Archive of Our Own ^beta

Getting through the house is the easy part. The Park family is out of town, and most of their security is with them. The living spaces are dark and quiet.

As soon as Taehyun follows Yeonjun and Kai through the doors to the first basement level, though, the whole world changes—ten degrees colder, a gray cement fortress.

“Start watching for the laser tripwires,” murmurs Soobin through their earpieces. He’s tracking them and hacking into the security system from a van out of sight down the street—nice tech, on a chaebol gig. 

Taehyun isn’t used to anything so sci-fi—this isn’t the kind of thing he and Yeonjun do. Kai, along with his guide Soobin, has been working on the security team of the Choi family for about six months, and their second son disappeared two days ago. When Kai called, almost desperate to get his client—his friend—back, Yeonjun didn’t hesitate.

“I can hear the lasers,” Kai says.

“They start about halfway down the stairs,” Yeonjun adds.

Taehyun can’t see anything—the lasers are meant to be invisible to the naked eye. Yeonjun, of course, can see them anyway, and Kai can hear the minute buzz of the electronics in the walls.

But Taehyun doesn’t have their supernaturally powerful senses or the sharp reflexes that come with them. All he has is the hand Yeonjun reaches back for him, coaching him where to take high steps over each tripwire as they descend the stairs and move down the hall.

So, he has everything he needs.

He goes fast—walking together, Yeonjun and Taehyun can still keep up with Kai. Taehyun trains hard, so he can always keep up.

There’s a keypad at the end of the hall, ahead of another steel door. “We’re at the combination lock,” Kai whispers. “Got anything?”

“No, I’m still working on it,” Soobin says, keys clacking in the background. “Hyung, what do you think?”

Yeonjun produces a small flashlight from one of his many pockets and shines it over the keypad, turning his head to scan the keys at an angle. Again, he’s looking for clues Taehyun could only dream of seeing—patterns of wear, the exact angles of fingers brushing across the keys.

Nobody who saw Yeonjun charming baristas or fumbling to open packages would recognize he basically has superpowers—he looks like a regular, if really fit, guy. But as he straightens and types in a code, there is something more than human about the speed and fluidity of his movements.

A sentinel is a person, only better—better senses, better healing, better strength and speed and power.

The lock shifts inside the door with a heavy grind. 

“I think these people’s security is shit,” Yeonjun says, eyes grinning over his face mask, as he pulls the door open and waves Kai gallantly ahead.

Yeonjun’s job is to read invisible signs in the air and the walls, and Taehyun’s job is to read Yeonjun. All of that better is too much for one human brain to hold—so along with the gifts of sense and strength and speed, fate gives each sentinel the gift of a guide to help keep their mind and body in balance.

There’s a sharp edge glinting off Yeonjun’s movements—a twitch in his fingers, a glitter in his eyes as he stares down a hall of plain doors.

“The security’s good,” Taehyun says as Kai presses his ear to the first door. “You’re just better.”

Yeonjun smiles too easily at the flattery. Taehyun pitches his voice lower to ask, “What number are you at?”

Yeonjun’s brow twitches toward a sneer. “About eight,” he admits.

Taehyun shakes his head. 

On a scale of one to ten, ten is the most sensory input Yeonjun can handle without starting to shut down and sink into the maze of his own mind. He doesn’t need to be anywhere near an eight right now, walking empty halls.

There’s a damp, unpleasant metallic odor down here, and strong smells are the worst for creeping past Yeonjun’s defenses and tipping him toward sensory overload. In their earpieces, a soft metronome is ticking a beat—a technique Kai and Soobin use to keep Kai’s hearing under control—and it’s more invasive and ominous than Taehyun expected. Everything feels more intense than it should.

“Can we get to seven?” Taehyun asks.

Yeonjun twitches again. He’ll want his senses on high alert while they’re working; he’ll think it’s worth the risk.

Kai moves to another door.

“Seven,” Taehyun says. “Please.”

Yeonjun sighs and rolls out his shoulders and puts his hand on Taehyun’s chest, able to feel Taehyun’s heartbeat through the heavy layer of his Kevlar vest. While he’s looking down at his own hand, Taehyun studies his face. His sharp angles find light even in this dim hall.

He used to have to meditate, a formal, mystic process, every time he needed to guide Yeonjun off this ledge. Now they’ve been together long enough that to guide him in this simple way, Taehyun only has to feel it. He stands in the calm, easy place where he wants Yeonjun to meet him, and Yeonjun’s forehead relaxes as he finds his way there.

“Seven,” Yeonjun says. “Maybe six.” He brushes his knuckles down the front of Taehyun's vest as he steps back.

“Got him,” Kai says. This is an old-fashioned key lock. Keeping his ear pressed against the door, he uses a couple of pins to break it in seconds.

The door swings open on a much worse room than Taehyun expected—windowless, bare, lit searingly bright. Choi Beomgyu is curled up in the corner, and he lifts his head a little too slowly.

The tension twists suddenly tight—it’s good Taehyun just talked Yeonjun down, because he can feel Yeonjun sharpen his squint, dialing his perception back up.

“It’s about time,” Beomgyu says, his tone light but his voice wobbling. “This has been my most annoying kidnapping yet.”

As Kai helps him up, he sways, and he’s favoring his left ankle. Taehyun kneels down next to him to press gently around the joint—it’s straight but badly swollen.

Ever since chaebol families started hiring sentinels as private security, their whole world has become a dangerous game—backgammon played with second sons and first cousins. But this game is played by gentleman’s rules—decent treatment, modest ransoms, leaving things tidy during an escape like this one.

Or it should be. It looks like the Parks are not following the rules, and the team is currently trapped in their basement with less firepower than Taehyun would have packed if he’d known there was a chance of real violence.

Hanging on Kai’s arm with his weight fully off one leg, Beomgyu still manages to look down his nose. “Did you bring the Fox?”

“Oh, not my government name,” Yeonjun says, clearly pleased. He's one of the most popular sentinels on social media, and easily the most famous who isn't a cop or soldier—who is, technically, a criminal.

“He’s an old friend,” Kai says. “And I brought him because he’s the best.”

“He blew up one of our mines!” Beomgyu says.

Yeonjun’s eyes narrow into a grin over his mask. “I’m pretty sure no one ever proved that was me.”

“And they got past security to do that because they’re the best,” Kai says, ignoring him. “They’re on our side tonight, so let us get you home.”

This dawdling to chat should be giving Beomgyu time to get steady, but he seems to be swaying more the longer Kai holds him standing. Taehyun rises and looks Beomgyu over—his lips are chalky-dry.

Taehyun has a little first aid training, but he doesn’t have the supplies to wrap a sprain and he’s not qualified to fix anything worse. He gives Beomgyu the canteen from one of his pockets and touches his elbow to help him guide it to his mouth and drink. With his fingers on Beomgyu’s skin, he visualizes easing Beomgyu’s pain, siphoning it out of him like a liquid toxin. 

Taehyun is Yeonjun’s guide, and his powers only have truly dramatic effects on him, but he can make little emotional suggestions to anyone—right now, they could use anything that will help them safely out of the Parks’ compound.

As Taehyun works, Yeonjun touches his earpiece and asks, “Is there any way out through the basement? I don’t know if we can get the package back through the house.”

“There’s an emergency hatch,” Soobin says. “Looks tight, though.”

“Too tight to get the package out on our backs?” Yeonjun asks.

As soon as Beomgyu lowers the canteen, he coughs the water back up. Kai’s eyes go round and Taehyun jumps closer to help him keep Beomgyu steady.

“I can’t tell,” Soobin says. “Maybe.”

“Looks like we have to find out,” Yeonjun says.

Taehyun helps boost Beomgyu onto Kai’s back. “Gotcha, hyung,” Kai says. “It’s okay.” 

“This is literally humiliating,” Beomgyu says like a little prince as he shuts his eyes and rests his head on Kai’s shoulder.

Kai is strong, but an entire Beomgyu slows him down, as does following Soobin’s instructions over the speaker and pausing for tripwires in the maze of halls. 

They have to get up to ground level to get out, but every turn takes them down, which feels deeply, sickly wrong. Beomgyu makes small, odd kitten noises when Kai’s running jostles him, which is worse. Yeonjun runs last, sweeping the line, but Taehyun can feel him even when he isn’t looking at him, a clear, bright note soaring higher as he focuses on a stream of infinite details. The basement smell gets worse as they descend.

“Left ahead,” Soobin says. “Hatch at the end of that hall.”

Taehyun’s treacherous brain thinks lucky we managed not to trip any wires as Kai spins the vault-style door handle on the hatch, and at once, both he and Yeonjun stop and turn to the empty hall behind them. A breath later, Taehyun hears heavy footsteps running toward them.

“Get him out,” Yeonjun says to Kai, “I’ll take care of this.” To Taehyun, he adds, “Go with them.”

“I can help,” Taehyun says.

“Help get them out,” Yeonjun says firmly, and even if it was possible to argue with that tone, there’s no time.

Kai turns the handle again and the heavy door thunks open as Yeonjun spins to get his elbow into the chest of the first guard. Taehyun hesitates at the hatch to watch—Yeonjun’s movements are fast and smooth, darting among the three guards like a static spark. Those aren’t sentinels, they’re regular folks, and they can’t keep up with him.

So three on one might be a fair fight. Taehyun follows Yeonjun’s order and turns away, beginning to climb. The emergency hatch is a tunnel straight up to the dark sky, with ladder rungs set into the wall. It is wide enough for Kai to get up while he’s carrying Beomgyu, but only just, and he goes slowly to keep from knocking Beomgyu against the walls.

Taehyun keeps his eyes up and follows, but his attention is below, tracking the heavy, meaty sounds of punches and picking Yeonjun’s grunts out from the others. The sounds of fighting move closer, from the hall into the hatch. “Look out!” Yeonjun cries as a hand gets Taehyun’s ankle.

His chin hits one rung of the ladder as the guard yanks him down, and he loses his grip on the rung above, and it’s already over. His head bounces off the cement wall as he falls, and the world tumbles over in a kaleidoscope of steely grays.

Taehyun takes one boot to the stomach and stays down, gasping.

Somewhere, Yeonjun roars.

Taehyun is alone on the spinning ground, and the sounds of fighting and yelling are far away past the ringing in his ears. He yanks out his earpiece, but it doesn’t stop. He has to try a few times to get the breath to say, “Hyung,” but he still can’t hear himself.

He blinks, but everything is still sideways, and it hurts to try to shake his head clear.

The only sound left is Yeonjun shouting.

This is an impossible situation to try to meditate in—on the floor of a gray hell with his whole body throbbing in raw pain—but as he closes his eyes, it is an unlikely relief to trace the paths in his mind he has created with years of practice. 

He concentrates, guiding Yeonjun the way the textbooks taught him: he imagines a wide, blank space and finds Yeonjun there. First, he sees the pure idea of Yeonjun he carries around in his own mind—the way he is at breakfast, usually, puffy-eyed and shirtless and smiling crookedly over his food.

And then, abruptly, he becomes Yeonjun as he currently is inside his own mind—dirty and snarling, twisting his neck as he hunts for something else to fight.

“Hyung,” Taehyun says again, inside his mind where he can hear himself clearly, where he and Yeonjun have practiced together so often and so well that his words always land true.

Yeonjun turns his attention to Taehyun with a sideways glance—he has to drag himself, but he does it without resisting. That’s not just the sentinel-guide bond that fate gave them before they even knew one another; that’s also trust and training. That’s the two of them together.

“Ten,” Taehyun says. “Nine, eight, seven, six.” He counts down faster than he normally would, but they might be in real danger back in their bodies, and he needs Yeonjun to get his senses under control now.

The dangerous glitter in Yeonjun’s eyes starts to soften.

“Come back to me, hyung,” Taehyun says. “I need help.”

He jolts back to reality, and Yeonjun is crouching in front of him, gaze focused and clear. Behind him, the men who followed them are shadows on the floor.

“Can you move?” Yeonjun asks.

Taehyun tries his limbs, and they all work—but his head throbs, that ringing still louder than Yeonjun’s words. “My—my head,” he says, though it’s hard to make his lips and tongue work to speak.

“I know,” Yeonjun says. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

He scoops Taehyun off the floor like he’s as light as paper; it will wear Yeonjun out fast to use that much strength, so Taehyun gathers himself to get on his feet. He wraps his arms around Yeonjun’s shoulders and hangs on tightly, though his vision blurs in and out as his head pounds.

Also, his stomach is swimming. “I might throw up.”

