Chapter Text
holding the infinite
i. eat the world raw
Jung Wooyoung joined their team and, for San, it changed everything.
♖♖♖♖
It was a strange day: unseasonably warm in October, the rain battered the windows of their secluded house and fogged them with humidity. It cast a dreary sort of grayness through the halls, even with the soft white lights on. Everyone was on edge for reasons they couldn’t describe. Yeosang and Hongjoong were out; they had some very important business to attend to, and they were so distracted by fixing each other’s suits on the way out the door that they forgot to tell anyone what that business actually was.
“It’s probably a job,” Jongho said, eyebrows raised. He popped a handful of grapes in his mouth and disappeared to somewhere in the house.
He was probably right but it didn’t make San any less restless that they hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. For a while he wandered about, looking for the others but eventually drifting off again when they, too, seemed put off and distracted by the strangeness of their leader’s departure. Seonghwa, anxiously cleaning a glass table for the third time, shooed him away. Mingi had elected to take a mid afternoon nap. Yunho stayed shut up downstairs in his bedroom-slash-office; the muted sound of video games was all that was audible in the gloom.
It wasn’t so much that they were off probably getting information on a potential job without them—Hongjoong, their leader, and Seonghwa, Hongjoong’s other half, did that all the time. They frequently scouted jobs or were approached by others who knew they were the best at what they do and didn’t sit everyone down until they had all the information so they could make a decision on what to do as a group. It wasn’t that. It was the urgency in which they had left; the nervous fluttering of Hongjoong’s hands at his bow tie that Yeosang absentmindedly reached out to fix as he opened the door and ushered them through it. Their long, hand-sewn overcoats—so dark of a black wool that they seemed to absorb the light—swished softly around their legs as they hurried out and disappeared with the car. They looked expensive in their nice suits and (stolen) coats. If it was a job they were scouting, San thought it had to be a big one. Important.
Still.
Something felt strange. There was a charge to the air, like the moments just before a terrifying clap of thunder shook the walls. He wished that someone would pay attention to him enough to allow him to express the feeling but even as he thought that, he realized he didn’t quite have the words to do it. In his anxiousness, San merely wandered about the house like a ghost and let the wheel of his thoughts run on an infinite loop. He knew the feeling would not pass until Hongjoong and Yeosang came back with whatever news or information they had gathered.
Eventually he found himself in the small library upstairs, sitting in the sill of the window, long legs stretched out on the bench. From where he sat he could see the front walkway of their house, shaded by the leafy tops of the trees, and watched for Hongjoong and Yeosang’s return until the sun went down. Uneasiness lingered around him like a stubborn shadow.
It felt, oddly, like everything was about to change.
♖♖♖♖
Hongjoong and Yeosang were gone well into the night. San had fallen asleep at some point—suddenly he was being shaken awake by Seonghwa, who looked at him with a parental softness in his eyes. But even as he blinked into the low light of the library, San did not miss the nervous tightening of his mouth.
“Wake up, Sanie. They’re back.”
He was on his feet immediately and trailing behind Seonghwa to the living room where everyone was already gathered. He zeroed in on Hongjoong and Yeosang: they looked fine, no bruises or cuts or visible injuries. Their coats were off and folded neatly over the backs of their chairs. In fact, they looked…thrilled. Their faces were flushed with what San thought might be excitement. The energy of the air—so anxious when they left without a word—had transformed into something electric.
That uneasiness—the sense that something was about to change, some monumental transformation of the life they all knew—returned. San twisted his wrist uncomfortably in the circle of his other hand.
“Sit down, San,” Hongjoong said. He did; San settled on the arm of the couch next to Yunho, who unconsciously leaned into him. The warmth of the connection grounded him a little and he found he could finally take a deep breath.
“You’re probably all wondering about where we went today,” Hongjoong finally said, when it looked like everyone was settled and no one was going to ask. “First, I’m sorry for not telling you. It was a bit last minute and we didn’t have much time to debrief or even prepare for it. Do you all forgive me?”
He needn’t have asked; everyone nodded in unison. Even still, their forgiveness seemed to bleed a little of the tension out of Hongjoong’s shoulders.
“Secondly, we went to scout a job.” He seemed to pause for dramatic effect; his grin widened to show his teeth and his dark eyes were huge behind the oversized square frames of his glasses. “It’s a big one.”
“What is it?” Seonghwa asked, and if he was offended by the lack of his involvement on this one, he didn’t show it. San liked to think that this was something between them alone: scenarios proposed and pre-planned in the hushed whispers that San often heard when he passed their bedroom at night.
“Imagine the biggest job we’ve ever had,” Yeosang said, and he was also grinning. “Multiply it. By ten.”
