#11. DBSK [Yunho/Changmin]
Fandom: DBSK
Title: Love is Blind (The Obsession Remix)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s)/Focus: HoMin
Length: 4300 words
Summary: Not all stories have a happy ending. The princess doesn't always ride off into the sunset with her white knight. Sometimes, there is only a bad situation, and a bad person, and a very unfortunate love story.
Warnings: TRIGGER WARNING! character death, obsessive/stalkerish thoughts and actions, emotional/sexual manipulation, and a very unhealthy personal relationship
Notes: Holy shit, this story ran away with me. All the thanks and love to my beta/cheerleader who must temporarily remain nameless. Seriously wouldn't have finished this fic without her.
Remixee author: jesusluvsjaeho
Title of work you remixed: Quietly Kill for You
Link to work you remixed: http://jesusluvsjaeho.livejournal.com/41819.html
At sixteen, Changmin discovers that his favorite color is red.
The first person is an accident. Mostly. He grows up on the wrong side of town, so when he and some friends find a gun, it’s not a big surprise. When that gun turns out to be loaded, it’s only slightly more surprising.
They are all laughing and joking, horsing around and pretending to shoot each other. When something in Changmin’s brain says that ‘pretending’ isn’t as fun as ‘doing,’ he goes along with it. That surprises everyone but him. It especially surprises the one on the ground, all bright red blood and wide, dead eyes.
They’ve all had their share of run-ins with the law, though, so none of them want to admit to any part in what happened. They hide the body and forget, easy enough to do when any one of them could have ended up dead by someone else’s hands at pretty much any time, anyway.
But Changmin doesn’t forget. He can’t. He can’t forget how easy it was, so easy to earn that rush, that thrill of someone’s life in his hands and gone in a moment. By the time he’s twenty, he’s attracted attention of the worst sort, on both sides of the law.
That’s how he meets one Jung Yunho, chaebol and mafia heir all in one.
But that’s getting ahead of the story. By the time he’s twenty and attracting all sorts of attention, Changmin has already realized something very important, practically vital. Everyone deserves to die. Everyone. It’s as simple as that, and the only reason they don’t is that most people never learn to flip that switch from ‘pretending’ to ‘doing’ like Changmin had.
The only reason Changmin himself doesn’t die, even if he deserves it as much or more than most people, is that he’s better than them. Better at not getting caught, better at staying one step ahead in the game, better at just not being dead. Better. Maybe even the best. Not bad for a hobby.
And it is a hobby. All the work he does giving people what they deserve is just something to pass the time. His day job is as a clerk in a convenience store. He has plenty of regulars, and every one of them thinks they’re special, because he greets them every time they come in, remembers them, listens to them. They think he knows all their names.
Really, he remembers them by why he thinks they deserve to die. The man who comes in every morning for cigarettes and the paper cheats on his wife of forty years and thinks no one notices. That woman beats her child. The pack of kids from the school up the road talk too loudly and too much. They deserve it just for the blessed silence it would bring.
That’s probably how Yunho’s father’s lackeys, and therefore Yunho’s father, and eventually Yunho himself find him. He’s at work. It’s the weekend, so the store is busy. Two men come in, ones Changmin doesn’t know yet, doesn’t know why they should die yet, but he gets his answer soon enough.
The two men paint the store red with his regulars’ blood. Changmin isn’t sure he would have fought back, even if he could, but he can’t, because he doesn’t bring a gun to work. The temptation would be too great. In a matter of minutes, these two have done all his work for him. It’s almost like an early Christmas gift.
Changmin is smiling vaguely when they finally turn to him. ‘Well done,’ he says.
That confuses them. Probably, no one has ever congratulated them on doing such a good job. That isn’t Changmin’s problem, though. He leans against his counter. ‘Was that supposed to be a message?’ He isn’t stupid, after all. He knows people don’t like him. No one likes death.
Of course it is a message, even if they try to pretend otherwise since he’s already guessed. He gets in the car with them easily enough. Too hard to explain why he just went back to minding the store, if he didn’t. They don’t even think to lock the doors. Either he’s unsettled them enough to make them stupid, or they’re stupid all on their own. He thinks it’s probably the latter. That makes this a highly offensive slight as well as a message, and one he’ll remember.
He’s made to change cars and walk and change cars again until no one could possibly connect the car that drove away from a horrific scene at a back-alley convenience store with the one that drives onto the Jung Estate. Not that anyone would. If anyone has the money to buy the police, he’s sure it’s this man.
He’s taken into a dark room and forced to kneel, a gun suddenly pressed against the back of his head. Obviously, they’re either going to kill him or make him an offer he’d be a fool to refuse. Since they could have easily killed him without all this pomp and circumstance, he’s fairly positive it’s the latter. So, of course, he doesn’t refuse.
It’s three months after that when he finally meets Jung Yunho, aforementioned chaebol and mafia heir. They’re at a party. Changmin is playing bodyguard this time, one of his least favorite assignments, because everyone knows there are people watching, so no one gives him the slightest cause to use the brand new gun strapped across his chest.
He’s moved up the ranks quickly to be at this party, as a guard or otherwise. Mostly, it’s because of his ability to keep his mouth shut and get his job done. Partially, it’s because he’s good at making sure people higher up than him tend to have unfortunate accidents that can’t be traced back to him. It’s all because he’s simply the best there is.
