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Mingi knows he's found the One in the second it takes him to realize that Jeong Yunho has just slammed a new magazine into his gun using the bridge of a man's nose.
It's flashy and obnoxious, the type of move Mr. Consummate Professional Secret Agent Man Jeong Yunho seems like he’d roll his eyes at Mingi for. Mingi is narcissistic enough that the idea of his fun, laissez-faire attitude toward mortal combat rubbing off on Yunho like this is almost as satisfying as the idea of actually rubbing off on Yunho.
Yunho kicks the guy hard into a wall, and follows up with a bullet into his already-bloody face. He then turns to take out two of his other attackers with two rounds to their chest and jaw, respectively.
Yunho stops to take a breath and wipe at the stream of blood winding from his ear and down his long throat before it can disappear into the open collar of his shirt. Mingi winces as he watches an arm the size of a cannon wrap around Yunho's neck from behind, a second equally-huge arm wrenching Yunho's own arm back by the elbow to keep him from firing. The guy’s so big that Yunho can’t get the leverage he needs to do anything, and ends up kicking over a table and chairs as he struggles.
His movie-star face is getting red and his chin is forced up by the thick arm beneath it. It’s hot seeing Yunho struggle for once, so Mingi gives a short, sharp, horny bark fueled by too long spent alone at his spot on the park bench.
He smiles serenely at a passing wee-hours jogger who makes a face at him. The jogger turns abruptly back in the other direction and nearly falls off the surprise S-curve in the sidewalk and into the grass.
“Careful!” Mingi calls joyfully, earning a terrified backwards glance from the jogger. He smiles politely and turns back down to the tablet.
Yunho is slowing, mouth open and eyes drooping. “C’mon, sweetheart, get your head in the game.” Mingi snarls under his breath. As if he hears, Yunho’s foot finally snags one of the chairs, drags it towards him, and Yunho clambers onto it as far as the arms holding him will allow. He forces the man’s arms up with his sudden change in altitude, loosening the grip just enough that he can shove hard off the chair and tip his assailant backwards. They both crash through a table and onto the floor.
There’s no sound on the video, but Mingi can almost hear the guy hollering as Yunho, against all odds and against all medical advice for a man who’s just spent almost a minute in a vicious chokehold, gets his feet back under him, aims, and blows the big man’s brains out the back of his skull. Mingi subdues his celebration to a small pump of his fist and sips his Americano, sending a request for 100,000₩ to his handler Choi Jongho with a “✿♥‿♥✿ he lived bitch pay up.” He takes one last wistful look at the exhausted little Yunho on his screen before turning his tablet off, sticking it in his bag, and heading off towards the gray midsize sedan parked at the curb a short walk away.
Mingi sets his bag and drink on the roof of the car and slides into the passenger’s seat with a grunt, and pulls out his phone again to see that Jongho has sent him a crudely drawn but somehow still incredibly accurate sticky-note drawing of himself, standing serenely among Mingi’s scattered head, torso, and limbs, a boldly scrawled YOU WILL NEVER GET MY MONEY FOOL across the bottom.
Mingi chuckles and shakes his head fondly, turning his phone to show the man in the driver’s seat the screen. “This kid. What a cutiepie.” Mingi tells him, not deterred by the near silence he receives in response. It’s interrupted by a small grunt when Mingi sets the phone down on the dashboard and turns fully in his seat to look at the man, who is now also sweating. His hand hovers by his seatbelt release and Mingi grabs the buckle a split second before he moves his hand to the button, prompting the man to cuss in English.
Mingi tuts, makes himself more comfortable, and continues staring. “Did they send you to settle my debts?” the man snaps. He’s a foreigner, American most likely, and sounds fluent, but like he learned Korean by mail. “I have the money, it’s just tied up in–”
Mingi raises an eyebrow, shutting the man up. He makes the bold decision to turn away from Mingi, staring out the windshield like he’s looking for someone outside. Mingi follows his gaze, and notices a pair of Ray-Bans tucked above the passenger’s side visor in front of him. He pulls them down and puts them on before reaching out and slowly turning the man’s red face back towards himself. Mingi flattens his mouth out like he’s sympathetic to the man’s plight. The man’s watery blue eyes search the mirrored surface of his own sunglasses, previous disinterest and annoyance gone, trying to make eye contact with whatever sliver of Mingi might actually have some sympathy for him. He’s met only with the crooked charm of Mingi’s cheek dimple.
Mingi palms the handle of the sturdy black knife he keeps up his jacket sleeve and the man starts to yell when he sees the blade, but the sound doesn’t get a chance to make it all the way to his mouth before Mingi violently silences it.
He wipes the knife on the cleanest patch of pants the dead man has left and pushes his shoulder until he’s slumped facedown on the steering wheel. This scene won’t look like anything other than what it is when the cops find it in the morning, so he doesn’t bother cleaning up much before climbing back out. It’s dark enough and the park is far enough out of the way that he’s not worried about being seen as he waits for his ride.
Trusty Wooyoung pulls up on his motorcycle moments later. He pulls his helmet off and shakes his hair out like he’s in a shampoo commercial, then thunks the helmet against Mingi’s chest. “If I find even a speck of blood in this thing after you clean it, you’re buying me a new one,” he says as Mingi takes the helmet and places the sunglasses in his bag in one movement.
“Let’s hope we crash and die on the way, then, ‘cause I’m definitely not cleaning this shit. I’m so exhausted, I’m gonna be debriefing from bed,” Mingi tells him sincerely. He puts the helmet on and swings onto the bike behind Wooyoung, snuggling in close with his bag tucked between them. He offers Wooyoung the rest of his Americano, and when it’s declined, he tosses it into a nearby trash can.
“I remember when you worried about leaving DNA evidence on a scene,” Wooyoung says with faux disappointment.
Mingi snorts. “If the cops can bag my ass off a straw, I deserve to go to jail. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
Wooyoung drops Mingi off at the entrance of their nondescript headquarters building and goes to park his bike as Mingi heads inside. He leaves Wooyoung’s helmet on a filing cabinet Wooyoung can’t reach the top of and runs for the showers before Wooyoung can come back and yell at him. He scrubs himself down as thoroughly as he can. He takes a minute to check for any missed smears of blood in the mirror, then changes into the spare clothes he keeps at Jongho’s desk.
Mingi’s debrief with the team takes about an hour longer than the actual hit took, which is always a pain. He signs his paperwork and confirms the efficiency bonus in his account, nods his way through the team leader’s small talk, flirts with Yeosang over the drone Yeosang is tinkering with, flips Jongho off, and finally gets to pack up. He doesn’t keep much at the office and doesn’t carry much on him anyway, but he’s polite enough to remove his week-old lunch from the communal fridge on his way out. A quick stop at the armory sees his knife (and, as a favor, his new sunglasses) cleaned and back in order.
He’s almost free when he hears a “Song, wait,” from across the lobby. If it was anyone else he would pretend not to hear and keep walking, but he stops and sighs for the boss out of obligation. “Let’s talk for a minute.”
“Yes, sir,” Mingi says automatically, resisting the urge to jog back over to the elevator bank he just came out of. The boss smiles at him, and if his eyes were warmer, Mingi would say it was almost indulgent. He steps into the elevator and keeps his hand in front of the door sensor, even though Mingi’s a step behind him, and settles against the back wall as the doors close. The building isn’t tall by Seoul standards, but it’s old enough that the elevators are slow, and they’re headed to the office on the twelfth floor.
“I’m told you handled your assignment well,” the boss says comfortably, checking his watch before folding his arms over what Mingi can tell used to be a thick barrel chest. He’s still in shape for a man in his sixties, a little shorter than Mingi with the solid build and full hairline of a younger man. His face is only remarkable in its plainness–if it wasn’t so startlingly average, Mingi wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup. It seems to be by design, like subtle procedures over the decades in this business have taken away any character he may have been born with–in fact, Mingi has only ever known him as Hong Gildong. The indistinctness of his features seems as intentional as that name. Mingi just thinks of him as the boss, not even a proper noun.
Mingi wonders, as he usually does when they’re alone in close quarters, if any of his targets have ever lived long enough to feel as uncomfortable with him as his employees are.
“It was no trouble,” Mingi tells him politely.
“I’m sorry to keep you from resting, but I wanted to speak with you before you left,” his boss says, then leans forward and presses the stop button on the panel. Mingi balances himself before the elevator can jolt him, and takes a step back. “I have a new assignment for you.”
“Yes, sir,” Mingi answers, uneasy.
“This is not a normal hit, so forgive the unusual circumstances,” the boss says, pulling a folded piece of computer paper out of the back pocket of his khaki pants. Any documentation not on a computer that Mingi receives is typically presented in a hunter green filing folder with at least one witness, so the drowsiness Mingi was starting to feel before stepping onto the elevator is completely gone now. He accepts the paper and shakes it open as his boss leans back against the wall again. The sheet is blank except for two scrawled words: JEONG YUNHO. Mingi keeps his face still when he looks back up.
His boss sighs. “You’re familiar with this subject, yes?”
“Somewhat,” Mingi says cautiously. “Twenty-seven years old, National Intelligence Bureau golden boy out of Gwangju.”
His boss shakes his head. “He’s not NIB anymore, at least not beneath the surface. He’s somewhere else. Something else. Unfortunately, this makes him an uncontrolled piece on my board, and you know I don’t allow those.”
Mingi nods automatically. “Are we recruiting him? He could be an incredible asset. I’ve seen him in action.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have,” Mingi’s boss says. Mingi swallows, and his boss smiles, knowing and not pleasant. Mingi understands. The line between personal stalking and reconnaissance is thin. “I’m quite aware of your…careful observation of Jeong Yunho, so that’s why this assignment is falling to you.”
“Recruitment isn’t rea–”
“This isn’t recruitment. What you watched today was the third failed hit in a row, and the first from our end. Brute force doesn’t work, and he’s too careful for subtler methods. You’re going to get yourself close to your golden boy, you’re going to find out exactly who he works for, and you’re going to eliminate him in a way that shows whoever’s really holding his leash that they must respect the rules of my game, or they will not be permitted to play it anymore.”
Mingi swallows. His boss doesn’t get angry. His boss doesn’t even get upset. Mingi used to think it was scarier that he didn’t, that he maintained this bland and neutral demeanor no matter what–but the reddened face, clenched jaw, and newly visible whites of his eyes are activating some primal terror in Mingi’s hindbrain he has to work to keep off his own face. He drops eye contact and folds the paper back up, as if hiding Yunho’s name will somehow calm his boss down, and tries not to let his exhale sound audibly relieved when his boss hits the button to restart the elevator.
He lets it continue up to the twelfth floor, and turns in the doorway to look at Mingi again. “You have a month. Don’t fail me,” his boss says, reaches in to hit the button for the ground floor, and turns to head for his office at the end of the hallway as the doors close.