“I have worse on me right now, I think,” Yeonjun says. “Try to hang on.”

Taehyun keeps his eyes closed and breathes through his nose as Yeonjun moves lightly up the ladder.

By a gift of luck, they’re free—they emerge outside the house’s walls, onto the street, and Kai is cooing cheerfully to Beomgyu as he picks him up off the sidewalk. He’s got two more guards slumped at his feet.

His face falls when he sees Taehyun. “Oh no! Is he hurt, too?”

“I’ll take him to the pirates,” Yeonjun says. “Can you get Beomgyu back?”

“Yeah,” Kai says, “but hyung, the the family has a real doctor—”

“I want the pirates,” Taehyun says. He can’t see Yeonjun’s face, but he can still feel Yeonjun’s smile.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Yeonjun says, and turns to run.

Once they’re out of sight of the others and the house, he pauses. “Do you think you can walk?” 

He crouches for Taehyun to find his feet. Taehyun gets steady enough to keep the ground under him, but he has to clutch Yeonjun’s arm to stay upright—the world is tilting like a boat on choppy water, and the ground seems to hit the walls around the big houses at the wrong angles. He closes his eyes and fights down his nausea.

“Oh, Taehyun,” Yeonjun says softly. His hands cup Taehyun’s elbows so lightly Taehyun can barely feel them, but the strength there holds Taehyun up. “Do you need the Chois’ doctor, after all? Or should we go to a real hospital?”

Taehyun shakes his head and tells himself it hurts less than it did before. He opens his eyes and takes a smooth breath and says, “I’m fine. If it’s a concussion, I probably just need to rest. That’s what Seonghwa-hyung will say, I bet.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you take him to a hospital?” Seonghwa says, after they’ve driven to the docks and taken a hidden motorboat out onto the river to board the pirates’ barge.

They’ve gathered in the captain’s quarters, lavishly full of stolen silk and leather. Seonghwa put a tarp down over the armchair Taehyun is sitting in, so that he wouldn’t get blood on the upholstery, and Yeonjun is pacing because he’s not allowed to touch anything. 

The captain, Hongjoong, is out tonight, but it’s not a secret that Seonghwa stays in these quarters, too, and most of the luxury is for him.

“Can the hospital even do anything for a concussion?” Taehyun asks.

“No, but I can’t do anything for a brain bleed,” Seonghwa says, shining a small light into Taehyun’s eyes. He sounds less angry, though. “I guess it’s promising that you’re well enough to talk back.”

“I will never get too sick to talk back,” Taehyun vows. Across the room, Yeonjun’s snicker sneaks under Wooyoung’s fuller laugh.

Taehyun’s head is getting clearer as time passes, which seems like a good sign that seeing Seonghwa instead of risking a hospital was the right call, but he mostly wanted to come here because Wooyoung always makes Yeonjun laugh and helps calm him down. 

In a hospital, with the antiseptic smells and long waits and eyes everywhere, Yeonjun’s senses would have gotten totally overwhelmed. He might have even gone into sensory overload and disappeared into his own mind—into the maze, it’s called, because he could get lost there. Taehyun isn’t strong enough to help him out of the maze right now. It wasn’t worth the risk.

Seonghwa presses a clean cloth to Taehyun’s face, where he bit his lip open smacking his chin on the ladder. “Can you hold that there?”

Taehyun takes it in his hand. The pressure feels strange against his achy jaw.

“Do you know who I am?” Seonghwa asks.

“You’re Seonghwa-hyung,” Taehyun says through the cloth. “We call you the doctor, but you’re really a nurse.”

“Actually, my license has expired, so I’m just a criminal, like you,” Seonghwa says cheerfully. “And who’s that over there?”

“That’s your ship’s second mate, Wooyoung-hyung,” Taehyun says. “And Yeonjun-hyung. My sentinel.”

Saying the words out loud makes him feel the connection between them—or notice it, really, because he can feel it all the time, like his own heartbeat. Yeonjun looks up, feeling it, too. Taehyun hurts all over, but that little warm spark in his chest, the one that matches Yeonjun’s—that feels good.

“Do you know who the president is?” Seonghwa asks.

“Beomgyu’s butt-face uncle,” Taehyun says.

Seonghwa looks up in alarm.

“Choi Minho,” Taehyun says promptly.

“Don’t make jokes while I’m trying to examine you,” Seonghwa says. “President Choi has his flaws, but a butt-face isn’t one of them.”

“I do not admit it,” Taehyun says. It makes Yeonjun laugh again, though Seonghwa sighs.

Seonghwa moves the light around to test Taehyun’s vision, then stands him up and makes him demonstrate his balance. It feels pretty bad, but he doesn’t throw up or pass out, which must mean he passes Seonghwa’s test.

“It does look like a concussion,” Seonghwa says. “Which means at least a few days of rest. Real rest, staying in bed and watching a drama. No exercising, no plotting your next little caper. Okay?”

“Yes, he’ll rest,” Yeonjun says before Taehyun can answer. Taehyun nods.

Seonghwa takes the now-bloodied cloth in Taehyun’s hand away from his mouth. He wets another in cool water and begins to wipe Taehyun’s face. Taehyun opens his mouth to say he can do it himself, but the cloth moves over his lip and he hisses in pain instead.

“Be still,” Seonghwa says.

Taehyun can look down and see that he’s covered in blood, but somehow he’s surprised by how much Seonghwa has to clean up. It’s not just his lip—it’s the back of his head, too.

Taehyun stays very still so Seonghwa can work, but he tracks the sound of Yeonjun’s steps as he paces faster and faster.

“You want to sit down, babe?” Wooyoung asks. “I can get something for you to sit on.”

“No,” Yeonjun says. His steps get heavier, stomping.

“Where are you at, hyung?” Taehyun asks. “Seven, eight?”

A pause. “Maybe a nine,” Yeonjun admits.

Taehyun sighs. “I’m okay. I’m really okay. There's nothing to watch for right now. Can we get that way down?”

Yeonjun makes a noise like a caged animal, a frustrated growl. Taehyun tries to turn his head to look, but Seonghwa’s hand holds his face firmly still.

“Can you really not calm yourself down this one time?” Seonghwa snaps. “I have to get him cleaned up. Taehyun-ah, let’s try the shower.”

Taehyun does not want to do that—he wants to get this over with and do his job to help Yeonjun—but if he doesn’t let Seonghwa help him shower now, Yeonjun will insist on doing it when they get home. He hesitates.

“I’m sorry,” Yeonjun says. “You’re right, hyung, I’ll be fine. Taehyun-ah, go with him.”

“Listen to the water against the boat,” Taehyun says as Seonghwa helps him stand again. “Try to get down to a five.”

“I’m fine,” Yeonjun says again. “Don't worry about me.”

The bathroom is luxe white marble, and not as small as Taehyun expected, considering they’re on a boat. Seonghwa puts a folding chair under the shower head and helps Taehyun undress with a coolly comforting professionalism.

Taehyun is startled by the sight of his own body. He’s achy all over, but seeing how bruised his side is from the fall, he feels it deeper. The water of the shower stings where his skin is broken, but as it flows over his tightly wound muscles and the ache recedes, he’d swoon if he wasn’t sitting.

Taehyun has been injured during their work before—but, he sees now, never as badly as this. 

“All right?” Seonghwa asks, his hands quick and gentle in Taehyun’s hair.

What a question—Taehyun doesn’t know. He trusts he will heal, but how close did they come to suffering a permanent loss tonight? Whispering so the sound of the shower might hide him from Yeonjun’s supernatural hearing, he tries to come up with clearer words. “I don’t feel good.”

“No, I don’t imagine you would,” Seonghwa says. “I don’t want to give you any hard pain meds tonight, but if you don’t have any worse symptoms overnight, you can have some tomorrow.” He pitches his voice low, too. “You can’t take care of Yeonjun if you don’t take care of yourself.”

“It was one bad job,” Taehyun says. “Kai and Soobin had the wrong intel about what we were going into.”

Seonghwa nods. “Just keep it in mind.”

Taehyun understands what Seonghwa wants him to see—but he already knows he won’t change anything.

The relationship between sentinel and guide is different for everyone. In school, guides in training learned all kinds of technical and practical skills—anything their sentinels might need from them—in addition to the rather magical science of guiding. It’s why Taehyun knows so much about martial arts and Soobin can hack computers. They had to be ready to serve many needs, knowing sentinels are as different from one another as any other people.

Kai has never needed a lot of help from Soobin to control his senses. He’s even-keeled—sometimes a little too chill about things—and has always been preternaturally skilled at handling his strong power. But with so much in his head, he can act oddly or turn painfully shy and withdrawn. To function at his best, he needs Soobin between him and the world, managing small talk and little daily practicalities.

What Taehyun does for Yeonjun is the opposite. Yeonjun is charming and capable and he leads their little team confidently, keeping them safe and building them a sustainable life in circumstances where that is not guaranteed. Yeonjun’s strongest enemy is in his own head. He goes too fast, gets too intense, pushes his body too far. Taehyun has to get between the shadowy crags in Yeonjun’s mind to help him best.

From the outside, it probably looks codependent and claustrophobic. But outsiders don’t really understand how much Yeonjun takes on. Taehyun knows how hard he works to take care of them both, and helping him as much as possible isn’t only Taehyun’s job—it’s his purpose. 

Clean and dry and dressed in fresh borrowed clothes, Taehyun could curl up right on the floor of the bathroom and go to sleep. But it isn’t far for Taehyun and Yeonjun to get back to their own home.

They take the motorboat back across the lapping dark water of the river. Taehyun closes his eyes and turns his face into the cool mist over the side. Yeonjun helps him out of the boat and back to the car, and he drives them through the warehouses on the docks to the one they live in. The pirates store their stuff here on the way to market, and they let Yeonjun and Taehyun stay in exchange for Yeonjun’s watchful eyes on the goods.

“Wait there,” Yeonjun says as he parks, and then comes around the car to open Taehyun’s door like a suitor in an old movie.

Stupid way to think of it.

He holds out his arm for Taehyun to take his elbow and leads him through the jagged pyramids of dark crates, and they take the creaky old elevator up to the second floor without Yeonjun even asking whether Taehyun could manage the stairs.

When they get to their loft, and Yeonjun unlocks another door and turns the light on, the drab world of the warehouse becomes their own hidden palace.

Half their stuff is actual garbage they’ve recovered, and the other half is beautiful, luxurious objects they’ve relieved from the afterlife debts of miserly owners. To cover the rips in the sofa where stuffing is spilling out, they’ve pieced together thick wool suiting and velvet dresses. Yeonjun has a coat with an ostrich-feather collar draped over his tattered armchair to cover its worn upholstery, and the feathers give the back the silhouette of a throne.

They don’t have a real kitchen, but next to the industrial sink there’s a line of appliances to cook everything they might need—a wheezing mini-fridge, a few hot plates in various states of disrepair, a serviceable rice cooker and ramen cooker, a shiny steel espresso machine, and even a cotton candy machine. Yeonjun lifted that on a whim from a carnival they exposed on social media for mistreating its animals.

Their bathroom was designed for dockworkers, a row of toilet stalls and a huge camp shower, but it’s also full of more lavishly perfumed soaps and oils than they both could use in a lifetime.

And in the two rooms in the hall of offices behind the loft that they’ve taken for their bedrooms, Yeonjun sleeps on a faded floor mat older than he is, and Taehyun has a firm, bouncy mattress so deluxe it comes with a remote control, made up with linen sheets and a heavy silk quilt.

Still, when Taehyun lays his exhausted body down, sleep dances away from him. His whole body is throbbing, the pain radiating deepest from the back of his head, his face, and down his side. No matter how he turns, his weight is on a cut or bruise, and when he closes his eyes, he feels the sick swimming of vertigo instead of the bed steady underneath him.

And still, he’s worried about Yeonjun.

His ears ring, but past that sound, he listens to the shower starting and stopping, and then Yeonjun walking around the loft. His steps come to Taehyun’s door.

For a moment, Yeonjun is a shadow in the doorway, his body a long, slim slouching line, as distant and gorgeous as a statue. He’s wearing nothing but boxers, to sleep in, and he could make a classical sculptor cry. He could probably make a lot of people cry, looking like that.

He steps from the yellow light of the hall into the cooler dimness of Taehyun’s room, closing the door behind him, and his tired, worried face becomes clear.

He doesn’t check whether Taehyun is awake—he can tell from Taehyun’s breath, maybe even his heartbeat. “Still in pain?” Yeonjun asks.

