Chapter Text
All in all, Yoo Joonghyuk, better known as the hero Regressor, didn’t hate the dynamic he had going on with the resident villain of the city and perpetual annoyance, Salvation.
Sure, sometimes the guy was a stubborn asshole who had a penchant for making his life just a little harder than it needed to be, but it wasn't like he was actively evil. The man, or at least the persona that the man put out, seemed like some unassumingly awkward NPC who for some reason, was a villain (or at least, a vigilante), and somehow always had a plan for everything, even though his plans were just as shit as his backup plans.
It wasn’t so much that they were enemies as it was the fact that Salvation seemed to have the irrepressible urge to just… mess around. Was it so hard to simply sit tight? Did he really have to half-heartedly rob a bank on a biweekly basis, for absolutely no reason at all?
Speaking of robbing banks, the current target was a modest, three-floor branch office on the corner of a reasonably quiet street in the city. It had nice tile floors, an equally polite and rather anxious manager, and, as of ten minutes ago, exactly one self-proclaimed villain standing on the front counter with a fistful of glitter-covered cards and seemingly zero self-respect.
"Really?" Regressor said, kicking open the shattered double doors. "Again?"
Salvation turned slowly from his perch atop the customer service desk, where he had been dramatically standing like a low-budget magician. His cape fluttered, because of course he wore a cape. Of course it fluttered. There was no wind indoors, and yet.
"Regressor!" he beamed, voice already pitched to carry across potential camera mics. "You came."
"I always come," Regressor muttered, stepping over a toppled sign that read Ask Us About Our New Mortgage Plans! which now had a boot print in it.
"Aw," Salvation cooed, "don’t make it sound romantic."
Without preamble, Regressor hurled a stapler directly at his head.
Salvation ducked, barely, and the thing thunked into the ATM behind him with enough force to dent the screen. The customers, who had already evacuated to a safe distance (namely, across the street) let out a collective ooh.
"Rude," Salvation said, straightening and brushing imaginary dust from his shoulder. "Is this how we treat our favorite nemesis now? No flowers, no fanfare?"
"You’re not my favorite anything."
"You say that," he said, flipping another card between his fingers. "But here you are. Again. Like clockwork."
The next thing Regressor threw was a chair.
”Hold on, you agree that I’m your nemesis?” Salvation asked, hopefully.
Another chair came hurtling towards him. Salvation took that as a yes.
"Alright, they’re getting into it now," Jung Heewon, Regressor’s teammate who usually went by Paladin, said, squinting through a pair of binoculars she definitely bought just for this purpose. She was crouched on a rooftop nearby with Lee Hyunsung, known professionally as Fortress, who had brought snacks along with his deeply patient attitude.
“I give it four minutes before he throws him through the window.”
Hyunsung, thoughtfully chewing on a rice cracker, shook his head. “Three. Tops.”
"You're on."
Below them, Salvation dropped from the counter in a spin that might have been cool if he didn’t trip slightly on the corner of his own cape. He caught himself with a sweep of his arm, flung a card like a frisbee, and exploded a fire hydrant with glitter.
Regressor, already bracing, stepped through the sparkly geyser like he did this every Tuesday. (He did.)
"You're wasting everyone's time," he snapped, elbowing a potted plant out of the way as he advanced.
"You say that like you didn’t come here just for me,” Salvation said, sidestepping a punch with a theatrical little hop. "You know, some heroes would be super grateful to have a reliable schedule. Helps with time management, you know."
Regressor did not answer. He just kicked him in the chest.
They crashed through the interior glass wall that separated the teller floor from the hallway, shattering it in a curtain of safety glass confetti. Someone's "Employee of the Month" plaque went flying.
Lee Jihye, watching the news livestream on her phone from under her desk at school, was furiously texting Na Bori.
jihye (12:03PM): update! master hit him with A WHOLE TWO CHAIRS!!
jihye (12:03PM): oh my god u should see the TENSION I’M NOT KIDDING I SWEAR
Glass rained down. The shards pinged off marble like sleet. Regressor drove Salvation backward through the teller corridor, shoulder first. Salvation hit the floor, rolled, and came up laughing.
"See, this is what I mean," he said, breathless. "You don’t hit anyone else like this.”
"Anyone else doesn’t keep coming back."
“So, anyone else isn’t worth the commute?”
Regressir swung; Salvation caught his wrist; they spun, boots slipping over a drift of loose deposit slips. A printer shrieked as it was body-checked off its stand. Toner mist burst like a cloud of smoke into the air.
Outside, squad drones orbited, red lights recording.
Inside, Regressor changed grip, hooked his heel, and wrenched. Salvation used the momentum to flip, cape tangling, knee driving for Regressor’s ribs, and missed by centimeters when Regressor dropped flat. Salvation overshot, slammed shoulder-first into the tempered-glass exterior wall, spiderwebbed it-
-and Hyunsung, watching through binoculars, calmly said, “Window in three. Two.”
