Work Text:
X had always harbored a profound distaste for corporate gatherings. The very notion of forced camaraderie with a throng of colleagues most of whom didn't even know him struck him as a particular form of modern-day torture. Yet, Smile had been unrelenting, employing a potent cocktail of insistence, veiled threats, and outright blackmail. His argument had been something along the lines of, "You're the one who always complains about overtime! Well, consider being hero a job too – so go on, take a break, have fun! It's certainly better than patrolling the streets!" And when Smile fixed him with those enormous, puppy-dog eyes and his kindliest of smiles, refusal felt like kicking a particularly endearing puppy. Furthermore, X found himself cornered by a past promise to cover for Smile’s so-called evening patrol. How could he, in good conscience, condemn Smile to such a fate? Let the poor soul suffer a little, he thought with a touch of dark amusement.
And so, that was how X now found himself trapped at a long banquet table, squeezed between his excessively chatty coworkers. They chattered incessantly, a ceaseless buzz of conversations about significant others, career ladders, family plans, the Sisyphean burden of a mortgage, and the tribulations of child-rearing – the utterly ordinary discourses of ordinary people, topics in which X held not the slightest interest. He sought a small refuge in methodically sipping another can of beer, procured from the food-laden table, and slowly chewing on a chicken wing from the same source. Perhaps Smile had a point; perhaps he did need to unwind, to playact the part of a normal person, to feign interest in the mundane dramas of domesticity and professional advancement. A seventh can of beer was opened with a sharp crack and the subsequent, brief hiss of carbonation.
Yet, even with a growing haze of alcohol, X couldn't fathom how Smile managed to spend so much of his time engaged in this very kind of prattling small talk at various public events. Let it not be misunderstood that X was complaining about his own situation; on the contrary, he was thoroughly content in his role as a lone wolf. The solitude, the silence – it all meant significantly fewer complications in his life. At least, he thought so.
The drinking session dragged on interminably. He had stayed for the absolute minimum required to not stand out entirely from the collective, but as the river of beer and soju flowed ever more freely, the last vestiges of manners and propriety were steadily washed away. A thought, hazy and unbidden, drifted through his mind: he wondered what Smile would be doing in such a raucous environment. Would he be the life of the party, laughing with a radiant face, his shoulders slumped in easy relaxation, his tie loosened even further, his cheeks flushed a warm, rosy pink from the alcohol? Or would that other side of him emerge—the cheeky, garrulous one who, once the cameras were off, thought nothing of brazenly pilfering food right from X’s plate when they shared a drink after a punishing day? Which version of Smile would this atmosphere have conjured?
He decided a more than respectable amount of time had elapsed since the party's commencement. The room was a cacophony of merriment and distraction, and the platters of food were nearly picked clean. Satisfied with his social debt paid in full, X downed the last few swallows of his long-warm beer and rose from his chair. His departure was a study in efficient motion; he offered a general, trailing farewell tossed over his shoulder as he walked, neither stopping nor turning back—a practiced ritual born from the certain knowledge that it was a meaningless formality and that he was, technically, always saying goodbye to everyone. In his wake, a ripple of confusion passed through the room. A couple of colleagues, their voices slurred with drink, asked aloud who that even was, their questions accompanied by the same habitual, unseeing glances around the table.
The Trust Value system is such a strange and wondrous thing; wish for something with enough fervent certainty, and the universe has a way of bending to make it so. X had never understood why more people didn’t harness that simple, latent power.
A faint, unsteady sway to his gait, he navigated the hallway and summoned the elevator, pressing the button for the ground floor with deliberate focus. When the doors slid open onto the street, he was met by the city’s breath – a gust of pleasantly cold wind that washed over him, cleansing the stifling air of the party from his skin and clearing the alcoholic fog from his head. It was a welcome baptism back into the quiet night.
