fic: A Hundred and One little Complications, Chapter 9
Title: A Hundred and One Little Complications, Chapter 9
Length: chaptered
Author: M_K Yujji
Rating: PG-13 for subject matter
Genre: AU
Pairing/Characters: DooSeob, Junhyung/Gayooon, mentioned past mix'n'match combo of Yoseob/Hyunseung/Gayoon, past Gayoon/OMC, ofc's of the grandmotherly and children types
Warnings: RPS, Violence
Disclaimer: Though real people are used as characters, this fic bears no resemblance to Real Life and these people are not owned by me.
Comments/Notes: Partially inspired by snb123's spy prompt and this picture.
So, this is the scene that didn't want to end so I had to actually split the chapter up into two. Lots of information, but I think some confusion will be cleared up. ^_^ Hope you like it~<3
Previously: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8
Side Shots: Second Chances | Guardian | Aftermath
Summary: Doojoon is a gay reporter with too many enemies in too many places, the divorced father of a beautiful little girl. Gikwang is his deceased ex-wife’s last husband and the closest thing he has to family since his blood relatives disowned him. When an assassination attempt almost kills them all, Gikwang calls in a favor.
As if Doojoon's life isn't already complicated enough...
~*~*~
Doojoon glared balefully at the alarm clock as it shrieked at him from across the room where it rested on the nightstand on Yoseob’s side of the bed.
Stupid…
He groped blindly behind himself until he managed to snag the book he’d left on his own side and tossed it at the wailing alarm clock. It hit the wall with a satisfying crunching sound and died with one last half-hearted warble.
Feeling smug, Doojoon curled back around Yoseob and let his eyes slip closed.
“Wassit?” Yoseob’s sleepy voice was muffled against Doojoon’s collarbone, warm puffs of air making the older man shiver slightly.
Doojoon just made a shushing noise and hugged Yoseob closer. “S’nothing. Sleep.”
On another day, Yoseob would probably have protested and forced himself - and Doojoon - up. The military seemed to have programed the ability to sleep in right out of his system at the same time it was programing in anal retentive neatness and bad assness. Gikwang had the same problem, really. They were both up by six a.m. Every morning.
It had been a long night, though.
Saying goodbye at the restaurant had taken far longer than either of them had expected. Soonlee hadn’t wanted Yoseob to go and she’d clung to him with a stubborn tenacity that even Cheon couldn’t have matched. In the end, he’d had to just hold her until she’d fallen asleep and could be passed off to Junhyung.
The stop at the hospital hadn’t been much better. They’d left Gikwang and Cheon sleeping in the car, but Doojoon had gone in with Yoseob, not wanting him to be alone. The blonde hadn’t said much about it, but it was easy to see that he was worried about his friend.
The nurses had told them that most of the damage was superficial and looked worse than it was, thankfully. The worst of his injuries were a nasty concussion and a couple of cracked ribs. Dongwoon would need to stay overnight for monitoring and he’d be in pain for a while, but he’d heal.
Despite the reassurances, Yoseob still found it necessary to steal Dongwoon’s chart and look over it himself just to make sure no one was hiding anything from them.
Visiting hours had been over long before they got there, but one of the nurses had fallen prey to Yoseob’s expression of sweet innocence and worry and had let him in to see the younger man. She’d given him an hour and he’d slipped inside without Doojoon and taken every minute of it.
Hyunseung had been there as well, lurking in the hallway with an ipod turned up loud enough to make Doojoon wince as he pretended the nurses weren’t trying to get him to leave. When Yoseob and Doojoon had finally left he’d already taken Yoseob’s place, settled in the chair at Dongwoon’s bedside doing his best immovable object impersonation. Doojoon was fairly certain the nurses had given up.
By the time they’d gotten back home and gotten Cheon tucked into her own bed and Gikwang settled on the couch - he’d refused to even consider his own condo - Doojoon hadn’t been able to keep his eyes open any longer. He’d collapsed into bed without bothering to shower. He didn’t think Yoseob had been far behind him, but since he’d passed out pretty much the second his head had hit the pillow, he wasn’t entirely sure.
All he wanted was to keep Yoseob in bed until they were both rested and ready to face another day.
“Doojoon?”
He cracked an eye open to glare through the light that Gikwang was letting into the room.
His friend looked contrite, but he wasn’t shutting the door and moving. “Sorry, Doojoon. I can take Cheon to school, but you start back to work today, don’t you?”
Monday.
“Fuck.” Doojoon sighed and rolled over onto his back, rubbing his eyes with an unhappy pout. If he hadn’t just spent the better part of a month on medical leave, he’d call out sick.
“D’Joonie?” Yoseob stretched and yawned before settling back down against Doojoon, chin propped up on the older man’s chest as he blinked sleepily. “S’ok?”
With another sigh, Doojoon smoothed Yoseob’s hair back. “I have to go to work. But you should get some more sleep.”
There wasn’t any point in both of them being miserable and tired, after all.
Yoseob just gave him an incredulous look.
It actually took Doojoon a second to remember why it was a bad idea to leave the house alone and he had to wonder just when he’d managed to forget Yoseob’s purpose for coming into their lives.
He waved off Yoseob’s scolding. “Sorry, I forgot.”
That made Yoseob laugh a little before he pushed himself up and gave Doojoon a quick kiss. “Maybe we should have had you checked over for a concussion.”
“I’ll just… go get Cheon ready for school,” Gikwang muttered from where he was still hovering in the doorway.