Heewon hissed. “No, he’ll redirect-”
Regressor launched an uppercut from the floor. Salvation’s head snapped back. The already-cracked pane gave up. The two of them went through in a burst of reflected sky.
Hyunsung extended an empty palm toward Heewon.
She groaned and slapped money into it. “Goddamn it. I’ll win a bet one day, you know.”
Hyunsung smiled sweetly. “Sure you will.”
They didn’t fall far; this was the second-floor mezzanine, a shallow drop to the awning that angled over the sidewalk. The awning shuddered, buckled, and dumped both men into a decorative planter full of crushed granite and drought-resistant shrubs. Salvation wheezed. Regressor landed in a crouch.
Pedestrians scattered to a respectful distance that was, in practice, a semicircle with phones raised.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Salvation announced, “you’ll want to get this part in slow-mo-”
Regressor slammed him against the hood of a nearby car before he could finish.
“Do you ever shut up?” Regressor hissed, one forearm braced across Salvation’s chest, pinning him down. More than one person in the crowd gasped. Someone shouted, “Kiss already!”
Salvation, utterly unbothered, grinned up at him. “You’re awfully close for someone who doesn’t like me, hero.”
“Shut. Up.”
“Your hand’s on my chest.”
Regressor realised, belatedly, that it was. He removed it very quickly.
Back on the rooftop, Heewon groaned. “He’s so bad at denying it. Look at him, look at his face! Hyunsung, tell me that’s not thinly-veiled repression.”
Hyunsung, halfway through his third rice cracker, gave her a weary glance. “We’re supposed to be monitoring them. Not- whatever this is.”
“I am monitoring them,” she said. “I’m monitoring the very real possibility that they’re going to hook up mid-fight, and I don’t know if we’re ready for that as an agency. Or a society.”
Regressor dragged Salvation upright with a hand fisted in his collar. The villain’s cape snagged on a broken shard of glass, and he made a noise halfway between indignation and laughter.
“You’re under arrest,” Regressir muttered, as if this would stick this time. (It wouldn’t.)
“Aw,” Salvation said, leaning in just slightly, like this was a date instead of a fight. “You never take me anywhere nice.”
Regressor exhaled through his nose, clipped a suppression cuff around Salvation’s wrist, then the other, then, because he absolutely did not trust whatever sleight-of-hand pocket dimension produced those weaponised glitter cards, looped an arm under Salvation’s back and hauled him upright bridal style to keep his hands visible.
Lee Jihye, somewhere out there, shrieked.
“Put me down,” Salvation said, delighted.
“No.”
He carried him across the sidewalk debris like a fireman hauling out a certain cat stuck in a tree for the tenth time.
Some very enthusiastic onlooker (probably the same one as before) shouted, “That’s my OTP!” and Salvation, legs swinging, offered them an upside-down wave.
“I hope your back gives out,” he added, looking back at Regressor.
“You weigh about as much as a wet towel,” Regressor said.
“Oh, so now you’re calling me scrawny? Can’t believe the state of chivalry these days- hey, ow, careful with the cuffs, I need circulation in these wrists.”
Regressor tuned him out. Mostly.
The precinct was close, just a few blocks. Unfortunately for his dignity (though there couldn’t have been much left anyway), he passed two beat cops, a news van, and a child in a Spider-Man hoodie who pointed and yelled, “LOOK! IT’S THE GLITTER GUY!”
Salvation turned his head. “My name’s Salvation, but thank you-”
Regressor adjusted his grip and hit the button to open the precinct doors with his elbow.
The officer at the front desk didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “Four again?”
Regressor nodded.
“He still doing the card tricks?”
Regressor nodded grimly.
They walked past the holding cells. Salvation was humming now. Some show tune. Regressor didn’t care enough to identify it.
He dropped him on the bench with all the tenderness of tossing a duffel bag. Salvation bounced a little, then dramatically threw himself back like a fainting heroine.
Regressor locked the cuffs to the wall ring and turned to leave.
Behind him, the humming stopped.
“Wait,” Salvation said.
He paused in the doorway, tense.
“Did you miss me?”
There was a silence.
“No,” he replied, walking out.
“Liar!” Salvation called out after him.
—
In the hallway, Heewon was leaning against the wall, chewing gum, having definitely been waiting twenty minutes to say something smug.
“Was it everything you dreamed?” she asked, falling into step beside him.
“He wasted thirty-seven minutes, disrupted traffic, and destroyed the interior of the bank.”
“Uh-huh. And you threw him through a window. Kinda cute, actually. Very Mr. and Mr. Smith.”
Joonghyuk gave her a look. “If you have nothing useful to say-”
“I have plenty of useful things to say. Like, for example: you should kiss.”
He ignored that.