Trust me and just jump for koizoras
For: koizoras
Title: Trust Me and Just Jump
Pairing(s): Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s) Use of guns, nongraphic deaths of minor characters, excessive swearing
Length: 5k
Summary: Baekhyun is a trained mercenary, and one of the best. He does not, will not like some new member coming in to take all of the glory
Author's note: I hope you like this?? It’s not exactly what I thought it would be, but I hope you enjoy.
“Did you hear about the Gardenias?” Kyungsoo asked as soon as his roommate set foot in the door, a bag of takeout clutched in one hand.
“You bringing me flowers, Do?” Baekhyun retorted, voice a little tired, but still lively as he kicked off his shoes.
“You wish,” he snorted, “It’s your favorite person. He left his last target Gardenias.”
By that point, Kyungsoo should have known better than to open the topic, and Baekhyun should have recognized the baiting, but he found his good mood slipping away as the moments passed.
Inhaling, and just kicking off his shoes with little ceremony, Baekhyun grumbled, “In a bank vault, seriously? Who even takes flowers on a heist like that?”
Kyungsoo paused for a moment, then spoke in code. “It wasn’t that kind of target. He took Mr. Kim his dry-cleaning.”
“Seriously?” Baekhyun dropped the food on the table, hands shaking as he fought his need to pace, “And he left flowers. Let me guess, the wife found them?”
His roommate nodded, unable to get words out before Baekhyun ripped open the plastic, his movements vicious.
“He’s infuriating!” Baekhyun spat, nearly spilling their food as he yanked off the cellophane wrappings, “My god, we’re you know, not fucking Mafioso. Who leaves a calling card, if you don’t want to be fucking killed?”
Kyungsoo pursed his lips sympathetically though he didn’t look away from his laptop. He knew better than to try and interject at this point.
“Why do people hire him? He barely even-ugh! Why does he have to be everywhere? You’d think he doesn’t ever go on vacation.”
He could feel his friend’s amusement radiating from him; he had known Kyungsoo nearly as long as his actual family, and had grown to the point where he could anticipate the man’s reactions.
Baekhyun whipped around to stare daggers at his friend. “Do you have something to say?”
Bending his laptop screen a bit back, Kyungsoo glanced up at him, hand raising to adjust his glasses. “I just think it’s funny how you’re the one grilling someone for never taking a vacation. But please, tell me how my family vacation to France went last summer?”
Baekhyun bit his tongue, shot him a fierce look, and Kyungsoo shrugged, “Exactly. And if I’m not wrong,” he turned his attention back down to his laptop, “Didn’t you stay behind for another assignment with Chanyeol?”
“Don’t say his fucking name!” Baekhyun hissed, “That bastard will hear and then suddenly I’ll have him in all of my next cases.”
“So is he Voldemort, Beetlejuice, or both?” His friend quipped, and the only thing that kept Baekhyun from throwing something at him was the knowledge that if he broke something of Kyungsoo’s, that his body would never been seen again.
“That’s not the point. I can’t get away from him!”
“Move?” Kyungsoo frowned at something on screen, “Go to another city. You’re good enough to get a job anywhere.”
“And leave your sorry ass behind? I’m not that heartless.” He went to sink down next to his roommate, grabbing for the television’s remote. He didn’t want to admit it, but the real reason he didn’t want to run, though he would miss Kyungsoo, was that it would seem like Chanyeol would win, so he couldn’t let that happen.
They were mercenaries; hired to the highest payer, willing to get their hands dirty, help all of the real world supervillains with their devious plans, steal things, you name it. Baekhyun had gotten into it after his stint in the military, as most of the law abiding citizens found his skill set to be dishonorable. He came back not only knowing how to fire guns, but how to pick locks, hot wire cars, and find ways into rooms that most people would have no hope of breaching. It wasn’t like he set out to break the law-it just happened to be what he was good at.
People whispered about him; that he was only so good because he was a freak, he had grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth and had been raised to do terrible, horrible things.
That he slept with victims to make his steals.
And then there was Chanyeol; another mercenary who had entered into the field a few months after him, yet had more of the crowd’s approval, even though he wasn’t nearly as good as Baekhyun. At first he thought the sentiment came from being perfectly average, a team player that wouldn’t take your solo assignments. But at the stories spread and took flame, he heard all kinds of ridiculous tales involving sweet talking, being affable and taking what he wanted. The man was a giant, but not intimidating, as his ears stuck out and he was too prone to smiling. And his hands were too big for good pickpocketing. And he was too clumsy to scale buildings.
No; the reason people admired Chanyeol was that he was a dead shot with a gun-dead because even if he didn’t get you right between the eyes, one shot would kill you sure as the sun rises in the morning. People liked him. Or if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be around for much longer.
“That means he’s already tried, or you’re probably safe.” Kyungsoo always teased when Baekhyun really got going, “Can’t let a failed kill get away.”
They both actually had that in common, though: They were both lucky as fuck. Baekhyun had been shot more times than he could count on two hands, but they never crippled him, never put him in the hospital or out of work for long. Chanyeol, he had seen himself, avoided death by sheer chance so many times that it made his own stomach drop, wondering how many times he had ducked at the right time, or hesitated unnecessarily in his own work.
One of their first missions together, when he barely knew the other by name, came in the form of a simple body guarding mission with a large pool of guards. Many of them had fought against each other in the past, but a job was a job. Some professionals might feel uncomfortable now working with the men that might just have been against them the night before, but the truth was much simpler: They worked for hire. If someone got a reputation of betrayal, the heist had either be enough to last a person for the rest of their life, or they would find themselves out a job. People didn’t hire mercenaries they couldn’t trust, and other mercenaries would happily absorb the extra duties. Money was king-that was the business.
So that night, a good 20 of them stood in a boardroom, watching for trouble against the back wall, analyzing the mercenaries on the other side of the room, hired for their client’s hopeful partner. Chanyeol had been absorbed by his side, and with the mask covering his face, he actually looked intimidating.
Twenty minutes later, Baekhyun revoked that thought when he realized the man couldn’t stop fidgeting. He bounced from foot to foot, biceps flexing beneath the padding they all wore, the man reaching up to touch and fix his hair enough times that the guy next to him looked like he would snap at any moment.
