Chapter 1: The Shape of You I Can’t Touch
Chapter Text
The room is covered with dust and scorched wires. A figure moves through the shattered balcony window—sleek, fast, almost too graceful for the ruin around him. Concrete slabs stretch ahead into the night in fractured slabs, veins of rust curling from exposed rebar like ivy.
Matthew moves like smoke, like water—shoulders low, steps near silent despite the broken terrain, all strong core and fluid spine. His boots avoid the slick of oil leaking from the split pipe overhead, and he clears a downed beam with a breath of grace that no camera could ever quite capture.
To the left, a bare concrete pathway that used to be a terrace or something, now mess of debris and twisted railing, snakes by the walls. Matthew stills. Steps on broken tiles, glass and ceramic crunching under boots.
Click.
His silhouette is all black shadow and danger, clinging to a gaping window pane.
Click.
His eyes are brown and golden, bright against the dim light of the lamp resting low on something that used to be a cupboard. He stares at his prey like a predator who knows he won’t miss.
He doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t flinch.
He lifts his gun with a silencer with one hand, the other already curled against the empty window pane to balance his weight. The guard steps into his range. Half-tired, checking something on a crate.
Pfft.
The headshot is clean, a silent snap into the base of the skull. He did not even notice. The guard’s body folds sideways like someone unplugged it from the world.
“Got him,” Matthew says softly, into the comm. His fingers linger on his earpiece, gliding, almost caressing.
There’s a beat of silence as Matthew jumps into the room, too graceful and elegant for the situation. Then the voice slides into his ear like silk.
“Now put it in.”
Matthew chuckles, stepping lightly over the body as he unslings a flash drive from a pocket in his tactical vest.
“Buy me dinner first, Echo.”
No answer, but he can hear the faintest snort of laughter under the line.
The room beyond is a mess. The walls are bare, wires snaking like vines from exposed sockets. Shards of mirror glass glitter on the mattress where someone’s boot crushed it flat. Damp wallpaper is peeling like old scabs. Bottles and shell casings are strewn on the floor like confetti on a themed birthday of some mafia heir.
An old laptop rests on a crate, still warm.
Matthew slides the flash in with a casual flourish. The fan stirs, whirring like breath. The screen lights up in a cascade of terminal code.
“Do your magic, Echo.” The words slide over his tongue, his tone just slightly too sing songy.
He does not react to the soft whirr of camera angling.
The screen reflects faint blue against the blood on his knuckles. The sweat on his forehead glistens like glitter. For a moment, he leans into it—shoulders loose, the tight coil of his body relaxing like an animal who knows it’s safe. His mouth quirks to one side as the monitor flickers—as Echo starts doing his magic—and he sits on the edge of the bed, watching the upload bar flicker upward.
He does not react, but he hears it. Somewhere far away, unseen—
A click, click, click.
The feed on the main monitor shifts. The security camera above the broken window crackles with static, the view briefly scrambling before resettling. He moves it again, whirr.
Hanbin exhales, back swallowed in darkness, hunched over a desk, face bathed in blue light. His eyes flick between six separate screens, each showing a different view—hallways, stairwells, heat signatures, Matthew’s body from right and above as he sits beside the glowing laptop in a demolished hotel room.
He looks perfectly at home in the chaos.
Black tactical gear, heavy boots, hair a mess with just enough dust clinging to it to make it show on the shit camera.
More screens hang above Hanbin like halos, monitors wired into the ceiling with exposed cables. It looks like the inside of a machine—half-cave, half-coffin. His fingers glide across the keyboard with fluid urgency, mouth set in a line that would look impassive to anyone else.
But every breath, every keystroke, is tuned to him.
To the man in the demolished hotel.
“OK, I'm inside,” Hanbin murmurs into the mic as Matthew snorts a laugh. “Start the sweep on the root directory.”
“Already on it,” Matthew replies, fingers tapping a few keys on the laptop. A new download starts, the bar slowly filling in. Hanbin exhales, the tension loosening from his shoulders.
He lets himself look.
The camera catches Matthew in half-profile, crouched beside the glowing laptop, his body carved in light and shadow. He’s adjusting something on his vest, eyes darting toward the doorway, always assessing. The blade at his hip catches a gleam from the broken glass. His mouth is slack for a moment, caught in thought, before curling into a smirk Hanbin knows better than he should.
Hanbin should look away.
Instead, he watches Matthew stretch his neck and check his gun, the silencer still on. The slow roll of back muscles beneath fabric. The vest pulled tight around his chest, digging into his delicate waist. The soft curl of hair damp with sweat. He watches with the detached attention of a professional—but it frays at the edges, threads tugging loose where they shouldn’t. A playful kind of focus.
Hanbin’s fingers hover above the keys.
The way the shadows fall on Matthew’s face, the way his mouth moves when he speaks into the comms—it makes Hanbin feel like a ghost watching the living. Like something haunting what he can’t touch.
What he shouldn’t—
He swallows hard.
And then—
“Hey, Echo—I never asked.”
The voice breaks the hush like warm breath fogging glass. Hanbin blinks, shoulders stiffening. His fingertips hesitate above the keyboard again. He shifts slightly in the cracked leather seat, eyes flicking toward the feed where Matthew crouches—laptop humming dimly beside him, the faint spill of its screen casting shadows across his perfect jaw.
“What?”
“Does your name start with a B?”
Hanbin watches as Matthew moves. There’s no urgency now—just a casual stretch of one leg, the slow twist of his torso to glance around the room again. He crouches lower by the flickering laptop, adjusting it just slightly. The camera feed wavers as he looks up, brows raised, the corner of his mouth lifting.
Hanbin pauses, eyes squinting at the monitor.
“...No, actually.”
“Huh.” A soft scoff from the mic, warm with amusement. Hanbin checks the feed, zooms slightly—Matthew’s smirking again. His chin is tilted, mouth curled just enough to telegraph trouble. That same stupid expression he gets before he does something reckless. Something charming.
“So, no B?”
Hanbin inhales, banishes the urge to bite into his cheek and steadies his hands. “There is a B in my name,” he says lightly, tapping in a command to reroute the camera angle above Matthew. It whirrs quietly, the way these old cameras lwft for so long without attention always do. He leans in closer to the monitor, watches Matthew squint at the wall across from him, scanning, listening. His gaze snags on a broken beam.
There. He’s found the lens.
“Is there?” Matthew hums, like he’s tasted something interesting. Then he grins—teeth flashing like a promise—and speaks directly into the dark little eye above him. “And is there… an A in your name too, perhaps?”
Hanbin feels the words hit like a slow match dragging across skin and igniting just over his ribcage. They make eye contact through the camera, but only he knows. He has to look away for a second. The corner of his mouth twitches despite himself. His voice, when it comes, is measured. “I can’t tell you my name, Matthew.”
“Security stuff?”
“Something like that.”
A soft click echoes from the laptop as Matthew leans closer, scrolling through directories. “Can you at least tell me the first letter?” he murmurs, almost like he’s joking. “Come on. I’ll guess the rest. I’m good with puzzles.”
Hanbin doesn’t answer.
Matthew smirks faintly. “Fine. Echo, then.” He tilts his head, looking up toward the dusty chandelier above him like it’s some kind of epiphany. “Echo is nice. Echo echoes. Echo stays. Echo…” He trails off, gaze flicking to the corner where he knows the camera sits. His voice drops. “Echo knows me too well.”
He leans back on his haunches, the laptop’s glow licking up his throat like candlelight. “I’m going to figure it out one day,” he says, voice soft and sinfully self-assured. “And when I do—”
He tips his head toward the camera, his grin slow and deliberate.
“I’m going to whisper it in your ear. Over and over. While you're underneath me.”
Hanbin’s pulse flares. His fingers twitch against the keyboard. He swallows so tightly it hurts.
He should not allow this.
He always allows this.
“I bet it sounds good like that,” Matthew adds, mock-thoughtful, dragging a gloved finger of his right hand along the edge of the laptop. “All wrecked. Barely breathing.”
“You’re impossible,” Hanbin murmurs, voice tight. Not chastising—fond. And dangerous. He is biting into his cheek now. Too close to the monitor flickering the feed from Matthew’s demolished hotel room.
“You’re the one who keeps me talking,” Matthew says. “Must like hearing me.”
Hanbin’s jaw tenses. He taps a few keys too hard, the clack loud in the quiet of his command room. He knows Matthew could hear it in his ear.
“I like when you follow orders.”
Matthew’s eyes gleam. “You should give me more of them, then.”
Hanbin exhales—half-laugh, half-warning. “Are you seriously aroused in a desolate hotel full of corpses?”
“I’m always aroused when I hear your voice. Didn’t you notice?”
Hanbin tilts the camera an inch to the right. It sweeps lazily over Matthew’s crouched form, the black of his shirt stretching tight across his shoulders as he shifts. The camera whirrs, the sound irreplaceable.
“Oh,” Hanbin says, amused and deliberate. “I noticed.”
Matthew lets out a laugh—unforced and real. It echoes faintly off the ruined walls. He stretches, spine rippling with a muted crack. Hanbin’s eyes follow the movement like muscle memory. Too easily.
“You ever stop working?” Matthew asks, voice lower again. “Or do you just watch me breathe between kills?”
Hanbin doesn’t rise to it. He clicks into a new window, eyes scanning lines of code that blur for a second before reasserting their place in his focus. “Focus,” he says, steady but soft, like a rope thrown across a widening gap.
Matthew tilts his head, like he’s listening for something beneath the static—something only he can hear. Hanbin's breathing, maybe. Or the clack of the keyboard. Then he grins. Bright. Ferocious. Feral.
“I’ve always wondered what your hands look like,” he murmurs, the words dragging slow across the line. “You type like a pianist but command like a god. I bet your fingers are long and beautiful.”
He draws his knife, not to use it. Just to trace a lazy line down the inside of his thigh. The blade doesn’t break the cloth, but it presses just enough to ground him. Or maybe tease. His breath hitches slightly as the steel drags over muscle, fabric, heat.
Hanbin stays quiet, but a muscle in his jaw ticks. He refuses to look at the camera, even as he feels the weight of Matthew’s attention pressing up the line like a body against a door.
He desperately wants to look into the camera. And for one terrifying, terrible moment, he imagines Matthew actually coming into his dark command room.
Matthew speaks again, thoughtful this time, like he’s genuinely curious and his tone snaps Hanbin back to his body. “Are you into me?”
A pause. The sound of Hanbin tapping something into the terminal, deliberately casual.
He is immensely grateful Matthew can't see him the way he can.
“We’re working, Matthew," he says, trying to sound casual, like his throat is not tight and his knees did not slide apart a little.
“Come on,” Matthew hums, teasing. “I’m charming.”
Silence crackles through the comms.
He is. He so damn is. Hanbin exhales a sigh that is far from exasperated. It helps a little, focusing on his breath, to ease the tension building in his body on the chair that remembers the shape of him in dents and dips in old leather after all those years.
The download bar flickers, lurches forward another five percent. The sound of Hanbin’s fingers gliding over the keys fills Matthew’s ear. He’s humming. Quiet. Focused. Not for show—but he knows Matthew can hear it.
And of course, Matthew does.
He sways a little, like he recognized the melody. He hums it too, a little behind the beat before he hunts it, catches it, hums it in unison with his handler through the comms.
Hanbin could cry.
“So…” Matthew says then, when their voices die out after the second chorus repetition, conversational as a man asking about the weather, “do you top or bottom?”
Hanbin blinks at the feed like a man seeing a monitor for the first time in his life. He watches Matthew scratch at his jaw with his gloved fingers, glancing up at the camera lens from under his eyelashes like a bashfull virgin. If Hanbin did not know better he'd think he's nervous. But Hanbin knows him too well.
Then, of course, there’s the sound of Hanbin’s typing stalling for just a breath.
“…Depends on the mood,” he says before he can stop himself. His voice is smooth. Too smooth.
He imagines Matthew barging through the door to his command room with one precise brutal kick, throwing him on the table, crushing into each other until their hips are flush, the scent of Matthew’s sweat filling his lungs, his knees locking aroung his waist…
“Oh fuck,” Matthew groans. “Of course you switch. You’re fucking perfect.”
He sighs—dramatically, loudly, as if Hanbin’s answer has put the weight of the world on his back.
And Hanbin's bitten lips quirk up.
“What do I have to do, Echo? Huh?” He leans forward toward the camera, whispering like a prayer or a curse. “Do I have to bring you the heads of every target on our list? Line the floors of your apartment with dead men and carve 'Echo' into their chests just so you’ll finally crawl into my bed? Or would flowers suffice?”
Hanbin’s hands freeze mid-keystroke. He bites back a sound and adjusts his mic instead.
This is always so dangerous. But they love dangerous.
But! But. They are still in enemy territory. Hanbin closes his eyes so hard fireworks burst behind his lids. He handles the situation, as he always does, by throwing the blame on his asset.
“You have to focus, Matthew,” he says finally, breath tight. Like he did not just have to reposition on the chair. Like he did not enjoy every second.
“Then command me.”
There’s a pause, like a string pulled taut between them. Hanbin stares at the monitor, at Matthew.
Hanbin leans into the mic, his voice dropping low, molasses-thick. The way he knows works on Matthew.
“That was a command.”
The comm line vibrates with his voice. Rusted velvet. A purr edged in steel.
Matthew shudders. Licks his lips. No joke this time—just a soft, “Okay.”
He smiles into the camera like a cat who’s found the warmest patch of sun. Like he hasn’t just been caught mid-fantasy with a body count at his back. Like he just did not make Hanbin imagine scenarios involving his own caloused hands, one gloved, deep in Hanbin’s pants.
Hanbin chuckles. Quiet. Incredulous. He rubs the heel of his hand over his eyes, then looks back at the monitor. Forces himself to focus too. He was dangerously close to praising Matthew in the lewdest way possible.
He once called him a 'good boy'. During a mission in Osaka. Matthew stared at the camera he knew was there and punched a hole into a thin wall of a tea shop. On his way back, soaked in rainwater that washed away the blood from his gear, he promised Hanbin to think about his voice later.
He promised Echo.
Matthew is still smiling when Hanbin's eyes flick up. His expression is pure sin, pure surrender.
And Hanbin—Hanbin lets himself look. Just for a second.
And then—
Hanbin's eyes catch a movement on a third monitor. A switch flips:
“Incoming. Your three. The door.”
Voice cold. Sharp. Precise. All the warmth stripped clean in an instant.
They work.
Matthew straightens at once, expression shifting from indulgent to lethal. His hand clutches the knife, the smile vanishing without a trace.
He turns on instinct, slides behind the splintered crate, movements fluid, precise. The sole of his boot lands silently on the cracked floor as he presses his back against the wall by the door. One hand on the hilt of his knife. The other curled loosely, steady.
Hanbin breathes out into the comms. His eyes track the hallway camera.
"Kill in three," he says simply, and Matthew nods.
The door creaks.
A sliver of motion. A man’s foot. A shoulder. The glint of a belt buckle—
Matthew lunges.
It’s clean. Quick. A sharp exhale, the sick hush of steel sinking into flesh. A gurgle. Hanbin watches as Matthew yanks the man twice his size inside with brutal ease, pressing him back with a forearm, knife twisting, the blade arcs up—one, two. The man crumples. Matthew shuts the door with a quiet click, the toe of his boot nudging it into place.
Blood seeps dark across the dust-strewn floor as Matthew lays the man down, almost gentle.
On the feed, Hanbin sees Matthew wipe the blade on the guard’s jacket, breath low and even. There’s not a flicker of panic. Just practiced stillness. Coiled grace.
“You sound very attractive when you command me, Echo,” Matthew mutters, crouching down by the laptop again, checking the strap on his boot like nothing happened. His voice is dust and heat and something that might be fondness if it weren’t flirting with danger.
Hanbin presses his thumb into the spacebar until the plastic creaks.
“So you keep telling me,” he says.
Matthew glances up at the camera, tongue flicking across his bottom lip. His pupils are blown, his pulse just visible in the hollow of his throat.
“Would you like it,” he says low, “if I commanded you sometime?”
Hanbin doesn’t answer right away. The monitors flicker with new data. There are several guards still patrolling, unaware of anything that happened here. That is still happening.
“Pull out, Matthew.” There’s a smile in his voice. Just enough for Matthew to hear. Just enough for Hanbin to regret.
He watches Matthew's lips quirk into a smile that is teeth and heat and nothing polite. His eyes dart to the floor, almost shy, and Hanbin watches him through the camera with lips parted and heartbeat audible in his ears.
The screen shows Matthew dragging the second body behind the crate. He wipes a smear of blood off his neck with the hem of his sleeve, then glances toward the flickering laptop. His gloved fingers grip the flash drive and pull it out in one smooth motion.
Hanbin’s fingers pause on the keyboard.
He’s memorized every motion, every angle of this man’s body.
Not because he’s Echo. Or because he is his handler. But because he’s Hanbin.
Matthew crouches low, the laptop flickering pitifully for the last time as he breaks it in the middle with one snap of his hands. He slots the flash drive into a hidden pocket inside his vest, fastens the clasp, and glances toward the camera.
"Target retrieved," he says, voice warm but clipped. "Now do I get my prize?"
Hanbin watches him from an angle. The slow flex of his gloved hand. The shadows painted beneath his jaw. The way his mouth curls at the corners.
"Prize?" Hanbin echoes.
Matthew leans against a fractured beam, lifting his eyes toward the camera again, stretching like a fox toward sun. “You. Face to face.”
Hanbin exhales, presses two fingers to the side of his headset as if steadying himself.
There it goes again. It does not matter how many times Hanbin has to reject him, woefully, he never stops trying.
“That’s not possible,” he says carefully. “I don’t exist. Not in the way you think.”
It is not even a lie.
“Oh right, security protocol,” Matthew says, dry. “Or was it hierarchy? Departmental firewall, too? Or maybe you’re afraid I’d try to stop working, settle down with you—” he grins, cruel and gorgeous “—but we’ve got KPIs to hit, right?”
Hanbin closes his eyes. Just for a moment. Lets his shoulders sag half an inch, jaw tight. He wonders if Matthew’s knife twisting in the soft tissue feels half as terrible as the pain that blooms in his chest right now.
“…Matthew,” he says quietly.
But Matthew is already walking.
Dim hallway. Warped metal and scorched plaster. His steps are nearly soundless as he sweeps toward the exit.
Hanbin follows his every move from above—one hand on the keyboard, the other resting lightly near a book with scribbled notes.
“Left corridor,” Hanbin says, voice sliding low into his ear. “Two heat signatures. One still, one pacing. Just at the corner. You’ve got about thirty seconds before the pacing one turns his back.”
“You say that like it’s a challenge,” Matthew replies, already veering left.
“Because I know you’ll take it as one.”
A flicker of a grin in his voice. Hanbin can't see it, but he hears it. “And you like that?”
Hanbin clicks the view of the cameras. He sees Matthew's face now, half in shadows.
“I like efficiency.” Hanbin’s voice sharpens slightly. “The ego’s just a bonus.”
Matthew ducks behind a crumbling pillar. Eyes flick to the security camera overhead. It tilts—just slightly, at the same time when Habin tilts his head in front of the monitor.
“…Was that you moving the camera?”
“Would you prefer I let it catch your good side?”
“I don’t have a bad side,” Matthew says smoothly. “You’ve said so yourself.”
Hanbin doesn’t answer right away. He watches Matthew shift his weight onto the balls of his feet—ready. Precise.
“Come on, Echo,” Matthew adds, quieter. “I live for your compliments.”
“…Don’t get used to them.”
The pacing guard halts. Matthew tightens his grip on the blade.
“Ten seconds,” Hanbin murmurs. “Take the one on the right first—his reflexes are slower. Old injury. Left shoulder.”
“I keep wondering how you know all this,” Matthew muses. “Then I remember you probably know my blood type. Name of my childhood dog.”
Hanbin lets a small breath escape his nose. “You didn’t have a dog,” he says. “You had a rabbit.”
That lands. Hanbin sees it—the flicker in Matthew’s pupils. The quiet inhale.
“…Huh.” Matthew shifts his grip. “That’s creepy. And hot.”
“Three seconds, Matthew,” Hanbin says, voice low.
“Say it again.”
“Two seconds.”
“Say my name like that again and I’ll start thinking you care.”
A pause.
“…Go.”
Matthew moves. Blade first—like a shadow sprung loose. He runs through the shattered frame of what used to be a door. Hanbin flicks to a different feed. Watches Matthew turn left like a ricocheting bullet.
One.
Two.
Bodies drop without a sound. No alarms. No scream.
Just a breath of static over the line.
“Still got it,” Matthew says, a little breathless, checking his back with a glance.
Hanbin types something—doesn’t need to say it, but says it anyway. “You always do.”
A pause. Longer this time. Like Hanbin might stop there. But he doesn’t.
Softer—barely audible:
“…I’d never let you fall.”
➳➳➳♡
It’s cold in the conference room. Not clinically so, not like the server nest upstairs, but enough to set Hanbin’s teeth just barely on edge. The kind of cold that seeps into his joints and makes him forget how to breathe like a person.
He’s not supposed to be here. Not now. Not for this.
On the glass wall, reflections distort the long table into something serpentine. Seven chairs. Two occupied. One empty—deliberately so. The one across from him.
He’s already sweating under the collar of his black turtleneck when they begin.
“The gala will be held at the Daehan Foundation Hall,” says Director Jang, clasping his hands on the table like a funeral announcement. “Primary target: Minister Go.”
Hanbin’s eyes flick to the file in front of him. His fingers drum once against the plastic cover, then still.
Matthew’s face stares up at him from a surveillance still. Too recent. Too sharp.
A cut under his left eye nearly missed the mole.
“A stealth assassination?” Hanbin asks, voice neutral. Detached.
“Not unless absolutely necessary. We want the Minister exposed, not disappeared. Which is why he’s not going in alone.”
Something ugly coils low in Hanbin’s chest. “He’ll have someone with him?”
Jang nods. “You.”
Hanbin doesn’t blink. For half a second he entertains the possibility that the Director is not proposing his worst nightmare.
“No,” he says. His commanding voice has little effect on sensibilities of a heartless man. There’s no shift in the Director’s expression. Only the faint buzz of the overhead lights.
“I’m on his ops team,” Hanbin says then, firm, like he will allow this blunder. “I’m his handler. He trusts my voice, not my face. I should be in his ear—guiding, correcting. I shouldn’t even be near the target.”
“You’ll be his date.”
The words drop like if a grenade exploded in the cutlery cupboard. And Director Jang is… smiling.
Hanbin scoffs under his breath. “That’s idiotic.”
“On the contrary,” the other operative says—Sunwoo, HR liaison and professional emotionless bastard. “It’s elegant. The public guest list is locked. Your name is on it. No one else could blend that seamlessly.”
“No one else would be seen at his side without suspicion,” Jang adds. “the target won’t know you. And your father will be pleased you're attending.”
Hanbin stills.
There it is.
He closes the file.
“So this is his idea,” he says quietly.
Jang’s silence is answer enough.
He sighs a heartbeat later, as if at a misbehaving child. “He trusts you to handle it like a good handler.”
No, Hanbin thinks. He trusts me to hate it.
He imagines the way his father might have said it—cold and amused, a twist of irony behind every syllable: Let my son be the bait. It’ll be cleaner that way. At least he won't bring any boytoys with him.
Hanbin’s voice barely makes it out. “He doesn’t realize who Matthew is, does he?”
“Only that he’s a young assassin with an almost perfect record.” Director Jang is smiling still, like even this little thing amuses him too.
"Your father will of course be protected and safe," Sunwoo says sweetly, back straightening, head nodding, like he really believes that is Hanbin’s worry.
Hanbin presses his thumb against his temple and ignores the idiot. His pulse has started a slow, traitorous rhythm in his throat. “The NDA stays active,” he says.
“Sure, that would not serve the Agency. The asset knows he has a date. He’ll meet them at the gala. The Handler will give him debrief.”
A pause. A breath. Director Jang's eyebrows rise at the silence.
“You’ll have one-way comms access if you want it,” Sunwoo offers. “But he won’t know it’s you. We take our legal stuff very seriously.”
