Archive of Our Own

The cold, cruel wind often blew over the city, and yet Yoongi never found it quite as hostile as the ever-present glass and concrete. Pink, blue, or green neon, all the corners always seemed the same, no matter the light illuminating them, making the city a living, breathing maze with no escape. Not from the surveillance, not from love-starved human hearts that've never known humanity at all. Not from the truth.

Despite being so close by, practically within a hand's reach, everything seemed to be permanently distant. Like if you get close, it will disappear. Like nothing could be taken for granted anymore. 

In this cruel world, nobody is without fault. Whether you're helping the rebellion or licking the blood-stained boots of the government officials, both will get you killed if you're not careful enough. 

All this comes down to the company you keep or... don't keep. Yoongi's done both, and in his humble opinion, neither is inherently a good or bad choice. Not unless you get attached, and then you wish you could've somehow reversed the clock. 

The sky was still dark when Yoongi opened his bleary eyes. I mean, as dark as a city built on synthetic lights and holographic screens could be. The entire cityscape has always been lined with streetlights, neon club signs, and LED-powered ads over buildings to the point that Yoongi couldn't help but feel like his senses were being assaulted.

Displeased, he rolled onto his other side with the hope of hiding his face in Jeongguk's firm back or warm chest. Unfortunately, he found neither. The disappointment left him quiet for a second, listening to the muted drumming of rain against the soundproof windows.

"Echo," he croaked out eventually, one arm draped over his eyes in that inborn kind of tiredness. 

"Good morning, Yoongi," Echo responded instantly with that artificial but oddly warm voice. "It's currently 4:18 on a Thursday morning. The average temperature outside over the last four hours is 6°C. It's slightly windy with a light but steady drizzle first observed about half an hour ago. Today's elevated pollution levels in your area may cause respiratory issues for more sensitive individuals."

See, Echo was originally Yoongi's creation. It's a precise machine that responds to whoever is authorised to access it. Once it was just Yoongi, now it is also Jeon Jeongguk. It's like a powerful web of files, DNA samples, and ID scans that controls the apartment's security measures, devices, and location details. Used to be a cure for seasonal loneliness and became a partner in crime.

"Okay, thank you," Yoongi responded calmly. He is hardly a fan of artificial intelligence, but with Echo, it's different. He's grown so attached to the machine that at times he's kinder to it than he is to Jeongguk. "When did Jeongguk leave?"

"Jeongguk left the apartment exactly 1 hour, 10 minutes, and 36 seconds ago. He didn't leave a message."

Yoongi sighed heavily as he lifted himself on both forearms into a sitting position. "Full gear?"

"No, he appeared to have only been wearing the helmet."

"Comm pad?" As on cue, the familiar 'ping' sound reached Yoongi's ear when the AI located Jeongguk's abandoned communicator.

"It's on the kitchen counter, approximately 15 meters away from you."

"And the tracker?"

Echo's hesitation made Yoongi raise an eyebrow. Sometimes it felt like Jeongguk had a bad influence on the machine, and they were scheming behind Yoon's back. Oddly enough, Echo has proven useless when it came to lying to Yoongi. It must feel some kind of obligation towards him as the creator, even after it has taken a liking to Jeongguk's much brighter personality.

Yoon cleared his throat. "Echo, what is the location of Jeongguk's tracker?" 

"...Downtown, Biome Square."

Meanwhile, Jeongguk eased off the accelerator the moment an incoming comms request flashed across his wet visor. A private channel between him and the AI was convenient enough that Yoongi himself offered to set it up a few months ago, though his idea for it certainly didn't match Jeongguk's. Ever since, the biker's life became a whole lot easier... And Echo's more difficult, he could imagine.

"Yeah?" He automatically raised his voice after accepting the request. Echo could hear him just fine inside the helmet, and Yoongi kept reminding him of it, but he just couldn't get rid of the bad habit.

"Hello, Jeongguk," Echo started cautiously. "I don't mean to alarm you, but Yoongi woke up before your arrival. He is not happy with your absence."

"Okay, just hold him off for a bit. I'm almost there," he leaned left to weave between two self-driving cars at an intersection. 

The AI went silent for a bit, putting Jeongguk on mute. The quiet stretched for a while to the point where Jeongguk thought the problem had been dealt with. That's mainly why he jumped in his seat when Echo spoke again out of nowhere. 

"Have you considered preparing a surprise that he would enjoy?" The AI offered, and for a moment, Jeongguk could've sworn that there was a hint of sarcasm in its serious, synthetic voice. He actually didn't think he'd get mocked by a machine today.

"He will enjoy this one," Gguk insisted. "He just doesn't know it yet."

"Are you sure? I've recorded elevated blood pressure."

Jeongguk rolled his eyes deliberately, though it didn't bring him quite as much satisfaction as it did whenever Yoongi was there to witness it. "Yeah, trust me. He's being dramatic, as usual," he gunned the engine of the bike before passing a line of hover vehicles and taking a shortcut left in hopes of getting home faster.

Unfortunately, he wasn't fast enough. Even in the weak morning light, he could still make out Yoongi's nervous silhouette from miles away, arms crossed and one foot tapping against the slightly wet ground. And... is that his shirt?

Jeongguk pulled up onto the driveway and killed the engine shortly after. Still, the sound of it somehow managed to cover up for the heavy 'here we go' sigh. Or was it the helmet?

"I... love that you took the time to come down and greet me properly," Jeongguk smiled with just a tiny bit of exaggeration to it.

Yoongi's eyebrow quirked up in mild annoyance. "Go die," he rasped out, the hoarse morning voice leaving goosebumps on Jeongguk's skin under the breathable fabric of his hoodie. "To you, this might be a joke, but not to me."

Jeongguk leaned back on the bike. His smile disappeared in seconds as the stare-off continued. Yoongi's piercing, feline eyes were always just stone-cold daggers that often portrayed the man's emotions better than he himself did.

"It's not a joke," he assured with a subtle shake of his head. Immediate, honest.

"Could've fooled me," the older of the two turned and made his way back inside the tower. 

Hurriedly, the younger man swung his leg over the bike and removed one of his fingerless gloves. At a double tap of his fingers against the steering bar, the bike made a whirring sound and compressed into a tiny little thing that could easily be mistaken for a toy - Yoongi's brilliant work. Once he slid the palm-sized machine into his pocket, his steps quickly carried him to the entrance of the building in pursuit of Yoongi.

"Yoongi, please wait," Jeongguk called out, one hand gripping the chin bar of his matte helmet and the other one dangling at his side as he skipped over every second stair. "It was supposed to be a surprise, okay?"

"I've had my fair share of surprises. Enough to last me for a lifetime," he mumbled to himself with eyes lowered and watching each step he passed.

Jeongguk finally caught up to him just a few steps away from their floor. "This is a fun one," the biker assured as he slid past Yoongi and strategically blocked off his way.

Yoongi looked longingly past Jeongguk's shoulder at the door to their apartment before rubbing a hand over his sleepy face. "You blackmailed Echo into lying to me. Again." 

"Okay," he took a deep breath before continuing with his explanation, "There was technically no blackmail involved," he claimed. Yoongi didn't look like he was buying all this, just like a very disappointed and unimpressed cat.

A beat.

"Wait, Echo lied to you?" Jeongguk frowned.

Yoongi blinked and rewound what happened this morning.

"...Were you Downtown on Biome Square?" he asked after a moment of silence, his head held suspiciously high for someone likely about to admit defeat.

"Yes," Jeongguk nodded slowly and truthfully, of course.

Yoongi paused and ducked under the biker's arm to continue his journey back to the apartment. "Then no, it didn't... But it was about to."

"Okay, and how is that my fault?!" he threw both his arms into the air in mild exasperation, but followed anyway, like a scolded child with no power of argument whatsoever.

Given that Yoongi's speciality has always been cybernetic engineering, the apartment is what one would expect. Half home, half workshop, the space is open, slick, and sharp. Above all, however, it is being endlessly improved and upgraded because Yoongi remains critical enough to still find imperfections in his own superhuman creations.

The heavy door clicks open after a biometric check - fingerprint, iris scan, and voice recognition. As monotone and annoying as this routine had felt in the past, both found it automatic and almost warm after living together for so long. It is necessary to keep their 'sins' locked away from prying eyes.

Their home is arguably the most technologically advanced place in the entire city, mostly because its technology is mainly illegal. Wrapped in glass that blacks out or dims at command, the apartment opens into a wide, flexible space that is maximally customizable. Lighting, colors, and temperature change are just some of its smart features controlled by none other than Echo. 

The space is almost entirely open-plan, divided less by walls and more by shifting architecture. Walls can easily become screens at command, displaying security feeds, maps, ambient scenery, or upgrade schematics while the furniture retracts into its construction when needed; voice-activated storage compartments, automatically foldable guest seating, and more.

Because both of them are busy men, one side of the apartment is generally dedicated to work. It's seamlessly integrated into the living space in a way that one wouldn't probably notice if Yoongi didn't want them to. It includes floating interfaces, robotic tool arms installed over the ceiling, modular worktables, and flush panels that perfectly hide the storage hidden behind them. It's Yoongi's space - always tidy, always ready.

Jeongguk's section is a reinforced, recessed maintenance platform where his motorcycle, V4 R-17 Revenant, or, as he calls it, 'Baby', magnetically locks into place for repairs. It is minimalistic, efficient, and automatic, allowing for quick but thorough work. 

Despite all the polished futurism, neither Jeongguk nor Yoongi allows the space to ever feel too sterile or empty. 

Yoongi's vintage and retro pieces can be found all over the place. He does love collecting items that represent the passing time and death of past eras of humanity, which he longs for. Things like analog cameras, antique wristwatches displayed on the console table next to the door, or a record player carefully modified to sync with Echo are a touch of warmth within the pristine space. Being already flawless at his job, Yoongi likes exploring the technology that came before.

Where Yoongi adds history, Jeongguk adds life. The deep, lively, bioengineered greenery spills from wherever it doesn't disturb Yoongi's work - top shelves or bookcases, the coffee table, the kitchen counter. He takes care of it with passion, deeply cherishing the touch of life amongst their cyber reality. There are also quite a few holographic pieces scattered here and there ever since Jeongguk became so fascinated with holographic art. 

In short, the place is a balanced mix of both their personalities, and that's what makes it home.

The door closed behind Jeongguk as he stormed in after Yoongi.

"Welcome home, Jeongguk," the AI greeted.

The biker didn't respond, frustrated enough to subconsiously ignore it. After all, he wanted to do something nice, and it turned out just about as it usually did.

Silently, he unzipped the backpack and rummaged in it for a while before finally retrieving a palm-sized, egg-shaped object. He rotated it in his fingers and then made his way towards the kitchen, from where he could hear the sound of the coffee machine, only drowned out by the patter of his heavy boots.

Yoongi stood with his back against the counter with his arms still crossed over his chest. His platinum blond hair, now mussed with sleep and unkempt, had started to show darker roots, and Jeongguk's wrinkled shirt slid off one shoulder just enough to let one faded hickey peek out like a small accessory. Even in oversized shorts, barefoot, and all annoyed, Yoongi was the one thing that Jeongguk wouldn't ever trade for anything else.
Not even for a safe passage out of this city... not even when they argued or fought.
Not even when the fights were about such trivial matters. 

Jeongguk walked up the few steps onto the raised kitchen area and put the backpack down on the kitchen island before sliding the tiny, round device across the counter towards Yoongi. It bumped the man's palm from the side and made him blink a few times, as if woken up from a trance of some kind.