Taking pity on the man, he fell to the back of the line when the meeting ended, so he walked in front of Chanyeol while they guided the men out safely.
“You’re Byun, aren’t you?” A voice rumbled from behind him, just loud enough to make Baekhyun wince.
“Hush,” he hissed under his breath.
“Don’t worry. I’ve been to enough of these. It’s not going to go south unless one of us does something stupid.”
Baekhyun blacked out momentarily from the sheer irony, then snorted, wondering how quickly this guy was going to get himself killed.
Ironically, at their second meeting, that idle thought had nearly come true: They were both assigned to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy politician. Baekhyun was a no brainer; he could climb like a spider, silent and quick, but Chanyeol? The newbie?
Turned out he was a good getaway driver.
Baekhyun sat in the backseat with the girl even after he had bound her up, trying not to focus on his scrapes and bruises, a few of them burning like he had left chunks of himself behind at the girl’s school.
“How hard did you hit her?” Chanyeol asked, cutting a turn so sharply that Baekhyun smacked his unsuspecting head off of the car door.
“Fuck,” he swore under his breath, “I already told you. I just injected her. I didn’t hit her.”
“What if you gave her too much? What if she OD’d?”
Baekhyun felt his eye beginning to twitch, and he ignored Chanyeol’s following question, instead slipping his hand beneath her to her mouth, feeling the gentle puffs of her breath in unconsciousness.
“She’s alive,” he snapped, “We were given her weight. Overdosing her would be amateur.” Frankly, even if he didn’t have her weight, Baekhyun did enough kidnappings that he had the right dosage pretty much down to an art.
Baekhyun hoped the obvious irritation in his answer would shut the other up, but barely half a minute passed before Chayeol was talking again. “Pretty exciting. Do you ever get used to it?”
Baekhyun didn’t know why he was humoring him, but he crossed his arms across his chest, eyes on the girl as he replied, “No. The circumstances are different every single time. Sometimes I’m with people I’ve worked with for years, sometimes I’m with a stranger.” His voice was pointed, and this time Chanyeol caught on, laughing.
“But we’re brothers, aren’t we?” He teased, “We’re supposed to trust each other.”
“If you believe that, you’re naïve.”
Chanyeol shrugged, banking another turn that almost brought up Baekhyun’s dinner, his hands grabbing onto the seat in front of him to steady himself.
“I figure we’re in it for the money. We might not have good morals, but we’re regular people with a very specific set of skills.”
Baekhyun fought the urge to close his eyes at the encroaching nausea. “If you quote Liam Neesan at me one more time, you will mysteriously not turn up for work tomorrow.”
Laughing again, Chanyeol went to say something else, but the girl stirred, and Baekhyun hushed him, warning that she would likely come to soon.
That heist went off pretty smoothly, the car ditched, the girl deposited, and the money being inserted into his account like normal, but the long standing itch under his skin that came when he was around Chanyeol was there to stay from then on.
During briefings, Chanyeol talked, pairing off with the latest sucker who didn’t know better. But who would know that their best sharpshooter, a criminally bad and skillful driver, could be the annoying neighborhood dad type as well?
Baekhyun didn’t like to think what most of them were like outside of the masks and layers of black padding, but he couldn’t seem to register Chanyeol as just another coworker. Somehow, even though they had practiced shooting together and he knew the man could hit just about anything, he couldn’t imagine him actually killing someone.
About half a year after Chanyeol first came to their group of mercenaries, Baekhyun had his doubts assuaged when a guarding mission they had both been assigned turned into a shoot off unexpectedly.
It all felt decidedly unreal until real bullets shot through the couch he hid behind, centimeters to his left. Panic welled up in his chest, but he squashed it down, knowing he had to move to somewhere with more cover, somewhere the bullets couldn’t just pass through.
Chanyeol was somewhere up on the balcony, not visible to the outside, and Baekhyun contacted him, pressing his earpiece.
“How many?” Baekhyun murmured, “One’s got me pinned.”
“Working on it.” Chanyeol’s voice sounded distorted through the earpiece, but aside from that, there was a different cadence to it, something that had the little hairs on the back of Baekhyun’s neck rising. “Three.”
A shot rang out, and there was a scream, before Chanyeol’s voice came back, satisfied, “Two. You should be safe to move for now.”
Stunned, barely able to believe him, Baekhyun rose to a crouch, moving to hide behind the showy marble pillar that likely would keep the bullet from going right through it, though they also likely wouldn’t redirect into him if he stayed directly behind it.
Minutes passed of nothing, sirens wailed in the distance, and Baekhyun swore, “What do we do?”
“They can’t implicate us.” Chanyeol reminded him, “As far as the police need to know, we’re bodyguards-fuck.”
Baekhyun was so stunned hearing the other swear, that he almost didn’t register the sound of automatic gunfire until the bullets started to shred the couch he had hidden behind previously.
Readying his own gun, Baekhyun tried to gauge when the best time to take his shot would be, but in that moment, Chanyeol easily leaned over the balcony to shoot the guy cleanly in the head.
It seemed too easy; and when bullets zipped in toward the balcony, they realized the enemy had sent the machine guy in as bait to find Chanyeol, his compatriot swearing colorfully as he retreated, trying to find some cover, stumbling as another bullet found him.
Without thinking, Baekhyun leapt out of cover, hefted his gun, and unloaded it in the direction the other bullets came from. He didn’t know if he hit anyone or not, but the other bullets stopped just as the police came in.
They were called in to discuss the shootout, but it wasn’t exactly like they knew anything about the details, and after they gave their testimonies and contact numbers, they were allowed to leave. It took longer for Chanyeol than Baekhyun, as he had been shot, and Baekhyun wondered if he should go visit him. The vision of the mercenary shooting the man with the machine gun kept popping into his mind, the way he unashamedly went for his head, the way red had splattered over the wall. You saw stuff like that in their line of work all of the time, but there was something sick in Baekhyun’s chest as he played that image with the knowledge of Chanyeol’s injury.
His concern over that pushed him to go visit, though he near instantly regretted it; Chanyeol looked like a completely different person out of uniform, face pale and uncovered as he watched some soap opera on the little television.
Baekhyun cleared his throat in the doorway, feeling strangely overdressed in his padded, dark clothes-like he was trying to blend into the dark in a place that had no deep shadows.
