theme of the day: superpowers
Title: that has such people in it
Pairing: character-focused (baekhyun/kai and chanyeol/d.o if you squint)
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life, gen
Warnings: swearing, mentions of ptsd and war
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: three pieces of avengers au that don't really go anywhere. kai's a super soldier. baekhyun's a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. chanyeol's a hawk guy, d.o thinks love is for children, xiumin's always angry, and luhan's a demigod with a hammer. 2,437 words.
1. (set between captain america and the avengers)
Jongin closes his eyes in 1945 and doesn't open them again until after the turn of the millennium.
He wakes up in a place that is not Times Square, not Manhattan. This is not New York City. The air suffocates here, like an asthma attack waiting to happen. In this, it's a startling return to normalcy.
You've been asleep for almost seventy years, they say, and there is the thought at first that this must be a dream, immediately followed by-no, no.
He'd at least have some measure of control over a dream. Everything about this strips him of it.
Living in the S.H.I.E.L.D. compound is not so different from living on an army base. There's a similar cadence to it, the monotonous rhythm of subsisting on the government dime. In the new millennium, it's all slick plastic and polished metal and skin-tight black uniforms, something straight out of a science fiction film-but everything is fundamentally the same. He has nowhere else to go. All he has are his hands. Every day there's a new punching bag to pound into the dust.
He is a super soldier. He is a weapon. He exists for the good of the people. He does what has to be done because no one else can.
One plus one equals two. These things still make sense.
The 21st century has cell phones and computers and supersonic jets. Television is in color. Gas is four dollars a gallon. Howard Stark helped invent the atomic bomb. The Second World War ended. There was never a third, but there was a war in Korea, and one in Vietnam. The USSR came and went. America put a man on the moon-several, actually. They've been trying for Mars.
Brave new world, indeed.
Director Fury calls it the Avengers Initiative. Agent Park calls it a waste of time. Baekhyun, when Jongin meets him, calls it a boy band, and couples the remark with a winning smile. Jongin has no idea what that means, but he can read tone, and Baekhyun Stark is smug all over.
He's Howard's son-adopted, after the Starks had given up trying for biological-which is odd in and of itself because Baekhyun is twenty-nine, older than Jongin had ever known his father. Baekhyun is prickly and cocky and impatient and doesn’t take anything seriously. Jongin catalogues these things away and tries not to make undue comparisons.
It's hard. Jongin fought a war with Taemin and Moonkyu and Youngho. After Steve and Bucky and the Commandos stormed through Europe unchallenged, the higher-ups had decided on a similar plan in the Pacific theater. Pluck someone from the Korean-American Tiger Brigade and give him the same powers. He'd blend in easier.
And Jongin had. The Japanese called him Kai, which meant, among other things, machine. With the others, Jongin'd taken Saipan, then Tinian, then Peleliu. None of them had expected the tesseract, but it seems like things had turned out okay in the end.
He'd fought a war. Now he is expected to do the same with the Avengers. Now, he is expected to lead.
Jongin knows all about them on paper. Everything else, he observes. Kyungsoo, the Black Widow, is as cool and professional as he seems from his personnel file. Chanyeol is more readily abrasive, but he's a relentless operative. Combined, they have a mission success rate in the 99th percentile.
Minseok is quiet, prefers the solitude of lab work to fighting crime. It's a pity the strain of serum in his blood prevents him from having the life he'd rather have, but he takes it in stride.
Jongin's brain skips a little at the demigod. Thor-nicknamed Lu Han because someone on the helicarrier had a taste for terrible wuxia-is apparently the Norse god of thunder. By human standards, he's also something of a super soldier. He was born and raised in Asgard, but chooses to live in an unfamiliar place that is not home. It's an interesting choice.
Baekhyun doesn't sit still long enough for Jongin to get more than a drive-by read on him beyond terrible first impressions.
2. (set post-the avengers, after they've all moved into stark tower)
The first time Jongin encounters one of Baekhyun's robots, a couple of days after everyone's moved in, it ends with a particularly persistent electrical fire in the third level of R&D and, predictably, Dummy taking matters into its own hands and trying to fire-extinguish their way to safety. It's not his finest moment in the Tower, but then, it definitely isn't the worst thing Baekhyun's seen happen under his roof, so he counts it as a win.
S.H.I.E.L.D. shoves the rest of the team into temporary living arrangements at Manhattan headquarters while Baekhyun makes a half-hearted attempt at damage control. "I thought you said he was acclimated," he remarks, surveying the charred remains of the steps leading up to the main landing.
"He's acclimating," Agent Kim coughs into his hand. "It's an ongoing process. We'd appreciate it if you did your best to-help it along."
"Babysitting isn't really part of my job description," he points out, "but, as I am a solemn, dedicated patriot-"
"Oh, please-"
"-and fully invested in the way this boy band initiative pans out, I suppose I'll keep an eye on him." He grins lazily when Joonmyun sends him a despairing look. "Also, I'd really prefer it if this place wasn't burned down every time Kai jumped the wrong way at one of my AIs. We do, you know. Live here."
"I hadn't heard."
"Sarcasm isn't a good look on you, Kim-sshi." Baekhyun folds his arms across his chest, the arc reactor a familiar thrum against his skin. "Jongdae, have the usual contractors come in the morning and clean this shit up. The workshop could use a new layer of paint anyway."
"The usual contractors?" Joonmyun asks suspiciously. "How many times has something like this happened to you?"
"No comment," he says, surveying the damage with a cool eye, and grins when Joonmyun lets out a long-suffering sigh behind him.
The second time, they're in Baekhyun's minefield of a workshop. Dummy goes ballistic when Jongin reaches out and hits a random button on a screen near the front. Baekhyun hadn't even noticed him come down, too preoccupied with trying to figure out whether he could introduce light saber capabilities to the Mark 42. Maybe that'd be a little too tacky.