X threw another glance at his watch and released a sigh steeped in profound disappointment. The metro had long since ceased its operations; it means tonight, his journey home would be a pedestrian one. He had utterly forgotten, damn it all. A corporate soirée drowning in cheap alcohol and forced collegiality, and now a lengthy trek on foot – if it were within his power, he would strangle Smile for this. Yes, that’s precisely what he would do.
With a world-weary exhalation, he set off, his footsteps a slow, deliberate plod against the indifferent pavement. After navigating a series of monotonous, identical blocks, a brilliant thought – or so it seemed to his inebriated yet still ingeniously wired mind – dawned upon him. He had promised Smile he wouldn’t engage in any heroics tonight, but who was he to let such a perfect opportunity to utilize his power go to waste? As previously stated, the Trust Value System was his to command, and he intended to use it to its fullest extent. What could anyone possibly do about it?
A sharp click echoed in the still night air as he snapped his fingers, anticipating the familiar, predictable warp of dimensions he had come to know so well.
But instead of the controlled fold in reality he expected, the very fabric of the world beneath his feet dissolved into nothingness. It wasn't a familiar transition, it was an unraveling.
He was falling.
Not through air, but through a kaleidoscopic vortex of pure, chaotic space. The staid, geometric lines of the city street shattered like glass, fracturing into a million shimmering shards that swirled around him in a deafening whirlwind. Towers of concrete and steel bent and melted like wax, their silhouettes bleeding into swirling nebulae of impossible colors that hummed with raw, uncontained energy. The laws of physics became mere suggestions, violently rewritten and then discarded moment by moment.
He tumbled past visions that seared themselves into his mind: a flock of pigeons frozen in mid-flight, a sky pulsing with fractured light; his own reflection, fractured into a hundred different versions of himself, each staring back from a shard of broken reality with expressions of terror, amusement, or utter oblivion.
It was a symphony of madness, a descent through the raw, unedited source code of existence, and he was no longer the programmer – he was merely a glitch, tumbling uncontrollably through the chaos he had so carelessly invoked. The controlled power he was accustomed to was gone, replaced by a terrifying, sublime, and utterly uncontrollable force. He had not bent reality, but had broken its dam.
It seemed he was beginning to profoundly regret his decision. Stumbling forward on legs that refused to cooperate, weaving through the now-strangely-familiar edges of a reality that had just finished violently reassembling itself, he was for what felt like the dozenth time that night mentally screaming at Smile. His internal tirade was cut short as he suddenly, and unceremoniously, collided with solid ground.
Only the ground was far from the familiar asphalt of his home district. Instead, it was the rough, gravel-strewn surface of a skyscraper’s rooftop, offering a breathtaking, dizzying panorama of the glittering nocturnal city sprawled out below. X shook his head, trying to clear his swimming vision and make sense of the drifting, unfocused images before him, when a voice cut through the silence.
"Hey, what are you doing up here?! You promised me no heroics tonight."
There, standing before him in all his costumed glory – the vibrant hues of his suit stark against the city lights – was Smile himself. X let out a long, weary sigh and simply sat down, opting to glare up at his colleague in silent, disgruntled exhaustion.
"What, cat got your tongue? And how did you even get here?" Smile’s expression shifted from accusatory to genuinely puzzled.
X scratched the white crown of his head, a gesture of pure exasperation, and finally grumbled a reply. "I wasn't heroizing. I was engaging in 'mundane affairs,' just like you told me to. And I am now experiencing a profound and intense regret for having listened to you. The metro was closed. I thought that... well, this would be faster."
Smile was momentarily speechless. Then, a low chuckle escaped him, quickly blossoming into full-blown laughter that echoed off the rooftop vents. "The great and powerful X, bested by his own power? How much did you have to drink?" he asked, his tone dripping with playful sarcasm, finally extending a hand down to X, who was still sitting on the gravel in a disgruntled approximation of a lotus position.
"Only seven cans, I think..." X muttered, placing his palm into Smile’s waiting grasp. "And anyway, shut up. This is your fault. I wouldn't be in this position if it weren't for you," he added, being pulled to his feet.