The cruelty of it makes Hanbin’s mouth taste like metal. And they don't even realize.
He rises. Smooth and careful. Hands flat on the folder as if it’s the only thing keeping him grounded.
“You two are having a ball, right?” he asks.
Jang says nothing. Poised and nonchalant. He looks the same now as he looks when ordering drone strikes.
Sunwoo's mouth quirks up and he almost shakes with the excitement. "No, but you are."
Hanbin doesn’t grace that with a reaction. He takes the file and walks out into the long steel corridor like it might still lead somewhere else.
Somewhere softer. Somewhere safe.
But there's only the sound of his own echoing footsteps—and the voice in his head he’s about to become again.
The walk back to his office feels longer than it is. His steps echo in the sterile hallway, bouncing off steel and glass like ricochets with nowhere to land. The lights overhead flicker faintly, the building settling into its nocturnal hum.
When the door shuts behind him, it’s too quiet.
The monitors blink at him in shades of blue and static. Code lines flicker. Camera feeds jump between street corners, heat signatures, digital maps folded in layers like petals of a mechanical flower.
Hanbin doesn’t look at them.
He drops into his chair like his body no longer belongs to him. The leather creaks. One hand slides across the desk, searching for nothing in particular, until his fingers find the chipped edge of the keyboard—the place where he bit down a curse and slammed it after Matthew’s fourth mission. The night he refused to listen. The night he almost bled out.
Hanbin had taken this job because of him.
He hadn’t planned to. There were other handlers. And he had other duties. But when the profile landed on his desk… Seok Matthew. New asset. Exceptional physical record. Disciplinary red flags. No confirmed allegiance—he’d known.
Not by the photo.
By the field notes: ambidextrous, unnervingly precise, fluent in three languages but not fond of either. Exceptional physical capabilities. Slipped through the cracks of every training program. Scored highest in the psychological evaluation for emotional dissociation. Anger issues. Hired by Director Jang himself.
It was him. His Matthew.
And Hanbin had walked straight into the Director’s office the next day. Said he wanted a new assignment. Something long-term. Embedded. “Handler work,” he said. “No face to face contact.”
He had asked for this. For a voice-only role. For distance. For the illusion of safety. Because Matthew didn’t know who Echo was. Because Hanbin knew who Matthew was.
And because—selfishly, stupidly—he didn’t want to lose him before he ever had the chance to have him.
His father only scoffed. Hanbin's place in the boardroom was inherited, not earned—and he’d preferred the seat cold.
Hanbin leans forward now, elbows braced on the desk. His palms press against his eyes until he sees bursts of red and white behind his lids.
The gala. A charity event his family co-funds every year—lavishly, publicly, pointlessly. Built for optics, for favors, for thin veils over backroom blood. His father’s way of signaling his position in this city’s brutal little ecosystem.
And this year, the guest list includes Minister Go. A man whose hands are drenched in quiet war. Enemy to father's vision and goals. Untouchable in daylight. So he's being lured into candlelight instead. Into champagne smiles and discreet exits.
Hanbin’s family funds it, but that isn’t what twists in his chest like a blade.
It’s that his father chose him.
Sentenced him, really.
Put him next to the man they plan to use like a blade and discard like a shell casing when they're done with him.
When he's no longer of use.
Matthew doesn’t know. Not yet.
He knows the mission. Knows the target.
But he doesn’t know that Hanbin is the one who’ll walk into the ballroom beside him.
He won’t see his Echo.
He’ll see Hanbin.
And Hanbin knows exactly what that means.
He lowers his hands. Blinks at the screen. One of the cameras has picked up movement—just city traffic, the curve of headlights across a rooftop. It blurs like static behind his gaze.
If Matthew recognizes him, it’ll end. Instantly.
The connection. The trust. The voice in his ear.
He’ll see a ghost of the past he thought dead. Or worse—he’ll see an enemy.
And maybe—maybe he’ll kill him right there on the ballroom floor.
Maybe he’d deserve it.
Hanbin doesn’t know anymore. Not what he deserves. Not what he’s doing. Only that the damage is done, and he’s walking into the fire with his hands wide open.
And yet, he still hasn’t told them no.
Because somewhere in the poisoned well of his heart, there’s a selfishness too deep to root out. A craving to stand beside him. Just once. As himself.
Even if it means breaking everything.
Even if it means the silence will fall, and the voice Matthew once trusted will become something he hates.
Hanbin taps a key. One feed opens. The hallway outside Matthew’s hotel room. A grainy glimpse of tomorrow.
He exhales. His chest tightens.
The hotel camera clicks over with a dull, metallic shift. A new feed stutters to life.
Matthew’s room.
Hanbin sits forward slowly, letting the silence settle between them like ash and ruin.
On screen, Matthew is pacing. Restless. That same clipped rhythm to his steps—precise, predatory. Like a fuse lit at both ends. Energy that has nowhere to go.
Hanbin watches him stop. Start again. Drag a hand through his hair. It’s damp at the temples.
The feed blurs slightly as Matthew turns, and Hanbin adjusts the focus, almost without thinking.
He shouldn’t be watching. Not like this.
Not like a ghost waiting behind glass.
Not like a creep sizing his next victim.
But he stays.
Because this is the last moment they have like this—him behind the wire, unseen, tethered by sound. After tonight, it changes. Everything does. Matthew will meet his "date." He’ll see his face. He might recognize it.
He might recognize the voice.
And if he does—
No. Hanbin’s fingers twitch. He forces the thought down. Swallows it hard.
On screen, Matthew stops again. Pulls out his phone. For a second, he stares at it, thumb hovering above the call icon. Then—
“Hey, Echo.”
Hanbin hears him say it before his phone connects. The soft chime of Hanbin’s encrypted phone vibrates beside his keyboard. He snatches it up, answers without thinking.
“I’m here, Matthew,” he says quietly.
Matthew’s shoulders drop a little, the way they always do when he hears that voice. Hanbin closes his eyes for half a second. Just to feel it.
“I don’t like going in without you in my ear,” Matthew mutters. He crosses to the minibar, pours himself half a glass of water he doesn’t drink. “You’ll be there, right? Behind the curtain?”
“I’ll be monitoring every angle.” Hanbin watches him sit on the edge of the bed. “Target will be in the main hall and south atrium. He’ll likely leave the crowd after the second toast—he has gallbladder issues. I’ll text if the schedule shifts.”
Matthew nods. His hand curls loosely around the glass. “Do you… Do you know the guy they’re sending as my date?”
Hanbin hesitates. The lie comes out like a breath through cracked porcelain.
“No.”
“Too bad,” Matthew says with a dry, half-hearted smirk. “I was gonna ask you if he’s hot.”
Hanbin stares at him through the monitor. The laugh is there, tugging behind his ribs, but it doesn’t come out.
“He’ll be exactly what you need,” Hanbin says softly. “You’ll play it well.”
Silence crackles on the line. Then, Matthew murmurs, “Yeah. I always do.”
Hanbin doesn’t reply.
He just watches him breathe. Watches the faint glow of the lamp brush against his cheek. Watches him drop onto the bed, almost childlike. Watches the edge of his loneliness, curling like smoke in the corners of the room.
Tomorrow, it all changes.
But tonight—tonight, he’s still Echo.
Still trusted. Still safe.
And still allowed to stay.
Matthew shifts on the bed. His shoulders slack, spine curled slightly forward. He doesn’t say anything at first, just stares at the glass, and Hanbin doesn’t press.
His voice is quiet when he does speak. Measured, but soft. Open. Vulnerable. And Hanbin’s heart hurts.
“These kinds of events,” Matthew starts, running a thumb along the rim of the glass, “they used to make me nervous. All the polished people. All the rules. I never knew which fork to use.”
Hanbin doesn’t breathe.
“I used to know one of the families,” Matthew adds after a moment. “A long time ago. Not well. Just… enough.”
Hanbin’s throat burns.
He did know them just enough.
“They hosted these charity nights all the time,” Matthew continues, softer now. “Big performances. Kids in tuxedos trying to act like adults. Some of them were nice. One of them, a taller boy with round cheeks, taught me how to tie a bowtie.” A breath. “Taught me how to say please and thank you in pretty Korean, too. Properly.”
Hanbin swallows. His hand is clenched too tightly on the edge of the desk. He forces it open.
“Sounds like a good person,” he says, carefully.
Matthew’s smile doesn’t reach his voice. “He was.” Then—harsher, more brittle: “Not sure what he turned into.”
Hanbin flinches. Just barely. It’s enough.
“But I guess you wouldn’t know about that,” Matthew adds, not coldly—just tired. “Not your world, huh?”
“I’m not sure I have a world,” Hanbin says before he can stop himself.
Matthew makes a soft, surprised sound at that. Not quite a laugh. Not quite pity.
Then, abruptly, his tone shifts. Lighter, teasing: a deliberate change in altitude.
“Well, I’m still pissed they won’t let you in with me.”
“You know why,” Hanbin murmurs, grateful for the turn.
“I do,” Matthew sighs. “Still. I’d feel better if you were the one next to me.”
Hanbin presses the side of his fist against his mouth. Doesn’t answer.
Not until Matthew adds, quieter:
“Would’ve helped with the nerves.”
“…Me too,” Hanbin whispers.
There’s a beat of static. And then—Matthew exhales a shaky laugh.
“I’m going to botch the fake date part,” he mutters. “Watch. I’ll fuck up the champagne toast or step on his foot because I'll be thinking about my Echo.”
Hanbin stares at him through the camera, too close to the monitor. He hates himself a little bit right now.
“You’ll be fine,” Hanbin says, all nonchalant and calm. “Just remember the mission. You’re not there to fall in love.”
“Shame,” Matthew says, and this time the grin is audible. “You sound like someone who gives good first dates.”
Hanbin rolls his eyes toward the ceiling and smiles despite himself. “You don’t even know my name.”
“Names are overrated,” Matthew says, stretching out on the bed now, hand propped behind his head. “Voice like yours? I’d say that’s at least half the prize.”
Hanbin’s breath catches. Matthew’s flirting always does this to him—like a hook snagging low in his belly, a slow pull he can’t brace against. It tingles along his spine, as if the words were spoken directly against bare skin.
“And the other half?” he asks before he can stop himself.
A pause.
Then Matthew hums, deep in his chest. “I’ll let you know when I get my hands on it.”
He shouldn’t let himself feel this. But it’s already blooming—hot and fragile beneath his ribs.
Matthew’s hands, rough but still delicate, sliding beneath a shirt he’d never had to ask him to take off. Slow. Intentional. Fingers pressing into the soft parts of his waist, dragging heat across his ribs, the base of his throat, tilting his chin up like a question already answered.
His voice in his ear is low and tinged with the smirk he wears, saying his name like it was earned.
It’s not fair, he thinks, how badly he wants what he knows he can’t touch.
Hanbin shuts his eyes. His mouth is a thin, invisible line.
“Go over the target profile one more time,” he says, voice crisp, climbing out of the moment with surgical precision.
Matthew, to his credit, only chuckles. “Okay, okay. Just promise you’ll still be watching.”
Hanbin rests his hand on the screen. Just barely. It's cold and smooth and nothing like Matthew’s skin and he hates himself a little more now.
“I always am.”
Matthew leans forward, reaching for the tablet Hanbin preloaded with mission files. “All right, all right,” he says with a sigh, scrolling. “Target one: Minister Go Jae-in. Seventy-two. Money laundering, arms deals, possibly bathes in cologne and has three to five female ex-idols on his call list. Got it.”
Hanbin allows himself a tiny smirk.
Matthew flicks to the next slide. “Potential target two: oh, we have two, nice. Arnaud Claude, that's a mouthful. French? Oof, French-Canadian, touché. Younger. Lean. Scary sharp jawline. Definitely the type to think he’s God’s gift to the gala.”
“You’re not wrong,” Hanbin says dryly.
“Oh, I never am.” Matthew scrolls further. “You know, you have a very commanding tone when you're trying not to sound concerned. It’s kind of hot.”
Hanbin exhales through his nose, shaking his head, but doesn’t scold him.
Matthew keeps going. “Minister Go's routine, entry schedule, last sightings. All here. But you know what isn’t here?”
Hanbin lifts an eyebrow at the monitor even though Matthew can’t see him. “What?”
“My date’s measurements. Favorite color. Dominant hand. Kissing preferences. Allergy list. You know—the vital intel.”
Hanbin bites the inside of his cheek. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Tell me at least one thing. Are they tall? Do they have a tragic backstory? A voice that sounds like regret wrapped in silk? Any funky kinks?”
Hanbin nearly chokes.
Matthew grins wider when he hears him, scrolling idly again. “See, now I’m imagining a tragic young widower with a dagger in his garter, a vengeance and poison in his teeth.”
Hanbin actually laughs—sharp, involuntary, lovely. It bursts into the comms like sunlight through cloud.
Matthew pauses. On the camera, he tilts his head slightly. “Was that a laugh?”
Hanbin presses a palm to his lips. “No.”
“It was,” Matthew says, delighted. “Oh my god, you’re beautiful when you laugh, aren’t you? I knew it.”
“You’re imagining your date's a tragic assassin with a broken heart.” He can't shake the laughter from his voice and he stopa trying.
“And fantasizing about my handler. Let me multitask in peace.”
Hanbin tries to school his expression, but it’s a losing battle. “Focus.” He says to both of them with little strength.
Matthew glances at the screen again with that irresistibly soft smile, then flips to the next document with a flick of his thumb. “All right. Claude’s last location. Blah blah. Confirmed at the venue by 19:30. Okay, but listen.”
Hanbin exhales, wary. “What.”
“If I survive this mission and manage to pull off the world’s most convincing fake relationship,” Matthew begins, entirely serious now, “you owe me something.”
Hanbin hums. “What do I owe you?”
“I want to hear you say my name.”
Hanbin stills. The words are not playful—not this time. They land heavy and soft, warm as breath against skin.
"I say your name often," Hanbin allows. He watches Matthew inhale.
“I bet it sounds good when you’re out of breath,” he says, voice gone quiet. “I bet you sound like sin.”
Hanbin’s throat works around a dry swallow. “You’re out of control.” It is more a whisper then anything.
“And yet you’re still listening,” Matthew says, gaze flicking lazily around the room. “So who’s really in charge here?”
Hanbin lets the silence stretch—long enough for it to fray at the edges, too sharp for comfort.
Then, low and cutting:
“Claude’s right-handed. He’ll keep his pistol tucked under the table. You’ll spot it when he shifts his wine glass.”
Matthew’s smile sharpens. “There he is. That voice again.”
Hanbin doesn’t answer.
Matthew’s breath crackles in the line. “You gonna tell me to behave, Echo?”
Hanbin watches him—how Matthew stretches out again, eyes gleaming under the dim hotel light. A little reckless. A little tired. Still too beautiful for Hanbin’s peace of mind.
“No,” Hanbin says finally, soft. “You never would.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Matthew says, his voice a little lower still, like the hour's finally caught up to him. “I love our little talks, don’t you know that by now?”
Hanbin doesn't respond—not immediately. His pulse flutters behind his ribs.
Matthew's fingers slide along the curve of his lips, in thought. “Can I keep you in my ear for the night?”
That one hits too close. Hanbin blinks at the camera, at the way Matthew’s lashes brush his cheek when he closes his eyes. He looks… softer like this. Softer than he should be, knowing what’s coming and what he went through. What they did.
Hanbin’s fingers still on the keyboard. He means to say something snarky. Something deflecting.
But instead—
“What would you want me to say?” he asks, voice gone strangely quiet. “If I stayed in your ear.”
There’s a beat of silence on the line. Then:
“I don’t know,” Matthew murmurs, like he really means it, really is thinking about it. “Anything. Everything. What's your favorite color. What music do you listen to. Your real name. My name. I’d want you to tell me exactly what I sound like when I say yours.”
Hanbin exhales. His jaw ticks. “You’re dangerous.” It's a whisper.
“No,” Matthew says, smiling faintly. “You’re the one who’s dangerous. I’m just the idiot getting off on your voice like it’s oxygen.”
Hanbin’s breath stutters. He says it like he doesn’t realize what his voice does to Hanbin.
“You’d tell me to close my eyes,” Matthew says slowly, like he’s narrating a dream, “and I’d listen. You’d tell me to lie back and breathe deep and imagine you on the other end of the line. And I would. Your long fingers tapping on the keyboard. The way you laugh. The way you breathe.”
Hanbin’s heart is pounding now, too hard, too fast. He shouldn’t want this. But—
"I'd imagine your hand on my head, fingers in my hair." Matthew’s own hand, the one he pulls the trigger with, flicks up towards his black hair, patting his own head lightly.
“You’d say my name,” Matthew continues, voice dipped in heat, “again and again until it got stupid in your mouth. Until I couldn't think of anything else.”
Hanbin swallows, his throat bone-dry. “You need to get some sleep.”
“Mmh,” Matthew hums, noncommittal.
“Your date tomorrow is young and virile,” Hanbin adds, dryly. Too dry. “You’ll need the energy.”
“I’m going to come alone in this hotel room tonight thinking about your voice,” Matthew says, flat as sin, like it’s a passing comment about the weather.
Hanbin lets out a broken sound—a laugh, a gasp, maybe both.
“Fuck.”
There’s a beat of stunned silence. Hanbin presses his knuckles to his betraying mouth.
Then Matthew hums, pleased and low, his fingers carding through his hair, “Now that sounded promising.”
Hanbin swipes a hand over his mouth, breath hitching. “Go to sleep, Matthew.”
“You sure you don’t want to tuck me in first?” he teases.
Hanbin closes his eyes.
"Maybe one day," he whispers, then, before he can stop himself.
He hears the smile in Matthew’s voice, gentle. “Good night, Echo.”
Hanbin exhales through his nose, trying not to sound wrecked. “Good night.”
The line clicks off.
He should turn off the feed.
He doesn’t.
Matthew pulls the headset from his ear, places it and the phone on a nightstand. HE rakes a hand through his hair one last time, then tugs his shirt up and over his head in one fluid motion. He stretches as he tosses it aside, shadows dancing on muscles in the dim light, tattoos bright against his skin. Then he drops onto the bed with a soft grunt, one arm slung across his eyes.
He doesn’t know Hanbin can see him. Or maybe he does.
Hanbin watches him anyway.
His monitor flickers. Hanbin sits motionless in the glow, pulse in his throat, chest too tight to name.
And when he finally looks away, it's only because he can’t bear how much he wants to stay.
➳➳➳♡
The car glides to a stop in front of the limestone steps of the Daehan Foundation Hall, all glass and marble and money. Hanbin steps out into the cool evening, the sound of strings and chatter leaking through the open doors like perfume. He barely hears it over the thrum in his chest.
Security nods him through without a word—of course they do. He's not a guest. He’s a Sung, and the name cuts through velvet like a blade.
He knows he looks the part—tailored black suit, perfect taper at his lean waist, velvet shirt white as bone, hair swept back like it’s never known indecision. People turn when he enters, just enough to notice. It happens every time. He hates it. Hates that he looks like someone important, someone in control. Hates that their glassy eyes and wordless lips say handsome no matter how little sleep he gets, how hollow he feels inside. Looking good has always been another mask he was never allowed to take off.
The anteroom is hushed like a promise, gold-lit, filled with soft conversations and the sound of champagne glasses being touched without being drunk. Hanbin moves past the groups with a polite nods, scanning the room—
—and stops.
There. Near the edge of the archway, in front of the velvet-lined entrance to the ballroom.
A man, his silhouette beautiful and still. Dressed in black formalwear, one hand tucked neatly behind his back, the other relaxed at his side. His hair is longer than would be proper, like he forgot to visit the hairdresser for two months—and it’s a quiet blessing. A silver lining amid the perfect-cut animals warming their champagne with oily hands.
Hanbin swallows the wave of anger, focuses rather on his back, the suit fitting just right. The line of his spine is relaxed but alert. Shoulders broad, posture proud.
He is perfect.
The only person in this entire building.
Hanbin forgets how to breathe.
It’s him.
And for a moment, all he can see is another version of that same back—smaller, ganglier, half-hidden by a hoodie two sizes too big. Standing on the edge of the dock behind Hanbin’s house, staring out at the water with scraped knees and a frog cupped gently in both hands.
"Don’t laugh," the boy had said, looking over his shoulder. "He’s got a stupid face but I think he’s lonely."
Hanbin hadn’t laughed. He’d crouched beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and whispered, "Then let’s keep him company."
Now that boy is a stranger. A killer. And Hanbin has been so many things since.
He straightens his jacket. Smooths his cuffs. Breathes in through his nose and lets the past go, as best he can, before he walks toward him.
Toward Matthew.
The world hasn’t noticed them standing in the same room.
But it will.
And when it does—Hanbin knows the weight of it will be unbearable.
Matthew shifts, sensing movement behind him. He is working, assessing. Must feel vulnerable without his Echo in his voice. It’s just a turn of the head at first, like he’s scanning for someone—maybe the target. His gaze sweeps across the marbled floor, slow and disinterested.
And then it lands.
On him.
Hanbin watches it happen. Watches the moment settle in Matthew’s eyes like a tremor.
Recognition.
His jaw twitches first—just slightly, like he’s bitten down on something too bitter to swallow. Then his mouth slackens, then hardens again. His eyes narrow, and something quiet and dark flashes through them. Shock, yes—but not the wide-eyed kind. No, this is the quiet kind. The kind that comes with memory and weight and rot.
Matthew’s shoulders draw back, taut. The hand at his side curls into a fist. He shudder so subtly no one would notice—but Hanbin sees it. He always does.
The same way he sees the flicker of disgust that follows. The crack of betrayal, old and untouched for years, rising behind his sternum.
And then the worst thing.
Nothing.
Matthew schools his face into something polite. Blank. Courteous, even. The way one might smile at a ghost to pretend they weren’t afraid.
Hanbin feels the breath leave his lungs. Feels it hollow him out.
Matthew turns fully now. Says nothing. Just looks at him, tilting his head slightly, as if waiting for the script.
As if Hanbin is just another piece of the evening he will tolerate to finish the mission.
Hanbin opens his mouth—then closes it again.
So this is it.
No explosion. No curse. No confrontation.
Just the quiet razor of indifference. The kind that cuts deeper than hate ever could.
He wants to say I missed you.
He says, instead, with a gentle smile stitched too tight: “Shall we go inside?”
Matthew's lips curl—into what might be a smirk, or a snarl, or both.
“Lead the way.”
They walk side by side into the golden mouth of the ballroom.
The music swells. The chandeliers drip light like honey. A thousand eyes glance and move on, uninterested. The illusion holds. Hanbin breathes through it.
Matthew doesn’t speak at first. He doesn’t have to. His posture says enough—casual but careful, a trained body honed to restraint. His silence is louder than the music.
But then—just as they pass under the arch of soft lights near the center of the hall—Matthew leans in. His mouth brushes close to Hanbin’s ear like punishment, his voice low and smooth:
"So, you are my date, right?"
Hanbin just hums. His voice does not come.
"Your daddy wants my target dead, right?"
Hanbin nods. His breath is warm on his ear.
“We should make it convincing, then.”
Hanbin turns his head slightly. He doesn’t breathe.
Matthew’s hand slides around his forearm—confident, practiced. He loops it around Hanbin’s elbow, guiding it up and locking their arms together like lovers would. Like they’ve done this a hundred times. Like it means nothing.
“Smile a little,” Matthew murmurs. “Your family’s watching.”
Hanbin’s mouth curves automatically, though it feels like it’s carved from stone.
Matthew’s body is warm beside his. Familiar in ways he hasn’t let himself remember in years. Different and same. Strong and graceful. Tall, but still shorter than him. He sees his eyelashes flutter when he looks at him.
But Hanbin keeps his gaze forward, his voice comes soft, nearly lost in the music. “I didn’t think you’d agree to this.”
Matthew hums, noncommittal. “Didn’t have a choice, did I?”
A beat.
“You knew,” he adds, tone carefully neutral. “Didn’t you?”
Hanbin swallows. “Knew what?”
“That it would be me.”
Hanbin can’t answer.