There's a resounding crash. Jongin looks half-scared, half-guilty. "What the fuck," Baekhyun says, lifting his visor, and has to duck to avoid the robot's swinging arm. He smacks the all-kill panel on Jongdae's interface and Butterfingers powers down sleepily. "Do you have some sort of teleportation power that I don't know about? You just. Appear. It's creepy."
Jongin shuffles over to Dummy and bends down, peering down the hose.
"No-wait, don't do that."
"You made this?" Jongin asks. Dummy lets out a little celebratory toot of nitrogen, which narrowly misses Jongin's face when he jumps out of the way.
"When I was seventeen," Baekhyun says. He shakes his head, fiddling with one of the suit's finger joints. "Don't judge me too harshly."
"He's-" It sprays some more foam and one of the spare parts rolls off the table with a loud clang.
Baekhyun scoops it up before it disappears forever under a pile of wrecked metal. "Dummy, cease," he snaps. "You're not helping."
"He's really cool," Jongin finishes, running a hand down Dummy's metal arm.
Baekhyun's eyebrows jump. "Really."
"His name's actually Dummy?"
"Yeah," Baekhyun says, putting his wrench down. He plucks his sticky tank shirt from his chest and tries to air it out. No matter how low he turns the AC the lab always turns into a sweatshop after he's been working for a couple of hours. "The one over here, holding the armored leg up-that's Butterfingers." The robot squeaks in greeting. "Made him a year after Dummy. And the AI-"
"Jongdae," Jongin offers. "We spoke at breakfast this morning."
"Hey," comes Jongdae's voice over the speakers. "Baekhyun, I really hope you aren't doing what I think you're doing-"
"A retractable light saber would be awesome, don't argue with me," Baekhyun interrupts, still fanning himself. He turns back to Jongin, who's looking increasingly bemused. "His official name is Chen. Computerized Holistic Evaluation Network. Kind of a misnomer, now. Started out as something I fiddled with in college to help myself through class and then he became. This."
"Does Jongdae stand for something?"
"Just One Nasty Godforsaken Dickish Asshole, with an emphasis on the last E," Jongdae says, very dry.
Jongin coughs loudly into his palm in a bad attempt to disguise his laughter.
"He came up with that one after I told him there was no way he was ever getting with Kris Wu."
Baekhyun grimaces. "Stop spilling all my secrets. I swear to god I'll initiate a permanent system shutdown. Don't be fooled, Jongin," he warns. "This one is a crusher of dreams."
"I like him," Jongin announces. He touches his hand to a screen again and Jongdae throws lights over the whole room, light blue and shimmering, all the schematics Baekhyun's been working on for the past week blown up to life size.
"Yeah, alright," Baekhyun says, staring up at the beginnings of his Mark 48. "Maybe I do sometimes, too."
3. (set immediately after the avengers)
Thanks to Fury's PR circus and the natural effects of living in a digital world, every terrorist cell and crime ring and spy agency worth anything has seen his face a hundred times over by now: in the news reports, on shaky home videos, spray-painted across brick walls-his afterimage tattooed inside their eyelids like a promise.
It occurs to Kyungsoo that this has, rather effectively, put him out of a job. Baekhyun could probably wipe out whatever video footage exists with his tech, but it's been hours since the battle. The damage is done.
What use is a deep cover agent with no hope for deep cover?
They watch Thor and Loki wink out of existence. Kyungsoo gets up on his toes and whispers a throwaway comment in Chanyeol's ear about the gag, and the grin that pops onto his face reminds Kyungsoo of Milan, the business tycoon, three years ago-and then he's reaching into the back seat of the car for Minseok's bag. It's the same one he's been carrying since the beginning, his entire life boiled down into a toothbrush and a rumpled change of clothing that doesn't even belong to him.
Chanyeol drops Kyungsoo off at LaGuardia. Chanyeol's flight is the next day, to some lakeside shanty in Iowa. Kyungsoo flies to Korea on a fake passport, ensconces himself in a small SHIELD safe house off the coast of the Yellow Sea. It's isolated, and quiet, and cold. It gives him room to think about what he wants.
Because he doesn't really know anymore-all he's ever known is this, spying, pretending to be someone else so long and so well that by the end of it you've fooled yourself a little bit, too. Even when he was in Korea and still running jobs for his previous employers, it was mostly the same. It's why SHIELD wanted him in the first place, why they'd sent Chanyeol after him. It'd thrown Kyungsoo at first, more than he liked to admit, how much Chanyeol knew: about the hospital fire, Drakoff's daughter, a whole slew of jobs where Kyungsoo, while he hadn't really tried to cover his tracks, also hadn't realized were so obvious in retrospect. How much he'd been asked by Fury to study Kyungsoo. But then Chanyeol's the exception to a lot of things. Has been from the beginning. Despite how unflappable Kyungsoo usually is, Chanyeol always manages to take him by surprise.
It used to take Kyungsoo longer to snap out of roles, to extricate himself from manufactured characters and return to the one that was dubiously his own. The first time Chanyeol asked him to consider defecting instead of sending one of his exploding arrows through Kyungsoo's neck, Kyungsoo was Seungsoo, a small-time arms dealer from Busan, and while he'd turned the offer over in his head, probing at the edges of its sincerity, he'd also sent a whole magazine of .42 caliber bullets raining across the warehouse.
"There's something better than being a North Korean sleeper cell waiting to die, living off borrowed time," Chanyeol said earnestly, soot-stained face tilted up to meet his when they're close enough again, eyes wide. "You can turn it around."
"How have you survived till now?" Kyungsoo mused. "So naïve."
Except the strength of Chanyeol's conviction has always been something Kyungsoo's lacked, something he's been looking for. How long he takes to woo Kyungsoo is proof enough of that-Chanyeol dogs him through three more jobs, picks his way through Central America and Mumbai and all the way to Moscow for Kyungsoo.