He’s seen Yunho around before, at various parties or functions with his father. Only the completely legal ones. Rumor has it that the Jung heir couldn’t want less to do with his father’s side business. Changmin doesn’t know why anyone would waste an opportunity like that, but everyone is sure he’ll come around once he gets done being squeamish about things.
What this all means for Changmin, though, is that when one Jung Yunho, slightly tipsy and aiming for more than slightly, bumps into him at the party Changmin has been assigned to, he only recognizes him vaguely. Changmin is only a bodyguard to him, and never one that Yunho has dealt with directly. Only a bodyguard, not a hitman or a murderer or any of the other things Changmin might be called. Practically an innocent, really. Yunho smiles.
The things Changmin notices at that instant are threefold. First, the general awareness that one Jung Yunho, chaebol and mafia heir, was more than born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has never wanted for a single thing in his entire life, things Changmin couldn’t have even imagined wanting as a child, including companionship. He’s used to people, men and women, flinging themselves at his feet at the slightest indication he might want them there. Changmin does not fling himself at anyone’s feet.
Second, Jung Yunho has a very nice smile. Changmin thinks he might not even notice that it’s an invitation for flinging. If he does, he’s very good at hiding it.
Third, Changmin may have to rethink his stance regarding said flinging.
Eventually, as it becomes obvious that, no, that smile has no idea what it implies, Changmin finds himself wanting to make sure it isn’t used on anyone but him. Just in case. As he has spent a good deal more time lately making sure people don’t notice him than that they do, he also finds himself in a bit of difficulty.
Five parties and two art exhibition openings later, that difficulty remains. He likes his job well enough now that it’s not a hobby anymore, and that’s the only thing that keeps him from pulling any of his guns on any of the airheads, male or female, that follow Yunho around at these events. They’re like a cloud of flies eclipsing the sun, and he’s very nearly had enough, job or no job. Luckily, before he can act on any improper impulses, Yunho stumbles into him again. He’s clear-eyed this time, and it’s a much more deliberate stumble, but the smile is the same, and Changmin falls for it just as badly.
He greets Changmin by name, and Changmin has only a moment to wonder how someone like Yunho could notice someone like him before Yunho continues to explain that his father has mentioned him, has said he’s good at his job, and in fact highly recommended him.
If Changmin didn’t know better, he’d think he was being flattered. He pretends not to know better, just for a minute.
His father has also said that he might be needing a more personal set of guards, Yunho continues, although the smile disappears when he does. His father’s business, he hesitates, waiting for Changmin to fill in the blanks. Changmin doesn’t. Well, business is picking up, and of course his father worries, so would Changmin consider a more permanent position than the odd jobs he does now?
Not that Changmin considers his current occupation to be ‘doing odd jobs,’ but he supposes it could look like that to someone who has only seen him being bored while young socialites dance and mingle and display all their faults in such a tempting manner. Hardly surprising. But this, this is a golden opportunity on a silver platter, one he’d be a fool to turn down, and Changmin is certainly no fool. Besides, he’s sure it will be easy enough to take a few of those ‘odd jobs’ on the side.
‘Sure,’ he says, and grins when Yunho’s smile comes back. ‘Where do I sign?’
Not that there are any formal signatures or paperwork or health benefits. His sort of job is better handled off the record. Still, he and Yunho settle in fairly well, he thinks. They get along, practically right from the start. He listens to Yunho in most things, and Yunho listens to him when he says something is too dangerous or stupid or ‘is your head so far up your rich ass that you can’t see how asinine this behavior is?’ It’s a good relationship, a working relationship, but that isn’t nearly enough.
Now that he’s with Yunho more of the time, he can see exactly why Yunho doesn’t want anything to do with his father’s business. He’s a good person, a good man, he practically spends his weekends rescuing kittens. He’ll make an amazing CEO some day, but a terrible mafia boss. He doesn’t understand necessity when it stares him in the face.
Like the death of his first girlfriend. Yunho doesn’t see like Changmin does that she is only using him. Oh, she flirts and giggles and hangs all over him whenever people are watching and parts her legs like a whore whenever they aren’t, but Changmin sees. He sees that she’s just as happy to do exactly that for anyone with a thousand won to throw her way.
So he arranges for her to... stop.
Yunho is upset, deeply upset, bereaved even. He goes to the funeral, and Changmin is right there at his side, arm around his shoulder in patient, silent, support. He’ll give it a few days. Surely, Yunho will see he can do better.
But Yunho doesn’t, not really. He moves on, but it’s to more of the same, and Changmin is forced to intervene time and again over the next few months. Some of them are smart enough that he just scares them off, but he’s not squeamish about taking care of the ones that won’t take a hint. He even relishes it, because they deserve it for reaching beyond themselves. Just like he’s always known, everyone deserves to die, it’s just the reason that makes a difference.
Yunho, unfortunately, assumes the violence is because of his father and his father’s less than legal activities. He grows more distant from his family than before. On the positive side, it drives him to grow closer to Changmin at the same time. He sees Changmin as a friend more than anything, and while that isn’t nearly enough, it’s a good start.
They are coming home from the movies, the first time Yunho actually sees Changmin kill someone. For once, it’s in self-defense, the mugger not thinking that someone who looks and dresses like Changmin could possibly have a gun under his shirt. But he does, and he knows how to use it, and Yunho doesn’t seem to have known exactly how much blood could come out of a human body, which is really a shame, Changmin decides. Yunho would probably be gorgeous in red.