Mingi keeps a tight grip on the hand rail behind him the entire way back down to the lobby. He almost runs into Yeosang as he exits the elevator again, to the point where Yeosang holds out a hand in case he has to steady Mingi. “Are you okay?” Yeosang asks softly, apparently not able to keep his eyes from jumping to the security camera in the corner. He’s already stepping towards the front doors, his hand still out and hovering behind Mingi’s elbow, guiding him without touching him. Mingi takes the hint and keeps pace until they’re across the street, then breathes out heavily. “Mingi?” Yeosang prompts.
“I’m fine. Got another assignment directly from the boss as I was heading out,” Mingi explains, not sure how much he’s actually supposed to be saying. Fuck it, if he can’t tell Yeosang, he can’t tell anyone. “It was a little intense.”
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Yeosang asks, a slight cringe to his expression like he’s hoping Mingi will say no. It’s cute and it makes Mingi laugh, helping him shake off a little of the strange tension from the elevator. That in turn calms Yeosang slightly, allowing him to return Mingi’s smile.
“I don’t know the parameters of the mission. He didn’t really give me any? Except the one.”
“What’s the one?”
“I have to kill Jeong Yunho.”
WEEK ONE
Thanks to all the stalking of Yunho that Mingi has done over the past eight-to-twelve months, he has a pretty solid grasp on the parts of Yunho that Yunho can afford to let someone grasp. Like any good spy, he has a Life, a “life”, and a life, as far as Mingi can tell.
- the Life that gets captured on CCTV and traffic cameras and friends’ cell phones and includes things Mingi can watch through his own cameras or bugged hardware, like his apartment, his bills, his coffee order, the brand of treats he keeps in his pocket for if he meets a dog or cat on the street, the elderly woman who cuts his hair once a month out back of her tiny corner store and then sends him on his way with a wrinkly grin and a fond cuss when he kisses her gnarled knuckles like a princely suitor in thanks. His hour-long calls with his mother and father that he likes to take on the balcony of his place when the weather’s nice, his feet up on the railing. His Valorant account, and the Discord full of his dumb but sweet-natured gamer buddies who sometimes contact each other privately when Yunho’s offline too long, reassuring each other that he’s just busy with his data analysis job and he’ll be back soon. The dramas and anime he watches, the comics he reads. The porn he jacks off to (rarely, and even more rarely to completion. Mingi can sympathize–there’s nothing worse than getting yourself all settled in for a bit of alone time after eight days in the field and not being able to stop thinking about how you might kill the five dudes about to run a train on some eager twunk, or how you might escape the leather mistress’s most devious predicament bondage contraption yet, if you had to. There’s a reason a lot of people like them lose their libido completely, or keep accidentally getting turned on by shit like rollercoaster disasters or train derailments or documentaries about how slugs fuck. Mingi’s not there yet, but if things start heading in that direction, he’ll be making a career change right into a monastery).
- the “life” spent in office buildings under fluorescent lighting, right up until it’s being spent in warehouses/hotels/shipyards/bus stations/ballrooms/subway cars/remote farms/jungle compounds/other office buildings/etc. full of people who want to hurt him, or lie to him, or steal from him, or pay him to do one of these things. Mingi is less interested in this life than is probably safe, but he thinks the disinterest is fair, considering it looks too much like his own for him to think it’s the most important thing about Yunho. It’s not the most important thing about Mingi, so it can’t be the most important thing about Yunho, either. In the rich fantasy life that Mingi’s concocted for himself during hours of observing much more boring targets, he’s a really good boyfriend to Yunho, so he would never be that dismissive of Yunho’s interiority.
- the life nobody but Yunho really knows about, but that Mingi catches glimpses of in the tension of his neck and shoulders when he’s alone with his back to people, the twitch of his fingers when he’s sitting quietly, the times he’s suddenly dry-heaved after hurting or killing someone–usually just one contraction of his abdomen that folds him over before he collects himself. They’re infrequent, and they’re uncontrollable, but they happen to the best of them.
Mingi, in accordance with his deep, dark fantasies, decides to take the seduction route. He’s not good at it, at least not in the context of work, but if he’s gonna have to kill Yunho at the end of this, he might as well go for the full boyfriend experience while he can. He knows enough about who Yunho smiles at to guess he’s at least one of Yunho’s types. With a quick look at Yunho’s last few dating app swipes (Yunho’s been recently drawn to beefy business assholes and mean pretty chaebol princesses and nasty-looking hot banking guys apparently—all of which Mingi can pull off, even if he disapproves), Mingi borrows a Boring Handsome Guy outfit from Jongho (burgundy henley, the most normal jeans possible, Jongho’s most expensive boots that he refuses to admit are too big for him because he paid so much for them), a softer cologne than his usual from Yeosang (more floral, for the romance of it), and a vintage Chrome Hearts belt from Wooyoung (to keep it a little douchey, which Yunho seems to like). He figures he’s ready.
Wooyoung refuses to let him borrow his motorcycle since he called his belt douchey, so he just requisitions a nondescript car from the garage and drives to the bar he knows Yunho will be headed to after work, Yunho’s late-night-Friday ritual when he’s not in the field. Mingi gets there earlier than Yunho usually does, settles in a few seats away from his preferred table, and orders a soju and spicy squid while he waits.
Yunho is unfailingly polite, so Mingi doesn’t have to wait long. He’s wearing a navy blue striped polo shirt tucked into his fitted khakis with sunglasses pushed up into his hair, a smile on his face for the bartender who yells an enthusiastic greeting to him (one that Mingi did not get). Yunho orders a beer at the bar, makes some small talk while the bartender retrieves it for him, and orders a snack Mingi can’t make out over the growing noise before he heads to his table. Mingi tries not to let himself get distracted by the way his ass fills out the pants when he sits, just chews thoughtfully on his squid.
If this was a normal mission, Mingi would just spend the night watching Yunho drink and eat and occasionally check his phone, but due to the expedited nature of his assignment, he has to move a little faster. He waits until the bar is a little more crowded and Yunho’s on his second beer before he dabs a few drops of soju on his neck and hair, swishes some in his mouth and spits it back into the half-full bottle, stands up, and upends the rest of his food and all the spicy red sauce it’s swimming in over the woman with the dumbest-looking male companion he can find. The woman is surprisingly gracious about her ruined pastel cardigan, giving a noise of shock but immediately pulling it off instead of screaming, but her man stands before she’s even shucked her arm out of the first sleeve. Mingi is banking on him being exactly as short of mind as he is of body, which he is, so he swings at Mingi without realizing he’s having to swing up and not forward to even try and reach Mingi’s jaw. Mingi even leans down a bit to try and take it on his chin, but the guy is already too many drinks in for it to matter. The guy almost knocks himself off-balance with his own punch, so Mingi has to play drunker than he ever has in his life to help sell the next hit, which means Mingi ends up dramatically falling over the table and onto the floor on the other side, rolling once for good measure and to put him almost at Yunho’s table. People are yelling already, mainly the bartender, but Mingi feels a strong pair of hands pull him up to his feet without much effort and set him straight, brushing dirt off his back and shoulder. Mingi blinks, unfocusing his eyes and looking a little bleary, and turns to make eye contact with his savior.
Yunho’s even handsomer up close than he is on the little screens Mingi’s used to seeing him through, that movie-star face taking on an ethereal quality when Mingi can make out the delicate little moles and freckles on his soft skin, the reddening of his ears from the beer he’s drinking. “Wow,” Mingi says, no longer really acting. He stumbles, forcing Yunho to catch him by the elbow, and puts his own hand on Yunho’s elbow with a drunk smile. “Thanks, baby,” Mingi slurs, staring into Yunho’s eyes.
Yunho caves first, almost immediately in fact, his ears going even more crimson and his head ducking away to look at the dummy who’s still yelling about Mingi disrespecting his girlfriend, asking Mingi and the universe at large does she look like the kinda woman you dump squid on, hey-pal-I’m-talkin’-to-you, while said woman just rolls her eyes and continues dabbing at her cardigan with a detergent pen. Mingi didn’t get her too bad, but the guy doesn’t seem to understand, and picks up a chair like he’s gonna throw it at Mingi. This sets the bartender off even more, and it becomes a shouting match between the two of them instead, until the bartender picks up a baseball bat from behind the counter and the man sits back down in his seat almost comically fast.
Non-crisis averted, Mingi turns more fully to Yunho, who smiles politely at him again. “I’m Song Mingi. I owe you a beer for helping me out,” Mingi tells him.
Yunho starts to wave him off. “No, I–you just fell and I picked you up, it’s no big deal–”
Mingi grabs his wrist, not too hard, just assertive enough that Yunho stops talking in surprise. “Then I just wanna buy you a beer. Don’t say no.”
Yunho smoothly pulls his hand away, straightening his shirt out. “Fine, Song Mingi, I’ll take a beer. As long as it’s not because you owe me one.”
Mingi snorts at Yunho’s resolute near-pout. He’s cute. Mingi knew that, but it’s nice to know it’s the same in person. “Fine, I don’t owe you anything. In fact, you owe me now.” Mingi gestures for Yunho to sit back down at his own table, and heads to the bartender to grab four more beers and another order of squid. The bartender refuses to provide him with another saucy dish and only approves a handful of meat skewers instead, promising to drop them off when they’re finished frying if Mingi just remains seated for the rest of his time in the bar. Mingi pays the tab ahead of time, knowing neither he nor Yunho are big public drinkers, and brings the beers back to the table with only a little of his feigned unsteadiness, to keep up appearances.
Mingi drops the beers down and sits heavily across from Yunho, staring at him from under heavy eyelids. Yunho matches the look with another of his endless cute smiles playing at the corners of his mouth and sips his beer, nodding in approval.
“What’s your name?” Mingi asks bluntly, taking a swig of his own. The men and women on Yunho’s dating-app match list usually have some factor that keeps them from having to make polite conversation like normal people, like obscene wealth or massive hotness or both, so Mingi settles into that for the sake of keeping Yunho interested.
Yunho himself would fall into the latter category, actually, but he’s a sweetheart–he swallows his mouthful of beer, tips his head forward slightly, and introduces himself like he would to someone above him at work. Mingi’s even more endeared than he was before. “Where do you work?” he asks, as bluntly as the first question.
“I work at a data analysis firm in Dongdaemun,” Yunho answers, waving a hand. “Really boring stuff.”
“I bet,” Mingi tells him honestly.
Yunho laughs, a little surprised but not offended. “What about you?” he asks.
Mingi makes something up about owning a few clubs and art galleries around the city, mentions his father owns an investment and wealth management company overseas, and watches Yunho’s face show only understanding. Mingi hates how good he is at pretending to be this type of rich asshole, considering his parents have owned and operated a seafood restaurant his entire life and he spent most of his middle and high school years taking orders, cleaning fish, and cooking. He joined the military after graduating high school and got recruited to his current employer right after discharge, so he doesn’t know where the stupid, smug little laugh he gives Yunho when Yunho asks if he likes his work comes from. Probably residual energy from the previous owner of Wooyoung’s douchey belt, which Mingi knows Wooyoung saved up for and bought secondhand.