"You do know that taxis still exist, right?" Smile said, his voice still laced with incredulous giggles.
Now it was X's turn to stand there, swaying, and stare silently. A taxi... Smile thought he could see X's face loading.
"Come on, I'll take you home, hero." Smile laughed without malice.
"Oh no, you don't. You should suffer a little through this now." With a slurred mutter and another reckless snap of his fingers, X shattered the world once more.
The familiar rooftop vanished. But this time, the transition was not the controlled, geometric folding Smile had grown accustomed to – a phenomenon he’d even begun to understand despite having skipped every physics class in his school years. Instead, reality dissolved into an absolute, screaming kaleidoscope.
A silent, profound shock immobilized Smile. He was adrift in a maelstrom of pure, unrefined chaos. Towers of impossible geometry, built from shimmering light and molten sound, twisted and inverted upon themselves. The sky was a fractured canvas where neon-purple rivers flowed into emerald nebulae that pulsed with a deafening, subsonic hum. Fragments of the city street swam past like detritus in a psychedelic hurricane. It was reality unraveled at the seams, a raw and terrifying glimpse into the anarchic engine of creation that X usually kept so meticulously ordered.
For X, the experience was a nauseating, exhilarating whirl. The seven cans of beer turned his head into a lurching compass, spinning wildly without a true north. The dazzling, uncontrolled shifts in perspective made his head swim; he was a passenger on a rollercoaster he himself had derailed, each corkscrew turn and vertiginous drop amplified by alcohol. He felt powerful and utterly helpless all at once, a god succumbing to a dizzy spell at the edge of the universe.
It was Smile who acted. Cutting through the visual cacophony, his hand shot out, firm and anchoring, clamping around X’s forearm. "Stop!" His voice, though laced with awe and panic, was a command. "X, you’re drunk! You’re not steering, you’re just falling! Think of an anchor! Something simple, something solid!"
He focused, his own will – less powerful but infinitely more disciplined in that moment – pushing against the chaos. He didn't try to command the storm; he instead imagined a single, immutable point within it: the cold feel of the rooftop gravel, the specific hum of a city ventilation unit, the scent of night air after rain.
Slowly, agonizingly, the universe began to reknit itself. The screaming colors bled away, the laws of physics reasserting their dominion with a final, shuddering sigh. They stumbled, landing hard back onto the same rooftop, the city lights below twinkling with their usual, reassuring normality. Smile kept his grip on X’s arm, steadying them both as they gasped for breath in the sudden, profound silence.
With one hand clamped like a vice around X’s forearm and the other gripping his hand as if he were the only lifeboat on a sinking ship (though in this particular context, X was less a lifeboat and more the iceberg that had caused the disaster), Smile held on until the last shudder of reality subsided. "Good lord, what in the world was that...?" Smile mumbled, his voice shaky as he tried to process the sensory onslaught.
"Practical geometry," X slurred, the words thick and barely intelligible as he fought to regain his bearings.
After the final, disorienting snap, they found themselves once more on the familiar, solid surface of the rooftop. This time, however, the chaotic energy had bled away, leaving X in his usual form: his short black hair was neatly in place, and he was clad once more in his rumpled office suit, the mundane attire a stark contrast to the power he had just wielded so recklessly. Smile let out a sigh of profound relief – apparently, he too had had his fill of reality-bending for one evening.
"Alright, climb on my back. I'll carry you home," Smile declared, finally relaxing his iron grip, though he kept a steadying hand on X's arm. "Since I was the one who insisted you go out and 'unwind,' it's only fair I deal with the consequences." He moved slightly ahead and crouched down, offering his shoulders, all the while maintaining a firm hold to ensure his unsteady companion didn't lose his balance and accidentally pitch himself off the very rooftop they had just safely returned to.
With a series of half-asleep, swaying movements, X indeed managed to clamber onto Smile’s back, his weight settling heavily against the hero's costume.