By the time Changmin has checked them both for any errant blood spatters, herded Yunho into his car, and driven them both back to Yunho’s apartment, Yunho is well on his way into shock. Changmin vaguely remembers that you might be supposed to slap people who are in shock, but after the display with the would-be-mugger, he thinks perhaps it wouldn’t be the best idea.
So he kisses Yunho, instead.
It’s not exactly planned, but he thinks it works. Yunho’s certainly not shocked about the mugging, anymore. ‘I’m supposed to protect you, aren’t I? So don’t be surprised when I do,’ he tells Yunho, watching him once they’re safely inside where he can pull out his gun and check it over. He thinks Yunho might want to protest that, so he kisses him again, preemptively, just in case. This time, Yunho kisses him back.
It becomes something of a habit, kissing Yunho. Changmin knows, intellectually, that developing habits and attachments is a bad idea, especially for someone in his profession, and especially when the other half of the habit involves someone in Yunho’s position. On the plus side, it does stop Yunho’s idiotic predilection for dating useless trash.
And while Changmin would never stoop to considering himself possessive by any definition of the word, it does give him something of a higher standard for Yunho’s choice in companions. Not that Yunho has made so many new ones over the last months. He’s developing a reputation, and Changmin is sure it’s a good thing, if Yunho would only look at it the right way.
When Yunho gives him a hundred days gift, he realizes that perhaps the two of them have been thinking of this habit rather differently. It’s something of a paradigm shift, really. Changmin realizes in a split second that, to Yunho at least, Yunho is his, and Changmin rather likes that realization. Some of his surprise must show on his face, though, because Yunho laughs and tells him not to worry about it, he’d figured Changmin was sort of the oblivious type when it came to dates, anyway.
Of course, Changmin isn’t, and his fingers twitch in automatic response, but Yunho’s smiling that flinging-smile again, and this time, Changmin reconsiders.
In fact, he spends a lot of time the next few months reconsidering, his stance not so much changing as developing one giant exception. In college, he’s decided to major in psychology, because he finds it ironic, and because he finds the skills useful, if not in the way he thinks is probably intended.
Yunho’s a dominant personality, so it’s not exactly difficult to pluck at a trait here or a desire there until Yunho is completely wrapped up in what they have. It makes Changmin’s job so much easier. Yunho even comments that none of his friends have died recently, as if he’s surprised. Some tiny part of Changmin feels something resembling guilt for that, but really, it’s all for Yunho’s own good. He doesn’t come right out and tell Yunho that he doesn’t have any friends close enough for Changmin to bother with anymore. It just seems like adding insult to injury.
The first time Changmin brings one of his guns to bed, Yunho is more confused than anything. It isn’t as if Changmin has ever bothered to hide that he thinks of his guns nearly as fondly as he does Yunho. It’s something of a hobby within a hobby, his gun collection. He’s used every one of them at one time or another, and spends a good deal of his free time maintaining and caring for them, as if they were pets or children more than mere objects. He even has that very first gun, lovingly kept all these years. It’s that gun he brings with him now.
Yunho, of course, has no reason to recognize it. Changmin just likes the significance. ‘Relax,’ he leans down and whispers. The gun trails itself down Yunho’s neck, almost with a mind of its own. It’s a sign of Yunho’s trust that he doesn’t do more than twitch. Stupid of him, but endearing. Changmin grins. ‘You need to learn to stop being in charge.’
Naturally, Yunho seems less thrilled than Changmin, attention flitting between Changmin’s face and the gun’s barrel. Is Changmin sure there wouldn’t be a better way to teach him that? The objection dies on his lips when Changmin touches them, just lightly, with one finger. ‘Did I say you got to make decisions?’
They're playing by Changmin's rules this time, and he can feel the exact instant Yunho gives in, gives up, and it's a perfect, heady feeling, like the entire world is at his feet instead of one man. His fingers twitch, wanting this feeling to last forever, but that isn't the point of this. He sets the gun aside, anyway. Just in case.
As Yunho comes undone underneath him, because of him, he realizes with a clarity he's never had before that this, this man and this sight and this feeling, are his and no one else's. No one else deserves this. No one else.
Later, Changmin watches Yunho sleep, watches the gun catch the dim light from its position on the pillow next to Yunho's head. He reaches over, nudging it until it points at the two of them, lining up the perfect shot, and then kisses Yunho awake to start all over again.
That old habit of kissing Yunho becomes a new habit of fucking Yunho whenever the two of them have five minutes alone. Changmin becomes intimately acquainted with the private washroom in Yunho’s office, the backseat of Yunho’s car, the private cabin of his personal jet, and every flat surface in Yunho’s apartment. He starts to resent the people who take Yunho’s time and attention away from him for pointless, petty reasons. He starts making lists again.
They all deserve it, anyway.
He comes home to Yunho frowning at him one day. While there’s no possible way for him to pin anything directly on Changmin, because Changmin is just that good, Changmin knows that Yunho has figured it all out. He’s just waiting for confirmation. A confirmation that Changmin isn’t about to give him. So what if they’re business associates and lawyers and ‘upright’ citizens? Everyone deserves to die for some reason or another. Even Changmin. Even Yunho, probably, although Changmin is becoming less sure of that by the day. Yunho’s frown melts under Changmin hello kiss, though, and neither of them mention a thing.