Doojoon caught Yoseob before the younger man could skitter out of the bed. He pulled him close so that he could examine the scratch on Yoseob’s arm. “You all right?”
“It’s just a scratch, Doojoonie. It probably won’t even scar unless it gets infected.” Yoseob’s look was fond as he brushed one hand through Doojoon’s hair and leaned back in for another, lingering kiss. “Gikwang’s head is a lot worse off. Or your knees, for that matter. Don’t think I didn’t see the blood when we got home.”
“I didn’t realize I’d actually broke skin until I changed last night,” Doojoon replied with a grimace, thinking about the small cuts on his knees. He should have cleaned it up the night before, but he’d just been so tired. Besides, it wasn’t as if he’d gotten shot or anything.
Yoseob made a clucking noise as he shook his head. He snagged a pair of loose jeans from the nightstand on his side of the bed and pulled them on. “I’ll check it out to make sure there isn’t any glass still in the skin and bandage you up when you’re done in the shower, okay?”
“You could just join me in the shower.” They hadn’t repeated that first shared shower again and now that their relationship had actually moved beyond bodyguard and reluctant client, Doojoon wanted to try it again and enjoy it properly.
There was a moment of hesitation as want flashed across Yoseob’s face, but then the sound of Cheon’s giggle and Gikwang trying to hush her broke through the room and he grinned. “I showered last night and if we want Cheon to actually get something besides one of Kwangie’s awful shakes for breakfast, I’d better go fix it.” A third kiss and he slipped out of the bed. “Maybe tonight, if work doesn’t wear you out too much.”
Wicked promise sparkled in his eyes and Doojoon couldn’t help but scramble out of the bed and pull him into another kiss. When he finally managed to let go, he all but shoved the laughing man out the bedroom door. “Get out of here, for fuck’s sake, before I drag you back to bed and keep you there all day.”
“Promises, promises~” Yoseob sang out as he disappeared.
In the shower, Doojoon let his mind drift over the things he’d learned and the decisions he’d made over the weekend. And the shooting.
Yoseob had shrugged it off with a resigned look, saying it had always been a possibility, that assassins and mercs were a possessive bunch who didn’t like having their jobs swiped out from underneath them.
The idea that Yoseob may have been dragged into the middle of his mess even without Gikwang’s call made Doojoon feel both better and worse. It eased some of the guilt of dumping his problems all on Yoseob’s head on top of everything else he’d already done to the man, but at the same time…
All the damage, all the injuries, they were about him whether the assassin had been going after Yoseob as a rival or as someone important to Doojoon. The fear in Cheon and Soonlee’s voices was going to be haunting his sleep for a while.
And the worst part of all was that he honestly couldn’t think of a single thing he’d written - ever - to warrant having this sort of bounty on his head. Some of his pieces exposed parts of society that the average reader preferred to pretend didn’t exist, but nothing that was worth someone’s life.
He didn’t even know the woman who’d hired the hit man and none of the other people Yoseob had shown him were familiar. He’d been racking his brain trying to come up with something, anything, that he might have done that could have caught her attention, but had come up with nothing. It just didn’t make any sense.
Then there was Kim Heechul and the pair he had trailing after them. Yoseob had been right about them being handy to have around when the shooting had started, but Doojoon knew he hadn’t written anything of interest there. He’d worked for the same publication since he’d gotten his first byline and his boss had a very hands-off policy when it came to Kim. The man had an honest-to-god PR agent that all publications that so much as brushed against his name had to go through and if he said no, it didn’t get published. Period. The president didn’t have that much control over what got written about him.
It had always bugged Doojoon, but not enough for him to actually rock that particular boat. Why the man was suddenly interested in him was a mystery. He was willing to ignore it for the moment, though. The other mysteries in his life were more important.
Doojoon sighed and then jumped as the door to the bathroom slammed open and shut. Yoseob’s face, tight with aggravation appeared around the edge of the curtain. “Are you done yet?”
“Umm…” He blinked, startled and confused both by Yoseob’s sudden appearance and by the 180 his mood seemed to have done. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was taking so long.”
“…” Yoseob was silent for a moment before he sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “You’re not. I just… Sorry.”
As far as he could tell, Yoseob usually had a great deal of control over himself and Doojoon had to wonder what had upset him enough to have him snapping at innocent bystanders. Deciding he was clean enough, he flipped off the water and accepted the towel Yoseob offered.
When he stepped out, Doojoon wrapped both arms around the smaller man and pulled him closer. “What’s wrong?”
The answer was muffled against his shoulder. “Gikwang… just… he’s pushing things he doesn’t have the right to push anymore.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
The relationship between Gikwang and Yoseob was definitely making progress, but it was a long way from a full recovery and Doojoon didn’t want to risk endangering it or take sides, but he was willing to offer a shoulder and an ear to both of them. He hoped they understood that.
Yoseob huffed a sigh, the brush of his breath making Doojoon shiver. He was acutely aware of the fact that he was naked but for a towel and that Yoseob hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt after he’d been shoved out of the bedroom earlier. He pushed that awareness down as best as he could, though. It wasn’t the time or place for those thoughts.
“He wanted to know why Junhyung was raising my daughter.”
“Ah.” He wasn’t as shocked as he might have been. The evidence was there, after all. The resemblance between Soonlee and Yoseob was too strong for anything other than a genetic connection and with Yunja being Yoseob’s only other blood relative, there wasn’t anyone else to have passed it on. “And?”
Yoseob leaned back enough so that he could look at Doojoon’s face, but didn’t actually pull away. He searched for a moment before glancing away and making a face. “It’s complicated. And it’s fine. Soonlee knows, it’s not like anyone is lying to her. He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about.”
