassive. “He’s not going to resist,” he says finally, and his gaze shifts to Yunho. “You’re contracted with me, not my son, and he’s going to do what you say where it concerns his safety.” A wry smile twists his mouth as the office door opens and Wooyoung steps in with a tray containing sake and four cups. Jung makes a come-ahead gesture and eyes his son. “If he doesn’t comply with the way things are now, he’ll lose access to his accounts. Every last one.”
/
The interior of the SUV provided by Jung Financials smells strongly of sake, and as Yunho navigates the traffic with the help of the GPS he prays they don’t get pulled over; no cop in their right mind will ever believe they smell like a distillery because Wooyoung had dropped an entire carafe of sake when he’d learned his father intended to cut him off financially if he didn’t toe the line and accept a live-in bodyguard. One leg of Wooyoung’s jeans is soaked in sake from the knee down, and his butt-ugly shoes had made little squip squip sounds as he’d followed Yunho and Hongjoong down to the subterranean parking garage.
He hadn’t spoken a single word to Yunho; not while Changbin had investigated the SUV for tracking devices, explosives, or other things likely to turn the day from bad to worse, not while Yunho had transferred his things from the back of the Mars vehicle to the one he’d be driving for the foreseeable future.
Jung’s assistant, In Guk, typed his number into Yunho’s phone and handed him a piece of paper.
“Door code, code for the roof lounge and gym, code for the utility floor. Ingrid comes Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings to clean and restock the fridge and freezer. Masseuse comes Wednesdays, around 2pm. Skin care consultant comes on Fridays at noon.” His eyes had swept across Yunho’s face. “You’re welcome to avail yourself of their services when Wooyoung does. In fact, I’d recommend it.”
Before Yunho could ask him what that had meant, In Guk’s arm was seized by Wooyoung, who dragged him away, pouting. “Hyuuuunggg,” he whined. “I don’t want to live with him.”
In Guk had squirmed a little beneath Wooyoung’s worshipful puppy dog eyes and gently extricated his arm, patting Wooyoung’s hair awkwardly. “It’s for your own good, Young-ah. Your father thinks it’s best.” He’d sent an indulgent look to Yunho over Wooyoung’s head, a look that clearly said he’s just a kid, go easy on him okay?
Except he’s not just a kid. Yunho’s jaw clenches now as he takes a corner at the behest of the GPS. He’s a grown ass man who should be doing something with his time other than attending parties and clubs and red carpet events. He could be volunteering at a soup kitchen, or reading to orphans, or knitting afghans for the fucking elderly, but instead he’s prancing around in sake-soaked pants and flirting outrageously with his father’s clearly uncomfortable assistant in a last ditch effort to get his way.
This is going to be the longest month of his life.
/
Wooyoung maintains his sulky silence for the first three days.
During this time Yunho acclimates himself to the spacious apartment; the kitchen with its chrome and glass, all sleek lines and high ceilings and more space than his own apartment’s living room and kitchen combined. The living room is cavernous. Yunho’s room is tucked beneath the stairs and is still larger than his bedroom at home. Wooyoung’s room is directly above his. He’s pretty sure Binnie could park an Escalade in the bathroom, and that’s just the one on the main level. He doesn’t know about the one upstairs because he is trying to allow them both time to get used to the fact that they now share a space.
Yunho mostly spends his time mapping the interior of the apartment. He’d swept for electronics a second time even though Mars, Inc. had done so while Yunho and the Captain had been meeting with Jung the Elder and Wooyoung downtown.
He and Wooyoung orbit around each other like polarized magnets, keeping a distance while they take each other’s measure. The stony silence of the first day devolves into pissy looks and eye rolls by day three. Yunho doesn’t mind. Wooyoung doesn’t have to speak to him for him to do his job, and after what happened with Miko, he’s perfectly content to keep his assignment at arm’s length. With any luck, the cops will do their damned jobs for once and catch the sick fuck that’s been stalking Wooyoung for months.
He thinks of that last photo more than he’d like to admit.
He needs to see the space, to gauge for himself where the man had been standing when he’d taken the shot. The apartment is on the thirtieth floor; he doubts the guy had scaled the behemoth structure’s walls like Spider-Man and crawled through a window. As far as Yunho can surmise, he’d have had to have access to the apartment.
Yunho climbs the stairs for the first time since he’d arrived, mapping out the spaces, the location of windows, the placement of HVAC ducts. As a possible entry point, they’re a long shot, but Yunho works for Mars, Inc. because they’re the best in their field. The air ducts are now under vid surveillance, as are the elevators, which hadn’t been prior to this. A gross miscalculation, in Yunho’s opinion. The building’s existing cameras have been augmented with hardware installed by Mars, looped into a feed that’s monitored constantly by the tech department.
The second floor is mostly open space except for the wide double doors that separate it from the master suite. Yunho has just raised his hand to knock when the door is yanked open and Wooyoung all but barrels into him. It’s only Yunho’s reflexes that keep them from colliding; his hand shoots out and catches Wooyoung by the shoulder, keeping them apart.
Gone is the Wooyoung who has sulked and sighed his way around the apartment for the last few days dressed in the finest tatters money could buy. It always blew Yunho’s mind that people would spend thousands on clothes that looked like you’d slapped them together out of hairballs and leaf litter. The shirt he’d been lounging in yesterday had looked like rats had gotten at it, the collar frayed, the sleeves ragged. Unable to help himself, Yunho had looked it up online and nearly choked on his own spit. Four million won, to look like you’d just crawled out of a fucking dumpster. Un-fucking- real.
Hobo Wooyoung™ is nowhere to be found. In his place is the Wooyoung of the photos from the various galas and events he’d attended, glamorous and sleek and frankly gorgeous in all black. His eyes are smoked out, his lips full and rosy, his hair swept back from his face in a stubby little ponytail. His ears drip with platinum, all swinging chains and diamond studs. Those smoky eyes are wide and shocked on Yunho’s face, as if Wooyoung had forgotten momentarily that there was another person in his home.
Maybe he had. It wouldn’t surprise Yunho in the least; Wooyoung strikes him as an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ type of person.
“What are you doing here?” Wooyoung asks blankly after staring at Yunho for a full thirty seconds as if trying to place someone familiar and ultimately failing.
“I live here,” Yunho mutters.
Wooyoung scowls. “You’re staying here. There’s a difference.” He tries to sidestep past Yunho but Yunho counters him and he makes an impatient clucking sound with his tongue. “Oh my god, you’re annoying. Move.”
“I’m comfortable here, thanks,” Yunho responds mildly. “Where are we going?”
“We aren’t going anywhere. I am going out, not that it’s your business. Now move.”
“It’s absolutely my business,” Yunho counters. “Whether you like it or not, I have a job to do, which means I go where you go.”
Wooyoung looks equally horrified and murderous. “I have a fucking date,” he hisses. “I’m not dragging the fucking nanny along, thanks so much.” He moves again to get past Yunho and lets out an aggravated little growl when Yunho blocks him again.
“You’re about as terrifying as a baby lion trying to growl, do you know that?” Yunho shifts and crosses his arms over his chest. “Now. Where are we going?”
Yunho expects Wooyoung to back down, break his plans, to retreat to his room or throw a tantrum or call his father.
He doesn’t expect Wooyoung to call his bluff.
“Fine,” he snaps, his eyes dark and furious beneath the bronze and gold of his shadow. His expression is contemptuous as he looks Yunho up and down. “Let’s see if you can keep up.”
/
By hour three, Yunho is regretting every choice he’s ever made that has led him to this moment. The club is dark, the club is loud, the club is filled with people he doesn’t know and therefore cannot trust. He stays as close to Wooyoung as he can, and although he doesn’t think Wooyoung is trying to lose him on purpose, the undulating mass of bodies moving to what could only loosely be termed as music seems to exist just to separate them.
