Chapter Text
While he waits on the sidewalk for his ride to arrive, Hongjoong makes one more—last—phone call.
Jongho answers on the fifth attempt, because Hongjoong is relentless when he needs to be, and his voice is groggy and gravel rough. “What?”
“Jongho-yah,” Hongjoong says sweetly, though his jaw is clenched tight to keep from frothing at the mouth in public. “I hope you’re having a better morning than I am.”
There’s a sound over the line like Jongho is scrambling to get out of bed, a loud rustle of fabric and feet plodding on a hard surface at a rate that suggests he’s running. A door closes. Hongjoong waits while Jongho pants raggedly. “Hyung! Hyung, fuck, are you—”
“Whatever scheme you and your dad tried to pull didn’t work,” Hongjoong informs him. He feels strangely calm waiting out in the cold two blocks away from Yunho’s apartment and watching the world turn. There’s a tired grouping of office workers waiting by a bus stop across the street. A woman jogging behind three dogs with tangled leashes passes by. Hongjoong wonders what it’s like to live a normal life where you’re not at the center of some sprawling network of conspirators trying to keep you unknowingly under their thumb. “Tell me everything you know in the next five minutes or I’m calling Wooyoung to have him pull it out of you by force.”
“Wooyoung wouldn’t do that,” Jongho says, shaky.
He’s nervous. Good.
“Wooyoung loved me a hell of a lot longer than he’s known you and he’s got enough strength in one pinky to break your fucking arm if I asked him to.” Hongjoong grins at an elderly woman giving him a scandalized expression, offering up a jaunty wave as if her hearing a man casually threaten someone over the phone is an everyday occurrence, move along. “Spill.”
“Hyung—”
“Four minutes, thirty seconds.”
Hongjoong can hear the wet sounds of Jongho’s mouth opening and closing before he’s settling on, “Look, I didn’t want to get involved, but my dad is my dad. Hyung, I can’t just say no to him when he needs me and he was begging me to help.”
Hongjoong sighs. Some portion of himself, deep down wants to commiserate with Jongho for only doing what he thought was best, but Hongjoong has never had that kind of connection with a family member so mostly he just feels bored and exhausted at the seemingly endless betrayal. “Jongho, I have four minutes until an Uber gets here to take me back to my big evil egg donor where I will be kept locked up in a prison of her making, and all I’m asking for is to understand what the point of last night was even about. You can explain that much to me.”
Jongho hesitates. “They wanted to set you up for a fall and then swoop in at the last second to ‘rescue’ you so you’d be forced to stay and do whatever your parents asked of you.”
“They? ‘They’ who?”
“My dad,” Jongho whispers, “and your dad, and half the night shift at the SMPD.”
Three minutes, ten seconds until his car arrives. Hongjoong scrubs his hand down his face in frustration. “But why? Couldn’t they have done that without sending me on some wild goose chase at night for files that, what, weren’t even real?”
“Oh, the files were real alright. Did you look at the one with all the numbers like I told you to?”
Numbers. Numbers, numbers. Hongjoong wracks his brain, but as far as he remembers the only numbers folder was just a bunch of broken links saved to a text document and a corrupted pdf that wouldn’t open. He tells Jongho as much.
Jongho is silent for all of twenty seconds and Hongjoong is half afraid he’s hung up when Jongho finally responds, “Dad only fed me so much info, but if I understand it correctly...hyung, that building is set up in your name and it’s being used as a money laundering center for a bunch of shell corporations to funnel money. They were going to stage a raid, find you at the hub, and then have your dad make a big show of making it all go away in exchange for your loyalty.”
It’s so comical—so goddamn outrageous—that all Hongjoong can do is laugh long and loud and hysterical while Jongho made huffing noises of confusion. His fucking life, Hongjoong cackles to himself, what a joke.
“Hyung?”
“Don’t call me that,” Hongjoong tells him, continuing to laugh and wiping at the tears running down his cheeks. One minute, twelve seconds and counting, but a black sedan is turning at the end of the street ahead of schedule. “One last thing, Jongho.”
Jongho, sufficiently cowed, only hums.
“Hurt Wooyoung and I will break your arms myself.”
He catches the tail end of an indignant, “What about San?” just as he’s pulling the sim card out of his phone and putting it safely tucked away in an inside pocket with the USB he’d kept from last night. His phone he throws to the ground as hard as he can so that it shatters and startles the same old woman who’d been innocently trailing behind her aging chihuahua sniffing along the ground trying to find the best shop front to piss in. He crushes the whole thing beneath his heel right as his ride pulls up and a middle-aged man leans out of his window.
“Kim Hongjoong?”
“That’s me,” he answers, throwing his night bag into the backseat. “You mind if I pay you with cash instead of through the app? My phone decided to die on me.”
His driver offers up a cord plugged into the cigarette outlet. “Fine by me, but if you need to charge it I have this charger with me that you're welcome to use.”
Hongjoong clicks his seatbelt into place and smiles at him through the rear view mirror. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”
--------------
Leaving Yunho so abruptly after only having a few days together hurts more than Hongjoong had expected. His stomach aches, his hands shake, his knees feel like they’re full of pins and needles when he creakily makes his way out of the black sedan and shoves a handful of bills into the driver’s waiting hands. He doesn’t bother counting them out and the driver doesn’t say anything about being shortchanged or given a generous tip, so Hongjoong supposes it’s fine. Everything is fine.
The radio station looms up dark and foreboding in front of him, or at least Hongjoong wishes it would. It honestly just looks like any normal cement building with sun shielding darkened glass and a viciously modern logo swooping from one eave to the other in the shape of an M.
An assistant is already impatiently tapping her foot in the entrance and waving Hongjoong in like he’s wasting all of her precious time better spent running cups of stale coffee to minor celebrity guests. Hongjoong foot catches on a crack in the sidewalk rising up to greet him and he stumbles once, only just managing to stay upright by sheer force of will.
“Will you hurry up?” The assistant hisses at him, already reaching out to smack his arm with the sharp metal bits at the top of her clipboard. “Misun-ssi’s break is almost about to start and you were due to appear yesterday.”
Hongjoong bites his tongue. If Yunho were here, he’d have at least stopped to make sure Hongjoong was okay and wasn’t suffering, like, a spontaneous dislocation of his kneecap or something. But Yunho isn’t around and he isn’t going to be either. Not for a while.
Hongjoong squares his shoulders and steps into the building with its smoked glass windows and its glossy high-shine floors. This is fine.
--------------
Park Misun welcomes her wayward son back into the fold with a sheaf of papers shoved into his chest and slap across his face that leaves an angry red gash where her ring—a new Cartier by the looks of it—catches his skin and drags it away. Hongjoong takes it with his eyes closed and his hands shaking clenched up in fists hidden away in his pockets. The same assistant that had hit him with the metal of her clipboard lets out a muffled ‘eep’ of surprised concern, bending down to pick up the papers so they don’t get shuffled out of order.
“Hello, mother.”
“Hello yourself, you ungrateful little fuck,” Misun sneers at him. Her mouth is tilted up in that way she gets when she thinks she’s gotten a leg up on her competition. “You’re recording this in ten minutes, get your voice ready because as soon as you’re finished recording, we’re going to have a little chat.”
Hongjoong stays silent, not even bothering to look at the collection of radio friendly bullshit he’s going to spew out later because it’s probably more of the same shit he’s done before. Park Misun presents a charity banquet benefiting orphans, he’ll probably say, come shake hands with myself and my mother as we welcome you to open your hearts and your wallets for a good cause. Probably there will be overproduced segments of crying children and his father’s voice echoing a friendly yet severe warning about the crime statistics of abandoned children, followed with a ham fisted plug about his hospital being the number one center for successful organ transplants in the last ten years. His cheek tingles as the warm sensation of blood runs down to soak into the edge of his cotton face mask.
Misun holds out her hand. “Phone.”
“Don’t have one.”
“Bullshit.” She slaps him again, this time on the other cheek though thankfully without another ring to bite into his skin.