“What?” Jongho sounded alarmed. “We’ve done some big jobs.”
“Nothing like this. Nothing even close to this.” Hongjoong picked up the community iPad that was sitting on the glass of the coffee table. They all watched in a quiet anticipation as he typed furiously on the screen and seemed to scroll through several photos before finding one; he grinned and flipped it around to show them the first part of an article:
LOST PIRATE TREASURE UNCOVERED OFF THE COAST OF DOKDO, EAST SEA
BY PARK JINYOUNG
As of last week, historians at Seoul National University in conjunction with several historians from Europe have definitively identified treasure from known pirates in the wreckage of a ship discovered near the coast of Dokdo in the East Sea. Divers in the area claimed to have seen part of the wreckage but were unsure if they should approach; after consulting with the Coast Guard stationed on the island they, with permission from the government, were joined by three other professional divers to investigate. While investigating the wreckage one diver, unnamed here for privacy reasons, discovered an old chest that had been partially preserved in an air pocket inside the depths of the ship. With help from professional excavation crews, historians and jewelers identified over ₩100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion won) in rare diamonds, black opals, and other gemstones. An auction is slated to be held
The rest of the article was cut off, but it was enough that San got the picture: this “big job” that Hongjoong and Yeosang seemed so excited about…was stealing pirate treasure?
“Hold on,” Yunho said, “pirate treasure? Like for real pirate treasure?”
“It’s a little on the nose,” Jongho added, but didn’t elaborate.
“Yes, pirate treasure,” Hongjoong said, and turned the iPad back around to face him. “I know how it sounds—”
“Like The Goonies,” Mingi and Yunho said at the same time. They high-fived across Jongho.
“Laugh it up, but just think about it.” Yeosang’s eyes were nearly fever bright; the flush on his face brought out his birthmark in stark brilliance. “A hundred billion won? We’d never have to work a day in our lives ever again.”
Mingi frowned. “But I like working.”
“You like blowing stuff up,” Jongho corrected. Mingi grinned and didn’t argue.
Seonghwa waved both of them off. “Where did you even hear about this? I mean, besides the article, how’d you even hear about it? We don’t exactly read the paper.”
This was directed at Hongjoong, but San was a little surprised to see him turn to Yeosang expectantly.
“Actually, I heard about it this morning. Sort of. I was on the phone with my friend—”
San couldn’t help it. “Who?”
“Friend from high school. You’ve never met him.” He gestured vaguely and continued: “We were on the phone this morning because we were trying to make plans to go to dinner soon, and he told me that he was working some fancy-schmancy event that a bunch of rich people were going to, and that there was some buzz going around about money and jewels or something but that he didn’t really know what the deal was. He promised to get us in if we were interested in snooping, so I told Hongjoong and by the time we decided to check it out, we had to get ready and go.”
“Which,” Hongjoong cut in apologetically, “is why we didn’t tell you. Also, if it ended up being a bust, we didn’t want to excite you guys into thinking a job was coming. I’m sorry.”
It was unnecessary for him to apologize but just so like him that San smiled a little. Then Yeosang’s words sank in and he looked up.
“Wait—your friend told you about it? Does your friend know you’re a criminal?”
Yeosang clutched at his chest and feigned falling back into the overstuffed back of his chair. “Sanie, you wound me. Criminal is such an ugly word.”
“Sorry, does your friend know you’re a thief?”
“Is ‘thief’ really any better?” Jongho asked. He was promptly ignored.
“I prefer the term ‘industry professional’.”
“The industry being crime.”
Yunho chimed in, “what about career criminal? That’s a thing.”
“Pirate sounds way cooler, though,” Yeosang said.
“Oh, my god, are we going to start calling ourselves pirates?” Mingi asked, sitting up straight with wide eyes. “That would be so badass.”
“If any of you call me a pirate with any semblance of seriousness—”
They could have gone on like this all night; they had been so close for so long that it would eventually snowball into an entirely different conversation altogether. Seonghwa put a stop to it by clearing his throat and directing their attention back to Hongjoong who was patiently waiting for them to finish.
“So? What do you guys think?”
San honestly didn’t know what to think. It felt like there was way too much information that they didn’t have for them to really make a decision: it was like looking at a puzzle where some of the most important pieces are missing. The outline is there but the picture just…isn’t.
Seonghwa must have been feeling the same because he continued to pick at the frayed hole in the knee of his jeans and asked, “what do you think, Joong? You went to the event. What’s your honest opinion?”