Matthew’s grip on his arm tightens for the briefest second—then relaxes. “You always did know too much,” he says, almost lightly, almost playfully.
They move through the crowd like smoke. Beautiful. Dangerous. Looking just too good together. Pinned by a thousand unspoken things.
“You’re good at this,” Hanbin says quietly. It shpuld not have sounded so prickly.
Matthew’s smile is sharp. “You’d be surprised how easy it is to play a man in love.”
Hanbin’s step falters—but only for a moment.
“I suppose you would know,” he says, voice too steady.
Matthew doesn’t answer. But he doesn’t let go.
Their steps echo on marble. The music swells. Somewhere beyond the clinking glasses and perfumed air, laughter rises.
But Hanbin doesn’t hear it.
Not really.
Because Matthew’s warmth is pressed to his side, his fingers looped through the crook of Hanbin’s elbow like they belong there, like it’s easy, like none of this costs him anything—and it sends Hanbin reeling. Not into panic.
But into memory.
It was summer. They were twelve and eleven, sprawled out on the splintering floorboards of Hanbin’s treehouse, chewing sour candy and trading daydreams.
The cicadas screamed outside. Inside, it was dim and warm, paper stars still taped to the slanted roof, an old flashlight flickering between them.
“I’m gonna be a spy,” Matthew said, kicking his legs. “Or a dancer. Or an ice hockey player. Maybe all three.”
Hanbin bit the inside of his cheek, smiling small. “You can’t be all of them.”
Matthew turned his head, grinning like the sun. “Watch me.”
A pause. Hanbin’s voice was quiet when it came next, and a little shy, like the question had been waiting in his chest for days.
“And if I… if I asked you to marry me one day,” he said, not looking up, “would you say yes?”
Matthew blinked. Then sat up like he’d been zapped. “Marry you?”
Hanbin’s ears turned red. “You don’t have to answer. I just—”
“Yes!” Matthew blurted, too fast, too bright. Then he froze, frowning. “Wait. Can we?”
Hanbin looked at him then, question plastered across his face. “I don’t know.”
Matthew chewed on that. “I’ll find out. If we can’t, I’ll make us new names. We'll move to Canada or something. Somewhere with trees and good snacks.”
Hanbin laughed, eyes wide and warm.
Matthew beamed. “You’d be a good husband. You make really good tea.”
"We will need to learn how to cook real food, too!"
"I will learn how to cook!"
Back in the ballroom, Hanbin blinks. His eyes are a bit watery. The light is too sharp, probably.
Matthew is still beside him. Still warm. Still too beautiful. But older now. Sharper. He’s no longer a boy who dreams of learning how to cook and weddings under paper stars.
And he’s no longer someone who would say yes.
Hanbin’s chest aches with it.
But his smile—his mask—doesn’t waver.
He needs to get this done.
He moves them with practiced ease, drifting toward the tall shadow of his father like it’s any other business introduction. The crowd parts subtly at the edges—people still know to give Chairman Sung room to breathe.
Matthew doesn’t resist, though Hanbin feels his gaze flicking across the space. He’s watching everything. Of course he is.
But Hanbin just leans in, just enough. His hips slant, his voice lifts an octave—syrupy and fake as he sings, “Let’s go say hi to daddy.”
Matthew stiffens imperceptibly, and Hanbin wants to laugh. He doesn’t.
Chairman Sung doesn’t look up when they stop at his side. He’s speaking to a senator, flanked by two aides, sipping sparkling water like it might bite him.
Hanbin waits.
Seconds tick.
“Father,” he says sweetly.
Chairman Sung spares them a glance. Just a glance. Eyes sweeping over Hanbin with professional indifference, then barely brushing over Matthew. Not a blink of recognition.
“This is—”
“I know who he is.” His father's voice is clipped. Low. “Another plaything of yours.”
That’s all.
No handshake. No further comment. His eyes have already turned back to the senator. Dismissal in every line of his spine.
Hanbin lets the silence hang. Smiles at the senator whose face melts when he sees him.
Then—deliberately—he shifts closer to Matthew, almost draping himself against him like a practiced fuck boy, daddy's disappointment. His hand slides up Matthew’s bicep, fingers elegant, possessive. His smile widens like a cut through his face.
The effect is immediate.
Chairman Sung’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t look at them again.
He just says, almost under his breath: “Do try not to humiliate your mother tonight, boy.”
And then he turns away.
Gone.
Hanbin’s smile stays in place, carved deep into his cheeks. His hand stays where it is—warm on Matthew’s arm, his wrist a little too tense, his knuckles too white.
Now, that he was seen, they can work.
They walk away without another word.
When they’re a safe distance, Matthew speaks. His voice low and sharp, but laced with something too honest to be pure anger.
“What the fuck was that?”
Hanbin doesn’t look at him right away. Just inhales, holds it, and exhales like it’s nothing.
“That,” he says softly, “was a successful conversation.”
His eyes flicks toward Matthew's face when he stops walking. Just—halts, mid-step, enough to tug them slightly off balance. His hand closes firmly around Hanbin’s wrist, the same one that had lingered too long on his forearm. Not hard, not cruel. But solid. Anchoring.
Hanbin meets his eyes.
Matthew’s gaze is unreadable at first—blank in a way that usually comes just before something dangerous. Then it cracks, like glass under a thumb.
“You call that a conversation?” he asks, voice low, incredulous. “He didn’t even look at you.”
Hanbin tries to pull away. Matthew doesn’t let him. “Let go.”
“No.” Matthew’s eyes narrow. “Why’d you do that? The way you—hung on me.”
Hanbin raises an eyebrow. His mouth moves first—habit, defense. “Because it works. You saw it. It made him ignore us. Job done. You're free to do your mission or whatever.”
“No,” Matthew says again, and this time it’s quieter. More dangerous. “That wasn’t the job. That was you. Performing.”
Hanbin laughs, bitter and breathless. “Maybe I like performing.”
“You were making a point,” Matthew says. “And I don’t think it was for him.”
That gets him. Hanbin’s expression flickers, just for a second—barely enough to register.
But Matthew sees it.
He softens. Just barely.
“You okay?” he asks, voice quieter now, almost hesitant. “Like. Actually?”
Hanbin looks away. His throat moves like he’s swallowing glass. “I didn’t sleep much.”
Matthew doesn’t answer that. Doesn’t tease him for it. Just lets the words hang between them.
And then, with sudden heat: “He talks to you like that often?”
Hanbin smiles again—tight, hollow. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“I would,” Matthew snaps. “So I can maybe start to understand why you let someone walk all over you like that.”
Hanbin blinks, startled. Then something new twists in his face. Not anger—worse. Something like shame.
He pulls his wrist free.
“Stop pretending you care, Matthew,” he says. “It doesn’t suit you.”
Matthew exhales sharply, but he doesn’t chase the bite.
He just says, more softly now, “You shouldn’t have to make yourself small for him.”
Hanbin almost says something. Almost cracks. But then he straightens his spine, smooths his jacket.
“Come on,” he says, brisk and cool. “The target’s about to give his opening speech. You wouldn’t want to miss your prize.”
He offers Matthew his arm again, like none of it happened.
Like the boy who wanted to marry him never existed.
Like they did not speak just yesterday about prizes.
But they are stopped in their tracks when a woman approaches, draped in violet silk and rhinestones. Her face is taut from the years, lips filled, cheeks smoothed—and Matthew stiffens, recognizing her instantly.
“Hanbin, darling,” she purrs, barely glancing at Matthew. “You’ve grown into your cheekbones. They’ll be grateful on camera.” A sharp smile. “And who’s this little thing?”
Matthew doesn’t flinch. He smiles with all his teeth. “Just another orphan from the war,” he says, voice light and acidic. “Trying to make good with the right company.”
She hums like she didn’t hear it, taps Hanbin’s arm with two lacquered fingers.
"I will have Park Heecheon at my vernissage. From Vogue. Be a darling and reply to my invitation, sweetie. You will look exquisite next to my paintings," she says, and it sounds like a threat. She floats off into the noise with a wave of her hand.
They’re both silent for a beat too long.
Hanbin exhales. He feels Matthew's tension. He remembers her from the past.
“She didn’t recognize me,” Matthew says. “She used to beg at my father’s table.”
Hanbin nods.
“I remember the way she talked down to the kitchen staff. The bribes. The way she offered me her fucking daughter like she was a horse to be traded.”
“Matthew—”
Matthew turns, slow, smiling as if he’s telling Hanbin a secret. “My family’s in the ground. And yours funds this filth. You friends with her, too?”
Hanbin says nothing. This was inevitable.
“I’m playing house with the boy whose last name paid for the guns. Isn’t that romantic?”
Hanbin turns to him, eyes hollow. Voice flat. Nothing like Echo. “Matthew, focus.”
Matthew blinks. Something flickers behind his eyes.
Hanbin’s throat closes. “This isn’t the place.”
“No,” Matthew agrees, too brightly. “This is the party. Where everyone smiles and drinks and pretends my parents' ghosts aren’t pressed against the glass.”
His voice drops low, soft enough for only Hanbin to hear.
“And I’m smiling at you, because someone told me to. Isn’t that funny?”
Hanbin keeps his tone flat. Controlled. “Funny and romantic both. I am having a ball. Now focus.”
Matthew stiffens beside him. Something shifts in his eyes again—unsettled.
“That tone,” he mutters, almost to himself. “You talk like a goddamn handler.”
Hanbin doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t blink.
“You say focus like you know how to say it. Like you think it matters if I listen.”
Hanbin tries to laugh it off, but it’s thin, shaky. “I’ve had to escort men like you before. You don’t always do well in crowds.”
“Oh?” Matthew’s mouth twists into a mock smile. “What kind of men like me have you escorted?”
“The arrogant kind.”
“The dangerous kind?” Matthew asks flatly.
Hanbin doesn’t deny it.
Matthew’s next words are quieter, but sharp enough to bleed. “It really is ridiculous, you know. Me, here—dancing with you, pretending this is just some gala.”
He glances sideways.
“Your family’s name is on the banners. My family’s names are written on their gravestones.”
Hanbin turns toward him, face still, eyes glassy, patience wavering. His heart bleeds for him. “You need to stay sharp. We have work to do.”
Another look. Like Matthew’s mind is almost catching something. Meanwhile, grief presses into Hanbin's ribs.
But Matthew just laughs—dark and humorless. “You’ve had a lot of practice pretending, haven’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Matthew smiles again, this time with real poison.
“That little act with your father. All hips and lashes, clinging to me like you wanted him to choke on it.”
Hanbin’s mouth twitches. His fingers curl at his side.
“You think if you perform hard enough, it’ll hurt him?”
“You’re drawing attention.”
“Good,” Matthew whispers, vicious and close. “Let him watch his precious boy be the whore he always thought he was.”
Hanbin doesn’t speak. The floor beneath his feet tilts, then cracks. Somehow, it does not swallow him whole, but he prays it would. A cold kind of sensation spreads in his stomach, climbs up towards his throat, and holds it in a vicious grip.
Matthew straightens his cuffs, slipping seamlessly back into poise.
“We’re supposed to look in love, right?” he says coolly. “Don’t worry. I’m very good at pretending, too.”
He slides Hanbin’s arm through his own. Like a chain.
And together, they step forward—perfectly staged, utterly at war. Hanbin follows without thought.
Matthew’s hand is light on his arm—barely there—but it burns like a brand. The warm ghost of a boy who used to hold his wrist when crossing the street. Who used to reach for him without thinking. Who used to smile like it meant something.
Now his grip is formal, practiced. A gesture to fool the crowd. To convince the onlookers that this is intimacy, not artifice. To hurt Hanbin, at least a little.
Hanbin lets himself be hurt.
The room warps at the edges, his vision too bright. He registers cut-glass chandeliers and white-gloved servers, the smear of violin music through air that tastes like old money and rotting bodies. But none of it sticks. All he sees is Matthew’s back in front of him. All he hears is that voice—so close to recognition. So far from forgiveness.
Matthew hates him.
Maybe not Echo. Not yet.
But Hanbin—the real one? The boy he used to know?
He might as well be buried with the rest of Matthew’s family.
And what makes it worse, what hollows Hanbin out so completely he thinks he might float out of his body—is that Matthew’s right. About the rot. About the ruin. About what Hanbin’s last name carved into the city like rust into bone.
Even if he didn’t wield the knife, he was born with it in his hand.
You’ve had a lot of practice pretending, Matthew had said. And Hanbin wanted to scream that it wasn’t practice—it was penance. That every bow of his head, every smile, every flirtatious little flicker of performance was just another way to say I’m sorry I lived when they didn’t.
He swallows it. All of it.
Because Matthew doesn’t need his apology.
He needs his partner.
So Hanbin keeps his spine straight and his lips soft. Lets Matthew guide him to the drinks table like they belong in this world. Like they’ve ever belonged in the same sentence again.
But underneath it—beneath the silk and charm and fake calmness—Hanbin mourns.
He mourns a boy he once braided friendship bracelets with. Who used to draw flowers on his wrists and call him brave.
He mourns the moment he first saw that name again—buried deep in the system, flagged red and high-risk. A name he hadn’t spoken aloud in a decade, but that had never truly left. It lived in every shadow, every dream, every tear he’d pretended not to cry.
And he mourns what he did with that knowledge.
That he’d wanted it—had begged for it—when he saw Matthew’s file. Had clawed his way into the assignment, slipped behind the screens, chose a new name for himself, and whispered Echo checking in just to be close again.
Instead of apologizing.
Instead of collapsing at Matthew’s feet and confessing everything—that his father had signed the order, that he'd used his thirteen-year-old son as bait, that he’d watched the footage, that he could not have done anything. That even when he could have tried to undo the silence that followed, he didn’t. Not really. Not in any way that counted.
Because what had he wanted? To be forgiven without asking? To be close without consequence?
Even now, the memory is a wound: the way Matthew’s name lit up the screen like a curse, like mercy. The boy whose parents had died for no reason at all—and Hanbin had not even reached out.
Only to trade it for a voice in his ear. A handler, distant and cold.
But even if it was selfish, even if it was unforgivable—
Hanbin hadn’t known he was still alive until that moment.
And now he doesn’t know how to let go.
The champagne glasses are crystal-thin and gleaming under the soft amber light. Hanbin reaches for one, but Matthew beats him to it.
“Let me,” he says, voice smooth as silk. A curl of a smile on his lips. He offers Hanbin the flute like a man offering a ring.
Hanbin hesitates—just a fraction too long. Then he takes it.
Matthew’s fingers brush his.
The contact is electric.
“Cheers,” Matthew murmurs, raising his own glass.
“To?” Hanbin asks quietly.
Matthew’s gaze lowers before it slides back up. “To playing nice.”
They clink.
The sound is sharp. Hollow.
Hanbin takes a sip, just to buy himself a moment. The bubbles burn going down. He watches Matthew work the room with terrifying ease—shoulders relaxed, eyes warm, mouth parted in the kind of easy amusement that charms board members and billionaires alike.
It’s perfect. Too perfect.
His hand slides lightly around Hanbin’s waist, guiding them toward a knot of diplomats near the central staircase.
“Let’s give them something to talk about,” Matthew whispers as they walk, his breath brushing Hanbin’s ear.
Hanbin shivers.
And then Matthew starts.
He tells a charming lie about how they met at university, about bumping into each other over spilled coffee and then meeting again at a conference in Osaka. Hanbin almost misses his cue.
He picks it up late—adds a laugh, a polished anecdote about a study group that turned into late nights and joint research papers.
Matthew covers the falter so smoothly it’s like it never happened.
Hanbin watches him—the lines of his face in motion, the way his teeth flash with amusement, the flick of his wrist when he gestures at the gala's opulence and calls it “vintage villain chic.” His performance is effortless. Irresistible.
And devastating.
Because Hanbin knows every word is false.
Knows that the smile curling on Matthew’s lips is poison-laced.
That the arm around his waist is a leash.
And he wears it anyway.
At one point, Matthew leans in to brush something off Hanbin’s lapel—fingers lingering a second too long. He murmurs, too low for anyone else to hear: “You look good tonight, Hanbin-hyung. The family name’s doing you favors.”
Hanbin stiffens. “It always has.”
Matthew straightens. His smile widens for the audience. “Must be nice.”
They move through the room like a power couple—gorgeous, ruthless, unbothered. Matthew laughs just enough. Touches Hanbin just enough. Flashes just enough teeth to remind everyone they’re predators, not prey.
But Hanbin knows the truth. Reads it in Matthew's every move.
He’s the one being hunted.
And Matthew is the perfect weapon.
The perfect date.
The boy Hanbin once thought he might marry, now smiling with every sharp edge exposed.
And it doesn’t scare him—he’s not afraid of Matthew’s anger. If anything, he welcomes it.
It’s the thought of indifference that terrifies him. A version of this night where Matthew wouldn’t touch him at all.
So Hanbin lets the performance continue. Lets himself be led like a partner in a waltz made of ruin and longing. Because this—this violence dressed in velvet—is still a kind of closeness.
And, even though it’s more than he deserves, Hanbin is selfish.
But it is time to work.
Hanbin leans in, echoing Matthew's moves, lips almost brushing the shell of his ear as he murmurs into it, “Target’s on the move. North corridor. Past the violinist.”
Matthew hums in acknowledgment, a polite sound disguised as pleasure. “Let's do this.”
They separate, just a few steps—but it feels like a cut. Hanbin lets the distance stretch between them as they move through the crowd, Matthew drifting toward the gilded column near the conservatory door. One hand tucked into his pocket, relaxed. Smiling.
It’s a performance.
But it’s also muscle memory.
The way Matthew positions himself within earshot of the cluster of donors. The way he tilts his head at the exact angle to catch a stray phrase. The way he moves like he belongs.
He is beautiful as he smiles, the glass halfway to his red lips. He's deadly as he gazes at the donors and nods, his eyes focused, black hair just a little too long on his neck. He is Hanbin's dream and a nightmare both, as he takes a sip from his glass, earring catching light, jawline sharp.
Hanbin circles wide, taking up a position near the oversized flower arrangement, fingers toying absently with his half-empty glass. From here, he can keep an eye on both Matthew and the target. The room pulses with too many voices, too many glasses clinking, but his focus doesn’t stray.
He sees it.
Matthew’s shoulders shift.
A tell.
He heard something.
They reunite at the edge of the dance floor. Hanbin doesn’t have to reach—Matthew’s hand is already there. Waiting. Their fingers fit together too easily, a familiar puzzle piece slotting into place.
“Talk,” Hanbin murmurs, just loud enough.
Matthew’s voice is low, all warmth and champagne-soaked charm to anyone who might be listening. “They’re planning to move him. Our guy’s getting an escort after the next toast.”
Hanbin nods once. “That gives us fifteen minutes. Maybe less.”
Matthew grins without joy. “Then I hope you’re still good at improvising.”
Hanbin’s smile flickers. “I never stopped.”
They step into the heart of the room, where the chandeliers drip gold and shadows turn soft at the edges. The dance floor is a mirror. Hands find each other like muscle memory—his in Matthew’s, steady and warm, the other settling low at his spine. They move forward in tandem, closer than necessary. Closer than safe.
Each motion is practiced, but not rehearsed. Every shift of weight, every pause, every turn—it’s all clean lines and silent understanding. Hanbin doesn’t have to think. He’s counting the beats in the back of his head, eyes flicking toward the walls, catching the reflection of a guard by the terrace. The north door. Unguarded. Noted.
But then there’s Matthew.
Matthew, who steps into him like he’s always belonged there. Who keeps their palms locked in a careful tilt, fingertips brushing just enough to draw sparks up Hanbin’s wrist. Who follows Hanbin's lead with fluid precision—because it’s the mission, but also because he knows Hanbin’s rhythm. He remembers.
The music blooms around them—violins lush and yearning, the kind of piece that wants to be about undying love. About heartbreak. About hope. And for a breathless second, Hanbin lets it be all of it.
They turn in unison, bodies aligning like constellations charted long ago. The fabric of Matthew’s jacket whispers against his sleeve. Their knees almost touch with every step. Hanbin pivots, gliding back with just enough drag to feel the pressure of Matthew’s hand tighten at his waist.
“Two guards by the terrace,” he murmurs, voice low, lips barely moving. “But the north door is unguarded.”
Hanbin lets Matthew guide them briefly, letting the illusion of control slip from his fingers. It’s a calculated trade—just long enough for a pair of silver-haired donors to glance over their champagne flutes, whispering behind fingers. A younger woman—some politician’s wife—stares outright, wide-eyed, as if watching a scandal unfold in real time.
Hanbin meets her gaze for half a second with defiance. She flushes and looks away.
“Let’s make a final scene,” Matthew says, too smoothly. “Something worth remembering. Something they’ll write down in their stupid little reports and your daddy will choke on.”
His smile could slice diamonds.
Excitement runs up Hanbin's spine, and he nods once. “On your count.”
Their steps shift—elongate. They build something between them: tension masked as elegance, danger clothed in silk. The tempo swells. Hanbin turns into the space between Matthew’s arms, breath caught in the rush of movement, of heat. They glide across the polished floor like they’re chasing the edge of a storm, every move pulling the eye, every gaze just long enough to look like longing.
It’s always been this way. Rooftops and secret summers. Running breathless through dusty corridors, pretending they were dancers, knights, gods. Spinning to pop music or trot, whatever played on the radio, Hanbin’s hand in Matthew’s, laughter echoing of the walls.
Now there’s no laughter. Just silk and surveillance. Just the sure pull of Matthew’s hand at his back, drawing him into the next turn, guiding their weight like they’ve practiced for this moment all their lives.
“You’re a better dancer than I remember,” Hanbin says, unable to help the warmth threading into his voice.
“You were twelve,” Matthew murmurs, low and hot near his ear. “I was trying not to die of heatstroke.”
Hanbin huffs—too soft to be called a laugh. Matthew looks at him and his eyes are warm. Hanbin's body yields without meaning to.
And that’s when Matthew leans in.
The music crests. His hand slides lower, curling down below Hanbin’s waist with sure, deliberate pressure. The other gliding on his arm, fingers featherlight, stopping at his ribs. He pulls him in, one beat too long, one breath too close. Tilts him—like a partner, like a promise. Like a man caught up in something sudden and consuming. The world narrows to citrusy perfume and heat, the slight hitch in Matthew’s breath, the way his thumb brushes just under Hanbin’s ribs.
He kisses him.
No hesitation.
Their lips slide together with dizzying ease, like they’ve done this before. Like their mouths were shaped by the same memory. Hanbin shudders into it—head tipping, lips parting, breath stolen. Matthew is shorter but stronger, grounding him, one hand now splayed between Hanbin’s shoulder blades, keeping him close, pressed.
Their heads tilt in sync. They breathe in sync. The world falls away.
It’s perfect.
It’s agony.
Hanbin’s heart slams against his ribs, panic and want tangled in the same beat. He knows this isn’t real—but his body doesn’t. His mouth doesn’t.
The kiss lingers. It deepens.
Their lips slide and fit together.
And around them, people giggle. A woman gasps. Someone claps, delighted. A champagne glass clinks too loudly.
Hanbin breaks away with a startled laugh, flushing high in his ears and cheeks. He remembers the performance. Curses it. “Sorry—sorry, we—”
He grabs Matthew’s hand, laces their fingers like it’s instinct, and pulls him away from the dance floor in a rush of fabric and heat and adrenaline. His laughter bubbles up again—this time unpracticed, breathless, real. “I think we just became the scandal of the night.” He says it to the people watching, unable to hide any emotion in his voice.
Matthew follows, matching his steps without pause. “Good,” he says, low and amused, eyes flicking to Hanbin’s profile. “Let them talk.”
They slip into a side corridor, shadows falling long under the warm wall sconces. Footsteps echo behind them—soft, deliberate.
“Fifteen seconds,” Hanbin whispers.
Their hands are still joined. Neither of them lets go. Footsteps approach—measured, unhurried. The faint echo of laughter from the ballroom fades behind them. Their eyes are still locked. The target appears in the corridor like clockwork, a glass in one hand, the other scrolling through something on his phone. Alone. Unaware.
Hanbin exhales—once, tightly.