Chanyeol’s eyes flickered to him when the door opened, but he didn’t seem to register who it was at first. When he did, a large grin split across his features, and Baekhyun had to repress the relief that wanted to appear at the normalcy of the other’s actions.
“Three bullets.” Baekhyun greeted him, voice like a curse, “You’re damn lucky.”
“Nice to see you, too.” He teased.
Shaking his head, Baekhyun strode over to the bed, fighting to keep his eyes from wandering now that he could actually see what Chanyeol looked like under the protective padding.
“So how long are you going to be in here?” He asked.
Chanyeol smiled. “Overnight. I went into surgery to remove the bullet that hadn’t passed through. Once I’m recovered from surgery, I’m free to go home, so long as I change my bandages regularly.”
Baekhyun nodded. “So we’re out your presence at work for a while.”
“Who said that?” Chanyeol’s lips curled up into a smirk, “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
Ignoring the strange feeling his smirk elicited, Baekhyun frowned at him, and instead changed the subject, hoping to return the feeling. “You killed everyone you shot at. And you got the machine gun guy so quickly…”
Chanyeol blinked, though he didn’t look taken aback.
“He was going toward you?” He explained, surprise lacing through his words, “I figured he’d shoot you before you had a chance to return fire.”
Irritation shot through him. “I can take care of myself.”
Baekhyun felt himself blushing when Chanyeol shot a rather serious look his way, and he snapped at the other, “What?”
Instead of saying anything, Chanyeol shrugged, head lolling to the side as he went to stare out the window.
Staring at him another long minute, Baekhyun felt himself growing restless with the normally chatty man’s silence. “Fine. Whatever.”
He wheeled around, going to exit, and he announced, “Next time, just let him shoot me, yeah?”
The amazed scoff he got in return was almost worth it; they both knew he wasn’t exactly the adventurous one out of the two of them. Chanyeol took the improbable, largely stupid risks, and while Baekhyun hated that the man thought he had to be saved, it stood to reason that they had both made it out with only minor injuries.
From then on, though, it changed-whenever they worked together, Chanyeol had to be in the most dangerous position, had to take the first shot, had to barge in first. Baekhyun had no idea if being shot so many times without major injury made him cocky, or if he just wanted to behave that way because Baekhyun called him on his unnecessary heroics.
Reports came in of him doing stupid, ridiculous risks otherwise, anyway. Baekhyun felt a certain satisfaction that he didn’t have to ask-people just liked to talk. Especially about people like Chanyeol, who certainly couldn’t be expected to last much longer. Luck always ran out when it was overused.
Baekhyun knew that, and yet he pushed himself harder. When people reported that Chanyeol drove through the city’s busiest intersection without getting anyone killed, his job offers sputtered a bit, but those that needed mercenaries that would get the job done against all odds started going to him. His job offers never seemed to decrease, no matter how many he did, and Baekhyun found himself taking more than he ever had before to compete.
If Chanyeol drove across two cities to avoid the cops, then Baekhyun stole priceless jewelry singlehanded, climbing enormous buildings without a spotter, risking certain death, not even thrilled with the risk. Anger and irritation at the cocky, impossible piece of shit that had entered his turf pushed him onward. Newbies couldn’t overtake absolutely everything, even with the best dumb luck they had ever seen as a collection of mercenaries.
Amidst his busy schedule, Baekhyun still had the rare day off, as Kyungsoo would physically force him to take them so he wouldn’t burn himself out. He pretended that he hated them, but in reality, something about the ability to do nothing but eat pizza, drink wine, and watch Netflix all day made him happy. A few glasses in, and he even considered calling over a friend to help him finish the pizza.
Firmly in his happy place, he almost didn’t notice the faint sound of sirens in the distance.
He had long since made enough money to move out of the shittier part of town, so he paused his show and went to peer out the window, shocked at the car he saw plowing through people, driving on sidewalks and the like.
Immediately, he thought of Chanyeol, and he rushed to grab his phone, cursing the man as he texted, “If you just went down 5th in a runaway car, I s2g”
A few hours later, he finally got a reply, though it was just a winking emoji, and Baekhyun swore to Kyungsoo numerous times, for a good hour that night, that Chanyeol had done it on purpose because he knew where Baekhyun lived.
Kyungsoo let him go for the first twenty minutes, but when the hour started to come up, he just stared at his roommate, before finally cutting him off.
“Jesus fucking Christ Baekhyun, what does it matter if he did? You’re still the senior, you’re still better than him in mostly everything. Why does it matter if he did this to push your buttons?”
“Because he thinks he’s hot shit!” Baekhyun protested, a little hurt that his roommate was siding with the enemy. “He’s doing this to prove a point.”
“Then why don’t you ignore him and show him how pointless that is?” Kyungsoo looked so exasperated, shame started to well up in Baekhyun’s chest. “Ignore him. Don’t talk to him, don’t talk about him, don’t acknowledge him.”
“I-” But Baekhyun had no logical rebuttal to that, and fell silent. To be frank, he didn’t understand his feelings that well either. He just knew that Chanyeol pressed his buttons.
In his shame at how clearly over it all Kyungsoo was, he bit his tongue from there on out when he came home, and just spent longer hours at the gym when something got to him. Otherwise at work, he didn’t say anything to the man, didn’t make eye contact with him, and only replied with what he absolutely had to when Chanyeol addressed him.
When the man finally worked out that Baekhyun “didn’t care,” he tried to ask him why, but Baekhyun blew him off, coming up with a million different tasks he had to worry about.
It was finally when they shared an assignment again, another body guarding mission as a highly important safe of goods was moved out of the city, that Chanyeol finally stopped him as the others oversaw the loading of the car.
He stopped him around the corner of the house, body blocking the way forward, an arm on the other side of Baekhyun in case he tried to retreat.
“What did I do?” He started, diving right in.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t play dumb.” Chanyeol’s eyes flashed, “You won’t talk to me. You don’t even look at me anymore.”
Baekhyun couldn’t help himself. “Wow, it sounds like you spent a lot of time watching me.”
That caused the man to lean back a bit, though it didn’t give enough for Baekhyun to escape.
“Maybe I did.” Chanyeol’s expression settled to something more serious, more mature. “But how would you know if you weren’t watching me?”
It was a real catch-22, and Baekhyun just noticed how closely they stood together, Chanyeol pressing into his space like he could care less, so long as he could get the senior mercenary to listen.