He went quiet for a moment, tucking the pad of a painted finger into the corner of his lips while he thought about it. That same strange uneasy feeling crept over San again: it came and went like the tide, and he hated the uncertainty of it. They had pulled off jobs with terrible odds before—they all had their own scars and old wounds to prove it—but it was the idea of the thing. The huge amount of money, the seemingly incalculable risk. It wasn’t that it felt wrong somehow; they had botched jobs and, in their respective youths, done enough of their own time in juvenile detention centers to know what real danger felt like. It wasn’t anything like that—it was simply the enormity of it.
Hongjoong finally sighed and sat up straight. “I’ll be honest. I’m a little worried. Even after getting our faces out there,” he gestured between himself and Yeosang for this, “and getting information on the value of the treasure and what they plan on doing with them…it feels a little scary. It’s very…”
“Big,” San supplied; there was maybe a more descriptive word, but it seemed to work the best because Hongjoong snapped his fingers.
“Yes. It’s big. Big, guys. Like, potentially go to jail for a very long time if we get caught sort of big. Life ruining-ly big, if it goes wrong. There’s so many things we still don’t know. There’s a lot of pieces missing. But…”
The room was quiet as he shared a look with Seonghwa. It was unlikely that he would find any resistance there, as they trusted each other and operated almost as a single unit. San watched Seonghwa nod his head once in a tiny motion to confirm that, yes, he was on Hongjoong’s side on this one.
“If it works, it could be life changing. We’re already good but we could be the best. We’d be infamous. More than that, we’d still have each other. Do you understand what I mean?”
They did. It was rare for them to not. But even still, San could read the trepidation on their faces; he could see it in the furrowing of their brows and the nervous tapping of their fingers on their legs even as they agreed to it. San himself felt that way—like they were doing this with their eyes closed.
“We have time to gather more intel,” Hongjoong said. “From what we heard, the jewels aren’t going to auction for a while, and there are probably going to be events and dinners and all that bourgeoisie kind of stuff before anyone even looks at them. That gives us time to get more information, scope out locations, all our usual stuff. I’d never ask you guys to do something this huge completely blind. But I wanted to see what we all thought about even trying.”
Nobody argued with this—it was likely that they were too nervous to. No one wanted to start a fight with Hongjoong about how off-the-wall insane it sounded to steal billions of won worth of pirate treasure based on a tip they got from Yeosang’s high school friend (who apparently everyone knew at the very least existed, except for San). And it likely wasn’t even because they didn’t want to do it—even looking around a little, the trepidation, while still there, had made room for the promise of excitement that the challenge brought. Underneath the glitz and the glamor of becoming their own version of modern day pirates, though, there was the very real danger that the invisible red thread that bound them all together would snap. There was, beneath the hesitant sort of excitement, still the underlying fear that the universe would untether them from each other irreversibly.
“We won’t do it unless we’re all in,” Hongjoong said finally, and softly. Like San, he could probably read their feelings on their faces and knew what they were thinking. He took his time and looked at each of them straight on. “If even one says no, it’s off. We won’t do it.”
Silence again. San watched Seonghwa and Hongjoong meet eyes and hold them, having a private conversation with just the minute movements of their faces. He hated to admit it but it sparked the flint of jealousy in the pit of his stomach just a little; he craved that type of connection with someone else. He irritably pushed the thought away and tried to focus.
After a moment, Hongjoong looked away and cleared his throat. “We don’t have to decide tonight. We can sleep on it.”
Surprisingly, Mingi shook his head. “I’m in.”
Yunho, next: “Me too.”
“Me too.” Yeosang.
“Same.” Seonghwa.
A tad reluctantly: “I’m in too.” Jongho.
All eyes swiveled to San. He was the last vote: the make or break of the whole deal. He didn’t say yes right away—not because he was unsure. If the rest of them agreed, then he also agreed, because collectively they were their best as a single unit and it wasn’t often that they disagreed upon something as serious as a job. San only hesitated because that feeling rushed back in and threatened to drown him: the suffocating sense of impending change. It was here. Right now.
There was never any other answer: “I’m in.”
Hongjoong’s face lit up in the most glorious smile. He pushed the translucent square frames of his glasses up into the dark of his black hair and sank comfortably backward into the overstuffed armchair in visible relief.
“I’m really glad. I know we can pull this off just like any other job, we’re just going to have to get even smarter about it. That’s another thing…” Hongjoong trailed off and, to San’s surprise, looked over at him with a sort of apologetic wince already queued up in the line of his shoulders.
“Why are you looking at me?” San asked. “What did I do?”
“It’s not what you did,” Yeosang cut in. “It’s what he’s about to say.”