Matthew crowds him, and Hanbin almost gasps, his back hitting the wall. His lips are parted, but Matthew lets go of his hand.
He steps forward, all casual elegance in his suit, like he’s just slipped away for some air. One smooth movement and the blade is out—small, precise, wickedly sharp. He slashes across the carotid and angles the spray of blood away with the ease of a man tying a bowtie.
The target jerks.
Not a sound escapes his lips as Matthew presses his palm over them.
Matthew holds the body as it collapses, lowering it with unexpected gentleness. He props the man against the ornate table tucked against the corridor wall, arranging the limbs just so, tilting the chin to suggest a faint, drunken slouch. It’s almost beautiful—grotesque in its stillness.
The blood is the only tell. A slow, creeping bloom beneath the body, inching across the polished marble floor. And the macabre splatter over the wall.
Hanbin watches from the shadows, hidden, heart in his throat, stomach clenching. He’s seen death before. Many times. He’s called it down through an earpiece in tones calm and cool.
Not from so close.
Not since Matthew's parents.
He can still see them. Collapsed like ragdolls. The flash of red on stone. The way they clung to each other, even at the end—hands gripped, defiant. The echo of boots in the corridor. The blank face of the man who pulled the trigger. The way Hanbin hadn’t looked away. Couldn’t.
And the boy—his best friend—held back by another blank-faced man, pounding his fists into the man's hold.
Hanbin had never found the words for that night. Not in the years that followed. Not even now, watching Matthew step over another body, all grace and precision and unspoken grief. He had thought, once, that silence might be mercy. But silence, too, is a kind of weapon.
And he had wielded it like a coward.
Matthew turns.
“We should go,” he says, voice low but composed, like they’ve just finished dessert and the night is winding down.
Hanbin hears it from a distance before it registers. Matthew reaches for Hanbin’s hand—unhesitating, steady—and pulls him toward the marble staircase, his shoe trailing past the edge of the spreading pool of blood.
Hanbin lets him lead. Fingers tightening around his without meaning to. They don’t speak as the walk turns to run—only the sound of hurried footfalls against carpeted steps, their breath sharp in their throats. Hanbin’s hand is still clutched in Matthew’s, hot and steady, as they reach the upper floor and spill into the suite Hanbin knows too well.
The door slams shut behind them.
The room is dim, lit only by the muted glow of city lights pushing through the tall windows. Hanbin’s eyes adjust quickly—but it’s not the shadows that knock the breath from his lungs.
It’s the smell.
Blood, still. Traces of it clinging to Matthew like smoke, faint and metallic—but beneath that, stronger, anchoring—Matthew himself. Familiar in a way that should hurt less than it does. Or more. Citrusy perfume, gunmetal, and skin. Hanbin’s pulse stutters.
Matthew exhales, slow and heavy, his chest rising and falling beneath the dark fabric of his suit. Somehow, the blood did not reach him, but it clings to him like evidence.
Hanbin stares at him, dazed. His jaw clenches, and his eyes flare—something wild glinting in the low light. This is the man he guided through city after city. The man he dreams about when he sleeps, and lives to protect. The voice he knows better than his own. And now he’s here, real, flesh, heat.
The man who used to be a boy, innocent and wide-eyed, who once said he’d marry him because no one else could braid friendship bracelets that fast. Who cried when he stepped on a snail, who carved their initials into the wood of their treehouse tree with a blunt butter knife, and whispered promises of forever.
That boy is gone.
And in his place stands a weapon—lethal, elegant, and terrifyingly precise. A man who doesn't flinch when pulling a trigger, who lowers a corpse like he’s tucking someone into bed. A man who doesn’t know whose voice guided him to the kills, whose whispers marked the targets and lit the path in blood.
Hanbin’s whispers.
But the worst part is that Matthew still moves like the boy Hanbin loved. It’s that he’s still beautiful when he kills.
And it’s that Hanbin doesn’t know if that makes him more human—or just a more perfect monster.
And Hanbin wants him. God, he wants him like a sickness.
Wants his mouth, smart and cruel. Wants his hands, steady even when soaked in blood. Wants to press himself against all that poise and precision until it breaks. Until it splinters into heat.
Because Matthew is a weapon, yes. But he’s also Hanbin’s favorite human. Hanbin’s stupid crush. Hanbin’s first and worst ache. And he still laughs like he did at twelve, still raises one eyebrow like he’s daring the world to catch up.
It’s unbearable.
It’s irresistible.
The silence is thick.
And then—they move.
At the same time. No signal, no words. Just the same magnetic pull that’s been threading between them throughout the night, years, lifetimes.
They collide like a match to dry air.
Matthew grabs him by the collar. Hanbin’s hands dive into his hair, his shoulders, his jaw—like he’s afraid to miss a single part. Their mouths crash together, hot and open and starved, lips sliding, teeth clashing. It’s messy and desperate and perfect.
Hanbin gasps against his mouth, pushes harder. They stagger toward the bed—the last place Hanbin saw him—hours ago, across a monitor, glowing like a secret. Now, he’s close enough to taste. Their mouths never part.
And Hanbin drinks him in.
The suits have to go.
Hanbin tugs at Matthew’s jacket like it’s a shackle, yanking it down his shoulders even as Matthew mouths hungrily at his throat. Fabric rustles, buttons scatter—neither of them careful, both of them burning.
Matthew bites, hard, into the curve of Hanbin’s neck, and Hanbin lets out a whine—his name, tangled in it like a thread of silk. “Matthew—”
It only spurs him on. Matthew’s tongue traces up to the sharp edge of Hanbin’s jaw before his teeth sink in again, sharp and possessive, just under his ear. Hanbin shudders, head tipping back, whining again. His fingers dig into the muscles of his arms. They are the only thing holding him upright.
He’s shaking. From want. From guilt. From everything he’s buried for years that’s now slamming back into him with every inch of skin they uncover.
They get the rest off in frantic pieces—ties ripped loose, shirts half-open, slacks shoved down with impatient hands. Hanbin’s hair is a mess, his mouth kiss-bitten. Matthew looks like sin incarnate, wild-eyed and flushed, every inch of his body a blur of tension and want.
Then Matthew grabs him—firm, undeniable—and throws him onto the bed.
Hanbin hits the mattress with a gasp, heart slamming against his ribs.
He opens for him.
And then Matthew is over him, crawling up like a storm breaking. Their bodies collide again—bare skin against bare skin, heat against heat. Hanbin arches into it, into him, hands clutching at Matthew’s waist, shoulders, anything he can reach. Their mouths crash again—sliding, devouring. It’s messy, it’s wordless, it’s everything.
Hanbin doesn’t know what this is.
He only knows he wants it to ruin him.
And Matthew wants it too. Undeniably.
He pulls a condom from the pocket of his discarded trousers—fingers steady, mouth set. Hanbin watches him, eyes dark, chest heaving, his entire body strung tight like a bow.
“I’m going to fuck you,” Matthew says, low and rough, a promise more than a threat.
Hanbin nods, dazed, his voice wrecked. “Yes. Please.”
Their eyes lock.
Matthew doesn’t look away—not when he tears the foil open with his teeth, not when he rolls it on with slow, deliberate precision. Not even when Hanbin lets out a tiny sound, caught between nerves and anticipation, heat flaring everywhere they touch.
Still watching, Matthew brings two fingers to his mouth, slicks them with his tongue. The movement is unhurried, deliberate, filthy. Hanbin feels it like a current under his skin.
Then Matthew reaches between his thighs, and Hanbin gasps, biting down on the back of his hand as the first finger presses in.
Matthew’s voice is quiet, almost tender. “That okay?”
Hanbin nods again, hand dropping. “More.” He doesn’t beg—but it’s close.
Matthew obliges, working another finger in, stretching him carefully. His movements are patient, precise, but his expression is hungry—eyes locked on Hanbin’s face, like he’s watching every tremble, every catch of breath, every shift in his hips.
Hanbin’s head tips back against the pillow, lips parted, a flush rising up his throat, when Matthew spits on his fingers. His hands find Matthew’s wrists, not to stop him—just to hold on.
He doesn’t want to forget a second of this.
Matthew curls his fingers, hitting just right, and Hanbin’s spine arches off the bed with a choked sound. His thighs tremble.
Matthew chuckles, low and dark. “I see what you meant by ‘you had a lot of practice.’”
The words cut. A deliberate blade between the ribs.
But Hanbin only gasps, eyes fluttering. His hips chase the pressure helplessly, and when the sting of the insult blooms, it tangles with heat in his gut.
“Please,” he breathes, shameless now. “Please, Matthew. Just—”
“Just what?” Matthew asks, voice thick. He pulls his fingers out slowly, deliberately. “Use your words.”
Hanbin whimpers. He hates how easily he folds. How good it feels to be wanted, even if it's poisoned.
“Fuck me. Please. I need you.”
And in that moment, Matthew hesitates.
His eyes widen and something cracks open. Just for a second. A flicker of emotion so raw and stunned and aching, like he hadn’t truly registered where they are, what they are doing. That Hanbin is looking up at him like that, voice shaking, lips bitten red, thighs spread.
And in that instant, the mask slips. Not entirely. Just enough for Hanbin to see a flash of something that shouldn’t be there.
Not cruelty. Not anger.
Grief? Love?
Too sharp. Too late. Too much.
Buried under the practiced stillness, the cold fire in his gaze. But Hanbin sees it. And it ruins him.
Matthew lines himself up, still watching Hanbin’s face like it’s the only thing that matters, like he's trying to memorize the exact moment Hanbin breaks apart.
Hanbin exhales shakily. His hands fist the sheets. Maybe this is what he deserves, he thinks, as Matthew pushes in—slow, stretching, burning. Maybe this is the only way he gets to have him. If it’s rough. If it hurts. If he hates him while he’s inside him.
He bites his lip, tears stinging behind his eyelids, but his body sings for it—opens up to him, pulls him deeper.
Matthew groans, low and ragged, and starts to move.
And Hanbin lets him. Lets it all wash over him—shame and pleasure and heartbreak—because if this is all he gets, he wants to feel every second of it.
Matthew thrusts in hard—once, twice—his breath hot and ragged against Hanbin’s ear. The bedframe shudders beneath them. Each snap of his hips lands deep, sharp, devastating.
Hanbin gasps, fingers scrabbling at Matthew’s shoulders, pulling him down. His mind tries to catch up, to anchor itself, but there’s nothing but the sound of their bodies, the low curse Matthew groans into his neck, the dull slap of skin on skin, and the pleasure building in Hanbin's stomach.
He still hates me.
But he wants me.
God, he wants me.
It’s twisted. It’s perfect.
“Fucking tight,” Matthew grits out, his hand sliding down Hanbin’s thigh to hitch it higher. “You're so fucking tight and taking me so deep.”
Hanbin shudders. “I want you. I want all of you.”
It slips out before he can stop it. A confession shaped like surrender.
Matthew freezes for half a breath—his thumb grazing Hanbin's jaw—but then slams back in deeper, harder, making Hanbin cry out.
His hand slides from Hanbin's jaw and wraps around his throat—not squeezing, just holding—and it’s grounding and terrifying all at once.
Hanbin moans, body arching. Pinned only by their hips and Matthew's hand on his throat.
This is madness.
This is heaven.
“Look at me,” Matthew growls.
Hanbin does. Eyes glassy, lips parted. His whole body is trembling under Matthew’s weight, pleasure mounting.
And then Matthew leans in and kisses him. Bruising. Possessive. Their teeth click. Their lips crash. It’s not sweet. It’s not gentle. But it’s real.
For one breathless moment, Hanbin lets himself believe that Matthew knows. That he’s kissing his Echo, that he is kissing his Hanbin. That the anger and ache between them is something they can burn through.
Matthew’s palm tightens around Hanbin’s throat, not fully choking—but enough that pressure builds behind his eyes, a ringing starts in his ears. His back arches again against Matthew, hips grinding up into Matthew’s as the thrusts grow sharper, harder, desperate.
And then Matthew’s mouth is right against his ear, voice low, ruined, biting.
“Always this easy,” Matthew grits, “when the hired trash fucks you?”
The words are vicious. Deliberate. They’re meant to sting.
And they do.
But Hanbin only whines beneath him, mouth falling open, hand clawing into the back of Matthew’s shoulder, leaving little crescent moons behind that will become bruises. His voice is ragged when it escapes. “I’m not—easy,” he gasps, but it’s not a denial. “Just you. Only you.”
Something flickers across Matthew’s face then. A flicker of disbelief. Pain. Fury.
His hand tightens a moment longer—Hanbin sees stars behind his eyelids, a haze of light and static—but then it’s gone, that pressure replaced by a bruising grip on his thigh, yanking it up, forcing him open, forcing him closer.
“Mine,” Matthew mutters. Not sweet. Not tender. Just hungry. Desperate. Claiming.
Hanbin shudders. “Yes—fuck, yes, Matthew—”
Their rhythm breaks into chaos. Matthew’s thrusts deepen, frantic and slick, dragging Hanbin’s body toward every snap of his hips. Hanbin’s head falls back against the pillow, a sheen of sweat glimmering at his temple, mouth open in a silent moan.
His hand slips between them, almost without thought. Fingers closing around his cock, already leaking, the slide messy with precome, spit and sweat. He jerks himself in sync with Matthew’s pace, each thrust sending another gasp from his throat, another whimper.
“Fuck—fuck, I’m close,” he breathes. “Don’t stop—don’t stop, Matthew—”
Matthew’s eyes are molten. Locked on him. His name is a weapon on Hanbin's lips, a tether, a plea.
“Look at me when you come,” Matthew growls.
And Hanbin does. Barely. Through wet lashes and fractured breath, he keeps his gaze locked as pleasure breaks inside him—shuddering through every muscle, twisting his spine, curling his toes. His mouth drops open in a gasp, his whole body spasming, one last choked-off cry escaping as he spills hot over his own knuckles and stomach.
Matthew doesn’t stop. Doesn’t pause. He fucks Hanbin through it, rough and relentless, eyes never leaving his.
And then he’s gone too—his breath hitching, fingers bruising Hanbin’s hip and thigh, a low curse falling from his lips as he slams in deep and stays there, locked inside him. He groans low and wrecked, the sound dragging along Hanbin’s spine like a live wire as he pulls almost out and then slams right back inside him.
They don’t move for a second. Just breathe. Just exist in the echo of it—sweat, heat, the pulse of something too raw to name.
Hanbin’s chest stutters with aftershocks. His hand is still caught between them, sticky and shaking.
Matthew doesn’t pull out. Doesn’t speak. Just lowers himself slowly, heavily, until their foreheads brush.
Hanbin closes his eyes.
Tomorrow will come. With the lies. The truths. The fallout.
But for now—it’s just this.
The weight of him. The heat. The wreckage. The ache.
And the way, despite everything, they still fit.
The sweat hasn’t dried yet when the silence settles—sudden and suffocating. It’s too quiet. Too real.
Matthew shifts first, breath ragged, arm loosening around Hanbin’s waist. Not pulling him closer. Just… letting go.
Hanbin feels the change like a slap.
He rolls away before the chill can set in, before the shame can catch up. His feet thud to the floor. He finds his suit jacket on the floor, fingers trembling as he pulls it on, inside out. He doesn’t bother with the shirt.
“Hanbin—” Matthew’s voice is hoarse.
Hanbin flinches at the name.
“Don’t,” he says, sharper than he means to. His hands drag through his hair like they’re trying to rip it out. “I need—fuck, I need air.”
“Are you—” Matthew sits up slowly, like the weight of it all is only just starting to hit him. “Are you okay?”
Hanbin almost laughs. It sounds wrong in his throat. “Am I okay?” he repeats, his voice rasping, turning to glance at him once—pantless, bruised at the throat, lips still wet. “You just—You said I was nothing. And then you—”
It all comes crashing down.
The pain. The pleasure.
Matthew's words.
He doesn’t finish. Can’t.
Matthew watches him, eyes unreadable. There’s a flicker of something—regret? confusion?—but he doesn’t stand. Doesn’t reach out.
“I didn’t mean—” he starts.
Hanbin lifts a hand. “It doesn’t matter,” he snaps. “None of it matters. We got the target. That’s what matters, right?”
Matthew’s silence is the only answer.
Hanbin swallows hard. He backs toward the door like the floor might vanish beneath him. Pulls his pants up finally. “You should… clean up. You have a debrief in the morning.”
“Hanbin—”
But the name hangs there, unanswered, as the door clicks shut behind him.
Hanbin doesn’t stop walking until the hallway turns cold and his reflection in the elevator doors makes him look like a stranger.
He presses his palm to the inside of his wrist, just to feel his own pulse. Still here. Still beating.
He whispers, “Focus.”
But for once, it is he who needs to obey.
The door clicks behind him. Hanbin doesn’t turn on the light.
He sheds the suit jacket the moment it closes, kicks off his shoes. Shirtless, barefoot, he stumbles to the bathroom like he’s forgotten how to move his body.
Steam curls upward before the water even hits him.
He steps under the scalding spray with his pants still on.
The fabric sticks to his skin like punishment. His hands brace against the tile, forehead pressed to the wall.
Stupid. So fucking stupid.
A choked noise escapes him as he slides down to sit in the tub basin, letting the water beat down on him, throat burning with unshed everything.
Then he slaps himself.
A sharp crack, wet skin against wet skin. Once, then again.
“Focus,” he whispers. “Focus.”
He doesn't know how long he sat there. Only that his fingers look like raisins now and his head is light like he's moments before fainting.
He peels the soaked pants off and lets them slump to the floor like a second skin he can’t wear anymore. His fingers are trembling as he wraps a towel around his waist, hair still dripping. Water trails down his spine. His lungs hurt.
The hotel room is dim when he returns—floor-to-ceiling glass, city burning quietly beneath. He stands there, wet and unarmored, the weight of it all sinking in—
And then his phone buzzes.
Just once.
The familiar chime.
PRIVATE LINE: INCOMING CALL
It’s the number only two people have. Only one can use.
Hanbin stares at it.
Then answers.
“Echo?” Matthew’s voice is low, uncertain.
Hanbin’s breath catches.
He swallows. “I’m here,” he says, voice raw.
A pause. Mattwe clears his throat. “You sound… weird.”
“I just showered.” A stupid excuse.
Another pause. Something softer this time. “Oh.”
The silence breathes between them.
Hanbin closes his eyes. His skin still smells like Matthew. His chest aches.
“So, you okay?” Matthew asks, the tiniest edge of concern in his voice. “You sound—like you’re somewhere else.”
Hanbin bites his tongue.
If only he knew.
“I’m with you,” he says instead. Stupid. So fucking stupid.
Another breath. A soft, vulnerable exhale. The kind Matthew never gives anyone else.
“Can I keep you for a bit?”
Hanbin doesn't open his eyes. Nods to no one. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Not tonight.
There’s another pause. Hanbin notices the lights from the outside are those of police cars.
Then Matthew speaks again, quieter now. Like he’s afraid of what he’s about to say—afraid of hearing it out loud.
“I kept waiting for your voice today,” he says, almost laughing. “During the mission. During the gala. In the fucking hallway, right before…”
A breath. A click of his tongue.
“But you weren’t there. You weren’t with me. Not really. And I was—God, I was so pissed off.”
Hanbin swallows hard. His fingers curl against his thigh.
“I told myself I didn’t need you. That I could handle it. And I did. We got it done. Clean and fast.”
A silence, sharp and echoing.
“But it didn’t feel right without you. I kept thinking how much better it would’ve been if you’d just said something. Just… been there.”
Hanbin exhales through his nose, slow and trembling.
I was right there.
You kissed me.
You were inside me.
You were holding me like I was all you ever wanted.
He says nothing.
Matthew lets out a shaky laugh.
“God, I’m talking too much. It’s just—tonight was a lot. That guy I was with—Hanbin—he…”
A pause. A fracture.
“…He reminded me of something I used to have. Something I lost.”
Hanbin’s throat tightens.
“I don't know why I'm telling you this,” Matthew murmurs. “Maybe it’s just because I know you won't judge me?”
He takes another breath, this one ragged and raw.
“I don’t know who you are,” he says. “But tonight, I think I realized I’m in love with you.”
Hanbin freezes.
It’s not a stab—it’s a plunge. Straight through the ribs. Twist.
And Matthew doesn’t stop.
“You’re the only thing that feels real anymore. The only one who sees me. Who keeps me from… falling apart.”
Hanbin’s voice is gone.
His jaw clenches, wet hair dripping down his neck. His skin burns. The ache in his chest blooms outward, wild and consuming.
He's not sure how much more he can take.
And Matthew is still speaking softly. Hisa voice a beautiful weapon.
“I think if you asked me, I’d give you everything.”
Another pause.
Then, tentative—like he’s offering up something sacred: “Can I see you? One day?”
Hanbin almost drops the comm.
You already have.
But all he manages is silence. A silence he knows is killing Matthew on the other end.
Finally, Matthew’s voice drops to a whisper.
“…Please say something.”
Hanbin closes his eyes.
He mouths the words before he kills the line:
“I love you, too.”
But he doesn’t say them out loud.
➳➳➳♡
Chapter 2: You Always Knew Me, Didn’t You?
Summary:
Three days after the Gala, Matthew is back on mission—his Echo calm in his ear, steady as ever. But the memory of Hanbin lingers like bloodied scabs. And then, a message arrives and everything changes when the lies and past collide.
Notes:
Chapter two is in Matthew's POV.
Warnings are the same as in chapter one. Do not read further if you're OK with the tags and don't want to read slight spoilers: Graphic depiction of violence, death, blood, rough sex (spit as lube). References to self-harm, depression, panic attacks, suicidal ideation, sex as a form of self-harm, PTSD, death of parents, child abuse. Themes of loneliness and abandonment, guilt and revenge.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The room smells like bleach and old carpet. Matthew’s boots leave wet marks on it as he crosses to the window. He checks the line of sight, the timing. His hands move automatically—gun, knife, earpiece—but his mind is three days back, stuck in a mirrored ballroom, fingers brushing against fabric, a laugh caught between two breaths.
A mistake.
He drags a hand down his face and exhales slowly.
“Hey, Echo.” He says the code.
Silence.
He swallows. Clicks the safety off. Tries again, quieter this time.
“Hey, Echo… You there?”
Static. Then—
“Hello, Matthew.”
His shoulders drop. It’s barely perceptible, but he feels it. A tight knot in his stomach eased.
“You’re late,” he mutters, but it’s not real annoyance. He’s already looking for the camera. "You see me?"
“Barely. The camera’s in the right corner. Above the window.”
Matthew finds it immediately. The red blink. He moves the curtain aside, angles his body toward the lens. Lets his mouth twitch upward—half-smile, half something softer. Only for his Echo.
“You see me now?”
“A little too well.”
A pause. A scoff. Then Matthew says, “I work better when you talk.”
“I know,” Echo replies. “That’s why I'm here.”
It hits harder than it should. He keeps moving—checklist, placement, entry point—but the warmth in his chest is real and annoying.
“You ever get tired of watching me bleed?” he asks, light, flippant.
“Not really. You’re good at it.”
He huffs a laugh, short and sharp. “Thanks.”
The job is simple on paper. One target, two guards, a fifteen-minute window. But Matthew knows better. It’s never simple. The men always hide secrets that don't get into the brief. The real reason for their planned demise.
It bothers him sometimes.
He moves through the building like he’s being pulled by a thread. Echo murmurs corrections in his ear, warnings, a breath of sound just before each turn. They’ve done this a hundred times. No stumbles. No wasted steps.
“Left,” Echo says, just as Matthew lifts his head. The guard is there, exactly where he said. Taken out before he can exhale.
“You remember Paris?” Matthew asks, catching his breath in the stairwell.
“Which part?”
“The window jump. Seventeen stories.”
“You screamed the whole way down.”
“I did not.”
“You did. I saved the audio.”
Matthew snorts, flushes a little. “Pervert.”
A soft exhale—Echo’s version of a laugh.
It’s easy, too easy, to fall into this. The rhythm. The voices only for each other. Echo says his name like it’s carved into him. Matthew responds before he even thinks.
They reach the rooftop in under six minutes. The mark is already bleeding.
