Tilted (8/?)
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A/N: Welcome to "Book Two," or the second half of this novel fic! The second half has its own title/sub-title and the point of view will now switch back and forth, but this is still the same story, not a sequel
BOOK TWO: SPLINTERED
Joonmyun had received an email from Yixing two days ago, letting him know he’d made it safely to the business conference in China. The fact that Joonmyun’s email and phone had been depressingly silent since then was helping him feel a little less guilty about being in this office where he was currently sitting, watching the secretary in front of him file away some of the paperwork he had just given her.
He’d been resisting the urge all morning to check up on Yixing again despite his failure to reply to Joonmyun’s other texts. Even now, he felt his phone in his pocket like a heavy weight and his fingers twitched with the impulse to check for new messages.
Joonmyun sat on his hands.
At that moment, the door flew open and a new secretary appeared, ushering him into the office of Detective Lu Han.
Joonmyun’s first thought when he walked into the office was that Lu Han looked nothing like a detective and less like a private investigator. His second thought was that he didn’t actually know what he’d been expecting a private investigator to look like. His third thought, he concluded while marveling at the smoothness of Lu Han’s skin and the smallness of his face, was that he’d definitely been expecting someone a little rougher around the edges.
“You must be Joonmyun,” he said, standing up and leaning over his desk to stick out a hand for Joonmyun to grasp. “Detective Lu Han, at your service. But you can just call me Lu Han.”
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” Joonmyun answered politely.
“Of course,” Lu Han said. “Please, sit.” He gestured to the squashy faux leather chair in front of the desk and Joonmyun sat.
Lu Han settled back into his own chair. “So, Mr. Kim, what brings you here? With what may I assist you?”
“Um.” Joonmyun cleared his throat unnecessarily and struggled to swallow past the lump in his throat. He had a summary of the situation prepared, but he was suddenly embarrassed to talk to Lu Han about Yixing. The silence dragged on painfully as Joonmyun kept mentally rejecting every possible start to a sentence and his jaw felt locked in place while Lu Han’s large, sparkling eyes blinked at him expectantly.
Joonmyun got the feeling that Lu Han was used to hesitant clients as he dropped his eyes to the clipboard that Joonmyun had filled out in the main office, now sitting atop Lu Han’s desk. “It says here you’ve been living with the same roommate for almost a year.”
Joonmyun nodded haltingly.
“You have suspicions that said roommate is hiding...something...about his past,” Lu Han continued, still reading from the clipboard, which he was now holding in one hand, the other grasping a pencil between his thumb and first two fingers. He leaned back a little in his chair, crossed his legs, and let the clipboard rest against the knee that was on top.
“Correct,” Joonmyun managed, the embarrassed feeling only mounting as he watched Lu Han continue to scan the rest of Joonmyun’s personal information. “Would it...possibly...be, um...possible…” Joonmyun trailed off and wondered if he slapped himself hard enough whether he’d regain the ability to form intelligent-sounding sentences.
Lu Han seemed to know exactly what he was asking. “Oh yes, it’s possible, but, from what I’m looking at here, I’d have to do some traveling, following him on business trips, possibly requiring multiple investigators, setting up extensive surveillance equipment...I should tell you that it could end up being quite expensive.”
Joonmyun found his voice again. “Cost is no object. I want to know the truth.”
Lu Han stared at him for a long moment, during which all Joonmyun heard was the ticking of the pink Hello Kitty clock on the wall and his frantic heartbeat.
“Very well,” the detective said finally, a tiny curve of a smile gracing his lips as he set down his pencil and uncrossed his legs, straightening in his chair. “I think I can help you.”
*
“How was China?” Joonmyun asked when he picked Yixing up at the airport. “I missed you.”
“Fine,” Yixing answered, smiling. “I missed you, too.”
Joonmyun smiled back at him as they walked to the car, the knowledge that he still had a while to wait before he would receive the first report from Lu Han still on his mind.
“You look like you’re worried about something,” Yixing pointed out.
“I do? I don’t know why.” Joonmyun tried to laugh lightly, arranging his features into what he hoped was a placid expression.
They met Jongdae and Jongin for lunch at a ramen shop they went to often.
“Where’s Sehun?” Jongdae, who was slurping away at his noodles in the corner of their booth, asked when he noticed that their youngest coworker wasn’t with them.
“He took a cab from the airport. He said he had some stuff to take care of,” Yixing told him.
“Oh, that’s weird,” Jongdae said.
Yixing looked at him in confusion. “Why?”
“Because,” said Jongdae matter-of-factly, “I figured the two of you would come packaged together. Like a bundle. Two for the price of one.”
Jongin laughed and stuffed some noodles into his own mouth.
“Actually, he did call me from the airport and say that he would be busy today,” Jongin admitted as he stirred his noodles, no longer eating at gamma ray speed.
Jongdae snorted. “What could he possibly be busy with?”