The room felt much quieter than it did even five minutes ago. Seonghwa blinked neutrally at him; San immediately knew that he also knew what was coming. Hongjoong must have pulled him aside when they got home and before Seonghwa came to wake him. He wanted to be annoyed by this but found he was a little too anxious to actually summon the feeling.
“What? What’s wrong?“
“Nothing’s wrong,” Hongjoong sighed. He sat up straight again and let his clasped hands dangle between his knees. “But, because we are going to do this job, I recruited another member.”
Neither Yunho nor Mingi could bury their shocked gasps. Clearly they didn’t know, either, and probably neither did Jongho but he was good at keeping his face neutral. San, while also surprised—their teamwork was near perfect between the 7 of them—was more confused as to why this seemed to be directed at him.
“Okay. I mean, everyone here was new at one point. Why do you keep looking at me?”
“He’s a sharpshooter. I’m bringing in a second one.”
“What?” San was floored. “We—we already have a sharpshooter! It’s me!"
“But we’re going to need a second one,” Hongjoong said firmly. “You can’t watch your own back while looking down the scope of a gun barrel, Sanie.”
“I’ve been just fine as the only sharpshooter for years!" He protested.
Hongjoong rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand; San could tell that his patience was quickly unraveling. “San, this isn’t an ordinary job. I need someone to be able to watch your back and have someone to be able to watch his back. I need to be able to guarantee your safety in one way or another, and having someone with you is the best way to do that. Two’s always going to be better than one. If we don’t like the vibe then we'll cut him out. But he’s an excellent marksman.”
“So am I!”
“I didn’t say you weren’t. But this is good, Sanie. You’ll have someone with you all the time now.”
As someone normally introverted this sounded like a nightmare to him—he was, finally, completely comfortable with just the seven of them—but he didn’t say that. Instead, he asked, “are you replacing me?”
Hongjoong at least seemed to have the good sense to look mortified by the implication. “No! God, no. You’re a sharpshooter, not the sharpshooter.”
“I was the sharpshooter.” San crossed his arms. Seonghwa had told him many times in that parental way of his that sulking so much as an adult man was slightly unbecoming of him, but he truly couldn’t help it. Hongjoong could say all he wanted that he still trusted San as their sole gunman, but it sure didn’t feel that way when he was so insistent about bringing in another one.
“He’s cute,” Hongjoong finally said, after a long stretch of silence where Yunho, Jongho, and Mingi decided to leave the room to go to bed. Only the four of them remained: San looked between the three of them and knew he was going to lose. Hongjoong grinned at him. “Does that help?”
It didn’t. Whoever it was, he probably wasn’t cute, and Hongjoong was just messing with him to ease the tension. Not that San cared whether or not he was actually cute, of course.
He definitely didn’t.
San stood up. Despite the earlier sense of excitement that their group agreement to hunt for pirate treasure elicited, the late hour and the lack of the other three in the room brought the energy down considerably. There was also just San’s bad mood in general, but he was willing to blame it instead on the way Seonghwa sleepily blinked his eyes at Hongjoong in a silent request. If we’re done here, let’s go to bed.
“Whatever,” San mumbled. The back of his neck burned when Hongjoong just laughed.
He watched, not without envy, as Seonghwa reached out and pulled Hongjoong along behind him with their fingers entwined. It made him jealous and he hated it: not because he didn’t want them to be happy together, but for the simple fact that he saw that happiness that they shared, a partnership so ingrained that it transcended language, and wanted it for himself. He loved the six of them like family but San found himself missing the intimate connection to another person made difficult to chase by their careers.
“You know,” Yeosang said, startling San out of his reverie, “he is cute.”
San turned his head to see Yeosang still reclining comfortably in his chair. “What?”
“That’s what you were thinking, right? That he isn’t actually cute. You think Joong made it up to placate you. Right?”
He hated to be read so easily, but it was Yeosang so it didn’t matter. “Maybe.”
“It’s true though.” San watched Yeosang stand up, unfurling gracefully to his full height and slender in his sharp suit. He slung the long coat over his arm and grinned at San, who again felt that uneasiness lingering around his elbows. “He is cute. Very cute, if I do say so myself. If I didn’t know him as well as I do I would probably want him.”
The words hit San slowly. If I didn’t know him as well as I do…
I was on the phone with my friend…
He promised to get us in…
“Wait,” San said. “Is the new recruit your friend?!"
Yeosang’s sharp grin grew impossibly sharper somehow—he looked dangerous like this, all handsome angles and dark hair pushed behind his ears. “Bingo.”
“The friend everyone seemed to know about except me.“
“Ahh, that’s not true.” Yeosang flapped a hand dismissively at him. “I’ve definitely mentioned him before, just probably never said where I knew him from or what exact friend he was. I don’t even think Joong knew his name before tonight.”