"I don't know what you want from me," Kyungsoo says, that last time. He's pretending to be some Asian pop sensation sent as an ambassador so he can get close to one of Putin's aides, and he's already done his job. Chanyeol's apparently working security. Two weeks ago, Kyungsoo's informants from across the border had told him his brother was dead-killed in a mysterious fire. The last of his ties. "I don't know why you haven't killed me yet."
Chanyeol grins at him. "Just come. We'll take care of you."
Kyungsoo does.
So it's really not surprising at all when Chanyeol bursts into the safe house a week and a half later, still smelling of farmland and forest, and parks his ass on the ugly paisley couch.
"What are you going to do?" Kyungsoo asks mildly, sipping his tea.
"I don't know," Chanyeol admits. He shoves his bag off his lap and onto the floor. "What do you think?"
Kyungsoo hums. You should come back, hyung, Jongin had said the previous night, over a secure call. It still feels odd when Jongin calls him that. He's technically eighty, older than all of them. We need you here. "I hear lower Manhattan's still in ruins. They could use some help."
Chanyeol leans back, whistles quietly. "Go big or go home, huh?"
"They already know who we are. Too late to change it." He smiles. "Might as well do some good."
"You've gone soft in your old age," Chanyeol teases, but his eyes are crinkling, and he accepts the cup of tea Kyungsoo pours out for him.
"Had to happen sometime," Kyungsoo returns. He watches the steam coil up from their teacups in tandem.
A/N: i keep flip-flopping between tao and sehun as loki because i think they both have qualities that would make them interesting lokis opposite lu han's thor, but then... there are obviously a lot of disparities lmfao. casting all the asgardians is pretty tough. anyway regardless these were really fun to write kekeke
Title: everyone's special
Pairing: kai-centric
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life, gen
Warnings: n/a
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: a bit of incredibles au ft. kid kai. 992 words.
The first time Jongin uses teleportation at school, it's to put a tack on his least favorite teacher's chair. Park-sonsaengnim teaches fifth grade English and hates Jongin because he constantly falls asleep in class. It's not Jongin's fault the man drones on like a lawn mower right after lunch period. Jongin's pretty good at English already anyway. He doesn't have to stay awake if he doesn't want to.
Park-saem jumps about a mile high when he sits down on the tack, a high-pitched yelp ripped out of his throat. Jongin snort-giggles into his palm as the teacher finds the tack on his chair and glances suspiciously around the room. He tells Sehun about it later, after school, when they're waiting in the courtyard for their parents to come pick them up.
Sehun's eyes go a little wide. The autumn wind picks up around them. "Aren't you afraid you'll get caught?"
Jongin sends him an affronted look. "By what? His slow eyes? No one can see me if I teleport fast enough. It'll be fine."
After the third time this happens in two weeks, Park-saem comes in one Monday morning armed with CCTV cameras for his classroom. Jongin almost sweats through his t-shirt when he does it again, but it turns out he's too fast for even cameras to catch. Park-saem sits down after lunch slower and slower with each day that passes, but Jongin manages to slip a tack in between his pants and the chair every single time. The rest of the class starts waiting with bated breath, eyes glued to the front of the room. It's becomes running joke around campus; ants in Park-saem's pants, ants in Park-saem's pants, all warbled in accented English in the halls, in the auditorium, in the gym. At least it's teaching people something in English. Park-saem should really be thanking him.
Despite the lack of evidence, Park-saem zeroes in on him. Maybe it's because Jongin's in-class sleeping has risen to an all-time high; he puts the tack on the chair and then curls up at his desk a minute after Park-saem hits the roof. Metaphorically. Despite the lack of evidence, Park-saem drags him to the principal's office a month after it begins, waving a video cassette tape around, demanding that Dr. Kim contact Jongin's parents. Says he won't rest until they're called in to correct this egregious error.
Dr. Kim, alarmed, makes the phone call. Jongin sits mulishly in a plush chair and swings his legs. His mother pushes in through the door, rushed and harried, and asks to know what's going on. Park-saem makes Dr. Kim play back the tape. Jongin watches it, bored. Like he'd anticipated, there's nothing incriminating caught on tape at all. But-
"Look!" Park-saem bellows, flecks of saliva flying everywhere as he pauses the video and rewinds. He plays it again. "Right there!"
Dr. Kim's growing increasingly impatient. "What are we supposed to be looking at?"
"Right before I sit down-he-Kim Jongin moves." Jongin squints at the tiny screen, watches the two-second playback. Yeah. He moves alright. His arm twitches. That's it. Park-saem's really losing it.
Dr. Kim looks less than impressed. "I think we've seen enough." He peers down at Jongin, who's busy sending glances at his mother. Her face is smooth, placid, reveals nothing. Park-saem's still spitting acid. "I'll handle this. Son, go home for the day with your mother."
In the parking lot, Jongin climbs into the back seat with his bag in his lap. His mom starts the car and catches his eye through the rearview mirror, still quiet. Then: "Is there anything you want to tell me, Jonginnie?"
Jongin sticks his jaw out. "No."
"Really?"
"He doesn't have any proof," he grumbles, crossing his skinny arms over his chest. "He can't blame any of it on me."
"You know that's not what I'm talking about."
Jongin scowls. "I just don't-I don't like him."
His mother nods absently. "He does seem like quite an unpleasant man. But Jongin-"
"How come," Jongin blurts out, leaning forward in the idling car, "how come we have all these powers, these cool things we can do-what's the point of being able to teleport if I can't even useit?"
"Oh, honey-"
"How come you and Dad never do anything unless it's-unless it's freezing the dumplings before you put them in the fridge or changing the color of your hair for Halloween?" Jongin's frowning so hard now he's pretty sure he's giving himself a headache.
His mother turns around in the front seat to look at him directly. She brushes a hand against his brow and sighs. "It's not that we don't want to."