Doojoon bit his lip for a moment, considering, then nudged Yoseob’s cheek with his nose. “Tell me? I’m a little sketchy on all these connections.”
For a moment Yoseob hesitated, then he looked back at Doojoon. “It’s a little involved. I don’t think we have time right now.”
“I’m willing to make time if you’re willing to tell me,” Doojoon replied. “But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
It would hurt that Yoseob didn’t want him to know such important things, but Doojoon could let it go for the moment. He didn’t want to upset Yoseob as Gikwang obviously had. This was something the mercenary had to come at in his own time.
Time that Doojoon was hoping they’d have together.
Yoseob sighed and pulled away. “Get dressed first. You’re too distracting like this.” He made a sour expression. “Besides. If I have to tell it, I’d rather just say it once and Kwangie isn’t going to leave it alone until I explain.”
“You uh…” Doojoon cleared his throat and blushed a little. “You should get dressed too.”
That made Yoseob quirk a grin at him. “You’re the one who pushed me out of the bedroom before I could put on a shirt.”
“One more kiss and neither of us would have been going anywhere today,” he muttered, knowing without looking that his blush had spread all the way down to his shoulders. It wasn’t too obvious, thankfully, since his complexion wasn’t nearly as pale as his companion’s, but it was obvious enough under the glare of the bathroom light while Yoseob was enjoying the view.
Yoseob actually laughed as he headed out of the bathroom, letting Doojoon dress in peace.
Once he was alone again, Doojoon glanced at the mirror and sighed.
Complicated, Yoseob had said. Somehow, Doojoon wasn’t surprised.
He shook his head and hurried through the rest of his morning preperations. He had a feeling that putting this off wasn’t going to make it any easier to get out of Yoseob.
In the kitchen, a fully dressed Yoseob had his back to the other two occupants of the room, ostensibly to clean, though it looked like he was dragging it out as much as possible and there was a tension in his back that wasn’t usually there. Cheon was chewing her food quietly, casting furtive looks at the two adults while Gikwang tried to bore holes into Yoseob’s back with the intensity of his stare.
Doojoon pretended not to notice any of it.
He walked over to Yoseob and settled his arms around the smaller man’s waist, letting his chin settled on one bony shoulder. He schooled his expression and gave his best ‘man of the house’ voice. “Did you pack us all lunch, dear?”
Yoseob snorted and flopped one hand at his head in a half-hearted smack. “I am not your ‘little woman’, Yoon Doojoon.”
“No, you most certainly aren’t…” Smiling, he nipped at Yoseob’s neck before stepping back and accepting his own breakfast plate.
With a quick glance at the clock, Yoseob went to crouch down next to Cheon. “Hey, sweetie, you still need to brush your teeth, right? And pick out a jacket to wear with this dress?”
The little girl sighed, looking quite put upon. “I’m not a baby, you know. You can just say you need to talk to Daddy and Papa.”
Yoseob smiled and ruffled her hair. “You’re absolutely right. You’re not a baby and I’m sorry for treating you like one. Do you mind if I talk to your Daddy and Papa?”
“No.” She shook her head and stood up, pausing for a moment. “Can I call you Yopa? Like Soonlee does?”
The blonde swallowed and dipped his head, the same shy hesitance on his face that he’d had with Soonlee the night before. “I don’t mind. But you should probably ask Soonlee and your Daddy if that’s okay.”
“Daddy?” She turned immediately to Doojoon, a hopeful look on her face. “Is it?”
He smiled at her. “If it’s all right with Soonlee.”
She beamed. “I’ll ask her at school today. Did you know she goes to my school, Daddy?”
“I’d guessed that, yes.” It hadn’t been explicitly stated, but it hadn’t been all that difficult to figure out. It did open up an entirely new barrel of questions, though, since it seemed like far too much of a coincidence that his daughter just happened to go to the same school as Yoseob’s. Doojoon suspected it was a topic for another day. “Now go brush your teeth.”
As soon as she was gone, Yoseob sighed and moved to settle into her chair. He propped both elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands. “You know we all grew up together. We all had… home issues… and Nana just sort of took us all in, raised us like her own. I mean, technically, I was the only one that actually lived with her, but,” he glanced sideways at Gikwang before looking up at Doojoon and shrugged. “Most nights at least half of the others stayed over too. Nana was the one who made sure we all stayed in school and graduated, that we didn’t end up in the gangs or, in Gayoon’s case, in some whorehouse somewhere. We were a family.”
He gave a wry sounding laugh. “A highly dysfunctional family maybe, but a family, regardless.”
“You still are.”
Yoseob nodded and looked away. He shifted back and let his hands settle on the table, palm up. “I love Gayoon and she loves me, but… we were never in love. She, Hyunseung, and I… We were the ones who weren’t too sure what we wanted, ya know? But it’s easier when you know you’re not the only one trying to figure it out and we were... safe. Which is important when you’re fourteen and confused. When we got older it was just for fun, killing time til we found someone we wanted to be with."
"Junhyung was always in love with Gayoon." Gikwang's voice was careful, devoid of censure, though Doojoon knew him well enough to know it was there, just under the surface.
Apparently Yoseob knew it too. He snorted and rolled his eyes. "Junhyung was as confused as we were just about other things. And it was hardly my fault that he was never willing to speak up about it." He took a deep breath and made an obvious effort not to dwell on what looked like an old argument. “We didn’t really do it much anymore after we enlisted. Hyunseung is a year older, so he went first. Junhyung has a medical condition… He exempted out and stayed here. And still didn’t say anything while Gayoon bounced around between boyfriends.”