Wooyoung lets the crowd envelop him as he dances with first one person and then another, touching and letting himself be touched as the bass pounds around and through the space. Yunho stands amidst the throng, trying to keep him in sight as the crowd ebbs and flows between them, trying to fight his panic. Any one of these people could be the person sending the pictures and threatening notes to Jung. He tries to scan the crowd while simultaneously keeping an eye on Wooyoung but it proves nearly impossible and he’s just about to grab his charge and drag him bodily out of the venue when there’s a sudden gap in the wall of people and Wooyoung pushes through it toward him.
“Having fun?” he asks, raising his voice to be heard over the music. His cheeks are flushed and his hair is sweaty at the temples but otherwise he looks as if he’d been strolling in a park instead of grinding up on any available person for the last three hours.
“Tons.”
Wooyoung rolls his eyes, his mouth twisting into a momentary frown. “You should have a drink. Or dance. Be a human instead of a robot. Have some fucking fun.”
Yunho, who has been told on various occasions that he has the emotional range of a teaspoon, lets Wooyoung’s words slide off him like water over stone. “I’m working, in case you’ve forgotten. I thought you said you had a date. Are they here?”
Wooyoung’s answer is to turn on his heel and push his way through the crowd toward the bar. Yunho follows, muttering apologies as he moves past and through little pockets of people. By the time he reaches the bar, Wooyoung has a small crowd of people around him and a flight of shots in a rainbow gradient in front of him. As Yunho watches, Wooyoung leans into the space of the woman standing beside him with her friends, his graceful fingers casually tucking her hair back off her face as he leans in close to say something against her ear. Even from several paces away, Yunho can see the delicate shiver move through her.
Whatever she says back, it seems to please Wooyoung immensely. Yunho catches a glimpse of his smile in profile as he picks up the red shot and holds it to the woman’s mouth. She drinks it dutifully, her eyes wide and wanting on his.
He takes the glass away and draws the pad of his thumb along her glossy bottom lip, then presses it to his own and kisses it. Then he chucks her under the chin before he turns, laughing, to the man on his other side.
“Your turn?” Yunho hears him ask. The man, who looks to be nearly twice Wooyoung’s age, is still in what Yunho assumes is his work suit, his shirt rumpled and his tie slightly askew. He nods almost dazedly, his eyes wide on Wooyoung’s face, desire etched into every pore. Wooyoung selects the second shot in the flight, the orange, and holds it to the man’s lips, tipping it so he can drink. The man trembles and a little trickle of liquor dribbles from the side of his mouth.
“Oh, you spilled a little,” Wooyoung murmurs, and as Yunho watches, astounded, Wooyoung leans in and kisses the man teasingly on his lips.
Yunho’s own mouth falls open in mingled surprise and horror and he can only watch as Wooyoung picks up the remaining four shots, two in each hand, and sends the bartender a little pinky wave. The man and the woman stare after him, twin expressions of want and disappointment on their faces.
“See?” Wooyoung asks, his head tipped up to meet Yunho’s stern glare with an expression of mischievous delight. With practiced ease he knocks back the gold-colored shot, angling the blue one in the knuckles of the same hand so that it spills in a jewel colored waterfall to blend with the first. Yunho absolutely does not watch the golden column of his throat when he swallows, certainly doesn’t bother to notice the way his tongue glides over his lip afterward before turning a challenging grin Yunho’s way. “Fun.” His eyes bely his easy expression. They’re sharp and hard as flint. Stay out of my business, those eyes seem to say. Stay out of my way.
“You never told me where your date is,” Yunho says, opting for the path of least resistance. At least while Wooyoung is squaring off with him it feels a little less like trailing after him on a sparkly leash.
Wooyoung studies him for a minute, restlessly rolling the remaining two shots between his palms. Then he spreads his arms and lifts his chin, indicating the crowd around him. The smirk, the one Yunho had first seen in those blurry shots from Django, slides into place and his gaze flattens. “Anyone.” The smirk becomes a grin, but there’s no humor in it. “Everyone.” He slams back both shots at once and drags the back of his hand across his mouth, moving closer to Yunho so quickly that he doesn’t have time to step back before Wooyoung’s free hand is clamped on the back of his neck and his mouth is against his ear. “Whoever I want. What ever I want, whenever I want it. That’s how this works.”
/
“I hate you.” Wooyoung’s tone is trying for indignant and falling short, tumbling face first into petulant. His words might carry more weight if the only thing keeping him upright hadn’t been Yunho’s hand scruffed in the collar of Wooyoung’s black silk shirt.
Yunho’s beyond pissed. He’d dealt with it while Wooyoung had danced, even when he’d gotten up on the bar and slut dropped like he thought he was in a fucking movie.
He’d remained impassive when Wooyoung had sweet talked one of the bartenders— a pretty, petite guy with a voice like dark chocolate —into lying back on the bar and serving the next round of shots for Wooyoung and his new ‘friends’ out of the cup of his own navel.
That had been bad enough, but Wooyoung had maintained steady and terrible eye contact with Yunho when it had been his turn to suck the Diamanté from the bartender’s bellybutton. Yunho knows, knows, that Wooyoung didn’t have to flirt his tongue around the bartender’s navel piercing after he’d taken his shot. He’d done it simply to see what Yunho would do or say.
But Yunho had held his cool, heroically in his opinion; outwardly stoic, inwardly raging. Resilient in the face of adversity.
At least, he had been until… the bathroom incident.
It’s partly his own fault and he knows it, which does precisely fuck-all to ease his irritation. He’d gotten distracted for a minute— one goddamn minute —scanning the crowd because he’d seen a man about his height wearing glasses and by the time he’d looked back to where Wooyoung had been grinding up on his eightieth dance partner of the night, Wooyoung and #80 had done a runner.
He’d found him after fifteen minutes, during which his blood pressure had risen to the point he could feel his pulse in his eyeballs and he’d begun to worry that Wooyoung hadn’t run after all but had been taken. The panic had begun coiling in his stomach on his third hurried search of the dance floor, a greasy knot sitting heavy below his sternum.
By the time he’d turned down the corridor to the bathrooms he’d been running. He hadn’t known what he’d have done if Wooyoung hadn’t been there.
But Wooyoung had been there, leaning casually against the bank of sinks along one wall, staring drunkenly down at the crown of the body-shot bartender’s head. That the bartender had been on his knees in front of Wooyoung, and the reason for that, had registered in Yunho’s panicked brain at about the same time. He’d come screeching to a mortified stop with every foul thing he’d intended to say when he found Wooyoung burning to ashes on his lips.
There’d been a moment, terrifyingly intense, where they’d just stared at each other across the wide, bright expanse of the restroom and then Wooyoung—
Yunho jabs a finger into the elevator’s up button and congratulates himself on not using his fist. He refuses to think about what had happened in that goddamn bathroom. Suffice it to say he’d eventually managed to drag Wooyoung out of there and pour him into the SUV. Now all that’s left to do is get him upstairs and into the apartment, and then he’s turning in his resignation first thing in the morning.
“Did you hear me?” Wooyoung demands, struggling to look over his shoulder at Yunho. “I said I hate you.”
“Oh no. Please. Don’t say such a thing,” Yunho deadpans, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.
Wooyoung scowls, then hisses when the elevator door opens right in front of him and Yunho frog-marches him inside. The elevator for the penthouse is a sleek bullet, a cylinder of chrome and glass that doesn’t leave a whole lot of space for the two of them. He stumbles forward and presses his face against the cool metal wall and Yunho takes the opportunity to release his shirt, flexing his fingers after so long in the same position.