Jongin closes his eyes and leans into her hand. "Then why don't you?"
"We aren't allowed." He hears her swallow. "Technically, we aren't even supposed to use it at home. We aren't supposed to draw attention to ourselves-government orders. It's supposed to protect us."
"It just makes me feel like I'm sick," Jongin declares. "Like there's something wrong with me."
He opens her eyes when her other hand comes up to grab his face. She looks deadly serious, like when Dad comes home late from work with bruises on his torso from an altercation at work or one of his sisters nearly burns down the house trying to bake something with their powers. "Listen to me, Kim Jongin. There is nothing wrong with you. You hear me? Nothing."
Jongin's lip quavers. He thinks about Sehun and his wind, Taemin and his shape-shifting, Moonkyu and how he could turn invisible at will. How unfair it was that they couldn't do anything, even though they were special. "Okay, Mom," he says. He lies out across the back seat of the car all the way home, the radio blaring something that leaves the bass thrumming in his chest, and watches the trees scrape the sky through the window as they pass.
Title: blink and you'll miss it
Pairing: baekhyun/kai
Rating: nc17
Genre: pwp
Warnings: swearing, sex
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: porn based on this fanart and set in michaelwesten's mama ar, used to light up the dark. 889 words.
Baekhyun's drifted off in the living room armchair by the time it's Sehun and Zitao's turn to shower. Jongin's last today. The sweat lining his stage outfit's completely dried. The rest of the dorm's filled with the sound of the others settling in for the night: a plucked guitar string from Chanyeol's room and Minseok's murmured voice, Lu Han playing something on the iPad in his, Joonmyun and Jongdae's faint tapping on computers.
Baekhyun's in a ratty pair of boxers and Chanyeol's Wolf shirt, the one with big white blocky letters emblazoned across the front. (His is probably lost somewhere in one of the piles of dirty laundry that have taken over the big couch.) The shirt's already purposely too big on Chanyeol; it fucking swallows Baekhyun now, the fabric crinkling around his torso as his damp head nudges the armrest.
He sighs something into the leather. Jongin edges closer as both showers go off in quick succession. Baekhyun stirs, eyes cracking open, and scans Jongin's face.
"Hey," Jongin says. He lifts his leg and wiggles the foot without a sock. "Looking for something."
Baekhyun snorts, shifting in the cradle of the chair. "That really your plan of attack? There's a whole mountain of socks on the couch."
Jongin shrugs, struggling not to smile. "Worth a try."
"Don't just stand there watching me," he mutters thickly after a moment. He tries to make more room on the armchair but it's a pretty sad attempt-Baekhyun's tiny, but not that tiny. "Ah, fuck."
Jongin scrubs the back of his hand over his mouth and settles on his knees, elbows propped on the armrest. Baekhyun's eyes widen a little before narrowing again, mouth curling up as one of his legs drops down to slide along the back of Jongin's calf.
"You're okay, right?" he croaks. The teleportation's still been going a little whack since their comeback, stress and even less sleep frazzling his nerves and finer control; Jongin's got a handle on it more often than not, but last weekend at a fansign he'd had to duck into a tent as he phased in and out for a good minute. The summer heat hasn't been kind.
"Yeah, hyung," he says, hooking his fingers over the waistband of Baekhyun's boxers. The dorm AC whirs on, clicking in time with the clock on the wall. "I'm fine."
They haven't done this enough for Jongin to be totally familiar with Baekhyun's body yet. It's always too fast, anyway: impromptu handjobs in the shower, making out with Jongin pushed into the kitchen counter or the bathroom counter or the barre in the dance studio when everyone else is gone. He hasn't had time to see everything he wants to, yet.
Baekhyun lifts his hips and lets the underwear slide off, cock soft against his leg. When Jongin lifts it in his hand, he sees a tiny mole on Baekhyun's inner thigh and leans over to press his mouth against it, sucking at the warm skin.
"Shit," Baekhyun says. His legs fall open a little more to accommodate, toes digging into Jongin's calf, his other foot braced against the armrest. Jongin sucks harder, hand pulling at Baekhyun's growing erection. "Come on. Don't tease. You don't have the time."
Jongin swallows him down before he can say anything more, breathes out through his nose, lips sliding past the shaft to fit around the base. Baekhyun gasps and thrusts up into his mouth. Jongin tries to loosen his throat as best he can but still chokes a little, saliva easing the way as Baekhyun's dick slides in deeper, nose bumping against the soft curve of his belly. When Jongin peers up through his fringe, Baekhyun's head is tossed back over the other armrest, collarbones throwing shadows across the bit of chest exposed from his shirt's swooping neck.
One of his hands slides into Jongin's hair to pull him closer, nails scraping along his scalp. Jongin leans into it, his own dick half-hard and pressing into the side of the armchair. He grinds against it and tenses his tongue, flicks up against the shaft of Baekhyun's dick, and feels the fingers in his hair twist hard enough to leave little pinpricks of pain at the roots.
When Baekhyun comes the whole living room lights up, floor lamps and ceiling lights burning at three or four times their wattage, easy. Jongin lifts his head and spits into a tissue, shades his eyes, waits for it to subside. Baekhyun uncurls on the armchair and yawns, licks his lips, stretches like a cat.
Jongin plucks his boxers from the floor and hands them back, fabric of his dress pants pulled tight at his groin. Baekhyun eyes the tent, contemplative, as Jongin fishes a set of clothing that doesn't smell too terrible from the couch. "You're not going to accidentally teleport, are you?"
"You're the one who came," Jongin returns, rolling his eyes. In the bathroom, though, when it's finally his turn to wash up and he's palming his dick underneath the spray, he snaps for a second into the dorm room, wet and panting. Jongdae lets out a very manly shriek when he turns from the computer and sees him. Jongin only has time to send him an apologetic frown before he flashes back into the shower, water trickling down his face.