“I don’t know,” Jongin said, furrowing his brows. “It was a little odd. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“You mean his other boyfriend doesn’t know where he is either? Wow. Maybe he went shopping for your engagement ring.” Jongdae burst into uproarious laughter.
“Hyung, seriously!” Jongin turned and playfully shoved the man next to him, who flailed hard enough to knock over his drink.
Jongdae grabbed two handfuls of napkins and soaked up the mess, still shaking with laughter. Joonmyun looked over at Yixing, who’d been quiet during the exchange, but his expression was unreadable.
“How was China, hyung?” Jongin asked Yixing, clearly trying to shift the focus away from himself.
“It was fine. Business conference, you know, pretty boring. What’s new here?” he asked, changing the subject again just as quickly.
“Oh, not a lot.”
“Except for Sehun’s impending proposal to Jong--”
“Would you shut up--!”
Joonmyun laughed at his friends until his phone vibrated in his pocket and he whipped it out to see a blocked number on the screen. “Uh, I’ll be right back,” he said to the group, mostly to Yixing, since Jongin and Jongdae were still wrapped up in their bickering.
He only answered the phone once he was outside the restaurant. “Hello?”
“Joonmyun, I assume you know why I’m calling. I’ve put together a preliminary report, and I’d like to meet with you a second time to gather some more background information.” Lu Han’s voice on the other line sounded deeper than Joonmyun remembered it being.
Already? he thought, surprised. Joonmyun waited, but Lu Han said nothing else. “Okay. So...?” he prompted, heart pounding. “Did you...find out anything?”
Lu Han laughed softly. The sound tickled Joonmyun’s ear as if he was really there next to him. “Oh, yes. You’ll need to come to the office with your deposit though before I can share that information.”
Typical, Joonmyun thought once he’d recovered from his heart skipping about five beats. “Very well,” he said, attempting bravado but abandoning it when he realized he didn’t quite manage it. “Uh...when can I come in?”
“I’ve tentatively penciled you in for tomorrow at 5pm. Let my personal secretary know if you can’t make it.”
He walked back into the ramen shop to find his friends in the midst of a much calmer conversation than they’d been having when he left.
“Who was that?” Yixing asked as he slid back into the booth.
Joonmyun hesitated. “My...mom.”
It felt wrong, lying to Yixing, but it was only for a little while, he assured himself. Just until he knew whether he’d been lied to about Lake Cassiopeia and art school in China and who knows what else. It was only fair.
*
“So where did you go yesterday?” Yixing asked, attempting to make conversation while he filed away his seemingly endless stack of reports and Sehun’s fingers click-clacked away on his keyboard.
Sehun added more sugar to his coffee before answering. “I went to see an old friend.”
He said it with the tone of finality he often used when Yixing asked too many questions, but he was too curious to just let the subject drop. As far as he’d known, Jongin was the only “old friend” Sehun had.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Yixing filed the last paper in the stack he was holding and tried to warm his fingers in his palms before he picked up the next one. They’d come back from China to find out that the heat was broken on their floor and Sehun’s office felt like an igloo.
He knew he was probably crossing the line, but he asked anyway, “What’s your friend’s name?”
Sehun tapped his fingers lightly on the computer mouse as he scanned something on the screen. “Since when are you so interested in my personal life, Zhang Yixing?”
A prickle of realization made the goosebumps that were already all over Yixing’s arms pop up afresh. “Oh, I think I get it,” he said slowly. “Is this a special friend?”
Sehun choked on his next sip of coffee. “No, god. He’s just...someone my family knows, okay? We’re not even really that close. Can we drop it?”
Yixing nodded and his mouth suddenly wanted to split into a full grin and he had to bite his lips so Sehun wouldn’t think he was completely crazy. He went to sit down at the other computer, realizing that the stack of reports he’d just finished had been the last one for the day.
“I’m going to get more coffee,” Sehun said abruptly as he drained the last few drops from his cup.
Yixing knew by now that that was Sehun’s way of asking if he wanted any. “I’m good,” he said, pointing to his full mug beside him.
He went back to concentrating on his work and jumped when he felt something warm cover his upper back. He looked down at his shoulders to see the collar of a black jacket laying across them and turned his head with wide eyes to see Sehun taking long strides toward the door. He stared at him, lips parted a little in surprise, until the younger man finally looked at him when he had his hand on the doorknob.
“You looked cold,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifted a little, before he slipped out into the hallway and Yixing was alone.
He blinked dumbly at the closed door for a moment, then slowly turned back to the computer screen, tugging Sehun’s jacket a little closer around himself without putting his arms through the sleeves. Sehun had just been wearing it and it smelled like his hairspray and lemongrass laundry detergent.
It should have been easier to work when he was no longer freezing, but it took a little more focus than usual to enter the numbers into his spreadsheet.
*
“You certainly work fast,” Joonmyun said when he walked into Lu Han’s office for the second time.