He can probably tell that from Taehyun’s breath, too, as Taehyun sits up. “Yeah, a little.”

Yeonjun raises an eyebrow. “Sounds like a lot. You’re not dizzy? Nauseous?”

“Just sore,” Taehyun says. “I’m okay. Do you need to meditate?”

“Meditate? Fuck off.” Yeonjun puts one knee down on the end of Taehyun’s mattress. “Neither of us is up for that. Why don’t I just sleep here?”

Taehyun already knows he’s going to lose this argument—Yeonjun finds his way into Taehyun’s bed every couple of weeks, after any annoying or uncomfortable day, and today was as bad as it gets—but he can’t easily give in. “That’s a bad habit.”

“Then we won’t make a habit of it.” Yeonjun moves the rest of the way onto the bed, almost purring. He makes his case like a seduction, crawling up to the pillows. “But Seonghwa-hyung said I should check on you every couple hours, and I need you to help me calm down a little, too. It’ll be easier for both of us this way.”

“What number are you at?” Taehyun twists his fingers, fretting, still sitting up as Yeonjun lies down.

Yeonjun touches Taehyun’s elbow, pulling lightly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll listen to your heartbeat for a while, and I’ll be fine.”

It feels like Taehyun’s heart is screaming—it’s horrible to imagine Yeonjun could hear that through the rhythm, somehow, but he lets Yeonjun lead him down and pull him into a spoon. Yeonjun’s fingers rest against Taehyun’s stomach, not still, but not moving enough to be ticklish. The heat of him does feel soothing around Taehyun’s achy body. 

“Helps a little?” Yeonjun asks.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Good,” Yeonjun says. He pauses long enough Taehyun thinks maybe he’ll drop the discussion for once, but no—he adds, “I don’t know why you always have to argue with me.”

“This is a bad habit,” Taehyun says again. “It’s dangerous for you to rely on touch. What happens if you go into the maze and I’m not nearby?”

“Where else would you be?” Yeonjun asks.

“If something happens,” Taehyun says. “An emergency, I don’t know. And anyway, what are you going to do when you get married? Ditch your family and come sleep with me?”

Yeonjun snorts, his breath hot on Taehyun’s neck. “What are you talking about? Who am I going to marry?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t. Married, can you imagine?” Yeonjun laughs low, his chest quaking against Taehyun’s back. “I’ll just marry you, darling, and then it won’t be a problem.”

Taehyun closes his eyes. Yeonjun’s arm around him anchors him, and the queasy sensation that was plaguing him when he tried to close his eyes earlier stays at bay.

He did so many impossibly difficult things today—he hurts so much he can feel the pain in every cell of body individually—and none of it feels as bad as this. 

Yeonjun can come in here half-dressed, wheedle his way into Taehyun’s bed, snuggle up and sneak his fingers under the hem of Taehyun’s shirt, and somehow it’s a big fucking joke to him that any of that could mean anything more than their calling as sentinel and guide. 

Taehyun knows it’s a joke because he can feel Yeonjun laughing where they’re pressed together, all the way from shoulders to knees. Close enough to feel Yeonjun’s pulse, and Taehyun has never felt more distant from anyone.

Taehyun takes Yeonjun’s wrist and moves his hand from Taehyun’s stomach up to his chest. “You shouldn’t joke about that,” he says. “And we are going to meditate tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Yeonjun agrees easily. “If you feel better.”

“I’ll feel better if we meditate properly,” Taehyun says. It’s easier to make it about professionalism and technique than his stupid, bruised heart.

Taehyun finds his breath and turns his thoughts to his control over Yeonjun’s senses, to the calm and peace he wants Yeonjun to feel. He means it so much. He cares more about this than he cares about feeling sorry for himself. 

But he only gets a few seconds in before Yeonjun taps his chest.

“Don’t do that now,” Yeonjun whispers. “You need to rest. You help me by just being here.”

Everything else Taehyun could think about would be harder on his mind, but he can't admit that. He still hurts too much to sleep well, as exhausted as he is.

"Okay," he finally says, instead of continuing arguments he has to let himself lose even though he's right. "Goodnight, hyung."

"Goodnight, Taehyun-ah." Yeonjun's voice softens toward sleep. "Love you. Thank you for taking care of me."

He’s sweet, but doesn't mean any of it the way Taehyun would, so Taehyun can't say it back. He keeps his eyes closed, and as the heat of two bodies under the quilt grows heavy and Yeonjun's weight sinks against him, he takes the rest he can from this strange, loud night.

Taehyun wakes from one of his fitful naps alone, and startles truly awake. It's bright enough outside that the narrow windows along the ceiling of the room are letting in real light.

His head is clearer—he promised over and over last night that he didn't feel dizzy or nauseated, and only now that it's gone does he realize how sick he felt. But as he tries to sit up, getting one elbow under him, his body doesn't work like he expects. He's so stiff he truly can't move his neck or shoulders. He collapses back down to the mattress with a small oof.

Yeonjun is at the bedroom door fast enough he might have used his powers to run. “Don't move,” he says. “How do you feel?”

“Better,” Taehyun says, trying to stop visibly wincing. “Really sore, is all.”

“Are you hungry?” Yeonjun asks.

Taehyun’s stomach answers for him, growling loudly. Yeonjun lifts a hand to tell him not to move—Taehyun is still not sure he could if he tried—and runs off toward their shabby kitchen again.

Slower, Taehyun rolls up, stretches his arms, and makes himself a seat out of pillows. It takes him so long that Yeonjun is back before he’s done, setting a box serving as a makeshift tray on the floor and hurrying over to redo Taehyun’s pillow throne. 

“It’s fine,” Taehyun says, embarrassed at the fuss, but then it is better when Yeonjun finishes messing with it and has him propped up against the pillows.

The breakfast he made for Taehyun is absurd—ramen, an omelet over rice, pickled vegetables, iced espresso, and a cloud of violet-colored cotton candy. Taehyun is hungry, but he’s still sick, too. His stomach roils. “I’ll eat well,” he says, and then, “But I actually can’t eat all this.”

“Oh, no.” Yeonjun immediately takes the ramen for himself. “I texted Seonghwa. He’ll be here in an hour or so.”

“Good,” Taehyun says. “We’ll have time to meditate after we eat.”

Yeonjun tenses to argue, but Taehyun gave up enough last night. He intends to win this one. Yeonjun reads him and relents without a fight.

Taehyun stays where he is, sitting up straight so he can control his breath. Yeonjun sprawls out across the foot of the bed, not touching. He puts a hand behind his head and kicks one knee up, closing his eyes. He looks like someone could paint him.

After a second, he opens one eye. “Are we doing this, or what?”

“Right.” Taehyun closes his eyes, too.

He imagines the empty space, and himself inside it. And then Yeonjun, the ideal form of him in Taehyun’s mind—at breakfast, Taehyun’s own.

Yeonjun doesn’t change—still smiling at Taehyun—but he shifts into place, and this image in Taehyun’s mind becomes a real, physical space he’s standing inside.

The pain disappears, evaporating like water. “Oh,” Taehyun says. “Nothing hurts, here.”

“Really?” Yeonjun’s mouth twists. “I guess I should have let you meditate last night.”

Victory granted, Taehyun can be gracious, too. “My head probably wasn’t clear enough. You were right.”

Yeonjun nods and looks around, though there’s nothing to look at. “How come you always picture me without a shirt on?”

“Because you never wear a shirt,” Taehyun says. “What number are you at?”

“Six or so,” Yeonjun says. “I can hear the water in the harbor.”

“You don’t need to listen to that right now,” Taehyun says. “Let it go. Down to five.”

Yeonjun hesitates. Which he never does—they disagree sometimes, but not here, not when Taehyun is guiding him.

“What’s wrong?” Taehyun asks.

“It’s because I’m listening to you,” Yeonjun says. “Counting your breaths. Making sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Taehyun says. “I’ll tell you if it gets worse.”

“No,” Yeonjun says. “No, you won’t. You’ll lie and say it’s fine.”

Taehyun takes that in and holds it. “Okay. Okay—I deserved that. I’ll let you help me, but you have to let me help you first.”

Yeonjun shakes his head. “How come that always ends up being the order?”

“That’s my job,” Taehyun says. “The water is too far away to hear now. Let it go.”

It’s easy to talk him down to a comfortable three once he starts cooperating. They count up to eight and back down to three again, for the practice, and then Taehyun is just staring into Yeonjun’s eyes. Because here, where they’re both carved down to the pure ideas of themselves and there’s nothing else to look at, it’s not strange if he doesn’t want to look away.

“Can we stay here?” Taehyun asks. “Just until Seonghwa comes over with the medicine?”

“Sure,” Yeonjun says. Touch doesn’t really work inside of a meditation, but he takes Taehyun’s hand anyway.

Taehyun watches their fingers wind together without feeling it. “What kind of sentinel did you imagine you’d be, when you were training?” Taehyun asks. “I know it wasn’t this.”

“I guess I imagined being an actual superhero, you know,” Yeonjun says. “Diving out of the sky to stop muggings or whatever. I think most sentinels do.” 

He’s making fun of himself, grinning wryly, so Taehyun smiles, too. It isn’t hard to imagine it, though.

“I also thought I’d work for the government or the military,” Yeonjun says, “but that was because I thought that’s where you went to help people. And then—well, you know.”

“I know,” Taehyun says. “You help people. I think you’re very brave.”

“I think you’re cute,” Yeonjun says, deflecting. “What about you? What did you dream of when you found out you were a guide?”

Taehyun’s hand is still in Yeonjun’s. Because it’s not real, because they can’t feel it, they can stand like this long past when it would get awkward in their bodies. Maybe Yeonjun has forgotten he took Taehyun’s hand at all. Taehyun hasn’t forgotten.

“I didn’t imagine any certain job,” Taehyun says. “A guide supports the sentinel, right? I expected my sentinel to pick what they wanted to do. I always thought of different things. Maybe it will be like this, or like this… I was excited to find out what it would be, not attached to one idea.”

“Did you ever imagine ending up where we did?” Yeonjun asks. “Going off-grid?”

“Kind of,” Taehyun says. “I’d think, what if my sentinel is a criminal? Not the steal-from-the-rich stuff we do, not someone good like you, but a real villain.”

Yeonjun’s gaze cuts deeper into Taehyun’s. “And what did little Taehyun think you’d do if that happened?”

“I figured if fate gave me that sentinel, it would have a reason,” Taehyun says. “It’s dumb, I guess. But I was just a little kid.”

The space around them, a blank canvas in Taehyun’s mind, feels more real than it should. Maybe Yeonjun’s fingers twitch in Taehyun’s hand—or maybe that’s impossible.

“That’s right,” Yeonjun said. “You waited a long time.”

Taehyun’s guiding started showing unusually early—he’d crawl into his parents’ laps and try to give them energy with his hugs as they drank their morning tea. Across the city, Yeonjun showed his sentinel strength unusually early, too, claiming he could see birds in their nests or little fish sparkling in the river’s waves long before his parents believed him. It’s one of the ways fate started getting them ready for one another before they met.

Yeonjun looks away. “Seonghwa’s here.”

When Taehyun comes back to his body in his room, Yeonjun has rolled closer, and his hand is around Taehyun’s ankle. He opens his eyes a second later, and squeezes once before he lets go and hauls himself up, groaning. It sounds like he gets to the door before the pirates knock.

Seonghwa kicks Yeonjun out of the room as he checks Taehyun over. He goes through the concussion symptoms first, and then, with great ceremony, takes out the pain medicine.

Taehyun sits still and listens to Yeonjun and Wooyoung playing with the cotton candy machine in the other room as Seonghwa changes the bandage on his lip and checks over the rest of him.

Yeonjun laughs a lot when Wooyoung is around. Which is totally fine—it’s good, it helps him relax—but for some reason hearing it makes Taehyun’s throat sore with tears now. He tries to blink it back and finds his eyelids heavy. Was he sad about something? He sinks too far underneath it to feel it anymore.

“Oh,” he says. “These meds are so nice.”

Seonghwa laughs enough that Yeonjun comes to check on them. Seonghwa gives Yeonjun a bunch of instructions, but Taehyun doesn’t follow the conversation. Exhaustion is catching up with him as dark waves take his pain away.

Yeonjun comes back when the others are gone. He has finally put a shirt on, a big, soft t-shirt, and it makes him look like the big, soft boy he truly is and almost never gets to be. “Are you feeling better?” he asks quietly.