Pairing: character-focused (baekhyun/kai and chanyeol/d.o if you squint)
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life, gen
Warnings: swearing, mentions of ptsd and war
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: three pieces of avengers au that don't really go anywhere. kai's a super soldier. baekhyun's a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. chanyeol's a hawk guy, d.o thinks love is for children, xiumin's always angry, and luhan's a demigod with a hammer. 2,437 words.
1. (set between captain america and the avengers)
Jongin closes his eyes in 1945 and doesn't open them again until after the turn of the millennium.
He wakes up in a place that is not Times Square, not Manhattan. This is not New York City. The air suffocates here, like an asthma attack waiting to happen. In this, it's a startling return to normalcy.
You've been asleep for almost seventy years, they say, and there is the thought at first that this must be a dream, immediately followed by-no, no.
He'd at least have some measure of control over a dream. Everything about this strips him of it.
Living in the S.H.I.E.L.D. compound is not so different from living on an army base. There's a similar cadence to it, the monotonous rhythm of subsisting on the government dime. In the new millennium, it's all slick plastic and polished metal and skin-tight black uniforms, something straight out of a science fiction film-but everything is fundamentally the same. He has nowhere else to go. All he has are his hands. Every day there's a new punching bag to pound into the dust.
He is a super soldier. He is a weapon. He exists for the good of the people. He does what has to be done because no one else can.
One plus one equals two. These things still make sense.
The 21st century has cell phones and computers and supersonic jets. Television is in color. Gas is four dollars a gallon. Howard Stark helped invent the atomic bomb. The Second World War ended. There was never a third, but there was a war in Korea, and one in Vietnam. The USSR came and went. America put a man on the moon-several, actually. They've been trying for Mars.
Brave new world, indeed.
Director Fury calls it the Avengers Initiative. Agent Park calls it a waste of time. Baekhyun, when Jongin meets him, calls it a boy band, and couples the remark with a winning smile. Jongin has no idea what that means, but he can read tone, and Baekhyun Stark is smug all over.
He's Howard's son-adopted, after the Starks had given up trying for biological-which is odd in and of itself because Baekhyun is twenty-nine, older than Jongin had ever known his father. Baekhyun is prickly and cocky and impatient and doesn’t take anything seriously. Jongin catalogues these things away and tries not to make undue comparisons.
It's hard. Jongin fought a war with Taemin and Moonkyu and Youngho. After Steve and Bucky and the Commandos stormed through Europe unchallenged, the higher-ups had decided on a similar plan in the Pacific theater. Pluck someone from the Korean-American Tiger Brigade and give him the same powers. He'd blend in easier.
And Jongin had. The Japanese called him Kai, which meant, among other things, machine. With the others, Jongin'd taken Saipan, then Tinian, then Peleliu. None of them had expected the tesseract, but it seems like things had turned out okay in the end.
He'd fought a war. Now he is expected to do the same with the Avengers. Now, he is expected to lead.
Jongin knows all about them on paper. Everything else, he observes. Kyungsoo, the Black Widow, is as cool and professional as he seems from his personnel file. Chanyeol is more readily abrasive, but he's a relentless operative. Combined, they have a mission success rate in the 99th percentile.
Minseok is quiet, prefers the solitude of lab work to fighting crime. It's a pity the strain of serum in his blood prevents him from having the life he'd rather have, but he takes it in stride.
Jongin's brain skips a little at the demigod. Thor-nicknamed Lu Han because someone on the helicarrier had a taste for terrible wuxia-is apparently the Norse god of thunder. By human standards, he's also something of a super soldier. He was born and raised in Asgard, but chooses to live in an unfamiliar place that is not home. It's an interesting choice.
Baekhyun doesn't sit still long enough for Jongin to get more than a drive-by read on him beyond terrible first impressions.
2. (set post-the avengers, after they've all moved into stark tower)
The first time Jongin encounters one of Baekhyun's robots, a couple of days after everyone's moved in, it ends with a particularly persistent electrical fire in the third level of R&D and, predictably, Dummy taking matters into its own hands and trying to fire-extinguish their way to safety. It's not his finest moment in the Tower, but then, it definitely isn't the worst thing Baekhyun's seen happen under his roof, so he counts it as a win.
S.H.I.E.L.D. shoves the rest of the team into temporary living arrangements at Manhattan headquarters while Baekhyun makes a half-hearted attempt at damage control. "I thought you said he was acclimated," he remarks, surveying the charred remains of the steps leading up to the main landing.
"He's acclimating," Agent Kim coughs into his hand. "It's an ongoing process. We'd appreciate it if you did your best to-help it along."
"Babysitting isn't really part of my job description," he points out, "but, as I am a solemn, dedicated patriot-"
"Oh, please-"
"-and fully invested in the way this boy band initiative pans out, I suppose I'll keep an eye on him." He grins lazily when Joonmyun sends him a despairing look. "Also, I'd really prefer it if this place wasn't burned down every time Kai jumped the wrong way at one of my AIs. We do, you know. Live here."
"I hadn't heard."
"Sarcasm isn't a good look on you, Kim-sshi." Baekhyun folds his arms across his chest, the arc reactor a familiar thrum against his skin. "Jongdae, have the usual contractors come in the morning and clean this shit up. The workshop could use a new layer of paint anyway."
"The usual contractors?" Joonmyun asks suspiciously. "How many times has something like this happened to you?"
"No comment," he says, surveying the damage with a cool eye, and grins when Joonmyun lets out a long-suffering sigh behind him.
The second time, they're in Baekhyun's minefield of a workshop. Dummy goes ballistic when Jongin reaches out and hits a random button on a screen near the front. Baekhyun hadn't even noticed him come down, too preoccupied with trying to figure out whether he could introduce light saber capabilities to the Mark 42. Maybe that'd be a little too tacky.