“Don’t get so excited, I haven’t done any active investigating yet,” said Lu Han, laughing in a light way that was slightly condescending. “Preliminary report means I’ve done some research on the person in question, which usually involves running their name and date of birth through a few databases and seeing what I can find out without having to dig too deep.”
Joonmyun was listening with rapt attention, waiting for Lu Han to continue, but the detective simply held out his hand. “Before we get into all that, I think you have a little something you promised me?”
Joonmyun shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled check, depositing it in Lu Han’s outstretched palm.
“Thank you,” Lu Han said, straightening it with his other hand and sitting down. Joonmyun copied him to sit in the chair in front of the desk again. “Now, onto the good stuff...or in this case, maybe not so good.”
Joonmyun swallowed hard. “What did you find out?”
Lu Han opened a dark green binder and flipped through almost to the end. “More like...what I didn’t find out,” he said, tapping a pen on his cheek. “His name doesn’t appear in any of our databases, which made things pretty difficult, for starters.”
“How...how is that possible?”
“I see a lot of people come through this office, Joonmyun-sshi,” Lu Han said, not answering the question right away. “Power-hungry businessmen, desperate orphans, obsessive lovers...rarely do I get to tell any of them what they want to hear. But I think that for you, right now, what you want is some validation. And I’m about to give it to you. Because, yes, I think your friend Zhang Yixing is indeed hiding something.”
Joonmyun only stared, again not sure what he had expected Lu Han to say, but it wasn’t that.
Lu Han smiled at his silence. “Congratulations. I’m moving forward with your case.”
“Great,” Joonmyun managed, still trying and failing to recover from his sudden loss of communication skills. He was used to talking, and definitely used to talking business, but he didn’t know how it was that everything Lu Han said seemed to throw him for a loop.
“The next step will be to follow him around a little,” Lu Han went on. “Find out where he goes, who he’s meeting, what he says to them, see if there’s anything he hasn’t told you that I can find out from someone else.”
Lu Han paused to prop his elbows on the desk and hold his pen in front of his face, twirling it around with his fingers and staring at it as if it somehow held all the answers. Then he looked up at Joonmyun again. “But first, I need to ask you a couple more questions.”
It took some effort, but he switched back into business mode. “What do you want to know?”
Lu Han put the pen down and clasped his hands in front of him, his cherub-like face taking on an incredibly serious expression that almost made him look his age. “If this is going to work, Joonmyun, I’m going to need you to put your walls down and speak honestly with me.”
“What walls?” Joonmyun sent back, suddenly defensive. He’d been honest this entire time.
Lu Han laughed again, that teasing little laugh that simultaneously annoyed Joonmyun and made him want to hear it again. “I can see walls all around you, my friend, and they are sky-high.”
Joonmyun didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about, but he’d never been much for figurative language. “Ask your questions,” he demanded. “I’ll tell you anything you need to know.”
Lu Han inhaled before he said, “Yixing has been a good roommate and a good friend to you, yes? Aside from keeping secrets.”
Joonmyun nodded. “Yes.”
“You think of him as a generally good person?”
“Yes.”
Lu Han moved aside some papers on his desk. “I still have your clipboard here, and I know it says there was never any romantic involvement between you two, but I need you to tell me, Joonmyun, could you, possibly, have any romantic feelings toward Yixing?”
Joonmyun could hear that obnoxious clock ticking behind the desk again. He wanted to ask how this was relevant, to say no, of course not, but Lu Han’s big eyes blinked at him in expectation and the word “maybe” was out of Joonmyun’s mouth before he could think it through.
Lu Han seemed to be making additional notes on the clipboard and Joonmyun wished he could evaporate into nothingness at will. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he murmured as he wrote. “You have to understand, Joonmyun, that my job is to get the whole story. And that story often involves the very people who ask me to get it for them.”
Joonmyun didn’t understand how Yixing hiding his past could have anything to do with him, but he nodded anyway, even though Lu Han wasn’t even watching.
“There are many possible reasons why Yixing isn’t telling you everything. But the way you feel about him affects the way you act toward him, even unconsciously, and that can affect how he responds to you,” Lu Han elaborated, doing that thing where he seemed to reply to Joonmyun’s unspoken thoughts. It made him shiver.
“I’ve been alone for a long time,” Joonmyun admitted, quietly, not even sure where the confession was coming from. Lu Han hadn’t asked him to explain. “When I met Yixing and got to know him, it was like I finally…” he trailed off, suddenly realizing again that he was pouring his innermost thoughts out to a virtual stranger. “I don’t know. I...I think that’s as much as I can say.”
Lu Han finally looked at him again, his expression kinder than Joonmyun had seen it before. “It’s okay. I think I have what I need. Thank you, Joonmyun.”
Joonmyun walked home feeling scrambled, like he had to think harder than normal to remember how to put one foot in front of the other, as all the thoughts Lu Han had put in his head swirled around in hopeless chaos. He’d come to the detective to find out the truth, but something about Lu Han had him second-guessing himself as well as Yixing.
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