Unfortunately, getting Yunho to leave his business circles behind proves to be considerably more difficult than his social circles had been. He insists that he has obligations and duties and Changmin would understand if he had ever had so many people in a company depending on him for their livelihood.
Changmin understands. He does. He just doesn’t like other people taking what is his. Which is why he decides to finally put a stop to it, once and for all.
Yunho has always refused his presence at official, professional functions. People can’t be allowed to get the wrong idea, he says. His father keeps his day job very separate from his... other dealings, he says. He won’t need a bodyguard tonight, he says, so Changmin can just stay home and wait for him. He’ll take his secretary as a date, but Changmin knows Ji Yeon, knows she’s as married as they come, so he doesn’t have any reason to worry, right?
Changmin nods, absently, yeses and nos in all the right places. His mind is elsewhere. His job is too big for one person, tonight, so he’s already thinking of all the ways to make sure no one ever says a word about it. How many years has it been, now, and Yunho really still doesn’t understand him at all. Luckily, he understands Yunho perfectly. He understands many things. He takes his favorite gun, his first, as special to him as Yunho, hearing Yunho sigh behind him while he sits at the table to take it apart, clean it, put it back together. Yunho kisses him on the head, whispering a soft goodnight and not to wait up. Changmin nods again.
He gives Yunho ten, twenty, thirty minutes, while he polishes and cleans and reassembles his favorite gun, his beautiful girl. He smiles slightly, amused that, really, if either of them is cheating right now, it’s him, not Yunho. Forty-five minutes after Yunho leaves, fifteen minutes after the function should have started, Changmin follows.
Hours later, Changmin is the first back to Yunho’s apartment. Even taking care of his own business doesn’t delay him half as long as Yunho is held back by police and doctors and whatever hangers-on survived what happened. It’s the price you have to pay, Changmin decides. Far too high a price, of course, but Yunho is bad at making good decisions.
When Yunho does finally stumble home, his eyes are wide, wild, and he knows. He doesn’t know how he knows, but it’s obvious that he does. He may have figured it out before, but it’s impossible to know something you’ve never seen before, just like Changmin never could have known death as he does now until he saw it for himself.
Changmin doesn’t pretend, so he doesn’t bother asking Yunho what’s wrong, or acting as if he has any reason not to know perfectly well why Yunho looks like that. If they both know, what’s the point? ‘You’re home. How’d it go?’
Yunho stares until Changmin gives in and slides out of his chair. Kissing Yunho has always worked before, but this time, Yunho jerks away when he tries. You already know, he says, and it’s true that Changmin does, but Yunho says that as if it really matters. Maybe to Yunho, it does.
‘I do know. You’re better off this way.’ Yunho chokes on something, his tongue, his indignation, his fear, his anger, Changmin doesn’t know. This time, when he tries to kiss Yunho, he succeeds. Something in Yunho is still his, even knowing what he does, and Changmin revels in it. He feels Yunho shudder, and kisses him again before holding him tightly. ‘I love you, Yunho.’ And it’s the first time he’s said it, but not the first time he’s meant it. Yunho is perfect. Yunho is everything he’s ever looked for without knowing what he was trying to find, and Yunho is his, even now.
It takes more coaxing than he’s used to, but Yunho lets himself be undressed and nudged into the shower. Changmin stays there with him, whispering love into his skin until Yunho is as clean and as dirty as he’s ever been. By the time Changmin steers him to the bed, Yunho’s eyes are glazed over in lust as much as shock.
Tonight, Changmin wants to drive Yunho as high as he’s ever been, their world narrowed to fingers and lips and tongues and teeth and skin, skin that Changmin wants to mark every inch of. By the time he gets up to bring his gun back to the bed with him, Yunho doesn’t even open his eyes until Changmin is kissing his way up Yunho’s neck and jaw again. His name is sweet on Yunho’s lips, a quiet, exhausted prayer. ‘Not yet. Not done yet.’
He starts again, drinking in all the little noises and caught breaths and twitches and turns and everything that is so incredibly Yunho, perfect Yunho. Yunho who is the one person in Changmin’s world who deserves everything Changmin could ever give him, including this. He brushes his gun against Yunho’s stomach, overheated skin twitching away from the cold metal, startling another gasp out of Yunho’s mouth, but little other reaction. He trusts Changmin, trusts a game Changmin has played hundreds of times before. It’s a stupid, blind trust that Changmin has only himself to blame for. Yunho deserves better than that.
The gun trails over Yunho’s skin while Changmin presses into him, sometimes ghosting, sometimes scratching hard enough for the sight to leave a mark. Yunho moans, all conscious thought gone in an overload of need and exhaustion and too many thoughts, thoughts that Changmin could protect him from just as well as anyone who wanted things from him, things they didn’t deserve and he shouldn’t have to give.
The gun pauses over Yunho’s heart, but Yunho doesn’t notice. Changmin lines up that perfect shot, just like always, while he fucks Yunho hard enough for both of them to feel it tomorrow, just like always. Yunho’s eyes flutter open. He knows, just like he knew about the massacre. They lock on Changmin, and he takes that as permission.
He pulls the trigger.