“You ruined my shirt,” Wooyoung mumbles, tugging halfheartedly at one sleeve in an attempt to smooth out the wrinkles from where it had been bunched up at the scruff of his neck. “You ruined my shirt and my night. You suck.” He rolls himself along the wall until he’s facing Yunho. His mouth is pouting, but in his eyes is a muzzy sort of discontent, as if he’d been trying for anger and hadn’t quite been able to swim up through the haze of alcohol far enough to achieve it.
“Poor baby,” Yunho says blandly. He is still attempting to forcibly forget the club bathroom, and any mention of the same is not in his best interest. “Hate me if that’s what—” Christ, he’d almost said if that’s what blows your load. Yunho shudders inwardly. This is the most terrible night of his life. “—makes you happy. I don’t give a shit.”
Wooyoung blinks blearily at him. “You’re mean. Why are you so mean? You’re too hot to be mean.” He frowns and then giggles softly, as if to himself, as he starts to slide sideways down the wall. “Shit. Wasn’t gonna say that out loud.”
Yunho, still trying to process what he’d just heard, catches Wooyoung under the arms before he can overbalance entirely. “What the hell, stand up.”
“Nooooooo,” Wooyoung whines, and promptly sags bonelessly against Yunho, forcing him to support almost his entire weight.
He smells like vanilla and tequila and there is no reason on Earth why it should make Yunho’s head turn in toward him, trying to follow the scent of his skin before he ruthlessly snaps himself back to reality. Forget waiting until morning to turn in his notice; he’s calling the Captain the instant he dumps this inebriated pseudo-succubus in his room.
Do not, he reminds himself bitterly, use any word with suck in it when it pertains to Jung Wooyoung, thank you very much.
“Stand up,” Yunho says again, scrabbling to get a purchase on Wooyoung’s shirt again.
In response Wooyoung flings an arm around Yunho’s neck and lets his muscles go even more slack. “Carry me,” he mumbles.
“I’m not carrying you,” Yunho grits out, his jaw clenched so tightly he’s worried it may crack. None of this is what he’d signed up for. “Will you stand up?”
“Nope,” Wooyoung says with a little pop on the ‘p’. His other arm follows the first, hooking around Yunho’s neck just as the elevator door opens.
Suddenly the part of the wall that had been helping Yunho support Wooyoung’s weight is gone, and they all but fall out into the hallway. Wooyoung’s yelp of surprise drills a hole in Yunho’s skull with its proximity and nothing but his years of practice changing trajectory suddenly on the soccer field keeps them even remotely upright. As it is he barely catches their forward momentum, one hand slamming into the wall above the little hall table and the other curling protectively around the back of Wooyoung’s head and tucking him into his chest.
The hand on the wall saves their asses— or skulls —and Yunho stares blankly at it for several moments, his heartbeat in his ears and his muscles zinging with adrenaline.
“Colossus saves the day,” Wooyoung giggles nonsensically.
“Let. Go.” The adrenaline is being rapidly overtaken by irritation and embarrassment. Here he is, four days into his assignment, in full view of the hall cams set up by Mars, Inc., in what probably looks like a compromising position with the man he’s supposed to be protecting. It’s mortifying; he knows whoever’s on surveillance for the graveyard shift is laughing their ass off right now. He’ll be hearing about it within the hour, he has no doubt.
With a pissed off hiss he straightens up, attempting to dislodge Wooyoung at the same time, but Wooyoung clings to him like a burr.
“Carry me, c’mon,” he mumbles against Yunho’s shirt, then huffs out a laugh as Yunho gives up any hope of sanity for this night and hoists him up. “Yaaaay.”
They can’t get out from under the gaze of those cams fast enough for Yunho. Carrying Wooyoung is just the best way to expedite that. A means to an end, nothing more. He continues to tell himself that in the entryway as he toes off his shoes and one entire side of his body rises in goosebumps when Wooyoung snuggles into the crook of Yunho’s neck. His legs are locked around Yunho’s waist and as Yunho hits the stairs he makes this… sound. It’s something between a hum and a purr, vibrating against the sensitive skin of his throat.
“This isn’t in my fucking contract,” he mutters, stomping up the stairs.
Despite being in good shape, by the time Yunho gets Wooyoung’s bedroom door open, he’s breathing heavily. Wooyoung hasn’t done a single thing to help, letting Yunho struggle to keep him aloft while struggling with keypads and doors and staircases and he has had just about all he can take of this spoiled little brat. Yunho doesn’t care how good the money is, doesn’t care how attractive he reluctantly finds Wooyoung, he’s done. Wooyoung doesn’t want him here, and he doesn’t want to be here and there’s really no reason to stay. Cap’ll forgive him.
Eventually.
Hopefully.
He’s a professional however, so he doesn’t toss Wooyoung in the general direction of the bed and stalk out with a slam of the door, no matter how satisfying that would be. Instead he walks right up to the edge of the bed and lowers Wooyoung carefully onto it, but when he goes to stand up, Wooyoung is still clinging to him like a koala.
So close. He is so close to snapping.
“Get off,” he snarls.
Wooyoung doesn’t let him go entirely but he does ease back enough that he can look up into Yunho’s face. His eyes are glassy with drink and fatigue but there’s something dancing in them that Yunho doesn’t like. It’s entirely too knowledgeable, too sober, for his peace of mind. “I already did,” he confides in a husky voice. “Don’t you remember? You were there.” He hums. “A little late to the party but you made it just… in… time.” He taps a finger against Yunho’s nose to punctuate each word. His smile is sly and secretive, and goddammit, sexy. Yunho pushes himself up and away and is grateful when the hand still clamped around the back of his neck falls away as easily as if it had never been there in the first place.
What can he say to that? Nothing. Nothing that isn’t fucking incriminating, anyway, and so he backs away from the bed and he lets himself out of the room without saying anything at all.
An hour later he’s still awake, staring resentfully up at the ceiling as if Wooyoung could feel his anger and frustration through the floor of his bedroom.
Try as he might, he can’t stop his mind from replaying the moment he’d walked into that goddamn bathroom at the club. It’s killing him to remember it, to recall the way he’d thrown open the door, half expecting to find it empty and instead…
“This is such bullshit,” Yunho whispers furiously. His hands are fisted in the sheets beside him to keep from touching himself. His cock strains against his boxers, throbbing, and in his mind’s eye over and over again he sees Wooyoung’s eyes slide to his as he stands frozen in the doorway of the restroom. He sees the fingers of one hand tangled in the bartender’s hair, hears the wet, messy sounds of what’s happening and he knows he needs to step back out again, knows he needs to avert his gaze but Wooyoung’s eyes… they hold him in place.
So he’d stood there, unable to move, unable to look away, and Wooyoung had smiled at him until his head had tipped back on a long, low moan.
Yunho’s hand disobeys his higher mind and closes around his cock. In the silence of the guest bedroom his pent-up breath hisses out between his teeth as he begins to stroke himself. Over and over he sees Wooyoung’s sultry smile, those eyes on his, blown wide with pleasure Yunho hadn’t been the one to give him. His breath quickens with his hand’s pace and now he feels again the phantom press of Wooyoung’s face in the crook of his neck, his breath warm against Yunho’s skin. He hears again that growling hum, feels the way it had rumbled against his pulse point as he’d carried Wooyoung up the stairs, carried him up to bed—
Yunho comes, gasping, spilling over his hand in the darkness, hating Wooyoung, hating the job, hating himself.
/
Yunho’s phone signals promptly at 6am. Under normal circumstances that wouldn’t have bothered him; he’s always been a morning person, preferring to get any less than awesome tasks out of the way early and leaving his afternoons and evenings free.