There's a resounding crash. Jongin looks half-scared, half-guilty. "What the fuck," Baekhyun says, lifting his visor, and has to duck to avoid the robot's swinging arm. He smacks the all-kill panel on Jongdae's interface and Butterfingers powers down sleepily. "Do you have some sort of teleportation power that I don't know about? You just. Appear. It's creepy."
Jongin shuffles over to Dummy and bends down, peering down the hose.
"No-wait, don't do that."
"You made this?" Jongin asks. Dummy lets out a little celebratory toot of nitrogen, which narrowly misses Jongin's face when he jumps out of the way.
"When I was seventeen," Baekhyun says. He shakes his head, fiddling with one of the suit's finger joints. "Don't judge me too harshly."
"He's-" It sprays some more foam and one of the spare parts rolls off the table with a loud clang.
Baekhyun scoops it up before it disappears forever under a pile of wrecked metal. "Dummy, cease," he snaps. "You're not helping."
"He's really cool," Jongin finishes, running a hand down Dummy's metal arm.
Baekhyun's eyebrows jump. "Really."
"His name's actually Dummy?"
"Yeah," Baekhyun says, putting his wrench down. He plucks his sticky tank shirt from his chest and tries to air it out. No matter how low he turns the AC the lab always turns into a sweatshop after he's been working for a couple of hours. "The one over here, holding the armored leg up-that's Butterfingers." The robot squeaks in greeting. "Made him a year after Dummy. And the AI-"
"Jongdae," Jongin offers. "We spoke at breakfast this morning."
"Hey," comes Jongdae's voice over the speakers. "Baekhyun, I really hope you aren't doing what I think you're doing-"
"A retractable light saber would be awesome, don't argue with me," Baekhyun interrupts, still fanning himself. He turns back to Jongin, who's looking increasingly bemused. "His official name is Chen. Computerized Holistic Evaluation Network. Kind of a misnomer, now. Started out as something I fiddled with in college to help myself through class and then he became. This."
"Does Jongdae stand for something?"
"Just One Nasty Godforsaken Dickish Asshole, with an emphasis on the last E," Jongdae says, very dry.
Jongin coughs loudly into his palm in a bad attempt to disguise his laughter.
"He came up with that one after I told him there was no way he was ever getting with Kris Wu."
Baekhyun grimaces. "Stop spilling all my secrets. I swear to god I'll initiate a permanent system shutdown. Don't be fooled, Jongin," he warns. "This one is a crusher of dreams."
"I like him," Jongin announces. He touches his hand to a screen again and Jongdae throws lights over the whole room, light blue and shimmering, all the schematics Baekhyun's been working on for the past week blown up to life size.
"Yeah, alright," Baekhyun says, staring up at the beginnings of his Mark 48. "Maybe I do sometimes, too."
3. (set immediately after the avengers)
Thanks to Fury's PR circus and the natural effects of living in a digital world, every terrorist cell and crime ring and spy agency worth anything has seen his face a hundred times over by now: in the news reports, on shaky home videos, spray-painted across brick walls-his afterimage tattooed inside their eyelids like a promise.
It occurs to Kyungsoo that this has, rather effectively, put him out of a job. Baekhyun could probably wipe out whatever video footage exists with his tech, but it's been hours since the battle. The damage is done.
What use is a deep cover agent with no hope for deep cover?
They watch Thor and Loki wink out of existence. Kyungsoo gets up on his toes and whispers a throwaway comment in Chanyeol's ear about the gag, and the grin that pops onto his face reminds Kyungsoo of Milan, the business tycoon, three years ago-and then he's reaching into the back seat of the car for Minseok's bag. It's the same one he's been carrying since the beginning, his entire life boiled down into a toothbrush and a rumpled change of clothing that doesn't even belong to him.
Chanyeol drops Kyungsoo off at LaGuardia. Chanyeol's flight is the next day, to some lakeside shanty in Iowa. Kyungsoo flies to Korea on a fake passport, ensconces himself in a small SHIELD safe house off the coast of the Yellow Sea. It's isolated, and quiet, and cold. It gives him room to think about what he wants.
Because he doesn't really know anymore-all he's ever known is this, spying, pretending to be someone else so long and so well that by the end of it you've fooled yourself a little bit, too. Even when he was in Korea and still running jobs for his previous employers, it was mostly the same. It's why SHIELD wanted him in the first place, why they'd sent Chanyeol after him. It'd thrown Kyungsoo at first, more than he liked to admit, how much Chanyeol knew: about the hospital fire, Drakoff's daughter, a whole slew of jobs where Kyungsoo, while he hadn't really tried to cover his tracks, also hadn't realized were so obvious in retrospect. How much he'd been asked by Fury to study Kyungsoo. But then Chanyeol's the exception to a lot of things. Has been from the beginning. Despite how unflappable Kyungsoo usually is, Chanyeol always manages to take him by surprise.
It used to take Kyungsoo longer to snap out of roles, to extricate himself from manufactured characters and return to the one that was dubiously his own. The first time Chanyeol asked him to consider defecting instead of sending one of his exploding arrows through Kyungsoo's neck, Kyungsoo was Seungsoo, a small-time arms dealer from Busan, and while he'd turned the offer over in his head, probing at the edges of its sincerity, he'd also sent a whole magazine of .42 caliber bullets raining across the warehouse.
"There's something better than being a North Korean sleeper cell waiting to die, living off borrowed time," Chanyeol said earnestly, soot-stained face tilted up to meet his when they're close enough again, eyes wide. "You can turn it around."
"How have you survived till now?" Kyungsoo mused. "So naïve."
Except the strength of Chanyeol's conviction has always been something Kyungsoo's lacked, something he's been looking for. How long he takes to woo Kyungsoo is proof enough of that-Chanyeol dogs him through three more jobs, picks his way through Central America and Mumbai and all the way to Moscow for Kyungsoo.