“Mm-hmm.” Taehyun puts his arm around Yeonjun’s waist and pillows his head on Yeonjun’s hip. There’s a reason he shouldn’t do that, but he can’t remember what it is. He’s so tired, and Yeonjun feels so warm. “Shh, hyung.”

It takes a moment for Yeonjun to shift closer. He puts his hand down on Taehyun’s shoulder; lifts it, and places it in the middle of his back; slowly slides it higher, between his shoulder blades. He must be uncomfortable, and the thought of figuring out how to settle in together forms in Taehyun’s head, but he’s asleep before he can say the words.

Taehyun loses some time to the hazy cycle of pain and meds, pain and meds. He marks time by Yeonjun coming in and out of his room with food and water and new funny videos on his phone for Taehyun to watch.

He said they wouldn’t make a habit of sharing Taehyun’s bed, but night after night, he keeps sneaking in. Maybe Taehyun, wobbly around the boundaries he usually maintains with more care, keeps pulling him in. By the time Taehyun is feeling better, weaning off the meds, and clear-headed enough to notice, it’s been four or five nights in a row, and he dreads the idea of sleeping alone.

This is why sharing his bed is a bad habit. Anything else as addictive as Yeonjun’s body would just kill him and get it over with.

Yeonjun comes in with a mug of tea for Taehyun as night is falling.

“You have to sleep in your own bed tonight,” Taehyun says.

“Actually,” Yeonjun says, handing the mug over, “if you’re up for it, I was thinking we could go out tonight.”

The mug has espresso in it, not tea. Intrigued, Taehyun takes a sip before he says, “Where do you want to go?”

Yeonjun grins in a dark, feral way, like they’re on a job and he’s figured out how to win. “Choi Beomgyu is DJing a party.”

“That doesn’t sound like our scene,” Taehyun says.

Yeonjun waves a hand. “I’ll find you something to wear.”

That’s not what Taehyun meant, but Yeonjun must know that. Taehyun knocks the rest of the espresso back like a shot.

Yeonjun does take charge of Taehyun’s outfit, bringing a pile of clothes in from his room and then digging through Taehyun’s clothes to put things together. 

Taehyun has to wear a face mask—he still has a butterfly bandage holding his lip closed, and nasty yellow-green bruises healing around his jaw—but at least the black cloth looks mysterious. With an open-weave sweater of Yeonjun’s hanging off one shoulder, Taehyun barely recognizes himself, lithe and athletic. But in a pair of Yeonjun’s too-long trousers, he turns into a kid playing dress-up.

“Definitely not,” Yeonjun says. “Try these.”

He tosses over a pair of skinny jeans from Taehyun’s own wardrobe. They’re worn pale, not as fancy as Yeonjun’s dark ones, but the fit is better—Taehyun sees it right away in the mirror, and again, reflected in the way Yeonjun looks at him.

Yeonjun presses his fingers against his lips as his gaze traces Taehyun up and down. Taehyun’s heart trips up into his throat.

“That’s better,” Yeonjun says. “You have nice legs.”

Taehyun looks down at his legs like he’s never seen them before, and has to catch up to follow Yeonjun out of the room.

Taehyun hasn’t been farther than the bathroom in days. There’s a pile that looks a lot like work on the kitchen table—a laptop much sleeker than Yeonjun’s, a closed notebook, a piece of rolled-up draft paper that could be a map or blueprint. “Are you planning a job?” Taehyun asks.

“A personal project,” Yeonjun says. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Why—”

“Seonghwa said no plotting,” Yeonjun says. “You’re supposed to be resting, remember?”

“I’m sure he would have said no parties, too, if he’d known,” Taehyun says.

“Do you want to stay home?” Yeonjun asks as the elevator doors open.

No, Taehyun doesn’t want to stay home. In the car, Yeonjun rolls the windows down and lets his hand float on the wind over the road, nodding to the beat as they sing along with the stereo. Taehyun wants to know where, exactly, they’re going, and why, but not enough to embarrass himself by asking questions Yeonjun will keep avoiding. 

He only embarrasses himself privately, watching Yeonjun’s profile as Yeonjun watches the road. All sharp angles and bold lines, he looks like a piece of the night come to life, but every time he has to think about driving, he puffs his cheeks out so cutely Taehyun could curl up and scream.

There was nothing in Taehyun’s textbooks about sentinels having secret parking powers, but Yeonjun always finds them some quiet dark loading dock to stash the car in. Or maybe that’s how well Yeonjun planned this night ahead, without mentioning it to Taehyun.

It’s only a couple blocks walk until they’re on a crowded street, striding past a line of people dressed way better than they are. Taehyun doesn’t mind being a criminal, but he’s not used to looking like one.

“I’m Seojoon, this is Wooshik,” Yeonjun says to a bouncer. “Soobin put us on the list?”

The guy clearly does not want to let them in, but Soobin’s name works some kind of magic.

Inside the club, Taehyun can feel the bass in the back of his head, pulsing where he hit it. Across a crowded dance floor, Beomgyu stands on a raised platform, hand in the air like a conductor or magician. Kai is behind him, close enough to grab him, though he’s smiling casually.

Yeonjun throws an arm around Taehyun’s waist. “Should we dance?” he asks, rolling his body in long, fluid lines.

Everyone around them looks. Everyone keeps looking. It’s not like Taehyun has ever been under the impression that wanting Yeonjun makes him unique, or special in any way. But he’s the one inside Yeonjun’s arm, at least right now, and he puts his hand over Yeonjun’s on his hip and rolls with him for a few beats.

Beomgyu drops a faster beat, and Taehyun winces and gestures to his head, trying to express that it’s too loud. It is too loud, probably—he’s going to have a headache tomorrow—but he also can’t take too much of this affection without getting greedy to keep it.

Yeonjun nods and gives him an arm, leading him up a dark staircase. Soobin is standing outside a door, expecting them, and he reaches out a hand but Yeonjun pulls him into a hug and starts doing body rolls again.

“Enough!” Soobin elbows Yeonjun off and lets Taehyun give him a nice hug. “How are you feeling? I was worried when I didn’t get to see you after the Park job.”

“I’m fine,” Taehyun says. “Yeonjun-hyung is making a huge fuss.”

“Well, he should,” Soobin says, and opens the door.

It’s a little quieter in the private room, enough that the noise isn’t painful—the music is muffled by glass overlooking the writhe of the dance floor. Kai is helping Beomgyu onto a black sofa, but he pauses to shout, “Yeonjun-noona!”

Yeonjun pops a hip out cutely as he waves.

Beomgyu lifts one foot onto the table in front of him, cushioned by a velvet pillow from the couch. He’s wearing transparent red sunglasses and draped in the glittering products of his family’s gold mines. He narrows his eyes. “Yeonjun and Taehyun,” he says, letting them know Kai or Soobin told him their real names. “Are you here to be friends or enemies?”

“Isn’t the curiosity thrilling?” Yeonjun asks.

Kai nudges Beomgyu with his elbow, some signal between the two of them, and Beomgyu rolls his eyes as he relaxes. “There’s a two drink maximum for freeloaders.”

There’s a spark to it, somehow. Everyone gets a unique, specific sexy side of Yeonjun—he bickers with Beomgyu, cuddles Soobin, plays perversely wholesome gender games with Kai. It’s like the only thing that isn’t sexy is the professionally direct nod he gives Taehyun, noting that he’s judged the room safe, before Taehyun goes to sit by Kai.

He leans into Kai’s side without speaking, all the greeting they need, and to Beomgyu, he says, “Hi. You look better than the last time I saw you.”

Beomgyu squints and cups his ear. Self-conscious, Taehyun pulls his mask down, uncovering his bruises. “I said you look better than the last time I saw you.”

“So do you,” Beomgyu says, “and that is not a very high compliment.”

“Speaking of our adventure…” Yeonjun reaches back to pull Soobin over, and Soobin tries to use the momentum to move them to sitting, but Yeonjun stays standing, looming over the cluster of seats. 

“What’s the plan?” Yeonjun asks.

“What do you mean?” Kai asks.

Yeonjun points at Beomgyu but speaks to Kai. “The Park family kidnapped your client and fucked him up. How are you going to hit back?”

“Oh! No plan.” Kai smiles. “We’re leaving it.”

Taehyun loves Kai’s bright, happy smile—after his weird hazy week, it lifts his own mood so much—that there’s a delay before he realizes what Kai actually said. “Huh? Nothing?”

Yeonjun looks too astonished to be angry. He turns to Soobin.

“It’s too hot,” Soobin says. “The boss doesn’t want to escalate.”

“After they did that to your guy?” Yeonjun gestures to Beomgyu. “To his child? It’s pretty fucking escalated. You can’t leave them with the win.”

“We’re not,” Soobin says. “We got him back without a ransom, and you and Kai did some damage on the way out. We’re square.”

Beomgyu looks back and forth between Soobin and Kai. “You can tell them,” he finally says. “They’re already involved, anyway.”

“Yeah, tell us,” Yeonjun says. 

“Chairman Choi is pretty sure someone on the inside is leaking information,” Soobin says. “We have to figure out who that is before we can do anything about the Parks.”

“The best way to flush out the leak is to hit back at the Parks,” Yeonjun says.

“It’s not our call,” Soobin says. “All Kai and I are in charge of is keeping Beomgyu safe, so…”

“So I’m learning how to DJ tonight,” Kai says.

“I wonder if you’re trending,” Beomgyu says, whipping out his phone. “‘Who’s the hottie with Choi Beomgyu?’”

Kai laughs and covers his nose.

They’re all just saying what someone—their boss, Beomgyu’s father—told them, and carefully not giving away how they feel about it. If Soobin and Kai are focused on keeping Bemogyu safe, that could mean working with his family, but sometimes it could mean working against or around them.

And Taehyun’s job is to keep Yeonjun safe, which sometimes means working against or around him. He looks to Yeonjun both for his signal to follow and for any clues that he’s about to lose his temper and, with it, his self-control.

Because Taehyun is watching, he sees how Yeonjun looks back without meeting Taehyun’s gaze, through him instead of at him. Like Taehyun is an object in the story, not a character—it’s not the connection Taehyun can usually trust, and it doesn’t feel right.

Maybe it’s just the dark, noisy room, not a good place to have a serious talk. Yeonjun’s expression shutters, and he says, “They’re not square with me.”

Beomgyu laughs too brightly for the conversation. “‘They’re not square with me’,” he repeats in a ridiculous, nasal voice. “Is he always this dramatic?”

“Yes,” Kai says cheerfully.

“He’s mellowed out a lot, I think,” Soobin says. “You should have seen him in school.”

“You were lucky to know me in school.” Now Yeonjun sits, sprawling over enough of the couch that Soobin has to fit snugly in with him. That’s a signal—the real conversation is over, and now they’re just hanging out. To Beomgyu, he adds, “I was a legend.”

Beomgyu rolls his eyes.

“Unfortunately, that is true,” Soobin says.

“He can’t have been that good if he ended up—” Beomgyu waves grandly at Yeonjun.

“A superhero?” Yeonjun says—like he means it, the word he said so ironically when he and Taehyun were telling one another the truth. “The most famous vigilante in the city? Your father’s worst nightmare? Yeah, I’m that good.”

Taehyun makes most of the social media posts that have made Yeonjun so famous, and he takes it seriously, but he shakes his head to hear Yeonjun say it like that. “Hyung, please don’t be embarrassing out loud.”

Yeonjun winks, and manages to look great even though he’s bad at it.

“All the guides in training at school used to wish he’d get paired with them,” Kai says. “Except not Soobin-hyung, because we always knew it was going to be us. And… not Taehyun.” Kai nudges Taehyun’s side.

Beomgyu gasps. “Oh my god, and now you’re stuck with him. He was a horrible bully, wasn’t he? I can tell.”

“Not really,” Taehyun says. He’d leave it at that, but everyone is waiting. Even Yeonjun, focused fully on Taehyun now.

So Taehyun continues, “He was always so good. He thought anybody who was still lacking was, I guess, doing it as a joke. He’d have let you laugh at him, too, if there was ever anything to laugh at.”

“You laugh at me all the time,” Yeonjun says, smiling uncomfortably.

“Well, you’ve become a big nerd in your old age,” Taehyun says.

Yeonjun huffs, but he’s not quite holding back a smile.

“I didn’t know hyung’s personality back then,” Taehyun says. “When I went into our evaluation, I was just trying not to make any huge mistakes.”

This story has wound out of Taehyun’s grasp. Yeonjun looks like he can’t tell whether to be embarrassed or pleased, and Beomgyu seems intrigued by the discomfort, and Kai is still smiling, not offering anything. Soobin seems to be aware Taehyun needs help, but he’s sitting with his lips parted as he thinks of something to say.