These are not ordinary circumstances. When he’d finally collapsed into bed after staggering to the bathroom on legs that had felt like rubber to clean himself off, he’d caught sight of the time on the bedside clock. It had read 3:26am, and although Yunho had passed the whole fuck out about nine seconds after his head hit the pillow, it’s still only two hours and some of sleep.
He squints balefully at the phone and considers muting it and going back to bed, but then he remembers last night and the questionable way they’d fallen out of the elevator. The elevator cams at least had the benefit of recording Yunho while he’d had Wooyoung scruffed like a wayward toddler; for the hallway cams, the only show had been them staggering out of the elevator in each other’s arms.
The Cap had probably woken up to the report and called him while his fury and disgust were still fresh in his mind.
Yunho sighs, scrubs a hand over his face, and picks up the phone. “Captain, I’m sorry, I think—”
“Have you checked your email yet?” Hongjoong demands without preamble.
“Uhh… no. In the seven seconds I’ve been conscious I have not checked my email.” He doesn’t even attempt to sift the sarcasm from his voice. He’s got two brain cells powering currently, and no evidence of additional troops on the horizon; one for talking, and one for panicking.
“Who pissed in your oatmeal, kid? Nevermind, I don’t want to know what you’re into.” Before Yunho can stammer out a response, Hongjoong pushes on. “Jung received another email overnight, with new pictures. Was Wooyoung at a club last night? Somewhere with a mezzanine?”
A thin trickle of unease slides down Yunho’s spine. He puts the call on speaker and accesses his email, squinting at the images of a crowded dance floor taken from a higher vantage point.
Had there been a mezzanine? He thinks yes. He squints at the photos. The quality reminds him of the other photos, the one where the suspect had been within dancing distance. He zooms in, trying to get a sense of place. Wooyoung is clearly centered in the photos, illuminated by beams of light as they’d flashed in time with the music. Just seeing it was enough to make a headache tease the outer edges of Yunho’s consciousness.
“Yunho?” Hongjoong’s voice is terse.
“Yeah,” Yunho responds absently, still scrolling, still zooming. Where had he been when these pics were being taken? Somewhere in the crowd, close enough to keep Wooyoung in sight, he knows that but—
His eye catches something and he zooms in further. The pic loses integrity with every pass of his fingertips and he curses under his breath, staggering out of the big and still unfamiliar bed and over to where he has his laptop set up. A few taps and he can confirm what he thought he’d seen, and what is likely the reason for the Captain’s call.
“A laser sight,” he breathes. “Fuck.”
For the first few photos the club had been swathed in red from the banks of lights behind the DJ. Wooyoung had been dancing with someone about his height, leaning back against them, letting himself be touched, teased, in full view of the crowd. Yunho scrolls past these, gritting his teeth. The fourth photo, the lights are blue, and Yunho can clearly see the tiny red dot hovering at the level of Wooyoung’s Adam’s apple.
“This has now been escalated to a 147, Jeong, get your head out of your ass. Where were you when these were taken?” The Captain’s question is sharp, almost a bark.
Wishing I were literally anywhere else, Yunho thinks but doesn’t say. His eyes scan the fourth photo, trying to remember where he’d been while Wooyoung had been dancing with this particular partner. He finds himself, a blurred shape on the outskirts of the shot, his expression grim, focused on Wooyoung despite the dozen people separating them.
“Ten o’clock position, S—”
“I know where you were, goddammit!” the Captain shouts . Yunho winces. “That’s my goddamn point! You were meters away when there was a fucking laser sight on your assignment!”
Excuses bubble to Yunho’s lips and he bites them back, grinds them to dust. Cap’s right, and he knows it. He’d let Wooyoung get under his skin, throw him off-center, allowed Wooyoung to make him doubt himself and what he knew he should have been doing. He’s a bodyguard, for fuck’s sake. He’s one of the best Mars, Inc. has, and he’s acting like a goddamn rookie.
“He doesn’t make it easy, Sir,” is all he will allow himself to say. Not an excuse, merely an explanation, one thin sliver of truth. It’s a risk to even admit that much.
“If you want easy, I’ll demote you to a sweeper right the fuck now,” Hongjoong snaps. “So the little brat isn’t making it easy on you. Have you taken a single moment to ask yourself why he isn’t?”
“I-I,” Yunho stammers. His cheeks and ears are burning with shame.
“He made it pretty obvious from day one he doesn’t appreciate our assistance in keeping his ass on this side of the grave. But there’s a fucking catch, isn’t there? If he refuses to cooperate, his father cuts him off. So instead, he makes things hard for you—”
“You have no idea,” Yunho mutters under his breath.
“—because if you get pissed enough you’ll get sloppy. And if you get sloppy, you get fired, and he’s off the fucking hook.”
Yunho stares at the ugly abstract print on the wall above the desk, speechless as understanding dawns. Jesus Christ, what a fucking sucker he’d been. Wooyoung had gone out of his way all last night… to make Yunho uncomfortable enough to fuck up this assignment, or worse, to quit. And he’d fucking fallen for it.
“That little shithead,” he mutters.
“Finally,” Hongjoong snaps. “Is your brain fully fucking engaged now?”
Yunho bites back a sigh. “Yes, Sir.”
“Good. I want you fully lucid when I tell you the suspect knows about you. Maybe that will induce you to overcome your aversion to Little Lord Fuckboy. Wherever you go from now on, you go together. I want you on him like Velcro, Jeong. If he wants to dance, you dance with him. If he wants to paraglide off the top of Namsan Tower, I’d better see you strapped to his back like a parachute. If you aren’t stepping on his feet, you aren’t close enough, do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Sir.” Outwardly calm, inwardly panicking. The last thing on this planet Yunho needs is to get closer to Jung Wooyoung.
But his eyes are drawn back to that little bead of red light on Wooyoung’s throat in the picture. Then something catches him up short. “What do you mean, the suspect knows about me?”
“Keep scrolling,” Hongjoong sighs.
Yunho does. The last picture is of the email that had come with the pictures.
Do you think your little guard dog can stop me?
Closer.
“What the fuck.”
The sound of Hongjoong’s snort does the bare minimum to break through the tension in Yunho’s body. “I imagine it’s the first time since puberty you’ve been referred to as ‘little’,” he says dryly. “Try to bear up under the strain, yeah?”
/
Wooyoung doesn’t emerge from his room until seven thirty pm. By that time Yunho has worked out, done his laundry, reached the limit of his patience with social media, and fielded a phone call from Jung’s assistant Seo In Guk, whom he isn’t certain he likes but can at least appreciate for his proficiency. Jung, much like his idiot progeny, probably isn’t the easiest person to work for.
Yunho is now watching a pot of water boil on the stove. A single packet of ramen sits nearby, ready to be cooked into a soup of nutrient-deficient, salty goodness.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Yunho is so focused on watching the little bubbles rise that he doesn’t hear Wooyoung come into the kitchen. When he speaks Yunho spins, his hand automatically going to his right flank despite the fact that he’s wearing his comfiest sweatpants and a tank, no holster in evidence.
Once he’s certain his heart isn’t going to stay lodged in his throat for the rest of his life, he gestures at the pot. “Cooking.”
Wooyoung peers past him, eyes the singular ramen packet. “Where are all your ingredients?”
With a blank expression, Yunho holds up the package and waves it over the pot of water. “Are you still drunk?”
Wooyoung gives him a pitying look and moves past him to the fridge. His head and shoulders all but disappear into it as he rummages loudly.
Yunho shrugs and turns back to the stove, silently willing the water to boil so he can drop the seasoning packet and the hockey puck of noodles in and get out of Wooyoung’s way.
“Excuse you.” Wooyoung shoves past Yunho with his arms full of things from the refrigerator. He grabs a knife out of the block and starts in on the carrot with quick, precise chops. “The spinach needs to be washed,” he says.
