SBB 2016 ENTRY #4: Half Awake In Our Fake Empire (1/2)
Title: Half awake in our fake empire
Pairing: OnKey, JongTae, platonic MinKey
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama, Inception AU
Warnings: suicide (but only in the context of killing oneself to wake up from a dream)
Final Word Count: 14,437 words
Here’s the thing: Kibum likes being the architect.
He has an eye for detail, for picking out the best parts of the world around him and building it all back up in the dreamscape. He never mixes up the dream world with reality, never builds places from his personal memory, and prides himself on his practicality and creativity.
Sometimes, though, he considers it a burden, the constant need to create new mazes, new worlds, new places among the limits and constraints of the dreamscape. He tires of paradoxes, of Escher steps and tight corners, of never truly being able to design freely for fear that the subconscious will catch up to him and destroy him and all the work he’s done.
He never intended to go into the illegal dream stealing field, always intended it to be a fun pastime until he got swept up in his own greed and ambition and decided foolishly that he would turn his favorite hobby into a job.
---
“Just leave it,” Kibum says, irritably, shoving his head under his pillow to muffle the sound.
“I can’t,” Jinki says, apologetically. “It’s the work phone.”
Kibum covers his ears, still under the pillow, as Jinki gropes around on the nightstand for his cell phone. It’s the default ringtone, as Jinki has never cared to change it and couldn’t even be bothered to learn how, and it irritates Kibum to no end.
“Hello?” Kibum hears Jinki say, and then that’s it for several long minutes as the person on the other end of the phone explains something to him. As Jinki listens, Kibum reaches one hand out from under his pillow to play at the fingers on Jinki’s right hand, the one that he’s not currently using to hold the phone up to his ears. Kibum peeks out from under his pillow and sees Jinki flash a quick smile at him, but suddenly that smile falls and Jinki’s fingers still, and Kibum stills too. He knows that look.
Something has gone wrong.
What’s happening? Kibum mouths, and Jinki shakes his head and turns away to focus, a clear sign that it’s indeed something incredibly serious, something that warrants all of Jinki’s attention.
“Is she - oh, Victoria. I’m so sorry. What do you need us to do?” Kibum hears Jinki say. He lifts the pillow from his ears to hear, but the person on the other end of the line is speaking so quietly that he can’t make out much of anything, even with Jinki’s phone volume always jacked up to the max.
“All right. Yes. Okay. I’ll let them know.” Jinki is nodding now, and Kibum wants to stay focused but it’s hard with him not being able to hear one side of the conversation and his clear shot of the nape of Jinki’s neck, which always makes him a little weak.
When Jinki ends the call, Kibum snaps into focus. “What’s going on?” He asks, sitting up straight for the first time that morning.
“It was f(x)’s extractor, Victoria,” Jinki says. “They failed a job.”
“F(x) failed their job?” Kibum asks, surprised. That’s never happened before; f(x) has a legendary track record with successful missions.
Jinki nods, looking grim. “They lost one of their members, too - Sulli is gone.”
Kibum’s hand flies up to his mouth, where he chokes back a sudden shocked gasp. “Oh my god. Did she get-”
Jinki nods again. “She got shot in-dream while on heavy sedation for multiple levels and got stuck in limbo. They couldn’t get her out in time.”
“Jesus,” Kibum breathes. He can’t believe she’s gone, remembers the beautiful baby-faced female forger and the smile that they’ll never see again. But that’s the reality of their line of work, and Kibum, as well as f(x), know that as well as anybody. Losses are a dime a dozen in the field, and that’s not even counting the ones outside of dreams, the ones where the companies they work for threaten murder upon failure, and the ones they don’t work for threaten revenge upon success.
It’s tough, and it’s illegal, but someone’s gotta do it.
Speaking of…“What do they need from us?” Kibum asks, swallowing his grief for the moment. There will be time to mourn later.
“They were doing an extraction of SM corp,” Jinki says. “But since they’ve failed, they need us to go in and get the info for them. They would try again, but now they’re down one person, and on top of that SM are after their asses in the real world since they got caught. So they’re lying low until that all gets taken care of.”
“Will f(x) be advising us, then?” Kibum asks. “I assume the information they gathered before their op is fairly current?”
“It is for the most part, but it doesn’t cover the fact that the head of the corporation, Lee Soo Man, has trained projections,” Jinki explains. “For some reason their research overlooked the fact that he’s had dream defense training in the past. That’s what ended up fucking them over.”
“Shit.” Going in knowing about dream defense training is hard enough. Being blindsided by it must’ve just been awful. Kibum can’t even imagine the pure panic they must have all felt upon the realization that Lee’s seemingly harmless projections were armed and ready for their arrival. Trained projections are terrifying - they’re ruthless and infinite, being near-impossible to keep at bay as they just respawn, over and over, until the dreamer wakes up or dies in the dream, whichever comes first. Kibum usually won’t take such a dangerous job unless it’s lucrative, a favor to someone that they owe a hell of a lot from, or both. And as the thought of money hits, he has to ask, “What’s the payment?”
“Worth our while,” Jinki says. “F(x) won’t take any of the money, since they failed - the corp they were originally working for won’t pay them a cent. The only reason why they’re not being followed and killed is because we owe them a favor and they told their corp that we would handle it. That company has graciously decided to pay us what they were going to pay f(x).” Jinki pauses. “And, well. Victoria said it would be worth it for them just to get SM off of their trail. She’s tired of running.”
And I am, too, Jinki doesn’t say, but Kibum hears it anyway. They’ve been doing this for a long time. Sometimes they both think it’s been too long of a time.
“With the money from this job-” Kibum starts.
Onew finishes for him, already knowing what Kibum is going to ask. “-We’ll be able to retire,” he says, and what he says hits them both at once, the realization that they won’t have to keep running anymore, that they can finally be done with this job once and for all.
It’s been nearly a decade of working in the dream extraction business for both of them. Jinki has always been an extractor, leadership coming to him easily, and as long as he can remember, Kibum has been his architect. Jinki’s very first job had forced him to put together a ragtag team of newbies, as he hadn’t yet been well established in the industry. He had gone to local colleges and universities and put out ads, and there Kibum (and, incidentally, his eventual point man Minho) had been. As luck would have it, Jinki and Kibum clicked right away as extractor and architect, and they had worked together from then on.
The connection between the extractor and the architect has always been important in the dream-sharing world. Though the extractor is the one who makes the plans and figures out how they’re all going to be carried out, the architect is the one that sets the scene and builds the stage. They work together in tandem: Jinki explains what he needs, and Kibum creates. Kibum shows Jinki the maze he’s set up, and Jinki works his plan around it. It’s a give and take, a flow and ebb, and it’s something that Jinki and Kibum have perfected over the years, together.
They go straight to work, not even out of bed yet but ready for action. Kibum knows that their first order of business is to contact their point man, and so does Jinki, as he grabs at his phone again to do just that.
“Time to call Minho,” Jinki says, going to put in the man’s number. He’s speed dial #2, and Jinki has almost hit the button when Kibum starts whining.
“Nooooo,” Kibum says. “Do we have to work with Minho? Can’t we call up someone else? Tiffany? Seulgi? Anyone?”
Jinki sighs. “I don’t know why you and Minho have been doing this weird best frenemies thing for so long, but it’s got to stop,” he says. “It’s unprofessional. Minho is my point man.”
“But he’s awful,” Kibum grumbles. “And he probably can’t even take the job. He’s in Helsinki.”
“You keep tabs on him?” Jinki raises his eyebrows and Kibum groans.
“I can’t help that he sends me postcards humble-bragging about all the places he’s going!”
Jinki raises his eyebrows even further, if it’s even possible. “He sends you postcards?”
Kibum groans, falling back onto the bed and putting a pillow over his face. “I hate this,” he says, “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
Jinki just sounds amused, at this point, and Kibum hates him a little for it. “I’m going to call him whether you talk to me or not.”
“Okay, okay, call him, just - don’t tell him I’m on the op, too.”
“What? Come on, Kibum. Everyone knows you’re my architect. What will I do if he asks?”
“He won’t ask. Not until you meet him in person, anyway,” Kibum says. “And if he does, lie. Tell him it’s Kyuhyun or something.”
“He’ll never believe that,” Jinki says.
Kibum huffs a sigh, falling back down onto his pillow and throwing one arm over his face dramatically. “I know,” he says. “But what can I do? I’m irresponsible.”
Jinki laughs from the other side of the bed. “You guys’ relationship is so weird.”
Kibum resents Jinki for saying it, but it’s kind of true. His and Minho’s relationship is pretty weird.
---
They had known each other in high school, but had run in very different circles - the only thing they had in common was that they loved dream-sharing.
Since dream-sharing has always been something typically passed down from mentors (for example, Kibum had learned from his grandmother, from whom he’d gotten his first dream-sharing unit, called a PASIV) and generally kept a secret outside of the dream-sharing community, having two dream-sharers in one school was a pretty big coincidence.
Kibum remembers the first time he met Minho, back in freshman year. They had hated each other almost immediately, Kibum not fond of the sports crowd and Minho not liking Kibum’s flippant attitude towards him.
But then one day Kibum discovers that Minho also knows the ways of the dream-sharing world, and everything changes.
It happens in Kibum and Minho’s shared chemistry class, one morning their sophomore year. They’re doing an experiment, and to each other’s immense displeasure, the teacher had forced them to become lab partners for the semester, meaning they needed to sit next to each other, do classwork together, and most importantly of all, carry out all laboratory experiments in coordination with one another.
Kibum’s doing all the work, as he’d expected, but it’s not because Minho is slacking off, to his surprise (well, there must be a reason why he and Minho are in the same advanced chem class, after all, but Kibum hadn’t thought about that). Kibum is following the teacher’s instructions to the letter, but Minho is making a concoction of his own.
He’s not messing around, though, or trying to make things blow up, to Kibum’s knowledge. In fact, Minho has his eyebrows furrowed and is completely focused on his task, mixing together some chemicals that Kibum is very familiar with himself. It takes a few minutes for Kibum to realize that the reason why he knows these ones specifically is because of his experience with dream-sharing.
Before Kibum can say or do anything to confirm his suspicions, though, Minho does it for him, muttering under his breath. “If I add this compound, then I’d be more heavily sedated, but I wouldn’t feel the kick, so I wouldn’t be able to wake myself up,” Minho says to himself, looking at a compound in his right hand and the mixture in his left. “What should I do…?”
“You have to add this compound here,” Kibum says without thinking, tapping at one of the small vials at the lab station. “Leaves your in-ear fluidity intact, making it so that you’ll feel the loss of balance, even in-dream.”
Minho looks up at Kibum sharply, and Kibum suddenly realizes that he’s just outed himself. But then Minho smiles, and says, “You, too, huh?”
Kibum swallows. “Yeah. Me too.”
From then on, they have an uneasy friendship, filled with arguments and petty competition but also with amazing shared dreams. Kibum has a knack for creativity but Minho has a knack for technique, and the two would often combine their talents to create extensive maps and dream levels, honing their techniques together. They also learn how to deal with fights in the real world: after they fought, if it was Kibum’s fault, Kibum would buy Minho a soccer jersey. If it was Minho’s fault, Minho would buy Kibum a purse. They have always been a fickle pair, but in the end, they get along.