At twenty-six, red is still Changmin’s favorite color.
Title: Love is Blind (The Obsession Remix)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s)/Focus: HoMin
Length: 4300 words
Summary: Not all stories have a happy ending. The princess doesn't always ride off into the sunset with her white knight. Sometimes, there is only a bad situation, and a bad person, and a very unfortunate love story.
Warnings: TRIGGER WARNING! character death, obsessive/stalkerish thoughts and actions, emotional/sexual manipulation, and a very unhealthy personal relationship
Notes: Holy shit, this story ran away with me. All the thanks and love to my beta/cheerleader who must temporarily remain nameless. Seriously wouldn't have finished this fic without her.
Remixee author: jesusluvsjaeho
Title of work you remixed: Quietly Kill for You
Link to work you remixed: http://jesusluvsjaeho.livejournal.com/41819.html
At sixteen, Changmin discovers that his favorite color is red.
The first person is an accident. Mostly. He grows up on the wrong side of town, so when he and some friends find a gun, it’s not a big surprise. When that gun turns out to be loaded, it’s only slightly more surprising.
They are all laughing and joking, horsing around and pretending to shoot each other. When something in Changmin’s brain says that ‘pretending’ isn’t as fun as ‘doing,’ he goes along with it. That surprises everyone but him. It especially surprises the one on the ground, all bright red blood and wide, dead eyes.
They’ve all had their share of run-ins with the law, though, so none of them want to admit to any part in what happened. They hide the body and forget, easy enough to do when any one of them could have ended up dead by someone else’s hands at pretty much any time, anyway.
But Changmin doesn’t forget. He can’t. He can’t forget how easy it was, so easy to earn that rush, that thrill of someone’s life in his hands and gone in a moment. By the time he’s twenty, he’s attracted attention of the worst sort, on both sides of the law.
That’s how he meets one Jung Yunho, chaebol and mafia heir all in one.
But that’s getting ahead of the story. By the time he’s twenty and attracting all sorts of attention, Changmin has already realized something very important, practically vital. Everyone deserves to die. Everyone. It’s as simple as that, and the only reason they don’t is that most people never learn to flip that switch from ‘pretending’ to ‘doing’ like Changmin had.
The only reason Changmin himself doesn’t die, even if he deserves it as much or more than most people, is that he’s better than them. Better at not getting caught, better at staying one step ahead in the game, better at just not being dead. Better. Maybe even the best. Not bad for a hobby.
And it is a hobby. All the work he does giving people what they deserve is just something to pass the time. His day job is as a clerk in a convenience store. He has plenty of regulars, and every one of them thinks they’re special, because he greets them every time they come in, remembers them, listens to them. They think he knows all their names.
Really, he remembers them by why he thinks they deserve to die. The man who comes in every morning for cigarettes and the paper cheats on his wife of forty years and thinks no one notices. That woman beats her child. The pack of kids from the school up the road talk too loudly and too much. They deserve it just for the blessed silence it would bring.
That’s probably how Yunho’s father’s lackeys, and therefore Yunho’s father, and eventually Yunho himself find him. He’s at work. It’s the weekend, so the store is busy. Two men come in, ones Changmin doesn’t know yet, doesn’t know why they should die yet, but he gets his answer soon enough.
The two men paint the store red with his regulars’ blood. Changmin isn’t sure he would have fought back, even if he could, but he can’t, because he doesn’t bring a gun to work. The temptation would be too great. In a matter of minutes, these two have done all his work for him. It’s almost like an early Christmas gift.
Changmin is smiling vaguely when they finally turn to him. ‘Well done,’ he says.
That confuses them. Probably, no one has ever congratulated them on doing such a good job. That isn’t Changmin’s problem, though. He leans against his counter. ‘Was that supposed to be a message?’ He isn’t stupid, after all. He knows people don’t like him. No one likes death.
Of course it is a message, even if they try to pretend otherwise since he’s already guessed. He gets in the car with them easily enough. Too hard to explain why he just went back to minding the store, if he didn’t. They don’t even think to lock the doors. Either he’s unsettled them enough to make them stupid, or they’re stupid all on their own. He thinks it’s probably the latter. That makes this a highly offensive slight as well as a message, and one he’ll remember.
He’s made to change cars and walk and change cars again until no one could possibly connect the car that drove away from a horrific scene at a back-alley convenience store with the one that drives onto the Jung Estate. Not that anyone would. If anyone has the money to buy the police, he’s sure it’s this man.
He’s taken into a dark room and forced to kneel, a gun suddenly pressed against the back of his head. Obviously, they’re either going to kill him or make him an offer he’d be a fool to refuse. Since they could have easily killed him without all this pomp and circumstance, he’s fairly positive it’s the latter. So, of course, he doesn’t refuse.
It’s three months after that when he finally meets Jung Yunho, aforementioned chaebol and mafia heir. They’re at a party. Changmin is playing bodyguard this time, one of his least favorite assignments, because everyone knows there are people watching, so no one gives him the slightest cause to use the brand new gun strapped across his chest.
He’s moved up the ranks quickly to be at this party, as a guard or otherwise. Mostly, it’s because of his ability to keep his mouth shut and get his job done. Partially, it’s because he’s good at making sure people higher up than him tend to have unfortunate accidents that can’t be traced back to him. It’s all because he’s simply the best there is.