“I wasn’t watching you.” Baekhyun tried to ignore how the proximately made the night’s air warmer. “You’re an idiot if you think I was.”
“Then I must be an idiot.” The hand on the wall shifted, fingers pressing carefully into Baekhyun’s shoulder. “I know you were.”
He lost the battle to repress a shiver. “How could you say that for sure?”
Chanyeol leaned in, and Baekhyun fought a losing battle to look away from him. “Because I checked. I wanted you to be watching me.”
Anger flared up in him, and Baekhyun went to snap something back, when the cracking sounds of gunfire lit up from behind them.
“Shit.” The word floated in the air, Baekhyun not even fully aware that he had said it, before they both pulled out their guns, their conversation forgotten as they hid behind cover, shooting at those that would disrupt their payday.
One of their men sent a message to their ear pieces, telling them that they had basically gotten everything packed, and would leave without them, though they should get to one of their vans to cover them. They had originally been planned to go in the limo, but plans changed by necessity sometimes, of course.
Both of them looked at each other, on the same page, though Baekhyun’s limbs still felt the phantom stiffness of anger, and Chanyeol seemed a little more distracted than usual.
Retracing their steps, they ran back to their vans, free of fire as the people that wanted to intercept the safe followed the initial car.
Chanyeol jumped into the driver’s seat, and Baekhyun the passenger’s, reaching into the backseat for the heavy duty gun they had prepared in case of just such an incident.
“Can you manage that with my driving?” Chanyeol asked carefully.
“I can do what needs done.”
Neither of them spoke much after that, Chanyeol peeling out of the parking lot in front of a small car that blew its horn at them.
He had the route memorized, as he originally was supposed to drive the carrier car, and he followed after them, both of them nodding to each other when they caught sight of the cluster of cars. Two of their guard cars had been able to move into position, and theirs marked three of four, the last one apparently either lost or having been blown out of operation.
Sliding down the window, Baekhyun braced his gun properly, then started shooting at the enemy car, the bullets sticking into the bumper, leaving holes.
“Lower.” He muttered to himself, just as Chanyeol warned him that they would swing a rather large turn up ahead.
Prepared, Baekhyun aimed wide, smirking to himself when the car yanked like he had gotten used to, and small dents appeared in the back window.
A window in the back of the car opened, and a matching gun came in their direction, the arm aiming for Baekhyun, who ducked back inside the car just in time.
“Careful.” Chanyeol hissed, almost too quietly for Baekhyun to hear, like he couldn’t help himself, but he knew his words couldn’t be taken well.
Grunting in reply, too focused on their job, Baekhyun popped back out of the window and returned fire, shooting at the window, then quickly down at the tires of the car again, frustrated to see that everything appeared reinforced for the most part.
“We’re going to need landmines to hurt that car.” He complained to Chanyeol, “Unless we ram them.”
Chanyeol thought about it, then frowned. “We purposefully avoided bridges like that to keep the cargo safe.”
Baekhyun thought about it, then asked, “The bridge we’re going on, is the traffic divided?”
Chanyeol shook his head. “It isn’t.”
“Then I have an idea.”
He explained to Chanyeol, but the man was already shaking his head. “What are the odds that would happen?”
“Well, would you prefer I use that rocket launcher and bring the cops down on us?”
Chanyeol sighed, and he knew he had won, both promising that they would use that only if the original plan wouldn’t work out.
After exchanging more fruitless gunfire, though the cracks in the back window did grow a bit bigger, they finally reached the bridge, and Baekhyun immediately saw that his plan could work.
“There’s a few trucks. Can you get us next to them?”
Chanyeol merely inhaled, nodded carefully, and sped up and over all at once, going to ram the opposition before they could realize what was happening.
They failed the first time, but the car shook from the light impact, and as the driver tried to recover, the shooter also obviously off balance, Chanyeol gunned it just enough to ram them, the car fishtailing right into the oncoming lane, where a passing truck hit them head on, no one having time to react to prevent it from happening.
Baekhyun gave an excited scream of victory as the car flew back, rolled, and even the potential injuries of innocent people couldn’t ruin the moment, their ingenuity, the adrenaline surging through him.
“We did it! We fucking did it!”
Chanyeol looked at him, and his face was lit up with excitement. “No, you did it. It was your idea.”
“No,” Baekhyun retorted naturally, “It was your driving. You made it happen. Fuck! That was so cool.”
They made a right off the bridge and circled onto an on ramp to get on a long stretch of highway.
As soon as they did, Chanyeol hit something on the steering wheel, then leaned over, hands grabbing Baekhyun’s face as he kissed him hard.
Their lips clashed in a surprised, hard impact, though Baekhyun couldn’t fight the instincts that pulled him closer to Chanyeol, his body bowing over the center console, hands fisting in the front of his shirt, eyebrows bunching as their lips parted, locking together.
Chanyeol’s tongue brushed over his lower lip, and he gasped in excitement, though he pulled back, choking out, “Shouldn’t you be driving?”
“Cruise control.” Chanyeol’s eyes shone with a bit of grudging admiration. “I don’t have to do everything all of the time.”
“Good.” Now it was Baekhyun’s turn to reach for him, draw him close into another kiss, this no less passionate, though their lips met a little more carefully. He hadn’t understood the manic, frustrated energy, but this felt like just the outlet he needed, a shaky breath leaving him when their tongues met in a wet clash, Chanyeol’s sweeping his prejudices away as his tongue swept into his mouth.
When they got to their location, they were advised to leave once everything was secured, taking unmarked cars that other members had left for them days before. Baekhyun and Chanyeol did their jobs, no one could argue that-but Baekhyun knew his neck sported a few more bruises than usual, and Chanyeol fidgeted like he had forgotten his medication.
No one noticed anything was off until someone realized they had left together once everything was said and done.
There was talking that needed to be done, but more than that, there were frustrations that needed to be relieved-and it just happened that they both found a great way to relieve a year’s worth of built tensions. When Baekhyun led him into his bedroom, he could feel his stubbornness giving, a greater understanding growing.
That is, until he woke up to a Gardenia on the pillow next to him, a kissy mark on the note tied to it.
“Fucking Chanyeol!”