"Alright then, course is set for home, you drunkard," Smile announced, adjusting his grip to secure his passenger before starting the careful descent.
The night air was bracing, a crisp and clarifying tonic after the stifling heat of the party and the psychedelic chaos of the dimensional rift. Smile adjusted his grip, securing X’s legs more firmly around his waist. “Hold on,” he instructed, his voice softer now, the earlier teasing replaced by a steady, reassuring calm. “And try not to get sick on my suit. This thing is a nightmare to dry-clean.”
With a low hum of energy that was as much a part of him as his own heartbeat, Smile pushed off from the rooftop. They ascended not with a jarring lurch, but with a smooth, powerful grace that sent a rush of wind whipping past them. The city unfurled below like a vast circuit board of light, a breathtaking tapestry of gleaming skyscrapers, winding arterial highways pulsing with headlights, and the quieter, dimmer residential grids where the city slept.
X, who usually experienced flight as a controlled, self-directed force, let out a faint, involuntary grunt of disorientation, his arms tightening around Smile’s neck.
“Easy there,” Smile said, glancing back as best he could. “I’ve got you. Just… try to relax. Look at the view. It’s prettier when you’re not the one having to steer through it.”
But X kept his face buried in the fabric of Smile’s shoulder, the world a dizzying, nauseating tilt of lights and shadows. “It’s too fast,” he muttered, his voice muffled. “And everything’s spinning. Your fault.”
“My fault?” Smile chuckled, banking gently to avoid the spire of a skyscraper, the maneuver as effortless as breathing. “I’m not the one who tried to turn the fabric of spacetime into a personal drunk-driving shortcut?”
A weak grumble was his only answer. Smile felt the tension in the form clinging to his back, the rigid line of anxiety. His tone softened further. “Hey. Seriously. You’re safe. I’m not going to drop you. Worst-case scenario, I’ll just use myself as a crash mat. It’s literally in the job description.”
He felt X’s breath hitch, then release in a long, shuddering sigh. Slowly, tentatively, X turned his head, resting his cheek against Smile’s shoulder blade instead of burying his face. He cracked open an eye to see the world streaming past far below – a mesmerizing, silent river of light.
“See?” Smile said softly. “Not so bad when you’re not the one causing the chaos, is it?”
“It’s… tolerable,” X conceded, his voice barely a whisper against the wind. “Don’t get a big head about it.”
Smile smiled, a genuine, unforced expression even though no one could see it. “Too late.” He adjusted their course, angling toward a quieter district, the glittering commercial heart of the city giving way to the softer, warmer glow of apartment windows. “Almost there. Just a few more blocks.”
They flew in silence for a moment, the only sounds the steady rush of wind and the distant hum of the city. It was X who broke it, his voice small and uncharacteristically vulnerable. “I… miscalculated. Back there.”
“You think?” Smile replied, but the jab was gentle, devoid of any real sting.
“The alcohol. The emotional residue from that insipid gathering. It compromised my focus.”
Smile’s grip tightened just a fraction, a silent, solid reassurance. “Yeah, well. Maybe next time just call a cab like a normal, non-reality-warping person.” He began a slow, gentle descent, circling down toward a familiar, nondescript apartment building. “Or, you know, call me. I’d have given you a lift. A normal one. No kaleidoscopic nightmare dimensions included.”
Smile’s descent was a whisper against the night, his landing on the balcony so precise it barely disturbed the stillness. He carefully set X back on solid ground, and the man instantly swayed, his hand shooting out to clutch the cold metal of the railing for support. With a fluid, practiced motion, Smile manipulated the balcony door’s lock – he had his own particular method, one he’d perfected over many such visits. He’d done this countless times, letting himself into X’s apartment in the evenings, a habit he maintained despite X’s frequent, grumbled requests to use the front door like a normal person. To Smile, the formality of a front entrance felt far stranger, more of an intrusion than this silent, aerial arrival.