“It’s all right. The businesses run themselves. The most work I do is popping in every few weeks and showing all the little celebrities what a real VIP is,” Mingi says. He finishes his first beer to get the taste of that bullshit out of his mouth, almost laughing at himself.
Yunho isn’t falling all over himself at Mingi’s rich-kid-shithead act like someone who was interested in money would be, which Mingi finds fascinating. Yunho’s still obviously interested, his eye contact remaining flirtatious and a little smile stuck permanently on his mouth, but he’s letting Mingi talk like he’s doing Mingi a favor.
Mingi has suspicions, so after their last beers are done and most of the meat skewers have been devoured, he leans back in the seat and folds his hands behind his head. “You got plans after this, Yunho?” he asks. Jongho’s shirt is showing off his biceps well enough that he doesn’t need to keep them flexed, but he flexes a little bit, anyway.
Yunho makes a disappointed sound between his teeth, leaning back a little as well. “I’ve got an early morning tomorrow. Working remotely, ‘cause it’s Saturday, but a long day anyway.”
Mingi scoffs. “Data entry’s that important?”
“Data analysis,” Yunho corrects politely. “Yes, unfortunately.”
Mingi stands up. “Let me drive you home,” he says.
Yunho stands up too, letting Mingi put a hand on his back, a little too low to be friendly. “You don’t have a driver?” Yunho asks.
“Nah. Sometimes I like the control,” Mingi says, kicking himself for forgetting this one thing and hoping the car he arrived in is something a rich guy might drive. He doesn’t know much about cars. The one he requisitioned was black, and clean, and that’s all he cared about at the time.
“Sure, then,” Yunho says. He allows Mingi to guide him out, yelling a farewell to the bartender over their shoulders. Mingi brings him out to where he parked, and a quick peek at the badge on the back of the vehicle reveals it to be some kind of Mercedes. Probably good enough, Mingi thinks, and opens the door for Yunho.
Yunho tells him he doesn’t live far, and quietly points out the turns Mingi needs to take with courteous timing. It’s fifteen minutes, but instead of bringing them directly into a parking lot or garage, Yunho’s guided him to a quiet side street near his apartment building, dark and empty. He asks Mingi to park in the shadows, which he does, and reaches over to pull the keys out of the ignition and turn off the lights.
He unbuckles both of their seatbelts but doesn’t sit fully back up in his seat, just turns a little to look at Mingi, expectant. Mingi forces himself not to swallow too hard, especially when Yunho leans forward again. His hand is trembling slightly when he presses his palm between Mingi’s legs, but the pressure on his dick is firm.
Mingi sinks his own hand into the soft hair at the back of Yunho’s head, gripping so tight Yunho’s eyes close in discomfort. “What are you doing?” Mingi asks quietly, shaking Yunho a little by the hair. Gently, just enough to make him wince. He keeps his eyes shut.
“Wanted to thank you. For the ride. For the beer. You said I owe you, right?” Yunho answers softly, pushing harder against the seam of Mingi’s jeans and wincing again when Mingi shakes his head a little once more, like Yunho’s a disobedient dog he’s scruffed.
“You gotta pay me back here, huh? Why not your apartment? You got roommates?” Mingi asks, the last word disdainful.
“I can’t invite you up to my apartment after a first date,” Yunho answers, the little smile reappearing.
“Why not?”
Yunho opens his eyes, big and innocent, his cheeks pinker than they were before. “Oh, Mingi, I don’t want you to think I’m a slut.”
Yunho is a slut, the same way Mingi and everyone else in this line of work is a slut, whether they want to be or not. It becomes a job hazard or a perk, depending on the situation.
He sucks Mingi’s dick in the car, mouth soft and wet and hesitant in a way that Mingi can tell is mainly for Mingi’s benefit, if Mingi was the type of man he’s pretending to be. Yunho’s pretending to be someone cowed and entranced by that type of man, by money and power. That type of man is never satisfied feeling like they’ve gotten something completely free, that the people they’re with are there only because they really like them as people, that someone would bruise their chests on a center console in public just because they really want to. It’s about power, like everything else in their lives, and they can’t get off if they don’t have all of it. And that’s the man Yunho’s asking for, what he’s been seeking out.
So Mingi gives Yunho what he wants, encouraged by the hand he notices down Yunho’s own pants. Mingi fucks his mouth just slightly too hard for him to be able to get comfortable, and doesn’t let him up for air until he feels Yunho gagging. He drags Yunho up by the hair, lets him gasp twice, then shoves him back down when Yunho gives him a wet-eyed nod. He angles his hips towards the end so he can nail himself into Yunho’s open throat over and over until he comes, keeping Yunho’s nose dug into his hip until he finishes, only letting Yunho back up when Yunho eventually comes with a muffled moan around Mingi’s dick and one of Yunho’s hands scrambles up to scratch at Mingi’s arm in desperation. Yunho doesn’t have a chance to swallow again or close his mouth as Mingi pulls him off, saliva and what semen didn’t make it down his throat dripping onto the leg of Mingi’s jeans when Yunho coughs.
“I’m sorry–sorry–” Yunho says hoarsely, trying to wipe the mess with his clean hand, but Mingi just pulls his hair until he’s sitting upright. His face is red and soaked from his cheeks to his neck, his eyes bloodshot and running uncontrollably like he’s really crying. His hair is sticking up everywhere, and he looks dazed as he pulls his hand out of his pants and rests it in his lap, fingers slightly curled around the smears of come in his palm and between his fingers.
Mingi doesn’t want to reveal that this isn’t actually his car, so he doesn’t bother looking helplessly for a packet of tissues. He takes the collar of Yunho’s shirt and lifts it, rubbing it against the messier parts of Yunho’s face until Yunho’s eyes, still unfocused, settle on him as best they can. “Thanks,” Yunho says, blessing Mingi with a gross little pervert grin that Mingi will keep in his heart forever.
Mingi zips himself back up and wipes his own mouth with the back of his wrist, having drooled a bit at some point, too. “You liked that?” he asks, not too incredulous. Yunho nods, just as politely as everything else he’s done tonight. Well, almost everything. “Wouldn’t have expected you to be into that.”
Yunho shrugs. “I’m into a lot of things. Did–” Yunho’s face falls almost imperceptibly. “Did you like that?”
Mingi knows he should stay in character, neg Yunho about something to keep him from being fully satisfied, but he doesn’t have the heart to. “Yeah, Yunho, I liked that. Thank you,” he says honestly. He watches Yunho’s face carefully for any sign of disappointment, but Yunho must not be as into the asshole treatment as he thinks, because he just looks content with Mingi’s answer. “I wanna see you again,” Mingi says, risking ruining Yunho’s mood.
Yunho shrugs slightly, and rubs both his hands on his pants. He uses his left hand to pull his phone out, typing Mingi’s number into his messenger as Mingi gives it to him and sending a little thumbs-up sticker to Mingi when he’s done. “I’ll let you know when I’m free,” Yunho tells him.
“What do you wanna do?” Mingi asks.
Yunho shrugs again. “It’s up to you.”
Mingi thinks for a minute. “Dinner. I’ll really treat you this time.” Mingi gives him a crooked smile. “If this is what I get for two beers and some meat sticks, I can’t even imagine what eight courses and a wine pairing might get me.”
Yunho laughs, embarrassed, giving Mingi the chance to grab him and pull him forward for a kiss. Yunho hesitates but opens his mouth for Mingi to deepen it. Mingi doesn’t push his luck and finishes up with a last quick lick of Yunho’s mouth, rubbing his thumb over Yunho’s bowed upper lip before letting him go and starting the car again. Yunho turns back when he reaches the doors of his building and Mingi offers him a charmingly bad two-eyed wink before he pulls out of the side street and back onto the main road.
He’s still not sure exactly how he’s gonna get the information he needs out of Yunho, but he’s got time. His next goal is getting into that apartment, so he sends a quick text to the groupchat.
You: anybody got fancy restaurant recommendations
You: btw got blown
CJH: UP, I HOPE
JWY: congratulations.
KYS: wait why
KYS: by who
CJH: AWAY, I HOPE
JWY: was it awesome
CJH: TO SMITHEREENS, I HOPE
You: can we please focus on whats important
JWY: i can get you in at Continental if you answer me
CJH: i can get you in at momoyama if you don’t
KYS: ohhh was it yunho
WEEK TWO
Yunho is late to their second date, which Mingi would be annoyed about if 1. Mingi didn’t know he was late because he was helping his pregnant, widowed downstairs neighbor build her impending baby’s crib and 2. he didn’t walk into the restaurant in a gray suit and with windswept hair, his jacket folded over his arm to show off the two-tone black and gray vest that dipped his waist in so dangerously between his broad shoulders and solid hips and ass that Mingi wanted to forgo dinner altogether. Yunho is a little flushed from his rush to the restaurant, and flushes a bit deeper when Mingi stands up to take his jacket and pull his chair out for him. He makes a cute little face like he wasn't expecting the courtesy, which is when Mingi makes a mental note to go back through Yunho’s dating app matches for the past year and execute every single one of them that made it to a first meeting.
Mingi has ordered the chef’s tasting menu with six wine pairings for them both before Yunho showed up, but gives Yunho the menu in case he’d like to order anything else. Mingi’s less interested in the food than he is in Yunho being interested in the food, and Yunho’s eyes go wide when he sees the price. “No, no,” he says quietly. “This is insane.”
“It’s my first time eating here, too, don’t ruin it by pretending you don’t wanna at least try it,” Mingi tells him.
“If you try to run out on this bill, I’ll cut your head off and mail it to your mother,” Yunho answers firmly, setting the menu down gingerly at the edge of the table like it’s going to hurt him. Mingi is fascinated to watch him slip back into his almost-shy demeanor as he smiles at Mingi again. ”Thanks for asking me out again. I’m sorry it took a few days to coordinate. I was out of town a bit this week.”
Mingi knows. Yunho was at some business’s retreat in Japan to steal a briefcase. Mingi watched him pose as ryokan staff and give a back massage to the oldest woman he’s ever seen in his life (and evade at least seven pinches to his ass) on their security cameras from his own desk, where Mingi himself was spending time filling out overdue expense reports, medical reimbursement claims, and rewriting insufficiently-detailed mission briefs from months ago in order to explain the expense reports and medical reimbursement claims. A chunk of the total amount of money he’d ended up getting back had gone to Wooyoung to bribe Mingi’s way into a table at this restaurant, and the rest was going to pay for the food and wine.
The caviar course arrives with champagne. Mingi doesn’t do a lot of the fancy dress-up missions by choice, so he’s not completely sure how to handle it other than popping a quick roll of the raw beef, caviar, and creme fraiche into his mouth. He figures the type of man he’s pretending to be wouldn’t be pretentious about his animal needs–eating, sex–even if he is about everything else.Yunho eats his first bite much the same, closing his eyes to savor the salty caviar, rich beef, and tang of dairy. He covers his mouth when he chews, his eyes opening to stare widely at Mingi. “This is incredible,” he says through his last chew, prompting Mingi to pick up another bite with his hand and hold it up for Yunho to take. Yunho shakes his head quickly, glancing around the dining room, but Mingi hasn’t moved when Yunho finally looks back at him.