The assistant tries to step in with a shy, “Ma’am, I don’t think—”
Misun rounds on her with a glare. “Because I don’t pay you to think, I pay you to schedule appearances.” His mother starts patting him down starting at his pockets and growing increasingly frustrated the longer she remains empty handed.
“I told you, I don’t have a phone anymore.” Hongjoong keeps his voice steady by focusing on a crack in the drywall on the other side of the recording booth where two sound engineers are carefully pretending not to stare. “Someone stepped on it this morning.”
Misun snaps her fingers at clipboard girl. “Call his number right now and then confiscate his phone. I don’t have time to play bad cop all day.”
She pivots on her heel and clomps back into the studio to jam oversized headphones over her ears and moving forward with a collection of listener questions. The assistant eyes him dubiously with her own phone held up between them.
“Do you really not have a phone?”
Hongjoong shakes his head. “I really, really don’t.” He points at the blood still sluggishly making its way down his face. “Think I’d put up with this just to hide a phone? Please.”
She hesitates before nodding and pocketing her own cell. They wait quietly outside the studio doorway as his mother answers some inane question about her favorite brand of toothpaste that cleverly segues into another ad for one of Misun’s many sponsors. Misun motions for the girl next to him to bring her a new coffee, and Hongjoong would feel bad for her if she hadn’t hit him with the business end of her clipboard earlier—possibly he is still bitter about it. When she goes to pass him again, Hongjoong holds a hand out gently at the height of her shoulder and the assistant pauses with her eyebrows raised.
“Yes?”
“Word to the wise, I’d find employment somewhere else.” He keeps his gaze steady at his mother smugly bouncing her script for the day against the tabletop. “Sooner rather than later.”
He drops his hand to let her get back to her glorified gopher job. Whether she ends up taking his advice is up to her, but at least Hongjoong won’t have to go to sleep with the guilt of letting someone who is maybe blameless in this whole business taking the fall and losing their source of income weighing on his conscience. He’s got enough of that to last a lifetime.
The advert Misun has him spewing less than ten minutes later is almost entirely the same drivel they trot him out for every few months. Come to a charity banquet hosted at the same auditorium next week, listen to an oration of the first few chapters of Park Misun’s newest book, turn out your pockets for a chance at a meet and greet spot and—
“We have a surprise announcement at the end of the presentation. Those lucky few Park Misun VIP Experience ticket holders will be able to sit down and chat with my mother, myself, and the lovely wo—” Hongjoong, blindsided, flubs the line and has to cough before he’s able to continue on, “The lovely woman I am so proud to call my soulmate. Tickets on sale now.”
"Terrible delivery," his mother informs him when he steps out of the recording area. "Just awful. Can you do anything right? Honestly, Hongjoong."
Patience, he tells himself. Fuck this up and we never go home. It rankles even now—even after everything he’s been through and knows about the kind of person his mother is—that he’s still being treated like an employee incapable of pulling their weight instead of a son. A son who can’t even admit to having a male soulmate.
Hongjoong has known two other minor celebrities in the closed circuit his mother keeps that have confided in him their soulmates are of the same sex, like the woman, who stars opposite his mother in most of her romantic comedies as the perpetual best friend, with a soulmate she keeps hidden from the world in a penthouse in France just because the soulmate happened to be a woman too. Or like the son of some big shot director that loved and supported his soulmate in his transition in private, yet denounced ever having been involved with someone who dared to undergo invasive surgery after invasive surgery to finally rid himself of horrible soul crushing dysphoria.
Swallowing back bile, Hongjoong stuffs his hands back in his pockets to pinch at the scabs between his fingers only just beginning to heal. The sharp sting helps to refocus on what he needs to do, not what he wants to—which is to run away to the nearest pap and give an impromptu interview about the shit his family is apparently trying to pull behind the scenes. But running won’t solve his dilemma of keeping Yunho safe and out of jail. It won’t solve the problem of potential blackmail held over his head by Seungho.
Hongjoong watches his mother sign off on some sponsor agreement. “So when do I get to meet this mystery woman?”
His mother keeps her gaze focused on a new clipboard provided by the same assistant earlier, totally disregarding his existence. “At the banquet you just just announced.” She sucks her teeth and scribbles out an entire page, flinging it hard into her assistant’s chest. “Fix that by tomorrow or you’re fired and your name blacklisted.”
To Hongjoong she says, “And then you’ll be visiting a chapel the next day for an engagement photoshoot.”
“You can’t be serious,” Hongjoong nearly whimpers, only holding himself off from the panic trying to weasel its way into his veins by digging the nail of his ring finger into the skin of his thumb until it gives way, breaking open so blood bubbles up hot and comforting beneath his fingertip. “How can we already be engaged? I don’t know her!”
Misun continues to ignore him, heels clicking against the linoleum as she leads him back toward the front of the building. “If someone hadn’t decided to steal from his poor, sweet mother and fuck off to that apartment building near Itaewon then we wouldn’t have to rush this arrangement so quickly.” Misun huffs angrily. “Not to mention the way you decided to flaunt your marks for the world to see the day I told our viewers we were going to show you and your soulmate meeting on stage. Do you just want to waste all of my hard earned time and money? Do you just enjoy making a fool and liar out of your mother?” She balls up her fist like she’s gearing up to strike him again and Hongjoong braces for impact while his mind reels.
“H-how—” He clears his throat, but only manages a soft croaking, “Itaewon?”
Misun snaps her fingers and someone is calling a driver to round to the front of the building. She sighs and leans in close as if she’s being divulging state secrets. “Hongjoong-ah. Did you really think we wouldn’t know exactly where you went the instant you disappeared?” She tuts. “Here I thought you were such a smart boy and you didn’t even notice the tracking app on your phone. Ridiculous, I should have just kept you on a leash like a dog.”
Hongjoong experiences the next few hours in a state of near catatonic shock. He’s ferried to high-end shop that specializes in tailoring menswear where a heavily tattooed and muscular man with a camera the size of Hongjoong’s head photographs every single inch of his skin while another man, frail, maybe in his late seventies, takes careful measurements with an old cloth measure the color of faded buttercream. His mother makes clipped and angry comments about the reddish purple finger marks peeking over the edge of his underwear that Hongjoong ignores for the sake of his own sanity.
By now, Yunho should be up and at work pouring out drinks and making adorable latte art of curling ferns. He probably hasn’t realized Hongjoong isn’t actually in class yet. Hongjoong squeezes his eyes shut tight against the flash of another photo.
This is fine.
He can do this.
Hongjoong raises his arms when prompted and tunes out the low level background noise of Misun bitching at the photographer, at him, at someone on the phone, at the driver playing tetris in the front seat while they wait, at the old man only doing his job the best way he knows how from years of experience.
“That woman is a nightmare,” the man quietly whispers to him under his breath when he goes to measure the circumference of Hongjoong’s throat.
“Sir, you have no idea,” Hongjoong breathes back. He gets a sympathetic tap against his collarbone for the remark until Misun is yelling, "Will you hurry it up? We have a schedule to keep!"
--------------
The tattooed man’s name is Youngchul he finds out later when Misun is finished yanking Hongjoong around town in a last minute dash for custom suits and getting measured for a set of rings.
“Your new bodyguard,” she tells him offhand. “Since you’re so hellbent on running off, your father and I decided it would be best if you had someone to watch over you.”
Youngchul says nothing, just stands stock still and frowns as hard he can at him right outside the door of Hongjoong’s bedroom. Or, at least, the place where a door used to be. They’d even removed the hinge plates from the molding. Hongjoong drops his overnight bag to his now bare mattress located on the floor and sighs.
“Does he talk?”
Misun scowls. “He’s not paid to talk, he’s paid to watch you .” She snaps her fingers a few times and jerks her arm in Hongjoong’s direction. “Youngchul, check his bag. If you find anything electronic then send it to the incinerator.”
Youngchul grunts, advancing in long powerful strides into the room to paw through the duffel, not that Hongjoong is worried he’ll find anything. His laptop and everything else important is safely locked away in Yunho’s apartment. Hongjoong swallows tight while his face aches from the scabbed over knot where his mother’s ring caught him. Yunho should be at home either eating or taking a nap.