Jeongguk leaned against the counter where Yoongi stood, watching him pick up the device and examine it carefully.

"This is a..." he paused, index finger hesitating before turning on the toy. "This is a Gen 1 Tamagotchi from 1996," Yoongi stated the obvious fact. He didn't seem surprised at first, but Jeongguk could read him better than anyone and noticed that subtle raise of his brow.

The biker nodded slowly, fingers drumming absentmindedly against the edge of the counter behind him. "Yeah... It is."

A beat.

They stood in silence for a while, Yoongi setting the time on the device and figuring out the controls, and Jeongguk simply waiting for something else to happen, but nothing did. Only more silence, occasionally broken by the toy's beeping sounds.

"I'm gonna go take a shower," he announced eventually, pushing himself off the counter and, with a quiet sigh, making his way out of the kitchen area, across the living room, and towards the bathroom.

Yoongi made no move to stop him, and that was fine. Jeongguk knew better than to hurry any conversation with Yoongi. He couldn't think of another person who needed quite as much space as Yoongi often did. Nonetheless, it didn't have to be a bad thing. Instead of emotion-driven shouting competitions that would eventually make them regret things, they usually had peaceful, well-thought-through adult conversations. During those, Jeongguk realised just how much adapting to Yoongi's way of life helped him grow as a person, even if frustration with his stubbornness remained a constant battle.

"Echo."

"Yes, Jeongguk?"

"Turn on opaque window film. I'm taking a shower," the biker requested while already pulling the black hoodie over his head.

The bathroom windows immediately turned white and blurry; a fitting match to the milky fog floating above the waking city. "Opaque theme engaged."

"Thanks," he mumbled more to himself than the AI and continued undressing in silence.

The smart bathroom occupies its own glassy corner of the apartment. Minimalistic but luxurious in every detail, it serves as both a private spa after nervous days and an urgent care center during 'bad nights'. 

Jeongguk had decided a long time ago that a shower was a better and more efficient option than a giant bathtub, and Yoongi seemed to have adjusted seamlessly despite his previous love for long baths. It's a spacious rainfall shower enclosed in pristine glass panels. Jeongguk's favorite feature? The preferred settings can be saved under both their names, which adds to the comfort of use.

The sink counter is a floating slab of obsidian composite, with two basins, that hums softly and emits a gentle blue glow at night. The giant mirror above it doubles as a display screen that is often lit with health diagnostics or Echo's thoughtful reminders. Behind it, a hidden med storage with emergency DNA samples and powerful drugs.

Of course, Jeongguk's love for greenery remains pervasive. The countless cascading vines, holographic orchids, and hydroponic moss decorations breathe life into the spotless space. 

Like the rest of the apartment, the place is not just black stone, soft light, and soothing plant life; it is practical and designed for efficiency. It is designed this way because Yoongi worries and because he cares more than he is ready to admit.

Jeongguk's muscles relaxed instantly at the heavenly feeling of hot water droplets hitting all the right spots. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and ran both hands through his longish, curly, dark hair, which turned all damp within seconds. 

The comforting sound of splashing water, the shower gel's citrusy smell, and Gguk's gentle humming filled the humid space with the kind of peace that let you forget for just a few seconds about all the problems and obstacles in your way.

"Let me wash your back, hmm?" The low sound of Yoongi's voice came out of nowhere... Well, technically from behind, but Jeongguk was so busy savouring his solitude and relaxation that he didn't even hear the door open. 

After the initial heart attack, Jeongguk turned to look over his shoulder at Yoongi, who stood there in the open shower doorway with one of his hands hesitantly positioned on the edge of the cabin and the other scratching his neck awkwardly.

"Holy hell, you scared the shit out of me," he admitted with a small, unamused huff.

"Then we're even," Yoongi muttered.

Not hearing an explicit refusal, Yoongi shed the mismatched pajama set, letting the fabric fall on the black tiles, discarded. Then, he stepped inside, pulling the fogged-up shower door closed behind himself.

This wasn't a regular occurrence. I mean, sure, they sleep together, have sex, cook for each other, and borrow one another's clothes, but somehow sharing a shower is where they draw the line. At least that's how Jeongguk knew that it wasn't just a rare change of mind, but Yoongi's poor, silent way of apologizing.

Silently, Yoongi reached for the shower gel and squirted some of it onto Jeongguk's loofah before finally getting to work. 

Yoongi's touch was gentle over Jeongguk's firm back muscles. The same ones that kept him warm during the night and safe on some missions. He remembered each and every scar as a wound that he singlehandedly stitched - the horizontal one under his left shoulder blade from a hunting knife injury, the white one on his lower back that he got from reckless driving...

Jeongguk sighed heavily at the tender touch. "This is not a prison, Yoongi," he retorted eventually, leaning his forehead against the wall in front of him. His eyes closed almost voluntarily.

"No, it isn't," Yoongi agreed, oddly enough. "But..." he added quickly. "It's not fun waking up with you gone, your comm pad still here, no message left for me, learning that you didn't take your gear and went Downtown alone," his voice rose in that controlled way that only Yoongi could pull off.

Jeongguk rolled his eyes and turned abruptly to face Yoon.

Jeongguk's eyes trailed from the engineer's white hair stuck to his forehead in damp, messy strands, past the pink lips from which a tongue occasionally darted out to lick away a few water droplets, and then down his neck, where a few fading hickeys still marked his pale skin. Then, back up, to those infuriatingly unbothered feline eyes. God, they both hated being wrong, didn't they.

"I was in a hurry, and it was supposed to be a surprise," Gguk ran his hand through Yoongi's fair hair, fingertips affectionately scratching the scalp.

A beat.

"I know that now," Yoongi blinked slowly. "Look, just say sorry, and I'll forget about it."

Jeongguk's eyebrows shot up, and his hand stilled in Yoongi's hair. " What if I'm not sorry?"

The air between them suddenly thickened, and it wasn't the temperature's fault.

Yoongi raised one eyebrow. His mouth opened and closed before it opened again, clearly at a loss for words. "Well, you should be, asshole."

At this point in the conversation, Jeongguk's arm fell to his side. "Okay, I'll say it," he offered. "But you don't get to keep the Tamagotchi," he took a step forward with a smile hiding somewhere between one and the other corner of his mouth.

"What?"

"Exactly what you've heard," Jeongguk shrugged and tilted his head to the side. "If I hadn't gone, you wouldn't have gotten it."

Yoongi carefully scanned Jeongguk from head to toe. This felt like a challenge, marked by the tilted head and a casual shrug. Jeongguk was trying to outdo Yoongi's nonchalance. This stank of a power play from kilometers.

"Yoongi, your heart rate is elevated," Echo's voice bounced off the shower walls. "Lowering the water temperature is recommended."

The blond couldn't believe his ears. His own creation is betraying him like this in broad daylight. Mentally, he cursed both himself and Echo once he realised that a telling blush quickly crept up his neck.

Jeongguk chuckled confidently with genuine amusement, which was even worse. "I don't think it's the temperature, Echo-"

"You don't know that. What if it is the temperature?" Yoongi cut in, nervously crossing both arms over his chest in retaliation. 

Exasperating, annoying, infuriating, maddening; all those words came to Jeongguk's mind at the moment. All of them could've been used to describe how Yoongi made him feel.

Did he like Yoongi for the challenge of it, as he did his job? Or was the challenge only a side dish served with a main dish so filling that Jeongguk simply couldn't digest more? 

Before the blond could even react, Jeongguk's left hand shot up to grasp his chin firmly while the other one reached for Yoongi's thigh, tugging at it as if trying to encourage the shorter man to lift the other leg and wrap both of them around his hips. "You talk so much, it's ridiculous."

Slightly disoriented, Yoongi hit the glass wall behind him, the cold surface against his back making him shudder, but he let himself be lifted by the other man in the heat of the moment. "You are a snake."

"No, I am a lover," Jeongguk whispered a breath away from Yoon's lips, with a full-on smirk across his face. He was so close, quite literally invading Yoongi's space. "Echo!"

"Yes, Jeongguk?" The machine responded in a tone that suggested it had already made predictions about the next request.

"Blackout windows, turn the ceiling lights off, activate blue LEDs," he commanded hurriedly.

Blue. Not a random choice. Yoongi often experienced bad migraines, and overall, he's always been pretty light sensitive. Blue lighting helped him calm down, fall asleep, and function better on many occasions. Sometimes Jeongguk made fun of that, since he himself preferred red ones that 'made him feel more badass'. Other times, like right then, he disarmed Yoongi with his thoughtfulness.

Echo wasted no time transforming the bathroom into an intimate enclosure where neither could properly see the other's facial features, but that didn't quite matter when Jeongguk's fingers were digging into Yoongi's jaw while Yoon's legs engulfed Gguk's waistline in a trusting grasp. "Done. Enjoy your time, you two."

Neither bothered responding to the AI's comment.

The first kiss came slowly, barely a touch of the lips. Barely a sound, even. Yet, the shower cabin felt too tight to contain it.
The second one drew a bit of a sigh from Yoongi as he allowed himself to close his eyes.
And the third one? During the third one, the blond pulled Jeongguk's hand away from his chin by the wrist and cupped the man's cheeks in both of his palms like a treasure.

"Hold me properly," he retorted in that grumbling, rude voice of his, but Jeongguk complied with only a scoff.

"Thank me for the thing," the biker mumbled quietly into Yoongi's mouth, both hands now supporting the man's pale thighs and occasionally squeezing them for what seemed to be his own, personal pleasure.

Yoongi frowned to himself as he dragged the tip of his thumb over Jeongguk's sharp jawline. "You still on that?"

"Yes, thank me for it," the younger insisted.

There was something adorable and almost affectionate in a way he needed validation, Yoongi thought to himself. And the way that validation had to come from him.

Nonetheless, he chose to argue, "I didn't ask you for it," he muttered into Jeongguk's mouth, tilting his head to the side to deepen the kiss.

It was Yoongi's first-ever 'shower kiss' as he decided to call it right then and there. There was water everywhere - in his hair, in his ears, in his nose, and gathered up in the hollows of his collarbones. Most notably, however, there was water between them and in his mouth, which made kissing back nearly impossible.

It trickled down his and Jeongguk's chin and then formed a thin, complicated route down their torsos. It felt... magical, in a way. Hipnotizing. He hated that Jeongguk could have this kind of effect on him, but at the same time didn't want him to have it on anyone else ever.

"No, but I went out of my way and got it for you anyway." Jeongguk adjusted his grip and peeled away from Yoongi's lips just to dive into the crook of the blond's neck. 

A beat.

Yoongi sighed and let his head loll back against the blacked-out window behind him, simultaneously watching Echo's soothing water weave projections on the ceiling and allowing Jeongguk more access to himself.

"Did you steal it?" he asked eventually, both hands mindlessly sliding up Jeongguk's wet shoulders and warm neck, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

Jeongguk ceased trailing his warm mouth over the other man's sensitive skin and pulled away abruptly. "No, I bought it," he insisted, audibly offended.

Yoongi couldn't quite make out his expression and didn't bother fully opening his half-lidded eyes, but he observed Jeongguk's mouth shifting in the darkness as he talked, and the way the shadow from his left side made his nose look more pointy than usual. His eyes sparkled, overflowed with the blue tint in a way that made his whites invisible. And the way his shoulders strained once he shifted slightly while still managing to balance Yoongi seamlessly in his arms.

"With your money?" Yoon asked in a much gentler tone now, fingers carding through the younger man's slicked back locks.

"No, with my soul," Jeongguk sighed in disbelief, still visibly agitated even if he did his best to hide it amongst sarcasm. "Yes, with my money. Legally."