Final author's note My apologies to the CEO, but I’m going to do some action today motherfucker
Title: Trust Me and Just Jump
Pairing(s): Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s) Use of guns, nongraphic deaths of minor characters, excessive swearing
Length: 5k
Summary: Baekhyun is a trained mercenary, and one of the best. He does not, will not like some new member coming in to take all of the glory
Author's note: I hope you like this?? It’s not exactly what I thought it would be, but I hope you enjoy.
“Did you hear about the Gardenias?” Kyungsoo asked as soon as his roommate set foot in the door, a bag of takeout clutched in one hand.
“You bringing me flowers, Do?” Baekhyun retorted, voice a little tired, but still lively as he kicked off his shoes.
“You wish,” he snorted, “It’s your favorite person. He left his last target Gardenias.”
By that point, Kyungsoo should have known better than to open the topic, and Baekhyun should have recognized the baiting, but he found his good mood slipping away as the moments passed.
Inhaling, and just kicking off his shoes with little ceremony, Baekhyun grumbled, “In a bank vault, seriously? Who even takes flowers on a heist like that?”
Kyungsoo paused for a moment, then spoke in code. “It wasn’t that kind of target. He took Mr. Kim his dry-cleaning.”
“Seriously?” Baekhyun dropped the food on the table, hands shaking as he fought his need to pace, “And he left flowers. Let me guess, the wife found them?”
His roommate nodded, unable to get words out before Baekhyun ripped open the plastic, his movements vicious.
“He’s infuriating!” Baekhyun spat, nearly spilling their food as he yanked off the cellophane wrappings, “My god, we’re you know, not fucking Mafioso. Who leaves a calling card, if you don’t want to be fucking killed?”
Kyungsoo pursed his lips sympathetically though he didn’t look away from his laptop. He knew better than to try and interject at this point.
“Why do people hire him? He barely even-ugh! Why does he have to be everywhere? You’d think he doesn’t ever go on vacation.”
He could feel his friend’s amusement radiating from him; he had known Kyungsoo nearly as long as his actual family, and had grown to the point where he could anticipate the man’s reactions.
Baekhyun whipped around to stare daggers at his friend. “Do you have something to say?”
Bending his laptop screen a bit back, Kyungsoo glanced up at him, hand raising to adjust his glasses. “I just think it’s funny how you’re the one grilling someone for never taking a vacation. But please, tell me how my family vacation to France went last summer?”
Baekhyun bit his tongue, shot him a fierce look, and Kyungsoo shrugged, “Exactly. And if I’m not wrong,” he turned his attention back down to his laptop, “Didn’t you stay behind for another assignment with Chanyeol?”
“Don’t say his fucking name!” Baekhyun hissed, “That bastard will hear and then suddenly I’ll have him in all of my next cases.”
“So is he Voldemort, Beetlejuice, or both?” His friend quipped, and the only thing that kept Baekhyun from throwing something at him was the knowledge that if he broke something of Kyungsoo’s, that his body would never been seen again.
“That’s not the point. I can’t get away from him!”
“Move?” Kyungsoo frowned at something on screen, “Go to another city. You’re good enough to get a job anywhere.”
“And leave your sorry ass behind? I’m not that heartless.” He went to sink down next to his roommate, grabbing for the television’s remote. He didn’t want to admit it, but the real reason he didn’t want to run, though he would miss Kyungsoo, was that it would seem like Chanyeol would win, so he couldn’t let that happen.
They were mercenaries; hired to the highest payer, willing to get their hands dirty, help all of the real world supervillains with their devious plans, steal things, you name it. Baekhyun had gotten into it after his stint in the military, as most of the law abiding citizens found his skill set to be dishonorable. He came back not only knowing how to fire guns, but how to pick locks, hot wire cars, and find ways into rooms that most people would have no hope of breaching. It wasn’t like he set out to break the law-it just happened to be what he was good at.
People whispered about him; that he was only so good because he was a freak, he had grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth and had been raised to do terrible, horrible things.
That he slept with victims to make his steals.
And then there was Chanyeol; another mercenary who had entered into the field a few months after him, yet had more of the crowd’s approval, even though he wasn’t nearly as good as Baekhyun. At first he thought the sentiment came from being perfectly average, a team player that wouldn’t take your solo assignments. But at the stories spread and took flame, he heard all kinds of ridiculous tales involving sweet talking, being affable and taking what he wanted. The man was a giant, but not intimidating, as his ears stuck out and he was too prone to smiling. And his hands were too big for good pickpocketing. And he was too clumsy to scale buildings.
No; the reason people admired Chanyeol was that he was a dead shot with a gun-dead because even if he didn’t get you right between the eyes, one shot would kill you sure as the sun rises in the morning. People liked him. Or if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be around for much longer.
“That means he’s already tried, or you’re probably safe.” Kyungsoo always teased when Baekhyun really got going, “Can’t let a failed kill get away.”
They both actually had that in common, though: They were both lucky as fuck. Baekhyun had been shot more times than he could count on two hands, but they never crippled him, never put him in the hospital or out of work for long. Chanyeol, he had seen himself, avoided death by sheer chance so many times that it made his own stomach drop, wondering how many times he had ducked at the right time, or hesitated unnecessarily in his own work.
One of their first missions together, when he barely knew the other by name, came in the form of a simple body guarding mission with a large pool of guards. Many of them had fought against each other in the past, but a job was a job. Some professionals might feel uncomfortable now working with the men that might just have been against them the night before, but the truth was much simpler: They worked for hire. If someone got a reputation of betrayal, the heist had either be enough to last a person for the rest of their life, or they would find themselves out a job. People didn’t hire mercenaries they couldn’t trust, and other mercenaries would happily absorb the extra duties. Money was king-that was the business.
So that night, a good 20 of them stood in a boardroom, watching for trouble against the back wall, analyzing the mercenaries on the other side of the room, hired for their client’s hopeful partner. Chanyeol had been absorbed by his side, and with the mask covering his face, he actually looked intimidating.
Twenty minutes later, Baekhyun revoked that thought when he realized the man couldn’t stop fidgeting. He bounced from foot to foot, biceps flexing beneath the padding they all wore, the man reaching up to touch and fix his hair enough times that the guy next to him looked like he would snap at any moment.
Taking pity on the man, he fell to the back of the line when the meeting ended, so he walked in front of Chanyeol while they guided the men out safely.