Youngchul throws a collection of underwear to the ground and toes through the stack.
Once upon a time, Hongjoong could have closed his eyes and let his mind wander away until the soul connection tugging behind his navel led him in Yunho’s direction, fed him a feedback loop of whatever Yunho was doing, let him see and smell and hear how Yunho was faring without Hongjoong around. But that tether is gone. Their connection is complete and, aside from the dreams they still share, there is no way for Hongjoong to keep tabs on his soulmate.
His fingers shake.
Pain flares in his chest and he winces. Indigestion, maybe, or a phantom pang of loss shooting down through his arteries.
Youngchul makes a show of stomping the clothes on the ground and the bag in every conceivable direction until the whole pile is a flattened boot-printed mess. Misun tuts.
“Nothing?”
Youngchul shakes his head and steps back out of the room, mission complete.
His mother rounds on him once the bodyguard is bustling around in the kitchen on the other side of her home. “You even think about setting foot outside of this building and Youngchul breaks every single one of your fingers in eight places. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Good.” Misun smooths her palms over the wrinkled edges of her Versace skirt. “Now.” She holds her arms open. “Aren’t you happy to be home? This is so much better to be a family again, Hongjoong-ah, come give your mother a hug.”
Hongjoong stays rigid while his mother wraps her bony malicious arms around his back in a brief hug as if she’s trying to switch back to being a normal person. She smells like Chanel No.5, a gut wrenchingly cloying scent that clings to the back of his throat nearly gagging him the longer she invades his space. “No more running away, Hongjoong. This is what’s best for you, someday you’ll understand.”
Youngchul passes the two of them in the doorway with a sandwich mounded high with shaved pork and at least three cheeses.
I understand you’re a psychopath, he doesn’t say while keeping his facial expression neutral and tensing his muscles so his body doesn’t shake in fear. You and dad both.
--------------
At some point, Hongjoong falls asleep and wakes up disoriented in the backseat of a car he doesn’t recognize. His vantage point is oddly low, and his seatbelt features some sort of old teddy bear missing an eye wrapped around the sharp edges. Two people in the driver and passenger seats whisper frantically at each other, and man and a woman Hongjoong vaguely recognizes but can’t quite put his finger on from where.
“Isn’t the gala tonight?” The woman hisses under her breath. “We’re going to be late and miss our chance to expose him.”
“Yes, but Beomseok isn’t due to make his speech until late. We have some time, darling.”
The woman nervously glances back in Hongjoong’s direction and smiles wan at him before turning back in her seat. “I still think bringing Yunho along for the ride was a bad decision. We should turn around and take him home, leave him with your mother or a sitter.”
Hongjoong’s stomach lurches hard into his throat. Yunho. Yunho, Yunho, Yunho, this is Yunho’s parents’ car. These are the people Hongjoong has only ever seen in bits and pieces. Literally.
The man reaches over to thumb against the woman’s knuckles turning white where she’s gripping to the edge of her skirt. “I told you we need him with us so security doesn’t turn us away at the door. It’s a charity function for sick kids, they can’t turn away a family with a leukemia patient. The optics would be horrible.”
“But—”
“It will be fine,” he says. “We’ll drop him off at the Christmas tree with the other kids and mingle until Beomseok shows up. The arrest will take less than four minutes and then we’ll be out again and the rest of the team can swoop in on our signal.”
The woman reaches back to touch Hongjoong’s—Yunho’s knee.
“I still don’t see why it has to be us that makes the arrest. We’re researchers, not cops.”
Yunho’s father shrugs. “Sangchul assured me—”
His voice is cut off by the loud squealing sound of an engine barreling towards them at speed and Yunho’s mother screams. The sound lasts only for a moment before the car jerks, crushes in on itself, and glass leaves a searing line of heat along Hongjoong’s cheek.
He blinks. There’s blood everywhere. Yunho’s father makes a wet gurgling sort of noise before his body droops along the hood of the car. Hongjoong tries to suck in air but his chest hurts. Everything hurts.
This is the part he remembers. His chest burning over like it’s full of liquid magma—broken ribs, he recalls, bruises from his neck to his hip from the pull of his seatbelt. Now there’s the added addition of pain in his face—in Yunho’s face—and the sound of his screams being pulled involuntarily from his throat.
The driver of the limo, Jongho's father, stumbles out, puking once on the side of the road, before Park Misun makes her grand entrance slipping out of a padded full body suit so she can smooth down her gown and apply a deep burgundy stain to her lips.
He can’t hear them over Yunho’s wailing and the distant noise of sirens flaring to life, but he can see her smiling in triumph as she pulls a wad of bills from her purse and smugly thumbs through the stack.
As if by magic, the whole scene pops out of existence to be replaced by the familiar warmth of Yunho’s bedroom where his soulmate is curled up into a ball in the middle of the bed.
Hongjoong stumbles from the shock, falls to his knees and whispers, “Yunho? Is that really you?”
His soulmate flinches and keeps his head buried. “I don’t want to speak to you right now.”
And while that’s a fair emotional response to have when faced with someone that walked out without a word, Hongjoong still takes the statement with a whoosh of breath like he’s been punched in the gut.
“Yunho, I can explain—”
Yunho finally sits up and his face is a mash of anger and hurt all twisted up together in blotchy red streaks from his cheeks to his neck. “Explain? Explain what? How you left without a word and then suddenly show up over the radio saying your soulmate is, and I am quoting you here, a ‘lovely woman’?”
Hongjoong shakes his head. “Yunho that’s not—I only said that because my mother—”
Yunho snorts. “Right. Mommy dearest.”
“Yunho,” Hongjoong begs, “Please, you have to understand, I’m doing this for us.”
“How?” Yunho yells at him. “How is suddenly showing the world your soulmate is some random woman doing anything for us ? I thought we were going to figure out what to do about your mom situation together! Why do you always have to run off by yourself?”
“Because she’s dangerous and I refuse to let you become a focus for her cruelty.” Hongjoong can feel a slow line of hot blood work its way down his cheek as he remembers the cutting slap she’d given him at the station. Yunho’s face pales to an inhuman sheet white. “Because I’m going to destroy my family and I will not let them destroy you, too. They knew where you lived this entire time, Yunho. They tracked my position. They knew!”
For all his bluster, Yunho scrambles off the bed to touch delicately at the cut in Hongjoong’s cheek sluggishly bleeding to drip off his chin to the floor where it ripples in dreamlike waves against the surface.
“Did she—?”
Hongjoong nods, fisting his hands in Yunho’s sleep shirt as their connection buzzes hard from the close proximity. “Yes.”
“Oh, Hongjoong-ah…” Yunho trails off. His fingers are a sparking fuzz of a lit fuse against Hongjoong’s cheek and he leans into the touch as Yunho slowly drags his fingertips over the worst of the jagged edges. “Wooyoung called me when he heard the radio segment.”
Hongjoong hums and closes his eyes, leaning forward until he’s breathing in the familiar scent of cheap laundry detergent over an evaporated trail of minty body wash.
“Aren’t you scared?” Yunho finally questions. “Being alone wherever you are?”
“I’m where I’ve always been, locked up in my mother’s house.” Hongjoong sighs, “And I’m not alone.”
When Yunho makes a questioning noise—adorable little half-formed ‘wuh’ falling from his mouth—Hongjoong has to keep his face hidden against Yunho’s shirt. He wiggles his fingers around to make the vines and curling ferns encircling his skin shift. “I have you with me.”
A beat. A ragged inhale next to his ear. Yunho’s arms coming up to crush their bodies together. “Jagiyah—”
“Two weeks,” Hongjoong says plaintively into Yunho’s chest. “Two weeks and I’ll be home for good. All this will be over, I’ll make sure of it.”
Yunho threads his fingers through the hair at the back of his skull tender sweet and Hongjoong shivers hard, pitiful mewling whine held in check by sheer force of will. “I’ve waited a lifetime for you,” Yunho admits quietly, “Maybe two weeks won’t be so bad.”
“Two weeks and then never again,” Hongjoong agrees. “And someday when we get married I’m going to do the American thing by taking your last name. I’m so fucking tired of being a Kim.”