That strange, lingering sense of impending doom again. Maybe I’m just overtired and it’s messing with my emotions.
San tried not to ask and failed. “What’s his name?”
“Wooyoung. Jung Wooyoung.”
“Wooyoung,” San said. “Wooyoung. Jung Wooyoung. Jung Wooyoung.” Almost like he was tasting it; trying to figure out how it felt on his tongue. Then: “Are you really going to let your high school friend get sucked into a life of crime?”
Yeosang snorted. “Who said he isn’t already?”
“You said he was catering the event or something! Caterers generally don’t fall under the umbrella of ‘professional criminal’.”
“Trust me, Sanie, there’s plenty of crooked cooks out there.” Yeosang passed by him to head to his own room with a loving pat on the shoulder but didn’t elaborate any further. “Go get some sleep. We’re bringing him home tomorrow and you can ask him whatever you want.”
Yeosang disappeared down one of the hallways and, just like that morning, San was alone again. He stood in the living room in a state of what could only be described as a physical ? above his head. Somewhere in the house their antique grandfather clock chimed for two am; San broke his concentration and blinked back into the present before drifting to his own room on the second floor.
He laid sleeplessly on top of his covers and stared at the ceiling. Jung Wooyoung. Jung Wooyoung, second shooter. Job stealer. Apparently cute, apparently not new to crime. And I’m the one who’s getting stuck with him.
San, annoyed and tired, threw his arm across his eyes, prayed for sleep to come and that, whoever Jung Wooyoung was, he went back to where he came from when this was over.
♖♖♖♖
That next morning almost felt like a repeat of the day before: San watched from where he was glued to the couch as Hongjoong, Yeosang, and Seonghwa got ready to rush out the door. Only this time, they all knew where they were going and who they were coming back with. The whole thing felt surreal. In a few hours there was going to be a stranger in their house—one that they had declared, albeit implicitly, was going to be San’s responsibility. He found that he was both annoyed and anxious as they pulled on their coats at the door.
“We’re only going to be gone for a few hours,” Seonghwa said; this seemed to mostly be directed at San, and it brushed uncomfortably up against his annoyance. He wanted to ask why are you singling me out like this? But knew if he did, someone else in the room (probably Jongho, because it was somehow always Jongho) would shoot back with because you’re the one with enough keyed up energy to power the neighborhood, and then he’d just be embarrassed, so he decided to keep his mouth shut.
“We’re going to pick him up and settle some affairs at his apartment before we stop by the office for some documents,” Hongjoong said, and this at least seemed to be aimed at the room in general.
“Is he going to be staying here?” San asked, and he didn’t mean to ask it in a way, but based on the look that Yunho and Mingi shot at each other from the armchairs at his left, he asked it in a way.
“What else were we gonna do? Pick him up every day like he’s in kindergarten?” Jongho accompanied this with a short laugh. He just managed to duck out of the way of the pillow San threw at his head.
“I was just asking, jackass.”
Seonghwa looked like he was three seconds from rolling his eyes. “Yes, children, he’s staying with us. He’s staying in the guest room until the job is over, and then we’ll decide what to do from there.”
The thought that this Jung Wooyoung person would, firstly, be staying in the empty room next to San’s and, secondly, potentially become a permanent fixture in the house—and by extension, their lives—made San’s anxiety spike in a way that he definitely did not like. Seonghwa stared directly at him like he was daring San to argue with him but San definitely didn’t have anything to refute him with that didn’t sound like he was being a petulant child. He dutifully kept his mouth shut until Seonghwa looked away.
“Seonghwa already cleaned the guest room for him, so it would be great if you guys could stay out of there from now on to give him a sense of privacy. We moved the other computer that was in there to the office.” Hongjoong nervously adjusted his tie; San was kind of glad to see that he wasn’t the only one who seemed thrown off by the impending introduction of a new person into their business.
Yeosang looked up from his phone. To Hongjoong and Seonghwa he said, “okay, he’s ready for us.” To the rest of the room (and San was annoyed again that Yeosang was looking at him for some reason) he said:
“You guys don’t have to worry. Wooyoung has been my friend for a long time. If I didn’t trust him, I wouldn’t have suggested him. I think you guys are going to like him, actually.”
That part was definitely aimed at San. He recalled their conversation from the night before and visibly rolled his eyes. Yeosang just laughed and put his phone in his pocket but didn’t try to push it any further. Mingi and Yunho seemed to be engrossed in whispering to each other; about what was anyone’s guess. It was likely they hadn’t been paying attention for the last few minutes anyway. They became fast friends when Mingi was introduced and San was sure that nobody was worried about them welcoming Wooyoung into the fold. Jongho either: Jongho was stoic and agreeable, if a little serious at times, and he was a master at keeping negative emotion off his face for the most part. If he didn’t like Wooyoung, no one was going to know.