Yunho gives up and leans forward quickly, trying to get it over with before someone notices, but Mingi pulls his hand back just out of reach. “Take it nice,” he orders quietly. He’s heard Yunho say this cheerfully to the eager dogs he treats on the sidewalk, through a patient smile, but Mingi keeps his own face neutral. “C’mon.”
Yunho seems to fight with himself before he tilts his body a few inches further over the table, letting Mingi put his hand back within reach before he takes the little roll of beef. He licks a smear of creme fraiche off Mingi’s thumb as he goes, sitting down with crimson ears and a satisfied smile as he puts his hand up to chew again. Mingi takes the last bite for himself and settles back, swallowing before downing half the flute of champagne in one sip.
He murmurs a “That’s a good boy” into the rim of the glass to watch Yunho’s ears get redder.
The rest of dinner–seafood, more beef, three dessert courses, and several more glasses of wine–passes without much fanfare. The food is satisfying for how delicately and beautifully it’s presented to them, and the wine’s expertly paired. Mingi doesn’t think he’ll find himself here again, but in the context of this being one of Yunho’s last meals, it’s worthwhile. He gets a sharp little pang in his gut when he thinks about that, so he interrupts Yunho’s effusive thanks with, “Wanna bring me home now?”
Yunho is a little tipsy. He’d gotten nervous after taking food from Mingi’s hand, so Mingi had decided not to really push it after that, only slipping the passionfruit mousse-covered tip of his thumb past Yunho’s lips when Mingi passed him on the way to the restroom. Yunho had finished all his wine and a cognac after dinner. The flush on his cheeks is darling.
“Are you sure?” Yunho asks, eyes slightly bleary. “It’s small. A little messy. You might be used to something more impressive. A more impressive house. I mean. I’m not small.” Yunho’s hand flies to his face when his brain catches up to his mouth and he laughs, too loud for the rich people around them. “I’m sorry.”
Mingi can’t help but smile and pull him into his side as they walk to the parking garage. Yunho had come in a cab but Mingi wants to drive, so the short walk in fresh air clears his mind. He hadn’t drunk much, a sip or two to taste while Yunho finished everything that was brought to him, so he supports Yunho when his pace and direction try to drift and veer. By the time they get to the car Mingi is holding Yunho’s jacket and Yunho’s arm is slung over Mingi’s shoulders, his head almost dropping onto his chest more from tiredness than the alcohol. He quietly thanks Mingi for opening his door and buckles himself in with no problems.
Mingi drops in behind the wheel and starts the car, pulls out of the garage and heads onto the street. He knows the route but has to prompt Yunho to tell him where to go, which Yunho does with his head tilted back and his eyes mostly closed. Mingi puts his free hand on Yunho’s thigh, squeezing tight when he pulls into the parking area for the apartment complex. Yunho’s eyes open slowly, sliding to Mingi before he unbuckles himself and gets out of the car. Mingi cuts the engine and follows suit, trailing Yunho through the lobby and to the elevators. Yunho presses the button for the seventeenth floor and leans back, staring at Mingi from behind his dark lashes. His face is expressionless, eyes dark and glassy like a doll’s, but his neck is still pink and his hands are tight around the elevator railing behind him.
The ride passes in silence. Yunho jolts a little when the elevator stops, heading out first without looking to see if Mingi is following as he walks down the hallway to his door. He unlocks it after a fumbled first try and opens the door, then pauses and turns to Mingi with a horrified look on his face. “God, this is so embarrassing. I’m sorry I brought you all the way here without realizing, but my little brother was staying with me this week and he left the place a mess. I didn’t even think about it until just now. Would you mind waiting? My mother would kill me if I let a guest see my apartment like this.”
Mingi blinks at him. “You think I haven’t been in a messy place before?”
“But not mine. Please, I just need a few minutes to clean up. Would you mind running to the store a couple blocks east and grabbing a pack of beer and some snacks, since I’m sure my brother either ate them all or took most of them for his trip back home?” Yunho’s face reddens. “And…actually, I don’t remember the last time I bought condoms. I haven’t exactly been active recently. They might be expired.” Yunho reaches out to play with the waistband of Mingi’s pants. “I promise I’ll make it worth your time.”
Mingi grabs his hand, pulls it up to his own face, and kisses his fingers at the first knuckle. “Fine. But remember, my time is real valuable.”
“I know! I’m so sorry,” Yunho says, finally smiling. He kisses Mingi on the cheek as Mingi turns to walk back to the elevator, and doesn’t go into the apartment until the elevator doors are closing. Mingi hits the button for the sixteenth floor, exits, and walks across the hallway to the stairwell to climb back up to the seventeenth floor. He peeks around the edge of the door to make sure the hallway’s empty before walking back to Yunho’s apartment and listening through the door.
The building is quality construction but not quite luxe enough for optimum soundproofing, so Mingi can faintly hear Yunho moving through the apartment. He pulls out his cell phone and logs into the app that lets him see the camera pointed at his balcony from a nearby building, but the curtains are shut. He knows Yunho’s brother isn’t going to visit him for another few weeks–ever again, Mingi’s brain thinks automatically, at which he feels a strange disgust–and that Yunho has brought people home recently. The lying doesn’t bother Mingi. He gets it. He just wants to know what halted Yunho at the door.
Mingi gets his answer a moment later, when he hears the sound of a body slamming into a wall. Mingi waits until he hears more than two voices grunting and shouting before trying the handle, which was left unlocked. Yunho knew he’d be walking into something, and the second it takes to unlock a door is a second someone can pull you back in. He waits until the noise is far enough away that he’s not going to accidentally open the door into Yunho’s head and steps into the apartment.
He’s familiar with the layout from his stalk-onnaissance hobby, so even with the darkness, he can make his way to the living room. He watches Yunho get thrown over his couch and roll off the coffee table, landing on the floor. He rises to a crouch, then launches himself at a man wearing all black tactical gear and a bulky pair of night vision goggles who comes at him from the side, his knee crushing into the man’s gut with a crunch and attendant wheeze.
Yunho shoves him against the wall for leverage on a second blow, and the wheeze sounds wet with blood this time. Mingi hears the man who threw Yunho running to join the first, and sees another man melt out of the shadows in the corner and head for the fray.
Mingi reaches over and flips the switch next to him on the wall. Light floods the room–it’s not going to do much to the night vision goggles, thanks to the modern tech in those fussy little sensors, but the change in the environment throws everyone off. Yunho recovers first, like Mingi knew he would. He grabs the goggles and slams his man’s head against the wall twice, hard enough to leave a bloody dent the second time, then turns and shoves his limp body into the two approaching him.
Mingi goes for the closest one. He grabs him by the shoulder of his tac vest and plants his feet, hurling him to the floor. It’s just hard enough to piss the man off, since he can’t pull out any of his incredible fighting moves while Yunho’s there, so he settles for a few nasty kicks into the man’s unprotected abdomen before he lets the guy pull him off his feet and drop him to the ground too. Mingi gives a theatrical shout of surprise and the guy yanks him down under his own body.
He pulls a knife and Mingi grabs his wrist, shoving it to the side. He pulls another knife with his other hand, which just seems excessive. Mingi tilts his head back to see Yunho preoccupied with another guy on top of the last one he saw, so he turns back to his assigned nuisance, twists the man’s left wrist in, and plunges his own knife into his own right shoulder, using his own hand.
The man howls and tries to stab down with the knife in his right hand, but can’t generate the force necessary before Mingi shoves his body up and off, rolling himself on top and tearing the goggles off his face. Mingi rips the knife out of his shoulder and slashes at his right hand, deep enough to hit tendons and force him to drop the other knife. He can’t kill the guy, not while he’s still trying to maintain his cover with Yunho, so he tosses his own knife away.
He falls back on his school delinquent days and starts punching. He hits hard enough to damage but not enough to kill him, at least not directly, until he hears one of Yunho’s men cut off a yell with a gurgle and looks over. Yunho is standing across the living room with two men at his feet, one with a cracked skull and one with his neck at an angle that gives Mingi the heebie-jeebies.
There’s a third body Mingi hadn’t noticed before by the door to the balcony. That one has a small silver Gwangju Taekwondo Association Junior Championship 2007 trophy embedded in his face too deep for it to have taken just one try to get it in there.
Mingi stares at the trophy for a moment, then looks up at Yunho, who’s wiping blood off his face with his sleeve, expression foul. “Second place?”
Yunho shrugs. “I had food poisoning that day.”
Yunho’s explanation in the car (after a hushed phone call in the bathroom that ends with him packing a small duffel and begging Mingi to let him bring him to a hotel), that his family is in some debt after his father made some bad investment choices, would have convinced anyone. It convinces Mingi too, who stops at the shop he’d been asked to before and grabs an armload of snacks, beer, and a box of condoms. Mingi isn’t pretending to be a particularly smart man, so he doesn’t poke any holes in Yunho’s story, or question how he’s fine after killing three men in his apartment and then, Mingi assumes, finishing off the fourth when he pretended he had to double back and get his toothbrush.
Mingi’s own explanation for why he was there, that he thought Yunho had somebody in the apartment he didn’t want Mingi to see and got jealous, seems to work fine. Yunho tries to pay for the hotel, which is nondescript and clearly focused on middle-class salarymen instead of what Mingi’s character would be used to, but Mingi gives the clerk a look that has her taking his card instead.
They head up to the room, which is almost offensively plain but clean, and Yunho sets his bag on the small table near the door. Mingi puts the beers in the fridge and watches Yunho strip down to his boxerbriefs, placing the discarded clothes in a plastic bag and leaving them on the floor. “I have to take a shower,” he says, his arms folded loosely against the chill of the room. “I’ll be back out in a few. I brought some clothes that should fit you fine, so you can get a shower too, if you want.” He smiles. “I don’t mind either way.”
“Freak,” Mingi says affectionately. Yunho disappears into the bathroom and Mingi hears the water turn on. He undresses too, wincing at the ache in his knuckles, and washes his hands at the kitchenette sink. He knows the shower won’t be big enough for two people, especially their size, but makes his way in after he deems enough time for Yunho to wash up has passed. Yunho doesn’t jump when Mingi steps in under the stream with him, just rinses his hair and moves around so Mingi can take the spot under the showerhead. Mingi washes himself too, and Yunho watches, eyes soft and hooded with interest.
Mingi shuts off the water when he’s finished and they both dry off in silence, then move back out into the room.
“Thank you. For helping me,” Yunho says finally. Projecting vulnerability, and not just because he’s naked.
Mingi is under no delusion that Yunho couldn’t have handled the entire situation himself, but Fake Mingi wouldn’t know that, so he preens. “What kinda man would I be if I didn’t?”