He gave Gikwang a pointed look that his friend avoided.
Yoseob just sighed and shook his head. “I don’t… I don’t actually remember it, but apparently the last time we were in Seoul on leave, she’d just broken up with a real asshole and was looking for comfort. She ended up pregnant.”
“I remember that.” Gikwang’s voice was soft, hesitant as he began tracing the pattern of the tablecloth, refusing to look up. “We all wanted to kill him, but she wouldn’t let us.”
“Hyunseung dealt with him a few years ago.”
Gikwang’s expression tightened into something that could have been disapproval or savage satisfaction or some combination of both and Doojoon wondered just how bad this guy had really been and what he’d done to Gayoon if even Gikwang had wanted him dead. “Good.”
They shared a look of perfect understanding and Yoseob nodded before taking the tale back up. “Right, so… She ended up pregnant with Soonlee, but I shipped back out before she found out. And then, this,” he flicked a finger at his scar “happened.”
“Why didn’t she just wait?”
Yoseob sighed and shook his head. “They thought I was dead, Kwangie. Why did you think no one bothered to hunt you down when you cut ties? You didn’t exactly hide.”
Gikwang looked stricken. “I … How-”
“Clerical error.” Yoseob rolled his eyes and made a face. “Some idiot had me on the list of fatalities from that last mission.” His expression tightened, shadowed with sadness and regret. “They left you alone because they thought you were too heartbroken over my death to face them. They wanted to give you time to grieve before forcing contact. They figured… if it hit them as hard as it had, then you…”
He swallowed hard and glanced at Doojoon. “We’d been inseparable since we were three. Him disappearing like that… even without a body, they never even questioned the military.”
“I didn’t know,” Gikwang muttered, burying his face in his hands, looking as miserable as he sounded.
Yoseob went on as if he hadn’t said anything. “The ones left over got closer. Junhyung and Gayoon married the day Soonlee was born.” He cut off Gikwang’s attempt to interrupt. “They were never going to lie to her about me. Gayoon and Nana made her a memory box and a special photo album and you know Nana. Even if they’d wanted to, she wouldn’t have let me be forgotten.”
His hands were shaking slightly and Doojoon reached out to cover them with one of his own. Yoseob gave him a small smile, tangling their fingers together. “So they found out when you came home?”
“No,” Yoseob shook his head and sighed. “Nana says… she couldn’t let go without a body to bury. She started making calls, trying to find my commander, hoping someone could tell her what they’d done with me. She was about to give up and have Hyunseung come see Gikwang to find out what he knew about it when she finally got ahold of Sarge. He’d been keeping tabs on me since no one else was. I think he felt sorry for me, no family, no friends, just… It wasn’t an easy recovery and my memory was spotty at best in the beginning. He didn’t realize there’d been any kind of mistake and he was… God he was so pissed. I’m pretty sure the yeoman who signed off on the paperwork without physical confirmation is cleaning toilets in Antarctica.”
It wasn’t an easy recovery.
Doojoon’s grip tightened. He couldn’t even imagine what Yoseob must have gone through and to go through it essentially alone. He wondered how much was being glossed over with the simple words. He wondered if he’d ever know or if that was something that Yoseob would keep to himself forever.
Yoseob wrapped his other hand around Doojoon’s and stared at them. “Soonlee was almost a year old the first time I met her.” A faint smile curled on the edges of his lips. “She was so… small. Just this tiny little thing. I didn’t want anything to do with her. It took Junhyung and Gayoon months of bullying me before I’d even hold her.”
“Seobie-”
There was bitter resignation twisted under Yoseob’s soft huff of laughter. “What business did a monster have tainting such a perfect, precious scrap of life?”
“You’re not a monster, Yoseob.” Doojoon reached out to tilt Yoseob’s chin up, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Please tell me you don’t actually believe that.”
For a moment it was all there for him to see, the pain and loneliness, the bitter fear and anger, years of betrayed confusion. Then it was masked under Yoseob’s usual control again. “I had no idea what I’d done, but my brother had abandoned me over it. What else was I supposed to think?”
“Seobie…” Gikwang’s voice was soft as set a hesitant hand on Yoseob’s shoulder. The mercenary tensed slightly, but didn’t move away or shrug off the hand. “I’m sorry.”
Yoseob just sighed and relaxed slightly before shaking his head. “You did what you thought you had to do. I already forgave you. Just… you can’t get pissy about what decisions you think we should have made. You don’t have that right. You weren’t there.” He turned to grab Gikwang’s hand as his friend jerked away as if he’d been scalded. “I’m not saying that to hurt you or rub it it. It’s just… it’s the way it is. Your decisions had consequences for the rest of us and we did the best we could. You don’t get to second guess the way things turned out.”
“Daddy?” Cheon’s head peeked around the corner of the door. Doojoon wondered how long she’d been standing there, waiting for a good moment to break in before finally giving up and interrupting. “I’m going to be late for school…”
“You won’t,” Yoseob promised as he pulled Gikwang into a rough, one arm hugged before pushing him away and standing up. “I guarantee that I’ll get you there on time.”
Doojoon followed, alarmed. “Hey, she’s already been in one car accident! Late is okay. Late is great.”
Yoseob’s laugh was shaky, but it was genuine. He scooped up their lunches and began herding everyone towards the door. There was little evidence of their conversation left on his face. “Don’t worry, Doojoonie. I’m a professional~”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Doojoon grumbled as he locked the door behind them.