And when Minho starts out as a point man in the illegal dream extraction business, doing research for teams and coordinating and schmoozing, he pulls Kibum along with him, giving every group he works with recommendations for Kibum and dragging Kibum along to every job that needs an architect. And then they both meet Jinki, and it’s all history from there.
---
Blinking himself out of his past with Minho, Kibum flaps a hand at Jinki. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just call him already.”
“Fine, fine.” Jinki hits the speed dial, and Kibum can hear the line ringing on the other end. Minho picks up after exactly three rings, just like he always does.
Jinki always has the volume up so loud on his phone that Kibum can hear Minho pick up, his brisk phone greeting of “Choi Minho” coming out clearly over the line.
“Minho, it’s me,” Jinki says.
“Jinki hyung! Hello. What do you need from me? It’s late here,” Minho laughs, and he sounds delighted to be hearing from Jinki.
“We’ve got a new job. It’s a big one this time.”
“Yeah? Who’s the mark?” Minho asks.
“SM,” Jinki replies, and Minho gives a low whistle.
“Shit, that is a big one,” Minho says. “Why such a big corp? Who’s going up against them?”
“A rival pharmaceutical.” Jinki takes a breath before continuing. “And f(x). They lost Sulli to the SM op.”
Minho is quiet on the other end. Jinki understands. It’s not how he would’ve chosen to hear the news, either. But this kind of thing is unavoidable in their line of work.
“I see,” Minho says, finally, after a long silence. “SM has it coming, then.”
“Yes. Are you up for it?”
“Of course,” Minho answers, right away. “What do you need?”
“Get us a headquarters first. We’ll meet first thing tomorrow morning. Can you do it?”
“Easily,” Minho says, and Kibum rolls his eyes at the confidence. But even he knows that Minho will absolutely get the job done.
“We’ll see you there, then,” Jinki replies, and Kibum winces when he hears the “we.”
“All right,” Minho says, seemingly having missed the plurality of Jinki’s statement. “I’ll text you the address tonight. You still in Seoul?”
Jinki gives his affirmation, then they hang up. He turns to Kibum and quirks a smile. “One more job.”
Kibum tries to smile back. The anxiety that he always gets when he and Jinki go on a dangerous job together has started to eat at him again, and he attempts to tamp it down. “One more job.”
---
When they arrive at the warehouse building that Minho has chosen for the team to work out of, the point man is already there.
“Minho,” Jinki says, in greeting, warm and friendly.
“Jinki,” Minho returns, similarly warmly, before sliding his eyes over to Kibum, who enters the room behind Jinki. His smile slips into an irritated slant of the lips. “Kibum.”
Kibum can almost feel Jinki side-eyeing him from where he’s standing. He knows as well as anyone about Kibum and Minho’s long history of somewhat friendly antagonism. They live to squabble, though they work together well and in the end they would even call each other good friends.
Kibum rolls his eyes. “It’s good to see you too, Minho.”
“Did you get my postcards?” Minho asks, somewhat smugly, and before Kibum can slide back a bitter quip in response, Jinki says, “Let’s get to work.”
Minho and Kibum both snap to attention. They know Jinki’s no-nonsense voice when they hear it, and it always reminds them why he’s their planner, their extractor, their leader.
So they sit in some chairs that they find and arrange in a haphazard circle, and they begin.
---
“We’ve worked with Victoria’s team before,” Jinki says, and Kibum remembers that mission, remembers the all-female team and the near-perfect extraction that came along with it. “They did us a big favor then, so this time, we’re going to pay it back.”
“What does it entail?” Minho asks, always the one on top of things.
“Routine extraction, shouldn’t be anything harder than that,” Jinki says. “It needs a few levels, though. SM knows us too well already. We need to trick him into giving us the information himself, make it seem like we’re working with him when we’re really working against him. This’ll take more than the standard dream within a dream.”
“I’ll call Taemin,” Minho says, immediately catching on. “We’ll need a good chemist so the dreams don’t collapse at every disturbance.”
“Perfect,” Jinki says. “Will Jonghyun be with him?”
This is where Kibum cuts in. “Not this time,” Kibum says. “I got a postcard from Jonghyun about a month back. He’s taking some time off in Greece.”
“Away from Taemin?” Minho raises his eyebrows. “From what I’ve heard, Taemin is currently in the states.”
“Away from Taemin,” Kibum confirms.
“-Regardless of where Jonghyun is,” Jinki interrupts, turning a stern eye towards both Kibum and Minho, “We’ll need to call him in. Having a forger is integral to this job.”
“I’ll do that tonight,” Minho says, and Jinki makes a noise of affirmation.
“Thank you, Minho. Now for the logistics: how are we going to get him asleep? Is he up for any medical operations or long travel in the near future?”
Kibum snaps his fingers. “Cross-continental train ride,” he says, and Minho nods at him, albeit a bit grudgingly. “Lee takes them biweekly to get to business meetings in Tokyo. They last over nine hours - just the amount of time we need.”
“Good,” Jinki says, nodding sharply. “The perfect opportunity. Minho,” he says, turning to the point man, “Make sure we can buy out the train car and the conductor, along with any attendants working that day. We’ll need their full cooperation.”
“I’ll check the train’s company,” Minho confirms. “Shouldn’t be too much of a problem with the budget that SM’s opposing pharmaceutical is giving us.”
“While you do that, I need you to check in on Lee’s projection training. That’s what fucked over f(x), and I’m not going to let it ruin this job for us, too. I need to know who did it, the extent of the training, what exactly it entailed and how bad it’ll be for us in-dream.”
“Got it. I know a guy,” Minho replies.
Jinki nods again, and says, “That’s enough for now. I’ll set up the warehouse with everything we need. Kibum, you’ll be helping me with that. Minho, I’ll leave you to your research.” He stands, and the other two stand as well.
It’s time to get ready for the job.
---
Minho researches his marks differently than other teams.
Other teams focus on the objective: they hack government files, do online searches, bribe media outlets.
Minho prefers to focus on the personal.
He’s always been a good networker, his honest face and polite charms making him the ideal schmoozer. He can get in anywhere, anytime, with just a smile.
It’s good, too, that he has talent in this field, because it gives their extraction team a good reputation, in turn getting them more high-profile jobs. SHINee is known for being professional, personable, and always in-sync, and part of that is the good face that Minho gives them in areas outside of their work. They’re well-regarded in the dream extraction world, Minho especially, and he’s glad for that, especially for cases like this one, where he needs info fast.
“I need to ask a favor,” Minho says, having given one of his connections a call.
“What do you need?” It’s Yunho, the head of a two-person team specializing in inceptions. “You did me and Changmin a big favor last time by giving us an in to YG,” he says. “We’ll give you whatever info you’re looking for.”
“I need to know who did the dream protection training for Lee Soo Man. We’re running an op on him soon.”
To Minho’s surprise, Yunho answers almost immediately. He was maybe expecting Yunho to ask him to wait so he can check out some files or search through his (fairly extensive) database, but as soon as the words are out of Minho’s mouth, Yunho says, “Lee Soo Man? That one’s easy.” He laughs, and it’s nice and familiar, even over the phone. “That was me and Changmin.”
“That’s good,” Minho says. “It makes it easier for us, then.”
Minho catches Yunho’s snort through the phone. “Oh, yeah, for sure. The reason why I remember his training so well at all was because of how shit he was at it. The dude is smart, but he has so little control over his subconscious that it’s truly awe-inspiring. His projections are militarized, sure, but they’re so weak one of your SHINee guys could probably take out five of them on his own. The only way they’d land a shot on you is if you stood right in front of one of their guns or if they managed to get one-in-a-million lucky.” Yunho pauses a little, Minho assuming to allow himself to think, and then finishes with, “the one you’ll really have to look out for, though, is Lee’s head of security. You’d have to keep him out of the dream.”
This is the kind of information Minho’s looking for, the kind of insight that he would never have been able to find out through any other means. “What do you mean? You mean he goes into dreams with Lee?” This is the first Minho has ever heard of such a thing.
“Oh, yeah, for sure,” Yunho says. “The guy is always with Lee, he even checks on him when he’s sleeping to make sure he’s not hooked up to anything. So if he is, the guy hooks himself in too, in order to protect Lee’s subconscious - he knows it’s weak.”
“So we’ll have to incapacitate him in some way,” Minho says.
“Precisely. But you’ll also need someone to impersonate him - this is really important. If Lee ever catches on that he’s in a dream, or if you’re gonna be convincing him that he is, he’s going to expect his head of security there. You’ve got a good forger, if I remember correctly?” Yunho asks.
“Yeah, yeah. If I can get ahold of him.”
“Make sure you do that. Do you need anything else?”
“Could you send over the complete report for the training you did? We’d really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” Yunho says. “Same PO Box as always?”
“You know me,” Minho replies, amicably but surely. He’s gotten what he’s wanted, but it’s always beneficial to stay in the good graces of one of the dream-stealing world’s biggest extractors.
“Great. Stay safe, Minho.”
“Always.”
They exchange pleasantries, and then Minho hangs up the phone, though he doesn’t put it down.
He still has lots of calls to make.
---
When Taemin hears his phone ring at an ungodly hour, he looks at the caller ID and almost doesn’t pick up the phone. But then he thinks of how bored he’s been lately, and decides that it’ll be worth it to see what kind of job he might be offered this time.
As soon as Taemin brings the cell phone up to his ear, he doesn’t even have time to say hello before he hears a very familiar voice say, “We need you.”
Taemin clicks his tongue. “Minho,” he purrs into the phone. “You, Kibum, and Jinki finally muster up the balls to ask me to join your weird, kinky threesome? Awesome.”
Taemin can almost see Minho’s bewildered and exasperated expression through the phone. “What? We don’t have a - we’re not in a - what the hell, Taemin. No. I’m calling to offer you a job.”
“What sort of job?” Taemin asks, sitting up and crossing his legs. It must be important, for Minho to call his personal cell.
“Extraction,” Minho says.
“Come on, you can do better than that.”
“Three levels. We’re going up against SM.”
Taemin blinks twice and then smiles. “There you go. Tell me more.”
“It’s a takedown and revenge mission all in one. We’re going to trick SM into thinking we’re working with him, steal his info, and then leave. Quick and easy, if you’ll agree.”
“Who’s your forger?” Taemin asks, trying to pretend like the answer to this isn’t going to make or break his decision to join the team for the op, trying to pretend like he doesn’t want the answer to be what he knows it’s already going to be.
“I’m calling Jonghyun right after I hang up with you,” Minho says, and Taemin hopes Minho didn’t catch the way his breath caught as soon as the name Jonghyun was out of his mouth, hopes he didn’t notice but knows that he did anyway (noticing things is Minho’s job, after all).
“All right,” Taemin says. “Good. That’s - that’s good.”
“So, are you in?”
Taemin swallows before answering. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m in.”
“Great. Want me to call Jonghyun, or do you want to do it yourself?”
This time, Taemin doesn’t hesitate before answering. “You. Definitely you.”
He hangs up, doesn’t even wait for a reply, knowing that Minho will send him any pertinent information soon. It’s just - it’s been too long.
Uneasily, he falls back onto his pillows and tries to go back to sleep, phone still clutched to his chest, wondering how Jonghyun is doing.
---
Jonghyun wouldn’t really call himself a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
That’s how he’s known in the dream world, but really, he thinks it’s more the other way around.