Yoongi absently curled a single silky hair strand around his index finger. "I can pay you back," he whispered into the space between them.

"I don't want you to pay me back. I want you to thank me."

They both went silent for a bit, their misting breaths mixing in the air between them and creating some kind of spellbinding concoction that made Yoongi's head spin as if he were high.

"Okay," he agreed eventually, voice still quiet not to ruin the moment. "You say 'sorry,' I say 'thank you'. How's that?" he smiled encouragingly, clearly accepting that neither of them was purely right here.

The air shifted again, and Jeongguk's shoulders relaxed visibly before he finally announced, "I'm sorry for leaving so early alone and without your knowledge."

Yoongi nodded after a short second, accepting the apology, and pulled Jeongguk closer by the nape to pick up where they left off. "Thank you for the gift, Kookie-ahh," the last word got muffled by the wet sounds of their mouths meeting yet again in a passionate exchange of saliva and apparently shower water.

"Echo-" Yoongi started, but before he could even spit out half the sentence in between Jeongguk's unnaturally possessive kisses, the LED strip lights had already turned red.

Jeongguk almost couldn't hold in his amused chuckle at how intelligent the AI has become. Sometimes it felt more like living with a sassy furball than a technologically advanced mechanism designed to protect them and make their life easier. It turns out that there is a thin line between extremely convenient and mildly passive-aggressive.

"Maybe you could fix the attitude with the next system update?"

Yoongi scoffed at the suggestion, toes flexing once the biker gently lowered his legs onto the slippery tiles. "I'm afraid that would require clearing the entire memory bank."

If Echo heard that, then it definitely didn't want to risk getting on Yoongi's bad side and simply remained silent, even somewhat subsiding the hum of its processors in the background, until it didn't. 

The ping came through at the most inconvenient moment, breaking them apart. Yoongi pulled away first, visibly alert.

"Priority alert. Incoming rebel dispatch. It has been marked as urgent by: Kim Namjoon." Echo's notification resonated along the room's fog-covered walls and windows. 

Jeongguk rolled his eyes. Why did it always have to happen when they were busy and not on a boring Saturday evening? He almost whined from dissatisfaction when Yoongi gently but confidently pushed his chest away with both hands, already invested. 

"Ceiling lights on, Echo," Yoongi ordered, and immediately the room lit back up in a bright hue that made Yoongi squint for just a moment. Then, he turned to face Jeongguk's disappointed expression and frowned even more deliberately. "...What?"

"Wow, it took you like two seconds to abandon this," he gestured between them, "for work."

"It's fine," Yoongi sighed in that annoyingly exaggerated way as he exited the shower and pressed one of his wet hands against a hidden wall panel to the right to retrieve a towel and hand one to Jeongguk. "We'll do whatever you want when we get back."

He was gone from the room in a matter of seconds, with Jeongguk trailing wearily behind. 

"Details, please," Yoongi rushed into the living room with both hands still trying their hardest to keep the towel around his waist tucked in place. Eventually, however, he gave up, squeezing the two ends where the fabric met between his fingers so it wouldn't fall.

Echo dimmed the lights slightly, and eventually the holographic screen above the coffee table lit azureous. The display showed a digital dossier with all the most important information.

"Target identified as Han Minsoo," the AI read aloud. "I have already shared a copy of this file to your mobile devices."

The file continued, and Yoongi quickly skimmed the text for the most important intel.

Target: Han Minsoo
Government Internal Logistics Affiliate
Status: Active Surveillance Target
Last seen: Isonic Avenue / entering Club Halcyon
Source contact: Park Zade, bartender at Club Halcyon (Rebellion Affiliation Confirmed)
Priority: Immediate Intercept

Last line scrolled beneath:

Extract intel if possible. Neutralize if necessary.

"What's a government official doing at a gay club?" Jeongguk snorted as he positioned himself right behind Yoongi. He crossed both his arms over his chest in clear disgust at the sight of the attached picture. 

Minsoo looked like a man in his late fifties, with an elegant bowtie around his collar and a pair of smart glasses. A gold tooth, a receding hairline, and a tiny scar on his temple, probably from a past encounter with a close-range melee weapon - those were all specific characteristics that Jeongguk tried to memorize before following Yoongi into their bedroom.

Yoongi shrugged. "Better yet, what's he doing there at almost 6 am?" he mumbled to himself, lost in thought as he scrolled through all the jacket options. "Shouldn't he be working or some shit?"

"Maybe he is working," Jeongguk snorted as he himself stopped right next to Yoongi and in front of their digital closet. "Who knows, perhaps he leads a double life as a lap dancer."

"Or," Yoongi paused, "He is meeting some other government asshole there."

A bit less than ten minutes later, Yoongi shut the weapon storage compartments using a short voice command, a kind of lock, and they both made their way to the exit.

Yoongi wore black from throat to ankle. A compression mock neck and a combat harness with a silenced, customised, electrical handgun already strapped to it, hidden beneath a heavy, oversized, denim poncho. The rib-cuffs of his favorite cargo pants ended up tucked into a pair of tall, double-laced, tactical boots with retractable knives hidden at the sides. Additionally, during all missions, Yoongi always carried an emergency hunting knife strapped to the inside of his left forearm and, of course, his gloves.

They aren't just any gloves. A set of neuro-connected rings hidden beneath the fabric allows him to interact with tech by touch, hijack systems and devices remotely through surfaces, override security commands in drones, doors, and cameras, and emit short-range electrical pulses through contact. Additionally, it's a one-way communication tool between him and Echo. The weapon makes him an agile, shadowy killing machine.

Similarly to Yoongi, Jeongguk looked like violence personified. He threw a black, cross-embedded bomber jacket over a tight, suede tank top. His dark hair was tied in a practical ponytail with a few strands left loose at the bottom. The pair of fitted leather gloves matched perfectly with just as black, baggy leather pants, the material of which cascaded and partially covered Jeongguk's favorite heavy combat boots. 

As for weapons, Jeongguk rarely carried anything more than a handgun strapped securely to his lower back, unless Yoongi made him bring throwing knives like he did that day. In such cases, he usually stored them on his bike or in a satchel attached to his belt.

Of course, Jeongguk's bike is a weapon on its own. V4 R-17 Revenant is a nano-modified vehicle that used to be a black-market combat bike. Yoongi rebuilt it almost entirely into a custom interceptor hybrid, which he nicknamed the Revenant. It has quite a few interesting features: an impressive compression storage mode, a cloaking field, magnetic traction wheels, a summon protocol via Echo, silent mode, EMP burst, and a biometric lock linked to Jeongguk. Remodeled to run on hydrogen fusion microcell fuel, it has a built-in deployable smoke screen that helps the rider disappear in the blink of an eye.

The apartment's lights cut to standby behind them, and all three locks clicked into place as they descended the staircase together. Jeongguk's heavy boots left a whole lot of noise in their wake that reverberated and followed them all the way down to the clear main entrance door.

"Traffic analysis complete. Probability of target departure within thirty minutes: thirty-six percent." Both of them heard Echo's instructions through the built-in earpieces as soon as they put on the helmets. 

"That's not too bad," Yoongi commented.

Meanwhile, Jeongguk reached into his jacket's pocket to retrieve the machine. The palm-sized bike looked like an extremely detailed toy from up close; however, after Jeongguk threw it into the air above the driveway, the machine unfolded beautifully into a full-sized interceptor motorcycle like a butterfly spreading its wings. Sleek black chrome lined with shifting blue circuitry beneath the plating; in Jeongguk's mind, it was by far the hottest thing built by a human ever.

He swung onto it first, naturally, and let the frame adjust to his weight automatically like it always did, and all Yoongi could do was look.

The way he leaned back in his seat and grabbed onto the handlebars with only one hand... He hated Jeongguk a little bit for looking that good.

"I thought we were in a hurry?" The biker inquired, and although Yoongi couldn't see his face through the visor, he could definitely tell that the bastard was raising a breath.

Yoongi cleared his throat before responding, "Correct." He nodded and climbed on behind the biker, one hand bracing against the seat and the other immediately wrapping around Jeon's belt for balance, as if he couldn't have just simply grasped his shoulder. 

Jeongguk looked over his shoulder briefly with what sounded like an accusatory scoff. "Hold on tight, my fragile flower."

"I built half this bike. If you crash it with me on it, I'm killing you."

Jeongguk laughed genuinely in response, sound muffled by the helmet's walls.

Then, the engine finally ignited with a deep electric hum that no doubt sounded like a guarantee of a wild ride. 

Before Yoongi could register it properly, they were gone with the apartment tower blurring in the distance behind them, and the early morning traffic enveloping them from each and every side. 

Aetherfall blurred around them as the bike shot onto the elevated roadway like a bullet. Fading neon reflections mixed with thriving rays of sun that gradually fought their way through the early morning fog, foreshadowing a rainbow after the initial downpour.

For the main engineer of the machine's current components, Yoongi sure doesn't mount it all that often. When he does, it is always with Jeongguk, and he would probably trust him with his life in any other situation. Still, he had to admit that the man drove like death had personally offended him. 

"Slow down, show off.." He mumbled more to himself than to Jeongguk, being as sure as he was that the younger man wouldn't actually listen to him, but surely Gguk heard him through the comms just fine.

A clipped answer came, slightly louder than necessary, "No."

"You missed the turn-" Yoongi sighed, head turning after the intersection as he dismissed the notification in the corner of his visor.

"I know a shortcut."

Before Yoongi could even react, the bike launched sideways into a secluded alleyway where he wouldn't have even suspected that it could fit. As narrow as it was, Jeongguk did manage to handle it quite well. The tires screeched dramatically when Gguk jammed the brakes just seconds before they reached the mouth of the alley. At that moment, the rear wheel skidded over the surface, causing Yoongi's stomach to flip dangerously.

A pause, interrupted only by the low hum of the engine.

"You are absolutely fucking nuts," the blond let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

Jeongguk cackled through the comms. "Noticing just now?"

Club Halcyon burned rainbow against the bleak city of Aetherfall. 

The entire exterior of the building shimmered in cascading holographic projections, prismatic light over mirrored glass, music pounding through the walls in a way that made the very pavement vibrate.

The place has always been known for its queer clientele, colorful substances, and android sex workers. Luckily, neither Yoongi nor Jeongguk ever found themselves enjoying a promiscuous sex life, not only high as a kite, but also with a bunch of machines. As expected, that is exactly what they stumbled upon inside the building.

In a reality as automated, depressing, and monotone as the one inhabited by citizens of Aetherfall, for certain people, no hour was too early for a little club excursion.

Inside the bass hit like a heartbeat, bodies moved in and out beneath laser grids and synthetic starlight, people sat in distant corners of the room attempting to treat last night's chemical mistakes with a bit of solitude.

Their contact was a bartender, Yoongi remembered. After a quick look, he confidently made his way towards the bar, and sure enough, a young man with a shaved head, tattoos glowing with embedded bioluminescent ink, and a lip ring similar to Jeongguk's stood behind the crystal-clean counter decorated with holographic projections of mysterious glittery liquid waves.

"You Zade?" Yoongi leaned forward on his forearms with a bit of a forced smile stretched out over his face.

Zade's eyes flickered over them only once - first at Yoongi's shorter form, then higher, at Jeongguk's curious face as he scanned the place, undoubtedly distracted by all the colors and sounds.

Recognition.
A sharp nod.
He wiped his hands on a bar towel.

"Uh... He's in the VIP wing. I'll take you there," Zade offered politely, already nervously pointing both of them in the alleged direction.