Yunho pulls him to the bed and lets go of him to grab the condoms out of the grocery bag and a bottle of lubricant out of his own bag and set them on the nightstand. He moves the comforter onto one side of the bed and lays down. His hair is still damp and he looks cold, goosebumps rising on his arms and the developing bruises from his fight stark against his skin.
“You want it on your back?” Mingi asks. Yunho shakes his head and turns onto his stomach, pulling his knees in underneath him and lifting his hips.
“I like starting facedown,” he admits with a smile. “Then you can do what you want to me.” He chews on his thumbnail, staring up at Mingi, and Mingi’s dick twitches so hard it’s almost painful. He kneels behind Yunho and watches Yunho’s eyes close, his hand dropping into a loose fist next to him on the pillow.
Mingi grabs one cheek of his ass just to see how his hand looks on it, puts the other hand on his waist to see the same, and slides his dry dick past Yunho’s hole. “Feel that?”
Yunho doesn’t answer, so Mingi slaps his ass. The red spreading from the impact and the red on his ears match perfectly. Yunho laughs, startled, prompting Mingi to hit him again, his dick settled firmly between Yunho’s cheeks. “Yeah, I feel it,” he says softly, looking over his shoulder like a whale-eyed dog. “You’re big.”
“I know. Give me the lube.”
Yunho obeys, passing the bottle back to him. Mingi pours enough down over where he’s snug against Yunho’s ass to get them both wet and pushes forward, hard, just grinding against his hole, his perineum, the underside of his balls. He moves back just enough to push the knuckle of his middle finger against Yunho’s hole, more pressure than Yunho’s expecting. Yunho yelps in surprise but laughs brightly and pushes his ass back, so Mingi does it again before pushing his thumb in to the base knuckle. Yunho is tight but receptive, relaxes quickly with a sigh and Mingi feels it when his front half sags down into the mattress and pillow he’s laying on. “You’re used to this.” Mingi observes, pulling his thumb out and pushing back in. “Good at taking it.”
“I’m good at giving it, too.”
“I didn’t fuckin’ ask,” Mingi answers, in character, but he has to force the bad attitude. He saw Yunho’s dick in the shower.
Mingi guesses Yunho is easy enough to take two fingers, and he’s right. Yunho’s back bows and he makes a small noise into his own arm, but he settles back down again while Mingi feels around, finds his prostate with his middle finger and leans down to kiss the center of his back, right over a set of two freckles on his spine. He twists his fingers around inside Yunho without much care to make up for the gentleness, getting him ready but not much more than that, and bullies his ring finger in alongside the other two to make Yunho squirm and start making noise again. Yunho starts to pull away from the sensation but Mingi keeps him still with a hand on his shoulder, leaving him to gasp helplessly and reach back. His slender fingers slide into Mingi’s, like he’s trying to help, so Mingi pulls out and says, “Finish up, then. Let me see.”
Yunho blinks back at him but does as he’s told. He turns onto his back and spreads his legs. He puts his free hand on his dick, but the only movement is one finger gently stroking the seam of his sac as he pushes his fingers into himself, three at a time, and finds his own prostate with ease. His dick drips onto his stomach and his head goes back, showing Mingi nothing but his long throat and the soft underside of his jaw. The hand on his dick goes to his neck, then, just barely squeezing at his pulse points before falling down to twist one of his own nipples. His head drops again and his eyes are glittering wet and almost shut.
Mingi steps off the bed and grabs a condom out of the box, tearing it open and rolling it onto his dick. He pulls Yunho’s hands away from himself and turns him back onto his front with a ferocity that shocks himself, pours a little more lube onto the condom, and shoves inside. He’s always been even bigger than people think he is, and the shocked sound forced out of Yunho when Mingi manages to get himself all the way in is worth having to be still for a minute to get himself back under control. He pulls Yunho’s hips back up until Yunho’s shaking legs get the hint and he gets to his knees, but when he tries to balance on his elbows, Mingi forces his upper half back down with a hand between his shoulderblades. Yunho’s fingers wrinkle the sheets as he pushes his own face down into the mattress and lets Mingi just fuck him, pulling more muffled gasps and groans out of the depths of his lungs and soul.
His body is beautiful and he’s so accommodating, even if it’s not conscious behavior. He picks up Mingi’s rhythm quickly, shoving himself back to meet Mingi’s force and then stilling when Mingi grabs his hips. He’s tight and soft inside. Mingi smacks the meat of his hip and gets a soft cry in return.
He’s getting close, but can’t quite tell if Yunho is. Yunho isn’t touching himself, even though Mingi never told him not to, so Mingi reaches down to stroke him. Yunho makes another noise, his body curling up so hard Mingi almost slips out, but Mingi slaps him on the ass once more and holds him still as he works. Yunho still pushes Mingi’s hand off his dick, so Mingi leaves it alone, a little perturbed and put out, but figuring the sensation might be too much.
Mingi feels his balls tighten up and stops, pulling out and shoving Yunho down onto his back. Mingi adjusts how he’s kneeling, then hauls Yunho’s lower half up over his lap. Yunho looks a little confused and very out of it, his hands up near his head, fingers curled in. He rewards Mingi with a rough little moan when Mingi pushes back in, at a slower pace but more brutal force. He doesn’t touch Yunho’s dick again but puts his hand down near it, splaying his fingers and palm over Yunho’s lower abdomen to feel the muscles in it contract as he fucks Yunho.
Yunho’s hand eventually makes it down to his dick, squeezing so hard Mingi thinks the head will burst. He’s trying not to come before Mingi, Mingi realizes, which makes him force Yunho’s hand away. “If you can come just from getting fucked, I wanna see it,” he says. Yunho just moans again, helpless. His legs try to close, but Mingi keeps them down, pushed against his own, his fingers digging into the long span of his thighs.
It happens suddenly, come streaking across Yunho’s belly and chest as Mingi watches him. He keeps fucking Yunho but pushes down on his stomach and presses his knuckle in beneath his balls, stimulating him from there, as Yunho finally allows himself to touch his own dick. He rubs through the last of it, hand trembling even as he grips and strokes, and the hot clench of his body pulls Mingi after him sooner rather than later. Yunho is limp while Mingi finishes, driving in deep and wishing he wasn’t coming into a rubber.
Yunho winces as Mingi pulls out of him, only fighting a little when Mingi slides his hands behind Yunho’s knees and folds them up towards his chest, spreading his legs a little more, enjoying the view of his softened hole. Mingi lets go of his legs and lets them fold over and fall to the side. Yunho gives an exhausted sigh, his hairline now wetter than it was before from the sweat. He’s smiling, eyes shut. Mingi gets off the bed and walks to the bathroom for a washcloth, tying and tossing the condom in the wastebasket and washing his hands. He gets the cloth wet, wrings it out, and wipes himself down quickly before rinsing it again and bringing it out to Yunho. He sits down on the bed and tries to pull Yunho’s legs apart to wipe off his ass and thighs, but Yunho just snatches the cloth away, heading to the bathroom on slightly unsteady legs to do it himself.
Mingi frowns, but pulls two beers and water out of the minifridge and opens a few of the snacks, fluffing the sheets and pillows. He’s exhausted and dozes off before he’s awoken by the sound of keys. He sees Yunho, fully dressed in sweats and a tshirt, pulling his bag over his shoulder and dropping his keys into an outer pocket. “Oh,” Yunho says. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was just resting my eyes. What are you doing?”
“It’s almost two in the morning and I’ve got another early day, I figured I would just–”
“Head home? Where those guys we beat up are?” Mingi asks. He knows if he pushes too much, asks too many questions, Yunho will get suspicious. But Yunho will get suspicious if he doesn’t, too.
“I figured I would stay the night at work,” Yunho answers smoothly. “I have a cot in my office.”
Mingi stands up. “You have a bed here. Come on.” He holds a hand out to Yunho, who looks conflicted. “Come here,” he emphasizes, gesturing. Yunho swallows, looks at Mingi’s naked body, looks at the door, and sets his bag back down. He takes Mingi’s hand and lets himself be pulled in, lets Mingi start sliding the hem of his shirt up before taking over and getting undressed to his underwear, climbing back into the bed. Mingi straddles him, bare ass on his clothed dick, and brushes the hair off his forehead.
“Feel up to another round?” Mingi asks.
“I’d love to, but I’d have to call out of work.”
Mingi shrugs. “I’ll ride you. Let me do something nice for you.”
“You’ve only done nice things for me.”
“You’re easy to do nice things for, baby. Hand me the lube.”
Yunho does as he’s told, watching Mingi roll off and lay down next to him. Yunho turns onto his side, propping his head up on his hand, and watches Mingi finger himself with efficiency learned in the field. Yunho pushes his hand into his boxerbriefs and strokes idly, lip white where it’s pulled between his teeth. When Mingi snatches another condom out of the box and pulls Yunho’s underwear down to his thighs to put it on him, Yunho looks eager despite his exhaustion. Mingi plans on putting him to sleep, so that works just fine for him.
Yunho’s face when Mingi takes him in is so devastating Mingi has to lean down to kiss him, breathing in his gasp when Mingi’s ass settles down on him and enjoying the grip Yunho takes on his biceps, like he’s trying to hold both of them steady. Yunho doesn’t have much energy left in him, and truthfully Mingi doesn’t either, but he gives Yunho what he can confidently say is one of the rides of his life. Yunho’s dick is thick and lovely, and he keeps his hands on Mingi, moving between his arms, his hips, and his chest. Mingi puts his own hand down on Yunho’s chest, pushing just slightly. He slides it up incrementally until Yunho takes his wrist and moves his hand, pushing Mingi’s fingers down around his throat. Mingi squeezes and Yunho groans, letting Mingi push the fingers of his other hand into Yunho’s mouth. He sucks on them without being asked, face reddening as Mingi increases his pace. His hips start moving more, too, pushing up into Mingi with the same enthusiastic rhythm-matching as he did when Mingi was fucking him.
His nails dig into Mingi’s ass as he gets close, his other hand flying back to Mingi’s hand on his throat and pushing it down harder. Mingi quickens his pace incrementally until Yunho bucks under him once, twice, three times, and then his body falls back to the bed. Mingi lets him settle for a minute, but Yunho pushes him off, looking dazed from the pressure on his neck. He lays down, his head hanging off the edge of the bed, and gestures for Mingi to get up.
Mingi doesn’t have to be told twice. The position seems easier for Yunho than it was in the car, and he doesn’t complain or even choke much as Mingi uses his throat. He pulls out after an almost embarrassingly short time to finish on Yunho’s chest, watching his come trail down over his clavicles and into the dip between them from the gravity of his position. Yunho still looks dazed, spit and tears dripping down into his hairline. Mingi takes the opportunity to get another washcloth, this time intent on not taking no for an answer.