San, it seemed, was the only one everyone was worried about. What, just because he was going to have to get used to another new person? A new person who does the kind of thing that San already does? How annoying.
Without acknowledging any of their (not so) subtle hints at him, San quickly flicked his hand at them in a go away gesture. “Bye bye, then.”
The three of them said their goodbyes and left without any further fanfare. The house was quiet again, much as it had been the day before, but the energy around the other three was considerably different. For one thing, Jongho was absorbed in watching something on his phone and wasn’t paying attention to any of them. Mingi and Yunho both agreed to go set off fireworks in the backyard; they asked San if he wanted to come but San just shook his head and sent them on their way. Nobody seemed anxious like they had yesterday.
Except San, of course.
Eventually he decided to get up, and he wandered around the house for a little bit again. He went into his room and watched Mingi and Yunho for a bit from the window: he laughed quietly to himself when Yunho got too close to a bottle rocket that Mingi had stuck in the grass, hitting the ground on his ass with an audible yelp when it popped and whistled into the air in front of his face. Even if there was going to be a new person in their house, at least the two of them and their antics were a constant that San could fall back on.
Even though Hongjoong had requested for them all to stay out of the now-cleared out guest room, San couldn’t help but open the door to poke his head in. It looked mostly the same: there was a bed in there now, where there had only been a desk with a fancy computer that Yunho had bought for a few years. Pale sunlight streamed in through the white curtains and fell into strips along the patterned bedspread. The desk was gone, too, replaced with a chic looking dresser that was suspiciously similar to the one that had been in Seonghwa’s room. If he had to guess, Seonghwa spent so much time in Hongjoong’s room that he probably hadn’t been keeping his clothes in there for quite some time.
San sighed. He was paradoxically both surprised and not to hear that it sounded a little bitter.
“Get a grip, Choi,” he mumbled to himself, and shut the door on the silent new bedroom.
♖♖♖♖
In the silence that had descended over the few hours since the three of them had left, there was a sudden shout from the living room:
“Hey! They’re back!”
San shot up. He’d been so absorbed in looking at pictures of a cat on its instagram account that he hadn’t been paying attention to the time at all. He turned to look at the clock on his bedside table and was surprised to see that almost five hours had already passed.
Jongho yelled up the stairs at him again: “Hyung! Come down here, they’re back!”
That uneasy feeling he’d had nearly all of the previous day came rushing back into him so abruptly that he stumbled where he’d been shrugging into a cardigan on his way out of his bedroom door. His heart was suddenly beating way too fast for comfort: why am I so nervous all of a sudden?
Near the railing, San shouted back down to him: “Are Mingi and Yunho still outside?”
“No,” Mingi called back; San heard the sliding glass door close a second later. “We heard the car pulling up in the driveway. Are they inside yet?”
“No,” Jongho said. Now that San was at the top of the stairs he could see where their youngest had pushed aside the heavy velvet drapes pulled across the front window by the door. “They haven’t gotten out of the car yet but they parked.”
Yunho looked like he was about to start climbing the walls. His dark hair was a mess. Mingi’s ashy blonde hair was equally messy, sticking up this way and that and streaked with the black dust of gunpowder. They had matching smudges on the tips of their noses.
“Hey, go scrub the gunpowder off your face,” Jongho said, noticing at the same time as San did. He stepped away from the window to usher the two of them into the adjacent kitchen and busied himself with getting a glass of water ready while Mingi and Yunho cleaned up.
The whole thing felt weird. San stayed where he was on the landing, adjusting his cardigan, trying to remember the other times they introduced new members to their team and if it ever felt so…uncomfortable. San wasn’t sure if it really was weird—it had been several years since the last member joined them, with rarely ever a longer period than six months between the rest of them—or if maybe he was just overreacting. That was always possible; all of them had their own specialties, which is what made their team so successful: Hongjoong was their leader; Seonghwa was his second in command and knife-wielder; Yeosang was the scout, the distraction, and the diffuser, getting them in and out of places with his handsome face and quick wit; Mingi was their demolitions guy and an ace with a pair of pliers; Yunho was the hacker; Jongho was their strongman. San was the lone sniper who often found himself on cold rooftops with their target in the crosshairs of the rifle he kept locked up in their office. They had a system and it worked. It felt strange to be adding someone who did something that was already being done.
Seriously. Get a grip, Choi. Jesus.