"I don't know what you want from me," Kyungsoo says, that last time. He's pretending to be some Asian pop sensation sent as an ambassador so he can get close to one of Putin's aides, and he's already done his job. Chanyeol's apparently working security. Two weeks ago, Kyungsoo's informants from across the border had told him his brother was dead-killed in a mysterious fire. The last of his ties. "I don't know why you haven't killed me yet."
Chanyeol grins at him. "Just come. We'll take care of you."
Kyungsoo does.
So it's really not surprising at all when Chanyeol bursts into the safe house a week and a half later, still smelling of farmland and forest, and parks his ass on the ugly paisley couch.
"What are you going to do?" Kyungsoo asks mildly, sipping his tea.
"I don't know," Chanyeol admits. He shoves his bag off his lap and onto the floor. "What do you think?"
Kyungsoo hums. You should come back, hyung, Jongin had said the previous night, over a secure call. It still feels odd when Jongin calls him that. He's technically eighty, older than all of them. We need you here. "I hear lower Manhattan's still in ruins. They could use some help."
Chanyeol leans back, whistles quietly. "Go big or go home, huh?"
"They already know who we are. Too late to change it." He smiles. "Might as well do some good."
"You've gone soft in your old age," Chanyeol teases, but his eyes are crinkling, and he accepts the cup of tea Kyungsoo pours out for him.
"Had to happen sometime," Kyungsoo returns. He watches the steam coil up from their teacups in tandem.
A/N: i keep flip-flopping between tao and sehun as loki because i think they both have qualities that would make them interesting lokis opposite lu han's thor, but then... there are obviously a lot of disparities lmfao. casting all the asgardians is pretty tough. anyway regardless these were really fun to write kekeke
Title: everyone's special
Pairing: kai-centric
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life, gen
Warnings: n/a
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: a bit of incredibles au ft. kid kai. 992 words.
The first time Jongin uses teleportation at school, it's to put a tack on his least favorite teacher's chair. Park-sonsaengnim teaches fifth grade English and hates Jongin because he constantly falls asleep in class. It's not Jongin's fault the man drones on like a lawn mower right after lunch period. Jongin's pretty good at English already anyway. He doesn't have to stay awake if he doesn't want to.
Park-saem jumps about a mile high when he sits down on the tack, a high-pitched yelp ripped out of his throat. Jongin snort-giggles into his palm as the teacher finds the tack on his chair and glances suspiciously around the room. He tells Sehun about it later, after school, when they're waiting in the courtyard for their parents to come pick them up.
Sehun's eyes go a little wide. The autumn wind picks up around them. "Aren't you afraid you'll get caught?"
Jongin sends him an affronted look. "By what? His slow eyes? No one can see me if I teleport fast enough. It'll be fine."
After the third time this happens in two weeks, Park-saem comes in one Monday morning armed with CCTV cameras for his classroom. Jongin almost sweats through his t-shirt when he does it again, but it turns out he's too fast for even cameras to catch. Park-saem sits down after lunch slower and slower with each day that passes, but Jongin manages to slip a tack in between his pants and the chair every single time. The rest of the class starts waiting with bated breath, eyes glued to the front of the room. It's becomes running joke around campus; ants in Park-saem's pants, ants in Park-saem's pants, all warbled in accented English in the halls, in the auditorium, in the gym. At least it's teaching people something in English. Park-saem should really be thanking him.
Despite the lack of evidence, Park-saem zeroes in on him. Maybe it's because Jongin's in-class sleeping has risen to an all-time high; he puts the tack on the chair and then curls up at his desk a minute after Park-saem hits the roof. Metaphorically. Despite the lack of evidence, Park-saem drags him to the principal's office a month after it begins, waving a video cassette tape around, demanding that Dr. Kim contact Jongin's parents. Says he won't rest until they're called in to correct this egregious error.
Dr. Kim, alarmed, makes the phone call. Jongin sits mulishly in a plush chair and swings his legs. His mother pushes in through the door, rushed and harried, and asks to know what's going on. Park-saem makes Dr. Kim play back the tape. Jongin watches it, bored. Like he'd anticipated, there's nothing incriminating caught on tape at all. But-
"Look!" Park-saem bellows, flecks of saliva flying everywhere as he pauses the video and rewinds. He plays it again. "Right there!"
Dr. Kim's growing increasingly impatient. "What are we supposed to be looking at?"
"Right before I sit down-he-Kim Jongin moves." Jongin squints at the tiny screen, watches the two-second playback. Yeah. He moves alright. His arm twitches. That's it. Park-saem's really losing it.
Dr. Kim looks less than impressed. "I think we've seen enough." He peers down at Jongin, who's busy sending glances at his mother. Her face is smooth, placid, reveals nothing. Park-saem's still spitting acid. "I'll handle this. Son, go home for the day with your mother."
In the parking lot, Jongin climbs into the back seat with his bag in his lap. His mom starts the car and catches his eye through the rearview mirror, still quiet. Then: "Is there anything you want to tell me, Jonginnie?"
Jongin sticks his jaw out. "No."
"Really?"
"He doesn't have any proof," he grumbles, crossing his skinny arms over his chest. "He can't blame any of it on me."
"You know that's not what I'm talking about."
Jongin scowls. "I just don't-I don't like him."
His mother nods absently. "He does seem like quite an unpleasant man. But Jongin-"
"How come," Jongin blurts out, leaning forward in the idling car, "how come we have all these powers, these cool things we can do-what's the point of being able to teleport if I can't even useit?"
"Oh, honey-"
"How come you and Dad never do anything unless it's-unless it's freezing the dumplings before you put them in the fridge or changing the color of your hair for Halloween?" Jongin's frowning so hard now he's pretty sure he's giving himself a headache.
His mother turns around in the front seat to look at him directly. She brushes a hand against his brow and sighs. "It's not that we don't want to."