Yunho lets Mingi pull him back up onto the bed and allows him to wipe down his face and then chest, then dispose of the condom and clean him off, pulling his underwear back up as he lays there. Mingi takes care of himself quickly, snags what he figures is the pair of underwear Yunho meant for him out of Yunho’s bag, and pulls them on himself. He grabs a bottle of water and a snack cake and returns to the bed, sets them down, and carefully drags Yunho up into a semi-sitting position against the pillows and headboard. “Eat something. We worked off dinner,” he says, putting the cake in Yunho’s hand and the uncapped water in his other hand. He grabs a beer and bag of chips for himself, joining Yunho on the bed shortly after.
Yunho takes a bite of the cake and a sip of the water, not calling Mingi out for how intently he watches Yunho eat the whole thing and down half the bottle before setting it aside. Mingi finishes his beer and chips quickly, gathering the garbage to throw it away. He brushes his teeth first using the disposable amenities bag in the bathroom drawer, washes his face using the travel-size cleanser and moisturizer Yunho brought, and waits for Yunho to finish doing the same and half-stumble back to bed. “Thank you,” Yunho says when Mingi shuts the light off. “For letting me stay.”
“And for the fucking.”
Yunho’s teeth gleam through his smile in the city lights shining through the gauzy curtains before Mingi closes the blackout set over them. “And for the fucking.”
It doesn’t take Yunho long to fall asleep. He snores so softly that Mingi is endeared–none of his recording devices had ever picked that up.
Mingi’s phone lights up on the table next to him.
H: How goes it?
Mingi stares at the screen, wishing he had a normal job where a text from the boss after two in the morning might be considered rude.
YOU: It’s going fine. I’m heading to his apartment to search it tomorrow. Today.
H: Pleased to hear it. Don’t forget your objective.
Mingi puts his phone facedown on the side table and sighs quietly, settling back on the pillow, and lets Yunho’s breath lull him to sleep.
WEEK THREE
As expected, Yunho’s not stupid enough to store anything incriminating at his apartment. Mingi checks around a bit when Yunho invites him over the next evening for a drink and a movie they watched 15 minutes of before Yunho rides his face on the couch, then checks on his own the following Monday while Yunho is at work. He breaks into Yunho’s Bureau office late Tuesday night after another date that ends at a much nicer hotel than the first, though he knows that will be a bust. All of his contacts are also a bust, and Jongho isn’t able to dig up anything, either. It’s highly unlikely that Yunho’s working alone, but Mingi almost wishes he was, when faced with the prospect of returning to his boss with nothing. He isn’t keen on torturing Yunho for the information, considering torture doesn’t work, especially on people who also know it doesn’t work and are furthermore trained to withstand it, but he feels like the wind might blow that way if he continues running into dead ends. In fact, a short but impactful meeting with his boss that afternoon assures it.
He goes grocery shopping Saturday and brings the armload to Yunho’s apartment, which is starting to feel almost homey despite having only gone there a handful of times. They’d met up a few times for lunch, for dinner, for sex, to the point where Mingi not seeing him outside of CCTV for the past two days has been a genuine disappointment.
He’s going to make up for it by cooking him a hearty meal, drugging his nightcap, and bringing him to an abandoned warehouse to start yanking teeth. Uneasiness unsettles his stomach as he crosses the threshold, accepting a kiss from Yunho when he won’t let him take the bag. Mingi sets up in the kitchen, but quickly becomes dismayed at the dullness of Yunho’s knives and has to hunt for a sharpener in his junk drawer. Yunho nurses a beer and compliments the way his hands look as he works.
Mingi is absorbed in his prep, slicing an onion, when he realizes he doesn’t hear anything other than the sounds he’s making. He stops, thinking Yunho might have gone to the bathroom, but is surprised to turn around and make eye contact with a gun pointed at his face, then with Yunho, who is pointing the gun at his face.
Mingi knows he should act now. He has options–tackle Yunho to the floor and choke him out, grab a knife off the counter and stab him, knock him down with a chair and beat him to death with it. All of these options rely on him being faster than a bullet, though, so he’s not sure how viable they are. He could lie and say he doesn’t know why Yunho is doing this to try and buy a few seconds before he does the above. He could even intentionally tank the mission and climb out the kitchen window and onto the fire escape, if he didn’t think Yunho might shoot him on his way down.
He does nothing. Yunho’s face is so carefully blank that Mingi knows he’s keeping it that way on purpose, his dead doll eyes giving Mingi nothing. Not that Mingi thinks he deserves anything, necessarily, but he wants something.
The something he gets is a kick to the side of his face that knocks him into the counter. His palm slaps down over the handle of the knife he was using and instinct takes over. He grabs it, flips it pakal-style into his right hand, and slashes upwards as he turns. He feels the blade dig into Yunho’s flesh as it passes, but Yunho’s reflexive jerk backwards keeps it from slitting his face in half jaw-to-temple, even if the retreat puts him off balance and lets Mingi get in too close with another slash aimed at his throat.
He dodges that one, but Mingi moves in too quickly for him to recover and grabs the hand holding the gun, crushing both their fingers around the weapon until Yunho swings at him with his other hand and nails him in the jaw with a nasty haymaker. Mingi doesn’t let go, dragging them both to the floor as he falls. He almost takes off both their thumbs as he stabs down towards his gun hand.
Yunho lets go of the gun to avoid the knife but launches Mingi into the table, sliding the gun across the floor and letting it disappear beneath the oven and thud against the back wall rather than chance Mingi getting it.
Yunho gets to his feet first. Mingi is up soon after, back to attacking with the knife and forcing Yunho back further, out of the kitchen and into the hallway, where he meets one of Mingi’s incoming strikes with a heavy wooden picture frame off the wall against the side of his skull.
Mingi shuts his eyes against the burst of pain and the following shower of glass and splinters, giving his head a rough shake and kicking out with a blow that would have had Yunho wheezing, if it had landed between his legs like it was supposed to. Yunho isn’t there when he opens his eyes–Mingi sees his lanky form disappear into the bedroom. The quarters in there are too close and closed-off for that to be a good tactical plan, so Mingi assumes he’s going for another gun.
Mingi had gotten too distracted to hide any of his own here, and he doesn’t have access to where he knows the ones outside the bedroom are hidden. Foolishness, thinking Yunho wouldn’t figure him out before he had a secure upper hand. Arrogance, thinking even if Yunho did figure him out, he would be, what, too lovestruck to fight his own murder? Mingi’s known him for almost a year, but Yunho’s known him less than a month. Mingi is the lovestruck one, a sudden realization that makes him as angry as it does embarrassed.
Embarrassment makes him more angry, and with that humiliation comes clarity.
“Hey!” he yells from the hallway, back against the wall closest to the doorway. “Jeong Yunho!”
There’s no answer. If Mingi focuses past the ringing in his ears, he can hear a muted shuffle, like Yunho’s moving in a closet or the bathroom. Mingi ruffles some more glass out of his hair and onto the floor, adjusts his grip on the knife. He can’t get to the front door without passing the open bedroom door, and the fall from the balcony would kill him for sure. He could try his luck with the fire escape, but the thought of getting picked off as he runs down many tiny flights of stairs is too much for his fragile ego.
Plus, he wants Yunho to answer him. “Yunho. Yunho. Jeong Yunho. Jeong Yunho.”
Nothing except the sound of something being thrown to the floor, possibly in irritation, and a faint whirring noise. That gives Mingi an idea, and he risks his free hand to pull his phone out of his pocket and drops a pin in his group chat with Jongho, Yeosang, and Wooyoung with the words GOT BLOWN and a frowning emoji. Jongho immediately texts back a death threat, so Mingi adds MY COVER I MEAN. 17 FLR SSW SIDE LBL CURTAIN 5 PLANTS.
There’s no response.
Mingi puts his phone back into his pocket. “Yunho-ya. Yunho-ya. Jeong Yunho. Yunho-ya,” he says, getting singsongy at the end. If Yunho’s training was anything like Mingi’s, he can withstand tortures they don’t have names for yet, but everyone always forgets the sheer agony of being kind of annoyed in your own home.
“What?!” Yunho shouts from the bedroom.
“When did you figure me out?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Yunho says rudely.
Mingi snorts. “Whatever you’re digging up in there is gonna put me down for good, right? Why can’t you just tell me? If you don’t, I’ll become a ghost who haunts you forever.” No answer. “Was it when I was too good at chopping onions just now?” Still no answer. “Was my driving too impressive on our dates?”
“You hit a curb every time,” Yunho barks back. Mingi figures he wasn’t planning on answering again, but had to get the dig in.
Mingi ignores it. “Am I too suave and worldly? Too smooth and attractive? Was my sexual technique so incredible that you realized I must be an international student of the seductive arts?”
“You bit through the condom trying to open it with your teeth last time, remember?” Yunho finally snarls. Sue Mingi for trying to make a midday quickie in a park bathroom exciting.
Mingi hears a long zipper. Yunho continues, “I’ve been watching you for seven months, Song Mingi. I knew the entire time.”
Mingi’s head snaps up. “You did not.”
“Did too, asshole. You think I’d let myself get surveilled for a year without ever realizing it? Then let some clumsy PMC loser honeypot me with a fake drunk act at a bar? Do you really have no professional respect for me whatsoever?”
Then the two sounds that Mingi’s been listening for happen almost simultaneously: the slide and click of a magazine into a gun in the bedroom, and two quick buzzes from the phone in his pocket. “I’m not a PMC loser! I’m a different kind of loser!” Mingi retorts, checking his phone.
A text from Wooyoung: back alley
A text from Yeosang: get down
Mingi drops fast, and half a second later, bullets shatter the glass door leading to the balcony and start ripping through Yunho’s walls at chest-height throughout the entire apartment in a steady line, destroying decor and furniture with prejudice. Mingi keeps low and slides past the bedroom doorway, and a quick glance inside shows blood splattered on the floor and Yunho’s socked feet laying still on the other side of the bed, the nastiest-looking rifle Mingi’s ever seen fallen nearby. It would have blasted Mingi through the wall and left chunks of his liver in the apartment next door, if Yeosang’s drone had arrived seconds later. Mingi takes one last look at Yunho’s socks, the gray cotton toe of his right foot now stained red.
He doesn’t let himself feel anything about it, just focuses on getting to the front door and ripping it open, rolling into the hallway, and sprinting barefoot to the stairwell. He jumps most of the flights down, thankful for the adrenaline keeping him from feeling the jolt up his legs when he lands, and can hear people screaming when he gets close to the lobby. He makes it to the service entrance that leads to the back alley and spots Wooyoung on his bike immediately, jumping on behind him and holding tight as Wooyoung speeds off almost before he’s settled.
They make it to the office fast. Wooyoung refuses to let him walk in alone, pulling them into the garage and grabbing Mingi before he can step away from the motorcycle, holding onto his arm as he cuts the engine and gets off of it himself. He takes his helmet off and sets it on the seat before grabbing Mingi’s face, turning his head from side to side, inspecting his neck, his chest, his gut, and his legs for any damage. “Stop–Wooyoung, stop it!” Mingi rasps, lungs not quite recovered from his rush down the stairs. He tries to push Wooyoung’s groping hands away, but Wooyoung returns his effort with a too-hard-to-be-joking smack to his side before grabbing him by the arm again and marching him towards the lobby.