He had thought that the apprehensive feeling he’d had yesterday had manifested when everyone was waiting for him to agree to the job. That sense that everything was about to change—he thought that the job itself was the thing that was changing them, was going to change everything. So why did he still feel like he was standing on the lip of a canyon and looking down into the dark?
“Hey,” San said, one foot on the top step and about to come down. “What if—”
He never got to finish. The front door swung open to reveal a windswept Hongjoong pushing his clear glasses frames up the slope of his nose. Even from the top of the stairs San could see the flush on his cheeks, pinked from the cold wind that followed them in as he held open the door and waved the rest of them inside.
“Hi guys,” Hongjoong greeted them without looking. Seonghwa came next, face also pinked from the cold and blowing into his hands. He immediately turned to walk backward as Yeosang jumped the lip of the doorstep into the warmth of the house. San suddenly realized just how warm it was inside—was he sweating a little? He touched his temple but it came away dry.
San watched as Hongjoong leaned out a little and waved. “Come in, Wooyoung! Everyone’s waiting for you!”
“Oh!” A voice called, and San watched from where he stopped halfway down the stairs as Jung Wooyoung walked through their front door for the first time.
Hongjoong closed the door behind him but San didn’t notice. He was stuck on the person standing a little awkwardly near the coffee table of their living room: he was so much…smaller than San had pictured. Not that he had spent much of his sleepless night trying to picture what Jung Wooyoung might look like, of course. But he didn’t look at all like San had thought he might.
For one, he was so much more petite than San had expected: his arms were covered by the sleeves of his black turtleneck, but it was a little hard to imagine that he was lifting heavy rifles and steady against the kickback after pulling the trigger. His eyes were big, dark and bright with the soft lights of their house reflected in them as he looked around in unabashed awe. His hair—a deep, inky black on the top and bleached blonde underneath—was cut nicely and a little windswept like Hongjoong’s before he unconsciously shook it back into place. San couldn’t help but notice the plump shape of his lips as they split in a huge grin.
“Wow,” he said, blinking rapidly, finding Hongjoong and letting his smile grow impossibly wider. “Your house is so nice!”
Hongjoong laughed. Yeosang laughed and shoved Wooyoung a little from behind, which made him laugh, too. It sounded like someone squeezing a small dog. Or maybe a seagull. San’s heart did something weird; a feeling kind of like dread sank over him as if someone had dropped him into a giant bucket of ice water.
“Sorry. Hi, everyone. My name’s Jung Wooyoung.” He gave a tiny wave to the direction of Mingi, Yunho, and Jongho who were still standing in the kitchen. San wasn’t sure if Wooyoung was purposefully not looking at him or if San was standing so still that he just didn’t notice.
Still smiling, Hongjoong lightly touched Wooyoung’s shoulder to get his attention. He pointed in the direction of the kitchen where Mingi, Yunho, and Jongho were standing around the island. He pointed to each of them. “That’s Mingi, that’s Yunho, and that’s Jongho, our youngest.”
“Aw, c’mon, hyung,” Jongho whined, but didn’t argue. “Hi, Wooyoung-ssi.”
Yunho didn’t say hi, but instead nearly started bouncing on his feet and said, “I heard you’re good with guns.”
Wooyoung grinned at him. San felt like he was watching this interaction from the distant end of a long tunnel.
“The best.”
San watched as Wooyoung squinted one eye and took out a hand from where it had been hidden under the jacket folded over his arms: he made a gun with two fingers, pointed it at Yunho, and made a pew sound. He blew pretend smoke from the barrel. In an unsurprising display of theatrics, Yunho clutched his chest like he’d really been shot and pretended to fall to the ground. Wooyoung’s laugh—and Yeosang’s, and Seonghwa’s—seemed to echo. San felt like his grip on reality was slipping.
San almost thought he was going to get away with just standing there until introductions were over, but then Hongjoong was meeting his eyes and pointing up at him where he was frozen on the stairs.
“And that’s San, our marksman. He’s the one we were telling you about.”
They were telling him about me…?
Time did something weird, then. It seemed to stutter: everyone else froze, like time had stopped them, but he watched Wooyoung blink in slow motion and tilt his head up in San’s direction. His eyes opened at half speed and then they were looking at each other, Wooyoung in the living room and San halfway down the stairs, heart beating so loud he could count each thump in his ears. That apprehensive feeling, the feeling that the stability of everything that they knew was about to come shaking apart, expanded in his chest like the impossible infinite inflation of a balloon. Wooyoung smiled at him in slow motion and San felt like he couldn’t breathe.