~*~*~
on to Chapter 10
Length: chaptered
Author: M_K Yujji
Rating: PG-13 for subject matter
Genre: AU
Pairing/Characters: DooSeob, Junhyung/Gayooon, mentioned past mix'n'match combo of Yoseob/Hyunseung/Gayoon, past Gayoon/OMC, ofc's of the grandmotherly and children types
Warnings: RPS, Violence
Disclaimer: Though real people are used as characters, this fic bears no resemblance to Real Life and these people are not owned by me.
Comments/Notes: Partially inspired by snb123's spy prompt and this picture.
So, this is the scene that didn't want to end so I had to actually split the chapter up into two. Lots of information, but I think some confusion will be cleared up. ^_^ Hope you like it~<3
Previously: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8
Side Shots: Second Chances | Guardian | Aftermath
Summary: Doojoon is a gay reporter with too many enemies in too many places, the divorced father of a beautiful little girl. Gikwang is his deceased ex-wife’s last husband and the closest thing he has to family since his blood relatives disowned him. When an assassination attempt almost kills them all, Gikwang calls in a favor.
As if Doojoon's life isn't already complicated enough...
~*~*~
Doojoon glared balefully at the alarm clock as it shrieked at him from across the room where it rested on the nightstand on Yoseob’s side of the bed.
Stupid…
He groped blindly behind himself until he managed to snag the book he’d left on his own side and tossed it at the wailing alarm clock. It hit the wall with a satisfying crunching sound and died with one last half-hearted warble.
Feeling smug, Doojoon curled back around Yoseob and let his eyes slip closed.
“Wassit?” Yoseob’s sleepy voice was muffled against Doojoon’s collarbone, warm puffs of air making the older man shiver slightly.
Doojoon just made a shushing noise and hugged Yoseob closer. “S’nothing. Sleep.”
On another day, Yoseob would probably have protested and forced himself - and Doojoon - up. The military seemed to have programed the ability to sleep in right out of his system at the same time it was programing in anal retentive neatness and bad assness. Gikwang had the same problem, really. They were both up by six a.m. Every morning.
It had been a long night, though.
Saying goodbye at the restaurant had taken far longer than either of them had expected. Soonlee hadn’t wanted Yoseob to go and she’d clung to him with a stubborn tenacity that even Cheon couldn’t have matched. In the end, he’d had to just hold her until she’d fallen asleep and could be passed off to Junhyung.
The stop at the hospital hadn’t been much better. They’d left Gikwang and Cheon sleeping in the car, but Doojoon had gone in with Yoseob, not wanting him to be alone. The blonde hadn’t said much about it, but it was easy to see that he was worried about his friend.
The nurses had told them that most of the damage was superficial and looked worse than it was, thankfully. The worst of his injuries were a nasty concussion and a couple of cracked ribs. Dongwoon would need to stay overnight for monitoring and he’d be in pain for a while, but he’d heal.
Despite the reassurances, Yoseob still found it necessary to steal Dongwoon’s chart and look over it himself just to make sure no one was hiding anything from them.
Visiting hours had been over long before they got there, but one of the nurses had fallen prey to Yoseob’s expression of sweet innocence and worry and had let him in to see the younger man. She’d given him an hour and he’d slipped inside without Doojoon and taken every minute of it.
Hyunseung had been there as well, lurking in the hallway with an ipod turned up loud enough to make Doojoon wince as he pretended the nurses weren’t trying to get him to leave. When Yoseob and Doojoon had finally left he’d already taken Yoseob’s place, settled in the chair at Dongwoon’s bedside doing his best immovable object impersonation. Doojoon was fairly certain the nurses had given up.
By the time they’d gotten back home and gotten Cheon tucked into her own bed and Gikwang settled on the couch - he’d refused to even consider his own condo - Doojoon hadn’t been able to keep his eyes open any longer. He’d collapsed into bed without bothering to shower. He didn’t think Yoseob had been far behind him, but since he’d passed out pretty much the second his head had hit the pillow, he wasn’t entirely sure.
All he wanted was to keep Yoseob in bed until they were both rested and ready to face another day.
“Doojoon?”
He cracked an eye open to glare through the light that Gikwang was letting into the room.
His friend looked contrite, but he wasn’t shutting the door and moving. “Sorry, Doojoon. I can take Cheon to school, but you start back to work today, don’t you?”
Monday.
“Fuck.” Doojoon sighed and rolled over onto his back, rubbing his eyes with an unhappy pout. If he hadn’t just spent the better part of a month on medical leave, he’d call out sick.
“D’Joonie?” Yoseob stretched and yawned before settling back down against Doojoon, chin propped up on the older man’s chest as he blinked sleepily. “S’ok?”
With another sigh, Doojoon smoothed Yoseob’s hair back. “I have to go to work. But you should get some more sleep.”
There wasn’t any point in both of them being miserable and tired, after all.
Yoseob just gave him an incredulous look.
It actually took Doojoon a second to remember why it was a bad idea to leave the house alone and he had to wonder just when he’d managed to forget Yoseob’s purpose for coming into their lives.
He waved off Yoseob’s scolding. “Sorry, I forgot.”
That made Yoseob laugh a little before he pushed himself up and gave Doojoon a quick kiss. “Maybe we should have had you checked over for a concussion.”
“I’ll just… go get Cheon ready for school,” Gikwang muttered from where he was still hovering in the doorway.
Doojoon caught Yoseob before the younger man could skitter out of the bed. He pulled him close so that he could examine the scratch on Yoseob’s arm. “You all right?”