“It was weird you went into your evaluation still not knowing,” Soobin says. “Most people figured it out way before.”

“I felt Soobin-hyung as soon as I got on campus, my first day,” Kai says to Beomgyu. “I went and found him before I found my room.”

“That’s cute,” Beomgyu says.

“Well, everything about Kai is cute,” Taehyun says.

It is cute. And now they have a great story about discovering their sentinel-guide bond. They tell it all the time.

Taehyun doesn’t sit around being sad that he and Yeonjun weren’t close in school. It was fair that Yeonjun thought Taehyun was some kid back when he definitely was some kid, and he treats Taehyun as an equal now.

But this does sting a little. In their academy, each sentinel and guide in training were paired together in rotations for their evaluations, so that they’d have an opportunity to find their match—but they were also always looking for one another, touching hands in classrooms and hallways and hoping to feel the spark they’d all read about. The reason Taehyun and Yeonjun walked into their routine evaluation without already knowing they’d find each other was that Yeonjun really never gave Taehyun a second thought until Taehyun was his homework.

The pause feels like it could lead into a new conversation—and Taehyun would welcome that—but Yeonjun speaks up instead, his tone more careful. “I was frustrated, back then, that it was taking me so long to find my guide. Sometimes I thought, maybe they hadn’t made it into the academy at all—maybe they were from another country, or didn’t know they were a guide. One of those dramatic stories you see in movies.”

Taehyun has never heard this before. No one has ever been less like a character from a movie than Taehyun when he was in training.

“But I think I wasn’t ready,” Yeonjun continues. “It was humbling, feeling the bond that first time and realizing how much bigger it was than I’d expected. It was not cute, it was…” He takes his time to find the right word, and Taehyun tries to steel his heart.

“Holy,” Yeonjun says. There's the lilt of a question in his voice, but he looks to Taehyun like he's unsure how that's going to land, not about what he said.

Taehyun’s heart is nothing but soft pulp, after all. With time to think, he could come up with the response that deserves. But Yeonjun has caught him off guard, choosing this of all moments not to cut his kindness with silliness.

It’s been a hard week, with Taehyun hurt and Yeonjun hovering so close and careful. Everything feels too intense.

It’s lucky the server appears with champagne. Taehyun takes a glass, but he won’t mix it with a head injury and whatever’s in those pills Seonghwa gave him—he holds it in his hand without raising it.

Actually, Kai is the only one who takes a real drink. Beomgyu has a little sip, and Yeonjun and Soobin are just holding theirs, too. It’s a waste of what’s probably good champagne.

“Tell him about the bunnies,” Kai says.

“That’s the most dramatic story,” Soobin says.

Kai laughs. “I was going to say it was the cutest.”

Yeonjun rolls his eyes, but he opens his hand permissively, so Taehyun starts the story. “I was researching hyung’s job offers, and one of them was a cosmetics company. I found this expose on their animal testing.”

Kai is practically vibrating.

“Do you want to tell the story?” Taehyun asks.

“Taehyun and I were roommates,” Kai says immediately. “Yeonjun and I came back to the room, and Taehyun was shaking. His face was totally white. I thought someone had died. But he was just looking at these sad bunnies on his computer. I went to get Soobin-hyung, and we came back twenty minutes later… and they were already gone.”

Beomgyu’s eyes grow wide. “Wait, this is your superhero origin story?”

“He wanted to save the bunnies.” Yeonjun points at Taehyun’s face. “Look at those eyes. What was I going to do, tell him no?”

“That’s even cuter than these two,” Beomgyu says. “Now, I know we did not have any bunnies in that mine you blew up.”

“I don’t think you have any idea what was in that mine,” Yeonjun says. “And I don’t think you want to talk about it in polite company, either.”

"Who here is polite?" Taehyun asks.

Soobin sighs and, relenting to some internal battle, takes down half his champagne in one drag.

Beomgyu taps his red sunglasses down his nose to glare at Yeonjun over them, then quickly starts and pushes them back up again.

“What, are you hiding something?” Yeonjun asks.

“My face is almost as messed up as his,” Beomgyu says, nodding at Taehyun. “No offense.”

Taehyun shrugs.

“It isn’t,” Kai says. “I mean, sorry, Taehyun, but Beomgyu’s isn’t as bad. You can’t even see it under the makeup.”

“You should be proud you got through it, not hiding,” Yeonjun says. He reaches over and takes Beomgyu’s glasses off, then lifts Beomgyu’s chin with one knuckle. “Yeah, you look fine.”

Beomgyu wrinkles his nose.

“No reason to hide.” Yeonjun pushes Beomgyu’s hair behind his ear. “You have nice eyes.”

Taehyun’s heart sinks so fast Yeonjun or Kai must hear it plummet. His jaw drops, and he directs his gawking down to his glass instead of watching Yeonjun touch Beomgyu’s face. 

Taehyun tries to be a sensible, organized person, to live a life he can be proud of. And that means that falling in love is the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to him by such a wide and terrible margin. He has no practice feeling this helplessly cringey.

“I’m going to get some air,” Taehyun says, standing.

“If you go up the stairs on the left, there’s a deck on the roof,” Soobin says.

Taehyun nods, and waves Yeonjun down when he starts to get up, too. “I’m fine,” Taehyun says. “I’ll be right back.”

As he’s leaving, he hears Yeonjun ask Beomgyu, “How did you get into DJing?”

Taehyun is interested in hearing more about Beomgyu’s life—it’s weird that Taehyun used to spend every day with Kai and Soobin, and now they spend their time in a strange, expensive new world—but hearing Yeonjun express the same interest makes the room feel painfully hot. Taehyun escapes instead of listening to any more.

One level up, he finds the deck, and it is a relief—cooler and quieter than the club, with the music lower than the conversations of people scattered around the tables. Taehyun walks around the edge and finds a quiet corner where he can look out over the city. The jagged edges and scattered lights of buildings are striated with shadow-dark gashes that would be beautiful green parks in the daytime.

Kai loves the bunny story. As far as Taehyun can tell, Yeonjun likes sharing it, too. It usually lands cutely, but it wasn’t cute at the time.

Taehyun walked into his evaluation with Yeonjun expecting nothing; Yeonjun took Taehyun’s hand like he had better places to be after he got it over with; and then his startled gaze locked onto Taehyun’s, and Taehyun’s life kicked instantly into a higher gear than he’d ever known.

Taehyun was still too young to graduate, technically, but Yeonjun was ready, and that was all anyone cared about. The academy wanted him to get a prestigious placement, and a roster of government agencies and giant corporations wanted him the way fairy-tale trolls want something gold.

Yeonjun refused to do the audition the military assigned to him—he wouldn’t even tell Taehyun what they’d asked him to do. The corporate job offers looked better at first, but it took only a little scratching to find the rot under every surface. When Kai and Yeonjun found Taehyun having a panic attack over test bunnies, it was the end of a long afternoon finding horror stories behind every company who wanted Yeonjun to work for them—employee abuse, environmental disasters, and sentinels dying young over and over again for dangerous, meaningless work.

It was the first time either of them had ever said it out loud when Yeonjun crouched down in front of Taehyun and said, “Let’s run away. Say yes.” But they’d both thought it enough times that it was a pure relief to hear the words.

They started by going to the pirates—Yeonjun had known Wooyoung since they were kids—trading Yeonjun’s skills for a place to stay. They raided that cosmetics lab a week later, but they didn’t even save the fucking bunnies.

They had an idea they’d let them out in the woods, or something, but there was nothing but asphalt in the industrial park, and it was immediately clear those animals were not wild and would not survive. So they had to leave the bunnies—but they did film them, and wreck the rest of the place, planting the first seeds of Yeonjun’s social media fame. They stole equipment for Hongjoong to sell for their first income, and they escaped into the night like shadows.

And it became a life, for almost three years, now. Taehyun is over the edge of adulthood with almost nothing to his name—a pile of stolen possessions, a small circle of family and friends he has to contact carefully to keep them out of danger, a few outstanding warrants, and Yeonjun.

So he has everything he needs.

He would not change one thing about his life, except that if he could, he’d cut his heart right out of his chest and throw it over the side of this building. He can’t live like this, watching Yeonjun flirt with everyone alive and laugh at things that feel painfully serious to him.

Yeonjun might be listening. He could hear Taehyun up here, if he focused. He wouldn’t, normally—he would listen to the entrances, or the hall outside the room. He respects Taehyun’s privacy and trusts him to shout if something goes wrong.

But today, with Taehyun hurt, he might be listening. Just in case.

Taehyun puts his hands over his face and leans into the dark. “Hyung, I’m in love with you,” he whispers, pulse thrilling. “It feels like I’ve loved you my whole life, so you’d think I’d be used to it, but it gets heavier every day. I don’t know what to do.”

He stays like that, frozen, but of course nothing happens. He drops his hands, elbows resting on the ledge, and turns his focus outward. He lingers there, breathing deeply and imagining himself as cool and distant as the night to calm down before he has to drag himself back to join the others.

“Taehyun-ah?”

Taehyun jumps and whirls like Yeonjun grabbed him by the throat. He can’t speak—he waits for what Yeonjun will say.

But the question in Yeonjun’s eyes stays blank and mild. “Do you feel okay? You’ve been up here a while.”

Taehyun sighs. Adrenaline falls out of him in a wave, leaving him more tired in a sudden drop. “I’m fine. It’s loud in there.”

“We got what we needed, if you want to go,” Yeonjun says. “We can head out the back. Beomgyu and Kai already went back on stage.”

Taehyun follows Yeonjun down the stairs. “Wait, did we get anything?”

Yeonjun lifts a hand in silent acknowledgement and doesn’t answer until they get out of the club and well away from the building, turning onto the street where they’re parked. “You’re right, we got fuck-all,” Yeonjun says. “But the information that they’re doing fuck-all, that was necessary.”

“Necessary for what?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Yeonjun says. “Your job is to rest right now.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Taehyun says as he gets into the car. “You never want to rest when you’re hurt. You took a whole pane of glass to the gut and you were a huge whiny baby that I had to help you to the bathroom twelve hours later.”

“I’m built to get knocked around,” Yeonjun says. He purses his lips into a little duck bill as he pulls into the road. “That’s what sentinels are for. You’re different. You’re—” He pauses. “It’s different.”

When they get home, Taehyun is already half-asleep. But Yeonjun throws an arm around his shoulders and murmurs low in his ear, “I did something bad.”

“Is that supposed to be a surprise?” Taehyun asks.

Yeonjun opens his hand in front of them and reveals an earring on his palm, a large oval pearl on a gold hook.

“Soobin’s not going to help you get in places if you steal from them,” Taehyun says. He doesn’t care—and he doubts Soobin would, if Beomgyu even misses one piece from all the jewelry he was wearing—but Yeonjun’s eyes are glinting like that because he wants to be scolded, so Taehyun obliges him.

“I know,” Yeonjun whines, pleased. “But Beomgyu had so much. He was being a tease.”

Taehyun’s heart pinches, and he shakes his head.

“I think it would look nicer on you.” Yeonjun lifts the earring next to Taehyun’s face, his knuckles brushing Taehyun’s cheek.

Taehyun flinches. 

Yeonjun freezes, caught with his hand hovering in front of Taehyun’s face.

“Sorry,” Taehyun says. “I mean, thank you. I think I’m ready for bed, my head hurts—”

“Really?” Yeonjun scoops Taehyun’s head into his hands. Taehyun is fine—he was making an excuse—but the press of Yeonjun’s fingers on the back of his skull does actually hurt, and he bites back a hiss of pain.

“Ah, sorry.” Yeonjun snatches his hands away. “I’m sorry. It helps me so much when you touch me, I forget it doesn’t go both ways.”

Now Taehyun reaches out, but Yeonjun steps back. “You’re right. We should go to sleep.”

Taehyun takes a pill and gets in bed, listening to Yeonjun moving around. He goes to sleep in his own room, like Taehyun told him to. This is supposed to be what Taehyun wanted, but he hates it now that he’s actually alone.

He and Yeonjun could work together for decades. They could be great—they could be legends. But not if Taehyun keeps feeling like this. 

He can’t spend his life cataloging every time Yeonjun touches someone else, reading signs that aren’t there every time Yeonjun looks at him, collapsing into bed all spun around from turning it over in his own mind. He can’t live like this, but, worse, he can’t work like this. He needs to keep the psychic connection between himself and Yeonjun clear and serene—it’s dangerous to them both to cloud it with secrets, hiding his thoughts.