The persona he plays in his dreams is always a little too cocky, a little too sure, a little too bad boy for who Jonghyun really is as a person.
So he’s not technically a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s more of a sheep in wolf’s clothing. If that’s even a thing.
People often ask him why he’s in the business, why he, with his strong moral compass, had decided to become a high-profile criminal. But he’s never thought of himself in that way, never really thought he was doing anything that bad.
The people he goes after are never the common folk, those who work hard day in and day out to support their families. It’s always corrupt government officials, scheming CEOs, the true scum of humanity, in Jonghyun’s opinion. And taking from them, from the big companies - what’s truly the harm? They’re just helping take down a corrupt system anyways, one company at a time. Like Robin Hood.
---
Jonghyun’s never really been good with reality.
He loses himself in his mind a lot, can’t remember if he’s in the real world or in a dream, keeps his totem close to his chest so he can constantly remind himself that yes, this is reality, yes, this is real.
And when he gets the call from Minho, it’s one of those times, when he’s not sure what’s real or what’s fake but at least this time he knows because Minho has never featured very prominently in his dreams.
He jumps at the opportunity to accept the job, and even after Minho tells him that Taemin will be on it he doesn’t back down. It’s time to see the other man again, anyways. It’s time.
---
When they all meet at the warehouse, face-to-face and all together for the first time in what seems like forever, it’s like a meeting of old friends. The only ones who had met up recently were Jinki, Kibum, and Minho for their quick debrief and pre-planning session, and now they’re finally ready to finalize their plans with the gang all back together.
The only two who are a little stiff at this reunion are Jonghyun and Taemin, and everyone notices. Everyone else is like usual - Jinki is warm to all, Minho and Kibum are quibbling with each other but otherwise happy to see Jonghyun and Taemin again, but the latter two are very clearly not sure where they stand with each other.
So after the quick greetings and brief catching up, Jinki very succinctly brings Taemin and Jonghyun up to speed with anything they might not yet know, and decides that they would all meet again tomorrow, same time and place, in order to lock things down more fully. They all know he’d rather get it done today, but it’s clear that Jonghyun and Taemin need some time to talk.
After Jinki has dismissed them, he, Kibum, and Minho leave almost immediately, clearing out to God knows where. Their quick dispersion means that Jonghyun and Taemin are left blindsided by the realization that this is the first time they’d been alone in months.
For several very long seconds, all they do is stare at each other, unsure where they stand with one another, until Taemin quirks a smile and says, “Hi, hyung.”
Jonghyun chokes back a sudden sob and rushes forward, reaching out for Taemin in a hug. Taemin returns it, and they wrap their arms around each other, the feeling familiar, the awkwardness of before forgotten.
“Where’ve you been?” Taemin asks, and Jonghyun answers through tears, the force of how much he’s truly missed Taemin suddenly hitting him like a steam train.
“Greece,” he says. “Where were you?”
“America,” Taemin answers, finally letting go of Jonghyun, who’s still shuddering through short little sobs. He pats Jonghyun’s shoulder, smiling. “Did some odd jobs. Just the usual. Extractions, inceptions, dancing-”
“You were dancing?” Jonghyun asks. He’s sobbing even harder now, but Taemin knows it’s out of happiness for him being able to dance, plus the intensity of the emotions that he’s feeling at seeing Taemin again. Taemin understands. He doesn’t cry much, but if he did this would definitely be a pretty good moment for it.
“Yeah,” Taemin says. “Found a good studio, did some backup dance work at concerts and stuff. Not too much. You do any music?”
Jonghyun shook his head. Not in the real world, anyway. “Did do a few jobs here and there, though.”
“Find a better chemist than me?” The question is innocent, but they both know what it really means.
“Nah,” Jonghyun says, smiling wider now. “I could never forget you.”
“Me neither,” Taemin admits, and now that it’s out in the open for both of them, all he feels is relief. He’s glad. He’s really missed Jonghyun, so much more than he thought he would, and has been constantly worried that maybe Jonghyun has found someone else, someone to dream with and take care of and love. But he should’ve known that that was never something Jonghyun was ever going to do.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Jonghyun asks, and Taemin barks out an only slightly bitter laugh.
“Really? Come on, Jonghyun,” Taemin says. He’s dropped the formal speech - he only calls Jonghyun hyung rarely, anyways. “I wasn’t the one who ran away.”
Jonghyun doesn’t say anything, until he says, quietly, “Let’s go home.”
Taemin looks up, quickly. “Our apartment? It’s still-”
“I’ve been paying for it every month. It’s still ours. If you want it.”
“Of course, of course I want it - yes. Yes. Let’s go home.”
---
“Is this safe?” Jonghyun asks, looking down at the vial that Taemin has just handed him. They’d been about to go to bed, but Jonghyun ended up telling Taemin about his inability to sleep without being hooked up to the PASIV, and Taemin conjured up a sedative for him solely from what they’d been able to find in what was left behind in his in-apartment lab all that time ago.
Taemin rolls his eyes. “How many years have I been doing this for you? Of course it’s safe.”
Jonghyun keeps eyeing the concoction, the liquid a vibrant shade of green where in the past it’d been clear. “And it’ll let me sleep?”
“As long as you want to.”
“Without dreaming?”
“Without dreaming.”
“I mean-” Jonghyun pauses, looking down again at the vial in his hands. “It’s just been a long time.”
“It wasn’t my fault that you kept on running away,” Taemin points out.
“I couldn’t - I couldn’t keep on living like that,” Jonghyun says. “I missed the dreaming.”
“I know,” Taemin says. “But I’m here. In reality.”
At this, Jonghyun breathes in sharply and looks up from the vial, taking one hand and pulling Taemin’s chin down, so they’re face to face. He looks him directly in the eye and says, “Just because you’re here doesn’t mean it’s reality.”
Then he lets go and turns away.
Taemin is in complete shock, trying to process the gravity of what Jonghyun has just said to him. “Jonghyun, have you - you’ve been projecting me? Into your dreams?”
Jonghyun nods slowly, still not looking at Taemin.
“Jonghyun, you can’t - why are you doing this?”
Jonghyun doesn’t answer. He’s completely quiet, and Taemin is completely bewildered.
After a long moment of silence, Jonghyun says, quietly, “He’s nothing like you.”
That doesn’t help. “God, Jonghyun. God.” Taemin pulls at his hair, stressfully. He can’t believe that Jonghyun has never told him this before. This is dangerous, this is bad, this is even more serious than he thought it was and he could have sworn just half an hour ago that his and Jonghyun’s situation couldn’t get any worse than it already had been.
Jonghyun is silent again, almost ashamed. One of his hands is clutching tightly at the vial, so tightly that Taemin is afraid it will shatter, and his other is in his pocket, where Taemin knows Jonghyun is running his thumb over the surface of his totem, making sure that yes, this is still the real world.
“What’s happening to you?” Taemin asks, and it breaks his heart to see Jonghyun like this, Jonghyun who used to support him through high school and college and who was always so, so strong in front of him. Taemin has always been younger, but for a second, he feels like he should be the one protecting Jonghyun. Just for a second.
“I don’t know,” Jonghyun says. He finally twists the cap of the vial off and starts sipping at the contents, first slowly but then gulping more fervently as the taste hits his tongue. It’s mint, just the way Jonghyun’s always liked it. Taemin always remembers that Jonghyun won’t drink anything unless it’s flavored to his tastes.
And then Taemin remembers why he started putting Jonghyun on heavy sedation in the first place, to give him dreamless sleep, and he wonders why he ever let himself forget.
---
Taemin never wanted to start making the drug for Jonghyun, never wanted to keep feeding him so much that he became dependent on it for sleep, never wanted this to happen. But he’ll do anything to keep Jonghyun here, with him, in the real world. Anything.
Even if it involves heavily sedating him every time he so much as dozes off.
It starts long before Jonghyun runs away from him, long before they even joined the dream extraction business together. Back when they were first experimenting with dream sharing, just for fun, Jonghyun had already been dangerously attached to all of it.
The dreamscape was a world where Jonghyun could live without fear, could build a house just for his mother and his sister, a nice big mansion he thinks that they always deserved but could never afford. Here Jonghyun can play music with no troubles or consequences, can spend hours where in the real world only minutes pass. This is, for lack of a better word, his dream.
But then they join the dream extraction business, and so many things begin happening all at once, and then they start messing around with limbo.
Taemin ducks out as soon as they first get there, the unending emptiness overwhelming him and forcing him to kill himself repeatedly at each level of the dream in order to wake. He doesn’t want to build there. It doesn’t feel right.
But Jonghyun loves it immediately, sees it as a place of infinite potential, and right then and there, he begins to build.
He builds so much without Taemin knowing that the next time Jonghyun drags him there through the dream levels he’s shocked at how much there is.
What was once a barren place is now filled with buildings, trees, flowers, grass - it’s a paradise, one so Jonghyun that it comforts Taemin immediately.
The first building Taemin sees is a house, and when he asks Jonghyun what it is, he says it’s for the both of them.
So they live there, in that house, for what feels like years. But Taemin never really builds, nothing apart from small things that he tweaks or things he adds on - the main composition is done by Jonghyun. This is their world, but it’s unmistakably one that Jonghyun has created.
As the weeks pass, they begin to count the time. Neither of them are great at math, but they know they haven’t been asleep out in the real world for long. But at this point, neither of them truly care. They’re happy.
They have everything they could want here, food and shelter and the pleasure of each other’s company.
Jonghyun builds Taemin a studio for dancing, and right across the street he constructs a recording studio for himself. We should record a duet, sometime, Jonghyun says, and Taemin agrees readily, still excited about his dance studio. It’s beautiful, and Taemin can spend hours, sometimes days, there.
Jonghyun builds more houses for his mom and his sister, saying that he’d bring them there someday. Taemin thinks nothing of this when Jonghyun originally says it, but later (now) he realizes that Jonghyun is serious about turning limbo into his home, about staying there forever. Taemin kicks himself for not seeing the signs earlier. But they had just been so happy.
They spend years in limbo, the days blurring before them, lazy and content. Reality starts feeling like a dream, and it’s distant, a thought that neither of them want to concern themselves with while they’re here.
But then they wake up.
They’d set an auto-kick on a timer for seven hours, to make sure they’d wake up together (and at all). It had seemed like a great idea at the time - their sleep had been aided by a sedative concocted by Taemin, but it was the first time they’d used it and they still weren’t sure about all the effects yet. They had wanted to be safe.
But as soon as their eyes open in the real world, Taemin regrets it deeply, because he would give anything to not have to be here to see this.
Because as soon as Jonghyun registers where he is, he cries.
He cries an incredible amount, big ugly tears falling down his splotchy, scrunched-up face, utter despair wracking through his body as he shakes through his heaves and sobs.
It was too much for him, Taemin realizes. He wanted to stay forever.
Taemin never really knows what to do when Jonghyun cries, so he just sits there. At one point he rubs Jonghyun’s back, but he doesn’t know how much it helps. All he says is “I’m here, I’m here,” but that doesn’t seem to help Jonghyun at all.
They’d both aged in limbo, both lived through what seemed like a lifetime, and Taemin had known that it wouldn’t last forever but it was clear that this had never occurred to Jonghyun.