“Okay, and?”
“Um, maybe wash it?”
“I’m allergic.”
Wooyoung’s head snaps around. “To spinach?”
“To vegetables in general.” To Yunho’s relief, the water in the pan has begun to boil and he snags the ramen packet only to have it literally slapped from his hand like he’s a misbehaving toddler.
“What are you, five?” Wooyoung scoops up the packet and tucks it behind the bag of bean sprouts on the counter. “Take several seats, this kitchen is for people who understand food.”
Scowling, Yunho opens the cabinet for another package. “I understand that I’m fucking hungry.”
“Will you leave it?” Wooyoung sounds exasperated now, leaning away from the counter and blinking as he slices an onion. “Go sit down, let the master work.”
Yunho purses his lips. “I’m not letting you cook for me. You might poison it.”
“Technically,” Wooyoung says sweetly as he sets a frying pan on the second burner and coats it with oil, “laxatives aren’t poison.”
“What?”
“What?” Wooyoung’s eyes are dancing and goddammit all he’s still pretty, all soft and rumpled like this, with no trace of the night before on his skin.
Even if he does have a knife in his hand.
Yunho takes a large step back and leans against the sink. “You’re funny,” he says blandly.
Wooyoung makes an impatient noise as he slides the matchsticked carrot and sliced onion into the frying pan. “Do you really think I’d risk that? I’m eating this, too. I don’t plan on spending the next six hours hunched on a toilet, so.” He flicks a glance over at Yunho. “You’re safe.”
Yunho has to admit, as the vegetables gently sautée and the noodles cook in a fragrant broth, Wooyoung seems to know what he’s doing in the kitchen. He relaxes slightly when Wooyoung hands him the knife to wash, leaving him armed only with the long cooking chopsticks he uses to separate the noodles as they soften. Had it been Yunho armed with the chopsticks he could have killed someone. He doubts Wooyoung has had that kind of training.
In far less time than he’d thought possible, Wooyoung slides two bowls onto the center island and hops up onto a stool.
Yunho carefully pulls his bowl toward him and stares down at the food. It looks like the kind of ramen you get in a restaurant, purposefully plated for aesthetic. Still, he hesitates, because at this point he wouldn’t put it past Wooyoung to slip something into Yunho’s bowl only. A man who would run Yunho ragged the way he had last night surely wouldn’t scruple to poison him in an attempt to get him out of the way.
“For fuck’s sake,” Wooyoung mutters, then leans over and dips a spoon into Yunho’s bowl. “I told you, I’m not going to poison you,” he says in an annoyed tone, and sips the broth from the spoon. “See? You’re safe. Quit being a baby.”
/
They maintain this cautious, wary sort of truce for almost a whole week. Yunho had taken what Hongjoong had told him the night after the clubbing disaster to heart, and sticks to Wooyoung like glue.
They eat together. Wooyoung cooks or Yunho heats up something Ingrid had prepared and stored in the fridge or freezer. Most of the meals are taken quietly, each scrolling on their phones and pretending the other doesn’t exist. Yunho is well aware that Wooyoung resents not being able to set foot out of his apartment without Yunho following right behind, and he wonders again why Jung doesn’t want his son to know the extent to which the suspect has gone, how close he has come. A healthy dose of fear for his life might make him a little more willing to put up with Yunho, but what does Yunho know? He’s just stuck here with a pissy, snarky man who seems to get his kicks from irritating Yunho to the point of violence. Yunho can’t even demand the respect due an elder because they’re the same damn age, as hard as that is to believe.
Still, he tries. He fucking tries, goddamn it.
They attempt to find common ground with entertainment and can’t quite manage it. Yunho likes video games, Wooyoung likes Drag Race. Yunho likes Vincenzo, Wooyoung is thoroughly invested in Queen of Tears.
The one thing they can agree on is the rooftop gym, a large glass structure housing a pool and various pieces of workout equipment. Outside the gym is the outdoor portion of the roof, little patio lounge areas with umbrellas and cushioned seats. This building is taller than the ones around it, making it unlikely anyone could be looking down on them with a tele lens.
Or a fucking rifle sight.
From the center of the gym, Yunho can see all the way around the rooftop area which means he can keep an eye on Wooyoung even when he gets bored of mocking Yunho’s fitness routine and goes outside to smoke.
“It’s not smoking,” Wooyoung scoffs when Yunho calls him on it. “Smoking’s gross and makes you smell bad.”
“Vaping, then,” Yunho corrects himself bitterly, rolling his eyes to the heavens. They’re lounging on patio chairs with their faces tipped up to the sun despite the raw and chilly air. It’s been a few days since Yunho has been outside and his body feels as if it’s coming back to life after hibernating for a week. “Isn’t being rich enough of a drug?”
“Who’s talking about drugs?” Wooyoung demands on an exhale.
“Nicotine’s a drug.” Yunho can’t help but feel smug.
The unimpressed look Wooyoung sends him is dry as a desert. “Okay, Ajussi,” he says flatly. “Using that logic, you’re just as bad as me. Caffeine’s also a drug, Mr. Can’t Function Before Coffee.” He looks away then, eyes scanning out over the lower roofs of the surrounding buildings. He looks unhappy. Yunho wonders how anyone with as much money as Wooyoung has could possibly be unhappy.
Then he asks himself why he cares, and shoves the thought away. He doesn’t. Obviously. He’s just going fucking stir crazy. He’s missing his friends, his best friend in particular, and these stilted attempts at conversation with Wooyoung are a pale substitute for the banter and humor and camaraderie. He can’t relate to this bougie little bitch and he doesn’t want to bother learning how. His job is to keep the guy alive, not to make friends with him. He’d been friends with Miko, had come to love him even, the way an older brother will love a younger brother who needs him.
Being Miko’s friend hadn’t helped Yunho keep him alive. Being Yunho’s friend hadn’t stopped Miko from wanting to die.
And that’s another thing that bothers Yunho about Wooyoung—
He’s been here for more than a week, and Yunho hasn’t met a single one of his friends. It’s not like he’d expected Wooyoung to bring him along on coffee dates or noraebang meetups or whatever but there’s been nothing. No one has stopped by, Yunho almost never sees Wooyoung on his phone unless it’s to order food or to check in with his father’s assistant, apparently something he’s supposed to do every few days.
Jung the elder hasn’t called his son once, at least when Yunho’s been present, and since that little fiasco at the club there are very few places Wooyoung goes alone. As far as Yunho is concerned Wooyoung can shit, shower, and shave by himself and that’s the extent of his alone time. Yunho had promised himself after that conversation with the Captain that he wouldn’t let his guard down again, and he intends to keep his word.
No, Jung hasn’t called his son but he has forwarded every email that comes, every picture within them, every cold, calculating note at the end, to Cap, who sends them on to Yunho.
One morning, while Yunho is watching the little coffee pot fill drop by agonizing drop with bleary eyes and sleep-tousled hair, the keypad on the front door beeps. Yunho is instantly, achingly awake, making the split-second decision not to vault the sofa where Wooyoung is lounging and watching YouTube and sprint for his room and his gun. Instead he grabs a random handle from the knife block beside the coffee pot and moves to stand by the wall that separates the entryway from the living room. It puts him between the intruder and Wooyoung, and gives him the element of surprise.
He hears shuffling, and a rustling, and a clink, all of which says ineptitude to Yunho as loudly as it says weapon.
He takes a breath, steels himself, and pivots to block the intruder’s path with the knife at the ready. His brain is cold and sharp as ice and he clocks everything in slow-mo and with perfect clarity; the guy is nearly his height, in some kind of long dark coat. His arms are locked around two paper grocery bags, and there is the barest suggestion of neatly combed hair and a furrowed brow above eyes that widen as they register Yunho and the weapon he wields. There’s something familiar about the face, and it clicks just as Wooyoung cries No! and the intruder drops both grocery bags to the tiled floor as he raises his hands in a warding off gesture. Something in one of them shatters on impact.