He’s furious, that much Mingi can tell. “I have to go see the boss,” Mingi says when Wooyoung hits the elevator button for their floor.
“Shut up,” Wooyoung says. Mingi doesn’t really feel like getting hit again, and he’s suddenly exhausted, so he just leans against the wall and doesn’t argue. Wooyoung drags him out past the empty desks and into the equally empty locker room, where he shoves Mingi into a stall and turns on the water in the next stall over before returning. Mingi is too confused to complain, so he just stares at Wooyoung, who is rubbing his face.
“The boss didn’t expect you to walk away from that.” Wooyoung tells him, just barely audible. “He gave you that assignment because he thought you wouldn’t be able to complete it and he’d have an excuse to take you out.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Mingi snaps.
“He gave it to you off the record because he didn’t want you having backup. He’s working with whoever Yunho’s actual boss is. They want you both dead.” Wooyoung shakes his head. “Yeosang told me about the assignment and it sounded so weird that I had to look into it, but there was literally not a single thing on record about this. I only know for sure something’s going on because Hong Gildong met with some shady fuck–Yunho’s boss–and an NIB representative tonight. Jongho was in Yunho’s building coming to find you and pull you out when you texted.”
“He–he meets with NIB reps all the time, that doesn’t mean anything,” Mingi insists, already restructuring his brain to accept what Wooyoung’s telling him. Wooyoung pulls out a phone Mingi doesn’t recognize, handing it to Mingi, indicating for him to look at the screen.
Wooyoung presses play on a recording app. “Yeosang bugged his car after I got suspicious. He had to go on a creepy lunch with him to get access, so you owe him bigtime.”
Mingi listens carefully to the low voices coming from the device. Three distinct voices, one of which belongs to his boss. He can’t make out everything between where the bug was hidden and the sound of water, but one of the voices mentions removing obstacles, and another mentions solving problems, but Hong Gildong himself tells the others, plainly–”Whether Song kills Jeong or your boy kills mine, I’ll tie up my loose ends and you can tie up yours.” As best as Mingi can tell from the rest of the stilted conversation, this isn’t even personal–his boss wants the kind of money the NIB can give via their shadow orgs, and Yunho’s boss wants the human resources and other connections Mingi’s boss can give. He and Yunho are nothing but housewarming gifts from one clandestine agency to the other. Proof of loyalty. Pawns on a board.
The recording ends. Mingi stares down at the screen until it goes black; Wooyoung lets him have that long before snatching the phone back. “We have to get you gone,” Wooyoung tells him urgently, cutting the water. He checks outside the stall to make sure nobody’s come in while they were talking, but the coast is clear. “You can’t go back to your apartment because we know they’re watching it, but Jongho packed a bag for you. He knows a safehouse.”
Mingi blinks. “This is…” He shakes his head. “How do I know–” Wooyoung slaps him upside the head again, giving him the third hit he’s taken to that exact spot in less than an hour. “Ow!”
“If you ask me how you know I’m telling the truth I will literally kill you right now and make all this a moot point. Are you fucking kidding me? God!” Wooyoung says, full volume, and that more than anything makes Mingi believe him. Wooyoung is a bad liar to start with, in Mingi’s opinion as a really good liar, and the second he gets angry he forgets how to do any kind of subterfuge at all. It’s the main reason he’s an extractor and not a field operative, and Mingi is thankful for the years they’ve worked together now. “Grab anything you keep here that you think you might need and I’ll meet you downstairs in ten,” Wooyoung orders, then leaves the locker room.
Mingi doesn’t waste time. The office is empty enough that he can get away with jumping onto Yeosang’s desk and yanking down the emergency bag he keeps behind a ceiling tile above it and the stash of cash he keeps taped under the top drawer of Jongho’s filing cabinet. He’s loath to take the stairs but the thought of sharing an elevator with someone right now is enough to make him vaguely nauseated, so he stomachs the five flights down to the lobby, stopping on the third floor to toss his phone in one of the cafeteria trash cans.
He makes it down to Wooyoung in the garage in eight minutes flat, nodding thankfully at him and Yeosang when he sees Yeosang standing there, too. Wooyoung gestures to a car Mingi’s never seen before, meaning someone probably stole it specifically for him. He’s touched. “Jongho’s gonna take you to the safehouse and then you’re on your own for a little while,” Wooyoung says, knocking on the driver’s side window. Jongho rolls it down and rests his arm on the car door, face unreadable. “Yeosang and I are gonna do what we can to keep everyone thinking you’re just gone.”
“There’s cameras everywhere here,” Mingi reminds him.
“Nobody would be stupid enough to bring you back here after that, so why would they check the cameras?” Yeosang tells him with a small smile. “We’ll have to assume they’ll figure it out sometime soon, though, so we’re making arrangements. Don’t worry.”
Mingi grabs Wooyoung suddenly to pull him into a hug, then does the same with a slightly stiffer Yeosang, who’s red when Mingi releases him. “This won’t be forever,” Mingi tells them. “We’ll see each other again. Even if it takes some time, I promise, we–”
“Yah, stop with that, we’re not babies leaving summer camp!” Jongho hisses. “Get in the car! We’ll work out visitation rights when you’re not in immediate danger!”
“I’ll miss you most of all, baby Jongho,” Mingi tells him sweetly, walking around the car to toss his belongings in the backseat and slide into the front. Wooyoung leans into the open driver’s side window but doesn’t say anything, just nods once at Jongho and slaps his big palm against the roof of the car. Jongho, unsentimental, nods back and pulls out of the parking spot, making his way to the garage entrance.
They’re on the highway headed south for a good hour before Mingi suddenly chokes up and has to roll his window down, hanging his head out like a sick dog. “There was no reason,” he groans when Jongho, alarmed enough for physical contact, reaches out and grabs his shoulder. Mingi dry heaves, spits the saliva that gathers in his mouth, and groans. “There was no fucking reason,” he repeats, letting Jongho gently pull him all the way back into the car before he rolls the window up with the control on his side. Mingi closes his eyes and leans his head back.
Jongho, emotionally perceptive in a way he tries to pretend he isn’t, sighs heavily. “You have to think of it as a mission,” he says, kindly but sternly.
Mingi shakes his head. “I know. I know it was a mission. But I can’t help…there’s a universe where it wasn’t. Or one where it was, but we figured out we were being played before–before he died. Before I killed him.”
“Don’t be silly. That was Yeosang’s kill,” Jongho tells him lightly. Mingi doesn’t have the energy to give Jongho the dirty look he wants to, but Jongho sighs again. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, the only other way it could have gone in this universe was him killing you first, and that’s not acceptable. Not to me.” He reaches out again to squeeze Mingi’s shoulder, allowing Mingi to pat the top of his hand before bringing it back to the steering wheel.
Mingi wipes his eyes with the collar of his shirt and then closes them, exhausted as suddenly as he was devastated. “Can I sleep?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah. We’ve got a little ways to go.”
Mingi isn’t aware of when he falls asleep, but he doesn’t wake up until Jongho shakes him hours later. His eyes are too blurry from sleep to see the clock on the dashboard, but he can tell it’s late. They’re on an unfamiliar, quiet residential street, in front of a plain but charming house with a little wooden gate in front. Mingi, sore and tired and feeling a little sick from either emotional turmoil or the couple of blows he took to the skull, self-indulgently lets Jongho open his door for him, then grab his bags as he climbs out of the car.
“Where are we?” he asks.
“Namhae.” Like that unlocked the rest of his senses, Mingi can smell salt and hear the waves beyond. He can’t see far enough to tell in the dark, but figures they’re probably within walking distance of the sea.
“Beachfront property. This is the glamour I was promised when I took this job,” Mingi jokes weakly.
Jongho rolls his eyes. “Don’t try to run into the water from here. You’ll fall for just long enough to stop being scared of the fall, and then the landing will be unpleasant.”
“Noted.”
Jongho doesn’t let him carry his bags and opens the gate for him. He sets Mingi’s belongings down on a stool on the porch to fish a key out of his pocket, then unlocks the door. “Give me a sec,” he says, a hand out for Mingi to stop. Mingi lets him go in and listens carefully. He presumes Jongho wouldn’t intentionally drive him six hours into a trap, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious. He sees the lights flicker on as Jongho moves through rooms, efficient and thorough, and grabs his bags when Jongho motions for him from the entryway. There’s a pair of old house shoes placed neatly by the door he commandeers before dropping his bag on the bench in the hall just outside the kitchen where the house opens up. It’s modestly but thoughtfully decorated inside, unusual for a safehouse. The furniture is worn but in good shape.
Mingi is confused by the dust, or lack thereof. As his nose adjusts to the scent of a new location, he turns to look at Jongho, who’s checking the lock on the back door.
“How long’s it been since someone was here?” he asks.
“A week? Maybe two? Last time I know for sure was when Mijung stayed two months ago.”
“Is she like, super good at cleaning?” Mingi mutters.
“No way, Dowon almost requisitioned a rifle to take her out from the rooftop last time she returned an agency car.” Jongho opens the back door, then turns around to look at him. “Why?”
“Smell anything weird in here?” Mingi asks.
“Just you. I’ll show you where the tub is in a minute.”
“Jongho,” Mingi says, trying not to sound desperate. Jongho finally looks at him as he steps into the kitchen and finds the garbage can near the sink. He grabs a tissue from the box on the counter and uses it to lift the corner of the lid. Jongho peeks over his shoulder. A stack of four cup ramens sit empty at the bottom, insides still wet from recent soup.
More immediately concerning is the pile of bloody gauze and cloth next to them, including a sock with a red toe Mingi recognizes. Mingi blinks, and by the time he looks up, Jongho has fired a tranquilizer dart into his ribs with a somewhat apologetic expression. He sets the gun down and waits a moment, during which Mingi isn’t able to grab anything he could use as a weapon before his torso stops cooperating, the numbness spreading out to his limbs. Jongho grabs Mingi before Mingi falls, hoisting him up over his shoulder as Mingi weakly tries to punch Jongho in the ass with his dangling, useless arms.
“Bastard,” he mumbles, voice slurred beyond recognition even to himself, and lets his head drop against Jongho’s broad, warm back in defeat. If Jongho wanted to kill him, he figures Jongho would just do it, so he assumes he’s being sold and will disappear forever.
Well, it was always a risk.
The tranquilizer isn’t quite strong enough to knock him out, so he’s cognizant of being tipped somewhat gently into a narrow bed in a room that looks like a particularly sheltered and churchgoing teenage boy’s, with blue flannel bedding, a couple of posters featuring idols and football stars, and an old wooden cross hanging on the wall above an older wooden study desk. Jongho pulls the chair out from the desk and drags it over so Mingi can see him when he sits in it, his brows furrowed.
“I’m sorry I had to do that,” Jongho tells him awkwardly. “I just don’t know how you’re going to react to this next thing that happens, and I figured it would be best for all of us if you were just kinda floppy for it.”