Once the entrance to the apartment was open, Smile took X firmly by the hand, guiding him across the threshold with a steadying pressure. He navigated him carefully past a low pile of the rug, a familiar obstacle he knew was a prime tripping hazard for someone in this state. "There we go, almost to your crib," Smile murmured, steering X into the stark, minimalist confines of his bedroom. X required no further invitation; he collapsed onto the soft expanse of his bed with a heavy sigh, his form instantly ruining the perfectly regimented, military-crisp sheets.
"Alright, where does he keep the homewear?" Smile mumbled to himself, opening a modest closet. He was met with a sight that was profoundly, predictably X: a wardrobe composed almost entirely of identical, impeccably folded items, arranged with a precision that bordered on the obsessive. Damn him and his perfectionism, Smile thought, though he had to admit that, for once, the fastidious organization was exactly what was needed.
He selected a set of soft, light pajamas and approached the nearly comatose form on the bed. "Hey, no sleeping yet! We've got to get you changed," he said, his voice firm but kind. He slid an arm under X's shoulders and, with a grunt of effort, hauled him up into a semi-seated position. "If you wake up tomorrow sober and still in this suit, and consequently in a foul mood from the very first second, it's going to be a miserable day for both of us."
The struggle was both absurd and endearing. X, in his current state, was about as cooperative as a sack of potatoes with a particularly stubborn attitude. As Smile attempted to maneuver the suit jacket off his shoulders, X simply went limp, his dead weight threatening to pull them both to the floor.
“Come on, help with me here,” Smile grunted, heaving him back upright. “You’re worse than a toddler. At least they flail. You just… deflate.”
X’s head lolled against Smile’s shoulder, his breath warm and smelling faintly of beer against Smile’s neck. “S’your fault,” he slurred, the words muffled by fabric. “Should’ve… left me on the roof. Good roof. Solid. Not spinny.”
“The roof was ‘spinny’ because you tried to turn the universe into a kaleidoscope,” Smile retorted, finally winning the battle with the jacket and tossing it onto a nearby chair. The tie was next. X seemed to take this as a personal attack, batting weakly at Smile’s hands.
“Stop that,” Smile chided, his voice softening despite himself. He caught X’s flailing wrist, his grip gentle but firm. The simple contact sent a familiar, aching jolt through him. “I’m trying to help you, you impossible man.”
X stilled, his eyes struggling to focus on Smile’s face. In the dim light of the bedroom, his usually sharp features were softened, his guard down completely. “Smile?” he mumbled, as if just realizing who was manhandling him.
“The one and only,” Smile said, his tone light, a perfect mask for the quiet turmoil inside. He worked open the top button of X’s shirt, his fingers brushing against the warm skin of his throat. He felt X shiver.
“Why d’you always… do this?” X’s voice was a low, drowsy rumble. His gaze was unfocused, but it held a strange intensity.
“Do what? Save you from yourself? It’s in my job description. ‘Hero.’ Ring any bells?” Smile’s attempt at levity felt hollow. He was hyper-aware of every point of contact, of the trust implicit in X’s pliant helplessness.
“No,” X insisted, his hand coming up to clumsily pat Smile’s chest, right over the emblem on his suit. “This. You. Always… here. Even when I’m… an asshole.”
Smile’s breath caught. He looked down at the hand resting on his chest, then back at X’s face. The alcohol had stripped away every one of X’s formidable defenses, leaving behind a raw, unsettling honesty.
“Someone has to be,” Smile said quietly, his own pretense fading. He gave up on the buttons for a moment, just holding X upright. “Who else is going to keep you from getting lost in your own head? Or your own personal dimension?”
X’s eyes drifted shut again, a faint, almost imperceptible smile touching his lips. “Hmm. You. Only you.” The words were a sleepy exhale, so quiet they were almost missed. But Smile heard them. They landed in the center of his chest with the force of a physical blow, warming him from the inside out.