Then Wooyoung is between them, his eyes dark with fury instead of fear, his arms spread wide to keep as much of Jung’s assistant blocked from Yunho’s sight as he can. It isn’t much, considering the fact that Seo In Guk is Yunho’s height and Wooyoung is considerably shorter. And angrier. And louder.
“What the fuck, you absolute goddamn psycho!” Wooyoung shouts. “What is wrong with you?”
“I’m doing my fucking job!” Yunho snarls back. “Maybe you’ve heard of those?”
“Guys—” In Guk manages from behind Wooyoung.
Wooyoung turns to him immediately, all fawning solicitude in an instant. “Hyungie, are you okay?” he demands quietly, patting at his shoulders and leaning in to look into In Guk’s face with earnest concern. “Did he hurt you?”
In Guk straightens up and offers a wan, trembling smile as he presses his palm to his heart. “No, Young-ah. Just… startled me.” His eyes flick up over Wooyoung’s shoulder. “I guess I can honestly tell Mr. Jung that he chose a very… vigilant guard for you.” He looks down at the grocery bags and makes a small sound of dismay. A clutch of green onion lies on the floor beside a loaf of bread, and a reddish liquid soaks the bottom of one bag. It’s beginning to pool on the floor.
Wooyoung follows his gaze. “My kimchi!” he wails, turning an accusing glare on Yunho. “Why are you like this?” He looks at the knife again. “And what the hell do you think you were going to do with a bread knife?”
Yunho stalks to the kitchen and shoves the long, flexible, serrated blade back into the block he’d snatched it from, scowling. He’s tired, and annoyed, and goddammit, he’s embarrassed now on top of it all. He’d overreacted, which isn’t like him at all. He hadn’t even stopped to make sure that the knife he’d grabbed would be useful— what would he have done if it truly had been some murdery stalker? Beat him into submission with the flat of it? Jesus Christ.
He tries to help put the groceries away but Wooyoung refuses to acknowledge him except to wave him off like he’s a bothersome fly. He tries to help In Guk clean up the mess in the entryway and feels like a dick when the man flinches a little before plastering on a smile and assuring Yunho that he’ll take care of it, not to worry.
In the end he retreats to the living room and watches them through the archway, listens to the low murmur of their voices. He sees the way Wooyoung leans into In Guk’s space, and is amused by the deft way the older man skirts him, moving away from the reach of his hands with practiced ease that speaks of many occasions spent in Wooyoung’s company. Wooyoung never looks put out or bothered in the slightest that his overdone advances are so deftly avoided. Perhaps it’s the gentleness Jung’s assistant uses to deflect, never accusatory, never drawing attention, just the easy redirection of an absently affectionate older sibling.
“Do I have to have someone live with me?” Wooyoung pouts, his gaze pleading even as he deftly rolls up kimbap at the counter.
“Hush,” In Guk murmurs as he washes the few dishes Wooyoung has used to prepare the filling with his shirtsleeves rolled high to avoid the suds. “You’re being rude, Young-ah. Mr. Jeong is just doing his job.” The brief look he sends to Yunho in the living room is apologetic before he turns back to Wooyoung. “Your father just wants you to be safe. Looked after, you know?”
Wooyoung sets the bamboo roller up again with nori and rice, scowling. “Why couldn’t you just stay here?”
In Guk rinses his hands at the sink. “I offered that, actually. But your father reminded me quite firmly that I’m his assistant, not yours.” He clears his throat a little, sheepishly. “He also reminded me about work/life balance, and that I should pay attention to that.”
“Work/life balance,” Yunho mutters to himself. “Must be nice.”
The two in the kitchen don’t seem to hear him, and when In Guk leaves it’s with the final admonishment to Wooyoung to be polite and try to understand that Yunho is here to do an important job.
Wooyoung, Yunho can’t help but notice, makes no promises to that effect. He just loudly bemoans In Guk’s departure, attempting to drape himself over his shoulders, pressing loud, exuberant kisses to his cheeks at every opportunity, like an overexcited puppy that has made a new friend.
It sets Yunho’s teeth on edge but then, everything about Wooyoung seems to do that.
As the week wears on, however, Wooyoung appears to take In Guk’s advice. At least, he looks like he’s trying to take Yunho’s constant presence in stride, and it’s more than Yunho had expected so he supposes he should be grateful.
Maybe Wooyoung has realized that the less he resists the more smoothly things are bound to go. Perhaps it’s because he’s finally accepted that this is how things are going to be for the foreseeable future.
Yunho thinks it’s more likely that he just enjoys having someone to chauffeur him around town and carry his bags from bougie store to bougie store like a pack mule.
He hadn’t known before that the employees of such stores worked on a commission, and seeing someone like Jung Wooyoung walk through their doors was like a gift from the gods. Yunho sits on a padded leather bench in Stüssy while Wooyoung is swept away by fawning salesclerks, keeping one eye on the door and one on his phone, texting back and forth with Jongho, who will be their Six until midnight.
Jongho: is the rich bitch almost done? It’s hot out here
Yunho: it’s like four fucking degrees out, how are you hot?
Jongho: good genes I guess idk
Yunho looks out the window. Across the street, Jongho leans against a sleek, black street bike, head bent over his phone
“Who’s that?”
Yunho looks around. Wooyoung is standing beside his bench, half a dozen bags at his feet, staring out the window at Jongho. Yunho sighs and pockets his phone. “That’s our Six. If we ever get into trouble and you can’t see me, you find him. Or whoever’s on shift at the time.”
“I didn’t know you were into pet names, Colossus.”
Yunho bristles without knowing precisely why. “It’s not a pet name, for fuck’s sake. It’s his job title. It means—”
“I know what the fuck it means,” Wooyoung interrupts with a big, huffy sigh, as if Yunho is the most boring person on the planet. “I’ve heard enough overdone police jargon from dramas to know what the hell ‘six’ means.”
Yunho bites back a scathing retort and scoops up the bags, since he knows he’ll have to anyway if he wants to leave any time soon. He entertains a brief fantasy of clobbering Wooyoung over the head with the heavy bags and has to force himself to tuck them into the back of the SUV like a whole ass adult. It takes him barely thirty seconds, but in that time Wooyoung has made his way across the street to where Jongho lounges against his bike.
Praying for strength, Yunho jogs over. “You can’t just fuck off like that,” he grumbles.
“Relax, Colossus. I was just complimenting Jongho here on his bike, is all. It’s hot,” he adds, flashing a smile at Jongho that makes Yunho’s gut clench. “Take me for a ride sometime?”
Jongho crosses his arms, looking amused. “I’ll ask my husband if he’ll loan you his helmet.”
Yunho watches in shock as Wooyoung backs off as calmly as he’d started, as if it didn’t matter a bit to him whether Jongho was interested in his advances or not. As if he flirts the same way normal people breathe, unconsciously, just one of the body’s automatic functions. He thinks of that night at the club, all those people Wooyoung had panting after him within minutes of meeting him. He thinks of Wooyoung’s arms hooked around his neck, of his face buried against Yunho’s throat. His stomach muscles clench again and he grits his teeth against a shiver.
“Come on,” he snaps, suddenly terrified that any of that had been evident on his face. “You have an appointment at two.”
/
Yunho hates crowds.
Not for the reason most people would think, either; he enjoys people and being social as much as the next moderately well-adjusted person.
It’s just that in his line of work, the more people around his assignment the harder it is to keep that assignment safe. When your attention is spread that thin it makes holes through which someone can slip with murder on their mind.