“You’re Byun, aren’t you?” A voice rumbled from behind him, just loud enough to make Baekhyun wince.
“Hush,” he hissed under his breath.
“Don’t worry. I’ve been to enough of these. It’s not going to go south unless one of us does something stupid.”
Baekhyun blacked out momentarily from the sheer irony, then snorted, wondering how quickly this guy was going to get himself killed.
Ironically, at their second meeting, that idle thought had nearly come true: They were both assigned to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy politician. Baekhyun was a no brainer; he could climb like a spider, silent and quick, but Chanyeol? The newbie?
Turned out he was a good getaway driver.
Baekhyun sat in the backseat with the girl even after he had bound her up, trying not to focus on his scrapes and bruises, a few of them burning like he had left chunks of himself behind at the girl’s school.
“How hard did you hit her?” Chanyeol asked, cutting a turn so sharply that Baekhyun smacked his unsuspecting head off of the car door.
“Fuck,” he swore under his breath, “I already told you. I just injected her. I didn’t hit her.”
“What if you gave her too much? What if she OD’d?”
Baekhyun felt his eye beginning to twitch, and he ignored Chanyeol’s following question, instead slipping his hand beneath her to her mouth, feeling the gentle puffs of her breath in unconsciousness.
“She’s alive,” he snapped, “We were given her weight. Overdosing her would be amateur.” Frankly, even if he didn’t have her weight, Baekhyun did enough kidnappings that he had the right dosage pretty much down to an art.
Baekhyun hoped the obvious irritation in his answer would shut the other up, but barely half a minute passed before Chayeol was talking again. “Pretty exciting. Do you ever get used to it?”
Baekhyun didn’t know why he was humoring him, but he crossed his arms across his chest, eyes on the girl as he replied, “No. The circumstances are different every single time. Sometimes I’m with people I’ve worked with for years, sometimes I’m with a stranger.” His voice was pointed, and this time Chanyeol caught on, laughing.
“But we’re brothers, aren’t we?” He teased, “We’re supposed to trust each other.”
“If you believe that, you’re naïve.”
Chanyeol shrugged, banking another turn that almost brought up Baekhyun’s dinner, his hands grabbing onto the seat in front of him to steady himself.
“I figure we’re in it for the money. We might not have good morals, but we’re regular people with a very specific set of skills.”
Baekhyun fought the urge to close his eyes at the encroaching nausea. “If you quote Liam Neesan at me one more time, you will mysteriously not turn up for work tomorrow.”
Laughing again, Chanyeol went to say something else, but the girl stirred, and Baekhyun hushed him, warning that she would likely come to soon.
That heist went off pretty smoothly, the car ditched, the girl deposited, and the money being inserted into his account like normal, but the long standing itch under his skin that came when he was around Chanyeol was there to stay from then on.
During briefings, Chanyeol talked, pairing off with the latest sucker who didn’t know better. But who would know that their best sharpshooter, a criminally bad and skillful driver, could be the annoying neighborhood dad type as well?
Baekhyun didn’t like to think what most of them were like outside of the masks and layers of black padding, but he couldn’t seem to register Chanyeol as just another coworker. Somehow, even though they had practiced shooting together and he knew the man could hit just about anything, he couldn’t imagine him actually killing someone.
About half a year after Chanyeol first came to their group of mercenaries, Baekhyun had his doubts assuaged when a guarding mission they had both been assigned turned into a shoot off unexpectedly.
It all felt decidedly unreal until real bullets shot through the couch he hid behind, centimeters to his left. Panic welled up in his chest, but he squashed it down, knowing he had to move to somewhere with more cover, somewhere the bullets couldn’t just pass through.
Chanyeol was somewhere up on the balcony, not visible to the outside, and Baekhyun contacted him, pressing his earpiece.
“How many?” Baekhyun murmured, “One’s got me pinned.”
“Working on it.” Chanyeol’s voice sounded distorted through the earpiece, but aside from that, there was a different cadence to it, something that had the little hairs on the back of Baekhyun’s neck rising. “Three.”
A shot rang out, and there was a scream, before Chanyeol’s voice came back, satisfied, “Two. You should be safe to move for now.”
Stunned, barely able to believe him, Baekhyun rose to a crouch, moving to hide behind the showy marble pillar that likely would keep the bullet from going right through it, though they also likely wouldn’t redirect into him if he stayed directly behind it.
Minutes passed of nothing, sirens wailed in the distance, and Baekhyun swore, “What do we do?”
“They can’t implicate us.” Chanyeol reminded him, “As far as the police need to know, we’re bodyguards-fuck.”
Baekhyun was so stunned hearing the other swear, that he almost didn’t register the sound of automatic gunfire until the bullets started to shred the couch he had hidden behind previously.
Readying his own gun, Baekhyun tried to gauge when the best time to take his shot would be, but in that moment, Chanyeol easily leaned over the balcony to shoot the guy cleanly in the head.
It seemed too easy; and when bullets zipped in toward the balcony, they realized the enemy had sent the machine guy in as bait to find Chanyeol, his compatriot swearing colorfully as he retreated, trying to find some cover, stumbling as another bullet found him.
Without thinking, Baekhyun leapt out of cover, hefted his gun, and unloaded it in the direction the other bullets came from. He didn’t know if he hit anyone or not, but the other bullets stopped just as the police came in.
They were called in to discuss the shootout, but it wasn’t exactly like they knew anything about the details, and after they gave their testimonies and contact numbers, they were allowed to leave. It took longer for Chanyeol than Baekhyun, as he had been shot, and Baekhyun wondered if he should go visit him. The vision of the mercenary shooting the man with the machine gun kept popping into his mind, the way he unashamedly went for his head, the way red had splattered over the wall. You saw stuff like that in their line of work all of the time, but there was something sick in Baekhyun’s chest as he played that image with the knowledge of Chanyeol’s injury.
His concern over that pushed him to go visit, though he near instantly regretted it; Chanyeol looked like a completely different person out of uniform, face pale and uncovered as he watched some soap opera on the little television.
Baekhyun cleared his throat in the doorway, feeling strangely overdressed in his padded, dark clothes-like he was trying to blend into the dark in a place that had no deep shadows.