“Confirm identity,” Echo says.
“A fitted blue suit. Limp on the right leg. Got him.”
“Then finish it.”
Matthew obeys.
The body slumps. A streak of red spreads under the collar. He stands there a second too long, breathing hard. His pulse is still up, but it’s not adrenaline.
It’s the voice in his ear.
“You still watching?” he asks, voice low.
There’s a silence.
Then: “Always.”
And Matthew smiles again, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
He doesn’t move.
He should go check the mark, but he does not move.
The wind on the rooftop cuts through his black uniform, stings against the sweat on his spine. Somewhere below, someone’s playing music—a thudding beat under the city noise. He watches the body bleed out from afar.
“You ever think about how many times you’ve talked me through a kill?” Matthew asks.
Echo doesn’t answer right away.
“Seventy-three confirmed,” he says then. “More if you count kills we did not report.”
Matthew huffs. “Of course you do.”
“Of course,” Echo echoes.
Matthew wipes the sweat from his neck, his fingers tangling in the long hair. He should get it trimmed. “That’s a lot of me following your voice.”
“You’ve always listened.”
A strange, quiet heat coils under Matthew’s ribs. He tries to ignore it. Fails.
“You ever wonder why I do?”
“You trust me.”
It’s too easy, the way he says it. Too fast.
Matthew scoffs, but it’s not convincing. “I don’t trust anyone.”
“You do,” Echo says. “You just don’t admit it.”
He heads for the door, boots crunching on gravel. “What’s next?”
“South corridor. Guard’s moving toward the east stairwell. You’ve got ninety seconds.”
“Plenty of time.”
He slips into the hallway. Quiet now. Still filled with adrenaline, still thinking about nothing but the sound in his ear.
Still remembering.
Rome, four years ago. Night job. He’d taken a blade to the gut—first serious hit—and Echo hadn’t flinched.
“Don’t fall asleep. Talk to me.”
“I’m bleeding out, man.”
“You’ll survive. I’m with you.”
And he had.
Rainstorm in Osaka. A missed shot. He was cornered on a fire escape, soaked to the bone.
“Trust me,” Echo had whispered. “On three, jump left.”
It made no sense. He did it anyway. Landed on a balcony three stories below.
“You’re fucking magic,” Matthew had said, laughing breathless.
“No. Just watching.”
Now, he rounds a corner and spots the second guard.
Tall. Broad. Complacent.
Matthew doesn’t slow down.
His grip shifts—blade reversed, body low. Two quick steps, and his arm locks tight around the man’s neck. There’s a startled grunt, a flailing elbow, but it’s already too late. The knife slides cleanly under the chin, just above the vest line. A warmth rushes over Matthew’s glove. The body jerks once. Then slumps.
No words. No hesitation.
He exhales through his nose, steady. But inside, he’s off balance. Everything is moving too fast, and not fast enough.
“Clean,” Echo murmurs in his ear. The praise lands softer than it should. Too soft.
Matthew drags the body out of the light and straightens slowly, chest rising and falling. “You sound impressed.”
“I’m always impressed.”
His mouth quirks, humorless. “Flattery?” he mutters. “Dangerous game.”
There’s a pause. Then:
“I thought you liked danger.”
Matthew stops.
The air in the hallway is warm, metallic. The kind of heat that sticks to your back and fogs your thoughts. He wipes the blade against his thigh, slow and deliberate, then slides it away.
“Thought you liked control,” he throws back, his voice a little lower than before.
Silence.
It hangs longer than it should. Dense with things unsaid. And those said.
It is a dangerous game.
“You think I’m in control when you look at the camera like that?” Echo's voice comes slowly, but almost breathless.
Matthew freezes.
He lets the words sink into him, how carefully Echo says them. Like they matter. Like they’ve been waiting to be said.
He looks up, eyes scanning. The fluorescent lights above him flicker once, casting shadows that twist across the walls and ceiling. The hallway is empty—just him and blood on his gloves, and that voice in his ear, always too calm.
His heart thuds once. Hard.
He lifts his head, deliberately slow, and finds the camera in the far corner—half-hidden behind a metal grate. He steps toward it. Not rushed, not panicked. Just deliberate. Like he’s offering something.
He tilts his face up, just slightly. Catches the lens with his eyes.
“I’m looking now,” he murmurs, heat threading under his skin. “What do you see?”
There’s a beat of silence. Maybe two. He's playing with fire, and he desperately doesn't want to lose Echo, but he does enjoy danger.
Then Echo replies, and his voice is different—quieter, yes, but lower, raspy, like something unspooled just beneath the line.
“Trouble,” he says. “Beautiful trouble.”
Matthew exhales a slow, uneven breath. His lips part. He almost laughs, except it feels too raw.
“…Shit.”
He shouldn’t feel this warm. His hands are still tacky with blood, the scent of copper clinging to his sleeves. He should be calculating exits, scanning corners. Instead, he’s—
What? Flushed? Waiting for more?
“You should move,” Echo says, gently now. “Extraction’s waiting.”
Matthew stays exactly where he is.
His fingers twitch at his side. The light from the far door pulses faintly, signaling the exit corridor.
But he doesn’t move.
He licks his lips. Swallows once. “You ever think about what it’d be like to see me for real?” he asks, and his voice is hoarse, low—like it’s caught behind everything he hasn’t been saying and everything he spilled already. “Not through a lens. Not a file. Just… me.”
Another silence. But this one feels like breath held, not distance.
“I think about it,” Echo says, finally. Quietly.
That’s it.
But it lands like a hit to the sternum.
Matthew presses his back to the wall beside the camera. Tilts his head just enough to look up at it again—neck bared, heart stupidly loud in his chest.
He’s not supposed to say things like that. Not to someone like him.
He lets the quiet sit for a second longer. Two.
He could say something. He wants to. He wants to ask if it’s real. If Echo feels it too. If he’s imagining all of this—if the loneliness is just screwing with his head, the same way the Gala did, the same way Hanbin—
No.
Don’t think about that.
He straightens. Flexes his fingers once. The blood has started to dry.
“I’ll hear you in debrief,” he says, voice smooth again, tucked back into its box.
“I know,” Echo replies. Steady. Certain. “I’ll be there.”
Like always.
Like forever.
➳➳➳♡
The water’s too hot.
It beats down on the back of his neck like punishment, scalding, relentless. Steam curls up around his face, fogs the mirror behind the curtain, seeps into his lungs. Matthew stands there with his forehead pressed to the tiles and lets it burn.
His hands are braced on the wall. He hasn’t moved in minutes.
There’s blood under his fingernails. Still.
Seventy-three kills.
Probably more.
And Echo was there for all of them.
That number keeps circling in his head like a drain that won’t close. Seventy-three times he's killed. Seventy-three times he’d let someone guide him. Trusted a voice in his ear more than his own instincts. Trusted someone invisible. Unreachable.
Unknowable.
But not really.
“You think I’m in control when you look at the camera like that?”
The words had sunk their teeth into him, deep. Maybe even deeper than the fucking number.
Not just flirtation. Not just the usual dance they too easily slipped into between shots fired and body disposal. This was different.
It felt real.
Matthew drags one hand through his wet hair and closes his eyes, harder than necessary. Darkness behind his eyelids doesn’t help. All he sees is a moving camera lens. Blood on cement. A flash of silver cufflinks at the gala. A stranger’s hands on his body. A voice that felt too close.
“I think about it.”
Echo’s voice in the corridor, answering a question Matthew hadn’t meant to mean so much.
He feels it still. The way it slid down his spine. Settled in the pit of his stomach like heat coiling low.
He presses his teeth together, jaw clenched. Tries to breathe.
I work better when you talk.
That’s why I'm here.
That should’ve made it easier. It doesn’t.
Because there’s a difference between working with someone and needing them. And Matthew is starting to suspect he doesn’t know the line anymore.
And Echo… this is his job, isn't it?
He swipes a palm down his face and curses under his breath.
“Fucking idiot.”
Steam rises in thick waves. It’s stifling, heavy. His skin feels too tight, his chest too full.
He steps out of the stream, dripping, and leans against the wall again, head down. Water traces along his spine, clings to the curve of his lower back. He exhales through his teeth, steadying himself.
“What the hell are you doing to me…” he exhales softly.
There’s no answer. Of course there isn’t. He left the comm in the other room. Did not say the magic words 'Hey, Echo.'
His body feels like Echo is still there. Like the voice never really stopped. Like he’s still being seen, and something inside him doesn’t want that to stop.
He drops his forehead back against the tile and lets the water dry on him until he goes cold.
The towel clings damp to his shoulders as he sits on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing. The lamp’s on—low, yellow, flickering slightly like it might burn out soon—but he hasn’t moved to turn it off. The window’s cracked open. Cold air leaks in, cooling the sweat that hasn’t quite stopped.
His hair is dripping onto the towel, bed, and floor. He doesn’t care.
The mission is done. The blade’s cleaned. He should be logging the report. He should be asleep. He should be doing anything other than this—this hollow, taut, pulsing mess of after.
But all he can think about is the way Hanbin’s mouth felt against his skin.
Not the number, the target, not even the uncertainty that is Echo.
Hanbin's fucking mouth on his.
He shuts his eyes and curses, low.
It was supposed to be nothing. A fuck, a release, a mistake.
It wasn’t.
He missed him. All those years he fucking missed him.
It was desperate. Raw in a way Matthew hadn’t expected—like they were both trying to carve something out of the moment before it slipped through their hands. Before it had the chance to mean something.
And it did. It fucking did.
That’s what pisses him off the most.
His fingers dig into the edge of the mattress, nails biting fabric.
“You’re the enemy,” he’d said.
He still believes it. Doesn’t he?
Doesn’t he?
Because Hanbin had lied. Disappeared. Shown up out of nowhere in a suit that fit too well, with that same quiet look in his eyes like he already knew how Matthew would break. Like he counted on it.
Like he remembered, too.
The hallway. The dirt path behind the school. His room. Hanbin’s voice—higher, younger, telling him “You’re not alone, okay?” again and again, even as they crouched behind the garden wall, knees scraped and shoes muddy. His hand had been warm around Matthew’s wrist, steady in a way kids weren’t supposed to be. They both knew that if Chairman Sung found them there—filthy, late, soft with each other—he wouldn’t ask questions. Just make them answer. But Hanbin had still said it. Like a promise. Like he meant it. Even when everything else had already started falling apart.
Matthew draws in a breath, sharp and tight.
Maybe it wasn’t his fault.
The thought is a betrayal. Betrayal of the memory of his family. But it’s there, forming like steam on the mirror.
He’s thought it before. In the quiet, in the dark, in the moments Echo's voice felt too familiar, too safe. The mission that led to the fire in the Seok mansion hadn’t been Hanbin’s. It was handed down by the Chairman. Executed through cold, adult hands. Hanbin had been there, sure—but so had Matthew. So had all of them.
But the two of them… they were kids.
Once, in the walled garden behind the estate, Chairman Sung held their heads underwater in the koi pond—to teach stillness, he said. The water had been crystal clear, imported stones lining the bottom in precise concentric circles, the fish darting like flickers of gold. Hanbin didn’t struggle. Matthew did. He remembered the burn in his lungs, the weight of the man’s hand between his shoulder blades, and Hanbin’s fingers brushing his wrist under water—wait, that touch said, wait. Neither of them spoke when they were dragged out, gasping. Stillness was the lesson. Obedience, the reward.
And still—
“I fucking hate you,” Matthew mutters into the empty room.
It sounds hollow. Like a bruise, not a threat.
Because the truth is, he doesn’t know if it’s hate or grief or something worse.
He misses him.
That’s the part he won’t say aloud.
He misses the shape of Hanbin’s hands. The scar under his collarbone. The way he’d looked at Matthew like he was the only thing worth looking at in the whole fucking room of cheap rich people. The way he didn’t speak after they’d fucked—just held him for half a minute, like it might matter.
He used to look at him like that even back then—when they were kids playing in houses too big to fill. On marble floors, in echoing hallways lined with glass and rules, Hanbin would find him. Sit beside him without a word. Look at him like he was something real in a world made of glass. His mother, kind and soft-spoken, once pressed a snack into Matthew’s hands when no one else remembered he hadn’t eaten. His own parents hadn’t come that day—father locked in the lab and mother writing in code, working on 'ideas that would change the world one day'. Hanbin watched him like he understood. Not with awe, not with softness, but with something fiercer. Like no matter how loud the world got, he would always listen to him first.
Matthew scrubs a hand over his face.
He shouldn’t have gone to the room with him.
He should’ve walked out.
He should’ve asked—why now? Why me? Why are we kissing, why are we not stopping?
But he didn’t.
Because something in Hanbin had made him stay. And now it’s tearing him apart.
He stares at the comm on the bedside table. Still off. Still cold.
He almost reaches for it.
Almost.
Instead, he mutters, “I hope I never see you again,” and lies back on the bed like the words don’t shake at the end.
He closes his eyes.
And it’s there.
A flicker, uninvited—sharp as glass, soft as skin. A tremor in his fingertips. A warm breath on his cheek.
Hanbin was thirteen. Late summer. The hill behind the house, the one with the half-dead tree that no one was supposed to climb. Matthew had dared him anyway. Hanbin always took the dare.
They were laughing. Out of breath. Dirt and bark under their nails. They'd climbed so high.
He doesn’t remember why he leaned in. Doesn’t remember who moved first.
Just the press of lips—quick, awkward, warm. Not even a real kiss. Just contact. Like instinct. Like breathing.
Hanbin had pulled back fast, wide-eyed. Smiling. Blushing.
“You’re nice,” he’d said, too soft.
“You’re nicer,” Matthew had shot back.
Then they both ran down the hill like idiots, hearts hammering, pretending it hadn’t happened.
But it had.
And now—
“Fuck you,” Matthew says aloud to the white paint on the ceiling. To no one.
His whole body is a live wire. Tight with need. Heat thrumming under his skin with nowhere to go. His breath hitches once—frustration, memory, something.
He sits back up, stares at his own reflection in the black mirror of the TV screen.
Water still beads along his collarbone. His mouth is dry.
He doesn’t move.
Doesn’t need to.
Because suddenly it’s there again—
Not the kiss on the hill. Not the boy with scraped knees and too-big eyes.
But Hanbin. Now.
Hanbin under him.
His hair fanned across the pillow, a hand curled tight in the sheets, the other gripping Matthew’s shoulder like it hurts to let go.
His mouth parted. Wet. Breath catching on every thrust.
The way he’d looked up at Matthew—fucking looked—like he knew him. Like he’d always known him.
Silent. Aching. Shaking apart without a single word. Pleasure breaking his beautiful face.
And the sound—fuck. That sound he made when Matthew whispered something filthy against his throat, when their hips met hard enough to bruise, when Hanbin arched into him like he wanted him to crawl inside.
That broken little moan, soft and strangled. A surprised inhale, pitched high, cut off at the end.
Like he was trying to keep it in.
Like letting Matthew hear it would make it real.
He came under him. His whole body was trembling.
Like he'd been holding it in for years.
Matthew grits his teeth so hard his jaw pops.
“Fuck,” he mutters, voice low and guttural.
The image won’t go. It pulses behind his eyes. Warm skin, flushed cheeks, the burn of heat where their hands had locked together. That unbearable intimacy—not just physical, not just sex. Like it meant something. Like it had always meant something.
And then Hanbin had gotten dressed in the dark.
And left before the bed got cold.
Like Matthew wouldn’t still be replaying it, right fucking now.
He fists the towel, dragging it off like it’s too much weight to carry. His skin prickles with leftover steam, flushed from memory and fury both.
“Stupid. Stupid. Fucking stupid.”
He gets up so fast his head gets light. Doesn’t care. Crosses the room and yanks his clothes out of the duffel on the chair like they’ve personally wronged him.
His shirt is inside out. Doesn’t fix it.
Shoves his arms through, muttering, “Get over it. Get the fuck over it.”
His mind’s still spinning. His jaw clenched so tight it clicks again.
“You think I’m in control when you look at the camera like that?”
Echo.
That fucking voice again.
He thinks about the way Echo had said “beautiful trouble” with a dangerous tone.
Like he thought about it. Mulled it over. And still chose to say it aloud.
He reaches for the comm. Stops. His hand hovers.
“Don’t. Don’t be that guy. He doesn’t want to talk to you. Not really. Not about that.”
Last time he’d called outside of ops, Echo had taken too long to pick up. Had spoken too gently. Too careful. Like Matthew might break. Or like he has actual life apart from keeping an eye on a hitman with red all over his documents.
Like he already knew he’d say it. Like he'd already knew he fucked his date.
“I think I’m in love with you.”
Matthew slaps himself across the face. Hard and sharp.
It stings. Good.
“Get a grip.”
He doesn’t want to hear silence. Doesn’t want to hear pity. Doesn’t want Echo to say something careful again, or worse—say nothing at all.
He grabs his holster and turns toward the door—
Buzz.
His phone lights up on the nightstand. Not the comm. His personal phone.
He freezes.
The screen glows:
UNKNOWN NUMBER
If you want answers, come…
His heart stutters. Once. Then again.
He opens the message.
No name. Just coordinates, a time, a room number. And one word at the end:
Tonight.
➳➳➳♡
The streets are wet with recent rain, slick under his boots as he rounds the corner.
The hotel is nothing special—mid-tier, anonymous, like a dozen others he’s checked into with a burner name and bloody knuckles. But the coordinates were exact. The timing perfect.
No signature. No codename. Just the echo of something familiar. Just the promise of answers.
His heart hasn’t stopped pounding since he read it.
By the time he reaches the elevator, he’s sweating despite the cold. The ride up is silent. He checks his sidearm twice. The hallway blurs. He counts the doors out loud to keep his breath even.
Room 714.
He hesitates.
Because if it’s Echo…
If it’s really Echo—
Then he doesn’t know who he’ll be when he walks back out.
He waits just outside the door. One step back from the threshold, where the carpet frays against the tile. The silence hums.
He tells himself to breathe. That it could be a trap. A setup.
But something in his chest won’t settle. Something that feels like a countdown.
He stares at the number on the door until it blurs.
Lifts his hand.
Lowers it.
Then, finally, swipes the card.
The door clicks shut behind him.
Matthew’s hand hovers near the gun at his hip, not because he plans to use it—but because everything in his body is screaming to be ready.
The lights are low. No ambush. No trap. Just one person sitting on the bed in the middle of the room, elbows on his knees, head bowed.
Not Echo.
Hanbin.
His head lifts slowly when Matthew steps in. Eyes locked. No mask. No apology.
The air pulls tight between them like a held breath.
“You,” Matthew says, and it’s not a question. Not quite an accusation either. Just a tremor.
Hanbin straightens. His expression flickers—something like relief, quickly strangled by tension.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he says, voice flat.
Matthew huffs, sharp. “You texted me.”
Hanbin stands, slowly. “I need to talk.”
Matthew’s gaze rakes the room—clean, quiet, hotel-standard. One bed. No cameras, no comm feeds.
“You picked a hell of a setting.”
Hanbin doesn’t answer. His hands flex at his sides.
Matthew steps closer. “So?” he says. “Talk.”
Hanbin opens his mouth. Shuts it.
He was going to say something. Matthew sees it—the hesitation, the half-step forward. The way his lips twitch like the truth is pushing to be let out.
But then something shifts. A flicker of hurt. Anger. Shame, maybe. All layered so tightly Matthew can’t tell which one cracks first.
“You really don’t recognize me, do you?” Hanbin says suddenly, low.
Matthew flinches like it was thrown at him. “What?”
Hanbin stands up and takes a step forward, something brittle behind his voice now. “You were there with me. At the gala. At the hotel. And you didn’t—” He breaks off. His jaw clenches. His expression changes suddenly. “You said shit I’ll never forget, and you said it like I was nobody.”
Matthew blinks. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You called me pathetic,” Hanbin snaps, voice higher, ears redder. “Said I was easy.”
The words land like slaps. Matthew opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He doesn’t remember saying that. Doesn’t want to remember if he did.
“That night,” Hanbin continues, voice rising, “you looked at me like you knew me. Like maybe it wasn’t— And you—” He cuts himself off again, hands flailing, sharp with rage. “And you said that.”
The silence swells.
Matthew’s breathing hard now, even though he hasn’t moved.
“You sent me that message,” he says, low, cold. “To yell at me for being rough in bed?”
“No!” Hanbin’s voice cracks on the word, too loud. “I didn’t—I—” He scrubs both hands over his face. “I wanted to tell you. About everything. I was going to. But then you said that and I—fuck, Matthew, I couldn’t—”
Matthew’s eyes narrow. “You think I owe you softness? You don't know me anymore, you stopped knowing me thirteen years ago.”
“You think this is easy for me?” Hanbin shoots back. “You think I don’t wake up every goddamn day thinking about it?”
Hanbin doesn’t answer. Matthew does not know which leaving he means.
But Hanbin just stands there, breathing hard, mouth half-open like the silence is physically choking him.
Matthew shakes his head, laughing again, uglier this time. “That’s what I thought.”
“I didn’t leave because I wanted to,” Hanbin spits. “I left because I had to.”
“That’s convenient,” Matthew snaps. “You always had to, didn’t you? When it got hard, when it got real, when I—” He stops himself. Too close to saying it.
When I needed you.
Hanbin steps forward. “You think I wasn’t real? You think I didn’t mean every fucking second of it?”
“You meant it so much you ran.”
“I stayed as long as I could,” Hanbin growls. “Longer than I should’ve. And it nearly killed me.”
“Oh, poor you.”
“You don’t know anything, Matthew.”
“I know enough.”
Hanbin’s eyes flash. “No, you know what you want to know. You remember me how it hurts best. You rewrite it so I’m the villain and you’re just collateral. That way, you don’t have to look at yourself.”
That lands. Too deep. Suddenly, the option that Hanbin might be right makes Matthew see red. His jaw clenches. “Go fuck yourself.”
“Already did,” Hanbin throws back, “with your voice still in my head.”
Matthew recoils like he’s been slapped.
“Yeah,” Hanbin breathes, stepping in close, too close. “I remember everything you said. Every fucking insult you whispered like I wasn’t even a person.”
“I was angry—”
“You meant it.”
Matthew doesn’t deny it. Hanbin's mouth twitches, jaw tight, eyes dark.
“Yeah,” he says finally, voice like gravel. “So what if I did?”
Hanbin's face falters.
Matthew steps in, slow, deliberate. “Yeah, maybe I did mean it. Because you're the problem. Because when I see you, then I have to feel it. All of it. The way you left. The fire. The blood. Them.” His voice shakes now, barely audible. “The life leaving my parents' eyes.”
“I didn’t—”
“But you were there.”
“I didn’t pull the trigger, Matthew.”
“But you stood there.”
Hanbin swallows hard. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
“I was thirteen! You think it was that simple?” Hanbin snaps, his hands flying. “You think I wanted any of that? That I didn’t—” He stops himself, voice cracking.
Matthew breathes in sharply. “You could’ve warned them.”
“I didn't know.”
“You could’ve left with me.”
“I wanted to.” It slips out like it hurts. “God, I wanted to. I begged them—”
“Don’t,” Matthew cuts in, voice cold. “Don’t stand there and say you cared when you left me in that burning house with my executed parents and a fucking memory.”
Hanbin’s face twists—something between grief and fury.
“I didn’t leave you,” he says, trembling. “I never left you. They took everything. I held onto you any way I could.”
“Yeah?” Matthew spits. “And how did you do that? Any secret notes I didn't find? Charity dates? Orders and coordinates through an anonymous number? You think that’s care?”
“I think it was survival.”
They’re close now. Too close.
Matthew’s heart is pounding. His body aches—not just from rage, but from want. From the sick heat of remembering Hanbin’s mouth, Hanbin’s hands, Hanbin’s silence.
From the pain that is simply too much.
He can still feel it—Hanbin’s fingers curling in his jacket, the crush of lips against his, the heat blooming in a corner of that glittering hell where everything was lies except that. It haunts him more than the silence that came after. Maybe that’s the worst part. That in the middle of all that blood and glass and pretending, Hanbin meant it. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe Matthew just needed it to mean something. He swallows hard, rage scraping against something raw and desperate in his chest.