That this hadn’t even been about murder when he’d been assigned this job doesn’t matter in the least. It had stopped mattering the moment that fucking freak had targeted Wooyoung with a laser sight.
So yeah, Yunho hates the fuck out of a crowd, and that’s why he really doesn’t understand how he’d allowed himself to get talked into attending the fucking nightmare of food and booze trucks that is the so-called Love Festival. Across the Han from Wooyoung’s apartment, they’ve blocked off four city blocks surrounding a popular stream and lined the street on both sides with sake and soju tents, trucks serving frozen drinks, trucks serving hot drinks, trucks serving every kind of food that can possibly be considered to be love-themed.
Yunho had been an idiot, truly, taking in Wooyoung’s oversized hoodie and the relaxed fit of his jeans and thinking this would be a normal outing, like the time they went to Daiso for some kind of lemon cleaner that only they carried or the time Wooyoung made Yunho drive to thirty-six different Olive Youngs until he found the face masks he wanted. Wooyoung loves to dress up, to play up his features and his skimpy ass outfits when he’s going out to party or go clubbing. Understated clothing equals understated outing, right?
Wrong.
He’s been to this street, been to this stream, before. It’s a popular dating spot— it’s considered romantic to sit by the stream with your sweetheart and set a flower afloat to symbolize your love or whatever. He remembers the sidewalk vendors with buckets full of flowers in every color of the rainbow. In any season other than spring, Yunho can’t imagine the attraction, but here they are halfway through November. It’s colder than jellied goat balls out here as his father used to say, long ago when he’d been alive to say anything.
The dark and understated hoodie is proving an entire bitch to keep track of, since Wooyoung has absolutely no intention of making his movements known to Yunho beforehand. He wanders where he wants, looking at whatever display or drinks menu catches his fancy. Twice Yunho reaches out just in time to snag the fold of his hood with a finger to avoid losing sight of him entirely.
The second time he accidentally yanks on it and yokes Wooyoung up momentarily just as he’s about to step off the curb to cross the pedestrian filled street.
Wooyoung makes an aborted yip like a pup who’s been swatted for misbehaving and whirls to face Yunho with a sardonic grin. “Damn, Colossus, didn’t realize you were into all that.” His eyes are twinkling with mischief, clearly enjoying the way Yunho’s ears burn hot with embarrassment.
“Would you just… I don’t… would it kill you to stay with me?” he splutters, mortified and exasperated at once.
Wooyoung’s eyebrows wing upward. “If you wanted to hold hands, Colossus, you could have just said so.” His smile is bright and sharp, challenging, as he laces their fingers together and swings their hands between them. “We didn’t need to leap straight to breath play. Take a bitch to dinner first, damn.”
Then he drags Yunho into the throngs of people walking down the street, perusing the stalls and sharing food and drink. Music and lights pulse from somewhere up ahead but Wooyoung seems perfectly happy to look at everything they pass. Yunho, for his part, tries to look everywhere at once; into the pooling shadows between the stalls and food trucks, into the undulating crowd that pulls them along like a tide, at the buildings that flank the busy festival because windows and rooftops and even recessed doorways could hide a killer.
An hour later he has a steaming cup of what Wooyoung calls ‘bitchbaby cocoa’ clamped in one hand while Wooyoung still drags him around by the other.
“Non-alcoholics just call it cocoa,” Yunho tells him gruffly as they move past a table with fortune cards on it.
The woman behind the table calls out to them on their way by. “You’re such a cute couple! Would you like to choose a fortune card?”
Reflexively, Yunho tugs his hand free from Wooyoung’s— couple? What? Us? —and Wooyoung lets it go easily. Yunho stares down at his now free hand. Had… had it always been that easy? Could he have just let go at any time tonight? A pool of dread begins to fill his stomach. Had he just walked for more than an hour around the Love Festival holding hands with Jung Wooyoung because he wanted to?
What the entire fuck is wrong with him?
He looks up at the milling people around him and realizes he’s lost sight of Wooyoung again. “Goddamn idiot,” he reprimands himself and he starts moving through the crowd, on the lookout for a dark hoodie in a sea of the same. “Get yourself the fuck together.”
Yunho is so convinced that Wooyoung has disappeared on him again
— just like at the club, his mind berates him, remember the club? remember the bathroom, and the bartender, and the—
that he almost walks right past him, would have kept on walking indefinitely if he hadn’t heard Wooyoung’s voice just as he’d been moving beyond a little game stall fringed by large stuffed animals as prizes.
“Colossus.”
Yunho’s head snaps in the direction of his voice. It takes him a minute to pinpoint him but finally spies him at the far end of the game stall’s counter with his arms crossed, scowling at the guy running the game.
“Can you not disappear every time I look away for ten seconds?” he demands, pushing his way past some people loitering between him and the game stall.
Wooyoung ignores that, jabbing an accusing finger at the guy in charge of the stall instead. “This man won’t let me play,” he grouses.
“It’s a couple’s game, I’ve told you so already,” the man shoots back. His arms are folded over his chest and his jaw is set at a stubborn angle. “A couple is two people,” he adds with a smirk.
Yunho casts a glance over the cheap corkboard dotted with small balloons, at the even cheaper prizes in the bins— he’s seen this type of shtick before. You drop ten thousand won and at best you can win a little charm for your phone case or one of those fluffy pencil toppers for school. The big prizes, the big plushies with cute faces and soft fur, would take hundreds of thousands of won if you played by the stated rules of the game.
“We’re two people,” Wooyoung says, pointing between himself and Yunho.
The guy shakes his head. “You’re not a couple.”
Wooyoung huffs. “That’s homophobic.”
The man rolls his eyes skyward. “I don’t care if you’re two guys, two girls, or a dog and a goddamn cat. You’re not a couple. This is a couple’s game.”
The look Wooyoung sends him is pleading. Yunho narrows his eyes. Wooyoung’s widen. Yunho scowls. Wooyoung’s bottom lip pokes out.
Jesus fucking Christ, FINE. Yunho turns to the man. “We are a couple,” he says, doing his damnedest not to choke to death on his own spit. “Let him play.”
The man eyes them skeptically. “You don’t look like a couple,” he muses.
Yunho gingerly settles an arm around Wooyoung’s shoulders. They’re as tense as a live wire, but he doesn’t pull away. Yunho sends the guy a wolfish grin that feels more like lockjaw than joy. “Better?” he says through his teeth.
The guy looks unconvinced, and Yunho isn’t sure what else he can do. He’s never heard of a carnival game where you had to beg them to play. It’s ludicrous.
“It’s our first date,” Wooyoung says smoothly, suddenly leaning into Yunho’s side. “And you’re making it really awkward. Sir,” he adds, as if it’s an afterthought, as if it’s an honorific they both know he doesn’t deserve. He tosses a ten on the scrubby astroturf stapled to the countertop.
Grumbling, the man slaps down five warped, likely dull darts. “Knock your socks off.”
With a happy crow, Wooyoung shrugs Yunho’s arm from his shoulders and scoops up the darts.
The first two bounce off the balloons he aims at, thumping to the floor of the stall; the third hits the board at an angle and drops onto the balloon below it, popping it almost on accident. The last two glance off the cork board’s frame.
The smarmy huckster running the game sets a tiny eraser shaped like a raspberry ostentatiously down in front of Wooyoung. “We have a winner!”
Wooyoung hisses in aggravation, slaps down another ten. “Five more.”
Yunho turns his back to the game and scans the crowd once more. The sun is fully set now and the deep purple shadows of late autumn twilight are lanced with streams of light from stalls, from trucks, from the area up ahead where the DJ is playing popular love songs reworked over edm tracks. He has that prickly feeling again at the back of his neck, the one he gets sometimes when some part of his brain registers a threat before the rest of him does. He glances down at his watch, sees the little blue blip on the screen marking their six’s location, and relaxes a little. Jongho is on the far side of the stream, keeping an eye out from a distance.