Yunho laughs, and laughs, and laughs harder until he’s crying loud hiccuping sobs into Hongjoong's neck and Hongjoong is kissing away the tears as best as he can, crushing their mouths together when Yunho leans up into him.
“One last thing.”
Yunho hums, blinking slow and out of sync as his arms begin to fade away. Hongjoong grabs at his face, tapping Yunho’s cheeks in urgency. “Don’t believe a single thing about me unless I’m the one saying it to you. Got it? Only from me.”
“Only you,” Yunho agrees. He places one last gentle kiss to the center of Hongjoong’s left palm, mouth wet at the edge from his tears and a little bit of accidental drool. “I’m going to try to trust you.”
“Okay,” Hongjoong husks, overwhelmed and guilty. “Okay.”
Offering up one crooked grin, Yunho fades out to nothing leaving Hongjoong grasping at empty air and suffocating in his own dream.
This is enough.
This will have to be enough for now.
--------------
Being locked away unable to contact the outside world is much harder in practice than it is in theory. He's no closer to solving the puzzle connecting his father to the chief of police, or even what Yunho's parents were doing in that strange glimpse of the past. He gains even less information during the brief hours he and Yunho manage to share dream spaces, too busy losing themselves to touch while they have the chance rather than talking about the strain the connection is put under being so far away from each other for so long.
According to Yunho, Wooyoung is incandescently angry, both at Hongjoong himself and at Jongho for helping his father try to further blackmail his best friend. San and Mingi are keeping themselves at a distance, only coming over to keep Yunho occupied when he calls either of them when the separation and the cramping loneliness gets to be too much. Though, Seonghwa and Yeosang apparently demand updates at a near constant rate so where Yunho finds the time to be lonely...well.
“I’ve had to literally yell at them that if they don’t cut it out I’m going to stop responding,” Yunho tells him while they lounge on the sand of a warm beach somewhere in the tropics, conjured up from reading too many travel magazines strewn about Misun’s living room. Three yachts and one sailboat flicker in and out of each other at odd angles like the dream can't decide if this is a party island for snobby rich kids in seersucker suits and board shorts or just some far away destination for the lonely javelin fisher.
Hongjoong laughs, curled into Yunho’s side naked as the day he was born. “They’re just worried.”
“Twenty seven text messages, hyung,” Yunho pouts. He pours a phantom handful of sand over Hongjoong’s thigh and they watch as it fizzles out of existence as soon as it touches skin. “I’m worried too. That bodyguard guy makes me nervous.”
“Mmm.” Hongjoong lazily swirls a finger around the dark brown of Yunho’s nipple until Yunho is cringing away from the touch with a stifled laugh. “I think he’d rather just collect paychecks by making sandwiches and giving me the evil eye instead of actually having to rough me up.”
It helps that Youngchul was there taking pictures when Hongjoong was stripped to nothing but his underwear and had seen how scrawny his arms and legs were. There was no competition if push came to shove. And while Hongjoong may fantasize about kicking Youngchul in the dick and running out of the apartment, the chances of that happening are pretty much zilch anyway.
Four days of putting up with Youngchul shadowing his every move in his mother’s penthouse like to the kitchen for drinks or the bathroom to piss, the plans have apparently changed. Misun comes home Tuesday afternoon with a new packet in her hands and an aggravated slant on her perpetually pursed mouth. Hongjoong thinks she needs another round of botox if she’s going to stay under the delusion that Best Actress Nominee Park Misun is impervious to Father Time.
Hongjoong keeps his mouth shut as Misun drops a thick mound of papers into his lap with a headshot of some actress clipped to the front.
“Memorize all of this before the banquet,” she says. “We have to make this public introduction believable so the press doesn’t go off the rails reporting on that boy of yours parading around town with his marks out again.” She pokes at his chest with the end of a knobby stiletto tipped nail. “I won’t have you embarrassing me again, Kim Hongjoong.”
“I won’t, mother,” Hongjoong replies neutrally as if he’s not internally twisting up all of his fingers and toes at the lie. “Who is this?”
“We’re working on such a time crunch,” Misun sighs, completely and utterly ignoring him.”And finding a henna artist willing to do this much work at such short notice has been nigh impossible. Are you happy knowing you've put me in such an awkward position? My god the endless paperwork I'm having to go through for your benefit is astounding.”
Hongjoong flips through the first few pages that read like baby’s first résumé. The name he’d seen last week, Shin Youkyung, is a fledgling actress newly contracted under the Park Misun umbrella and has apparently been in love with one Kim Hongjoong ever since she heard him speak about his family at a charity gala broadcasted on the local news. He was sixteen at the time, and spotty all along his chin, bored out of his skull and only put in a token amount of effort to read off the cue cards he’d been handed two seconds before taking the stage. Hongjoong remembers leaving that same banquet to bruise his knees on the hard cement flooring of a nondescript bathroom two floors down and then calling Wooyoung an hour later to let his almost-not quite boyfriend fuck him brainless in front of a wall of mirrors in Wooyoung’s dance studio.
She's also the daughter of the police chief and more than likely Hongjoong's mystery soulmate. His fake one anyway.
He flips another page and lands on a series of questions and answers. A lengthy ‘Get to Know Me!’ she’d answered in extreme detail.
“What are you going to do about Seungho?” Hongjoong hedges.
Misun twirls in front of a mirror, bending low to check the swell of her cleavage in her latest acquisition from Dior. “Who?”
“The blackmailer.”
“Oh. Him and that snot nosed girl with the bad hair.” Misun waves Hongjoong off. “Youngchul will take care of that nasty business for us.”
Youngchul, ever a man of few words, only grunts deeply and wanders away with a fistful of half eaten beef jerky and what appears to be a well worn self-help book Hongjoong doesn't recognize titled 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' stuffed up underneath one armpit. Misun watches him leave the room with obvious lust gleaming in her eyes, mouth hanging open just a touch, and Hongjoong gags so hard internally it almost becomes external. Saving himself from even more emotional and mental trauma, Hongjoong takes the stack of papers with him back to his room.
“I’ll just go read up on my future bride, shall I?”
Misun makes no move to acknowledge him, just adjusts the underwire straining beneath her bosom and stalks after his bodyguard with something like intent.
“Right.”
--------------
Reading through the insurmountable detailed history of Shin Youkyung’s life story is a little like reading a toddler’s idea of a fairy tale. Raised by a stay at home mom while her father worked tirelessly to support his family, eventually making his way through the ranks until he was able to land a more lucrative office job and come home more often. She makes sure to lay it on thick about how much she loved Park Misun’s movies, her acting, how much she admired a woman dominating a section of the public relations market with an iron fist. All she wants is to become an actress at the same level.
Youkyung waxes poetic about hearing Hongjoong speak for the first time, how calming his voice was and how she was so sure, down to her core, that they belonged together.
“I told my father, I said, ‘Daddy, you absolutely must find a way for us to meet face to face’,” she bashfully recounts under the sections titled: Aspirations. “I am delighted to know Hongjoong feels the same way.”
Hongjoong shreds that page for his own peace of mind. Apparently he’s said a lot of things to this woman that he is only just now finding out about. He should be angry, but all he feels is disgust. How long had Misun been planning this? How long had his father been a willing participant in pimping out his son?
Youngchul gives him a meaningful glare when Hongjoong goes to dunk the whole thing in the toilet, so Hongjoong opts instead to throw it at his bedroom wall.
--------------
Hongjoong goes stir crazy at the beginning of week two only three days to D-Day. After pestering both his mother in the brief window she'd been speeding around the house making last minute additions to her purse, possibly legitimately on a super dose of amphetamines, and Youngchul trying to get some light reading done in the living room (re: watching trashy daytime television with a book only propped in his lap for show), Hongjoong convinces them both to at least check his university email to inform professors he's taking an unexpected leave of absence. It could lead to awkward inquiries if he stopped showing up to class when he was a meticulously punctual student, maybe they'll sell information like that to a gossip site or two that could spin his absence into suggestions Hongjoong has gone AWOL on a drug and alcohol bender.