“Right,” Matthew snaps. “Survival. Nice word. And fucking me at the gala—what was that? Sympathy? A care package by the Sung family?”
“Was that all the gala was for you?” Hanbin asks, voice low but edged. “A convenient fuck?”
Matthew’s eyes flicker. “I didn’t know they’d send you. You did know they'd send me.”
Hanbin doesn’t react to that. Doesn’t even blink. He’s staring past Matthew now, like if he looks directly at him, he might say too much.
Matthew's jaw ticks. His arms stay crossed, like he’s holding himself still on purpose.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Hanbin says flatly. “The way you looked at me. The way you—”
He stops. Breathes in through his nose. Too calm for the occasion.
“Forget it.”
Matthew’s stomach twists. Because he can’t.
He won't.
Because it comes back too fast, too sharp—
The way Hanbin's lips parted when Matthew had looked up at him. His eyes were glassy and dark, breath catching just before Matthew kissed him like he’d been waiting to do it for years. Like Hanbin was waiting for it, too.
The way Hanbin’s fingers had curled into his shoulder, not to push him away—but to stay. To pull closer.
The sound he made—barely a sound at all—when his fingers got stuck in Matthew's hair, when Matthew's hips drove into him hard.
It hadn’t been a tactic. It hadn’t been clean.
It had been real—so fucking real it made his teeth hurt.
Matthew swallows, jaw clenched, guilt dragging nails across his ribs.
“You gonna say I forced you now?” he asks, sharper than he means to. “That you didn’t want it?”
Hanbin looks at him. Calm. But his eyes are red around the edges.
“You know I wanted it.”
The words hang there, stripped of pretense. No emotion in them, save for self-deprecation.
Matthew swallows. Because yeah, he did. He wanted it. He knows.
“I’m just trying to figure out what part of it meant something to you,” Hanbin adds, quietly. "Because I’m still picking pieces of it out of my goddamn chest.”
Matthew shakes his head, heat rising behind his eyes. “Then why didn’t you say anything that night? If it messed you up so bad, why didn’t you say it then?”
“I didn’t know how,” Hanbin snaps. “Fuck, Matthew, do you hear yourself?”
“You let it happen.”
“So did you! We both fucked!”
That stuns the room into silence. They stand there, breathing hard, fury and longing simmering in equal measure. Or at least Matthew now knows how to name the dull ache.
Hanbin exhales, voice hoarse. “You looked at me like you hated me. But you still touched me like you didn’t want to stop.”
Matthew's mouth opens, then shuts. He has no rebuttal for that—because it’s true. It is fucking true. He remembers calling him "mine" and meaning it in all the ways possible. And he remembers calling him a slut. Or something like that.
"Do you regret it?" Hanbin asks then, voice cracking.
Matthew blinks at him, stupidly. The question lands somewhere behind his ribs—too fast, too hard. He shakes his head before he can think. Then nods. Then shrugs.
Like maybe all the answers are true. Like maybe he can't lie.
Hanbin scoffs. A small, bitter sound. It scrapes like sandpaper.
“You can kill on command, but not admit you wanted me?”
Matthew’s jaw tenses. “It’s not that simple.”
Hanbin steps forward, voice still so fucking calm. “It is that simple.”
His ears are filled with static. And Hanbin stands there, his hands are fists now, shaking slightly at his sides. But his voice. Fuck, his voice is calm.
“You fucked me like you missed me. You kissed me like you knew me. But now you stand here like it never mattered.”
“It did matter—”
“Then say it.”
Matthew looks at him.
And says nothing.
Hanbin exhales, sharp and shattered. “Right. That’s what I thought.”
Matthew wants to react. He really does. But all he can muster is a half-shake, like he wants to hide. His head feels empty and too full at the same time, thoughts swimming around like this situation does not concern them.
Hanbin’s eyes flicker once—searching Matthew’s face, just for a second. Like he’s still hoping. Still waiting for something that might redeem this wreck.
But Matthew doesn’t move. And he stays silent.
So Hanbin lets out a breath. Small. Shaky.
And he turns.
Just turns away. Shoulders drawn in, arms tight at his sides like he’s holding himself together by the thinnest thread.
“I shouldn’t have called you,” he mutters.
He’s looking at Hanbin’s back. The space between them yawns like a cliff edge—quiet, vast, and one step from ruin.
All Matthew would have to do is cross it.
Say his name. Reach out. Let his fingers graze the black hoodie and say something real.
But his mouth stays shut.
His arms stay frozen.
His heartbeat is a war drum pounding against bone, screaming go—but his body refuses.
He’s braved ambushes. Bombs. Blackouts.
But this—this is worse.
Because what would he even say? That he misses the boy who used to fall asleep beside him, sunburned and safe? That seeing him now feels like being handed both a lifeline and a blade? That he’s in love with the one voice he trusts, and Hanbin picked the worst fucking time to come back to his life and become real again? That he has been in love with him for thirteen years, maybe more?
That the night after the gala opened something inside him he thought had burned to ash the day his parents died?
Or that it’s all of it. Every word. Every goddamn beat.
All at once.
Hanbin interrupts his thoughts.
“I wanted to feel you,” he says, quieter now. “Even if it hurt. And it fucking hurts.”
Matthew swallows hard. His voice is low, tight. “I wasn’t pretending.”
Hanbin’s gaze snaps to his. There’s disbelief there—anger, too. “Then what the hell was that?”
Matthew exhales sharply, pressure building under his skin. “A mistake,” he snaps, too fast. Regret is instant. It floods his chest before the word is even fully out.
Hanbin jerks back—just a small shift, but Matthew sees it. Feels it like a fucking blade.
“No—wait. Fuck.” His voice cracks. “That’s not what I meant.”
But Hanbin’s face already breaks, and he looks away, jaw clenched.
Matthew’s heart is racing. “I didn’t plan it, okay? I didn’t go there thinking I’d—” He swallows. “But when I saw you, I...”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t know how.
Hanbin turns away again. He’s quiet now. And it’s somehow worse than yelling.
And Matthew—who’s always had words for missions, for death, for damage—has none for this.
Except maybe—
“It mattered to me,” he says, barely audible.
Hanbin’s back stiffens.
Matthew’s breath shakes. “And I meant it.”
Matthew takes a breath that shudders all the way down.
“I keep thinking about you. Every day for thirteen years,” he says, and it hurts. It sounds like it hurts, too. “You’re the enemy. You're my best friend. You're gone, but here. And I can’t stop. I keep seeing you. Hearing you. I can't—”
He breaks off. The words feel too big in his mouth.
Hanbin’s jaw tightens. His voice is so quiet it almost vanishes.
“You think I don’t?”
Matthew looks up, startled.
Hanbin’s still not facing him fully. “You think I don’t stay up some nights, wishing it had been different? Wishing I’d said something sooner?”
A pause. The air thins.
“I should’ve told you everything right there. But we were slipping from the very first moment and I thought…”
He drags a hand through his hair. “If all I could have was that night, I’d take it. I just wanted to feel you. Even if it broke me. I'm selfish that way.”
Matthew’s lips part. His throat burns.
“I wanted you too,” he says. “That night. I still do.”
Hanbin turns to him now, eyes shining with fury and longing both.
“Then do something about it.”
And just like that, the floor drops.
Something twists under Matthew’s ribs. Snaps.
His next breath is ragged. He moves before he thinks—one step forward, two—
Their mouths crash together.
Teeth, lips, fire. It’s not a kiss—it’s a collision. A break in the dam. A desperate, violent answer to the silence neither of them could survive.
Matthew fists Hanbin’s hoodie and slams him into the wall.
Hanbin gasps, low and wrecked, like he’s been waiting for this.
He doesn’t hesitate—grabs Matthew by the collar and yanks him in harder, biting at his lower lip like he wants to tear him open. Their teeth click. Their noses mash. It’s brutal. Filthy. Perfect.
They kiss like they’re trying to punish each other for wanting it so badly.
Matthew can’t think. Can’t breathe. All he knows is Hanbin’s mouth on his, hungry and hot, the taste of him like a memory dragged back from the dead. Like something Matthew thought he’d buried.
But it’s still here. He’s still here. Alive, real, right fucking in front of him.
And it hurts.
It hurts how good it is. How much he missed this—missed him. Not just the body, the heat, the mouth. But him.
Matthew’s tongue licks into his mouth—hot, unforgiving. Hanbin moans against him, opens wider, chases it like he’s never going to get enough. One of Matthew’s hands snakes up into his hair, the other drags down his back and claws at his waist, desperate for something to hold on to.
He wants to bite. Mark. Take.
He wants to crawl inside the ache and never come out.
Hanbin fists the front of Matthew’s shirt, grinding up into him like he’s starving.
Their mouths part and crash again, again—wet and unrelenting. Matthew licks into the corner of Hanbin’s mouth, then sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, deliciously plump, bites hard enough to bruise.
He’s not thinking clearly. Doesn’t care.
Just wants more. More of Hanbin, the only thing that ever made sense. More of this.
Matthew shoves his thigh between Hanbin’s legs, grinding up with ruthless force. And Hanbin gasps against his lips.
“You like this?” he snarls into his mouth. “So fucking desperate for me?”
Hanbin groans—bit-off, involuntary—and grabs his hand, slamming it between their bodies.
“See for yourself.”
Matthew does. Pushes his hand into Hanbin’s pants without ceremony. Wraps his fingers around him through the fabric of his underpants, palm flat, pressure cruel. Hanbin shudders and bites his shoulder so hard he’ll leave marks.
“Fuck,” Matthew mutters. “You’re soaked.”
“I’ve been hard since you walked in.”
It shouldn’t turn him on more, but it does—Matthew’s head spins with it. Lust like poison, thick and choking.
They stumble toward the bed, tearing at each other’s clothes. Buttons fly. Seams rip. Hanbin laughs—low, breathless, something cracked in it—when Matthew bites down on his chest, teeth grazing his nipple.
“Still angry?”
Matthew growls, “You want gentle, you called the wrong guy.”
“I didn’t,” Hanbin gasps, dragging him down. “I called you.”
They hit the mattress with a thud, mouths still locked, Hanbin already writhing beneath him—thighs spread, hips bucking, mouth open like he wants to be ruined.
Matthew pins him by the wrists, grinds down until Hanbin gasps a tiny 'ah', then shifts to suck a bruise into the soft spot under his jaw.
Hanbin curses, his hands grasping at Matthew's. “Take it off—fuck, take it off—”
Matthew yanks his briefs down, drags his tongue down Hanbin's stomach like he wants to taste the way Hanbin arches. Then he’s flipping him over, dragging him to the edge of the bed, teeth sinking into the back of his neck like punishment.
Hanbin's knees hit the floor with an audible thud. Matthew spreads them.
Hanbin groans. “Do it. I can take it.”
Matthew spits in his hand, lines himself up, and presses in—hard. No teasing. No pause. Just one long, brutal thrust that knocks the breath from both of them.
Hanbin’s body jerks, and he lets out a sound—half-cry, half-moan, all need.
“You take me so fucking well,” Matthew snarls, panting, hips already slamming forward again.
Hanbin gasps into the sheets, knuckles white on the mattress. “Then don’t stop.”
He doesn’t.
Matthew fucks him like a fight. Like revenge. Like grief. Every thrust hits deep and harsh, and Hanbin takes it all, back arching, voice raw. It’s obscene—the way they move, the way it sounds—like everything they’ve never said is being spoken in sweat and skin and bruises.
“Thought you hated me,” Hanbin pants.
“I do,” Matthew grits.
But his hands and lips are everywhere—tight on Hanbin’s hips, sliding up his chest, kissing his throat on the pulse point, just enough to feel the tremble. Just enough to say I know where you’re soft, and I still want you.
“Then fuck me like you mean it.”
Matthew obeys.
Until Hanbin is trembling under him, muttering his name like it’s a curse and a prayer. Until the pain blooms into pleasure and back again. Until they’re both lost in it—wrecked, wrecking each other.
Then Matthew falters.
Just a second.
The sight of Hanbin—bent over, knees bruised, mouth open in helpless pleasure—punches the breath from his lungs. It’s too much. Too real.
He does not hate him.
He pulls out abruptly, chest heaving.
Hanbin whines at the emptiness—wrecked and desperate—but before he can protest, Matthew’s already dragging him up.
“Get up,” Matthew breathes, voice ragged and shaking. “I want to see you.”
Hanbin is pliant in his hands, dizzy with lust. Matthew hauls him up from the floor like he weighs nothing, one arm around his waist, the other on the back of his neck. They stumble, mouths crashing again—sloppy, wild—as Matthew backs them up toward the center of the bed.
Hanbin lets himself be thrown down again. Bare, hard and panting, limbs loose and trembling.
Matthew climbs over him—eyes dark, jaw tight, hunger written in every line of his body. And Hanbin's eyes are glassy and full of lust. His hands reach for him, hold him close.
Matthew hooks Hanbin’s legs around his waist, and Hanbin pulls them higher, locking them by the ankles. Matthew positions himself again, watches Hanbin's mouth fall open.
No words this time.
Hanbin gasps when Matthew thrusts into him, all at once—no warning, no mercy. His spine bows off the bed, head tipped back on the pillow, mouth open in a shattered moan. His legs wrap tighter around Matthew’s waist, heels digging in like he can’t stand the idea of being empty again.
His nails rake down Matthew’s back, scratching deep enough to leave angry lines. Matthew hisses, then groans—low and guttural—head dropping as he rocks into him again, harder this time.
Wet sounds echo in the room—skin slapping, panting, the obscene drag of bodies slick with sweat. Every time Matthew thrusts in, Hanbin lets out a breathy, high-pitched gasp, his hands scrambling over Matthew’s shoulders, his chest, his throat like he doesn’t know where to hold on.
“Ah fuck, ” Matthew grunts, voice wrecked, hips slamming forward again, driven by the tight clutch around him and the way Hanbin sobs with every deep push. His cock twitches inside him at the sound.
Hanbin turns his head, panting into the pillow, flushed and fucked-out and trembling. “That all you’ve got?”
Matthew snarls, grabs a fistful of his hair, and yanks his head back so their mouths are a breath apart. “You want more?”
Hanbin nods, wild-eyed, lips parted and wet. “Yes. Yes, fuck—”
So Matthew gives it to him.
He adjusts their angle just slightly—hooks one of Hanbin’s thighs up over his shoulder, opens him wider—and starts to thrust again. Relentless. Deep. The bed jerks with every slam of his hips. The headboard thuds in rhythm against the wall, loud and steady.
Hanbin cries out, nails digging into Matthew’s arms now, barely able to hold himself together.
Matthew leans over him, bracing one hand beside Hanbin’s head, the other gripping his hip so hard it’ll bruise. Their chests brush, sweat-slick. Their mouths hover close.
“You like getting wrecked, huh?” Matthew pants, voice dark, teasing, half-possessed.
Hanbin’s laugh comes out broken, hitched with breath. “Only by you.”
He is not sure if he registers the words, but they tickle him along his spine as he growls and bites down on his shoulder—just enough to bruise, to make Hanbin jolt and gasp, to claim him.
They move in frantic rhythm, eyes locked now, mouths brushing but never quite kissing—both of them too far gone. Every thrust lands harder than the last. Hanbin’s head tips back again as he lets out a moan that sounds almost like a sob, body shuddering beneath Matthew’s.
When—
"Shit, fuck, Matthew, wait, wait—" Hanbin whines suddenly, his body locking, his fingers digging painfully into Matthew's tricep.
Matthew freezes like he’s been shot. His hands cup Hanbin’s waist, gentler now, his voice sounds as panicked as he feels. “Did I hurt you?”
Hanbin bursts out laughing—breathy, high, real laughter, muffled against Matthew’s shoulder. “No, no—I’m fine—fuck,” he gasps, clutching his side and Matthew's arm. “Just—cramp. That's embarrassing—Fuck, I cramped. My whole leg just seized up.”
Matthew stares, dumbstruck for a beat. Then exhales hard, his forehead thunking against Hanbin’s chest. “You scared the living fuck out of me.”
“I felt like I was dying,” Hanbin wheezes, still laughing. “Just not in the sexy way.”
Matthew groans. “OK. Fuck.”
“Help me stretch?” Hanbin says between giggles, nudging Matthew’s shoulder with his palms. “Or at least hold still while I reset my stupid leg.”
Matthew huffs—but there’s a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth now. This moment feels unreal on so many levels. But his hands settle carefully on Hanbin’s hips, grounding him. “Take your time,” he murmurs. “Not going anywhere.”
Hanbin smiles down at him, eyes still glassy. “Good.”
Matthew waits and watches, not quite registering how their conversation tickles him behind the ribs now. Hanbin's cheeks are flushed, still catching his breath, as he stretches his leg out slowly, rotating his ankle with a wince.
Matthew’s fingers skim over the outside of his thigh, tracing lazy circles into the muscle. It takes almost all of his self-control not to move, so he helps him slowly rest the leg on the bed. Hanbin exhales, and he feels his mouth stretch in a grin. “You’re quite hot when you cramp mid-fuck.”
Hanbin laughs again—less breathy this time, more present. Then his gaze lowers, eyes darkening just a little. His hips shift, slow and testing, a tease.
“Think I’m ready,” he murmurs, voice turning molten. “Unless you plan to massage every muscle back to life first.”
Matthew groans, hands tightening at his waist. “Tempting.”
Hanbin leans in, brushing his lips over Matthew’s without quite kissing him. “Shut up and let me ride you.”
The words hit Matthew like a thunderbolt. His hands clamp around Hanbin’s waist, possessive, reverent—like he could mold him out of want alone. His gaze darkens, pupils blown wide as he exhales.
Hanbin throws the other leg over him and climbs on top, knees bracketing Matthew’s hips. He sinks down with a ragged moan, head falling back, one hand braced on Matthew’s chest, the other gripping his thigh for balance. He starts to ride him—steady and polished turning desperate fast. Like the only way to stay alive is to fuck this out of his system.
Matthew can’t breathe. Can’t look away.
Hanbin moves like sin and salvation—hips rolling with frantic grace, mouth open in something between a sob and a gasp. Sweat slicks his throat, his chest, drips from his jaw. His skin is flushed, glowing. His lashes flutter. His hair sticks to his temple, messy and perfect.
He’s beautiful. He’s fucking exquisite. He's here and he's real and he's all his.
Matthew swallows hard, the heat in his gut twisting tighter with every bounce of Hanbin’s hips, every shattered sound he makes when he sinks too deep.
“You look—” His voice cracks. “Fucking unreal.”
Hanbin opens his eyes—wet, dark, blazing with heat—and whines, “And you feel fucking unreal.”
Matthew’s hands fly to his waist and he slams up into him, snapping his hips with brutal force.
Hanbin cries out, body jolting, nails clawing across Matthew’s chest. He says something, but Matthew does not catch it.
Their rhythm is chaos. Loud. Uncontrolled. Skin on skin, breath on breath, the slap and drag of bodies and the wrecked chorus of gasps, moans, and half-choked curses. Hanbin’s thighs tremble around Matthew’s hips. His voice is wrecked now—raw and breathless with every bounce, every collision, every stretch.
He’s close. He's losing it.
Matthew sees it—his rhythm starting to break, balance slipping, head swimming. Hanbin’s eyes flutter closed, and he sways forward, mouth open, shivering from the inside out.
Matthew sits up fast, wraps an arm around his back, and pulls him to his chest.
“C’mere,” he says, almost tender, catching Hanbin’s gasp in his mouth as he kisses him—rough, messy, wet. Then he flips them—rolls Hanbin's body beneath him in one breathless motion, forces Hanbin’s thighs open, and slams back in.
Hanbin whines as he falls into the pillow face-first. It's filthy and comes from his very soul. It rips out, high and cracked, his chest slamming into the mattress as Matthew drives into him from behind—deep and mean. His arms look for purchase and find it in the pillows. Matthew watches as his knuckles turn white while he pulls Hanbin's hips up. His legs tremble, spread wide, body arching at a painful angle. He’s already shaking again, muscles locking and releasing in frantic pulses.
Matthew grips the back of his head, curls a fist in his hair, and pulls—hard—wrenching Hanbin’s face to the side so he can see him.
His lips are red and ruined. Eyes wild and glassy, fluttering. His throat is marked with teeth and his mouth is open in soundless pleasure.
God, he’s beautiful like this.
Matthew leans down, breath fanning across his jaw. “You close, Hanbin?” he grits. “You want me to make you come?”
Hanbin whimpers, nods frantically.
“Say it,” Matthew demands, fisting his cock now, matching his thrusts. It twitches in his palm, wet and hot and impossibly hard.
Hanbin gasps, legs locking. “Yes—fuck—yes, Matthew—please—”
The sound of his name like that—wrecked, desperate—slams into Matthew’s spine like a punch.
Hanbin’s whole body seizes. His spine arches, throat stretched bare, head thrown back in Matthew’s grip. He comes with a broken, keening moan—loud and devastating—spilling hot and messy across Matthew's hand and the sheets. His thighs twitch. His hips buck up and then again, fucking himself on Matthew. His voice is raw, saying nothing and everything.
“Matthew—Matthew—oh my God—ah, Matthew—”
The sound guts him.
Matthew slams in once, twice more and loses it—coming hard, hips grinding deep, breath tearing out of him in a harsh, shattered groan. He presses his mouth to Hanbin’s shoulder as he spills inside him, body convulsing, fingers digging deep like he doesn’t ever want to let go.
They collapse together.
A heap of limbs and sweat and breathless silence. The bed creaks beneath them with finality. The air smells like sex, like salt, like heat. Matthew is dizzy with it—still inside him, still clutching too hard, still not ready to let the world come back.
Hanbin twitches under him. Boneless. Gone. His chest stutters with aftershocks. His mouth moves like he wants to say something—but no sound comes.
Matthew stays there, forehead against the nape of his neck, listening to the echo of his own heartbeat in his ears. Feeling the ache crawl through his body like punishment and prayer.
There’s so much he still doesn’t know how to say. But this might be all they can ever get. And Hanbin took it. All of it.
Every thrust. Every breath. Every broken piece of him.
Pleasure, punishment, and the echo of past and present colliding into a few minutes when the universe stopped around them.
But the universe never actually stopped.
They lie tangled in the wreckage of the bed, breath still ragged, silence heavy between them. The room smells like sex and something that might almost be grief.
Matthew's chest heaves against Hanbin's back. His hand is still resting low on Hanbin’s hip, loose now.
Then—
Hanbin reaches.
It’s small. Almost hesitant. One hand finds Matthew’s, still sticky with sweat and come, and pulls it up—slowly, deliberately—until Matthew’s arm is wrapped around his chest.
Then the other.
Hanbin knots their fingers together. Holds them there.
Like a cage. Like a plea.
Matthew doesn't breathe.
His own heartbeat is deafening. He doesn’t dare shift. Doesn’t speak.
Because Hanbin is trembling.
Not visibly—but Matthew feels it. Tiny tremors, like something inside him is cracking, slowly, silently.
Matthew tightens his hold. Just a little. Presses a kiss to the back of Hanbin’s neck without thinking.
He doesn’t say stay.
He doesn’t say I’m sorry.
He doesn’t say please.
But something in him aches with it.
Matthew doesn’t mean to fall asleep.
But Hanbin was always safe. He was always happiness and joy, and the sweet scent of spring going into summer, and his best friend, and always something more.
And Hanbin is warm in his arms. Quiet. Still trembling slightly, but no longer running. And Matthew, wrecked in every possible way—body spent, heart shredded—lets himself drift.
Just for a second.
Just until the noise in his head quiets.
The last thing he feels is Hanbin’s fingers curled tight through his own.
The sound is small.
Click.
Soft as breath.
But it shatters him immediately.
Matthew jerks awake, heart pounding. The sheets are warm where Hanbin should be. Still warm where Matthew’s arms had wrapped him close.
He blinks into the dark. Stares at the door.
The hallway light spilling from underneath it flickers once before going still.
Gone.
He’s gone.
Matthew sits up too fast. The ache in his limbs, in his spine, in his chest—he ignores it. His hands are still curled at his chest like they’re holding someone.