Jonghyun is never the same after waking up, and he keeps wanting to go back to limbo, but Taemin won’t let him. They’re never apart from each other in the real world, either, just like in the dream world, and Jonghyun could never, ever resent Taemin, but after Taemin starts secretly sedating Jonghyun so that he won’t have a chance to hook himself up to the PASIV before he sleeps or disconnecting the wires on the off chance Jonghyun does get the opportunity to plug in, he can see the irritation starting to build, until one day, Jonghyun just blows up.
“You can’t keep me away from it forever, you know,” Jonghyun snaps, pulling his arm away from where Taemin is still hanging on, Jonghyun’s wrist in one hand and the wires of the PASIV in the other.
“If I could, I would,” Taemin says, with feeling. He’s never meant anything more.
“Well, you can’t,” Jonghyun replies, and Taemin can see him steeling his expression, trying not to cry, before getting up. “I have a job tomorrow. They need a forger. I’m going.”
“Don’t go into limbo.”
Jonghyun’s poorly-steeled face falls. “I know, I shouldn’t, you’re right, I just-”
“Don’t,” Taemin insists. “I’m here.”
“I know.” Jonghyun smiles sadly, all anger gone now. “Look at that, you making sure I stay safe. It was always the other way around.”
“We protect each other,” Taemin says, making sure Jonghyun understands. “We stay together.”
“We stay safe?” Jonghyun asks.
“We stay alive,” Taemin confirms, and that becomes their mantra from then on, before they leave for any jobs.
Stay safe. Stay alive.
---
As Taemin thinks on everything that’s led up to this moment, Jonghyun’s unsteady voice pulls him back to the present, and the current problem on their hands. “Can you…can you help me?” He’s finally dropping off the sleep, the sedative kicking in. Taemin can hear it in his voice.
“Don’t run away again,” Taemin says, and he means it.
---
The next day, they all meet at the warehouse again, and the atmosphere is a thousand times better than it had been the day before. Jonghyun looks well-rested for the first time in ages and Taemin looks happier than he’s been in a long time. Everyone is grateful that Jinki gave them a day to get all their affairs in order.
But now it’s back to business, and it’s time to work.
Jinki sits them all in a semicircle facing a whiteboard that he has set up in the middle of the room. Here, he’s documented an outline of the mission, in big letters inside circles, everything connected with lines.
“I trust that Minho has briefed you all on this mission’s objective,” Jinki says, and everyone nods. “F(x) has helped us out a lot in the past, and we owe them one now.”
Before Taemin even has a chance to open his mouth, Jinki cuts him off, already knowing his question. “And on top of that, the payment will be enough to keep us all going for a very long time.”
“Nice,” Taemin says, happily, and Jinki rolls his eyes - though he’s amused, as always, and weak for their youngest - before he continues.
“The dream will be three levels. Obviously that many dream levels is unstable, so we’ll all need some very strong, special sedatives to keep us under, but not so strong that we can’t feel any of the kicks when they come. Taemin, that’s where you come in. Do you have any sedatives that fit the bill? They’ll need to put us into a long, stable sleep, but also be receptive to drops and falls.”
“Of course I do, those are a dime a dozen with my stock. But why do we need so many levels?” Taemin asks. “Not that I’m complaining, since I don’t want to be out of a job or whatever, but this seems pretty convoluted for a simple extraction.”
“Lee Soo Man is an incredibly smart man,” Minho cuts in. He has the files that f(x) has given him in his lap, along with the documents sent by Yunho, and he’s been skimming through the papers off and on for the past hour. “He knows a lot of the techniques that extraction teams use to get to you - his training has been incredibly comprehensive. We’re lucky, though - since our team is so well-liked in the industry, thank god, I was able to get ahold of the files for the training that he went through. That, along with the information on f(x)’s botched job, should give us the upper hand we need to take him by surprise.”
“How are we going to do that?” Jonghyun asks.
Jinki winks at him. “That’s where you come in,” he says. “We need your forging skills for this one.”
“I assume you’re not talking about my talents in composition,” Jonghyun says, smiling, and Jinki laughs.
“Well, in a way,” Jinki says. “We need you to impersonate someone.”
“Done and doner,” Jonghyun says. “Who’s the mark? Gender? Race? Age? I’m open to anything.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Kibum mutters under his breath, and Jonghyun shoots him a quick, playfully-offended glare.
At Jonghyun’s question, Jinki turns to Minho to reply, and Minho stands and strides across the circle in order to give Jonghyun one of the files from his own folder.
“Your mark is Lee Soo Man’s head of security,” Minho replies, handing Jonghyun a photo and tapping on the face pictured there. “Asian man, early 30s. Can you do it?”
Jonghyun scoffs. “In my sleep,” he says. “Will I have access to him at all?”
Minho nods briskly.
“Lee Soo Man’s doing a public event in Seoul this weekend,” he says, handing Jonghyun another slip of paper. “His entire security detail is coming with him. I’ve got you a press pass and a staff badge, so use them wisely.” He hands Jonghyun each item as he names them, finally ending with, “And of course, don’t get caught.”
“Not gonna happen,” Jonghyun says, and smiles. “It’s good to be working with you all again.”
Minho smiles back, but Jinki cuts in. “Yes, but don’t get sappy now. There’s a lot of work to do,” he says. “You’ll need to be able to emulate this man perfectly in order to gain Lee’s trust in-dream. That’s huge. It has to look like we’re working with him or else this won’t work.”
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“All right,” Jinki says. “I trust you to get this done.” He looks around at their circle of chairs, where all of them are perched, waiting for direction. “In fact, I trust all of you. I know we’ve worked together for a long time, but it’s been a while since our last job together. This is our official comeback. We’ve got to make it count.”
“What about safety?” Jonghyun asks. “Trained projections are tricky.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to fuck with those.” Taemin backs Jonghyun up immediately. “Isn’t that what got f(x)?”
“F(x) wasn’t aware of Lee’s dream training, but we are,” Minho says. “My contact says they’re also pretty bad. It’s a slim chance of us getting hurt if we’re properly prepared.”
They continue the debrief, but after Minho talks about the “slim chance,” it niggles at Kibum and he has trouble paying attention to the rest.
A slim chance is still a chance, and it bothers Kibum that their last job will be a risky one.
After the rundown of the job, as he and Jinki are going over the layouts of the mazes for each level of the dream, Kibum stops mid-explanation to say, “I don’t feel good about this job.”
“Why not?” Jinki asks. “I feel pretty prepared. You heard what Minho said. There’s only a slim chance anything will go wrong.”
“There’s still a chance, and I don’t like that,” Kibum says.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jinki says. “We’ll be all right. And I’ll make sure nothing happens to any of you.”
This was definitely the wrong thing to say to appease Kibum. “What did you say?” Kibum asks, dangerously.
Jinki gulps. “That I’d make sure nothing-”
“Happens to us? What the fuck, Jinki?”
“All I’m saying is that as long as the four of you are safe, it’s fine-”
“-It’s fine what? If you die? If you’re lost down there in the dream world?” Kibum takes a breath. “Again - what the fuck?”
Jinki sets his jaw and looks away determinedly. “I’ll do anything to keep the four of you safe.”
“That’s - that’s -” It’s not what Kibum wants. It’s not what any of them wants. How does he explain this in words to Jinki? How does he say that Jinki’s self-sacrificing nature is more selfish than selfless? What does he say?
Kibum doesn’t know, so in the end, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he runs.
Jinki doesn’t come after him.
---
Kibum constantly worries about the safety of the mission for the rest of their prep time. They’ve done worse before, they’ve done an inception with three levels and nothing could be more difficult than an inception alone, let alone one that’s so unstable. This is only an extraction. But he still can’t help but be anxious.
So he repeatedly badgers Minho with logistical questions that he already knows the answer to.
“What happens if the dream collapses?”
“It won’t, not if Taemin’s sedatives work. And they will.”
“What if we miss the kick?”
“We won’t. We’re on a timer. Musical cue, you love that stupid Gaga song so that’s what it’s gonna be.”
“But what if we miss the kick?”
“Backup kick from the first level. Taemin will handle it.”
“And if one of us gets injured? SM’s got trained projections.”
“There’s a tiny likelihood of us getting injured badly enough to die in-dream, even with trained projections. We know what’s going on ahead of time, which will give us a leg up. And if anything does happen, bleeding slows when you go down levels.”
“Then what if one of us dies?”
“We go to limbo.”
“What’s up there? What if we get stuck there forever?”
“Whatever anyone sharing the dream has conjured up in limbo in the past, so probably all of Jonghyun’s old shit. And you’ll probably go into a coma in real life. It’s not pretty.”
“But what if-”
At this, Minho finally heaves a loud sigh, whirling around to face Kibum, who has been following him around the ground floor of the office building for the better part of an hour. “Kibum, come on. You know the answers to all these questions already, even better than I do. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing,” Kibum says, looking away and sniffing in faux disdain. “I’m just making sure you know your stuff.”
“Right.” Minho is, of course, unconvinced. After all, they’ve worked together so much that at this point he knows Kibum almost better than Kibum knows himself. “Is something happening with Jinki?”
“No,” Kibum lies.
“Kibum,” Minho says, admonishingly, and Kibum hates how Minho can make him feel like an idiot about his relationship with Jinki, every time.
Kibum decides to amend his answer, figuring he might as well tell Minho the truth. “Yes.”
Minho doesn’t say anything, waiting for Kibum to elaborate. He knows Kibum will eventually. Kibum loves to talk.
“Here’s the thing,” Kibum says. “We all know this mission is more dangerous than we’re pretending it is, and I’m really worried. Jinki is saying he’s ready to like, die for all of us, and I hate it. He shouldn’t have to feel like his life is less important than the rest of ours, I don’t get it, it’s like he thinks it’s so selfless but it’s so selfish. It’s awful, Minho, he’s okay leaving me alone and I can’t - I can’t -”
“You love him,” Minho says, and Kibum rolls his eyes.
“Duh.”
“Then let him do what he wants,” Minho continues. “He’s a grown man. That’s just how Jinki is. You knew that when you got together with him.”
“But it’s awful,” Kibum says, plaintively. “It’s so selfish. He doesn’t understand that with him dead we all might as well be dead too. We all care about him.”
“Don’t you think he knows that? But he’s our leader. He thinks he needs to sacrifice himself for us. That’s his way of loving.” Minho levels a look at Kibum, and his breath catches in his throat. That’s Minho’s serious look. He knows it from a mile away. “So all you have to do is give him a reason not to.”
“What?” Kibum asks.
Minho shrugs. “Give him a reason not to die for you. Make sure the job runs smoothly. Make sure he knows you don’t want to lose him. Whatever. Just do what has to be done.” He turns to walk away, shooting a quick smile at Kibum from over his shoulder. “And you’re selfish, too. Don’t forget that.”
And then Minho walks away, and Kibum wonders just when Minho got so used to giving him and Jinki relationship advice.
---
The night before the op is supposed to take place, before they both go to sleep, Taemin turns to Jonghyun and says, “Be careful.”
Jonghyun breathes out slowly and Taemin can feel Jonghyun’s breath on his neck. “I know,” he says.
“Don’t forget your totem,” Taemin reminds him, gently, and Jonghyun feels like a child.
“I know,” he says again, and then they’re quiet. They need all the rest they can get tonight.
And then, finally, in the moments between dreaming and waking, Jonghyun hears Taemin repeat their mantra, the one they’ve repeated to each other for years, the one that reminds him how much Taemin loves him, too.