Chanyeol’s eyes flickered to him when the door opened, but he didn’t seem to register who it was at first. When he did, a large grin split across his features, and Baekhyun had to repress the relief that wanted to appear at the normalcy of the other’s actions.
“Three bullets.” Baekhyun greeted him, voice like a curse, “You’re damn lucky.”
“Nice to see you, too.” He teased.
Shaking his head, Baekhyun strode over to the bed, fighting to keep his eyes from wandering now that he could actually see what Chanyeol looked like under the protective padding.
“So how long are you going to be in here?” He asked.
Chanyeol smiled. “Overnight. I went into surgery to remove the bullet that hadn’t passed through. Once I’m recovered from surgery, I’m free to go home, so long as I change my bandages regularly.”
Baekhyun nodded. “So we’re out your presence at work for a while.”
“Who said that?” Chanyeol’s lips curled up into a smirk, “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
Ignoring the strange feeling his smirk elicited, Baekhyun frowned at him, and instead changed the subject, hoping to return the feeling. “You killed everyone you shot at. And you got the machine gun guy so quickly…”
Chanyeol blinked, though he didn’t look taken aback.
“He was going toward you?” He explained, surprise lacing through his words, “I figured he’d shoot you before you had a chance to return fire.”
Irritation shot through him. “I can take care of myself.”
Baekhyun felt himself blushing when Chanyeol shot a rather serious look his way, and he snapped at the other, “What?”
Instead of saying anything, Chanyeol shrugged, head lolling to the side as he went to stare out the window.
Staring at him another long minute, Baekhyun felt himself growing restless with the normally chatty man’s silence. “Fine. Whatever.”
He wheeled around, going to exit, and he announced, “Next time, just let him shoot me, yeah?”
The amazed scoff he got in return was almost worth it; they both knew he wasn’t exactly the adventurous one out of the two of them. Chanyeol took the improbable, largely stupid risks, and while Baekhyun hated that the man thought he had to be saved, it stood to reason that they had both made it out with only minor injuries.
From then on, though, it changed-whenever they worked together, Chanyeol had to be in the most dangerous position, had to take the first shot, had to barge in first. Baekhyun had no idea if being shot so many times without major injury made him cocky, or if he just wanted to behave that way because Baekhyun called him on his unnecessary heroics.
Reports came in of him doing stupid, ridiculous risks otherwise, anyway. Baekhyun felt a certain satisfaction that he didn’t have to ask-people just liked to talk. Especially about people like Chanyeol, who certainly couldn’t be expected to last much longer. Luck always ran out when it was overused.
Baekhyun knew that, and yet he pushed himself harder. When people reported that Chanyeol drove through the city’s busiest intersection without getting anyone killed, his job offers sputtered a bit, but those that needed mercenaries that would get the job done against all odds started going to him. His job offers never seemed to decrease, no matter how many he did, and Baekhyun found himself taking more than he ever had before to compete.
If Chanyeol drove across two cities to avoid the cops, then Baekhyun stole priceless jewelry singlehanded, climbing enormous buildings without a spotter, risking certain death, not even thrilled with the risk. Anger and irritation at the cocky, impossible piece of shit that had entered his turf pushed him onward. Newbies couldn’t overtake absolutely everything, even with the best dumb luck they had ever seen as a collection of mercenaries.
Amidst his busy schedule, Baekhyun still had the rare day off, as Kyungsoo would physically force him to take them so he wouldn’t burn himself out. He pretended that he hated them, but in reality, something about the ability to do nothing but eat pizza, drink wine, and watch Netflix all day made him happy. A few glasses in, and he even considered calling over a friend to help him finish the pizza.
Firmly in his happy place, he almost didn’t notice the faint sound of sirens in the distance.
He had long since made enough money to move out of the shittier part of town, so he paused his show and went to peer out the window, shocked at the car he saw plowing through people, driving on sidewalks and the like.
Immediately, he thought of Chanyeol, and he rushed to grab his phone, cursing the man as he texted, “If you just went down 5th in a runaway car, I s2g”
A few hours later, he finally got a reply, though it was just a winking emoji, and Baekhyun swore to Kyungsoo numerous times, for a good hour that night, that Chanyeol had done it on purpose because he knew where Baekhyun lived.
Kyungsoo let him go for the first twenty minutes, but when the hour started to come up, he just stared at his roommate, before finally cutting him off.
“Jesus fucking Christ Baekhyun, what does it matter if he did? You’re still the senior, you’re still better than him in mostly everything. Why does it matter if he did this to push your buttons?”
“Because he thinks he’s hot shit!” Baekhyun protested, a little hurt that his roommate was siding with the enemy. “He’s doing this to prove a point.”
“Then why don’t you ignore him and show him how pointless that is?” Kyungsoo looked so exasperated, shame started to well up in Baekhyun’s chest. “Ignore him. Don’t talk to him, don’t talk about him, don’t acknowledge him.”
“I-” But Baekhyun had no logical rebuttal to that, and fell silent. To be frank, he didn’t understand his feelings that well either. He just knew that Chanyeol pressed his buttons.
In his shame at how clearly over it all Kyungsoo was, he bit his tongue from there on out when he came home, and just spent longer hours at the gym when something got to him. Otherwise at work, he didn’t say anything to the man, didn’t make eye contact with him, and only replied with what he absolutely had to when Chanyeol addressed him.
When the man finally worked out that Baekhyun “didn’t care,” he tried to ask him why, but Baekhyun blew him off, coming up with a million different tasks he had to worry about.
It was finally when they shared an assignment again, another body guarding mission as a highly important safe of goods was moved out of the city, that Chanyeol finally stopped him as the others oversaw the loading of the car.
He stopped him around the corner of the house, body blocking the way forward, an arm on the other side of Baekhyun in case he tried to retreat.
“What did I do?” He started, diving right in.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t play dumb.” Chanyeol’s eyes flashed, “You won’t talk to me. You don’t even look at me anymore.”
Baekhyun couldn’t help himself. “Wow, it sounds like you spent a lot of time watching me.”
That caused the man to lean back a bit, though it didn’t give enough for Baekhyun to escape.
“Maybe I did.” Chanyeol’s expression settled to something more serious, more mature. “But how would you know if you weren’t watching me?”
It was a real catch-22, and Baekhyun just noticed how closely they stood together, Chanyeol pressing into his space like he could care less, so long as he could get the senior mercenary to listen.