Still waiting for a body that isn’t there.
He presses both palms to his face. Drags them down slowly.
Breathes in, fast. Breathes out, shaking.
“Fuck,” he says. It comes out broken.
The room smells like him. Like them. It feels like being haunted.
He doesn’t move.
He just sits there, naked in the dim light, grief crawling up his throat like a choking fist.
Hanbin left.
No note. No call. No confession. No goodbye.
Just that soft click.
Just silence.
Just absence.
And Matthew—ruined, aching, undone—lets it swallow him whole for two excruciating seconds
He’s out of bed as the third heartbeat wrecks his ribcage.
No thinking. No pause. Just movement.
He grabs his clothes from the floor—half-buttoned, backwards, doesn’t care—and stumbles into his shoes like they’re anchors, like they’ll stop him from falling apart.
The hallway is empty.
The elevator blinks at him like it knows something he doesn’t. He takes the stairs instead, two or three at a time, barely breathing. The ache in his thighs from the night claws at him, but he doesn’t slow down.
Out onto the street.
Cool air slaps him in the face. It’s still dark—early, pre-dawn—but not quiet. A delivery truck groans by. Someone smokes at a bus stop. The city doesn’t care that his world just split open and bled.
He scans every face, every corner.
Nothing.
A cigarette stub on the pavement. A door swinging shut. A flash of dark hair that might be Hanbin—until it isn’t.
He runs down the block anyway. Turns the corner. Checks the alley. Circles back.
Gone.
Gone like he was never there.
The memory hits like a brick: Hanbin’s hands grasping his. The weight of him. The heat. The fucking kissing. That trembling silence between the last breath and the click of the door.
Matthew leans against a streetlamp, throat tight, heart ricocheting inside his ribs.
He swallows hard. Wipes his face with one hand, even though he’s not crying.
“I wasn’t pretending,” he mutters to himself.
His voice sounds small.
He looks back at the hotel.
Wonders if maybe he imagined all of it.
Then he touches his lips. Looks at his hand. It's clammy, dried sweat and maybe cum on the back of his palm.
It’s real.
It was real.
And Hanbin still left.
Matthew breathes in through his nose. Exhales hard.
Then he walks. Fast. Like he can outrun the fucking ache. Like maybe, if he moves fast enough, he won’t start shaking.
He doesn’t look back again.
He hails a cab with a hand that won’t stop trembling.
The driver doesn’t ask questions. Just nods and takes him in like any other sad-eyed passenger before dawn. Matthew gives his address in a voice that barely registers above a whisper. Sinks into the back seat.
The city moves around him, glassy and indifferent.
His head tips against the window. It’s still warm where Hanbin’s mouth had been on his neck. Still sore in places he doesn't let anyone touch.
He closes his eyes.
The taxi smells like stale coffee and vinyl seats, nothing like Hanbin. His stomach twists.
By the time the cab pulls up outside his place, the sun is starting to rise—but the light doesn’t reach him. Not really.
He pays without thinking. Nods his thanks. Climbs the stairs like underwater.
Inside, the apartment is too quiet. Still messy from the last time he stormed out.
He drops his keys. Kicks his shoes off. Doesn’t bother with the lights. If somebody wanted to ambush him, this would be the best time. He stumbles into the bedroom, falls face down onto the mattress like his body gave out.
Shaking.
Breathing too fast.
Not crying. He wishes he could. But the tears won’t come.
He’s wrung dry.
God knows he’s cried too much in this life already. For his parents. For the betrayal. For the boy he kissed under a half-dead tree thirteen summers ago. For the man who left him, twice now, without a single answer.
He curls in on himself. Clutches the edge of the blanket like it might anchor him.
Hanbin’s gone.
And the worst part is—Matthew isn’t sure if he wants to break something.
Or call him.
But how would he call him? Even that connection is unreal.
He lies there for a few minutes. Or maybe hours.
Every time he closes his eyes, it’s the same: sweat-slick skin, Hanbin’s mouth slack with pleasure, the wrecked sound of his own name echoing in the dark. The click of the door, the impossible emptiness of the hotel room, abandonment in the most vulnerable of moments.
Matthew.
He jolts upright. Chest heaving. Skin hot, throat dry.
Fuck.
He buries his face in his hands and exhales shakily. His body still aches—from the bruises, the sex, the weight of fucking everything.
How did it get like this?
He stands, paces. Closes the door to the bathroom with a bang.
The water is cold by the time he notices.
Matthew doesn’t remember turning the shower on—just that he stumbled in, still sticky, still aching, still trying to scrub the night off his skin. But it won’t come off. Not the bruises on his hips and shoulders and biceps. Not the way Hanbin whispered his name. Not the look in his eyes when he came apart, wrecked and beautiful and real.
It won’t leave him.
He presses his palms to the tile. Hangs his head. Tries to breathe.
But the air is thick. The silence louder than the water.
Hanbin left.
The thought hits hard—like something physical. Like his ribs crack under the weight of it.
He left once, when a house of the Seok family was on fire. Then, he left in the dark, stumbling for his clothes in a hotel room. And now, again, without a word, after an argument and sex that felt like it was mending something.
He walked away when Matthew needed him most. And this time—this time he did it with his body pressed close, with his lips on Matthew’s throat, with his hands all over him like a promise.
And still he left.
Again.
And Matthew let him.
He lets out a broken breath, fists curling against the wall.
He can’t do this. Not again. Not when it already feels like he’s standing on glass. He's not sure how much more he can take.
His thoughts spiral. Jagged, loud.
I’m losing it.
That’s when it happens.
That name.
That anchor.
Echo.
A different voice, bathed in static. A different kind of pain.
The sound of it used to soothe him. That gentle, dry cadence—half-command, half-hope. Sometimes amused. Sometimes quiet. But always there.
Always calm.
“I’ll never let you fall.”
He remembers that line like it saved his life. Maybe it did. In Delhi, in Panama, in Nevada, when he tried to run away from a grenade.
Years. It’s been years. And still—Echo never left. Through blood and fire, through cities burning and safehouses falling—through the commands Matthew cursed and begged for—Echo stayed.
Even when Matthew turned off the line, he’d hear the phantom static in his ear. A ghost that sounded like home.
Even now.
After every stupid thing Matthew said.
He turns the water off. Doesn’t reach for the towel. Just stands there, dripping, shivering, shaking like some stupid deja-vu—because what the fuck does it mean, to be haunted by a voice that never had a face?
To feel safer with a disembodied voice than with the man who just held him like he mattered?
He drags a hand down his face. It comes away wet, but not just from water.
Echo is safer. Echo is steady. Echo didn’t leave.
And Matthew—
Matthew is unraveling. Thread by thread.
He stumbles into the bedroom, wet and naked, grabs the comms off the nightstand like it’s a lifeline.
Because it is.
Because he doesn’t know who the hell he is right now, but he knows one thing: He needs to hear that voice.
Even if it’s not real.
Even if it only makes everything worse.
His voice is hoarse when he says it.
“Hey, Echo.”
Silence.
A long one.
Then a click. A shift in the air, a breath through the line.
He waits. Nothing comes.
And yet—
He feels it. That strange, impossible comfort. A presence that has no body. A voice that’s not speaking—but listening, maybe. Maybe waiting too.
His shoulders sag.
“I just need… ,” he murmurs. “I just… I needed…”
He trails off. What? What did he need? To be heard? To not be alone? To find something that still makes sense?
His fingers tighten around the mic. He waits for Echo's voice, but he stays quiet. Maybe that is kind of a mercy.
“I think I fucked up,” he whispers.
Still no reply.
But it’s enough. It’s always enough.
Just Echo breathing into his ear.
He lies down, curling up on the bed. The world feels heavy. Dim. Quiet in the worst way.
But not empty.
Not with Echo still out there. Somewhere.
Still listening.
His skin feels too tight. His chest won’t loosen. His thoughts are cracked glass—sharp, disjointed, catching on every breath.
He keeps seeing Hanbin. The sweat on his throat. The way he said his name like it meant something.
“I’m not okay,” he says. “I thought I could fake it longer, but—I can’t.”
His voice catches. He closes his eyes.
“I met someone,” he says, softer. “And he made me feel like home. Like I wasn’t a weapon. Like I could be more.”
His throat works around the next words. They hurt coming out.
“And then he left.”
A beat. A bitter laugh.
“But you—you’ve always been here. Echo. No matter how bad it got, no matter how far I fell. You stayed.”
He lets the silence stretch. Then swallows.
“He made me feel like—like I could breathe again. Like I had a body. A home. That I was… I don't know, a person. And then he left. And I don’t know if I should fucking hate him or—” His voice cracks. “Or find him and never let him go again.”
His hand tightens around the mic.
“I thought I could keep it separate in my head,” he says, laughing bitterly. “You and him. But I can’t. You both have so much power over me. You’ve been in my ear for months. Years. Your voice is—” He shuts his eyes. “It’s the only one I trust.”
He drags a hand down his face, voice fraying at the seams.
"But he's… he was… here and he's familiar and I fucking miss him every day ever since I was fucking twelve."
He leans forward, rests his forehead against his fist.
“But you’re more real to me than anyone else,” he says. “And he comes back to my life like this, kisses me back at the gala and abandons me again like—”
A shaky breath.
“You’re the one I trust. The one who stayed. I don’t even know what you look like—but I’d kill for you. I do kill for you. Not for the agency, but for you, for your praise and acknowledgment. And it still feels cleaner than anything I have with him.”
There’s a pause—too long. His voice almost fails him.
“And I know it’s stupid. I know I don’t even know you. And he, I hurt him, I think. I fucked up when I was horny and fucking angry at the same time and I blame him for shit he could not change, but… But I dream about you. And him. And I wake up shaking and hard and fucking guilty. Every time. For months now.”
“I’m losing it,” he breathes. “I know I am. It fucking hurts but I don’t know how to stop.”
His voice falls to a whisper, cracked and raw.
“I know you don't like me saying it but I really think I’m in love with you. And with him. For like, years now. Isn’t that fucked up?”
He means it.
Every word.
He presses his eyes shut. Waits for judgment. For anything.
And then—
“It was never meant to get this far,” Echo says.
Quiet. Calm. Almost kind in its finality.
But the words punch straight through him. Hollow him like a bullet fired from too close. He freezes, but his heart stutters, then hammers like it’s trying to break out. The comm stays warm in his hand.
He ends the call like he’s been burned.
Lets the earpiece fall to the floor.
Sits there, stunned. Alone. Haunted.
His breath catches in his throat. His pulse is a roar.
He stares at the wall. Blank. Empty. Useless.
“Fuck,” he mutters to the white paint on the walls.
To no one.
It doesn’t echo. Nothing does.
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck," he exhales.
He doesn’t feel lighter.
He just feels worse.
➳➳➳♡
The next morning.
Matthew feels like he’s dying.
Not in the dramatic, operatic way—just the quiet, dragging death of no sleep, no answers, and too much skin rubbed raw. His muscles ache in strange places. His back stings where nails caught skin. His throat is dry, and his face is still puffy from crying—something he refuses to admit even happened.
His shirt sticks to his arms and shoulder blades. There's a bruise blooming under his jaw. He probably looks like a living corpse, but he doesn’t check the mirror.
He drags himself to HQ on autopilot. No sleep. No food. No thought. Just the lingering phantom weight of hands on his body and the echo of a voice finally putting him in his place.
I think I’m in love with you.
He doesn't know who he was talking to anymore. The voices of Hanbin and Echo melt into one. He doesn't know who moaned under him, who yelled at him, who calmly said no to his love and closed the door behind him.
The corridors are already humming with motion. People nod to him, step aside, whisper behind his back. He ignores them. He looks like hell, and he doesn’t care. If anyone asks, he’ll say the mission got bloody. Won’t be a lie.
The closer he gets to ops, the worse the pressure in his chest gets. Like something inside him knows. Like the body always knows first.
His skin feels hot. His stomach twists. There’s a ringing in his ears that wasn’t there before and is dangerously close to static.
He pauses outside the glass corridor near Mission Ops—because the world feels tilted sideways suddenly. Like his feet are on the floor but gravity’s pulling him somewhere else.
A door is cracked open—barely—and inside, voices.
He doesn’t mean to listen.
He just—can’t move.
And then:
“You can’t get a reassignment. It’s impossible.”
A voice he knows—clipped, stern. Director Jang. The man who hired him.
“You told me I could pull out if it got too close,” says another voice. Familiar. Soft. Steady in the way that always made Matthew feel safer, even now.
“You promised.”
Matthew’s heart jolts. His breath catches.
Echo.
That’s Echo.
Echo not covered in radio static, but Echo in person.
His feet root to the ground.
“I don’t have time for this,” Director Jang snaps. “First you have to have him, now you have to drop him—what the fuck do you want?”
“I’m compromised.”
His voice is calming and shattering at the same time.
“The asset doesn’t benefit from having me in his ear anymore.”
There’s a pause.
A short, stunned silence.
Matthew’s head spins. He calls him an asset. His voice is as calm as it is when they exchange qibs and flirty one-liners and when he sics him on a target.
“You mean your pet hitman?” Director says with a short laugh. “He only listens to you. You’re not going anywhere.”
"I am.”
Echo’s voice is low. Measured. But cold now—razor-edged, full of warning.
“You said I could step out. I’m invoking that. Effective immediately.”
A beat.
Matthew’s heart thuds. His ribs feel too tight.
“You step away,” Director Jang says slowly, almost amused, “he becomes a rogue liability. That means clean-up.”
The next pause stretches—and shifts. The air changes. It feels sharp. Tense. Matthew doesn't breathe.
“If you touch him,” Echo says, voice like frostbite, “I will burn this place to the ground.”
"You do not have that much power, handler," the director snaps back.
Silence.
“You think he’s the liability?” Echo continues, lower now, lethal. “Try me.”
Director Jang lets out a dry laugh—but it sounds a little strained.
“Watch yourself, boy,” the Director mutters. “You’re not indispensable either.”
Matthew doesn’t breathe.
He doesn't wait for Echo’s follow-up.
His feet move before his brain can stop them. His hands shake as they curl into fists. His spine is rigid. His jaw locked. The sound of blood in his ears is louder than anything else.
Echo wants to leave too.
The thought is so loud it splits his ribs open.
He stumbles down the corridor, fists clenched, vision tunneling. His reflection flickers in the glass walls—wide eyes, flushed cheeks, a mouth twisted around disbelief.
Of course he wants to leave. Everyone does.
His chest heaves. The air feels wrong in his lungs. Too much, too fast, too sharp.
It’s your fault.
He said too much last night. Said I love you. Said so many other things.
And now Echo is pulling away.
Just like Hanbin did.
You scared him. You always do. You get too close. You ruin it. You make it too real.
He can still feel Hanbin’s mouth on his skin. The bruises on his hips. His scent. His voice.
He can still hear Echo’s voice in that room. Cold. Cutting. Threatening to set the world on fire—and still asking to be let go.
They both want out.
It was never going to last.
You’re too much. Too broken. Too much blood on your hands.
He’s going to be alone again. It’s happening all over.
Matthew slams his fist into the wall without thinking—hard, loud, the pain barely registers. His breath breaks. He chokes on it. His shoulders quake.
He presses his forehead to the cool surface and squeezes his eyes shut.
It doesn’t help.
He can’t stop shaking.
Echo tried to leave.
And now that voice—that presence that never left, that got him through every ruined night, every broken mission—is just one more person reaching for the door.
One more person that Matthew couldn't hold on to.
He slides down the wall, heart pounding, nausea rolling in his gut like a tide.
It’s all slipping again.
And there’s no one left to catch him. As always.
His body folds in on itself, hands braced against his knees, shoulders hunched like he’s trying to make himself smaller—disappear inside the weight.
He can’t breathe.
The air scrapes through his throat in stutters. Too dry. Too fast. His hands won’t stop trembling. Something pins his chest like a knee—pressure, heavy and cruel.
His jaw locks, then clicks as it breaks open with a ragged, helpless sound.
Don’t cry here.
Don’t cry here!
But his face is already burning. His vision already blurs. And his ribs are already cracking apart with something silent and ugly and too deep to name.
People pass.
Boots. Soft-soled shoes. The tap of high heels.
No one stops.
They don’t want to.
They know who he is.
They know his file. His body count. His name, whispered like an execution order. Some of them glance. One slows, almost says something. Then thinks better of it.
They keep moving.
Because the last thing anyone wants is to see him falling apart. And be in his range.
Because Seok Matthew is supposed to be the one who does the breaking. They do not want to get broken by him.
His breath stutters again.
He drags in a gasp and holds it.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Then he lets it go. Quiet. Controlled. Mechanical.
He wipes his face with the back of his hand. It comes away damp.
His eyes are red. His lip is bitten raw. He’s pale and trembling and he knows it.
So he shoves it down.
Like always.
He pushes to his feet, every joint aching, knees locking like rusted steel. He smooths his shirt, straightens his jacket. Rubs the blood from his knuckles where he hit the wall.
Then he walks.
No limp. No hitch. No sign of the break inside.
Just the rhythm of boots on tile. Just the cold set of his jaw. Just the silence he wears like armor.
Because if Echo is going to leave him—
Then no one gets to see the pieces he leaves behind.
➳➳➳♡
He takes the mission without reading the file.
There’s something ugly behind his eyes when he signs off on it. His mouth is too dry. His knuckles are bruised, but he doesn’t remember how. The woman briefing him looks uncertain for a second, says something about his handler.
He cuts her off.
“Just send the coordinates.”
She hesitates. “Do you want the call sign? Your comms—”
“I said,” Matthew repeats, cool and polished, “just send the coordinates.”
The woman looked scared. He doesn’t care.
He doesn’t want to care.
Because caring is how it starts—how it always starts. The voice in his ear. The touch that lingers. The lie of safety.
He can’t do it again.
He can’t survive doing it again.
So he walks out with the weight of a new target and an old ache in his chest. The safety lock on his gun is broken. He doesn’t read the name. Doesn’t ask the intel. Doesn’t even open the file.
Just one foot in front of the other.
He tells himself it doesn’t matter. If he dies on the job.
But his hands won’t stop shaking.
And for a second—only a second—he thinks about pulling out.
He doesn’t.
Because Echo would have stopped him if he were dangerous to himself.
But Echo is gone.
➳➳➳♡
He walks into the lobby looking like power made flesh.
A tailored charcoal suit clings to his frame like it was sewn onto him. No tie, just a crisp white shirt undone at the collar, the sleeves sharp at the cuffs. His hair is slicked back with deliberate care, not a strand out of place. His cheekbones are carved high and cold, lips pressed in a neutral line, eyes unreadable behind soft gray contacts.
He’s every inch the fantasy: successful, silent, too beautiful to be real. The kind of man who’s either here to close a billion-won deal or end someone’s life. No one asks which.
He rolls a slim carry-on suitcase behind him—black leather, custom lining. Its contents could pass any check, but he knows they won’t be checked. He walks with the confidence of someone who belongs, even when he doesn’t.
The woman at the front desk glances up and blinks. She flushes a little on her cheeks, an adorable shade of pink. “Name?”
“Park Jihoon,” he says smoothly. Not even a hitch.
The falsified ID pings green. She hands him a visitor’s badge and nods him toward the elevators.
He thanks her with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, but it pleases her.
Then he turns away.
Inside the elevator, the walls are mirrors. His reflection watches him from three angles. There’s no music, just the soft hum of ascent.
He smooths his jacket down. Checks his cuffs again. Straightens them even though they’re perfect.
When he cracks his neck, he looks like control.
But inside, something is slipping.
He feels it like a bruise beneath the surface, invisible but tender. Something raw that this week scraped open and never quite closed.
The elevator rises—28, 29, 30—and with each floor, the weight in his stomach sinks deeper.
By the time the doors open, he’s a weapon again.
He steps out into a gleaming hallway—white floors, frosted glass offices, the scent of money and sterile power clinging to every surface. The place is too clean. Too modern. He hates it already. Wants to destroy it and himself in the process.
He follows the map he locked and saved into his memory earlier—the map his handler sent him. Not Echo. He’s not thinking about Echo. He doesn’t want to.
He turns a corner. Finds the back supply room. Slips inside.
The door clicks shut behind him.
The silence is total.
He exhales, slow. Drops the suitcase onto the floor and kneels beside it.
When he opens it, everything’s there: the disassembled pistol, the silencer, the blades, the fiber-wire, the tiny pin-cams and comm gear. Laid out like an altar. Every piece is in its place. He starts putting the gun together, his movements slow and clean.
Slick. Mechanical.
But he feels it again.
The weight. The presence.
His eyes drift upward.
There, tucked just above the cabinet, almost invisible—one corner-mounted camera.
He stares at it for a long time.
He knows the model. He knows the angle. He knows the feed is encrypted and rerouted through at least three firewalls before it even hits Ops.
He knows Echo is watching.
Even if it isn’t him anymore.
Even if today it’s someone else. A stranger. A voice that will be too sharp, too cold, too wrong. Trying to command him, even though his documents say, in red and underlined: does not work well with authorities.
Still, he stares at the camera like it’s a lifeline.
“Are you watching?” he murmurs.
No reply. Of course not.
He closes his eyes. His hands don’t stop moving—sliding metal into metal, clipping the pieces together by heart—but the breath he takes is shaky.
He thinks about the last time Echo’s voice was in his ear.
Thinks about how much it hurt, even now, to hear him try to leave.
First Hanbin. Now you. You said you’d never let me fall.
He blinks hard. Shakes his head once.
He doesn’t believe in ghosts.
But Echo was never just a ghost.
Echo was presence. Gravity. The only steady line connecting him back to himself when the rest of the world burned.
And now?
Now all he has is the last fucking mission.
He finishes assembling the gun. Sets it down gently.
Then reaches for the buttons of his suit jacket and begins to change.
Let them watch. Let whoever’s in the chair see him peel himself out of the perfect disguise. Let them see the bruises, the scars. The jagged memory of that night clawed into his back.
Let Echo see what’s left.
The black shirt fits tighter than he remembers. He shrugs into it anyway, tugging the sleeves down his arms with clinical indifference. The fabric catches briefly on the scabs across his shoulder blades—souvenirs from the night—but he doesn’t wince.
He deserves worse.
The tactical gear goes on next: holster straps, sheathes, blades pressed flat to his thighs. He pulls the lightweight bulletproof vest over his head and tightens it around his ribs until it hurts.
No wiggle room. No air. That’s the point.
The room smells like cold steel and printer toner. It’s quiet enough to hear the small clicks as he loads a spare clip. His heart beats louder than the bullets.
His reflection stares back at him from the metallic filing cabinet. Pale, unslept, glowing with the kind of sick intensity that only comes from running full-speed off a cliff and not caring what’s below.
He glances at the camera once.
Then, finally, he pulls the comms unit from the bag. Just a thin black earpiece, shaped like any other.
But it’s not.
It’s a live wire. A loaded gun. A name he’s not ready to say.
He hesitates only once before sliding it into place.
And then—he waits.
One second.
Two.
His heart climbs.
He keeps his breathing even. Stares at the floor. Forces his muscles to stay loose. He doesn’t know who’s going to speak.
He doesn’t even know if he wants it to be him.
A flicker of static—
Then:
“Matthew.”
Just that. Nothing else.
Matthew closes his eyes.
It’s him.
The voice is low, measured. Steady. Clean. No trace of the panic from two days ago, no tremble, no emotion. Just control.
As if nothing’s happened. As if the world hasn’t cracked open and spilled all their secrets into the space between them.
As if he didn’t almost die last night. As if Echo didn’t almost leave yesterday.
He swallows.
Hard.
And answers, smoothly, like they’re already mid-mission: “Hey, Echo.”
There’s a pause—so brief you’d miss it if you didn’t know him.
Then Echo starts rattling off information. Floor numbers. Guard placements. Entry points. His voice is clipped and professional, the same tone he’s used for years.
Matthew doesn’t respond at first. He’s not listening. Not really.
He watches his own hands flex. He’s already dressed to kill.
He fastens his belt. Picks up the pistol. Slides it into place.
Then reaches for the blade, turns it over in his palm.
A whisper in his ear asks, almost gently. “You okay?”