"I'm just trying to avoid causing any undue stress," Hongjoong wheedles while his mother, black eyed and sniffling intermittently, considers it for all of thirty seconds before zipping her way down to the building's lobby where another driver is waiting with a hurried and off hand, "Whatever, just get it done."
Youngchul, for once, allows him to dick around on his mother's fancy Mac setup without hovering over his shoulder. Hongjoong uses the opportunity to look into the crash, because something in the back of his brain keeps whispering something doesn't add up. Why would Misun cover for a no nothing employee who drove under the influence of a prescription drug that could just as easily passed off as something he brought on the job rather than something Misun gave him? If it were her word against his, then public opinion would obviously side with the mostly loved celebrity instead of her sweaty pain killer addicted chauffeur.
The search leaves him empty handed considering he has no date to go off of, no concrete names since Yunho couldn't remember them, no police report filed away, and Hongjoong can only go through a certain number of 'Jeong car crash' searches on public news sites before he has to give up.
The thumb drive remains a stubborn black box of unanswerable questions.
"Hey, bodyguard dude," he calls down the hall. Youngchul doesn't say anything back, but Hongjoong assumes he heard him. "You in the business of harassing paps? We've had a group set up shop outside the building for two days now."
Struck by sudden inspiration in his search for answers, Hongjoong uses the home phone to make a call to the hospital while Youngchul is busy harassing a minivan with blacked out windows making camp across the street from the building. It’s a number he memorized so long ago when he had to, when he was still playing a dangerous game of keep away with Wooyoung and his mother and needed an alibi of where he’d been. An orderly picks up after a series of transfers to the children’s ward and Hongjoong begs to speak with Hyojung.
“I’m sorry, sir, but our head nurse is currently doing her rounds. Can I take a message?”
“No, I need to speak to her now. It’s an emergency,” Hongjoong begs. “It will only take a few minutes of her time.”
“Sir, I can’t just—”
“Tell her it’s her son calling,” Hongjoong interrupts and hopes the bluff pays off.
The man on the line sighs noisily but deigns to set the phone down and track down Hyojung. Hongjoong keeps one eye on the door and one ear open for the sound of anyone approaching the door, fingers tapping a formless rhythm along the marble surface of the sofa table they keep the phone sitting on.
The line crackles.
“Hongjoong! How are you holding up, love? The ward just isn’t the same since—”
“Hyojung,” Hongjoong interrupts her before he can be sidetracked by the ever present swirl of grief floating just beneath the surface. He’s had no time to truly process. “Can you do me a favor?”
“If it’s within my power, of course.” Hyojung says.
“You have access to my medical records, right?” Hyojung tells him she can and asks what this is about, is he alright? Has he come down with something chronic? Hongjoong waves away her concern. “I’m fine, but can you look up the date I came into the pediatric ward for the first time? After my ribs were broken in that bad accident.”
“Oh, love, we shouldn’t go poking into old files like that willy-nilly,” Hyojung tries to reason. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t—look, please, you’re the only one I can trust with this. Can you find out for me or not?”
Hyojung sighs roughly over their connection and Hongjoong can just make out the sound of fingers clicking on a keyboard. “December 3, 2004. Need the time of admittance or is that enough for you?”
“That’s enough,” Hongjoong says. “That’s plenty, thank you.”
He hangs up before Hyojung can ask him anymore questions and considers laughing.
December 3, 2004.
And fifteen years to the day Hongjoong gets swept off his feet at a bus stop just outside his old home. The cosmic coincidence would be funny if it wasn’t so goddamned sad.
But it's something to go off. A jumping point. Hongjoong enters the date into every public database he can think of again until, finally, he hits pay dirt. What he finds is so ridiculously insane Hongjoong spends a long, nerveless moment reading and rereading the headline until the lines stop resembling anything that might be words.
Of course.
Of-fucking-course.
Like the final thread of a tapestry being woven into place, Hongjoong can finally see the whole of the picture his parents have been so adamantly keeping hidden. If what Jongho had mentioned was true, then this would explain why his parents needed to buy up property under his name to funnel cash away from their pristine names.
"BREAKING NEWS: COUPLE AT CENTER OF ORGAN TRAFFICKING TASK FORCE KILLED IN APPARENT DRUNK DRIVING ACCIDENT
First responders say Jeong Joonho (34), along with his wife Min Jiyoung (32) and son Jeong Yunho (7), were found dead last night in an apparent drunk driving incident involving one vehicle. Eye witnesses say the couple were seen speeding down the highway when they veered off the center lane to crash headlong into the cement divider. Joonho had recently made a statement to the press just last week implicating the husband of actress Park Misun in a human organ trafficking sting started nearly six months ago. Kim Beomseok has reportedly denied any involvement and called the investigation a waste of time and resources.
Sgt. Shin Sangchul says a toxicology report has been ordered and the investigation ongoing..."
He saves the headline in a new document to the thumbdrive for safekeeping, clears any incriminating evidence of his snooping from his mother's computer, and leaves her office feeling wrong and off-footed. Youngchul eyes the tumbdrive in his hand but says nothing to stop him from leaving.
If he's understanding this right, then Kim Beomseok is no doubt accepting cash donations from high-dollar clients willing to buy their way up to the top of the organ donor lists. More than likely, his father is hiring shady thugsters to offer up small cash incentives to get the destitute and desperate to offer up their bodies in a bid to keep existing or to pay for their next fix. Misun puts up with it because it nets her cushy acting jobs and a radio station dedicated to her voice and her opinions and her vanity. The now chief of police probably allows all this to happen under his watch, because Beomseok is no doubt the reason he sped his way through the ranks from a beat cop working routine traffic problems to head of the whole organization.
Sangchul has the most important chess piece: holding the shameful fact over Kim Beomseok's head that the accident involving Yunho's parents was anything but a carefully calculated risk of Kim Beomseok's family in exchange for being safely hidden away from medical malpractice suits. And now, fifteen years later, Hongjoong is supposed to keep his head down and accept the chief's only daughter as his make believe soulmate just because she's been infatuated with him since Hongjoong had made his first bored infomercial for Park Misun's radio show.
Would Yunho even want to associate with him after this? Would he even care after all of this comes to light and he finds out what Hongjoong's parents have done? What they've deprived him of?
Hongjoong stumbles into the bathroom attached to his bedroom and loses everything he's eaten in the last 48-hour span into the toilet.
--------------
The dreamscape tonight is an open field with a darkened sky filled with constellations of stars and nebula Hongjoong has only ever seen on the internet, though somehow the sun still shines over them in a haze of warmth.
Yunho holds Hongjoong from behind, arms wrapped around Hongjoong’s middle, and he lets out a thin sigh of resignation against Hongjoong’s neck. “I want to say I’m shocked, but, honestly, I kind of suspected my parents were killed in that crash for a reason.”
Hongjoong stays mute. Shame and guilt vying for first place in his throat turning his vocal chords to frozen lumps. Yunho squeezes him tighter.
“Do you...do you think my parents had a proper burial?”
“Maybe.” Hongjoong considers the sprawling hills rolling outward around them into some shorn off faded abyss. “If we can find them, we should pay them a visit after all this is finished.”
Yunho mumbles agreement. They stand in the middle of this landscape basking in the simple pleasure of being able to see and touch when in reality they may as well exist in different hemispheres. Hongjoong looks at the sky and keeps count of each and every star with a short tap to Yunho’s knuckles, every contact a burning zap of electric energy.
Yunho is first to break the comfortable silence. “It hurts not having you here.”
“God, I know.” Hongjoong breathes deep through his nose to calm his nerves. He’s done so well not to think about the way his body keeps betraying him at inconvenient moments: his knees giving way stepping out of the shower, his hands shaking when he’s trying to pour a glass of water, his teeth chattering with cold even though the thermostat is cranked up to high. “It hurts me too. Everything fucking hurts all the time.”
Yunho dips down to slide his mouth over Hongjoong’s neck. “Let me make it better.”
Hongjoong shivers, not from the cold.
“Yunho?”
His soulmate shakes his head once. “Just trust me.”