Mingi’s floppiness prevents the finger he tries to give and the insult he tries to say, but he does manage to drool enough that the pillow by his ear gets wet, and hopes Jongho takes that in the spirit it is meant (malice). Jongho wipes his face off with a handkerchief as a shadow darkens the bedroom door. “Mingi, don’t–”
Mingi physically can’t throw himself off the bed, but he still makes an attempt. He fails, of course–his head feels like a balloon attached to his body with a ribbon, and his limbs are even less connected. Insultingly, Jongho doesn’t even budge from the chair to stop him from whatever he was trying to do.
Mingi just glares at the doorway. In the muscled arms of the most triangular man Mingi has ever seen lies Jeong Yunho, so unconscious he looks like he might be as dead as he’s supposed to be. He’s shirtless and bandaged up, and so much paler than normal from his beautiful face to his bony feet. Jongho moves the chair back to the desk and kneels down, pulling a trundle bed out from under the one Mingi is laying on. Yunho fits even worse on it than Mingi does on the twinsize, but he doesn’t wake up when the man holding him lays him on it like precious cargo, pulling a blanket up over his bare shoulders and delicately arranging the flat pillow under his head.
“Choi San, this is Song Mingi,” Jongho says, gesturing to Mingi. The beefcake smiles so sweetly Mingi forgets to be confused, angry, and betrayed for just a moment. “This is San’s house.”
“I grew up in this room!” San adds cheerfully. Mingi wants to call him a dork, or make a crack about how he’s honored to be kidnapped into the room San spent his teenage years jacking off in, or see if those muscles are just for show, but he can’t do anything except seethe. With how numb his face feels, he has a sneaking suspicion it doesn’t even look scary. “My parents are traveling in Europe for the next month, so it’s safe to stay.”
Who the fuck is this clown? Mingi tries to psychically ask, but either Jongho ignores him or has no psychic ability.
“I’m sure you’re really confused,” the cute clown continues, sitting on the nightstand near Mingi’s head and looking down at him kindly. “I’m part of Yunho’s team.”
“At the NIB, or his team at his second contract?” Jongho asks, but very obviously like he’s prompting for Mingi’s benefit.
“No, no! On Valorant!” San shakes his head. “We met at this arms dealer’s birthday party and kinda hit it off and have been playing together ever since.”
“Why were you at an arms dealer’s birthday party?”
San waves his hand through the air like he’s brushing something insignificant away, warm smile still crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I was getting intel on this shipment my partners and I were planning to intercept and steal, but Yunho and I had such a good time talking I totally forgot about the intel and had to torture it out of the guy’s lieutenant later anyway. It’s like, sorry for making friends? Anyway, Yunho double-intercepted the shipment and stole it from the guy I sold it to later, but he let me keep the money I got, which was really nice of him. He didn’t have to do that.”
Mingi’s mouth has stopped tingling during the course of the story, so he risks a request to Jongho. “Please kill me faster.” He’s envious of Yunho’s soft snores.
“We’re not killing you,” San tells him. “Yunho got betrayed too.”
Mingi uses his limited movement to look up at Jongho. “I still shot him.”
“Yeosang shot him, and it was only a little bit. Lots of blood, but he got down in time, so it was just a graze. Yunho’s a smart guy. He understands the situation. Besides, nobody could ever be mad at Yeosang.”
Mingi couldn’t argue with that, even if he had full use of his mouth and head. “Does Yunho know he understands the situation?” Mingi swallows, mouth dry. “Is he gonna wake up and kill me for real? He was ready to at the apartment.”
“Nah, it’s a real enemy of my enemy…is my…” Jongho looks up at the ceiling for a moment. “My enemy’s friend’s enemy’s…friend is…well, my enemy is my friend now, let’s just leave it there.”
“Oh my god,” Mingi groans. He shifts onto his side, ignoring the tingling of returning sensation throughout his body. “I hope he wakes up and finishes me off. I’m so sick of this. Get out of here, I’m going to sleep.”
Jongho gives him a sympathetic look and pats his shoulder again as he steps by. He knows the situation is dire because that’s more physical contact than Jongho has initiated in their entire four years of working together, and he did it twice in a day. San has already vacated the room, but Mingi says “Hey” as Jongho reaches the door. Jongho turns back. “What if I kill him? I could strangle him in his sleep. Or just push the trundle back in with him on it so he suffocates.”
“You couldn’t do that,” Jongho answers simply.
“Look, just because I can’t bench Yeosang and Wooyoung at one time doesn’t mean I’m not str–”
“That’s not what I’m saying, dummy. You were just crying about him in the car.” Jongho shrugs and turns the light off with the switch by the door. “Maybe this is that other universe you were talking about, huh?”
He leaves Mingi to stew in silence. It takes several minutes for the silence to feel suddenly wrong–he’s sure there’s something missing.
“You were crying about me in the car?” Yunho asks from the floor.
Ah, no more snores.
Mingi has the self-control and lingering temporary paralysis symptoms to keep him from screaming and jumping, but not from cussing. Yunho is on his back with the blanket pulled up to his chin, staring up at Mingi when he hangs his head over the side of the bed. “Were you?”
“He’s exaggerating.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He knew you were awake and was trying to embarrass me. But it‘s not working, because I’ve never cried.”
Yunho snorts. “You’re such a shitty liar. How did you even get into this line of work?”
“Voluptuous ass and a warrior’s heart.” Mingi pulls his head up, laying on his back to stare at the ceiling like Yunho is now. He has the sudden sense memory of a childhood sleepover with his best friend, when they talked about what they ate for dinner, and then sports, and video games, and school. And then girls. Then, precariously, boys. At some point they stopped looking at each other, just staring at the ceiling. The terror of someone knowing all your secrets, and the horror of knowing all of theirs, was too much to bear with eye contact.
He feels that way again, twelve years old at twenty-seven.
He swallows. He and Yunho should have a lot to talk about, if they aren’t planning on killing each other, but Mingi has nothing. It doesn’t sound like Yunho does, either. If he focuses, he can hear Jongho and San speaking at a low volume from the living room or the kitchen, and the waves outside, but Yunho’s steady breathing is what he keeps coming back to.
“So what was true?” Yunho asks bluntly.
“What do you mean?”
Yunho sits up with a wince Mingi can hear. “Every cover requires some kind of truth, so you can use it to guide yourself back. Claw your way back, if you spend too long being someone else.”
Mingi laughs, maybe more derisively than Yunho deserves. “I’m not into that Method spying shit, man. It’s not a dance to me. It’s not a game. Just a job.”
“That explains why you’re so bad at it, then,” Yunho snaps, definitely more derisively than Mingi deserves. Yunho lays back down, obviously pouting even though he’s shut his eyes.
Mingi lets the bad energy stew for a minute before giving up. “I liked…I liked taking care of you. In general but especially, you know. After fucking.” Yunho makes an amused pfft sound. Mingi can tell he’s either smiling or trying not to smile. “I know you didn’t want me to, and I know it didn’t fit with the guy I was pretending to be, but I liked it when you let me do something other than use you. I liked that, too, don’t get me wrong. I liked that a lot. But I liked when you were too tired to stop me so I could take advantage of your weakness. And–” Mingi clears his throat. “And clean you up really gently, like some dirty little stray I found on the street, and get you, like, a fucking Pepsi or something. A banana. Rub your hamstrings.” Mingi pauses again, thinking. “That’s the truth, I guess. I did all that shit knowing I was gonna have to kill you, though, so it’s fucked up that that was the one true thing you got from me.”
Mingi isn’t ready for Yunho to climb onto the bed with surprising limberness, his lips on Mingi’s face as their legs kick between each other to try and slot comfortably. Yunho is rangy and surprisingly dense, difficult to control when he’s not playing into what he thinks Mingi wants, but Mingi is careful of the bandages across his back and face. Yunho definitely isn’t, so somebody has to be.
They don’t go further than that, just kissing with their faces so close that Mingi can feel the tears on Yunho’s cheeks, taste them between their mouths. He puts his still-weak hand in Yunho’s hair and holds him there, holds him tighter with an arm around his back, above the bandages. “They’re gonna figure out where we are,” Yunho says on his exhale when he pulls away, punctuating himself with a kiss to Mingi’s temple.
“We’ll go somewhere else,” Mingi answers. “Then when they find us there, we’ll go somewhere else. Then when they find us there, you’re never gonna guess this one!”
“How do you feel about faking our deaths?”
“Well, you faked yours and Choi San somehow figured it out, so we’re 0 for 1 on that.”
Yunho slaps Mingi on the head wound he’d just kissed. “He was the first person I called after you ran off! Choi San is a smart, capable, invaluable member of my team,” he chastises.
“In Valorant.”
“In real life. He’s just sweet and friendly. You wouldn’t know anything about it, so I can see why you’d look down on him for that.”
“Friendliness…is not one of the skills they tested me for at clandestine operator kindergarten.”
Yunho snorts. “Can’t lie, can’t be nice, couldn’t win a fight without having your friend cut my apartment in half with a machine gun strapped to a drone. Are there any spy skills you do have?”
Mingi pretends to think hard. “This industry undervalues the ability to quickly eat important documents in an emergency.” Yunho laughs, dropping his head down onto Mingi’s pillow and rolling into the centimeters of space between Mingi and the edge of the bed. He remains mostly on Mingi. “Can hide almost any object in almost any person’s ass, including my own. I can lay quietly for hours on end looking through a rifle scope and don’t even have to get up to piss mostly accurately in my coffee can. I look good in a vinyl catsuit.”
“We’ll have to test that theory,” Yunho tells him, tracing an old scar just above Mingi’s left nipple.
“This is gonna be hard,” Mingi says eventually.
“You want me to say 'we can do it together’?”
“Nah. But look, I’ve got connections.”
“Me too.”
“I’ve got some money saved up. Jongho can get me a clean passport, if he didn’t pack me one already.”
“He told me he packed us both clean passports.”
“That sneaky fuck. I love him. Don’t tell him I said that.”
“He knows!” Jongho yells suddenly from another room, to an obnoxious laugh from San.
Yunho smiles. “I think we can do this. It’s not hard to disappear, even when you’re being looked for. We can lay low for a while. Go our separate ways if we need to.” Mingi hopes Yunho didn’t feel the way his stomach contracted in disgust at that idea. But the flattening of his hand on Mingi’s solar plexus, in comfort, lets Mingi know he did. “Maybe even figure out how to get back in.”
“Oh, we’ll burn that bridge when we get there, Yunho, don’t worry.”
Yunho shrugs. “There’s always contract work.”
“I think we can do this.” Mingi repeats.
Yunho smiles back at him. “Me too.”
He pats Mingi’s stomach and clambers off the bed, pushing the trundle back in with his foot. “I’m an optimistic guy in general, but I’m not an idiot. Our bosses are gonna figure out what happened soon.” Yunho’s mouth curls into a nasty little grin. “Let’s go see what kind of firepower San’s got stashed away here.”
Mingi rises and takes Yunho’s hand. “Lead the way, baby.”