Yoongi stole a glance at Jeongguk, and Jeongguk nodded for him to lead, and so Yoon did with Gguk trailing a few steps behind.

Zade led them wordlessly through the entire crowd of stumbling and cursing teenagers and complaining adults in their midlife crisis. They passed a couple of velvet security screens and entered a well-hidden corridor. Two rows of identical biometric lock doors. Zane stopped in front of the ones numbered as 12.

"He's alone inside," he murmured. "But I'm pretty sure he's waiting on someone, so I'd suggest being quick-"

A pause.

"And preferably as silent as possible," he added after a longer moment.

Yoongi could respect that. The poor guy's job was on the line here... but this was their job, and it had to be done one way or another.

The blond nodded. "Alright, good work. Thanks."

The bartender left in a hurry, and Yoongi immediately got to work. He placed his palm flat against the door, silent. The rings on his fingers helped him map out the power circuit, remotely examine the biometric sensor, and eventually access the mechanism's microprocessor.

"I feel insulted," Yoongi clicked his tongue in disappointment once the door beeped and the deadlock clicked open.

"See? I show off, you show off-"

"I'm not showing off," Yoongi interrupted instantly, frowning at Jeongguk, who casually leaned against the parallel wall as if in boredom.

A beat.

"Yeah, okay," he pushed away from it and motioned with his head towards the door as if trying to hurry Yoongi along.

"I'm not," Yoongi insisted. 

Jeongguk was ready to argue the usual way, but then the door cracked open, and a confused-looking man peeked out from inside the room. Han Minsoo, by the look of him. 

Both of the boys glanced over at each other. They didn't even have time to cover their faces. Ultimately, it was Jeongguk who acted first. 

"Oh no, you don't," he pushed the door open and, with one arm around the man's waist, pulled him back inside the room alongside himself.

"T-this must be some kind of a misunderstanding-" the man stammered as he regained his balance and put both arms defensively in front of his body, as if trying to put distance between Jeongguk and himself.

Yoongi silently entered the room and locked the biometric door behind them with a single touch against the surface. Then, he watched as the man struggled against Jeongguk, who calmly grabbed him by the neck, like one would a disobedient puppy, and kicked the backs of his knees with one of those heavy boots of his. 

Minsoo's legs buckled in an instant, and he ended up kneeling in front of the coffee table there, with his cheek pressed against the glass surface.

"Unfortunately, no," Jeongguk sighed heavily in mock disappointment. "Apparently, you've been a bad, bad boy."

"You-" the man blinked, clearly lost. His eyes darted all around the room, ultimately resting on Yoongi's unbothered form once the blond lowered himself onto a velvet chair placed backwards in front of him. "Y-you're with... The Rebellion?"

"No shit," Jeongguk muttered as he twisted the man's arm behind his back forcefully. "Move, and I break your spine."

Yoongi acted as a silent observer. He pulled out his comm pad, a tiny, compact, transparent device that lit up almost instantly in his hand. There, he pulled up the entire dossier that Echo shared within the network. "Room secured. Audio dampened. No external surveillance present," the AI's newest message popped up on the pad, to which Yoongi nodded once.

"Han Minsoo," he started quietly. "Iogistics Coordinator for the Governor's office," he read out loud from the file.

Minsoo swallowed loudly, visibly nervous. His voice came out unsteady and broken. "You have no idea who-"

Jeongguk cut the sentence short by twisting the man's arm further back, which made him cry out in sudden pain that stiffened all his back muscles. "Careful with them words," he warned.

Then, a sudden beat of silence. The room filled with the official's heavy breath and an occasional sob as Jeongguk held him firmly in place. Yoongi, of course, took his sweet time scanning the file like a hawk, which he hadn't had the time to do earlier. 

"Hmm.." he hummed eventually, intrigued. "It says here that three weeks ago, a series of unregistered transport authorizations were signed under your clearance," he said, looking up. "Would you believe that?"

Minsoo's eyes flickered nervously. Yoongi noticed, of course. He sent Jeongguk a knowing look, as if to signal something only they could read from each other's eyes. 

"Apparently," Yoongi continued. "Those transports didn't go through the standard routes. They bypassed central tracking, were flagged, briefly, and... magically disappeared from all records."

"W-where was this data sampled from?" Minsoo stuttered out, most probably trying to prolong the inevitable pain.

Yoongi wasn't having it, though. He leaned forward against the chair and nodded to Jeongguk.

The biker smirked grimly at the silent command and, without hesitation, propped up his leg against the coffee table right next to Minsoo's head for better balance. Then came a singular crack of a bone - quick, sudden. The man wailed and thrashed under Gguk's rigid grip. The fingers of both his hands flexed in panic as he realised that something undoubtedly just fell out of its place, painfully so.

"You also rerouted a convoy two nights later. Interesting," Yoongi added, unimpressed. "Medical supply shipment, for which the manifest didn't match the actual cargo weight."

Minsoo's breath grew uneven, and Yoongi could clearly see that his other arm, the one not held by Jeongguk, kept twitching where it stayed glued to the edge of the table in a tight squeeze. "I process h-hundreds o-or thousends of autorizations per day! I don't-"

Yoongi rolled his eyes in what seemed to be impatience. He wasn't sure how much time they had until someone else arrived to meet up with Han. They either had to get more creative or more efficient.

With that in mind, Yoongi leaned in slightly closer. "Let me make this easier for you, friend," his voice dropped. "I already know that you're involved. You can drop the hero act."

The eye contact between him and Yoongi felt like a competition. Minsoo's panicked glare searched Yoongi's unfazed eyes that accepted nothing but obedience. Tension grew until he looked away and glanced over his clearly injured shoulder at Jeongguk, whose short smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Look at me," Yoongi demanded. 

As on cue, Jeongguk's grip moved from the man's nape to his thin hair. He fisted his fingers in the strands, yanking his head up forcefully to meet Yoongi face to face and holding him there. 

"Who authorized the off-record transports?" the blond asked calmly with an almost bored expression.

"I..." the man swallowed, sweat droplets dripping down his temple. "I don't-"

Before Han could even finish, Jeongguk pulled on the man's hair hard, making him gag on his own words.

"Names," Yoongi ordered.

"I don't got no names, just coded clearances!" Minsoo finally broke with a sob following his desperate confession.

Yoongi's eyes narrowed slightly. This wasn't ideal, but it was something. "Okay, let's start with those."

Minsoo hesitated for a few seconds too long. A few seconds that they didn't have.

"You're doing great now. We're on the right track, pal," the biker whispered near the man's ear in that low, menacing voice - a warning hidden behind a mock praise. "Don't ruin it, hmm? Do what he says."

That seemed to have been the last straw. Minsoo's composure cracked. "T-those were sector-level override codes... internal, restricted."

"Prefix," Yoongi interrupted smoothly, his comm pad flickering purple as it prepared to record a voice memo from the interrogation. 

"... Delta-nine," he spat out.

Yoongi blinked slowly and leaned back in the chair. "Huh..." he huffed, eyes crossing those Jeongguk's in a sudden realisation. "Delta-nine is not logistics," he said more to Gguk than Han really.

In response, Jeongguk nodded with understanding. "Yeah, it's internal security."

Yoongi's brows furrowed, and his eyes slowly lowered to meet Han's panicked gaze expectantly. The man was sweating, sobbing, and hyperventilating. Good.

"So," Yoongi continued with a casual, almost conversational tone. "Internal security is running off-book transport through your department. That means one of two things to me," he held up two gloved fingers. "Either you're being used," he lowered his index finger slowly and watched as Minsoo's eyes followed the slow motion with horror. "Or... You're being paid," his middle finger stayed up for longer, before he finally lowered it as well.

"Which is it, Hannie?" Jeongguk snorted in amusement.

Minsoo's confession came out more like a question than an actual admission. "P-paid...?" lips shaking, snot hanging from both nostrils, stinking of sweat, and visible guilt - Yoongi almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

"Amount."

"E-enough."

Yoongi nodded once more towards Jeongguk, and as another piercing scream cut through the room, he stood and started pacing to cool off. 

Minsoo's arm fell almost entirely limp in the biker's grip, fractured and unresponsive. He kept crying for a long time... or at least it felt like a lot to Yoongi. Crying, cursing under his breath, mumbling some half-slurred words to himself.

"I asked you a question."

"Six figures per transfer! Please, for fucks sake, make him stop!"

Jeongguk smirked entirely to himself, smug and utterly self-satisfied with the man's horrified pleading. "Damn... That's a lot of money, Minsoo-yah."

Yoongi ignored the comment, eager to get this done already. "Payment method and origin point."

"I-It's through crypto wallets a-and... I-I don't know."

Jeongguk mumbled something unintelligible to himself before suddenly letting go of the fractured arm and forcibly yanking the other one away from the table and behind the man's back like a threat. "Well, you're about to."

Minsoo panicked. "I DON'T KNOW, I SWEAR! I ONLY EVER SEE THE FINAL ROUTING!"

"Okay," Yoongi cut Jeongguk's outburst with a measured hand gesture. "Tell me about the final transactions."

Minsoo took a few deep breaths, his injured arm faintly twitching against the side of his body where it fell uselessly. Yoongi noticed that every tiny movement made him flinch a little. "There's always a tag... l-like a signature or some shit."

Yoongi stilled. "Describe it."

"A symbol made of three vertical lines a-and..." Minsoo swallowed heavily. "And a horizontal... s-spiral of some sort??"

The blond zoned out for a second. That sounded familiar, like something that he'd already seen, but where could he have seen a signature of a greedy government-affiliated closed circle of criminals? Unless it was a single individual... someone he had unknowingly crossed in the past?

"How often do these transfers occur?" he asked without even blinking, calculating possibilities in his head.

"E-every ten days, I think? M-maybe... sometimes less, maybe."

A moment of silence followed Yoongi's short, firm nod before he straightened up and stretched his arms above his head like a sleepy child. "I think we're done here," he signalled to Jeongguk and swept the room with his gaze as if they had a chance to leave any of their things lying around. 

"Okay-...O-okay," Minsoo kept looking between both Jeongguk and Yoongi frantically, trying to understand what that meant. At the thought of painless freedom, he finally seemed to have somewhat calmed down as Jeongguk loosened his grip. "I told you everything, so... please, just let me go, okay? I won't tell anyone."

"We don't do deals with government scum," Yoongi informed calmly, hand already pulling out his handgun from under the poncho.

"Uh-.. Yoongi," Jeongguk tried to intervene.

The blond, however, didn't even acknowledge the objection. He checked the clip and switched the weapon's safety off. "Hold him still."

All the color drained from Han's face, and he blinked up at Yoongi with pure terror in his eyes. "No...wait-WAIT-"

Within seconds, Yoongi put the muzzle of his custom XX-Unit0 to the man's sweaty temple and pulled the trigger. More than a typical gunshot, it sounded like an innocent click of a paper punch. The bullet that pierced Han's skull was charged with 15000 volts of electricity before it exited the barrel through its muzzle.

That kind of technology has been banned in Aetherfall ever since the popularisation of brain implants. Whenever someone was murdered, robbed, or falsely accused of wrongdoing, a brain implant could help the authorities determine the course of events that preceded the homicide or crime.

The man convulsed in Jeongguk's grip, muscles spasming and mouth falling open in a sudden wave of undoubtedly excruciating pain. Then, he went limp. If the man had a device implanted anywhere in his brain, it definitely got fried right then and there.

A beat of silence, and then-

"Wow..." Jeongguk sighed as he lowered the body onto the floor, letting go of the dead man's hair and arm. "You're getting surprisingly trigger-happy in your old age," he joked to ease the tension even as they both stared at the expanding pool of blood beneath it.