Hongjoong lets himself be guided by Yunho’s capable hands to the soft grass beneath them, laughing a little breathlessly when his clothing seems to magically disappear with one heated glance. Yunho smiles at him once, sharp, before leaning over him to trail wet and biting kisses over each and every blooming mark on Hongjoong’s trunk like he had before, what feels like eons ago. And because this was a dream, and dreams never made sense anyway, when Yunho reaches down over the soft swell of his dick and under to touch at his ass, his fingertips are already sticky wet with lube.
Hongjoong sucks in a wounded sounding gasp at the first shockingly warm touch against his hole and his back arches from the sizzling heat starting to burn in his groin.
“Yun—”
Yunho cuts him off with a bruising kiss. Hongjoong gets so wrapped up in the feel of Yunho’s teeth and tongue, at the greedy push-pull between them, that he almost misses the first easy slide of Yunho’s fingers into his body—two at a time because his dream self was made to take them. Yunho moves away from his mouth again to lick a hot stripe from Hongjoong’s left nipple to the dip of his navel and lower still until Yunho is mouthing just shy of his cock, smirking when Hongjoong kicks feebly in the air at the merciless tease.
“Yunho, please,” Hongjoong pants raggedly. He tries to reach out to touch Yunho—to drag his mouth back up so he can kiss those cherry red lips, to pull Yunho down over his dick and fuck his throat raw, to do something—but he finds his arms planted against the ground as if an immense force is holding them down. He whines. “God, please, let me touch you.”
“No,” Yunho tsks with a shake of his head. “I said I wanted to take care of you and that’s exactly what I’m doing.” He sucks a mark into the meat of one thigh while his fingers continue to probe at a leisurely, maddening pace. “Just sit back and relax, hyung-ah.”
“You say that as if I have any other choice,” Hongjoong whimpers. Yunho only ignores him to suck another mean bruise to the inside of his other thigh and roves over the place where thigh meets groin, tongues at the creased line of ferns and ivy twisting up along his hip, until Yunho can take him into his mouth and systematically take Hongjoong apart.
Yunho opens him up at a pace that would make a snail jealous, always backing off at the last second when Hongjoong is so close he’s babbling nonsense into the air and thrusting weakly against Yunho's face and the tight, wet suction of his mouth. He’s a mess of noise and abortive jerks when he tries to wedge his hips lower over Yunho’s fingers that are somehow dripping enough lube down over the crack of his ass they make filthy squelching sounds on every mean shove of Yunho’s wrist.
Beneath a beautiful backdrop of stars and phantom sunlight, Yunho finally finally pushes in until he bottoms out, until Hongjoong can feel the hot slap of Yunho’s balls against his ass and cries out from the way his body opens up like he was created just for this: just to take Yunho’s fingers and his tongue and his cock. The grass is smooth beneath his back as Hongjoong slips over it with every careful nudge of Yunho’s hips. He can feel his cock leaving a sticky trail of precum against his belly on every thrust. Hongjoong would feel a little shameful about it if Yunho weren't staring down at him with his pupils blown wide like he wants to devour Hongjoong whole.
“You’re so—you’re so beautiful, Hongjoong,” Yunho growls down at him, fucking his hips so hard and so good Hongjoong hears himself begging a litany of please and god and so good. “Fucking, god, every inch of you is so fucking perfect, you know that? You were made for me.”
It’s like he’s being lit up from the inside out, Hongjoong hazily thinks through the fog of deep gut churning arousal. Their connection is flaring so urgently in his fingers and his toes Hongjoong wonders if he's glowing, if Yunho can feel the electricity thundering in his veins trying to reach up and out of his skin. He can feel Yunho’s cock in his stomach, in his groin, in the back of his fucking throat and at some point Hongjoong is going to forget how to function without having some part of Yunho boring into his body like he’s making camp. Yunho takes him into his wet fist, jerks him off quick. His whole body feels weightless with anticipation of falling over the edge and he wants desperately to take Yunho with him, to feel his soulmate leave him wet and raw and fucked open like this always.
“Come for me, hyung,” Yunho demands with a smug grin on his face, the dickhead. “Right now, Hongjoong. I want to feel you.”
“What did I say about telling me what to do?” Hongjoong sobs back, but by then the first crashing tidal wave of his orgasm is slamming into him in one swift rush. Yunho groans into his ear as his hand tightens just shy of too tight and Hongjoong can feel him tense and jerk into the grasping clench of his body.
Hongjoong huffs while Yunho catches his breath with his sweaty forehead resting on the cluster of carnations on Hongjoong’s throat. “If I wake up with cum in my ass, I am staging a riot.”
Yunho laughs.
--------------
Hongjoong wakes up slowly the day of the charity banquet with Yunho’s laughter still echoing in his ears.
He can do this.
--------------
Misun lays out a fine brocade suit the color of midnight with gloves to match for him to change into before they leave for the venue. It’s been a long time since he’s willingly worn a suit this fine, his usual attire for these things a simple blazer over a button down and slacks to match. Hongjoong gets into each piece as if he’s layering on armor, dutifully fastening each frustratingly small button and pressing the seams flat.
The old man at that shop had done an excellent job, Hongjoong notes. It’s a little loose in the waist, but that was mostly due to Youngchul staging a near constant war on the fridge stocks than any real effort to lose weight on Hongjoong’s part.
Youngchul gives him a single nod and accompanies him to the ground floor where the limo is waiting.
For the first time in days, Hongjoong’s hands don’t shake. He stays rock steady. The power of mutual orgasms, he supposes.
A nameless assistant meets him at the door with a harried, “Get to the back before anyone sees you, we need a last minute touch up.”
“Touch up?”
The assistant shakes her head and leads him to the back of the venue through a series of doors away from the main hall starting to fill with guests. It’s a new face in the revolving door of PAs, Hongjoong notes. Maybe the clipboard girl from the station made good on his advice and skedaddled before things get hairy. Maybe she got a promotion for keeping her mouth shut about Misun slapping the absolute shit out of him the other day.
He’s led to the same room as before when they’d propped Yunho up backstage to sign waivers and keep out of sight. Shin Youkyung is nowhere near as endearing as Yunho had been with his wrists and his ankles dangling out of a suit too small for his frame. She’s cute, gorgeous even, wrapped up in a golden strapless dress to show off as much skin as possible. Black henna flora trails over her arms and her throat, down into her cleavage and curling along one thigh to her knee.
Youkyung smiles excitedly at him and waves. Hongjoong offers up some semblance of a smile back and keeps quiet.
Misun and an Indian woman are having a pointed and angry conversation. Misun points at a patch of...something that could be creeping vines on Youkyung’s arm.
“It doesn’t have to be an exact replica, but you missed a whole section of—of whatever flower that is!” Misun grabs at Youkyung’s arm to force her into the henna artist’s personal bubble. “Fix it!”
“You’re hurting me,” Youkyung says with a whine. “I wanna say hi to my fiance!”
“You can when she gets finished with you, darling,” his mother coos, though her jaw is visibly clenched. “Hongjoong, take off your jacket and show this woman what she forgot to include.”
Youkyung makes shy overwhelmed noises when Hongjoong starts unbuttoning that he ignores. The woman in charge of recreating the swirl of flowers tuts when he reveals his arm and the cluster of prunella circling around his elbow.
“I can do this thing in two hours, maybe.” Her hand is warm where she carefully twists at Hongjoong’s skin to get a better idea of what she’s working with. She’s the first person to touch the marks who isn’t Yunho, and while she’s nice and isn’t trying to twist his arm off, it still makes every hair on his head stand on end in unease. She finally releases him just as Hongjoong’s stomach begins to churn hot and he can taste the looming threat of sick in the back of his throat.
Misun stomps her foot. “We need this finished in twenty minutes.”
The woman clicks her tongue again. “Thirty minutes and I can make one sprig bloom.”
Misun bites at her thumb nail, careful not to dig too hard and ruin her polish, before she’s nodding her head and snapping her fingers until a second PA slides into the room. “Make it happen,” she says to the henna artist. “We need to stall for time. Tell the caterers to hand out the canapes early,” she snaps at her assistant while they scurry off to make it happen, and rounds on her heel to address Hongjoong.