He’s seen Yunho around before, at various parties or functions with his father. Only the completely legal ones. Rumor has it that the Jung heir couldn’t want less to do with his father’s side business. Changmin doesn’t know why anyone would waste an opportunity like that, but everyone is sure he’ll come around once he gets done being squeamish about things.
What this all means for Changmin, though, is that when one Jung Yunho, slightly tipsy and aiming for more than slightly, bumps into him at the party Changmin has been assigned to, he only recognizes him vaguely. Changmin is only a bodyguard to him, and never one that Yunho has dealt with directly. Only a bodyguard, not a hitman or a murderer or any of the other things Changmin might be called. Practically an innocent, really. Yunho smiles.
The things Changmin notices at that instant are threefold. First, the general awareness that one Jung Yunho, chaebol and mafia heir, was more than born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has never wanted for a single thing in his entire life, things Changmin couldn’t have even imagined wanting as a child, including companionship. He’s used to people, men and women, flinging themselves at his feet at the slightest indication he might want them there. Changmin does not fling himself at anyone’s feet.
Second, Jung Yunho has a very nice smile. Changmin thinks he might not even notice that it’s an invitation for flinging. If he does, he’s very good at hiding it.
Third, Changmin may have to rethink his stance regarding said flinging.
Eventually, as it becomes obvious that, no, that smile has no idea what it implies, Changmin finds himself wanting to make sure it isn’t used on anyone but him. Just in case. As he has spent a good deal more time lately making sure people don’t notice him than that they do, he also finds himself in a bit of difficulty.
Five parties and two art exhibition openings later, that difficulty remains. He likes his job well enough now that it’s not a hobby anymore, and that’s the only thing that keeps him from pulling any of his guns on any of the airheads, male or female, that follow Yunho around at these events. They’re like a cloud of flies eclipsing the sun, and he’s very nearly had enough, job or no job. Luckily, before he can act on any improper impulses, Yunho stumbles into him again. He’s clear-eyed this time, and it’s a much more deliberate stumble, but the smile is the same, and Changmin falls for it just as badly.
He greets Changmin by name, and Changmin has only a moment to wonder how someone like Yunho could notice someone like him before Yunho continues to explain that his father has mentioned him, has said he’s good at his job, and in fact highly recommended him.
If Changmin didn’t know better, he’d think he was being flattered. He pretends not to know better, just for a minute.
His father has also said that he might be needing a more personal set of guards, Yunho continues, although the smile disappears when he does. His father’s business, he hesitates, waiting for Changmin to fill in the blanks. Changmin doesn’t. Well, business is picking up, and of course his father worries, so would Changmin consider a more permanent position than the odd jobs he does now?
Not that Changmin considers his current occupation to be ‘doing odd jobs,’ but he supposes it could look like that to someone who has only seen him being bored while young socialites dance and mingle and display all their faults in such a tempting manner. Hardly surprising. But this, this is a golden opportunity on a silver platter, one he’d be a fool to turn down, and Changmin is certainly no fool. Besides, he’s sure it will be easy enough to take a few of those ‘odd jobs’ on the side.
‘Sure,’ he says, and grins when Yunho’s smile comes back. ‘Where do I sign?’
Not that there are any formal signatures or paperwork or health benefits. His sort of job is better handled off the record. Still, he and Yunho settle in fairly well, he thinks. They get along, practically right from the start. He listens to Yunho in most things, and Yunho listens to him when he says something is too dangerous or stupid or ‘is your head so far up your rich ass that you can’t see how asinine this behavior is?’ It’s a good relationship, a working relationship, but that isn’t nearly enough.
Now that he’s with Yunho more of the time, he can see exactly why Yunho doesn’t want anything to do with his father’s business. He’s a good person, a good man, he practically spends his weekends rescuing kittens. He’ll make an amazing CEO some day, but a terrible mafia boss. He doesn’t understand necessity when it stares him in the face.
Like the death of his first girlfriend. Yunho doesn’t see like Changmin does that she is only using him. Oh, she flirts and giggles and hangs all over him whenever people are watching and parts her legs like a whore whenever they aren’t, but Changmin sees. He sees that she’s just as happy to do exactly that for anyone with a thousand won to throw her way.
So he arranges for her to... stop.
Yunho is upset, deeply upset, bereaved even. He goes to the funeral, and Changmin is right there at his side, arm around his shoulder in patient, silent, support. He’ll give it a few days. Surely, Yunho will see he can do better.
But Yunho doesn’t, not really. He moves on, but it’s to more of the same, and Changmin is forced to intervene time and again over the next few months. Some of them are smart enough that he just scares them off, but he’s not squeamish about taking care of the ones that won’t take a hint. He even relishes it, because they deserve it for reaching beyond themselves. Just like he’s always known, everyone deserves to die, it’s just the reason that makes a difference.
Yunho, unfortunately, assumes the violence is because of his father and his father’s less than legal activities. He grows more distant from his family than before. On the positive side, it drives him to grow closer to Changmin at the same time. He sees Changmin as a friend more than anything, and while that isn’t nearly enough, it’s a good start.
They are coming home from the movies, the first time Yunho actually sees Changmin kill someone. For once, it’s in self-defense, the mugger not thinking that someone who looks and dresses like Changmin could possibly have a gun under his shirt. But he does, and he knows how to use it, and Yunho doesn’t seem to have known exactly how much blood could come out of a human body, which is really a shame, Changmin decides. Yunho would probably be gorgeous in red.