"He saw our faces," Yoongi mumbled as he fussed over the gun before holstering it beneath the poncho. "Heard my name as well."

Jeongguk walked around the body carefully, not to get his boots dirty, and crouched in front of it. "Fair," he muttered under his breath and patted the blood-soaked jacket down in search of leads and private belongings, while Yoongi busied himself with unlocking the door for them.

"Anything?"

Jeongguk puffed his cheeks out while exhaling. "Gimme a sec," he threw over his shoulder.
There was a thin wallet with a few cards, a pack of mint gums, a now broken pair of smart glasses, a half-empty alcohol flask, and...
"Okay, found something," Jeongguk pocketed a weird-looking object - a fairly thick, gray card or a perfectly sealed, strangely flat, elongated box with no markings, numbers, or names on it. Suspecious. He's never seen something like this before.

"Let's get outta here then," Yoongi hurried Gguk along and, without meeting his eyes, pushed the door open smoothly. 

Jeongguk took one last look at the lifeless body and then sighed to himself. Sometimes, when the job got hard and Yoongi got distant, Jeongguk questioned whether he was ever qualified to do this. Nonetheless, there wasn't a thing he wouldn't do for Yoongi, and so they would talk about it even if Yoongi ended up giving him a cold shoulder for the entire week.

Just like this, the door clicked closed as Jeongguk jogged his way down the corridor to keep up with Yoongi.

Once Jeongguk made it to the main entrance, Yoongi was already at the bar and talking with Zade, who gave Gguk a somewhat frightened look of acknowledgement. The kid definitely wasn't a great fan of his, so the biker decided not to approach, as Yoongi undoubtedly instructed him about the procedure.

Instead, Jeongguk leaned against the wall nearest the entrance, one leg propped up against it and both arms crossed over his chest as he observed and waited.

Now the crowd really seemed to have thinned out, and staff kept bustling about to wipe tables and collect empty drink glasses. Apart from that, only a few people stayed interested in the dance floor. 

"Hey," someone slid into his space all of a sudden.

It was an androgynous-looking man, slightly tipsy and flushed. His blond, shoulder-length hair was put in a loose bun with a few strands curling around the curve of his face. His eyes were narrow, but his lips were full and spread into a polite smile. Perhaps too polite.

"First time here? You know, I could show you around." He tried to nudge Jeongguk's shoulder with his, but failed and stumbled a little.

Jeongguk caught his arm in the last moment and immediately withdrew his hand once the man managed to stand still on his own. Immediately, his arms crossed over one another again.

Impatient, he glanced briefly towards Yoongi, who was still leaning against the bar and now writing something down on a little piece of paper. "No, thanks."

The stranger smiled wider, undeterred. "You sure? C'mon. Just one drink-"

"No."

"One drink and we can go somewhere better-"

Then, a pair of deliberately loud boots approached. Jeongguk didn't remember Yoongi's soles making that much noise when they left home three hours ago. 

Yoongi stopped in front of them, fingers sliding something into the side pocket of his cargo pants. His gaze was flat enough to freeze fire, and if Jeongguk didn't know better, he'd probably think Yoongi was going to harm the poor guy in some awful way.

"He said no," Yoongi's gaze slowly travelled from the stranger's surprised face to Jeongguk's. "I hope," he added.

Jeongguk raised an eyebrow.

The stranger opened and closed his mouth silently before a sound even left his mouth. "Oh, my bad... I thought-"

Yoongi cut in smoothly. "Well, you thought wrong, so..." he trailed off with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, plastered on his face.

The guy mumbled an apology and fled nearly instantly, to which Jeongguk could only respond by staring blankly at Yoongi's back as the man turned, unfazed, and started walking away towards the exit.

"Oh my god," Jeongguk huffed out, having caught up with him, hands in his pockets as the door parted to let them out.

Yoongi kept walking. "Shut up."

"You got jealous!" Jeongguk called out after him once the blond increased his pace. At least a few people in the area turned at that.

God, why did he always have to make such a big deal out of stuff?

Yoongi stopped and took a deep breath before turning to face the younger man. "If you don't shut up and get the bike right now, I'll have you murdered by the end of this day."

Jeongguk beamed as he scanned Yoongi's face in search of affection amidst all the annoyance. "You'd miss me..."

"Terribly," Yoongi retorted and spun on his heel before resuming his walk towards where Jeongguk left the Revenant concealed and out of sight.

Jeongguk's smile slipped as he watched the blond walk away. Then, he pulled out his comm pad to summon it remotely via Echo. 

In the end, Yoongi had an even more shameful walk back to the spot where they parted and mounted the machine without saying a single word. Typical.

The ride back was a bit quieter. Not because Jeongguk drove slower - he didn't. There was just this unaddressed space that they had yet to talk about. One that Jeongguk already suspected had to do with putting an electrically charged bullet in a breathing human's brain, because no matter how tough Yoongi acted, he could never reach a machine's level of emotional detachment. Yoongi had morals and principles, and that's what kept Jeongguk by his side for so long.

Silence suddenly rang like a giant bell in their ears when Jeongguk killed the engine in front of the apartment tower. The synthetic hum of the engine was replaced by an awkward array of intrusive thoughts that somehow radiated off of Yoongi in waves.

Jeongguk pulled his helmet off first and placed it under his arm. His other hand reached back towards backpacking Yoongi, like a peace offering.

At first, he thought Yoongi might reject his spontaneous act of service. He thought that Yoongi was probably going to ignore him, but after a beat of stillness, he finally felt the blond's gloved fingers curl around his.

He took it, hesitantly. Jeongguk's assistance steadied him off the bike with that same ease the biker brought into everything physical between them.

Jeongguk dismounted second, and, oddly enough, after securing his compressed bike, found that Yoongi had been waiting for him at the entrance to the building, hands playing with his helmet absentmindedly.

Together, they made their way upstairs, but it wasn't until they crossed the apartment's threshold that someone finally spoke... and it was Echo, of course.

"Welcome home. No active tails detected. Apartment secured."

"Thanks, Echo," Jeongguk hummed as he placed his helmet securely in a hidden storage compartment that Yoongi had already opened before he himself managed to do so. 

"Of course, Jeongguk."

Yoongi's eyeroll became audible to Jeongguk the moment the blond kicked his boots off with more force than necessary. "Treacherous piece of code."

Jeongguk snorted to himself.

Cleanup was a practiced routine for these two: disassembling weapons, counting ammo, and changing clothes.

They took showers, separate ones, unlike the one that morning. 

Yoongi emerged first, hair damp and slicked back, dressed in loose black lounge pants and one of Jeongguk's old shirts simply because he loved the feeling of its fabric against his shower-warmed skin. 

"The bathroom's free," Yoongi called out as he approached the workshop. 

"Okay, I'll be quick!" Jeongguk responded from the bedroom. His steps soon echoed off the walls of the apartment as he hurried to take a cold shower.

"Take your time, I don't care," the last part came out quieter, as if Yoongi had only meant it for his own ears.

The workshop lit up with luminescent lights the moment Yoongi stepped on the platform. Everything remained in its place, just as he had left it the night before. 

Echo's new speech pattern module remained half-finished, floating above one of Yoongi's digital workstations, while the holographic diagnostic panels were still displaying Yoongi's log entry, and... The blond frowned.

A sealed, rectangular, gray container sat perfectly still at the very edge of the desk. That wasn't there before.

He picked it up with both hands and turned it between his palms with care. Looked like an exceptionally thin, unmarked keycard or a sealed holder for one. He immediately sat down to examine it closely, hands already moving the module to the side, and switched it up with the strange object.

"Echo, be a dear and scan this for me."

Yoongi waited and observed, his arms crossed over his chest, as the AI's purple light lit up the station with a soft, artificial buzz. 

"No match within my network, origin unknown," Echo informed after a few short seconds. "I have identified the external substance as high-density polyethylene mixed with a lead-based derivative."

Yoongi's eyebrows knitted. "Power source?"

"A working quantum battery located inside," Echo responded calmly. "It is powering a single, closed circuit."

Yoongi rubbed his lower lip with an index finger, a habit rooted in his deep restlessness. It's been some time since he last faced a piece of technology he did not understand. "So it's a device."

"Correct."

"Processor? Memory card?"

"Unclear," Echo concluded. 

"Okay, speculate," Yoongi challenged, deep in thought.

Echo went quiet for a moment, most likely processing Yoongi's command as the machine was used to handling more evidence-based matters. "Assuming that the device contains such components, they are most certainly conceiled in some way, as my sensors weren't able to detect any."

Yoongi budged, pulled out of his technology-induced trance when the bathroom's door clicked open. After a short moment, Jeongguk's steps started approaching from the direction of the apartment's main living area. Having reached the workshop's threshold, Jeongguk stopped in his tracks. "That's mine," he nodded towards the perfectly ironed shirt.

The blond didn't look up from where he was compiling a short report regarding the strange item, visibly busy. "You buy clothes too large for yourself. It's community property."

Jeongguk grinned, leaning forward with both forearms propped against the surface of the right edge of Yoongi's workshop table. "You found it, huh?" He nodded towards the device in his hands.

Yoongi's head shot up suddenly. "You know what this is?" his serious expression made Jeongguk blink three times, stunned, before answering.

"It's the thing that I found on Han." 

Yoongi looked down at the item, then back up at Jeongguk. Wet locks, blood rushing back to the surface of his skin, making it look faintly pink, a v-neck sweater slipping off one muscular shoulder, and hinting at the tattoos hidden beneath. His eyes travelled down Jeongguk's form... those damn loose, gray sweatpants.

Yoongi swallowed.
Yoongi blinked.
Yoongi shook his head.

"You...You don't know what this is," he shook his head in what seemed to be disbelief. "Why would you bring such a thing home?"

Jeongguk shrugged with a smirk hiding somewhere between one and the other corner of his mouth. "I don't know. Thought this other geeky, nerdy, blond scientist guy might want to take a look at it."

Yoongi sighed to himself with an extremely unimpressed expression, as if this had already happened in the past. "And what if it was an explosive?"

A beat.

"I have a feeling that, if it were an explosive, then it would've blown up already somewhere between the VIP room, where I picked it up, and our hall, when we walked in."

At a loss for words, Yoongi rubbed a hand down his face. Well, something was telling him that if he dies prematurely, it will certainly be Jeongguk's fault. 

When no comment came from Yoongi's side, and the engineer just seemed to have gone back to his research, Jeongguk pushed off the side of the desk and walked around it. "Also, were you checking me out just now?"

Yoongi scoffed, too early, too loud. "You wish," he mumbled more to himself than to Jeongguk really.

The biker nodded and leaned against the desk on Yoongi's left, right beside him, hands casually hidden in his pockets. "You know," he started, conversational but with a hint of that damn suggestiveness that Yoongi could pick up on without even looking up. "That guy at the club was pretty into me."

Yoongi rested his left temple on one hand, definitely not to block the sight of Jeongguk's gray sweats from his view. "I remember."

"He thought I was hot."

"No accounting for taste."

Jeongguk gasped dramatically, both eyebrows raised in surprise at such a sharp comeback. He even raised one hand to place it over his broken heart, which Yoongi only vaguely noticed through the spaces between his fingers. "That was cruel. I'm wounded."

The gesture made the blond roll his eyes in deliberate, but not entirely real, annoyance. "You'll survive, if we don't get blown up thanks to your pathological hoarding behaviours."

Jeongguk went quiet for a moment. Then, he looked down at Yoongi's covered profile, his blond hair still damp with shower water, shoulders lifting slightly with each breath.