He presses his hands over his eyes and breathes out hard through his nose. If he talks himself into crying about this, Yeonjun will hear him.

So he thinks about something else. He focuses on the little warm spark in his chest, the bond where he and Yeonjun are connected, and he thinks about calm, about peace, about guiding Yeonjun’s overactive senses down to let him rest well tonight.

Yeonjun will be able to feel that Taehyun is doing this, but he won’t feel it the way Taehyun means it. He’ll think Taehyun is working too hard, that he’s a big dork who worries too much about their meditation routine. He won’t know that he’s supposed to feel loved, and Taehyun can’t tell him without giving away too much.

But this is the best Taehyun has, the best he is, so he gives it until the medicine kicks in.

Taehyun startles awake, sure there’s a bug on his leg—

But it’s Yeonjun, lightly touching Taehyun’s skin as he sits down behind Taehyun on the edge of the bed.

“Hyung?” Taehyun asks, still bleary.

Yeonjun takes his hand away. “Just checking on you.”

“I’m fine.” Taehyun flicks the covers over his legs and turns onto his back so he can see Yeonjun’s outline in the dark.

“Are you?” Yeonjun asks. “Are you sure?”

“I’m fine. I’m tired, hyung.” Taehyun pats for Yeonjun’s hand on the covers, but he can’t find it. “Come and sleep. Or—” He blinks, trying to wake. “Do you need something?”

Yeonjun is still inside a pause, but at the end of it, he only moves away. “No. Sorry I woke you up. Go back to sleep.”

“Mm.” Taehyun closes his eyes, still mostly asleep. 

“Love you, Taehyun-ah,” Yeonjun says at the door. “You’re going to be okay.”

Taehyun tries to answer, but sleep takes him back and the door closes.

When Taehyun shuffles into the loft the next day, it’s not Yeonjun but Kai sitting on the couch, kicking his feet and playing with his phone. Taehyun grunts inquisitively.

“Yeonjun-hyung went out with his friend,” Kai says. “He asked me to keep an eye on you.”

“Wooyoung-hyung?” Taehyun asks, and Kai nods. That makes sense—Yeonjun has been working so hard to wait on Taehyun every day, he probably needs a day off to shop or drink or whatever he and Wooyoung get up to. “Well, good morning. You don’t have to babysit me, I’m fine by myself.”

“Good afternoon,” Kai corrects. “And I offered. Even if you’re fine, we can hang out.”

“For sure.” Taehyun sits on the other end of the couch, slowly becoming aware of the way Kai is staring at him. Taehyun raises an eyebrow.

“Heard any good rumors lately?” Kai asks, brimming over with glee. “Any little whispers in the night?”

“Oh my god.” Taehyun drops his head in his hands and keeps rolling forward, planting face-first into the couch.

Kai. Kai has even better hearing than Yeonjun does, and it would totally be part of his job to listen when Taehyun went off by himself, making sure he wasn’t starting some plan in a club full of rich people. If Taehyun had been thinking about literally anything except how weird and sad he felt, he would have known that.

“So you see the problem.” Taehyun sits up and throws his arms in frustration. “I love him so much it makes me stupid. I forgot you could hear me. What if I just forgot something like that on a job?”

“Do you spend a lot of time on jobs wandering off to be emo?” Kai asks.

“You’d be surprised.” Taehyun pouts so Kai will be nice to him, and Kai laughs but he does pull Taehyun into a quick, tight hug.

“Maybe subconsciously you did know,” Kai says. “And you said it because you wanted me to come over here and tell you to stop being silly and tell hyung out loud, for real.”

Taehyun’s eyes bug out, and he crosses his arms in an X in front of himself to physically block the terribleness of that idea from getting too close to him. “No.”

“Why not?” Kai asks defiantly.

“Why do I have to say it? He’s the hyung, and he’s the sentinel, and—and I’m injured—”

Kai is laughing at Taehyun in a kind of low, constant way, like a stream bubbling underneath  their conversation. “And I’m injured,” he mimics in a whine Taehyun chooses not to recognize. “This is so funny. I’ve never seen you be such a big baby about anything before. I didn’t know it was possible.”

Taehyun scowls. “If he loved me back, I’d already know. He’s the kind of person who would say it first. He flirts with everyone, all the time. It’s easy for him.”

“He doesn’t mean that, though,” Kai says. “He’s playing around.”

“Never meaning it is the same as always meaning it. He never lets it get too real. It’s all a joke to him.” 

“Well, he must mean it sometimes,” Kai says hesitantly. Taehyun lifts his eyebrows and waits, but no, Kai doesn’t have any way to tell the difference, either.

Taehyun gets up to make himself some coffee, to wake up and to avoid Kai’s unblinking beacon of a gaze. The espresso machine buzzes to life, but when he opens the refrigerator, he sees an Americano waiting for him to pour over ice. Yeonjun must have made two this morning.

“I know you’re not a joke to him,” Kai says. “I know that.”

“Not when we’re working. But he doesn’t see me any other way.” Stubbornly, Taehyun repeats, “He would have already said something.”

Kai waits for Taehyun to return with his coffee before he speaks again. “It’s scary to try to change things with your guide, even for someone really brave. It’s like, fate gives you this one person you basically need to live, and… their voice is the most beautiful sound and their skin is softer than other people’s, and the more overwhelming the world gets the better they feel to you. Who wouldn’t fall a little bit in love? But also, if you mess things up with them, you kind of ruin your whole life.”

Taehyun knows his face looks as disdainful as he feels, but he doesn’t try to fix it. “Yeah, those all seem like good reasons not to tell him.”

“I just mean, he would have a reason not to say it first,” Kai says. “To wait for you, even if he feels it too.”

“Didn’t you tell Soobin-hyung you loved him like three days after you met?” Taehyun asks.

“Months! And we still waited—” 

“Yeah, Soobin-hyung waited until you came of age,” Taehyun says. “But you fell in love at first sight and you both knew it. This isn’t the same thing. I’m not going to tell him something I know he doesn’t want to hear, and make him reject me, and then ruin his whole life, as you put it.”

“All right,” Kai says. “Live forever like you are now, that will definitely work.”

Taehyun sighs. “So if he likes me, it’s probably only because I’m his guide and that feels good to him, and if he doesn’t and I make things weird with him, it will ruin his whole life—” 

“Stop saying it like that—”

“But you still think I should tell him, because something even worse is going to happen if I don’t,” Taehyun says. He crosses his arms in an X again. “Great. Incredible talk. I’m so glad we could do this.”

Kai laughs and shoves Taehyun’s shoulder—he must mean to do it gently, but Taehyun still skids into the arm of the couch. 

“Lucky Yeonjun-hyung,” Kai says. “His fated soulmate is in love with him and completely cranky and miserable about it.”

Taehyun winces. That one cuts too close. “I really was acting like a butt last night,” he admits. He remembers whining and shrinking away from Yeonjun, who was just being normal and kind. He has another faint memory of Yeonjun coming in during the night, but he can’t remember what they said. “Did he say how long he’d be gone?”

Kai shakes his head. “I can text him.”

“No,” Taehyun says. “He’d rush right back, and he’s been doing so much for me. He deserves a day off.”

“Maybe he’d rush back because he doesn’t actually want a day off from you,” Kai says, but Taehyun rolls his eyes, and Kai stops pushing.

They spend the afternoon playing games on the couch as Kai makes and eats his own weight in pink cotton candy. Yeonjun doesn’t come home. Taehyun guesses he and Wooyoung would have ended up at the bar by the docks. He takes Kai there for dinner, so they can pretend to accidentally run into them—but Yeonjun and Wooyoung aren’t there.

Taehyun relents and texts, but by the time they’re done with dinner, Yeonjun still hasn’t replied. Taehyun tries calling, and it goes straight to voicemail. Wooyoung’s phone rings and rings without answer. Taehyun tries Seonghwa, who tells him Wooyoung said he and Yeonjun were going to the bar where Taehyun just failed to find them.

“What do you want to do?” Kai asks.

“I guess go home,” Taehyun says. “He’s probably on his way back.” He doesn’t want to think about what bad things could have happened while Yeonjun was out of his sight, but he says out loud, “If Yeonjun got arrested, it would be on the news.”

“I’ll ask Soobin-hyung to check,” Kai says, and texts as they walk home. The rows of closed warehouses are intimidating in the dark.

This is all the news is about, Soobin says, with a link to an article about a break-in at a bank in the center of the city.

No suspects caught yet

It’s the Parks’ bank

Kai and Taehyun lock eyes over the phone. “He wouldn’t have done that without me,” Taehyun says. 

But you’ve been with Taehyun all day, right? Soobin asks.

“He wouldn’t have done that without you,” Kai repeats. He sounds sure, but he has been sure about a lot of wrong things today.

As they walk home, Taehyun’s certainty wavers. Yeonjun never told him what was in the laptop and blueprint on the kitchen table yesterday, or why the non-answer he got to his question at the club was an answer he needed. Taehyun assumed he was planning something further out, that he’d fill Taehyun in eventually and they’d execute the job together, but Yeonjun never said that.

There’s a little warm spark in Taehyun’s chest, right underneath his heart—his bond with his sentinel. All that means for sure is that Yeonjun is alive, but it’s something to hold onto as he and Kai hurry back to the loft. Taehyun could try to meditate—he could drag Yeonjun into that space with him, even without Yeonjun concentrating, too—but he’d take Yeonjun’s attention away from his surroundings, wherever he is. Taehyun doesn’t have the information to measure that risk.

It’s another two hours of pacing around the loft—letting in Seonghwa and Hongjoong, and then Soobin, everyone except Yeonjun—before he hears the car finally pull into the warehouse.

“Hyung!” Taehyun shouts. He jumps up to run down the stairs, but his head swims and Seonghwa stops him. Kai squeezes his arm as he and Soobin push past to go down to the car instead.

“Taehyun-ah,” calls the wrong voice—Wooyoung’s, echoing from deep in the warehouse. “Hurry! Something’s wrong with Yeonjun.”

It takes Kai, Soobin, and Wooyoung all together to get Yeonjun’s unresponsive body up to the loft. They drag him to the sofa and lay him out as if he’s unconscious, but his eyes are open, roving the ceiling without seeing.

Taehyun touches Yeonjun’s face. He picks up one of Yeonjun’s hands and presses it against his own heart to share the beat with him, and then he slides Yeonjun’s eerily cold hand under his shirt and tries again, even closer to his heartbeat. Yeonjun doesn’t twitch.

“I don’t—I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Wooyoung says. “The security guards at the bank set off a flash grenade as we were getting in the car, and he just—fainted?”

“He’s in the maze,” Kai says.

“This is what happens when a sentinel gets overstimulated,” Soobin explains. “His senses are so heightened normally, when they get overloaded, he…”

They sound far away. Taehyun’s ears are ringing, like after he hit his head. 

“Hyung, please,” Taehyun says, his hands shaking as he holds Yeonjun’s face again. “It’s Taehyun. Can you hear me?”

“Disappears,” Soobin finishes.

Yeonjun’s eyes roll wildly, the whites all angry red. Taehyun’s mind is racing too fast to catch his thoughts, but this is why they practice so much—so he knows what he has to do even when he can’t think.

“I have to meditate,” he says. “Can you—” He needs the others to leave, or something, to back up so he can climb onto the couch with Yeonjun and cling without moving.

“Okay.” Soobin puts his hand on Taehyun’s shoulder. “Let’s move him somewhere you can have quiet, and we’ll wait here if you need anything. You can do it, I know you can.”

Kai and Soobin get Yeonjun up again and carry him to Taehyun’s bed. They lay him out too carefully, like an invalid, and Taehyun twitches in the doorway. He thinks he just wants them to leave, but once they do, squeezing Taehyun’s hands and closing the door behind them, he feels lost.

“Hyung, what did you do?” Taehyun asks Yeonjun’s empty face as he sits down on the bed. “I should have been there, you should have…” He trails off.

The injury is terrible, something he and Yeonjun have studied but never dealt with. It’s the circumstances, though—that this happened because Yeonjun left him behind—that leave Taehyun shaking. This is something worse than he would ever even have imagined, Yeonjun lying to him and disappearing and ending up hurt.

He takes Yeonjun’s hand and prepares himself for meditation. He sits up straight so he can breathe with his diaphragm and closes his eyes, picturing an empty white room.