By the time Changmin has checked them both for any errant blood spatters, herded Yunho into his car, and driven them both back to Yunho’s apartment, Yunho is well on his way into shock. Changmin vaguely remembers that you might be supposed to slap people who are in shock, but after the display with the would-be-mugger, he thinks perhaps it wouldn’t be the best idea.
So he kisses Yunho, instead.
It’s not exactly planned, but he thinks it works. Yunho’s certainly not shocked about the mugging, anymore. ‘I’m supposed to protect you, aren’t I? So don’t be surprised when I do,’ he tells Yunho, watching him once they’re safely inside where he can pull out his gun and check it over. He thinks Yunho might want to protest that, so he kisses him again, preemptively, just in case. This time, Yunho kisses him back.
It becomes something of a habit, kissing Yunho. Changmin knows, intellectually, that developing habits and attachments is a bad idea, especially for someone in his profession, and especially when the other half of the habit involves someone in Yunho’s position. On the plus side, it does stop Yunho’s idiotic predilection for dating useless trash.
And while Changmin would never stoop to considering himself possessive by any definition of the word, it does give him something of a higher standard for Yunho’s choice in companions. Not that Yunho has made so many new ones over the last months. He’s developing a reputation, and Changmin is sure it’s a good thing, if Yunho would only look at it the right way.
When Yunho gives him a hundred days gift, he realizes that perhaps the two of them have been thinking of this habit rather differently. It’s something of a paradigm shift, really. Changmin realizes in a split second that, to Yunho at least, Yunho is his, and Changmin rather likes that realization. Some of his surprise must show on his face, though, because Yunho laughs and tells him not to worry about it, he’d figured Changmin was sort of the oblivious type when it came to dates, anyway.
Of course, Changmin isn’t, and his fingers twitch in automatic response, but Yunho’s smiling that flinging-smile again, and this time, Changmin reconsiders.
In fact, he spends a lot of time the next few months reconsidering, his stance not so much changing as developing one giant exception. In college, he’s decided to major in psychology, because he finds it ironic, and because he finds the skills useful, if not in the way he thinks is probably intended.
Yunho’s a dominant personality, so it’s not exactly difficult to pluck at a trait here or a desire there until Yunho is completely wrapped up in what they have. It makes Changmin’s job so much easier. Yunho even comments that none of his friends have died recently, as if he’s surprised. Some tiny part of Changmin feels something resembling guilt for that, but really, it’s all for Yunho’s own good. He doesn’t come right out and tell Yunho that he doesn’t have any friends close enough for Changmin to bother with anymore. It just seems like adding insult to injury.
The first time Changmin brings one of his guns to bed, Yunho is more confused than anything. It isn’t as if Changmin has ever bothered to hide that he thinks of his guns nearly as fondly as he does Yunho. It’s something of a hobby within a hobby, his gun collection. He’s used every one of them at one time or another, and spends a good deal of his free time maintaining and caring for them, as if they were pets or children more than mere objects. He even has that very first gun, lovingly kept all these years. It’s that gun he brings with him now.
Yunho, of course, has no reason to recognize it. Changmin just likes the significance. ‘Relax,’ he leans down and whispers. The gun trails itself down Yunho’s neck, almost with a mind of its own. It’s a sign of Yunho’s trust that he doesn’t do more than twitch. Stupid of him, but endearing. Changmin grins. ‘You need to learn to stop being in charge.’
Naturally, Yunho seems less thrilled than Changmin, attention flitting between Changmin’s face and the gun’s barrel. Is Changmin sure there wouldn’t be a better way to teach him that? The objection dies on his lips when Changmin touches them, just lightly, with one finger. ‘Did I say you got to make decisions?’
They're playing by Changmin's rules this time, and he can feel the exact instant Yunho gives in, gives up, and it's a perfect, heady feeling, like the entire world is at his feet instead of one man. His fingers twitch, wanting this feeling to last forever, but that isn't the point of this. He sets the gun aside, anyway. Just in case.
As Yunho comes undone underneath him, because of him, he realizes with a clarity he's never had before that this, this man and this sight and this feeling, are his and no one else's. No one else deserves this. No one else.
Later, Changmin watches Yunho sleep, watches the gun catch the dim light from its position on the pillow next to Yunho's head. He reaches over, nudging it until it points at the two of them, lining up the perfect shot, and then kisses Yunho awake to start all over again.
That old habit of kissing Yunho becomes a new habit of fucking Yunho whenever the two of them have five minutes alone. Changmin becomes intimately acquainted with the private washroom in Yunho’s office, the backseat of Yunho’s car, the private cabin of his personal jet, and every flat surface in Yunho’s apartment. He starts to resent the people who take Yunho’s time and attention away from him for pointless, petty reasons. He starts making lists again.
They all deserve it, anyway.
He comes home to Yunho frowning at him one day. While there’s no possible way for him to pin anything directly on Changmin, because Changmin is just that good, Changmin knows that Yunho has figured it all out. He’s just waiting for confirmation. A confirmation that Changmin isn’t about to give him. So what if they’re business associates and lawyers and ‘upright’ citizens? Everyone deserves to die for some reason or another. Even Changmin. Even Yunho, probably, although Changmin is becoming less sure of that by the day. Yunho’s frown melts under Changmin hello kiss, though, and neither of them mention a thing.