"Still think you got jealous," he placed one warm palm on Yoongi's slender shoulder.

The blond stilled in a second. Then, cleared his throat.

"I intervened because he was irritating."

"Mhm," Jeongguk squeezed his fingers gently around Yoongi's shoulder muscles, one digit trailing a straight line down the side of Min's neck. His eyes followed, of course. Even his tongue did, peeking out to wet his lips.

"Also, he was delaying departure," Yoongi listed, jaw tight.

For a hot minute, he was no longer interested in the report, fingers hovering over the holographic statistics to save face.

Then, Jeongguk leaned down, moving his hand away from the blond's shoulder and placing it flat on the surface of the workbench to support his weight as he whispered straight to Yoongi's ear. "So if I kissed him-"

"You wouldn't."

The answer was immediate, almost as if Yoongi was anticipating the question since two sentences back.

Jeongguk blinked, stunned by the confidence and calmness with which Yoongi answered. "No?"

"No."

"And why is that?"

Then, Yoongi's hand finally fell away from the side of his face and landed right next to Jeongguk's on the desk. He turned in his rolling chair and silently stood up to face the younger man.

Even with that little bit of a height difference between them, he still somehow managed to make Jeon shudder with that cold, but at the same time, incredibly greedy look in his dark eyes. 

"Because," Yoongi continued, his voice taking that lower tone he normally reserved for threatening whoever got in his way. "You are not stupid enough to test me like that."

Silence fell over the space between them. Eyes searching eyes, breaths mixing. There it was, that thing between them again - that unspoken gray area where no moves were prohibited.
Heavy.
Hot.
Terrifying.

Jeongguk tilted his head slightly, his other hand coming up to brush a single strand of platinum blond hair away from Yoongi's forehead, taking advantage of the proximity. "That is the hottest thing you've said to me all week," he whispered, not ready to ruin the moment yet.

Yoongi, however, had other plans.

The blond's fingers wrapped around Gguk's wrist and forcibly pulled the hand away from his face. "Go die."

He was about to walk away, and Jeongguk knew it before Yoongi even moved. Then, when he did, an arm was already pulling him back by the waist. 

"Remember what you said when we left this morning?" Jeongguk breathed as he leaned his forehead against Yoongi's warm temple from the side. The younger's breath on Yoon's sensitive neck sent chills all the way down his spine.

Yoongi closed his eyes and opened his mouth to say something, evidently. Unfortunately, Jeongguk cut in before he could protest. "You said that we'd do whatever I want when we get back."

A beat of silence during which Yoongi's mouth opened and closed, then opened again. "What, you wanna argue in my work space?" he asked, audibly less sarcastic and spiteful, simply playing dumb for reasons that Jeongguk couldn't comprehend.

The biker snorted softly and then nuzzled against Yoongi's temple like a cat in heat. "No," he mumbled back, patiently. "I wanna bite into your thighs, feel your nails dig into my back, and then, optionally, shut that constant fucking nagging of yours up."

Yoongi's breath picked up as if on cue. "I... Well, that's too bad, cause you interrupted my work, so-"

"I do NOT care," Gguk interrupted again.

Then, no objection came. Yoongi stood there, planted right where Jeongguk stopped him, eyes staring stubbornly straight ahead, with his heart beating like a drumroll.

"C'mon," Gguk whispered as his thumb caressed Yoongi's side through that old, worn shirt he loved wearing so much. 

Still no answer.

That's when the first kiss landed. On the cheek, barely a peck. Then, closer to Yoongi's ear, which immediately turned red at the tip. Next, Jeongguk's tongue darted out to lick along the sharp line of Yoongi's jaw before he finally delved into the crook of the blond's neck. Not a random choice, but Yoongi's weak spot.

It seemed to have pierced right through the blond's tough facade, eliciting a shaky breath, which shouldn't have been as motivating to Jeongguk as it was.

In one moment, the biker's hand moved up from Yoongi's waist, where it had been innocently stroking his hip, and found its new position right at the base of Yoongi's neck, no longer soft and gentle, but hungry, longing for closeness; longing for warmth. 

"Don't make me beg you-"

Before Jeongguk could finish, Yoongi turned. One of his arms found support against the workbench from Jeongguk's right, and the other tangled into the younger man's hair, guiding his lips to the other side of his throat where a singular, faded hickey still persistently bloomed over the pale skin.

"Can I be of any assistance?" Echo interrupted, making both of them jump at the same time. In fact, Jeongguk almost pulled away, but in the end, stopped by Yoongi's firm grip, only managed to make a muffled, disapproving sound. 

"Echo," Yoongi panted out hurriedly. "Enter standby mode-" he almost choked on his own words when Jeongguk's greedy hands slipped beneath the light fabric of his pants, cupping his ass and squeezing with no consideration whatsoever.

"I'm worried you won't make it to the bedroom... because of the dimmed lighting, of course."

Jeongguk chuckled at the AI's response and licked a possessive trail up Yoongi's neck before biting his jaw. "It hates you."

"Just enter the goddamn standby," Yoongi hissed, clearly irritated, already climbing Jeongguk's broader silhouette to catch a free ride to the bedroom.

Luckily enough, the apartment's open space wasn't an issue for Jeongguk, who often ended up carrying a certain someone to a certain room. Actually, at that point, he could navigate the open space with his eyes closed... and that he did.

The door to their bedroom slammed shut with Yoongi's back violently hitting the solid surface. Normally, he would've scolded Jeongguk for being so insensitive, but at the time, all that he could muster was a weak, pained moan deadened by the biker's wet kisses.

"Sorry.." Jeongguk panted straight into Yoon's lips, in return only receiving a hum of acknowledgement.

Soon, a pair of coldish hands was sneaking under Gguk's sweater. Yoongi's bony fingers fit perfectly into the crevices between Jeon's abdominal muscles, which immediately tensed up at the pleasant, familiar, but chilly touch.

"You don't need to do that," Yoongi chuckled low into the kiss, legs squeezing Jeongguk's waist as if he was scared that the biker might eventually let go of his thighs.

"Hmm?"

The kiss broke briefly as Yoon clumsily pulled the sweater off Jeongguk's body. The younger man almost immediately raised his arms to simplify and speed up the process; they were back on each other in no time, Yoongi's sculpted lips swollen and pink from Jeongguk's constant licking and pulling.

"You don't need to flex your muscles like that," he repeated breathlessly.

Jeongguk and Yoongi's bodies differed a lot. While both of them were in great physical condition, Yoongi appeared significantly more agile, flexible, and simply smaller. He's never been especially focused on gaining muscle mass, unlike Jeongguk, who would always choose to show off his muscles at any chance he got. No wonder that's what Yoongi thought he was doing. Oddly enough, Gguk was too focused on the sound of blood thumping in his head and the feeling of palms sweating under Yoongi's thighs to engage in such competitive behaviours at the moment.

"Oh, your hands are cold," Jeongguk grinned and adjusted his grip before turning away from the door and making his way towards their bed like a man on a mission. "But... you know what they say. Cold hands, warm heart."

Yoongi scoffed to himself as he landed safely on the mattress of his and Jeongguk's shared bed. The LED strip lights underneath it immediately came to life, illuminating the bedroom in a soft, preset blue glow that, together with the blacked-out windows, set a very intimate mood. "Inaccurate," he commented shortly before his fingers once again found their spot tangled into Jeongguk's dark hair. His legs wrapped like snakes around Gguk's middle as he lifted Yoon's shirt and, holding him in place by the hips, started slowly kissing his way across the pale, flat stomach.

Yoongi could barely hold back from arching his back towards the man's warm, inviting mouth. 

"Accurate to me," Jeongguk retorted.

Yoongi looked down to argue with his roommate, but was stopped by the sight of those big, round eyes staring up at him defiantly. His mouth was parted, the tip of his tongue glistening in the blue light of the bedroom just shy of the waistline. His hair, loose and now mostly dry, with a few unruly locks cascading down his forehead, was completely tousled by the constant pulling and grasping. Then, his gaze travelled down Jeongguk's shoulders, trailing over the tattoos there. "You always this mouthy with your elders?"

"Nope," Jeongguk hummed, tongue slipping further out to wet his lips. "Only if I get to mark their thighs and suck them off in our shared bed afterwards," he winked, and with no warning whatsoever, hooked his teeth over the waistband of Yoongi's lounge pants. Meanwhile, his hands gently guided Yoon's legs off his sides and onto the soft mattress.

That seemed to have shut Yoongi up for good. A faint blush crept up his neck, but with no sarcastic comment to it, which told Jeongguk enough - silent agreement.

Once the fabric reached Yoongi's ankles, he kicked it off, letting it fall to the ground next to their bed. His legs, on the other hand, bent at the knees and parted invitingly to accommodate Jeongguk's warm hips that settled between them.

"Mhmm... you smell so good," Jeongguk dragged the tip of his nose up the inner side of Yoongi's left leg, deliberately stopping at the thigh and grazing the skin there with his teeth, which sent a rush of excited chills all the way to Yoongi's crotch. 

Jeongguk's mouth lingered as he bit into the skin multiple times, each bite more confident than the previous, tongue soothing the sting wherever he left a red, tooth-shaped imprint in his wake. Yoongi, on the other hand, let his head fall back against the pillows. His hair splayed over the white material, and if it weren't for the darker roots, they would've blended in perfectly with the color of it. He blindly hooked his legs over Jeongguk's shoulders, feet sliding over his back muscles whenever another bite came closer to a sensitive area than anticipated.

A breathy sigh escaped Yoongi's throat when Jeongguk's lips suddenly peeled off his skin. "Y-you bouta change that... I guess," he hummed, mouth falling even wider open with the feeling of those same lips redirecting their attention to his other thigh. Hickey after hickey, bite after bite, Jeongguk moved closer to the obvious bulge in Yoongi's underwear.

"Bullshit," the biker croaked seconds before his cheek purposely rubbed against the outline of Yoongi's hardening manhood, making the blond suck in a sharp breath. Yoongi's suddenly arched back gave Jeongguk an opportunity to slip his hands underneath it, allowing for leverage whenever Yoongi's hips involuntarily squirmed away from his attention. "I like a little sweat," and with those words on his lips, Gguk wrapped his mouth around the prominent swell in Yoongi's black boxers. The hot air from his exhale enveloped Yoon's shaft through the thin fabric, drawing a strangled moan right out of him. He pulled on Jeongguk's curly locks, causing the younger man to let out a suppressed groan, the low vibrations of which spread over his bottom half like a literal spell.

"Fuck..." Yoongi panted out.

He could feel a thin layer of sweat already gathering at his hairline despite not being even half-naked. Still, he could barely complain about such trivial inconveniences when Jeongguk's both lips kept rhythmically stroking along the outline of his erection, providing the kind of friction that wasn't explicitly direct, and that's what made it so desirable. 

The younger man's heavy breath soon filled the space around them, saliva soaking shamelessly through Yoongi's underwear and arms struggling to keep his legs apart by force whenever the squirming blond tried to close them around Gguk's head.

Still, despite the strong reaction, Jeongguk did not stop. If anything, he dug his fingertips more firmly into Yoongi's flesh to hold him still as he boldly dragged his teeth over the sensitive edges.

Yoongi gasped and instantly pulled Jeongguk's head up by the hair. Not to warn, but to scold - 'last strike'.

The biker's head lifted, lips glossy, cheeks flushed, a feral look in his eye - like a predator hungry for a meal. "What's up, hyung...?" he breathed out, acting all clueless, and then flinched at Yoongi's tightening grip in his hair, nails leaving crescent marks on the blond's lower back in return.