“It’s just a scratch, Doojoonie. It probably won’t even scar unless it gets infected.” Yoseob’s look was fond as he brushed one hand through Doojoon’s hair and leaned back in for another, lingering kiss. “Gikwang’s head is a lot worse off. Or your knees, for that matter. Don’t think I didn’t see the blood when we got home.”
“I didn’t realize I’d actually broke skin until I changed last night,” Doojoon replied with a grimace, thinking about the small cuts on his knees. He should have cleaned it up the night before, but he’d just been so tired. Besides, it wasn’t as if he’d gotten shot or anything.
Yoseob made a clucking noise as he shook his head. He snagged a pair of loose jeans from the nightstand on his side of the bed and pulled them on. “I’ll check it out to make sure there isn’t any glass still in the skin and bandage you up when you’re done in the shower, okay?”
“You could just join me in the shower.” They hadn’t repeated that first shared shower again and now that their relationship had actually moved beyond bodyguard and reluctant client, Doojoon wanted to try it again and enjoy it properly.
There was a moment of hesitation as want flashed across Yoseob’s face, but then the sound of Cheon’s giggle and Gikwang trying to hush her broke through the room and he grinned. “I showered last night and if we want Cheon to actually get something besides one of Kwangie’s awful shakes for breakfast, I’d better go fix it.” A third kiss and he slipped out of the bed. “Maybe tonight, if work doesn’t wear you out too much.”
Wicked promise sparkled in his eyes and Doojoon couldn’t help but scramble out of the bed and pull him into another kiss. When he finally managed to let go, he all but shoved the laughing man out the bedroom door. “Get out of here, for fuck’s sake, before I drag you back to bed and keep you there all day.”
“Promises, promises~” Yoseob sang out as he disappeared.
In the shower, Doojoon let his mind drift over the things he’d learned and the decisions he’d made over the weekend. And the shooting.
Yoseob had shrugged it off with a resigned look, saying it had always been a possibility, that assassins and mercs were a possessive bunch who didn’t like having their jobs swiped out from underneath them.
The idea that Yoseob may have been dragged into the middle of his mess even without Gikwang’s call made Doojoon feel both better and worse. It eased some of the guilt of dumping his problems all on Yoseob’s head on top of everything else he’d already done to the man, but at the same time…
All the damage, all the injuries, they were about him whether the assassin had been going after Yoseob as a rival or as someone important to Doojoon. The fear in Cheon and Soonlee’s voices was going to be haunting his sleep for a while.
And the worst part of all was that he honestly couldn’t think of a single thing he’d written - ever - to warrant having this sort of bounty on his head. Some of his pieces exposed parts of society that the average reader preferred to pretend didn’t exist, but nothing that was worth someone’s life.
He didn’t even know the woman who’d hired the hit man and none of the other people Yoseob had shown him were familiar. He’d been racking his brain trying to come up with something, anything, that he might have done that could have caught her attention, but had come up with nothing. It just didn’t make any sense.
Then there was Kim Heechul and the pair he had trailing after them. Yoseob had been right about them being handy to have around when the shooting had started, but Doojoon knew he hadn’t written anything of interest there. He’d worked for the same publication since he’d gotten his first byline and his boss had a very hands-off policy when it came to Kim. The man had an honest-to-god PR agent that all publications that so much as brushed against his name had to go through and if he said no, it didn’t get published. Period. The president didn’t have that much control over what got written about him.
It had always bugged Doojoon, but not enough for him to actually rock that particular boat. Why the man was suddenly interested in him was a mystery. He was willing to ignore it for the moment, though. The other mysteries in his life were more important.
Doojoon sighed and then jumped as the door to the bathroom slammed open and shut. Yoseob’s face, tight with aggravation appeared around the edge of the curtain. “Are you done yet?”
“Umm…” He blinked, startled and confused both by Yoseob’s sudden appearance and by the 180 his mood seemed to have done. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was taking so long.”
“…” Yoseob was silent for a moment before he sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “You’re not. I just… Sorry.”
As far as he could tell, Yoseob usually had a great deal of control over himself and Doojoon had to wonder what had upset him enough to have him snapping at innocent bystanders. Deciding he was clean enough, he flipped off the water and accepted the towel Yoseob offered.
When he stepped out, Doojoon wrapped both arms around the smaller man and pulled him closer. “What’s wrong?”
The answer was muffled against his shoulder. “Gikwang… just… he’s pushing things he doesn’t have the right to push anymore.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
The relationship between Gikwang and Yoseob was definitely making progress, but it was a long way from a full recovery and Doojoon didn’t want to risk endangering it or take sides, but he was willing to offer a shoulder and an ear to both of them. He hoped they understood that.
Yoseob huffed a sigh, the brush of his breath making Doojoon shiver. He was acutely aware of the fact that he was naked but for a towel and that Yoseob hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt after he’d been shoved out of the bedroom earlier. He pushed that awareness down as best as he could, though. It wasn’t the time or place for those thoughts.
“He wanted to know why Junhyung was raising my daughter.”
“Ah.” He wasn’t as shocked as he might have been. The evidence was there, after all. The resemblance between Soonlee and Yoseob was too strong for anything other than a genetic connection and with Yunja being Yoseob’s only other blood relative, there wasn’t anyone else to have passed it on. “And?”
Yoseob leaned back enough so that he could look at Doojoon’s face, but didn’t actually pull away. He searched for a moment before glancing away and making a face. “It’s complicated. And it’s fine. Soonlee knows, it’s not like anyone is lying to her. He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about.”