“And you ,” she points at him angrily, “Put your fucking shirt back on.”
Thankfully, Hongjoong doesn't have to suffer any more time with either his mother of Youkyung, who pouts like a toddler whose favorite toy has been taken away when he steps out of the room still buttoning his coat.
Youngchul is waiting outside leaning up against the wall with his arms held akimbo to his chest. Hongjoong gives him a nod of acknowledgement before turning on his heel to make his way back to the entrance to greet his mother’s guests.
Youngchul clears his throat. “Kim Hongjoong.”
He stops without turning back. “Yes?”
“You got that USB with you?”
Youngchul holds a palm outward and Hongjoong shrugs, tossing the metal fob up for Youngchul to catch because it’s not as if he’ll need it after tonight. Youngchul gives him a curt nod before shoving the device in his own pocket and trails after Hongjoong into the entrance hall where he stands only three feet behind him at all times while they wait for the call back to the stage.
Misun spins a heart wrenching tale of starcrossed lovers to the auditorium of adoring fans and her network of celebrity guests while he and Youkyung hang back behind the curtain. Youkyung bounces next to him, half out of excitement and half in a bid to help the henna dry down faster to keep it from smudging. She’s having to keep her elbow at an odd angle so that it doesn’t touch the gold beading in her dress. Youkyung tries to make whispered and furtive small talk. What’s it like to go to college? Are classes hard? She heard he was heavily invested in the arts and would he let her listen to his music sometime? Maybe their first dance could be to a song Hongjoong writes exclusively for her.
Hongjoong ignores her.
It’s rude, and possibly needlessly cruel of him, but this girl—this woman, he should say—had essentially begged her father into getting her set up as Hongjoong’s soulmate and his future wife thanks to a series of unfortunate and criminal events.
When he’s waved on stage to give his own speech, Hongjoong plasters on his network television friendly smile and walks out to the podium where he and his mother trade places.
Hongjoong looks out into the sea of B and C level actors, actresses, their hired bodyguards only vaguely hovering in the background for looks, the rank and file of personal assistants nervously snaking in between tables with sweating flutes of only mid-tier champagne, the glowing look of triumph on his mother’s face butting up against the bright-eyed woman’s cheek covered head to toe in blackened henna and he makes a decision.
Twenty-two years and tired of cowardice, Hongjoong smiles at the crowd and leans close to the microphone. His voice crackles over the surround system.
“Good evening.”
--------------
Local networks have decided to stream the event in lieu of their regular programming and several small businesses tune in to watch, including the hole in the wall diner only a short walking distance from the venue.
On screen, Kim Hongjoong leans into the microphone with a grin.
“Good evening,” he says, waiting for the light round of clapping to subside. “I think everyone here knows this already, but my name is Kim Hongjoong and I am the son of Park Misun and Kim Beomseok. I’m sure most of you have either seen or read about their whirlwind love story, yes?”
Laughter and more clapping. Hongjoong remains passively smiling at the camera.
A woman leaning on the restaurant’s register sighs. “What a handsome young man.”
Near the back, nursing his second helping of soju, a man tsks and finishes a deep gulp of alcohol, slamming the empty glass to the tabletop with a harsh clack.
Hongjoong continues, “You know, I used to be one of those people that didn’t believe in soulmates or of falling in love with the person the universe has picked out for me. Tonight, I have the privilege to tell everyone gathered here, and those listening and watching at home, that I am a monumental idiot, because meeting my soulmate was the single best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
He glances off stage to smile harder at someone hidden just beyond the curtain.
The woman at the register sighs louder, though it’s an obvious whoosh of dejection.
Another bottle of soju knocked back, the man in the back with a snapback shoved over his head seethes as celebrity son Kim Hongjoong continues to wax poetic about the life changing moment when he locked eyes on his soulmate.
“I saw them on the street and ran away,” Hongjoong laughs. “I didn’t want to go near them.”
Confused murmurs ripple through the crowd like waves unfurling outward on a still lake. Park Misun had never mentioned Hongjoong seeing and fleeing from his soul connection, rather she’d been on her radio show excitedly telling listeners Hongjoong was only waiting to touch his soulmate live for the world to see like his mother before him.
“This may be selfish of me, but I have never felt more beautiful than when their soul markings covered my skin.” He grins as the confusion in the crowd seems to reach a fever pitch even over the tinny sound coming from the aging speakers around the restaurant interior. Kim Hongjoong takes a deep breath. “I know you’re all here tonight to meet them.”
Cheering. Someone whistles. The man swallows the last dregs of his soju and taps his glass to order another as Kim Hongjoong reaches off stage…
--------------
Hongjoong holds his palm out towards Youkyung with his eyebrows raised, wiggling his fingers until Misun, giving him a glaring look of warning, allows Youkyung to catwalk across the stage with her blackened henna on prominent display. The cameras won’t be able to capture the not quite right quality of her skin nor will the guests clustered around tables just from the cheer amount of stage lights Misun had demanded to make her skin look flawless to the masses.
Youkyung grins like the cat who’d eaten the canary and twists the arm not currently drying down through Hongjoong’s elbow. He allows the excited cheering and round of clapping to finally calm down while Youkyung waves, before gently extricating his arm from her grip.
He leans closer to the mic. “Unfortunately, my soulmate is not here with us tonight.” Quick, before Youkyung can get away, he swipes his hand rough over the flower drying on her elbow so the henna visibly smudges. It’s not much, just a collection of deep dark brown lines, but it’s enough to show the world the wool being pulled over their eyes.
Youkyung shrieks and tries to cover up the incriminating marks, but by now it’s too late. The cameras have already zoomed in to the mark, cameras have already started flashing, and Hongjoong sees some of the lower list celebrities holding up their phones to record the momentous occasion with their screens highlighting small sections of their faces.
“My mother is hosting this gala to defraud you out of your money and your goodwill.” Outrage from behind the curtain echoes out across the room as several PAs hold his mother back from making a spectacle of herself. Youkyung slaps his hand away and stomps off stage, embarrassed and seethingly angry at being called out on the ploy. He shrugs. “To be fair, Park Misun was only going along with this scheme because my father owes the chief of police a favor, and that favor happened to be trying to marry me off to Shin Youkyung, his daughter, who means more to the chief than my freedom.”
The crowd is hushed. Hongjoong wonders where Youngchul is and why hadn't the bodyguard bodyslammed him offstage yet. He decides to shrug that off too.
“My name is Kim Hongjoong,” he tells the crowd. “My soulmate is a man named Jeong Yunho, who you may have seen being shopped around on gossip sites, and I am deeply, irrevocably in love with him. If that makes you uncomfortable, then so be it. I'm only here to speak the truth and finally step away from a family that never loved me.”
He gives the room one last sympathetic look, because he knows how much some of these people paid just to be allowed to breathe the same air as a Park Misun, before he bows low.
“Have a nice evening,” he quietly murmurs into the mic and steps off the edge of the stage directly in front of him. No one stops him and his march to the auditorium doors: no assistants, no minor celebrities, no donors, not even the Park Misun Industries security detail nervously eyeing him at the doors. Being detained by his mother’s hired goons would do worse for her image than anything he’d already laid out at the podium, so he sidesteps the men wearing dark sunglasses and shiny earpieces to greet the paps waiting just outside the venue doors.
Bulbs flash.
Hongjoong’s hands are steady.
He strides to the center of the swarm and holds a palm up. “Before any of you ask questions, let me say this: Not too long ago I stole a fistful of my mother's jewelry to pay for a cab ride across town, because my parents will not allow me to hold a job or maintain steady income and have sabotaged any attempts at gaining employment.”
Several people yell over each other that Hongjoong ignores, intent on getting this story out in the open.
“Please let me finish. My parents are not good people. I've tried to put up with them, I really have, and maybe some part of me loves them because they're family and I'm supposed to, but this is the last straw. My mother forged documents with my signature trying to accuse my real soulmate of kidnapping me that may very well show up in the hands of the Seoul metropolitan police department after tonight.”