Yoongi pulled again, "Stop being an asshole," his voice came out all shaky and out of breath.

Jeongguk blinked innocently. "Could've sworn you liked it," a challenging smile slowly crept onto his face. One that made Yoongi tighten his jaw and regret every life decision he's ever made that led him to sharing a bed with a man as unfuriatingly childish as Jeongguk.

Suddenly, Jeongguk's hair was being yanked upwards along the line of Yoon's body. The younger man resisted for just a moment, but ultimately let go of Yoongi's sides and hesitantly crawled up as guided by the blond's skinny fingers. Before he knew it, Yoongi bridged his hips, catching Gguk off guard, and took advantage of the disruption by hooking his left arm over Jeongguk's bicep and left leg under his knee. 

Yoongi smoothly rolled them over, hips straddling those Jeongguk's with no effort whatsoever. "You're useless," he announced while pulling Gguk's old shirt off his already somewhat sticky with sweat body with exactly one move.

Meanwhile, the biker watched stunned as the lifting fabric unveiled the entirety of Yoongi's pale, slim form.

During work, it was usually Gguk who took the physical blows. In short, where Yoongi contributed brains, Jeongguk contributed brawn. Still, accidents always happen when you're battling the unexpected and unknown, and such accidents left a few badass scars of their own on Yoon's body. In the darkness, they were hardly noticeable, but Jeongguk knew Yoongi's body like a map he himself drew, and so the warm tips of his fingers effortlessly found the concave mark just over Yoongi's heart. 

"And yet you still keep me around," Jeongguk placed his palm flat against the old scar and then dragged it all the way down to Yoon's hip, where he took hold of the bone and, propping himself up on his forearms, with a slow tug, prompted Yoongi to roll his hips up. 

Both of them sucked in a sharp breath, and then Yoongi's eyes snapped up at the biker. He leaned down without a word, platinum blond hair curving around his face like a shield. "No, you stay. Willingly," he whispered. "Means you're a masochist."

Judging by the other move Yoongi had just pulled, which, by the way, got Jeongguk far too excited, he might as well have been one. 

Without thinking too long or too hard, Jeongguk reached for the back of Yoongi's neck and pulled him into a kiss. Their lips collided hard and hungrily.

"That's not a no," Yoongi managed to spit out somewhere between those kisses that he struggled to keep the pace of.

"It's not," Jeongguk confirmed shortly.

Then, everything happened too quickly. Jeongguk took hold of both of Yoongi's hickey-covered thighs and flipped them over once more, with Yoongi reclaiming his comfortable spot on the mattress and Jeongguk taking back his position between Yoongi's legs, which would've made it easy for him to push his sweats down. It would've, if only Yoongi's hands hadn't gotten on it earlier.

Blindly, the blond hooked his fingers over the fabrics of both Jeongguk's sweatpants and underwear, pulling them down his legs clumsily but efficiently enough. Eventually, his hard work paid off, allowing Jeongguk to kick both off effortlessly, and once they were gone, Yoongi wasted no time at all. 

Jeon's mouth fell open with a quiet whimper, his warm breath ghosting over Yoongi's pink lips as those slim fingers wrapped around his throbbing, semi-hard length.

Jeongguk's hips instinctively thrust forward into Yoon's palm, seeking more friction and more attention from the blond, whose tongue darted out to trace the shape of Gguk's lower lip just as he squeezed his palm around the sensitive tip.

The movement became repetitive - down to the base, squeeze, up to the tip, squeeze - and as Yoongi slid his hand down the ridge of Jeongguk's cock with a breathless chuckle, he kept changing the pace, not letting the younger man adjust to one single tempo.

It drove Jeon crazy. Eventually, his breath became laboured, and from time to time, a frustrated groan slipped from between his now dry lips as he struggled to keep himself from fucking into Yoongi's hand like a man possessed.

"You like that?" Yoongi asked smugly, as he picked up the tempo. His bony fingers rolled over each and every delicate vein on Jeongguk's cock,  causing the biker to shudder and pull away from where he temporarily hid his flushed face in the crook of Yoongi's neck.

After a moment of careful thought, Jeongguk breathed, "Go die," as he leaned his forehead against Yoongi's.

Having closed his eyes, he couldn't quite see Yoongi's stunned expression at being defeated with his own snarky one-liner, but the moment of silence following his comment definitely rightfully captured Yoon's surprise.

"Since when are you that mean?"

Jeongguk yanked Yoongi's underwear down his thighs with ease, freeing the blond's own erection from the confines of his boxers. "Well, you're a bad influence."

"Am I?-" Yoongi's retort was cut short by Jeongguk's hold on his wrist. He pulled Yoongi's hand away, replacing it with his own.

Jeongguk's tattooed fingers wrapped around both of their hard members at the same time, the languid movement of his wrist sending a shockwave down Yoongi's spine. The feeling of their slick arousals finally rubbing together was so overwhelming that Yoongi's back arched off the mattress, and his leg slipped from the edge of the bed against his wish.

Jeongguk caught it, pulling Yoongi closer by the leg and hooking it firmly over his hip before he repeated the movement.

"Holy shit... I-I guess I am," Yoon swallowed loudly, his low voice reverberating through the bedroom.

Having no idea what to do with his hands, but at the same time desperately needing to hold onto something, he weaved his fingers into his own hair, eventually gripping the edge of his pillow with the other hand. As much as he loved pulling Jeongguk's hair and leaving animal-like scratch marks all over his back, he wasn't able to reach him after Gguk sat back on his heels for a better angle. 

Jeongguk's head lolled back with a heavy sigh as he rolled his hips up to meet the movement of his own hand, slick with his and Yoongi's mixed precum. It felt like he was getting high on this, watching the pristine ceiling on which the shadow of Yoongi's hips kept undulating upwards, accompanied by the sound of the blond's deep, hoarse whimpers and sensual grunts. Witnessing such a vulnerable display of need and despair from Yoongi's side almost felt improper. Then again, Jeongguk rarely did, and so he was planning on drinking every last drop of this forbidden potion.

When he could feel Yoongi's cock pulsing against his palm and hear the man's breathing going frantic on the other side of the bed, he stopped abruptly, which immediately earned him a loud and whining cry. Yoongi buckled his hips up into the air, one hand already off the pillow and on his way to stroke himself. Jeongguk slapped it away before the blond could reach his own member.

"Roll over," Jeongguk instructed with a small hand gesture. Yoongi took a moment to breathe and then complied with a quiet curse falling from his mouth. "Okay, now up," the biker patted Yoon's hip and helped him get up into a kneeling position by supporting his sides.

"You've got a vision, huh?" Yoon sighed as if it were an inconvenience to him, legs automatically spread enough to allow him to bracket Jeongguk's legs behind.

Jeongguk's hand found its place just below Yoon's cervical spine before it moved to draw a straight line down the side of Yoon's well-defined spinal cord. "Yeah, have a little trust," he chuckled, guiding Yoongi's hips into a gentle tilt. 

With an arm wrapped around Yoon's middle, Jeongguk allowed the blond to lean back against him steadily - torso supporting Yoongi's back, shoulder allowing the back of his head to rest comfortably. Then, he unceremoniously spat on his index and middle finger before reaching between Yoongi's buttocks to trace the wet tips over his hole.

Yoongi tensed up at first, breath hitching at the sudden slickness, but made an effort to relax gradually as Jeongguk pushed more firmly against the tight ring of muscles. Eventually, both fingers slipped inside, and when they did, Yoongi exhaled deeply. In a blind search for balance, he reached back with one arm, grasping the outer side of Jeongguk's muscular thigh, the other grabbing the arm around his waist. 

"Breathe, yeah?" Jeongguk whispered near Yoongi's ear, his voice soft and sweet like a concerned puppy. Yoongi hated this even if he loved it just as much.

"I am," he responded shortly. He could never quite get used to the feeling, no matter if it was a finger or Jeongguk's penis. It always brought this sense of fullness that gradually changed from uncomfortable to the best feeling ever, especially with a lot of spit. 

Jeongguk pulled the fingers out and spat on them once again before diving back in, taking turns spreading them, joining together, and arching both digits. Soon enough, the addicting concoction had Yoongi humming in approval. He turned his head towards Jeon's neck and hid there, lips sucking ever so gently on the skin under the biker's sharp jawline as he rolled his hips deliberately to meet Jeongguk's hand midway.

"Does this feel fine?" Jeongguk hummed softly as he spread all three fingers cautiously inside Yoongi's warm channel, working him open. 

Butterflies awakened in the pit of Yoongi's stomach, making his manhood twitch in anticipation. "Yeah, you're taking forever. Of course it does."

Jeongguk snorted as he pulled his fingers out and wiped them on Yoongi's buttock. "Okay, okay. Geez... You're impatient," he clicked his tongue with disapproval.

Then, Yoongi could hear him spitting again. Not once, but twice. It was a common thing for him, actually. After so much time living together and sharing their intimate life, Yoongi could easily classify Jeongguk as a lube hater... in a weird way. He stopped asking after some time, accepting that his roommate prefers more traditional ways of handling things.

Yoongi tightened his grip on Gguk's thigh as he felt the younger man's fingers spreading his asscheeks. Immediately, his heart skipped a beat, and he let go of Jeongguk's arm on his stomach. Instead, he reached back over his own shoulder to grab Jeongguk's tattooed one.

"Remember the safeword?" Jeongguk interrupted the tense silence between them, making Yoongi sigh with palpable annoyance.

"Can you just fuck me alread-" Yoongi's lips stilled agape when Jeongguk's tip suddenly slipped inside mid-sentence. He instantly stopped breathing and shuddered at the familiar feeling.

Meanwhile, the biker dared to chuckle breathlessly to himself as he gently withdrew his hips and then pushed back inside to get Yoongi's neuroreceptors used to the motion. The feeling was incredible - Yoongi's warm muscles spasming around his throbbing cock, doing their absolute best to adjust to this foreign body, and his nails straight up digging into Jeongguk's skin.

"That's it... You're doing great, hyung," Jeongguk whispered approbatory next to Yoongi's ear before quite literally pulling on it with his teeth.

The sensations had Yoongi's head spinning and his heart beating a thousand miles per second. "Stop saying shit like that," he panted out, interrupted by an involuntary whimper when Jeongguk slipped deeper inside him.

To Jeongguk, it was kind of amusing how Yoongi refused to show any vulnerability, even when being actively penetrated by another guy and barely able to stay upright on his own. He could respect that. He could also respect Yoongi's wishes. He could do anything for Yoongi. "Okay," he nodded in understanding. "What, you want me to be mean?"

"Whatever, just don't say corny shit like that," Yoongi sighed. 

Jeongguk raised an eyebrow, intrigued. Seconds later, he let go of Yoongi's middle. Then, forcefully, pulled Min's hands away from the points he'd been trying to hold onto - his shoulder and thigh, where red crescent marks had already been left.

"Wha-" Yoongi didn't even manage to finish the sentence before he was being pushed onto the mattress.

He fell safely, with his ass still instinctively in the air. No warning came before Jeongguk grasped his hip and yanked Yoongi's pelvis higher up, so that the blond could support his body weight on his own knees. "Don't move," he ordered.

The command sent chills down Yoon's spine, but he said absolutely nothing. 

"Uh, fuck..." he tensed up when Jeon's cock re-entered his channel, no longer as tight, but surely just as sensitive. It slipped down, then continued until Jeongguk bottomed out, making Yoongi's toes curl, and his hands grasp at the sheets from a lack of other options. "Jesus Christ.." he gasped, making the younger man smile ever so subtly.