“Stay safe. Stay alive.”
And then he’s asleep.
Part Two
Pairing: OnKey, JongTae, platonic MinKey
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama, Inception AU
Warnings: suicide (but only in the context of killing oneself to wake up from a dream)
Final Word Count: 14,437 words
Here’s the thing: Kibum likes being the architect.
He has an eye for detail, for picking out the best parts of the world around him and building it all back up in the dreamscape. He never mixes up the dream world with reality, never builds places from his personal memory, and prides himself on his practicality and creativity.
Sometimes, though, he considers it a burden, the constant need to create new mazes, new worlds, new places among the limits and constraints of the dreamscape. He tires of paradoxes, of Escher steps and tight corners, of never truly being able to design freely for fear that the subconscious will catch up to him and destroy him and all the work he’s done.
He never intended to go into the illegal dream stealing field, always intended it to be a fun pastime until he got swept up in his own greed and ambition and decided foolishly that he would turn his favorite hobby into a job.
---
“Just leave it,” Kibum says, irritably, shoving his head under his pillow to muffle the sound.
“I can’t,” Jinki says, apologetically. “It’s the work phone.”
Kibum covers his ears, still under the pillow, as Jinki gropes around on the nightstand for his cell phone. It’s the default ringtone, as Jinki has never cared to change it and couldn’t even be bothered to learn how, and it irritates Kibum to no end.
“Hello?” Kibum hears Jinki say, and then that’s it for several long minutes as the person on the other end of the phone explains something to him. As Jinki listens, Kibum reaches one hand out from under his pillow to play at the fingers on Jinki’s right hand, the one that he’s not currently using to hold the phone up to his ears. Kibum peeks out from under his pillow and sees Jinki flash a quick smile at him, but suddenly that smile falls and Jinki’s fingers still, and Kibum stills too. He knows that look.
Something has gone wrong.
What’s happening? Kibum mouths, and Jinki shakes his head and turns away to focus, a clear sign that it’s indeed something incredibly serious, something that warrants all of Jinki’s attention.
“Is she - oh, Victoria. I’m so sorry. What do you need us to do?” Kibum hears Jinki say. He lifts the pillow from his ears to hear, but the person on the other end of the line is speaking so quietly that he can’t make out much of anything, even with Jinki’s phone volume always jacked up to the max.
“All right. Yes. Okay. I’ll let them know.” Jinki is nodding now, and Kibum wants to stay focused but it’s hard with him not being able to hear one side of the conversation and his clear shot of the nape of Jinki’s neck, which always makes him a little weak.
When Jinki ends the call, Kibum snaps into focus. “What’s going on?” He asks, sitting up straight for the first time that morning.
“It was f(x)’s extractor, Victoria,” Jinki says. “They failed a job.”
“F(x) failed their job?” Kibum asks, surprised. That’s never happened before; f(x) has a legendary track record with successful missions.
Jinki nods, looking grim. “They lost one of their members, too - Sulli is gone.”
Kibum’s hand flies up to his mouth, where he chokes back a sudden shocked gasp. “Oh my god. Did she get-”
Jinki nods again. “She got shot in-dream while on heavy sedation for multiple levels and got stuck in limbo. They couldn’t get her out in time.”
“Jesus,” Kibum breathes. He can’t believe she’s gone, remembers the beautiful baby-faced female forger and the smile that they’ll never see again. But that’s the reality of their line of work, and Kibum, as well as f(x), know that as well as anybody. Losses are a dime a dozen in the field, and that’s not even counting the ones outside of dreams, the ones where the companies they work for threaten murder upon failure, and the ones they don’t work for threaten revenge upon success.
It’s tough, and it’s illegal, but someone’s gotta do it.
Speaking of…“What do they need from us?” Kibum asks, swallowing his grief for the moment. There will be time to mourn later.
“They were doing an extraction of SM corp,” Jinki says. “But since they’ve failed, they need us to go in and get the info for them. They would try again, but now they’re down one person, and on top of that SM are after their asses in the real world since they got caught. So they’re lying low until that all gets taken care of.”
“Will f(x) be advising us, then?” Kibum asks. “I assume the information they gathered before their op is fairly current?”
“It is for the most part, but it doesn’t cover the fact that the head of the corporation, Lee Soo Man, has trained projections,” Jinki explains. “For some reason their research overlooked the fact that he’s had dream defense training in the past. That’s what ended up fucking them over.”
“Shit.” Going in knowing about dream defense training is hard enough. Being blindsided by it must’ve just been awful. Kibum can’t even imagine the pure panic they must have all felt upon the realization that Lee’s seemingly harmless projections were armed and ready for their arrival. Trained projections are terrifying - they’re ruthless and infinite, being near-impossible to keep at bay as they just respawn, over and over, until the dreamer wakes up or dies in the dream, whichever comes first. Kibum usually won’t take such a dangerous job unless it’s lucrative, a favor to someone that they owe a hell of a lot from, or both. And as the thought of money hits, he has to ask, “What’s the payment?”
“Worth our while,” Jinki says. “F(x) won’t take any of the money, since they failed - the corp they were originally working for won’t pay them a cent. The only reason why they’re not being followed and killed is because we owe them a favor and they told their corp that we would handle it. That company has graciously decided to pay us what they were going to pay f(x).” Jinki pauses. “And, well. Victoria said it would be worth it for them just to get SM off of their trail. She’s tired of running.”
And I am, too, Jinki doesn’t say, but Kibum hears it anyway. They’ve been doing this for a long time. Sometimes they both think it’s been too long of a time.
“With the money from this job-” Kibum starts.
Onew finishes for him, already knowing what Kibum is going to ask. “-We’ll be able to retire,” he says, and what he says hits them both at once, the realization that they won’t have to keep running anymore, that they can finally be done with this job once and for all.
It’s been nearly a decade of working in the dream extraction business for both of them. Jinki has always been an extractor, leadership coming to him easily, and as long as he can remember, Kibum has been his architect. Jinki’s very first job had forced him to put together a ragtag team of newbies, as he hadn’t yet been well established in the industry. He had gone to local colleges and universities and put out ads, and there Kibum (and, incidentally, his eventual point man Minho) had been. As luck would have it, Jinki and Kibum clicked right away as extractor and architect, and they had worked together from then on.
The connection between the extractor and the architect has always been important in the dream-sharing world. Though the extractor is the one who makes the plans and figures out how they’re all going to be carried out, the architect is the one that sets the scene and builds the stage. They work together in tandem: Jinki explains what he needs, and Kibum creates. Kibum shows Jinki the maze he’s set up, and Jinki works his plan around it. It’s a give and take, a flow and ebb, and it’s something that Jinki and Kibum have perfected over the years, together.
They go straight to work, not even out of bed yet but ready for action. Kibum knows that their first order of business is to contact their point man, and so does Jinki, as he grabs at his phone again to do just that.
“Time to call Minho,” Jinki says, going to put in the man’s number. He’s speed dial #2, and Jinki has almost hit the button when Kibum starts whining.
“Nooooo,” Kibum says. “Do we have to work with Minho? Can’t we call up someone else? Tiffany? Seulgi? Anyone?”
Jinki sighs. “I don’t know why you and Minho have been doing this weird best frenemies thing for so long, but it’s got to stop,” he says. “It’s unprofessional. Minho is my point man.”
“But he’s awful,” Kibum grumbles. “And he probably can’t even take the job. He’s in Helsinki.”
“You keep tabs on him?” Jinki raises his eyebrows and Kibum groans.
“I can’t help that he sends me postcards humble-bragging about all the places he’s going!”
Jinki raises his eyebrows even further, if it’s even possible. “He sends you postcards?”
Kibum groans, falling back onto the bed and putting a pillow over his face. “I hate this,” he says, “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
Jinki just sounds amused, at this point, and Kibum hates him a little for it. “I’m going to call him whether you talk to me or not.”
“Okay, okay, call him, just - don’t tell him I’m on the op, too.”
“What? Come on, Kibum. Everyone knows you’re my architect. What will I do if he asks?”
“He won’t ask. Not until you meet him in person, anyway,” Kibum says. “And if he does, lie. Tell him it’s Kyuhyun or something.”
“He’ll never believe that,” Jinki says.
Kibum huffs a sigh, falling back down onto his pillow and throwing one arm over his face dramatically. “I know,” he says. “But what can I do? I’m irresponsible.”
Jinki laughs from the other side of the bed. “You guys’ relationship is so weird.”
Kibum resents Jinki for saying it, but it’s kind of true. His and Minho’s relationship is pretty weird.
---
They had known each other in high school, but had run in very different circles - the only thing they had in common was that they loved dream-sharing.
Since dream-sharing has always been something typically passed down from mentors (for example, Kibum had learned from his grandmother, from whom he’d gotten his first dream-sharing unit, called a PASIV) and generally kept a secret outside of the dream-sharing community, having two dream-sharers in one school was a pretty big coincidence.
Kibum remembers the first time he met Minho, back in freshman year. They had hated each other almost immediately, Kibum not fond of the sports crowd and Minho not liking Kibum’s flippant attitude towards him.
But then one day Kibum discovers that Minho also knows the ways of the dream-sharing world, and everything changes.
It happens in Kibum and Minho’s shared chemistry class, one morning their sophomore year. They’re doing an experiment, and to each other’s immense displeasure, the teacher had forced them to become lab partners for the semester, meaning they needed to sit next to each other, do classwork together, and most importantly of all, carry out all laboratory experiments in coordination with one another.
Kibum’s doing all the work, as he’d expected, but it’s not because Minho is slacking off, to his surprise (well, there must be a reason why he and Minho are in the same advanced chem class, after all, but Kibum hadn’t thought about that). Kibum is following the teacher’s instructions to the letter, but Minho is making a concoction of his own.
He’s not messing around, though, or trying to make things blow up, to Kibum’s knowledge. In fact, Minho has his eyebrows furrowed and is completely focused on his task, mixing together some chemicals that Kibum is very familiar with himself. It takes a few minutes for Kibum to realize that the reason why he knows these ones specifically is because of his experience with dream-sharing.
Before Kibum can say or do anything to confirm his suspicions, though, Minho does it for him, muttering under his breath. “If I add this compound, then I’d be more heavily sedated, but I wouldn’t feel the kick, so I wouldn’t be able to wake myself up,” Minho says to himself, looking at a compound in his right hand and the mixture in his left. “What should I do…?”
“You have to add this compound here,” Kibum says without thinking, tapping at one of the small vials at the lab station. “Leaves your in-ear fluidity intact, making it so that you’ll feel the loss of balance, even in-dream.”
Minho looks up at Kibum sharply, and Kibum suddenly realizes that he’s just outed himself. But then Minho smiles, and says, “You, too, huh?”
Kibum swallows. “Yeah. Me too.”
From then on, they have an uneasy friendship, filled with arguments and petty competition but also with amazing shared dreams. Kibum has a knack for creativity but Minho has a knack for technique, and the two would often combine their talents to create extensive maps and dream levels, honing their techniques together. They also learn how to deal with fights in the real world: after they fought, if it was Kibum’s fault, Kibum would buy Minho a soccer jersey. If it was Minho’s fault, Minho would buy Kibum a purse. They have always been a fickle pair, but in the end, they get along.