Another round of higher pitched questions, more flashing lights. Someone shoves a giant camera in his face to record him live.
Hongjoong breathes in the cold snap of winter bleeding into spring until he can taste the icy humidity on the back of his tongue. It tastes like freedom.
The cracking sound of a gunshot is a surprise. Hongjoong gapes at Seungho sweating and smiling grimly at him from across the street just before his ex-lover is tackled by security guarding the entrance, followed by the high pitched wailing screams of the paparazzi around him. It’s been a long time, but there’s a familiar tugging sensation behind his navel. Hongjoong touches at it in wonder thinking Yunho is somewhere nearby, except...
His hand comes away wet with something thick and crimson.
Oh.
Youngchul, amazingly, is the one to catch him when he falls and puts pressure on the wound to staunch the bleeding.
"Kid," he grunts, "have you got some amazingly shitty luck."
--------------
Stuffed into a dark linen suit, Yunho gently touches the glass separating the general public from the gleaming urns and the gilt framed pictures of loved ones and feels his heart twinge. It hurts still, even though he’d been through this pain before, but seeing the rounded brass holding the remains of someone he knew and loved…
“Hi,” he says hoarse, “It’s been a while since I’ve spoken to you, I think, and I’m sorry it’s taken me this long.” He feels awkward standing here speaking to the dead. He fiddles with his fingers, twisting them around each other. “I just wanted you guys to know that I finally met my soulmate and while I don’t think you’d approve of his family, I think you’ll be happy to know he managed to finish what you guys started.”
Yunho bows deeply at the picture of his family smiling, his parents young and happy, with their son missing several front teeth grinning between them. That Yunho had never known strife. He doesn’t have a scar dented into his cheek and maybe that’s the version of himself that went with his parents into the great beyond, wherever they landed.
“Kim Beomseok is in jail,” he tells them. “They’re still weeding out the network of black market organ harvesters, but there is progress so maybe you can rest easy.”
The urns remain silent, of course, but it feels nice to speak to them now that he knows where his parents are resting after so many years of not knowing.
“I’m still working on myself and going to school, but I hope I’m making you proud a little bit every day.” He gulps down a lump of emotion sitting thick in his throat. “God knows Hongjoong makes me so proud every day he walks around our apartment without his cane, even if it’s for a minute. He’s really strong, mom and dad. You’d love him.”
There’s a soft click and shuffle behind his back. Yunho sees Hongjoong huff while he leans on his medical crutch. His eyes are teary red, but he’s smiling so hard Yunho is helpless but to smile back.
“You done saying hi to your folks?”
Yunho nods, reaching out to hold Hongjoong’s arm to help steady him. Ordinarily Hongjoong fights off the help, determined to be fine all by himself, except today he’s leaning into the touch and allowing Yunho to take his weight. He must be more tired than he’d let on that morning before they left.
“Just about.” Yunho kisses the edge of Hongjoong’s forehead along his hairline. “Finished speaking to Jimin and Jun?”
Hongjoong nods, mute. Unexpectedly, he drops out of Yunho’s grip to bow deeply at the family urns, nearly overbalancing and landing on his face if not for Yunho managing to grab at his hip and his elbow, careful of the still tender area in Hongjoong’s stomach.
“Well that wasn’t cool,” Hongjoong pouts. “I was going to bow and ask them for your hand in marriage, now I just look like an asshole.”
“You look like a man who’s recovering from a gunshot you nerd.” Yunho laughs at him, even though it’s not funny and Yunho has stayed awake for an innumerable amount of sleepless nights worrying Hongjoong is going to be shot again, or is going to succumb to infection, or someone is going to break into their new apartment situated closer to Wooyoung’s studio and steal Hongjoong away like a thief in the night. “And you can ask me for my hand in marriage instead, you know. I’ll say yes.”
Hongjoong tuts. His face is ashen and pale, pinched inward on a wince of pain, but he’s good natured enough to bop at Yunho’s fingers gently drumming on his arm from nerves. “Stop trying to rush me.”
They slowly shuffle from the mausoleum into the warm and muggy June sunlight. Hongjoong raises his face to the sun and grins.
“Isn’t it bad luck to get engaged on the day of someone else’s wedding anyway?”
Yunho shrugs. “I think our whole lives have been one long string of bad luck.”
Hongjoong leans against his side, breathing heavy under the strain, and Yunho worries they’ve pushed this too far. Maybe they shouldn’t have made a pit stop to speak to the dead on the way to Seonghwa and Yeosang's wedding.
“I want cake,” Hongjoong grumbles when they finally make it back to the car. “If Seonghwa made those ridiculous dick shaped cookies instead of getting a real wedding cake, I’m disowning him.”
“I bet,” Yunho tells him bland. Hongjoong winces again when he clicks the seatbelt into place, panting a little from the pressure. “You sure you’re up for this?”
“I gotta get out and about at some point.” Hongjoong rolls his head along the headrest to smile at him, reaching for Yunho’s hand on the steering wheel. “How do you feel about going on vacation after all this? Somewhere nice with a beach.”
“Whatever you want to do,” Yunho agrees.
They pass a few billboards with Park Misun’s face graffiti’d over with dark mustaches and hateful messages. After the banquet, her name had essentially been blacklisted. The radio station went under almost overnight and several entertainment shows started interviewing assistants and low level employees to get an inside look into the cruelty of a once beloved actress. Someone had apparently filmed some of the abuse she’d taken out on Hongjoong, who took it without saying a word, always standing stock still while she clawed at his face or his arms or his clothing, breaking his phone or his tablets and walking away when she’d finally calmed down.
Similarly, Kim Beomseok was arrested almost the same night while attempting to flee the country to escape bribery and money laundering charges, petty crimes in comparison to the criminal network spanning across Korea and China. Go Youngchul, the bodyguard hired by Hongjoong’s parents, had apparently been an undercover agent of a larger government sponsored corruption investigation and used the files saved on Hongjoong’s USB to finally gain a warrant for Kim Beomseok and Shin Sangchul’s arrests.
Kim Hongjoong wasn’t awake to see any of it happen, though, too busy fighting for his life in a hospital with a gunshot wound to his stomach. Yunho remembers seeing it happen live on stream and experiencing the burning sensation of a phantom bullet lodged in his own guts as Seungho was shoved into the back of a police cruiser. San rushed him to the hospital where Hongjoong was undergoing surgery, and they’d huddled together on hard plastic seats waiting. And waiting. Watching some of the ferns on Yunho’s knuckles turn crimson red at the edges and feeling helpless.
But Hongjoong is here now, free of the burden of his family and so vibrantly alive that Yunho feels overwhelmed sometimes by it, even when Hongjoong is angry and frustrated at being unable to move as easily as he did before and taking that frustration out on their dinnerware.
“I’m sorry,” Hongjoong had whimpered one day when his hands had gone numb from the side effects of one of his medications and he’d dropped a plate. ”Sorry, sorry, I’m such a mess.”
Yunho had only swept up the pieces, deposited Hongjoong in the middle of their bed, and kissed him and kissed him until Hongjoong gave in and stopped crying. It was just a plate. They could afford more now that Hongjoong had sold off that building that had been put under his name.
Back in the present, Hongjoong plays around with the radio in search of a station he actually likes. “There’s nothing good playing right now,” he says angrily. “Daytime radio is a travesty.”
“So play your own music,” Yunho offers. “You’ve got plenty saved on your phone. Remember? You had me listen to your latest twenty tracks last night while I was trying to study.”
“I can't help that I was inspired,” Hongjoong cackles, and pulls up the music saved to his new phone with a grin. “Hey, you want to hear the song I wrote about your nose?”
Yunho taps his fingers on the wheel as they slowly merge into highway traffic. “If I must.”
He takes Hongjoong’s hand into his own across the console and thumbs over the thick black marks still faintly edged in red, still healing, and smiles at Hongjoong trying to dance in his seat without aggravating the wound in his side.
Finally being with his soulmate is everything he's ever dreamed of...
Hongjoong, giggling, shakes away his hand to reach up to push at the tip of Yunho's nose.
...And more.