For a long moment, he just stood there, holding the man he loved frustrating, brilliant, infuriating, vulnerable X upright against him. The unspoken thing that always hung between them, the mutual pining built on a foundation of bickering and unwavering loyalty, felt terrifyingly close to the surface.
Finally, Smile took a shaky breath, the moment passing. “Right,” he said, his voice a little rough. “Well, don’t get used to it. Now, arms up. Let’s get this shirt off before you decide to philosophize about the structural integrity of my hero costume next.”
And though X was mostly asleep, he offered a faint, clumsy cooperation, a silent testament to a trust that went deeper than either of them would ever dare admit while sober.
The final victory over the rumpled dress shirt was a quiet triumph. Smile managed to guide X’s limp arms into the soft pajama top, his movements now more methodical than frantic. The fight had gone out of X, replaced by a heavy, boneless exhaustion. He was pliant, allowing Smile to gently maneuver him, his head drooping forward onto Smile’s shoulder once more.
“There,” Smile murmured, his voice a soft hush in the quiet room. He smoothed down the fabric over X’s back, a simple, comforting gesture. “Almost done.”
The pajama pants were a simpler affair. With a practicality born of necessity, Smile worked them on, avoiding looking too closely, his focus entirely on the task. When X was finally dressed, Smile let out a long, slow breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He carefully laid him back against the pillows, pulling the ruined, but now straightened, sheets up to his chin.
“You gonna be okay?”
X nodded, not meeting Smile’s eyes. “Yes. I… thank you. For the… stable flight path.”
Smile gave him a warm, easy smile, the one that reached his eyes. “Anytime. Now get some sleep, you lightweight.”
In the dim light, X looked younger, the usual lines of tension and concentration smoothed away by sleep and alcohol. Smile stood there for a moment, just watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. The frantic energy of the night – the party, the chaotic teleportation, the struggle to get him home finally bled away, leaving behind a profound and weary tenderness.
He reached out and, with a gentleness he rarely allowed himself to show, brushed a stray strand of black hair from X’s forehead. His fingers lingered for a second against the cool skin.
“You’re a nightmare,” he whispered to the sleeping form, the words devoid of any real heat. “An absolute, world-class pain in my ass.”
He sank onto the edge of the mattress, the fight leaving his own body.
“But I’d rather have you being an idiot and needing a babysitter than…” He trailed off, unable to even finish the thought. The image of X lost forever in one of his own unstable dimensions, alone and disoriented, was a cold spike of fear in his gut.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and ran a hand over his face. The weight of the night settled on him. This was the part no one saw, the part that came after the flashy rescues and the easy banter. The quiet vigilance. The worry.
A soft, incoherent mumble came from the bed. X shifted, his brow furrowing slightly as if even in sleep, his mind was working. Instinctively, Smile reached out and placed a steadying hand on his shoulder.
“Shhh,” he soothed, his thumb making a small, calming circle. “I’m here.”
The tension in X’s face eased almost instantly at the touch and the sound of Smile’s voice. He settled back into the pillows with a soft sigh, sinking deeper into sleep. The simple, trusting response undid something in Smile’s chest. This was why he did it. This was why he put up with the insults, the stubbornness, the sheer infuriating brilliance of the man. For these rare, unguarded moments of pure trust. For the knowledge that he was, perhaps, the only person X would allow to see him like this.
He stayed there, keeping watch, until X’s breathing was deep and even. Only then did he slowly, reluctantly, remove his hand. He placed a glass of water on the bedside table, within easy reach, and made sure the balcony door was locked.
With one last look at his sleeping friend, Smile finally slipped out into the night. The city was quiet now, the crisis averted. With a final, two-fingered salute, Smile pushed off from the railing, shooting back up into the velvet night, a streak of vibrant color against the stars, leaving X alone with the quiet hum of his sleeping city and the unfamiliar, but not entirely unpleasant, feeling of having been cared for.