And when Minho starts out as a point man in the illegal dream extraction business, doing research for teams and coordinating and schmoozing, he pulls Kibum along with him, giving every group he works with recommendations for Kibum and dragging Kibum along to every job that needs an architect. And then they both meet Jinki, and it’s all history from there.
---
Blinking himself out of his past with Minho, Kibum flaps a hand at Jinki. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just call him already.”
“Fine, fine.” Jinki hits the speed dial, and Kibum can hear the line ringing on the other end. Minho picks up after exactly three rings, just like he always does.
Jinki always has the volume up so loud on his phone that Kibum can hear Minho pick up, his brisk phone greeting of “Choi Minho” coming out clearly over the line.
“Minho, it’s me,” Jinki says.
“Jinki hyung! Hello. What do you need from me? It’s late here,” Minho laughs, and he sounds delighted to be hearing from Jinki.
“We’ve got a new job. It’s a big one this time.”
“Yeah? Who’s the mark?” Minho asks.
“SM,” Jinki replies, and Minho gives a low whistle.
“Shit, that is a big one,” Minho says. “Why such a big corp? Who’s going up against them?”
“A rival pharmaceutical.” Jinki takes a breath before continuing. “And f(x). They lost Sulli to the SM op.”
Minho is quiet on the other end. Jinki understands. It’s not how he would’ve chosen to hear the news, either. But this kind of thing is unavoidable in their line of work.
“I see,” Minho says, finally, after a long silence. “SM has it coming, then.”
“Yes. Are you up for it?”
“Of course,” Minho answers, right away. “What do you need?”
“Get us a headquarters first. We’ll meet first thing tomorrow morning. Can you do it?”
“Easily,” Minho says, and Kibum rolls his eyes at the confidence. But even he knows that Minho will absolutely get the job done.
“We’ll see you there, then,” Jinki replies, and Kibum winces when he hears the “we.”
“All right,” Minho says, seemingly having missed the plurality of Jinki’s statement. “I’ll text you the address tonight. You still in Seoul?”
Jinki gives his affirmation, then they hang up. He turns to Kibum and quirks a smile. “One more job.”
Kibum tries to smile back. The anxiety that he always gets when he and Jinki go on a dangerous job together has started to eat at him again, and he attempts to tamp it down. “One more job.”
---
When they arrive at the warehouse building that Minho has chosen for the team to work out of, the point man is already there.
“Minho,” Jinki says, in greeting, warm and friendly.
“Jinki,” Minho returns, similarly warmly, before sliding his eyes over to Kibum, who enters the room behind Jinki. His smile slips into an irritated slant of the lips. “Kibum.”
Kibum can almost feel Jinki side-eyeing him from where he’s standing. He knows as well as anyone about Kibum and Minho’s long history of somewhat friendly antagonism. They live to squabble, though they work together well and in the end they would even call each other good friends.
Kibum rolls his eyes. “It’s good to see you too, Minho.”
“Did you get my postcards?” Minho asks, somewhat smugly, and before Kibum can slide back a bitter quip in response, Jinki says, “Let’s get to work.”
Minho and Kibum both snap to attention. They know Jinki’s no-nonsense voice when they hear it, and it always reminds them why he’s their planner, their extractor, their leader.
So they sit in some chairs that they find and arrange in a haphazard circle, and they begin.
---
“We’ve worked with Victoria’s team before,” Jinki says, and Kibum remembers that mission, remembers the all-female team and the near-perfect extraction that came along with it. “They did us a big favor then, so this time, we’re going to pay it back.”
“What does it entail?” Minho asks, always the one on top of things.
“Routine extraction, shouldn’t be anything harder than that,” Jinki says. “It needs a few levels, though. SM knows us too well already. We need to trick him into giving us the information himself, make it seem like we’re working with him when we’re really working against him. This’ll take more than the standard dream within a dream.”
“I’ll call Taemin,” Minho says, immediately catching on. “We’ll need a good chemist so the dreams don’t collapse at every disturbance.”
“Perfect,” Jinki says. “Will Jonghyun be with him?”
This is where Kibum cuts in. “Not this time,” Kibum says. “I got a postcard from Jonghyun about a month back. He’s taking some time off in Greece.”
“Away from Taemin?” Minho raises his eyebrows. “From what I’ve heard, Taemin is currently in the states.”
“Away from Taemin,” Kibum confirms.
“-Regardless of where Jonghyun is,” Jinki interrupts, turning a stern eye towards both Kibum and Minho, “We’ll need to call him in. Having a forger is integral to this job.”
“I’ll do that tonight,” Minho says, and Jinki makes a noise of affirmation.
“Thank you, Minho. Now for the logistics: how are we going to get him asleep? Is he up for any medical operations or long travel in the near future?”
Kibum snaps his fingers. “Cross-continental train ride,” he says, and Minho nods at him, albeit a bit grudgingly. “Lee takes them biweekly to get to business meetings in Tokyo. They last over nine hours - just the amount of time we need.”
“Good,” Jinki says, nodding sharply. “The perfect opportunity. Minho,” he says, turning to the point man, “Make sure we can buy out the train car and the conductor, along with any attendants working that day. We’ll need their full cooperation.”
“I’ll check the train’s company,” Minho confirms. “Shouldn’t be too much of a problem with the budget that SM’s opposing pharmaceutical is giving us.”
“While you do that, I need you to check in on Lee’s projection training. That’s what fucked over f(x), and I’m not going to let it ruin this job for us, too. I need to know who did it, the extent of the training, what exactly it entailed and how bad it’ll be for us in-dream.”
“Got it. I know a guy,” Minho replies.
Jinki nods again, and says, “That’s enough for now. I’ll set up the warehouse with everything we need. Kibum, you’ll be helping me with that. Minho, I’ll leave you to your research.” He stands, and the other two stand as well.
It’s time to get ready for the job.
---
Minho researches his marks differently than other teams.
Other teams focus on the objective: they hack government files, do online searches, bribe media outlets.
Minho prefers to focus on the personal.
He’s always been a good networker, his honest face and polite charms making him the ideal schmoozer. He can get in anywhere, anytime, with just a smile.
It’s good, too, that he has talent in this field, because it gives their extraction team a good reputation, in turn getting them more high-profile jobs. SHINee is known for being professional, personable, and always in-sync, and part of that is the good face that Minho gives them in areas outside of their work. They’re well-regarded in the dream extraction world, Minho especially, and he’s glad for that, especially for cases like this one, where he needs info fast.
“I need to ask a favor,” Minho says, having given one of his connections a call.
“What do you need?” It’s Yunho, the head of a two-person team specializing in inceptions. “You did me and Changmin a big favor last time by giving us an in to YG,” he says. “We’ll give you whatever info you’re looking for.”
“I need to know who did the dream protection training for Lee Soo Man. We’re running an op on him soon.”
To Minho’s surprise, Yunho answers almost immediately. He was maybe expecting Yunho to ask him to wait so he can check out some files or search through his (fairly extensive) database, but as soon as the words are out of Minho’s mouth, Yunho says, “Lee Soo Man? That one’s easy.” He laughs, and it’s nice and familiar, even over the phone. “That was me and Changmin.”
“That’s good,” Minho says. “It makes it easier for us, then.”
Minho catches Yunho’s snort through the phone. “Oh, yeah, for sure. The reason why I remember his training so well at all was because of how shit he was at it. The dude is smart, but he has so little control over his subconscious that it’s truly awe-inspiring. His projections are militarized, sure, but they’re so weak one of your SHINee guys could probably take out five of them on his own. The only way they’d land a shot on you is if you stood right in front of one of their guns or if they managed to get one-in-a-million lucky.” Yunho pauses a little, Minho assuming to allow himself to think, and then finishes with, “the one you’ll really have to look out for, though, is Lee’s head of security. You’d have to keep him out of the dream.”
This is the kind of information Minho’s looking for, the kind of insight that he would never have been able to find out through any other means. “What do you mean? You mean he goes into dreams with Lee?” This is the first Minho has ever heard of such a thing.
“Oh, yeah, for sure,” Yunho says. “The guy is always with Lee, he even checks on him when he’s sleeping to make sure he’s not hooked up to anything. So if he is, the guy hooks himself in too, in order to protect Lee’s subconscious - he knows it’s weak.”
“So we’ll have to incapacitate him in some way,” Minho says.
“Precisely. But you’ll also need someone to impersonate him - this is really important. If Lee ever catches on that he’s in a dream, or if you’re gonna be convincing him that he is, he’s going to expect his head of security there. You’ve got a good forger, if I remember correctly?” Yunho asks.
“Yeah, yeah. If I can get ahold of him.”
“Make sure you do that. Do you need anything else?”
“Could you send over the complete report for the training you did? We’d really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” Yunho says. “Same PO Box as always?”
“You know me,” Minho replies, amicably but surely. He’s gotten what he’s wanted, but it’s always beneficial to stay in the good graces of one of the dream-stealing world’s biggest extractors.
“Great. Stay safe, Minho.”
“Always.”
They exchange pleasantries, and then Minho hangs up the phone, though he doesn’t put it down.
He still has lots of calls to make.
---
When Taemin hears his phone ring at an ungodly hour, he looks at the caller ID and almost doesn’t pick up the phone. But then he thinks of how bored he’s been lately, and decides that it’ll be worth it to see what kind of job he might be offered this time.
As soon as Taemin brings the cell phone up to his ear, he doesn’t even have time to say hello before he hears a very familiar voice say, “We need you.”
Taemin clicks his tongue. “Minho,” he purrs into the phone. “You, Kibum, and Jinki finally muster up the balls to ask me to join your weird, kinky threesome? Awesome.”
Taemin can almost see Minho’s bewildered and exasperated expression through the phone. “What? We don’t have a - we’re not in a - what the hell, Taemin. No. I’m calling to offer you a job.”
“What sort of job?” Taemin asks, sitting up and crossing his legs. It must be important, for Minho to call his personal cell.
“Extraction,” Minho says.
“Come on, you can do better than that.”
“Three levels. We’re going up against SM.”
Taemin blinks twice and then smiles. “There you go. Tell me more.”
“It’s a takedown and revenge mission all in one. We’re going to trick SM into thinking we’re working with him, steal his info, and then leave. Quick and easy, if you’ll agree.”
“Who’s your forger?” Taemin asks, trying to pretend like the answer to this isn’t going to make or break his decision to join the team for the op, trying to pretend like he doesn’t want the answer to be what he knows it’s already going to be.
“I’m calling Jonghyun right after I hang up with you,” Minho says, and Taemin hopes Minho didn’t catch the way his breath caught as soon as the name Jonghyun was out of his mouth, hopes he didn’t notice but knows that he did anyway (noticing things is Minho’s job, after all).
“All right,” Taemin says. “Good. That’s - that’s good.”
“So, are you in?”
Taemin swallows before answering. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m in.”
“Great. Want me to call Jonghyun, or do you want to do it yourself?”
This time, Taemin doesn’t hesitate before answering. “You. Definitely you.”
He hangs up, doesn’t even wait for a reply, knowing that Minho will send him any pertinent information soon. It’s just - it’s been too long.
Uneasily, he falls back onto his pillows and tries to go back to sleep, phone still clutched to his chest, wondering how Jonghyun is doing.
---
Jonghyun wouldn’t really call himself a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
That’s how he’s known in the dream world, but really, he thinks it’s more the other way around.
The persona he plays in his dreams is always a little too cocky, a little too sure, a little too bad boy for who Jonghyun really is as a person.