“I wasn’t watching you.” Baekhyun tried to ignore how the proximately made the night’s air warmer. “You’re an idiot if you think I was.”
“Then I must be an idiot.” The hand on the wall shifted, fingers pressing carefully into Baekhyun’s shoulder. “I know you were.”
He lost the battle to repress a shiver. “How could you say that for sure?”
Chanyeol leaned in, and Baekhyun fought a losing battle to look away from him. “Because I checked. I wanted you to be watching me.”
Anger flared up in him, and Baekhyun went to snap something back, when the cracking sounds of gunfire lit up from behind them.
“Shit.” The word floated in the air, Baekhyun not even fully aware that he had said it, before they both pulled out their guns, their conversation forgotten as they hid behind cover, shooting at those that would disrupt their payday.
One of their men sent a message to their ear pieces, telling them that they had basically gotten everything packed, and would leave without them, though they should get to one of their vans to cover them. They had originally been planned to go in the limo, but plans changed by necessity sometimes, of course.
Both of them looked at each other, on the same page, though Baekhyun’s limbs still felt the phantom stiffness of anger, and Chanyeol seemed a little more distracted than usual.
Retracing their steps, they ran back to their vans, free of fire as the people that wanted to intercept the safe followed the initial car.
Chanyeol jumped into the driver’s seat, and Baekhyun the passenger’s, reaching into the backseat for the heavy duty gun they had prepared in case of just such an incident.
“Can you manage that with my driving?” Chanyeol asked carefully.
“I can do what needs done.”
Neither of them spoke much after that, Chanyeol peeling out of the parking lot in front of a small car that blew its horn at them.
He had the route memorized, as he originally was supposed to drive the carrier car, and he followed after them, both of them nodding to each other when they caught sight of the cluster of cars. Two of their guard cars had been able to move into position, and theirs marked three of four, the last one apparently either lost or having been blown out of operation.
Sliding down the window, Baekhyun braced his gun properly, then started shooting at the enemy car, the bullets sticking into the bumper, leaving holes.
“Lower.” He muttered to himself, just as Chanyeol warned him that they would swing a rather large turn up ahead.
Prepared, Baekhyun aimed wide, smirking to himself when the car yanked like he had gotten used to, and small dents appeared in the back window.
A window in the back of the car opened, and a matching gun came in their direction, the arm aiming for Baekhyun, who ducked back inside the car just in time.
“Careful.” Chanyeol hissed, almost too quietly for Baekhyun to hear, like he couldn’t help himself, but he knew his words couldn’t be taken well.
Grunting in reply, too focused on their job, Baekhyun popped back out of the window and returned fire, shooting at the window, then quickly down at the tires of the car again, frustrated to see that everything appeared reinforced for the most part.
“We’re going to need landmines to hurt that car.” He complained to Chanyeol, “Unless we ram them.”
Chanyeol thought about it, then frowned. “We purposefully avoided bridges like that to keep the cargo safe.”
Baekhyun thought about it, then asked, “The bridge we’re going on, is the traffic divided?”
Chanyeol shook his head. “It isn’t.”
“Then I have an idea.”
He explained to Chanyeol, but the man was already shaking his head. “What are the odds that would happen?”
“Well, would you prefer I use that rocket launcher and bring the cops down on us?”
Chanyeol sighed, and he knew he had won, both promising that they would use that only if the original plan wouldn’t work out.
After exchanging more fruitless gunfire, though the cracks in the back window did grow a bit bigger, they finally reached the bridge, and Baekhyun immediately saw that his plan could work.
“There’s a few trucks. Can you get us next to them?”
Chanyeol merely inhaled, nodded carefully, and sped up and over all at once, going to ram the opposition before they could realize what was happening.
They failed the first time, but the car shook from the light impact, and as the driver tried to recover, the shooter also obviously off balance, Chanyeol gunned it just enough to ram them, the car fishtailing right into the oncoming lane, where a passing truck hit them head on, no one having time to react to prevent it from happening.
Baekhyun gave an excited scream of victory as the car flew back, rolled, and even the potential injuries of innocent people couldn’t ruin the moment, their ingenuity, the adrenaline surging through him.
“We did it! We fucking did it!”
Chanyeol looked at him, and his face was lit up with excitement. “No, you did it. It was your idea.”
“No,” Baekhyun retorted naturally, “It was your driving. You made it happen. Fuck! That was so cool.”
They made a right off the bridge and circled onto an on ramp to get on a long stretch of highway.
As soon as they did, Chanyeol hit something on the steering wheel, then leaned over, hands grabbing Baekhyun’s face as he kissed him hard.
Their lips clashed in a surprised, hard impact, though Baekhyun couldn’t fight the instincts that pulled him closer to Chanyeol, his body bowing over the center console, hands fisting in the front of his shirt, eyebrows bunching as their lips parted, locking together.
Chanyeol’s tongue brushed over his lower lip, and he gasped in excitement, though he pulled back, choking out, “Shouldn’t you be driving?”
“Cruise control.” Chanyeol’s eyes shone with a bit of grudging admiration. “I don’t have to do everything all of the time.”
“Good.” Now it was Baekhyun’s turn to reach for him, draw him close into another kiss, this no less passionate, though their lips met a little more carefully. He hadn’t understood the manic, frustrated energy, but this felt like just the outlet he needed, a shaky breath leaving him when their tongues met in a wet clash, Chanyeol’s sweeping his prejudices away as his tongue swept into his mouth.
When they got to their location, they were advised to leave once everything was secured, taking unmarked cars that other members had left for them days before. Baekhyun and Chanyeol did their jobs, no one could argue that-but Baekhyun knew his neck sported a few more bruises than usual, and Chanyeol fidgeted like he had forgotten his medication.
No one noticed anything was off until someone realized they had left together once everything was said and done.
There was talking that needed to be done, but more than that, there were frustrations that needed to be relieved-and it just happened that they both found a great way to relieve a year’s worth of built tensions. When Baekhyun led him into his bedroom, he could feel his stubbornness giving, a greater understanding growing.
That is, until he woke up to a Gardenia on the pillow next to him, a kissy mark on the note tied to it.
“Fucking Chanyeol!”
Final author's note My apologies to the CEO, but I’m going to do some action today motherfucker