Seonghwa, Hongjoong, and Yeosang all exchanged a look between the three of them that San didn’t catch because he was still staring at Wooyoung, the harbinger of some disaster that San couldn’t name but could feel holding him in place with a freezing, invisible hand on the back of his neck.
From somewhere in the distance, Seonghwa said, “Sanie, are you going to say hi or just stand there?”
San tried to take a deep breath; couldn’t. All he managed was a nod. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Wooyoung said, seemingly unbothered by San’s underwhelming reaction. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
San came back to life with what felt like an ice water shock to the face. “Huh?”
Had…Yeosang been telling Wooyoung about them for all these years? Had Yeosang been telling Wooyoung about him? For how long? And how much?
“Yeosangie—” he started, but didn’t finish.
“Wooyoung!” Yunho almost shouted. San watched Wooyoung startle and look over with huge eyes.
Hongjoong, probably sensing what was about to happen, made a pained face and waved his hands in Yunho’s direction. “This can wait—”
But it couldn’t, because Yunho completely ignored Hongjoong and kept going:
“Want to see Jongho rip an apple in half with his bare hands?”
Seonghwa and Yeosang, to Hongjoong’s (barely held together) annoyance, burst out laughing. He tried to be serious for another ten seconds before he was laughing, too, and shrugged his shoulders in a okay, whatever you guys want to do gesture and held his arm out.
“I was going to introduce you to what everyone else does and then show you to your room, but if you’d rather watch Jongho rip an apple in half…”
Wooyoung laughed again and San felt each beat of it like a kick to the stomach. He missed Wooyoung’s response, but judging by the cheering that followed about a minute later, he guessed that Jongho dutifully performed his special talent for their new recruit. San watched the expression on Wooyoung’s face change from skeptical, to shocked, to excited, to impressed. That feeling in his chest grew until it hurt.
“Anyway,” Hongjoong said after the excitement had died down, “how about you go see your room and put your stuff away and get comfortable for a bit? Then over dinner we can talk more. Want to do that?”
Wooyoung seemed agreeable enough; he nodded his head and leaned down to pick up his heavy looking duffel bag. “Sure. That sounds good.”
Yeosang leaned forward and pointed up at San again. There was a grin on his face that San specifically did not like; it felt like he was saying I told you so but he didn’t know about what. “Since San’s just standing on the stairs, he can show you. It’s up there next to his.”
“Okay,” Wooyoung said, and every pair of eyes was on them as Wooyoung climbed the stairs and stopped on the one just below him. “Hi,” he said again, quieter this time. Wooyoung tilted his face up to him and San was helpless to notice the strong line of his jaw. His smile was smaller, more reserved; there was a mole on his lip that San felt distress at noticing from this close. “Thanks for showing me to my room.”
San was, for a reason he could not fathom, alarmed to be so close all of the sudden. He could smell the heady scent of Wooyoung’s cologne and the cotton-y notes of his laundry on his warm body. Suddenly his stomach kind of hurt.
“Sure,” he muttered, and immediately turned around. Once he wasn’t looking at Wooyoung anymore, it felt a little easier to breathe.
A little.
He didn’t check to see if Wooyoung was still behind him as he entered the hallway, but grabbed the doorknob a little harder than necessary and shoved the door to the guest room open. Without looking at him, San gestured to the room and mumbled something about this being his room and that he was next door. He was pretty sure Wooyoung thanked him and he was pretty sure that Wooyoung’s shoulder brushed his as he passed but as soon as his back was turned San made a beeline for his own room and slammed the door shut. He almost threw the lock but thought better of it and just leaned heavily against the door instead.
Alone, he could finally get his thoughts together. He wasn’t sure how exactly he knew, but the feeling that the rug was getting pulled out from underneath him—it wasn’t about the job. Now it was here. It was this, the suffocating feeling he felt when Wooyoung looked up at him for the first time. It was the wild, pendulum swing of his stomach when Wooyoung pursed his lips and blew invisible smoke from his fake gun in a way that he knew would make Yunho like him immediately. It was the way he felt like he couldn’t breathe: this was what the feeling was trying to warn him about. It was Wooyoung all along, the catalyst that was going to change everything as they knew it. Not the job. It was Wooyoung. The feeling drenched him like a cold wave; knowing that Wooyoung was the reason things were going to change forever made San want him here even less.
And the worst part, the one that he did not want to admit or look at too closely, was that Hongjoong and Yeosang had been right. They were right. Jung Wooyoung was cute. Beautiful, in fact; San was stunned by the realization and then shoved it away.
Jung Wooyoung was cute, yes, but that didn’t change the facts: when this was over, San wanted him gone. He just wanted everything to go back to normal.