Jongin closes his eyes and leans into her hand. "Then why don't you?"
"We aren't allowed." He hears her swallow. "Technically, we aren't even supposed to use it at home. We aren't supposed to draw attention to ourselves-government orders. It's supposed to protect us."
"It just makes me feel like I'm sick," Jongin declares. "Like there's something wrong with me."
He opens her eyes when her other hand comes up to grab his face. She looks deadly serious, like when Dad comes home late from work with bruises on his torso from an altercation at work or one of his sisters nearly burns down the house trying to bake something with their powers. "Listen to me, Kim Jongin. There is nothing wrong with you. You hear me? Nothing."
Jongin's lip quavers. He thinks about Sehun and his wind, Taemin and his shape-shifting, Moonkyu and how he could turn invisible at will. How unfair it was that they couldn't do anything, even though they were special. "Okay, Mom," he says. He lies out across the back seat of the car all the way home, the radio blaring something that leaves the bass thrumming in his chest, and watches the trees scrape the sky through the window as they pass.
Title: blink and you'll miss it
Pairing: baekhyun/kai
Rating: nc17
Genre: pwp
Warnings: swearing, sex
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: porn based on this fanart and set in michaelwesten's mama ar, used to light up the dark. 889 words.
Baekhyun's drifted off in the living room armchair by the time it's Sehun and Zitao's turn to shower. Jongin's last today. The sweat lining his stage outfit's completely dried. The rest of the dorm's filled with the sound of the others settling in for the night: a plucked guitar string from Chanyeol's room and Minseok's murmured voice, Lu Han playing something on the iPad in his, Joonmyun and Jongdae's faint tapping on computers.
Baekhyun's in a ratty pair of boxers and Chanyeol's Wolf shirt, the one with big white blocky letters emblazoned across the front. (His is probably lost somewhere in one of the piles of dirty laundry that have taken over the big couch.) The shirt's already purposely too big on Chanyeol; it fucking swallows Baekhyun now, the fabric crinkling around his torso as his damp head nudges the armrest.
He sighs something into the leather. Jongin edges closer as both showers go off in quick succession. Baekhyun stirs, eyes cracking open, and scans Jongin's face.
"Hey," Jongin says. He lifts his leg and wiggles the foot without a sock. "Looking for something."
Baekhyun snorts, shifting in the cradle of the chair. "That really your plan of attack? There's a whole mountain of socks on the couch."
Jongin shrugs, struggling not to smile. "Worth a try."
"Don't just stand there watching me," he mutters thickly after a moment. He tries to make more room on the armchair but it's a pretty sad attempt-Baekhyun's tiny, but not that tiny. "Ah, fuck."
Jongin scrubs the back of his hand over his mouth and settles on his knees, elbows propped on the armrest. Baekhyun's eyes widen a little before narrowing again, mouth curling up as one of his legs drops down to slide along the back of Jongin's calf.
"You're okay, right?" he croaks. The teleportation's still been going a little whack since their comeback, stress and even less sleep frazzling his nerves and finer control; Jongin's got a handle on it more often than not, but last weekend at a fansign he'd had to duck into a tent as he phased in and out for a good minute. The summer heat hasn't been kind.
"Yeah, hyung," he says, hooking his fingers over the waistband of Baekhyun's boxers. The dorm AC whirs on, clicking in time with the clock on the wall. "I'm fine."
They haven't done this enough for Jongin to be totally familiar with Baekhyun's body yet. It's always too fast, anyway: impromptu handjobs in the shower, making out with Jongin pushed into the kitchen counter or the bathroom counter or the barre in the dance studio when everyone else is gone. He hasn't had time to see everything he wants to, yet.
Baekhyun lifts his hips and lets the underwear slide off, cock soft against his leg. When Jongin lifts it in his hand, he sees a tiny mole on Baekhyun's inner thigh and leans over to press his mouth against it, sucking at the warm skin.
"Shit," Baekhyun says. His legs fall open a little more to accommodate, toes digging into Jongin's calf, his other foot braced against the armrest. Jongin sucks harder, hand pulling at Baekhyun's growing erection. "Come on. Don't tease. You don't have the time."
Jongin swallows him down before he can say anything more, breathes out through his nose, lips sliding past the shaft to fit around the base. Baekhyun gasps and thrusts up into his mouth. Jongin tries to loosen his throat as best he can but still chokes a little, saliva easing the way as Baekhyun's dick slides in deeper, nose bumping against the soft curve of his belly. When Jongin peers up through his fringe, Baekhyun's head is tossed back over the other armrest, collarbones throwing shadows across the bit of chest exposed from his shirt's swooping neck.
One of his hands slides into Jongin's hair to pull him closer, nails scraping along his scalp. Jongin leans into it, his own dick half-hard and pressing into the side of the armchair. He grinds against it and tenses his tongue, flicks up against the shaft of Baekhyun's dick, and feels the fingers in his hair twist hard enough to leave little pinpricks of pain at the roots.
When Baekhyun comes the whole living room lights up, floor lamps and ceiling lights burning at three or four times their wattage, easy. Jongin lifts his head and spits into a tissue, shades his eyes, waits for it to subside. Baekhyun uncurls on the armchair and yawns, licks his lips, stretches like a cat.
Jongin plucks his boxers from the floor and hands them back, fabric of his dress pants pulled tight at his groin. Baekhyun eyes the tent, contemplative, as Jongin fishes a set of clothing that doesn't smell too terrible from the couch. "You're not going to accidentally teleport, are you?"
"You're the one who came," Jongin returns, rolling his eyes. In the bathroom, though, when it's finally his turn to wash up and he's palming his dick underneath the spray, he snaps for a second into the dorm room, wet and panting. Jongdae lets out a very manly shriek when he turns from the computer and sees him. Jongin only has time to send him an apologetic frown before he flashes back into the shower, water trickling down his face.