Wooyoung nudges him from behind. “Let’s just go,” he says in a low tone. His head is down, staring at the little keychain he’d obviously traded the little eraser for. “Thirty thousand won for a keychain. I don’t even have fucking keys.”
The smug expression on the game runner’s face tells Yunho everything he needs to know. He turns Wooyoung by the shoulders and stands him in front of the counter again. Then he pulls out his wallet and tosses a ten onto the astroturf, his gaze steely on the guy behind the counter. “Five more.”
“What are you doing, Colossus?” Wooyoung whispers. “Don’t give this asshole your money, too!”
“Trust me,” Yunho murmurs, and moves so that he’s standing directly behind Wooyoung, watching from his vantage point. “Throw. Just one.”
Yunho watches as Wooyoung does, watches the dart bounce off a balloon.
Wooyoung glances back at him. “See? This sucks.”
Yunho nods, then reaches past Wooyoung for the second dart. “Hold this,” he says quietly. “I want to see something.” When Wooyoung grasps the dart in his fingers, Yunho immediately aims his wrist where the throw will have the best effect. “Throw from here.”
Wooyoung does. The dart arcs high and falls short of the board entirely. The man’s smirk is sticky with smugness.
Wooyoung groans in frustration. “You’re even worse at this than I am, Colossus.”
Yunho hums. “Maybe.” Before Wooyoung can reach for the third dart, Yunho snatches it up and tosses it into the air, quickly followed by the fourth and fifth. They each hit the top of a different row of balloons, obliterating the entire column on the way down, pop, pop, pop. “Maybe not.” His eyes hold the game runner’s gaze, and he notes that the self satisfied smirk is nowhere in evidence now. “I’ll take that one,” he says, pointing to the largest stuffie.
“You… you can’t just…” the man splutters, fury painting his cheeks a dull red.
“I just did.” Yunho pulls out his wallet again, flashing his security badge, knowing this asshole wouldn’t know it from a cop’s. He sees those ruddy cheeks pale, just as he’d hoped. “Unless you’d rather catch a charge, of course. I hear the games commissioner is a real stickler for the law, especially the one against rigging your setup.”
The dull hatred in the man’s stare gives him a brief flash of fierce joy. Yunho hands Wooyoung the stuffie prize, a black cartoon cat with a huge head and a red collar with a little bell. Then he clamps a hand around Wooyoung’s wrist and pulls him away into the crowd.
They don’t play any more games, but they eat lamb skewers and hotteok and fish cakes on a stick. They watch the people who came to dance as they approach the large courtyard area where the DJ plays barely recognizable versions of songs Yunho knows from when he was young. The lights wash over Wooyoung’s hair as they walk, purple and green and red and blue. Yunho tries to ignore how pretty he is in profile when he turns to look at the dancers. That way lies madness.
“That was pretty cool, back there,” Wooyoung murmurs grudgingly. They’re sitting on the outside edge of a large cement planter on the far side of the stream from where they’d started. Yunho is trying to look everywhere at once and Wooyoung is focused on his spiked apple cider, but he glances at Yunho every now and again as if to gauge the effect of his words.
“I apologize for putting my arm around you like that,” is all Yunho can think to say in return.
Wooyoung shrugs and tips his cup up to swallow the last of the sweet drink. “I didn’t die. Besides, it worked.” He dances the stuffed cat on his knee, then Yunho’s. “It’s the one I would have picked if you’d given me a choice.”
“Yeah?” Yunho arches a brow. “I would have figured you for the pink unicorn one.”
Wooyoung makes a face. “What about me says unicorn-lover?” he demands, looking affronted.
You’re small, and soft, and pretty, Yunho thinks but doesn’t say. He just shrugs instead, starting to feel irritated again.
“Just because I like guys doesn’t mean I automatically like pink and rainbows and shit,” Wooyoung mutters. He shakes the stuffed cat so the bell on its little red collar tinkles. “Black is my favorite color.”
“That’s nice,” Yunho says noncommittally.
Wooyoung makes an impatient sound. “You’re terrible at conversation.”
“How is accusing me of pigeonholing you considered conversation?”
“Pigeonholing? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Wooyoung asks. His expression is amused. When Yunho only rolls his eyes instead of letting himself be drawn in, he sighs and hops off the edge of the planter. “Looks like your two-second time limit to be cool is up,” he says in disgust. “Time to go back to being a prissy asshole, huh? Neat.” He scowls. “I want another drink.”
It’s past midnight when they get home, the apartment dark and quiet as they shuffle inside. Wooyoung isn’t what Yunho would call drunk precisely, but he’s certainly a bit past tipsy and so he’s expecting it when Wooyoung falls up against him while trying to unlace his boots one handed.
“Give me the cat,” Yunho says gruffly, reaching for the stuffed prize. “You need both hands to unlace your—”
“No!” Wooyoung hugs the stuffie to his chest and glares blearily at Yunho, slumping against the coat closet door. “Mine.”
Yunho rolls his eyes hard enough that he’s at risk of falling over himself, then crouches down to undo Wooyoung’s laces. “Maybe next time wear boots with zippers,” he grumbles, tugging off the first one and reaching for the second.
“Whatever you say,” Wooyoung murmurs, and Yunho can hear the lazy smile in his voice. “It got you on your knees though, didn’t it?”
Yunho’s head flies up to stare incredulously at Wooyoung. Wooyoung is indeed smiling, his eyes narrow and calculating as he gazes down at Yunho where he’s crouched with one knee on the floor. Before Yunho can even formulate a reply, his free hand comes up and brushes Yunho’s hair back from his forehead.
“Pretty,” Wooyoung murmurs as his fingers tighten in the strands. “So pretty like this, Colossus.”
It takes Yunho nearly ten seconds to react— a ten second lifetime during which his eyes flutter closed and all he can feel are Wooyoung’s knuckles against his scalp and the tight, almost painful tug on his hair. It feels incredible, makes him want more, makes him want to let this play out, see where it takes them.
Then his common sense reasserts itself and he surges upward, dropping the second boot to the floor. He knocks Wooyoung’s hand aside and twists it up behind his back in one smooth move, ignoring Wooyoung’s cry of surprise.
“Do not,” Yunho growls, low and deadly against Wooyoung’s ear, “pull that bullshit again.” He applies a tiny bit more pressure to the arm, stopping when Wooyoung squeaks. He’s angry, so angry with Wooyoung for doing that, for stirring shit up inside him. Angrier at himself for letting his guard down enough to be affected. “I’m not one of those poor fucks at the club.”
“Nah,” Wooyoung manages, and Yunho is infuriated to realize he’s laughing at him. “You just wish you were.” When Yunho releases his grip and shoves away on a hissed denial, Wooyoung turns so that his back is against the closet door instead of his face. He’s panting a little, rolling the shoulder of the arm Yunho had twisted and watching him with half-lidded eyes. “You want to put your hands on me that bad, I can give you a better reason than a temper tantrum.”
“Fuck you,” Yunho spits, mortified and pissed and turned on against his will. It’s like Wooyoung can see right through him to the seething, snarling knot of rage and lust in his belly, the part of him that had loved how it felt to press Wooyoung up against that fucking door. The part of him that had wanted to fuck him against it.
He grimaces. He needs a goddamned day off. He needs a vacation.
He needs a psych eval.
Wooyoung smirks. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” He moves past Yunho, his shoulder brushing against Yunho’s arm as he heads for the stairs, the black stuffed cat still clutched in one hand. “Sweet dreams, Colossus.”