So he’s not technically a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s more of a sheep in wolf’s clothing. If that’s even a thing.
People often ask him why he’s in the business, why he, with his strong moral compass, had decided to become a high-profile criminal. But he’s never thought of himself in that way, never really thought he was doing anything that bad.
The people he goes after are never the common folk, those who work hard day in and day out to support their families. It’s always corrupt government officials, scheming CEOs, the true scum of humanity, in Jonghyun’s opinion. And taking from them, from the big companies - what’s truly the harm? They’re just helping take down a corrupt system anyways, one company at a time. Like Robin Hood.
---
Jonghyun’s never really been good with reality.
He loses himself in his mind a lot, can’t remember if he’s in the real world or in a dream, keeps his totem close to his chest so he can constantly remind himself that yes, this is reality, yes, this is real.
And when he gets the call from Minho, it’s one of those times, when he’s not sure what’s real or what’s fake but at least this time he knows because Minho has never featured very prominently in his dreams.
He jumps at the opportunity to accept the job, and even after Minho tells him that Taemin will be on it he doesn’t back down. It’s time to see the other man again, anyways. It’s time.
---
When they all meet at the warehouse, face-to-face and all together for the first time in what seems like forever, it’s like a meeting of old friends. The only ones who had met up recently were Jinki, Kibum, and Minho for their quick debrief and pre-planning session, and now they’re finally ready to finalize their plans with the gang all back together.
The only two who are a little stiff at this reunion are Jonghyun and Taemin, and everyone notices. Everyone else is like usual - Jinki is warm to all, Minho and Kibum are quibbling with each other but otherwise happy to see Jonghyun and Taemin again, but the latter two are very clearly not sure where they stand with each other.
So after the quick greetings and brief catching up, Jinki very succinctly brings Taemin and Jonghyun up to speed with anything they might not yet know, and decides that they would all meet again tomorrow, same time and place, in order to lock things down more fully. They all know he’d rather get it done today, but it’s clear that Jonghyun and Taemin need some time to talk.
After Jinki has dismissed them, he, Kibum, and Minho leave almost immediately, clearing out to God knows where. Their quick dispersion means that Jonghyun and Taemin are left blindsided by the realization that this is the first time they’d been alone in months.
For several very long seconds, all they do is stare at each other, unsure where they stand with one another, until Taemin quirks a smile and says, “Hi, hyung.”
Jonghyun chokes back a sudden sob and rushes forward, reaching out for Taemin in a hug. Taemin returns it, and they wrap their arms around each other, the feeling familiar, the awkwardness of before forgotten.
“Where’ve you been?” Taemin asks, and Jonghyun answers through tears, the force of how much he’s truly missed Taemin suddenly hitting him like a steam train.
“Greece,” he says. “Where were you?”
“America,” Taemin answers, finally letting go of Jonghyun, who’s still shuddering through short little sobs. He pats Jonghyun’s shoulder, smiling. “Did some odd jobs. Just the usual. Extractions, inceptions, dancing-”
“You were dancing?” Jonghyun asks. He’s sobbing even harder now, but Taemin knows it’s out of happiness for him being able to dance, plus the intensity of the emotions that he’s feeling at seeing Taemin again. Taemin understands. He doesn’t cry much, but if he did this would definitely be a pretty good moment for it.
“Yeah,” Taemin says. “Found a good studio, did some backup dance work at concerts and stuff. Not too much. You do any music?”
Jonghyun shook his head. Not in the real world, anyway. “Did do a few jobs here and there, though.”
“Find a better chemist than me?” The question is innocent, but they both know what it really means.
“Nah,” Jonghyun says, smiling wider now. “I could never forget you.”
“Me neither,” Taemin admits, and now that it’s out in the open for both of them, all he feels is relief. He’s glad. He’s really missed Jonghyun, so much more than he thought he would, and has been constantly worried that maybe Jonghyun has found someone else, someone to dream with and take care of and love. But he should’ve known that that was never something Jonghyun was ever going to do.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Jonghyun asks, and Taemin barks out an only slightly bitter laugh.
“Really? Come on, Jonghyun,” Taemin says. He’s dropped the formal speech - he only calls Jonghyun hyung rarely, anyways. “I wasn’t the one who ran away.”
Jonghyun doesn’t say anything, until he says, quietly, “Let’s go home.”
Taemin looks up, quickly. “Our apartment? It’s still-”
“I’ve been paying for it every month. It’s still ours. If you want it.”
“Of course, of course I want it - yes. Yes. Let’s go home.”
---
“Is this safe?” Jonghyun asks, looking down at the vial that Taemin has just handed him. They’d been about to go to bed, but Jonghyun ended up telling Taemin about his inability to sleep without being hooked up to the PASIV, and Taemin conjured up a sedative for him solely from what they’d been able to find in what was left behind in his in-apartment lab all that time ago.
Taemin rolls his eyes. “How many years have I been doing this for you? Of course it’s safe.”
Jonghyun keeps eyeing the concoction, the liquid a vibrant shade of green where in the past it’d been clear. “And it’ll let me sleep?”
“As long as you want to.”
“Without dreaming?”
“Without dreaming.”
“I mean-” Jonghyun pauses, looking down again at the vial in his hands. “It’s just been a long time.”
“It wasn’t my fault that you kept on running away,” Taemin points out.
“I couldn’t - I couldn’t keep on living like that,” Jonghyun says. “I missed the dreaming.”
“I know,” Taemin says. “But I’m here. In reality.”
At this, Jonghyun breathes in sharply and looks up from the vial, taking one hand and pulling Taemin’s chin down, so they’re face to face. He looks him directly in the eye and says, “Just because you’re here doesn’t mean it’s reality.”
Then he lets go and turns away.
Taemin is in complete shock, trying to process the gravity of what Jonghyun has just said to him. “Jonghyun, have you - you’ve been projecting me? Into your dreams?”
Jonghyun nods slowly, still not looking at Taemin.
“Jonghyun, you can’t - why are you doing this?”
Jonghyun doesn’t answer. He’s completely quiet, and Taemin is completely bewildered.
After a long moment of silence, Jonghyun says, quietly, “He’s nothing like you.”
That doesn’t help. “God, Jonghyun. God.” Taemin pulls at his hair, stressfully. He can’t believe that Jonghyun has never told him this before. This is dangerous, this is bad, this is even more serious than he thought it was and he could have sworn just half an hour ago that his and Jonghyun’s situation couldn’t get any worse than it already had been.
Jonghyun is silent again, almost ashamed. One of his hands is clutching tightly at the vial, so tightly that Taemin is afraid it will shatter, and his other is in his pocket, where Taemin knows Jonghyun is running his thumb over the surface of his totem, making sure that yes, this is still the real world.
“What’s happening to you?” Taemin asks, and it breaks his heart to see Jonghyun like this, Jonghyun who used to support him through high school and college and who was always so, so strong in front of him. Taemin has always been younger, but for a second, he feels like he should be the one protecting Jonghyun. Just for a second.
“I don’t know,” Jonghyun says. He finally twists the cap of the vial off and starts sipping at the contents, first slowly but then gulping more fervently as the taste hits his tongue. It’s mint, just the way Jonghyun’s always liked it. Taemin always remembers that Jonghyun won’t drink anything unless it’s flavored to his tastes.
And then Taemin remembers why he started putting Jonghyun on heavy sedation in the first place, to give him dreamless sleep, and he wonders why he ever let himself forget.
---
Taemin never wanted to start making the drug for Jonghyun, never wanted to keep feeding him so much that he became dependent on it for sleep, never wanted this to happen. But he’ll do anything to keep Jonghyun here, with him, in the real world. Anything.
Even if it involves heavily sedating him every time he so much as dozes off.
It starts long before Jonghyun runs away from him, long before they even joined the dream extraction business together. Back when they were first experimenting with dream sharing, just for fun, Jonghyun had already been dangerously attached to all of it.
The dreamscape was a world where Jonghyun could live without fear, could build a house just for his mother and his sister, a nice big mansion he thinks that they always deserved but could never afford. Here Jonghyun can play music with no troubles or consequences, can spend hours where in the real world only minutes pass. This is, for lack of a better word, his dream.
But then they join the dream extraction business, and so many things begin happening all at once, and then they start messing around with limbo.
Taemin ducks out as soon as they first get there, the unending emptiness overwhelming him and forcing him to kill himself repeatedly at each level of the dream in order to wake. He doesn’t want to build there. It doesn’t feel right.
But Jonghyun loves it immediately, sees it as a place of infinite potential, and right then and there, he begins to build.
He builds so much without Taemin knowing that the next time Jonghyun drags him there through the dream levels he’s shocked at how much there is.
What was once a barren place is now filled with buildings, trees, flowers, grass - it’s a paradise, one so Jonghyun that it comforts Taemin immediately.
The first building Taemin sees is a house, and when he asks Jonghyun what it is, he says it’s for the both of them.
So they live there, in that house, for what feels like years. But Taemin never really builds, nothing apart from small things that he tweaks or things he adds on - the main composition is done by Jonghyun. This is their world, but it’s unmistakably one that Jonghyun has created.
As the weeks pass, they begin to count the time. Neither of them are great at math, but they know they haven’t been asleep out in the real world for long. But at this point, neither of them truly care. They’re happy.
They have everything they could want here, food and shelter and the pleasure of each other’s company.
Jonghyun builds Taemin a studio for dancing, and right across the street he constructs a recording studio for himself. We should record a duet, sometime, Jonghyun says, and Taemin agrees readily, still excited about his dance studio. It’s beautiful, and Taemin can spend hours, sometimes days, there.
Jonghyun builds more houses for his mom and his sister, saying that he’d bring them there someday. Taemin thinks nothing of this when Jonghyun originally says it, but later (now) he realizes that Jonghyun is serious about turning limbo into his home, about staying there forever. Taemin kicks himself for not seeing the signs earlier. But they had just been so happy.
They spend years in limbo, the days blurring before them, lazy and content. Reality starts feeling like a dream, and it’s distant, a thought that neither of them want to concern themselves with while they’re here.
But then they wake up.
They’d set an auto-kick on a timer for seven hours, to make sure they’d wake up together (and at all). It had seemed like a great idea at the time - their sleep had been aided by a sedative concocted by Taemin, but it was the first time they’d used it and they still weren’t sure about all the effects yet. They had wanted to be safe.
But as soon as their eyes open in the real world, Taemin regrets it deeply, because he would give anything to not have to be here to see this.
Because as soon as Jonghyun registers where he is, he cries.
He cries an incredible amount, big ugly tears falling down his splotchy, scrunched-up face, utter despair wracking through his body as he shakes through his heaves and sobs.
It was too much for him, Taemin realizes. He wanted to stay forever.
Taemin never really knows what to do when Jonghyun cries, so he just sits there. At one point he rubs Jonghyun’s back, but he doesn’t know how much it helps. All he says is “I’m here, I’m here,” but that doesn’t seem to help Jonghyun at all.
They’d both aged in limbo, both lived through what seemed like a lifetime, and Taemin had known that it wouldn’t last forever but it was clear that this had never occurred to Jonghyun.