All he manages is one shuddery breath before tears take over and his eyes open. He gives himself a few seconds—one sob, exactly—and then he lies down next to Yeonjun on the bed. He puts his cheek on Yeonjun’s chest, right over his heartbeat, and then slides Yeonjun’s hand under his shirt, over his own heartbeat, once again.

He finds the empty room, and then Yeonjun inside it. It’s the Yeonjun he knows best and loves most—smiling over breakfast.

He’s used to the change happening quickly—to Yeonjun aware and waiting for him. But Yeonjun is far away right now, and Taehyun has to wait, suspended in this space with the flat idea of Yeonjun, and keep his focus steady as a beacon for the real thing.

What finds him is a crash—and when he turns, he sees himself, bloody and strange, hitting the floor on his side. He takes a boot to the gut and stays down.

This can’t really be what he looked like that night, so small and broken like a doll. He was fine.

Yeonjun—the way he feels in his own head right now, sweaty and wild-eyed—comes running up, but the image of Taehyun on the ground disappears as Yeonjun kneels for him.

“Hyung,” Taehyun says. “I’m here.”

The crash falls again, far across the empty space, and Yeonjun turns, gasping for breath, and scrambles up to run for it.

“That’s not me.” Taehyun doesn’t have to chase to follow—this space isn’t real, so Yeonjun isn’t really running, and the exhaustion making him so ragged is in his own mind. “I’m right here. We’re in my bed right now, and Soobin and Kai and the pirates are outside, and we’re safe. You can wake up.”

Again, Yeonjun reaches the body on the floor and it slips away. Again, there’s a crash, and he turns and trips over his own legs getting up to run for it.

“Look at me!” Taehyun grabs for Yeonjun as he runs past, but they can’t touch here—can’t even pretend to if they both aren’t trying—and he dissolves between Taehyun’s fingers.

The worst thing that could happen is losing Yeonjun here, trapped in his own mind until dehydration or starvation take him. Taehyun shouldn’t even think of it, but the space he’s trying to hold steady for them in his mind dims in fear.

“Hyung,” Taehyun says again, helpless, without even his hands to reach out. 

But maybe that’s exactly it—that’s what Yeonjun will hear. That Taehyun needs him. 

“Hyung, help me,” Taehyun says.

Yeonjun looks over his shoulder, crouched on the floor as the memory of Taehyun fades in front of him again. He’s confused—brow furrowed, eyes blank—but he stays.

“I’m here,” Taehyun says. “That already happened. You got us out, and I’m safe now.”

Yeonjun shakes his head.

“Yes,” Taehyun says. He hears the crash behind him, and Yeonjun’s gaze flickers away, but he holds steady. “That’s over. It’s over, hyung. You had a bad afternoon today, do you remember?”

Yeonjun twitches, brushing it away.

“No,” Taehyun says. “Stay with me. Please try to remember. There was a flash grenade, right? It was too bright and loud?”

Yeonjun nods slowly, his distant gaze latching onto Taehyun’s. “It smelled horrible in the vault,” he finally says. “All that metal, and some kind of oil on the doors.”

Taehyun nods.

“I missed you,” Yeonjun says.

“Well.” Taehyun wishes they could touch, that he could wrap his arm through Yeonjun’s and hold on tight. “I’ll give you your scolding later. You’re with me now. We’re in my room. That doesn’t smell like much of anything, right?”

After a pause, Yeonjun says, “It smells like you. And cotton candy.”

“That’s right. Kai made a lot of it today. What can you hear?”

“I can hear you,” Yeonjun says. “Your heartbeat, and your breath—have you been crying? Did I make you cry?”

“No, I wasn’t crying,” Taehyun says. Maybe almost, but he held it together.

“Oh, sorry.” Something almost like a smile twists around the edge of Yeonjun’s mouth, and the tension between them unwinds, just a little. Enough.

“Can you start to let it go?” Taehyun asks. “We’re safe now. We’re together. You can turn it down.”

“I want to stay here,” Yeonjun says. “Where it’s just you and me. Isn’t it easier here?”

“This isn’t real,” Taehyun says. “Come back to me, and whatever is wrong, we can figure it out.”

Yeonjun shakes his head, but he says, “You’re right.” 

“Of course I am.”

“Thank you for taking care of me.” Yeonjun’s hand fades through Taehyun’s. “Love you, Taehyun-ah.”

“I love you, too, hyung,” Taehyun says, even though right now that feels—and sounds—like nothing more than worry.

“I’m really afraid this is going to hurt,” Yeonjun says, and when Taehyun jolts awake, he has Yeonjun’s body shaking in his arms.

“I’m fine,” Yeonjun says for the tenth time an hour later, getting testy as Seonghwa takes his pulse for the tenth time. Kai comes back from the kitchen, replacing a glass of water Yeonjun hasn’t even finished yet with a fresh one. “I’m back, senses at a cool five. I can barely even hear Wooyoung pacing around and talking to himself in the other room.”

“You’re dehydrated at best,” Seonghwa says, “and probably in shock. You’re pale, and you’re still—” He lifts Yeonjun’s hand to make a point, but Yeonjun pulls it away.

Seonghwa steps back and crosses his arms. “Is he still shaky?” he asks Taehyun.

Taehyun has one arm wrapped through Yeonjun’s, and he’s not steady. Taehyun nods.

“Traitor,” Yeonjun murmurs. He’s joking, but it doesn’t land after he left Taehyun behind to try to rob a bank.

“I can watch him,” Taehyun says. “He needs to rest, right?”

“He needs an IV and blood pressure monitoring,” Seonghwa says crossly. “In a hospital. So yeah, I guess, he needs to rest. Don’t let him up. I’m coming back in four hours, and if I see you out of that bed, I’m strapping you to it.”

“Sexy,” Yeonjun says.

“No.” Seonghwa lifts one finger imperiously. “I will listen to jokes if you two can go a week without trying to get yourselves killed messing with chaebols. Until then, shut up.”

“I’ll use the time to think of a good one,” Taehyun says solemnly. Seonghwa shakes his head and points threateningly at Yeonjun as he leaves.

Kai and Soobin leave faster—they’re sentinel and guide, and they know they’d just want to be alone after getting through the maze.

Wooyoung has been hiding, but once he’s the last person in the loft, he reappears with a duffel bag for Yeonjun and a hug for Taehyun. “Sorry,” he whispers in Taehyun’s ear. “I didn’t know.”

“I can hear you,” Yeonjun says.

Taehyun ignores him and hugs Wooyoung back hard. “Thank you for getting him home.”

After Wooyoung leaves, they let the quiet hold them. Taehyun said they could figure it out, but now he doesn’t want to have a fight. He wants to hold onto Yeonjun’s arm until he feels Yeonjun relax, to keep his pulse calm enough to soothe them both.

“Are you going to scold me?” Yeonjun asks. He doesn’t sound as happy about it as usual.

“I don’t want to be angry,” Taehyun says. “But I don’t understand why you would try something like that without me.”

He’s trying hard to be reasonable—he’s open to hearing an explanation that makes sense, in the extremely small chance Yeonjun has one. But Yeonjun tenses up, already giving himself away.

“The Parks had an armored truck making a delivery today,” Yeonjun says. “It was the best opportunity we’d have for months. And you’re hurt, so you weren’t up for it—”

“You could have asked if I was up for it,” Taehyun says. “We could have had Seonghwa check me over. But I was definitely okay to sit in a getaway car, at least, in case something like this happened.”

“I didn’t want you that close to it. It was dangerous.”

“Yeah,” Taehyun says. “Obviously. What we do is dangerous.” 

“That’s the problem,” Yeonjun says. “Maybe we need to do something else, change our method. You’re too important to get hurt like that.”

“If it was really an emergency, Soobin-hyung could guide you—”

“Not because you’re my guide. Because you—” Yeonjun stops and shakes his head. “Because you’re Taehyun.”

“I’ve been preparing my whole life for dangerous work. I know what I got into.” When Yeonjun doesn’t answer, Taehyun adds, “You knock people out who have someone who cares about them at home, too.”

“That’s different,” Yeonjun says, and when Taehyun starts to protest, he pulls away and turns so he can speak to Taehyun’s face. “It is. The difference is, people who work in chaebol security or whatever are older than you, they’re making more money than you, they chose those jobs knowing the risk and they can get new ones if they don’t like them. They didn’t get stuck by fate with some dirtbag who doesn’t know—Taehyun-ah, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Taehyun is stunned quiet for a second. “I thought we were doing this together. I don’t understand why you’re saying these things.”

“You can’t get hurt like that again,” Yeonjun says. “I can’t—I mean, you were in my head, you saw. It’s all I can think about. I can’t let that happen again.”

“So what, you leave me at home while you get messed up on jobs and hope somebody else can get you back to me in time?” Taehyun can’t let himself lose control, not when he has to be calm for both of them—he breathes it down, huffing hard through his nose. 

Yeonjun sighs heavily and wipes his hands down his face. “It wasn’t supposed to go wrong. The idea was, I’d prove I could do it without you.”

And Taehyun knows he doesn’t mean it unkindly, that this is a misguided attempt to keep Taehyun safe, but Yeonjun could stab him and it would hurt less. He presses his hand into his stomach to dull the ache. Without you.

“Well, you didn’t,” he says. “You can’t be a strong sentinel without a strong guide.”

“I guess not.” Yeonjun reaches for the duffel bag Wooyoung brought him, and takes out a black velvet box the size of a dictionary. “There’s also this.”

It’s obviously a jewelry box, but Taehyun opens it expecting anything except actual jewelry.

It’s a necklace, silver—no, white gold if Yeonjun stole it from the Parks. Coin-sized black diamonds shape flowers as big as Taehyun's palm. Taehyun only cares about luxury fashion when he’s stealing it, but even he recognizes the necklace Roseanne Park wore to the Met Gala.

“What do you think I’m going to do with a necklace?” Taehyun asks, holding his voice flat to keep from screaming.

Yeonjun shrugs, and wraps his arms around his knees. It doesn’t look right, that he should make himself small. “If you wanted, I was thinking you could sell it. Wooyoung said the pirates could help you fence it. And with that, you could start over anywhere you wanted.”

“Start over?” 

“You could still get into school somewhere,” Yeonjun says.

Taehyun’s heart drops. This is not the fight he was prepared for. “You really—you really don’t want me anymore?”

“Don’t say it like that,” Yeonjun says. “I want you to be safe and happy, and I don’t know if you can have that if you’re my guide.”

“I can,” Taehyun says. It’s so absurd to be having this conversation in bed, of all places, but he gets up on his knees and at least has the power of being taller than Yeonjun. “I’ll train harder, I’ll get stronger, I’ll—”

“It’s not about that,” Yeonjun says. “Don’t think about it like a test you have to pass, okay? Think about what you want.”

“I want to be with you,” Taehyun says instantly.

Yeonjun shakes his head. “You’re not happy. I know you’re not.”

Taehyun’s heart is already racing, but it gets louder in his ears, heavy and hard. Maybe Yeonjun knows. He knows, and he’s trying to get rid of Taehyun. “I am happy. I’m just—I’ve been injured, I haven’t been feeling well.”

“Yeah, and you were in a pretty good mood while you were stoned on pain meds,” Yeonjun said. “I don’t think I realized how miserable you’ve been lately until I saw you relax.”

Kai used that word, too. Miserable. “I’m not. I swear I’m not.”

“I wish you would tell me the truth,” Yeonjun says, sadly, like he doesn’t think it’s likely. “I know it sucks to bring powers into it, but I can hear your heartbeat change when you lie to me.” He chews the inside of his lip and lifts his gaze like it’s hard for him to look into Taehyun’s eyes, like he’s forcing himself. “I can hear your breath when you go to bed so upset with me that you’re trying not to cry.”

He's right about one thing—it isn't fair that he's bringing powers into it.

“Well, then, listen.” Taehyun takes one of Yeonjun’s hands and puts it against his own chest. “I don’t want to go anywhere. We can do whatever kind of jobs you want, or not, but I am not going to leave you to do it alone, not ever. If you think my heartbeat is telling you anything else, you’re hearing it wrong.”

Yeonjun searches Taehyun’s face, studying him like a map. “I wish you would tell me the truth,” he repeats. “All of it.”

Taehyun keeps Yeonjun’s hand in both of his, holding it tight against his own chest. His heart is slamming against it.

Neither of them can live like this.

Taehyun cringes away from what he’s about to do—his spine curls in, his face scrunches up until his eyes are closed—but once he doesn’t have to see Yeonjun’s face anymore, he gets the words out. “Hyung, I’m in love with you.”