The question isn’t urgent. It doesn’t sound like a concern.
But Matthew hears the weight behind it. Knows Echo tried to leave. Knows he does not want to be in his ear, guiding him through another mission.
He looks up. Straight into the camera.
For the first time, he answers honestly.
“No,” he says.
A beat of silence.
“I don’t think I’d mind dying today.”
It’s quiet again. Too quiet.
Then—calm, grounded, the one thing that’s never changed: “I’ll never let you fall.”
Matthew closes his eyes. Swallows the scream pressing up his throat.
And moves.
He slips into the back halls like he’s part of the blueprint—fluid, noiseless, a shadow stitched between doorways and lines of sight. The building is quiet here. Too quiet.
Most of the staff have already left for the day. Those who remain are high-clearance, upper-floor ghosts. Corporate predators who don’t know they’re being hunted.
“Two guards posted at the elevator,” Echo murmurs into his ear, calm as ever. “Both armed. Staggered formation. One’s shifting his weight—he’s tired. That’s your opening.”
Matthew breathes once. In. Out.
His heartbeat slows.
He moves.
It’s almost effortless. The guards don’t see him coming until it’s too late—one drops with a pressure point strike to the throat, the other silenced by a swift blade across the windpipe. Both bodies crumple soundlessly.
He wipes the blade clean against the suit of the second man. Stands straight. Adjusts his gloves.
“Clear.”
“Good,” Echo says, like the word fits in his mouth just fine.
Matthew doesn’t reply.
He just moves forward, deeper into the quiet labyrinth of reinforced glass and minimalist marble, lit by the glow of security lights and after-hours fluorescents.
“Stairs are safer. Northeast corner. Take them up to 43, then follow the maintenance corridor to the server level. The target will be hosting a dinner in the executive lounge above.”
Matthew turns on silent feet. “Got it.”
The voice in his ear stays steady. Every corner is pre-called. Every camera blind spot highlighted before he reaches it. They move like one mind, one machine.
The halls feel tighter the higher he climbs.
The air smells like stale air conditioning and wealth.
And still—he hears that voice. Not only in his head. In his blood.
Echo.
Always Echo.
Not Hanbin. Not the boy who left. Not the man who broke him.
The one who tried to leave but was not allowed. Held here with him by the shackles of the Agency, not being allowed to go against the protocol.
Maybe that is the only way he can keep him.
Never real. Never his.
Matthew reaches the final stairwell and pauses, fingers flexing around his weapon.
“Ready?” Echo asks.
Matthew doesn’t answer.
He just opens the door—and vanishes inside.
“You’ll need to move fast.” Echo’s voice pulses steady in his ear. “They found the guards by the elevator and just called for backup. You have three minutes.”
Matthew doesn’t hesitate.
He explodes into the executive floor like a storm with teeth—knife, gun, bare hands, whatever’s closest. Four men drop in rapid succession. A fifth lunges from the side, but Matthew spins, drives an elbow into his temple, then finishes him with a clean, clinical shot.
His ribs and legs ache. He can taste copper at the edge of his tongue.
“Status?” Echo asks.
Matthew lets out a breath—half-laugh, half-growl. “Fine.”
His pulse is high. The hum of adrenaline in his limbs buzzes like electricity, and he tilts his head up—just slightly. Finds the security camera nestled between two glass panels and lets a slow, crooked smirk pull at his lips.
That one’s for Echo.
A beat of silence passes.
Then Echo speaks again. “Five more coming up the back stairwell. Take the corridor on your right—faster exit.”
Matthew pivots. Runs.
The floors blur beneath his feet. He’s flawless in motion, but the noise is growing louder now—shouting, doors slamming, the heavy clunk of boots.
“Two on your left—behind the servers,” Echo snaps.
Matthew ducks, pivots again, fires twice. Two more bodies. He’s flushed now. The sweat is real. His breath comes quicker, but he’s smiling—he’s alive.
“Okay,” Echo says, “straight through this hallway, then s—”
Something slams. Metal against metal. A crash of steel and glass and air.
A sprinkler pipe overhead ruptures, sending a screech through the walls and a waterfall down on the servers. Lights flicker. A terminal sparks.
And inside his head—
Silence.
No voice. No command. No Echo.
Matthew’s blood runs cold.
“Echo?”
Nothing.
He presses forward, chest tight, teeth gritted. He ducks into the nearest room—a vast, open-space office, abandoned, destroyed. Rows of desks. Disconnected phones. Rolling chairs, champagne bottles and scattered blueprints like ghosts of a normal life.
He’s panting now. Alone. Blind.
“Echo?” he tries again. Sharper. Higher.
Still—nothing.
And again, Matthew feels the world tilt just a little off center. His breath catches.
He’s on his own.
The open office space stretches wide and wrong around him, like a graveyard.
Rows of plastic desks. Shredded linoleum with questionable stains. A coffee cup still lined with someone’s lipstick. It’s too quiet—abandoned after a party, maybe, or never fully moved into. It looks almost like a film set.
Matthew breathes through his teeth. Crouched low, shoulder pressed to the frame of a hollow desk, gun tight in his grip.
No footsteps. No voices.
Just the echo of gunfire in his bones.
He remembers the map, knows he is a floor beneath the main room, where his target is hosting a dinner right about now. But besides that, he's blind.
He peeks around the corner—glass glint. High up. Movement.
Sniper.
His body jolts.
A bullet rips through the window and the wall just above his head. Plaster showers his hair and shoulders.
He drops flat.
“Echo,” he hisses, heart punching the inside of his ribs like this is his fault.
Nothing.
He swallows down the panic. Shifts behind an upturned table and scans the angles.
Another shot flies above him with a high-pitched sound and lodges itself in the wall. They’ve got him. He can’t tell where the second shooter is—but there’s more than one. There has to be.
And still—no voice in his ear.
A loud crack to the left. He lunges the other way. Slams into a filing cabinet. Barely breathes.
You don’t need him, he tells himself. You’ve done worse. Alone.
But it’s a lie. Echo has always been there. Every impossible mission. Every kill that should’ve gone sideways. He’s the only one Matthew ever trusted with his back.
And now—he’s gone.
Matthew’s hands shake.
He’s not used to thinking this much during a hit. That’s Echo’s job. That voice in his ear that cuts through the noise. Tells him where to run, where to shoot, when to breathe.
Now the world’s gone quiet. Empty.
He can’t even hear the goddamn heartbeat in his own chest.
Another bullet punches through the glass pane above him. Shards rain down. A cut opens on his cheek.
He scrambles back, slipping on old dust. Elbows raw. Breathing ragged.
Gunfire again—closer. The backup is moving. He’s not just pinned, he’s being herded. Like an animal.
He grips his sidearm. Prepares to bolt.
But there’s no cover left. He’s in the middle of a dead zone.
And Echo is still silent.
The panic rises sharp and cold, like a needle up his spine.
His lips part—another breath, shallow, trembling. He is not sure he really wants to die like this.
Not because of fear. Not because of pride. But because that silence in his ear—heavy, unnatural—means something’s wrong. Means Echo might be hurt. Captured. Bleeding out in some room just like this one, waiting for a voice that never comes.
If Matthew dies here, then no one’s coming for him.
He has to live. Crawl out of this wreck, no matter how broken. Find him. Rip the sky apart if he has to.
Then—
Footsteps. Behind him. Fast. Heavy. Closing in.
He whips around, gun raised—
“MATTHEW—GET DOWN!”
A tall man all in black. A gun in his hand, a leather strap over his chest. But the voice... Not in his ear. Real.
Then a blur of motion.
A bullet tears through the air—
The world explodes around him.
A body crashes into his. A scream—no, a shout—cuts through the air as momentum slams them both to the ground. Pain snaps through Matthew’s ribs, but not from the bullet. He wasn’t hit.
Someone else was.
The comm falls from his ear, and all he hears is ringing.
He blinks once—twice—and the chaos slows just enough for him to see.
Someone’s sprawled across him.
Breathing hard. Shaking.
Clad in black tactical gear, lighter than his own. Matte, close-fitting. Dust clings to the sleeves, and one shoulder is already soaked in sticky, warm liquid.
Blood.
There’s so much blood.
Matthew’s heart drops.
Then he sees the face.
Hanbin .
His mouth goes dry.
Hanbin is the one who took the hit. The one who tackled him. Who saved him.
His mind stutters.
Too much to process. The voice. The face. The blood.
Hanbin's face is pale and broken with pain, teeth clenched tight, brow furrowed. There's a smear of red at his temple, a gash along his cheekbone. His left shoulder is torn open, the fabric burned away where the bullet went in.
Matthew stares like he’s never seen him before.
Because he hasn’t. Not like this. Not in gear. Not in blood. Not in battle.
This isn’t Hanbin, his childhood best friend, Hanbin the boy from the tree, Hanbin the lover, the heartbreak, the past.
This is someone else. A soldier.
Someone who just took a bullet for him.
Matthew's hands hover—useless—before grabbing at Hanbin’s vest, trying to pull him close, trying to do something.
Hanbin’s eyes flutter, and his breath hitches.
But somehow, even half-conscious, he’s reaching behind himself. Dragging something forward.
A weapon.
A sniper rifle, black and long and deadly, slung off his shoulder and now sliding into Matthew’s lap.
He brought a gun.
He didn’t just save him—he came armed. Ready. Trained. Giving Matthew a fighting chance against the snipers perched in the skyscrapers.
Matthew’s pulse skids sideways.
He looks at Hanbin.
Then at the blood.
And something inside him, already cracked, begins to splinter as more glass shatters. Another bullet slams into the far wall, embedding with a sharp crack—too close, too fast. The sniper’s still firing. Still hunting. Trying to lure them out.
Hanbin groans and slumps fully onto the floor, breathing shallow. His shoulder bleeds everywhere, blooming across his side in a dark, soaking pool.
Matthew doesn't flinch.
He moves on instinct now—the kind Echo trained into him.
His fingers curl around the long sniper rifle Hanbin dragged in. He props it against Hanbin’s body, bracing the barrel across the curve of Hanbin’s hip, using him—using his limp form—as a platform.
There's no hesitation.
He calculates the angle of the last bullet. He sees the glint of a scope.
Breathes in.
Fires.
A crack rings out. The kickback claws into his shoulder, into Hanbin's hip.
A flash of motion across the way—then nothing.
Silence.
Glass. Blood. Smoke.
The sniper drops.
Matthew lowers the gun.
His hands are steady, but his chest heaves. His pulse is a thunderstorm.
The room spins. The adrenaline still burns.
He looks down—at the blood, the rifle, the weight beneath his hands. At Hanbin.
And for one fractured moment, his mind snaps open.
The way Hanbin moved. The timing. The voice. How did he know where to go? How did he know to bring the sniper rifle? Why did he jump to protect Matthew?
A whisper rises in his skull—Echo.
But it’s too much. There’s too much blood. Too much noise. The mission isn’t done. His heart is still racing. The room is still not safe.
He locks it down.
Pushes it aside.
His breath sticks in his throat, pain crackling behind his ribs like lightning. There’s blood everywhere.
It spills hot and fast beneath Hanbin, staining the cold tiles a deep, alarming red. His shoulder is a wreck—torn open by the bullet, blood soaking through tactical fabric in dark, uneven bursts. Beneath the black, Matthew can see pale skin, the harsh outline of a muscle torn clean through. Too close to the artery. Too fucking close.
“Fuck—fuck, fuck, fuck—” Matthew whispers, panic rising sharp and cold in his spine. His hands hover, not sure where to start. Pressure?
“Stay with me,” he growls to no one but himself.
He snaps into action.
One hand dives into the front panel of his vest—rips open the velcro pouch, fingers fumbling but fast. He yanks out a vacuum-sealed field dressing and a roll of combat gauze, teeth tearing into the plastic.
The gauze is coated with a hemostatic agent—designed to clot blood fast, even under pressure. He remembers Echo's voice explaining how it works, but all he knows now is that it is not big enough. Never enough. He shoves Hanbin’s jacket aside and slaps the gauze down directly into the wound, fingers slick with blood. Hanbin lets out a strangled cry, but Matthew doesn’t flinch. Can’t.
He packs the wound with the rest of the gauze, hand braced against Hanbin’s chest to keep him still. Then the pressure bandage—he slaps it on, center over the wound, wraps it tight around Hanbin’s upper arm and shoulder, brutal and fast, yanking it snug with too strong motions. Tucks the tail under, double-checks the tension. Blood’s still coming, but slower now. Contained. Controllable.
“You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay,” Matthew says, over and over, like a mantra, like a curse, like a prayer. His voice is hoarse, wild. “I’ve got you, fuck—just stay—stay—”
Hanbin’s eyes open. There is a gleam in them, tears and life still. Matthew clings to it.
“Next building,” he rasps, as if it’s the only thing that matters. “Fourth floor from the top. Second window from the left.”
Matthew chokes on a breath.
He's working. He's directing.
Even now.
His grip tightens on the bandage. “You’re out of your fucking mind,” he says under his breath—but the sting in his eyes says something else.
He follows the line of sight Hanbin gave him—sees the glint, the second sniper waiting. One more shot away from ending this.
Not today.
Not him.
Not Hanbin.
He snaps back to action, slamming a fresh round into the chamber.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He shifts, grabs the sniper rifle and props it against the bulk of Hanbin’s body again, steadying it on the curve of his hip. It’s the only elevation he has. Hanbin lets out a tight, pained sound, his good hand finds Matthew's side, holds, but doesn’t stop him.
Matthew exhales. Just once. Lines up the shot at the same moment he feels Hanbin's fingers tighten in his shirt.
But the angle’s wrong.
He swears under his breath and shifts again, dragging the gun down Hanbin’s side with practiced hands, trying to find another brace point.
“No good,” he mutters. “Fuck. Stay down.”
He jumps over Hanbin and crawls forward, belly scraping against the cold tile, Hanbin's blood smearing beneath his knees. He finds a low desk, presses his shoulder against the side, props the rifle up again—
Crack.
The shot misses him by centimeters.
It hits the ground far too close to Hanbin’s legs—shards of tile fly up like shrapnel, cutting into Hanbin’s pants, his skin. Hanbin jerks violently, a strangled cry escaping his throat as he scrambles, dragging himself sideways with his good arm.
Matthew’s heart lurches into his mouth.
“Shit—shit, are you—?”
“I’m fine,” Hanbin hisses through clenched teeth, surprisingly calm. “Just—shoot. Now.”
Matthew’s vision narrows, breath coming sharp and fast through his nose. The order is clear. His hands tighten on the rifle. Everything inside him coils like a live wire, too many things crashing in at once—the blood, the pain, the realization just under the surface, the fact that Hanbin might not survive this if he doesn’t end it now.
Matthew braces the rifle against the desk, exhales slowly, and leans into the scope.
His hands won’t stop shaking.
His breath ghosts out between clenched teeth as he lines up the second sniper—fourth floor from the top, second window from the left—just like Hanbin said. Just like Echo would have said.
And that’s when it hits him.
Not all at once.
Not like lightning or fury—but like static crawling under his skin. A tickle behind his neck. A whisper between the ribs.
Fuck.
He doesn't let himself follow the thought. Not now. Not here. Not with Hanbin bleeding out behind him.
Instead, he steadies his breath, calms his hands, presses one eye to the scope—and speaks.
Low. Controlled. Like a man already halfway broken.
“So,” he says, and his voice cracks before it hardens again, “now that you might die here, I need to say this.”
He inhales sharply. Holds it.
“You lied to me.” His throat closes around the words, but he forces them through. “Every day. Every mission.”
His finger finds the trigger. The betrayal burns brighter than fear.
“You don’t get to die without answering for that.”
Behind him, Hanbin lets out a strained breath, almost a whimper. “I wanted…” His voice is hoarse, dragged raw by pain. “I wanted to protect you. Even from me.”
Matthew exhales.
Then he fires.
The shot lands clean—silent perfection. The sniper drops behind the glass, blood blooming like a smear of red ink. The window doesn’t even shatter.
Matthew lowers the rifle, eyes still locked on the glass.
From behind him, Hanbin breathes out—shaky, broken.
“Good shot.”
Just like Echo would’ve said.
Matthew turns his head slowly, eyes burning.
“That’s not the answer I wanted.”
Hanbin doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away either.
“You want an apology,” he rasps, blood staining the corner of his mouth. Not a question.
“I want the truth. Even if it breaks me,” Matthew shakes his head, furious—at himself, at the heat rising in his chest, at the sting in his eyes.
Hanbin’s eyes glisten, red-rimmed. “And I want to keep you alive. Even if it means lying.”
Matthew moves on all fours and sits on his heels beside Hanbin, blood already seeping through his pants. He looks down at him, at the way he holds his vest just beneath the wound, at the way he looks up at him like he is the entire reason for his blood on the ground.
It hits.
Not like a thought, or static crawling his limbs, or a shimmer behind the eyelids.
Like a floodgate breaking.
His voice.
Not the pitch, but the cadence. The warmth. The way he’d say Matthew’s name, like it was a beautiful secret. Like he does not allow it on his tongue. Like it is a dangerous indulgence he can never get enough.
Echo: “Don’t look back—”
Hanbin, years ago, in the trees behind the house: “—just jump!”
The touch.
That night in the hotel, Hanbin’s hand caressing his spine in the dark. How sure it had felt. How knowing. The way he laughed into his ear. A brush of air.
Echo had never touched him.
But somehow… he had.
The silence.
After the gala. After the missions. After Matthew said I love you through the comms—
—and Echo hadn’t said it back.
But Hanbin had looked at him like he had.
His love.
Matthew's hand, small and soft, reaching for paper stars taped to the ceiling of their tree house. The fear of death he had ever since his grandma died suddenly.
"People become stars when they die. But what if the star falls?"
"I will never let you fall." Hanbin and Echo say in unison, but their voices are one.
It all converges. Past, present, pain, longing—
—and the lie.
And then—
Another flash.
"You’re my echo.
They were kids. Seven, maybe eight. Hanbin was helping him with idioms. His Korean was still clumsy, still Western-shaped. He’d said something stupid—gotten the grammar backwards—and Hanbin had laughed, then repeated it properly, gently.
Not like a teacher. Like a friend, like a shadow. Like he cared.
“You’re always helping me,” Matthew had said, grinning. “You repeat everything I say, just better. And I always follow you.”
Hanbin had tilted his head, mouth quirking up. “That’s because I’m your brain,” he’d teased.
Matthew had puffed out his chest dramatically. “Nah. You’re my echo.”
"I am your echo!"
It had been a joke. Just a boyhood scrap of something warm.
But Hanbin—
Hanbin had kept it.
Carried it across time and silence. All the way to the comms. All the way to now.
And it wasn’t just the words.
It was every near-death breath they’d shared. Every time that Matthew should’ve died and didn’t. Because someone—Echo—had whispered just the right thing, just in time.
Bangkok.
They’d been reckless and young, chasing ghosts through heat-soaked alleys. The briefing had been vague, the exit plan worse. And still, Hanbin had shown up. Not even officially cleared, but there he was—slipping through shadows, eyes sharp, steps silent. When everything collapsed, when the ambush closed in—Matthew remembered the comms crackling, a voice hissing in his ear.
“Left. Now.”
It had saved his life. The Echo. The voice called himself Echo. His Echo.
He’d never known who it was. When he asked, he said he was Echo. His name was Echo. He is his Echo from now on.
But Hanbin had.
Hanbin had always known.
Just like he had that night at the hotel—the second time, after the mission, after the ruinous tension had finally snapped. Matthew remembered Hanbin’s hand on his chest, trembling. The way he’d looked like he wanted to say something he couldn’t shape into words. Something huge. Something that hurt to hold.
I didn’t leave you, he said. I held onto you any way I could.
Matthew hadn’t understood it then.
But now.
Now he knew.
Hanbin had wanted to tell him.
That he hadn’t disappeared. That he hadn’t vanished like the others. That what happened at Matthew's parents' house wasn’t a betrayal—it was a loss.
They’d taken Hanbin. Taken everything. And somehow, through all that wreckage, he’d held onto the only thing he could.
Matthew.
Even if it meant becoming a voice without a name. A touch without a body.
Even if he could never say it out loud.
He hadn’t left.
He’d just hidden. Deep beneath protocol, and clearance levels, and lies of omission.
But he’d still been there.
He’d always been there.
His Echo.
His Hanbin-hyung.
Watching Matthew. Guiding him.
Saving him.
Even when he was bratty. Even when he himself did not care if he got hurt.
And now he was the one on the ground—bleeding, slipping. His breaths coming faster, smaller. Like they might run out at any moment.
Matthew’s fingers curl around Hanbin’s vest, trembling.
He had kept him alive.
And now—
Now it was Matthew’s turn to do the same.
Matthew blinks back to the present, soaked in blood and trembling.
Because the lie wasn't just a strategy.
It was them.
It always had been.
Even when he didn’t know.
Even now, when he does.
But Hanbin is slipping.
His skin has gone a shade too pale beneath the sweat and blood. His mouth moves like he’s trying to say something, but nothing comes. Only shallow gasps. Only silence.
Shock and blood loss.
Matthew leans in, hands shaking as he adjusts the pressure on the bandage, trying to stop the flow with one hand while the other fumbles for another strip of gauze. His breath catches.
And then, like a stone breaking water:
“Hanbin.”
His real name. Not Echo.
Hanbin.
The body beneath him flinches, barely. Eyes flutter open, glassy and wet—but aware. Present.
Like someone who’s been called home.
Matthew swallows. “Hanbin,” he says again, this time almost begging. “Hanbin, stay with me—”
He presses down harder on the wound, blood squelching between his fingers.
“Come on. Come on, you’ve been through worse. You’ve patched me up from worse.”
A flash behind his eyes:
Hanbin, twelve years old, swatting mosquitoes as he tapes a piece of Matthew’s split lip with too much care and too little medical knowledge.
The two of them, barefoot in the summer grass.
Matthew keeps talking, voice rough. “You don’t get to disappear again. You hear me? Not like this.”
Paper stars glued to the ceiling of their treehouse.
Hanbin’s hand warm around his wrist after a fall. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“Stay with me,” Matthew whispers again, eyes burning.
The sound of ocean waves, moonlight spilled across the water.
Hanbin’s laugh, the high "ha-ha-ha", echoing off a rooftop somewhere in Cheonan.
"Fuck, Hanbin, do not do this to me-"
Summer sun painting freckles across Hanbin’s nose. Matthew counts them again and again.
A hotel room gone quiet.
Hanbin looking at him like he had a secret he couldn’t bear to keep.
And then—
Hanbin’s lips part. A breath, weak but real.
“I told you…” He whispers, voice raw, trembling. “I’d never let you fall.”
Matthew doesn’t get to respond.
Hanbin’s eyes roll back. His body slackens. His head lolls.
“No—no, no, no—” Matthew shifts, tries to check his pulse, tries to reposition, tries to do something, but everything is chaos, soaked in red and memory.
Lights. Shouting. The sound of boots.
Matthew grabs a gun from Hanbin’s side. Stands.
The killer becomes the protector.
The hallway erupts behind them—their people flooding in like a tidal wave. Tactical suits, medics, shouting over radios.
Matthew doesn’t move.
Looks down with blood on his hands and fire in his mouth.
“Don’t you fucking dare die.”
➳➳➳♡
Notes:
:')
Thank you for all your kudos and comments. This is a wild ride. <3
edgeofthewall on Chapter 1 Sat 28 Jun 2025 03:26PM UTC
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itsaseamonster on Chapter 1 Sat 28 Jun 2025 07:44PM UTC
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maettharem on Chapter 1 Sat 28 Jun 2025 11:34PM UTC
Last Edited Sat 28 Jun 2025 11:34PM UTC
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itsaseamonster on Chapter 1 Sun 29 Jun 2025 01:59PM UTC
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dandynb on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 11:35AM UTC
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itsaseamonster on Chapter 1 Thu 03 Jul 2025 12:16PM UTC
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seokmaeby on Chapter 1 Sun 13 Jul 2025 12:09AM UTC
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ietta on Chapter 1 Mon 14 Jul 2025 09:00PM UTC
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