Jonghyun is never the same after waking up, and he keeps wanting to go back to limbo, but Taemin won’t let him. They’re never apart from each other in the real world, either, just like in the dream world, and Jonghyun could never, ever resent Taemin, but after Taemin starts secretly sedating Jonghyun so that he won’t have a chance to hook himself up to the PASIV before he sleeps or disconnecting the wires on the off chance Jonghyun does get the opportunity to plug in, he can see the irritation starting to build, until one day, Jonghyun just blows up.
“You can’t keep me away from it forever, you know,” Jonghyun snaps, pulling his arm away from where Taemin is still hanging on, Jonghyun’s wrist in one hand and the wires of the PASIV in the other.
“If I could, I would,” Taemin says, with feeling. He’s never meant anything more.
“Well, you can’t,” Jonghyun replies, and Taemin can see him steeling his expression, trying not to cry, before getting up. “I have a job tomorrow. They need a forger. I’m going.”
“Don’t go into limbo.”
Jonghyun’s poorly-steeled face falls. “I know, I shouldn’t, you’re right, I just-”
“Don’t,” Taemin insists. “I’m here.”
“I know.” Jonghyun smiles sadly, all anger gone now. “Look at that, you making sure I stay safe. It was always the other way around.”
“We protect each other,” Taemin says, making sure Jonghyun understands. “We stay together.”
“We stay safe?” Jonghyun asks.
“We stay alive,” Taemin confirms, and that becomes their mantra from then on, before they leave for any jobs.
Stay safe. Stay alive.
---
As Taemin thinks on everything that’s led up to this moment, Jonghyun’s unsteady voice pulls him back to the present, and the current problem on their hands. “Can you…can you help me?” He’s finally dropping off the sleep, the sedative kicking in. Taemin can hear it in his voice.
“Don’t run away again,” Taemin says, and he means it.
---
The next day, they all meet at the warehouse again, and the atmosphere is a thousand times better than it had been the day before. Jonghyun looks well-rested for the first time in ages and Taemin looks happier than he’s been in a long time. Everyone is grateful that Jinki gave them a day to get all their affairs in order.
But now it’s back to business, and it’s time to work.
Jinki sits them all in a semicircle facing a whiteboard that he has set up in the middle of the room. Here, he’s documented an outline of the mission, in big letters inside circles, everything connected with lines.
“I trust that Minho has briefed you all on this mission’s objective,” Jinki says, and everyone nods. “F(x) has helped us out a lot in the past, and we owe them one now.”
Before Taemin even has a chance to open his mouth, Jinki cuts him off, already knowing his question. “And on top of that, the payment will be enough to keep us all going for a very long time.”
“Nice,” Taemin says, happily, and Jinki rolls his eyes - though he’s amused, as always, and weak for their youngest - before he continues.
“The dream will be three levels. Obviously that many dream levels is unstable, so we’ll all need some very strong, special sedatives to keep us under, but not so strong that we can’t feel any of the kicks when they come. Taemin, that’s where you come in. Do you have any sedatives that fit the bill? They’ll need to put us into a long, stable sleep, but also be receptive to drops and falls.”
“Of course I do, those are a dime a dozen with my stock. But why do we need so many levels?” Taemin asks. “Not that I’m complaining, since I don’t want to be out of a job or whatever, but this seems pretty convoluted for a simple extraction.”
“Lee Soo Man is an incredibly smart man,” Minho cuts in. He has the files that f(x) has given him in his lap, along with the documents sent by Yunho, and he’s been skimming through the papers off and on for the past hour. “He knows a lot of the techniques that extraction teams use to get to you - his training has been incredibly comprehensive. We’re lucky, though - since our team is so well-liked in the industry, thank god, I was able to get ahold of the files for the training that he went through. That, along with the information on f(x)’s botched job, should give us the upper hand we need to take him by surprise.”
“How are we going to do that?” Jonghyun asks.
Jinki winks at him. “That’s where you come in,” he says. “We need your forging skills for this one.”
“I assume you’re not talking about my talents in composition,” Jonghyun says, smiling, and Jinki laughs.
“Well, in a way,” Jinki says. “We need you to impersonate someone.”
“Done and doner,” Jonghyun says. “Who’s the mark? Gender? Race? Age? I’m open to anything.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Kibum mutters under his breath, and Jonghyun shoots him a quick, playfully-offended glare.
At Jonghyun’s question, Jinki turns to Minho to reply, and Minho stands and strides across the circle in order to give Jonghyun one of the files from his own folder.
“Your mark is Lee Soo Man’s head of security,” Minho replies, handing Jonghyun a photo and tapping on the face pictured there. “Asian man, early 30s. Can you do it?”
Jonghyun scoffs. “In my sleep,” he says. “Will I have access to him at all?”
Minho nods briskly.
“Lee Soo Man’s doing a public event in Seoul this weekend,” he says, handing Jonghyun another slip of paper. “His entire security detail is coming with him. I’ve got you a press pass and a staff badge, so use them wisely.” He hands Jonghyun each item as he names them, finally ending with, “And of course, don’t get caught.”
“Not gonna happen,” Jonghyun says, and smiles. “It’s good to be working with you all again.”
Minho smiles back, but Jinki cuts in. “Yes, but don’t get sappy now. There’s a lot of work to do,” he says. “You’ll need to be able to emulate this man perfectly in order to gain Lee’s trust in-dream. That’s huge. It has to look like we’re working with him or else this won’t work.”
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“All right,” Jinki says. “I trust you to get this done.” He looks around at their circle of chairs, where all of them are perched, waiting for direction. “In fact, I trust all of you. I know we’ve worked together for a long time, but it’s been a while since our last job together. This is our official comeback. We’ve got to make it count.”
“What about safety?” Jonghyun asks. “Trained projections are tricky.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to fuck with those.” Taemin backs Jonghyun up immediately. “Isn’t that what got f(x)?”
“F(x) wasn’t aware of Lee’s dream training, but we are,” Minho says. “My contact says they’re also pretty bad. It’s a slim chance of us getting hurt if we’re properly prepared.”
They continue the debrief, but after Minho talks about the “slim chance,” it niggles at Kibum and he has trouble paying attention to the rest.
A slim chance is still a chance, and it bothers Kibum that their last job will be a risky one.
After the rundown of the job, as he and Jinki are going over the layouts of the mazes for each level of the dream, Kibum stops mid-explanation to say, “I don’t feel good about this job.”
“Why not?” Jinki asks. “I feel pretty prepared. You heard what Minho said. There’s only a slim chance anything will go wrong.”
“There’s still a chance, and I don’t like that,” Kibum says.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jinki says. “We’ll be all right. And I’ll make sure nothing happens to any of you.”
This was definitely the wrong thing to say to appease Kibum. “What did you say?” Kibum asks, dangerously.
Jinki gulps. “That I’d make sure nothing-”
“Happens to us? What the fuck, Jinki?”
“All I’m saying is that as long as the four of you are safe, it’s fine-”
“-It’s fine what? If you die? If you’re lost down there in the dream world?” Kibum takes a breath. “Again - what the fuck?”
Jinki sets his jaw and looks away determinedly. “I’ll do anything to keep the four of you safe.”
“That’s - that’s -” It’s not what Kibum wants. It’s not what any of them wants. How does he explain this in words to Jinki? How does he say that Jinki’s self-sacrificing nature is more selfish than selfless? What does he say?
Kibum doesn’t know, so in the end, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he runs.
Jinki doesn’t come after him.
---
Kibum constantly worries about the safety of the mission for the rest of their prep time. They’ve done worse before, they’ve done an inception with three levels and nothing could be more difficult than an inception alone, let alone one that’s so unstable. This is only an extraction. But he still can’t help but be anxious.
So he repeatedly badgers Minho with logistical questions that he already knows the answer to.
“What happens if the dream collapses?”
“It won’t, not if Taemin’s sedatives work. And they will.”
“What if we miss the kick?”
“We won’t. We’re on a timer. Musical cue, you love that stupid Gaga song so that’s what it’s gonna be.”
“But what if we miss the kick?”
“Backup kick from the first level. Taemin will handle it.”
“And if one of us gets injured? SM’s got trained projections.”
“There’s a tiny likelihood of us getting injured badly enough to die in-dream, even with trained projections. We know what’s going on ahead of time, which will give us a leg up. And if anything does happen, bleeding slows when you go down levels.”
“Then what if one of us dies?”
“We go to limbo.”
“What’s up there? What if we get stuck there forever?”
“Whatever anyone sharing the dream has conjured up in limbo in the past, so probably all of Jonghyun’s old shit. And you’ll probably go into a coma in real life. It’s not pretty.”
“But what if-”
At this, Minho finally heaves a loud sigh, whirling around to face Kibum, who has been following him around the ground floor of the office building for the better part of an hour. “Kibum, come on. You know the answers to all these questions already, even better than I do. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing,” Kibum says, looking away and sniffing in faux disdain. “I’m just making sure you know your stuff.”
“Right.” Minho is, of course, unconvinced. After all, they’ve worked together so much that at this point he knows Kibum almost better than Kibum knows himself. “Is something happening with Jinki?”
“No,” Kibum lies.
“Kibum,” Minho says, admonishingly, and Kibum hates how Minho can make him feel like an idiot about his relationship with Jinki, every time.
Kibum decides to amend his answer, figuring he might as well tell Minho the truth. “Yes.”
Minho doesn’t say anything, waiting for Kibum to elaborate. He knows Kibum will eventually. Kibum loves to talk.
“Here’s the thing,” Kibum says. “We all know this mission is more dangerous than we’re pretending it is, and I’m really worried. Jinki is saying he’s ready to like, die for all of us, and I hate it. He shouldn’t have to feel like his life is less important than the rest of ours, I don’t get it, it’s like he thinks it’s so selfless but it’s so selfish. It’s awful, Minho, he’s okay leaving me alone and I can’t - I can’t -”
“You love him,” Minho says, and Kibum rolls his eyes.
“Duh.”
“Then let him do what he wants,” Minho continues. “He’s a grown man. That’s just how Jinki is. You knew that when you got together with him.”
“But it’s awful,” Kibum says, plaintively. “It’s so selfish. He doesn’t understand that with him dead we all might as well be dead too. We all care about him.”
“Don’t you think he knows that? But he’s our leader. He thinks he needs to sacrifice himself for us. That’s his way of loving.” Minho levels a look at Kibum, and his breath catches in his throat. That’s Minho’s serious look. He knows it from a mile away. “So all you have to do is give him a reason not to.”
“What?” Kibum asks.
Minho shrugs. “Give him a reason not to die for you. Make sure the job runs smoothly. Make sure he knows you don’t want to lose him. Whatever. Just do what has to be done.” He turns to walk away, shooting a quick smile at Kibum from over his shoulder. “And you’re selfish, too. Don’t forget that.”
And then Minho walks away, and Kibum wonders just when Minho got so used to giving him and Jinki relationship advice.
---
The night before the op is supposed to take place, before they both go to sleep, Taemin turns to Jonghyun and says, “Be careful.”
Jonghyun breathes out slowly and Taemin can feel Jonghyun’s breath on his neck. “I know,” he says.
“Don’t forget your totem,” Taemin reminds him, gently, and Jonghyun feels like a child.
“I know,” he says again, and then they’re quiet. They need all the rest they can get tonight.
And then, finally, in the moments between dreaming and waking, Jonghyun hears Taemin repeat their mantra, the one they’ve repeated to each other for years, the one that reminds him how much Taemin loves him, too.
“Stay safe. Stay alive.”
And then he’s asleep.
Part Two