Unfortunately, getting Yunho to leave his business circles behind proves to be considerably more difficult than his social circles had been. He insists that he has obligations and duties and Changmin would understand if he had ever had so many people in a company depending on him for their livelihood.
Changmin understands. He does. He just doesn’t like other people taking what is his. Which is why he decides to finally put a stop to it, once and for all.
Yunho has always refused his presence at official, professional functions. People can’t be allowed to get the wrong idea, he says. His father keeps his day job very separate from his... other dealings, he says. He won’t need a bodyguard tonight, he says, so Changmin can just stay home and wait for him. He’ll take his secretary as a date, but Changmin knows Ji Yeon, knows she’s as married as they come, so he doesn’t have any reason to worry, right?
Changmin nods, absently, yeses and nos in all the right places. His mind is elsewhere. His job is too big for one person, tonight, so he’s already thinking of all the ways to make sure no one ever says a word about it. How many years has it been, now, and Yunho really still doesn’t understand him at all. Luckily, he understands Yunho perfectly. He understands many things. He takes his favorite gun, his first, as special to him as Yunho, hearing Yunho sigh behind him while he sits at the table to take it apart, clean it, put it back together. Yunho kisses him on the head, whispering a soft goodnight and not to wait up. Changmin nods again.
He gives Yunho ten, twenty, thirty minutes, while he polishes and cleans and reassembles his favorite gun, his beautiful girl. He smiles slightly, amused that, really, if either of them is cheating right now, it’s him, not Yunho. Forty-five minutes after Yunho leaves, fifteen minutes after the function should have started, Changmin follows.
Hours later, Changmin is the first back to Yunho’s apartment. Even taking care of his own business doesn’t delay him half as long as Yunho is held back by police and doctors and whatever hangers-on survived what happened. It’s the price you have to pay, Changmin decides. Far too high a price, of course, but Yunho is bad at making good decisions.
When Yunho does finally stumble home, his eyes are wide, wild, and he knows. He doesn’t know how he knows, but it’s obvious that he does. He may have figured it out before, but it’s impossible to know something you’ve never seen before, just like Changmin never could have known death as he does now until he saw it for himself.
Changmin doesn’t pretend, so he doesn’t bother asking Yunho what’s wrong, or acting as if he has any reason not to know perfectly well why Yunho looks like that. If they both know, what’s the point? ‘You’re home. How’d it go?’
Yunho stares until Changmin gives in and slides out of his chair. Kissing Yunho has always worked before, but this time, Yunho jerks away when he tries. You already know, he says, and it’s true that Changmin does, but Yunho says that as if it really matters. Maybe to Yunho, it does.
‘I do know. You’re better off this way.’ Yunho chokes on something, his tongue, his indignation, his fear, his anger, Changmin doesn’t know. This time, when he tries to kiss Yunho, he succeeds. Something in Yunho is still his, even knowing what he does, and Changmin revels in it. He feels Yunho shudder, and kisses him again before holding him tightly. ‘I love you, Yunho.’ And it’s the first time he’s said it, but not the first time he’s meant it. Yunho is perfect. Yunho is everything he’s ever looked for without knowing what he was trying to find, and Yunho is his, even now.
It takes more coaxing than he’s used to, but Yunho lets himself be undressed and nudged into the shower. Changmin stays there with him, whispering love into his skin until Yunho is as clean and as dirty as he’s ever been. By the time Changmin steers him to the bed, Yunho’s eyes are glazed over in lust as much as shock.
Tonight, Changmin wants to drive Yunho as high as he’s ever been, their world narrowed to fingers and lips and tongues and teeth and skin, skin that Changmin wants to mark every inch of. By the time he gets up to bring his gun back to the bed with him, Yunho doesn’t even open his eyes until Changmin is kissing his way up Yunho’s neck and jaw again. His name is sweet on Yunho’s lips, a quiet, exhausted prayer. ‘Not yet. Not done yet.’
He starts again, drinking in all the little noises and caught breaths and twitches and turns and everything that is so incredibly Yunho, perfect Yunho. Yunho who is the one person in Changmin’s world who deserves everything Changmin could ever give him, including this. He brushes his gun against Yunho’s stomach, overheated skin twitching away from the cold metal, startling another gasp out of Yunho’s mouth, but little other reaction. He trusts Changmin, trusts a game Changmin has played hundreds of times before. It’s a stupid, blind trust that Changmin has only himself to blame for. Yunho deserves better than that.
The gun trails over Yunho’s skin while Changmin presses into him, sometimes ghosting, sometimes scratching hard enough for the sight to leave a mark. Yunho moans, all conscious thought gone in an overload of need and exhaustion and too many thoughts, thoughts that Changmin could protect him from just as well as anyone who wanted things from him, things they didn’t deserve and he shouldn’t have to give.
The gun pauses over Yunho’s heart, but Yunho doesn’t notice. Changmin lines up that perfect shot, just like always, while he fucks Yunho hard enough for both of them to feel it tomorrow, just like always. Yunho’s eyes flutter open. He knows, just like he knew about the massacre. They lock on Changmin, and he takes that as permission.
He pulls the trigger.
At twenty-six, red is still Changmin’s favorite color.