Doojoon bit his lip for a moment, considering, then nudged Yoseob’s cheek with his nose. “Tell me? I’m a little sketchy on all these connections.”
For a moment Yoseob hesitated, then he looked back at Doojoon. “It’s a little involved. I don’t think we have time right now.”
“I’m willing to make time if you’re willing to tell me,” Doojoon replied. “But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
It would hurt that Yoseob didn’t want him to know such important things, but Doojoon could let it go for the moment. He didn’t want to upset Yoseob as Gikwang obviously had. This was something the mercenary had to come at in his own time.
Time that Doojoon was hoping they’d have together.
Yoseob sighed and pulled away. “Get dressed first. You’re too distracting like this.” He made a sour expression. “Besides. If I have to tell it, I’d rather just say it once and Kwangie isn’t going to leave it alone until I explain.”
“You uh…” Doojoon cleared his throat and blushed a little. “You should get dressed too.”
That made Yoseob quirk a grin at him. “You’re the one who pushed me out of the bedroom before I could put on a shirt.”
“One more kiss and neither of us would have been going anywhere today,” he muttered, knowing without looking that his blush had spread all the way down to his shoulders. It wasn’t too obvious, thankfully, since his complexion wasn’t nearly as pale as his companion’s, but it was obvious enough under the glare of the bathroom light while Yoseob was enjoying the view.
Yoseob actually laughed as he headed out of the bathroom, letting Doojoon dress in peace.
Once he was alone again, Doojoon glanced at the mirror and sighed.
Complicated, Yoseob had said. Somehow, Doojoon wasn’t surprised.
He shook his head and hurried through the rest of his morning preperations. He had a feeling that putting this off wasn’t going to make it any easier to get out of Yoseob.
In the kitchen, a fully dressed Yoseob had his back to the other two occupants of the room, ostensibly to clean, though it looked like he was dragging it out as much as possible and there was a tension in his back that wasn’t usually there. Cheon was chewing her food quietly, casting furtive looks at the two adults while Gikwang tried to bore holes into Yoseob’s back with the intensity of his stare.
Doojoon pretended not to notice any of it.
He walked over to Yoseob and settled his arms around the smaller man’s waist, letting his chin settled on one bony shoulder. He schooled his expression and gave his best ‘man of the house’ voice. “Did you pack us all lunch, dear?”
Yoseob snorted and flopped one hand at his head in a half-hearted smack. “I am not your ‘little woman’, Yoon Doojoon.”
“No, you most certainly aren’t…” Smiling, he nipped at Yoseob’s neck before stepping back and accepting his own breakfast plate.
With a quick glance at the clock, Yoseob went to crouch down next to Cheon. “Hey, sweetie, you still need to brush your teeth, right? And pick out a jacket to wear with this dress?”
The little girl sighed, looking quite put upon. “I’m not a baby, you know. You can just say you need to talk to Daddy and Papa.”
Yoseob smiled and ruffled her hair. “You’re absolutely right. You’re not a baby and I’m sorry for treating you like one. Do you mind if I talk to your Daddy and Papa?”
“No.” She shook her head and stood up, pausing for a moment. “Can I call you Yopa? Like Soonlee does?”
The blonde swallowed and dipped his head, the same shy hesitance on his face that he’d had with Soonlee the night before. “I don’t mind. But you should probably ask Soonlee and your Daddy if that’s okay.”
“Daddy?” She turned immediately to Doojoon, a hopeful look on her face. “Is it?”
He smiled at her. “If it’s all right with Soonlee.”
She beamed. “I’ll ask her at school today. Did you know she goes to my school, Daddy?”
“I’d guessed that, yes.” It hadn’t been explicitly stated, but it hadn’t been all that difficult to figure out. It did open up an entirely new barrel of questions, though, since it seemed like far too much of a coincidence that his daughter just happened to go to the same school as Yoseob’s. Doojoon suspected it was a topic for another day. “Now go brush your teeth.”
As soon as she was gone, Yoseob sighed and moved to settle into her chair. He propped both elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands. “You know we all grew up together. We all had… home issues… and Nana just sort of took us all in, raised us like her own. I mean, technically, I was the only one that actually lived with her, but,” he glanced sideways at Gikwang before looking up at Doojoon and shrugged. “Most nights at least half of the others stayed over too. Nana was the one who made sure we all stayed in school and graduated, that we didn’t end up in the gangs or, in Gayoon’s case, in some whorehouse somewhere. We were a family.”
He gave a wry sounding laugh. “A highly dysfunctional family maybe, but a family, regardless.”
“You still are.”
Yoseob nodded and looked away. He shifted back and let his hands settle on the table, palm up. “I love Gayoon and she loves me, but… we were never in love. She, Hyunseung, and I… We were the ones who weren’t too sure what we wanted, ya know? But it’s easier when you know you’re not the only one trying to figure it out and we were... safe. Which is important when you’re fourteen and confused. When we got older it was just for fun, killing time til we found someone we wanted to be with."
"Junhyung was always in love with Gayoon." Gikwang's voice was careful, devoid of censure, though Doojoon knew him well enough to know it was there, just under the surface.
Apparently Yoseob knew it too. He snorted and rolled his eyes. "Junhyung was as confused as we were just about other things. And it was hardly my fault that he was never willing to speak up about it." He took a deep breath and made an obvious effort not to dwell on what looked like an old argument. “We didn’t really do it much anymore after we enlisted. Hyunseung is a year older, so he went first. Junhyung has a medical condition… He exempted out and stayed here. And still didn’t say anything while Gayoon bounced around between boyfriends.”