Yeonjun’s hand flexes inside Taehyun’s, and Taehyun lets him go so he can cover his face instead.

“What? Taehyun-ah…” Yeonjun makes a faint, breathy sound, like a laugh, and it’s only a noise of surprise or something, but still Taehyun can’t stand it.

He drops his hands and confronts the crooked half-smile on Yeonjun’s face. “Don’t laugh at me,” Taehyun says.

Yeonjun’s smile drops instantly. “I’m not—” His face falls deeper in understanding. “I would never laugh at that.”

“You do, all the time.” Taehyun has to cover his face with his hands again. “It’s fine if you don’t feel the same, but please don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing,” Yeonjun says. “I feel the same.”

Taehyun is almost startled enough to take his hands away from his face. He presses them tighter.

“Of course I love you,” Yeonjun says. “I tell you every day.”

“I don’t mean it like a friend, or like a brother, or like a joke, or whatever.” Taehyun finds the words where he left them last. “It feels like I’ve loved you my whole life, so you’d think I’d be used to it, but it gets heavier every day.”

“That’s because you’re not supposed to carry it alone,” Yeonjun says. “When you always shut me down, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to push. But I say it every day, because I want you to hear it. I love you.”

Taehyun lifts his face so only his eyes appear over the tips of his fingers, pressing his hands harder into his mouth. Yeonjun doesn’t look like he’s lying. He’s still smiling too much, though.

“What?” Yeonjun says. “Do you need to scold me more before you say it again?”

Taehyun has cataloged every annoying joke and flirtation for this exact moment. In other moods, he would have been thoroughly prepared to make Yeonjun answer for himself. But now he doesn’t care about any of it.

“I can’t believe you were going to send me away,” he says.

“I love you,” Yeonjun says again, and there’s no mistaking it for a joke. “Enough to leave you, if that’s what’s best for you.”

Taehyun frowns behind his hands. “Enough to let me decide what’s best? Enough to stay with me, even if something terrible happens again?”

Taehyun can guess what Yeonjun wants to say—that nothing so terrible will happen again, that Yeonjun won’t let it. He can watch the battle to stifle that on Yeonjun’s face, until, finally, Yeonjun just says, “Yes.”

Taehyun ducks his whole face into his hands again.

“What? Was that the wrong answer?” Yeonjun asks.

“It was the right answer,” Taehyun says.

“Come on, why do you keep hiding?” He tugs Taehyun’s elbow.

“Oh, I could never say any of this out loud,” Taehyun says into his hands. “To your face? Cringe.”

“Taehyun-ah,” Yeonjun says firmly, pulling Taehyun’s hands down until he can look Taehyun in the eye. His face is soft and open. “I love you. Seriously, completely. I meant it every time.”

Taehyun’s heart is like a little bird, all quick and loud. “See? Yikes,” he says, turning his face away.

Yeonjun scoffs. “Well, that’s fine. Your way was cuter, anyway.”

“Oh my god.”

“I can’t wait to tell Kai how cute you were when you finally confessed,” Yeonjun says. “Or Wooyoung. Actually, I think Wooyoung is still in the warehouse—”

Taehyun dives forward, throwing an arm around Yeonjun’s neck, and kisses him.

That shuts him up.

His hands come to Taehyun’s waist and his lips part so much more softly than Taehyun has ever let himself imagine. Taehyun traces one hand down Yeonjun’s arm—he’s always wanted to do that—and sits back, victorious.

Yeonjun doesn’t move—his eyes don’t open, his hand is still in front of him, cupping the shape of Taehyun in the empty air. 

Taehyun’s first thought is maybe, somehow, they are still misunderstanding one another—maybe that wasn’t what Yeonjun meant after all.

Or maybe that was not the best way to kiss someone who not only struggles with sensory overload but also just got out of the maze of his mind.

“Hyung?” Taehyun whispers. “Are you okay?”

Yeonjun grunts. “Can you do that again? But, slower?”

Taehyun does it again, but slower. That is nicer—good thinking from Yeonjun—and then, where the first one ended, Yeonjun takes over somehow, taking it deeper instead of letting go, which is even better. 

Taehyun moves the pads of his fingers down Yeonjun’s arm with a heavy drag, and when he gets to Yeonjun’s wrist, Yeonjun turns his hand and weaves his fingers through Taehyun’s. He pulls them both down so he’s resting on the pillow and Taehyun is on his chest, almost dizzy.

“You've done that before,” Yeonjun says, studying Taehyun's face.

“Yeah,” Taehyun says. “Is that a surprise?”

“A little bit. I mean, it's fine,” Yeonjun adds quickly. “But I kind of had this idea that you hadn't, when I imagined getting to kiss you.”

Yeonjun imagined this? Taehyun could leave it, mysterious and cool, but not after that confession. So he admits, “Kai and I used to practice. It wasn't very romantic, though. It was hard to get him to focus, because he'd always get distracted and start talking about Soobin-hyung.”

Yeonjun narrows his eyes.

“What, are you jealous?” Taehyun feels his grin bubble up from inside him. “You were around, you know. Aware that I existed exactly enough to be sure you didn't care.”

Yeonjun touches the corner of Taehyun's smile with his thumb. “You do look happier, finally.”

“Yes,” Taehyun says. “Does this make you happier?”

“This is perfect. But I think it makes me feel worse.” Yeonjun squeezes Taehyun’s hand to take any sting out of that. “I can’t see you get hurt again. I would lose it. I’d do something evil.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Yeonjun makes a discontented noise, like a growl in his chest Taehyun can feel. “We have to go pro or government or… or something.”

“Going pro would be more dangerous,” Taehyun says. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence we both got injured on chaebol jobs.”

Yeonjun sighs. “All right, then. It’s nothing but graffiti at carnivals from here on out. We’ll live on popcorn, I guess.”

“Graffiti at carnivals does really well on TikTok,” Taehyun says.

“Great, we’ll live on popcorn and likes,” Yeonjun says, and shakes his head. 

“We’ll figure something out,” Taehyun says. “Isn’t that bag, like, full of the Park family’s gold?”

Yeonjun starts to smile with one corner of his mouth.

“Don’t look pleased with yourself, you’re still in trouble,” Taehyun says.

“Yes, Taehyunie.” Yeonjun pouts, pretending to be humbled—enjoying his scolding too much. “At least maybe you won’t yell at me to meditate every time I try to touch you?”

“Hyung, we still have to meditate,” Taehyun says firmly. He means it, too—that wasn’t a joke—but now Yeonjun is definitely laughing at him, a subtly hysterical edge to it as he rolls his eyes toward the ceiling.

“But, yes,” Taehyun says. “You can… yeah.”

Yeonjun lifts his head, silly frown clearing. Anticipation rushes Taehyun, and of course Yeonjun hears the change in his pulse or something right away. “Don’t be nervous,” he says in a new voice—quieter, smoother, hiding a flame somewhere deep. 

“I’m not,” Taehyun says. He holds Yeonjun’s gaze evenly as Yeonjun nudges them sideways, pushing Taehyun onto his back and hovering over him.

Taehyun can’t help himself—he checks that the color in Yeonjun’s face is better and that the arm he’s holding himself up with isn’t shaking. But he looks strong and healthy and actually kind of perfect.

Taehyun cups Yeonjun’s cheek in his hand, and Yeonjun’s eyelids flutter. “God, that feels good,” he says. “Are you doing that on purpose? You don’t have to.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Taehyun says.

“God,” Yeonjun says again, and a little shiver runs through him as he turns his face to kiss Taehyun’s palm. Taehyun would never even have dreamed of this kind of intimacy, not without getting so humiliated at himself he’d lose his train of thought. It feels impossible.

“I can’t believe this is actually happening,” Yeonjun says. 

Taehyun smiles and doesn’t admit he was just thinking that, and another shiver moves through Yeonjun’s body. Taehyun feels it against him.

“Are you sure you’re not using powers?” Yeonjun asks.

“I’m sure,” Taehyun says. “This is powers.”

He opens his hand against the back of Yeonjun’s neck and concentrates as hard as he can on every too-sweet thing he’s still embarrassed to say out loud and on how much he wants Yeonjun to feel it, calm and safe and loved.

A groan pours out of Yeonjun like molten rock as his whole body melts into Taehyun’s. He ends up with his face against Taehyun’s chest, half-trapping him, warm and solid.

“Sorry,” Taehyun says. “That was manipulative.”

“You can manipulate me any day,” Yeonjun says, his cheek mashed against Taehyun’s chest. He sounds a little drunk.

When Taehyun laughs, some locked-tight tension inside him snaps free. It must have built slowly, over a long time—he hadn’t noticed it there, getting heavier, weighing him down. He only feels it as it lets go, as he pulls Yeonjun up to kiss him again and he notices how easy it is.

Beomgyu pauses, holding his can of black spray paint still in front of the window. It’s hard to tell if he’s hesitating or just thinking.

“What, are you scared?” Yeonjun asks.

Instantly, Beomgyu starts to spray, painting an enormous, wobbly circle. His high-pitched laugh is scandalized and absolutely thrilled.

“That looks great,” Yeonjun says, more encouraging now, and steps away to start throwing red slashes of paint across the storefront while Beomgyu fills in the face of a woozy emoji. Taehyun takes video on his phone, careful to keep Beomgyu out of the frame even though, like all of them, he’s well hidden in a beanie and mask.

It’s graffiti, like Yeonjun predicted for their future, but it’s not a carnival—they’re at a jewelry store in Gangnam, and Taehyun has some footage from the Park family’s gold mines to cut into the video. After all, Yeonjun said when they were planning this hit, he got his revenge, but Beomgyu never did.

Beomgyu taps into an artistic impulse as old as humanity itself, and starts painting round cartoon dicks across the top of the window.

“You’re a natural,” Yeonjun says.

“Maybe I’ll add it to my resume,” Beomgyu says. “DJ/playboy/artist/vigilante.”

“Rich kid/DJ/vandal,” Yeonjun corrects.

“You don’t need to say ‘rich kid’ and ‘DJ,’ it’s repetitive,” Beomgyu says.

Yeonjun snorts. “At least you’re self-aware.”

Beomgyu gasps as if appalled. “Take it back.”

“Got it,” Soobin says, unplugging a device from the electronic lock as the metal gates inside the windows start to rise.

“That’s us, hyung,” Kai says, pausing in his pacing up and down the block.

“Aww, I wasn’t finished,” Beomgyu whines, but Kai is already tugging his hand.

“Talk to you all later!” Kai calls as they run back to their van.

Taehyun pockets his phone. It’s a simple smash and grab once they’re in the store, sixty seconds to get everything they can into two duffel bags and then they’re running off in the opposite direction.

This late, keeping to streets of dark office buildings, the night is as silent and empty as it ever gets in a city this big. The only thing alive is Yeonjun’s hand inside Taehyun’s.

But there’s a siren near their first pickup point, so they shift fast and duck to the backup, a narrow alley in another row of dark luxury storefronts. Taehyun leans against the wall, catching his breath with his heart pounding in his whole body, as Yeonjun texts the change.

Yeonjun’s face is hidden by a mask and beret, but his bare arms are almost glowing in the shadows, and his eyes gleam as they meet Taehyun’s. He places an elbow on the wall by Taehyun’s head, closing them in so his back is to any CCTV cameras that might try to find them in this little crack in the city.

He puts his other hand on Taehyun’s hip, his eyes grinning.

With a breath’s space between them, Taehyun pulls his mask down. Yeonjun leans closer to hear what he’s going to whisper, but Taehyun only presses his open mouth to the bare skin of Yeonjun’s neck. He smiles into Yeonjun’s salt-slick skin when he feels Yeonjun jump.

He’s so easy to startle these days, surprised into cute bashfulness whenever Taehyun kisses him. And Taehyun has been doing it a lot, so he’s had plenty of chances to get used to it.

They’re still close against the wall when the van pulls up. Taehyun pushes his mask back into place and Yeonjun grabs both bags as the sliding door opens, and they both clamber inside.

Wooyoung, at the wheel, wolf-whistles with his fingers in his mouth, and Seonghwa is rubbing his temples as if they’ve already exhausted him. But Hongjoong isn’t worried about who is kissing where at what inappropriate time—he unzips one of the duffels and sighs happily as jewels clatter through his fingers in a sparkling mess.

It’s a long, wild ride back to the docks as Wooyoung swerves to avoid the sounds of sirens and busy streets. Taehyun keeps one hand on a handle in the van’s wall and one on Yeonjun’s arm, and through the twists of the city, they find their way safely home.