He gave Gikwang a pointed look that his friend avoided.
Yoseob just sighed and shook his head. “I don’t… I don’t actually remember it, but apparently the last time we were in Seoul on leave, she’d just broken up with a real asshole and was looking for comfort. She ended up pregnant.”
“I remember that.” Gikwang’s voice was soft, hesitant as he began tracing the pattern of the tablecloth, refusing to look up. “We all wanted to kill him, but she wouldn’t let us.”
“Hyunseung dealt with him a few years ago.”
Gikwang’s expression tightened into something that could have been disapproval or savage satisfaction or some combination of both and Doojoon wondered just how bad this guy had really been and what he’d done to Gayoon if even Gikwang had wanted him dead. “Good.”
They shared a look of perfect understanding and Yoseob nodded before taking the tale back up. “Right, so… She ended up pregnant with Soonlee, but I shipped back out before she found out. And then, this,” he flicked a finger at his scar “happened.”
“Why didn’t she just wait?”
Yoseob sighed and shook his head. “They thought I was dead, Kwangie. Why did you think no one bothered to hunt you down when you cut ties? You didn’t exactly hide.”
Gikwang looked stricken. “I … How-”
“Clerical error.” Yoseob rolled his eyes and made a face. “Some idiot had me on the list of fatalities from that last mission.” His expression tightened, shadowed with sadness and regret. “They left you alone because they thought you were too heartbroken over my death to face them. They wanted to give you time to grieve before forcing contact. They figured… if it hit them as hard as it had, then you…”
He swallowed hard and glanced at Doojoon. “We’d been inseparable since we were three. Him disappearing like that… even without a body, they never even questioned the military.”
“I didn’t know,” Gikwang muttered, burying his face in his hands, looking as miserable as he sounded.
Yoseob went on as if he hadn’t said anything. “The ones left over got closer. Junhyung and Gayoon married the day Soonlee was born.” He cut off Gikwang’s attempt to interrupt. “They were never going to lie to her about me. Gayoon and Nana made her a memory box and a special photo album and you know Nana. Even if they’d wanted to, she wouldn’t have let me be forgotten.”
His hands were shaking slightly and Doojoon reached out to cover them with one of his own. Yoseob gave him a small smile, tangling their fingers together. “So they found out when you came home?”
“No,” Yoseob shook his head and sighed. “Nana says… she couldn’t let go without a body to bury. She started making calls, trying to find my commander, hoping someone could tell her what they’d done with me. She was about to give up and have Hyunseung come see Gikwang to find out what he knew about it when she finally got ahold of Sarge. He’d been keeping tabs on me since no one else was. I think he felt sorry for me, no family, no friends, just… It wasn’t an easy recovery and my memory was spotty at best in the beginning. He didn’t realize there’d been any kind of mistake and he was… God he was so pissed. I’m pretty sure the yeoman who signed off on the paperwork without physical confirmation is cleaning toilets in Antarctica.”
It wasn’t an easy recovery.
Doojoon’s grip tightened. He couldn’t even imagine what Yoseob must have gone through and to go through it essentially alone. He wondered how much was being glossed over with the simple words. He wondered if he’d ever know or if that was something that Yoseob would keep to himself forever.
Yoseob wrapped his other hand around Doojoon’s and stared at them. “Soonlee was almost a year old the first time I met her.” A faint smile curled on the edges of his lips. “She was so… small. Just this tiny little thing. I didn’t want anything to do with her. It took Junhyung and Gayoon months of bullying me before I’d even hold her.”
“Seobie-”
There was bitter resignation twisted under Yoseob’s soft huff of laughter. “What business did a monster have tainting such a perfect, precious scrap of life?”
“You’re not a monster, Yoseob.” Doojoon reached out to tilt Yoseob’s chin up, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Please tell me you don’t actually believe that.”
For a moment it was all there for him to see, the pain and loneliness, the bitter fear and anger, years of betrayed confusion. Then it was masked under Yoseob’s usual control again. “I had no idea what I’d done, but my brother had abandoned me over it. What else was I supposed to think?”
“Seobie…” Gikwang’s voice was soft as set a hesitant hand on Yoseob’s shoulder. The mercenary tensed slightly, but didn’t move away or shrug off the hand. “I’m sorry.”
Yoseob just sighed and relaxed slightly before shaking his head. “You did what you thought you had to do. I already forgave you. Just… you can’t get pissy about what decisions you think we should have made. You don’t have that right. You weren’t there.” He turned to grab Gikwang’s hand as his friend jerked away as if he’d been scalded. “I’m not saying that to hurt you or rub it it. It’s just… it’s the way it is. Your decisions had consequences for the rest of us and we did the best we could. You don’t get to second guess the way things turned out.”
“Daddy?” Cheon’s head peeked around the corner of the door. Doojoon wondered how long she’d been standing there, waiting for a good moment to break in before finally giving up and interrupting. “I’m going to be late for school…”
“You won’t,” Yoseob promised as he pulled Gikwang into a rough, one arm hugged before pushing him away and standing up. “I guarantee that I’ll get you there on time.”
Doojoon followed, alarmed. “Hey, she’s already been in one car accident! Late is okay. Late is great.”
Yoseob’s laugh was shaky, but it was genuine. He scooped up their lunches and began herding everyone towards the door. There was little evidence of their conversation left on his face. “Don’t worry, Doojoonie. I’m a professional~”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Doojoon grumbled as he locked the door behind them.
~*~*~
on to Chapter 10