Gguk waited for no invitation. He kicked Yoongi's legs further apart using his knee and then manhandled his hips with one hand. The other found Yoongi's head and, treating it as yet another support point, shoved the side of it against the sheets.

Yoon's eyes must have rolled to the back of his head with the next thrust and another... and the next. The biker threw a curse under his breath, driving into Yoongi with a steady pace that quickly left them both breathless and sweating. It wasn't really fast but deliberate, as Jeongguk now put far more emphasis on quality over quantity - each thrust went deeper, and every single one made Yoongi's angry-pink cock throb helplessly between his spread legs.

As expected, soon enough, the blond had absolutely nothing else to complain about, being too busy biting on the cotton fabric of their duvet and panting as if he had just run a marathon.

Jeongguk, on the other hand, was having the time of his life. His freshly washed curls, now slick with sweat, obstructed his vision of Yoongi's perfectly arched back, but that was okay, because he got to hear all those desperate cries of pleasure that echoed off the bedroom walls and surely could've been heard outside. 

"That better?" Gguk croaked out as he pulled Yoongi up by his hair. Min's silhouette immediately adjusted back to its previous position, his pelvis tilted back, and his arms blindly groped Jeongguk's muscles in search of balance.

"Don't you fucking dare stop now!" Yoongi threw quickly, then swallowed and let his head loll back against Gguk's shoulder.

And Jeongguk? He watched Yoon's Adam's apple bobbing with each low sound falling from his lips, his stomach rising and falling in a frantic rhythm, his legs trembling as he struggled to breathe.

Jeongguk closed his eyes. He could feel Yoongi's nails scratching his neck and shoulder to the point of pain, so deliciously mixed with the extraordinary feeling of Yoongi's walls enveloping him fully, that he could no longer hold back.

Yoongi's breath grew uneven, and the sounds of his pleasure became gradually louder, meaning he was close. The younger left one hand cautiously placed over Yoon's stomach, the other one sliding down the blond's sticky, sweat-stained stomach and to his pulsing cock. Min almost jumped at the touch, his low, raspy whines awakening a hot pool of excitement in Jeongguk's lower abdomen.

At that point, Yoongi could hardly put together a coherent sentence, but as he grasped Jeon's chin and turned it towards himself, with those blissed-out, feline eyes looking right through the biker's soul, Jeongguk knew immediately what this was about. 

The way he attacked Min's lips, one could think that he needed that kiss more than his next breath. 

They swaped not only saliva, but little moans and deep whimpers as both neared their climax.

"J-Jeongguk-ah..." his name came out muffled somewhere between Yoongi's teeth and his tongue. 

In response, Gguk pulled away from Yoongi's lips and leaned their forehead's together. " I know... I know, I know," he repeated frantically with a few melodic gasps slipping between his words.

At that moment, he pulled out. Would it have been weird to cum in Yoongi? Jeongguk had no clue, as he'd never done it... and Yoongi had never given him an explicit permission to do so. Instead, as he pumped his hand chaotically up and down Yoongi's member, he could feel a hand wrapping around his own shaft. It felt as if they had done it hundreds of times before, because they had.

Yoongi came first, with his thighs shaking and abdominal muscles cramping. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he repeated like a prayer, tumbling over his own words. He ejaculated all over Jeongguk's fist and his own stomach, squeezing his fingers around Jeon's red tip that throbbed painfully, begging for attention.

That threw Jeongguk over the edge.

He sucked in a breath and then felt his muscles convulse as he shot his load over the backside of Yoongi's thigh.

Heavy breaths filled the space between them, Jeongguk's gentle hand gradually slowing its pace over Yoongi's manhood until it peeled off and patted the blond's thigh as if to signal the end.

As Jeongguk pulled away and got off the bed to no doubt get a warm towel for them to clean up, Yoongi sank onto the mattress. He first sat back on his heels and then gradually lowered himself onto the bed, eyes fixed on one of the windows, deep in thought. His limbs ached, his throat felt raw, and he could pick up on the beginning of a headache somewhere in the back of his head. 

Why did coming down always feel like a punishment? There was a dull ache in his chest that, if he focused on it for too long, would make Yoongi forget how to breathe.

The blond blinked when a warm, wet towel brushed against the bruised skin of his thigh, Jeongguk's hand unimaginably gentle over the bite marks. He looked up, meeting Jeongguk's round eyes in the darkness.

Yoongi silently took the blanket and sat up to start wiping himself clean from the remains of sweat and cum.

"You okay?" The softly spoken question came eventually, genuine in a way that made Yoongi want to push Jeongguk away and lock himself in the bedroom.

Instead, he just sighed and mumbled a short answer, "Fine."

A beat of silence.

Jeongguk didn't budge. In fact, he stayed unmoving at the edge of their bed, eyes watching Yoongi's shaking hands as he ran the towel through his hair briefly and then discarded it onto the floor. Initially, he had wanted to help Yoongi let off some steam, but now it felt like another layer had been added to the wall between them.

"You always get this quiet after you're the one pulling the trigger."

Yoongi exhaled through his nose and lay down on his right side, turning his back on Jeongguk. "Don't psychoanalyze me."

Gguk sighed softly with what seemed to be frustration. After all, how was he supposed to help Yoongi if he kept pushing him away? 

"I'm not psychoanalyzing you," he pulled himself up on the bed in enough proximity from Yoongi that he could touch the blond's sticky back if he wanted to. "I know you."

"That's unfortunate for you."

The sheets shifted as Jeongguk lowered himself onto his side and, ever so hesitantly, draped an arm around Yoongi's pale form. His hand splayed over Yoon's stomach, gently pulling him closer. "Still know you."

A beat.

Yoongi's fingers squeezed nearly painfully around the edge of the pillow under his head, and he swallowed the shaky breath that desperately wanted to break out of his throat. He didn't know if it was more about killing the guy or perhaps this disappointing feeling in his chest that made him feel hollow inside, but he felt sick. He felt like shit.

"He begged," Yoongi croaked out eventually, at the sound of what Jeongguk closed his eyes and hid his nose in Yoongi's hair. "I hate it when they beg," he continued, struggling to keep his voice from breaking at the edges. "And then, you know... they look at you like you're the monster."

I'll do it next time, Jeongguk wanted to offer, but he knew it wasn't something Yoongi wanted to hear. He didn't want to be understood or replaced. He wanted to step up to those responsibilities. He wanted to be that cold killing machine for intel extraction that the rebellion needed... but he just couldn't get rid of his humanity. 

Gguk placed a tiny kiss on Yoongi's shoulder - calming, grounding. "Hey... It's okay, hyung. You did what had to be done," he whispered, fingers caressing over Yoon's clenching abdominal muscles. All this self-restraint and what for? Why not just let himself cry?

Yoongi took a deep breath, then exhaled unevenly. "I know," he nodded in agreement, hand coming up to cover the tattooed one over his stomach. "Still don't like it."

Jeongguk understood that. In fact, he couldn't imagine what would have to happen for him to start enjoying the process of taking a human's life. Sometimes, Yoongi seemed so cold and distant that it was comforting to know he still found the job just as dehumanizing as he did at the beginning. He just got better at hiding it.

"C'mon," Jeongguk aimed for a lighter tone. "Don't think about it now, huh?" he coaxed, already reaching for the edge of the duvet to cover their tired bodies. "Nap with me, murderer."

Yoongi immediately turned to look over his shoulder at Jeongguk, offended. "I'm not a murderer."

"Yeah, you are," Gguk took the chance to turn Yoongi around in his arms, rolling onto his back and allowing the blond to rest his head against his shoulder. "You're killing me with your nobility."

Yoongi snorted, hiding his face in the crook of Jeongguk's neck. "Go die."

Outside, Aetherfall burned bright like a candle running out of wax. Inside, they allowed themselves a soft afternoon... before the city asked for blood again.

On Friday morning, Yoongi woke up with a throbbing pain behind his eyes. He immediately groaned, displeased and ready to complain, until he moved... and everything got even worse.

"Fuckin' hell," he mumbled, rolling onto his back. Everything hurt; his back, his butt, his shoulders, his butt, his neck, and his butt.

The apartment windows had already shifted from blackout mode to translucent, and pale synthetic daylight bled through the glass walls in fractured strips of silver and blue. Beyond them, Aetherfall stretched into the smog-towering spires, vanishing into haze, roads winding through the sky like veins of light, streams of self-driving vehicles gliding silently overhead. Holographic advertisements flickered against the fog in bursts of pink and cyan, so bright they stabbed behind his eyes.

Yoongi groaned and dragged the fabric of the sheets over his face.

"Good morning, Yoongi," came Echo's calming voice. "It's currently 9:21 on a Friday morning. The average temperature outside over the last four hours is 12°C. It's slightly windy with a high probability of afternoon showers. Today's elevated pollution levels in your area may cause respiratory issues for more sensitive individuals." 

"Where's he?" Yoongi groaned, eyes still refusing to adjust to the bright morning light.

"Specify."

Yoongi sighed, arm already stroking the cold sheets from Gguk's side of the bed. "Jeongguk, Echo. Where's Jeongguk?"

All of the worst-case scenarios ran through Yoongi's head as he remembered their argument from yesterday. Waking up to an empty space in bed wasn't fun, but waking up in an empty apartment felt like a fucking punishment.

"I've located Jeongguk in the workshop area. He's disassembling the Revenant." 

Yoongi frowned as he lifted himself into a sitting position despite all the pain an suddering that he experienced in the process. 

He was on his feet in no time, hurriedly pulling on yesterday's shirt and pants.

"Echo, torque specs for an R-17 rear stabilizer," Yoongi heard as he slowly shuffled his way into the living area.

At first, the lighting didn't feel any more forgiving there than it did in the bedroom, but as Yoongi took the first few steps, the AI recognized his movement and adjusted the ambient lighting lower in response to elevated pulse and visible discomfort. 

"Displaying specifications now, Jeongguk," Echo answered almost conversationally.

Instantly, Yoongi's day was ruined.

"God, you're so useful. Unlike your creator," Jeongguk hummed, already focusing all of his attention on one of the floating holographic stats panels. 

"I heard that," Yoongi grumbled from the corridor as he briefly made a stop in the bathroom to check his reflection in the mirror.

And, God, did he look awful. If someone got attacked by a blood-hungry wolf who tortured them, made them cry and beg for their life, and then kissed the life out of them... then they would look exactly like Yoongi did. Neck covered in messy hickeys, hair in desperate need of a comb, eyes slightly swollen and red, skin carrying the ache of teeth and fingers sinking into it.

A pause.

Then, Jeongguk shouted back, entirely too cheerful for this hour. "Good morning, my precious sunshine!"

Yoongi rolled his eyes. Typical. Sleep with him like the world is ending, disappear before sunrise, then act as if nothing happened. Asshole. 

"Brightness reduced by twenty percent," Echo announced pleasantly as Yoongi stepped into the living room, still very much wrapped in the blanket he stole from the bedroom's armchair. He immediately made his way towards the workshop, slim fingers still rubbing sleep from his irritated eyes.

The apartment opened into the massive workspace, seamlessly incorporating open-plan steel flooring, suspended worktables, holographic monitors, and transparent digital interfaces floating in the air.

Jeongguk stood in the middle of it, leaning over the maintenance platform as if he belonged there more than the architecture did. Tattoos crawling down one arm, grease smeared over his knuckles and cheekbone. His leather pants sat low on his hips, and his black tank top clung to his muscles.

He was bent over his motorcycle, one side panel removed, wires and engine parts exposed beneath the chassis.

Yoongi hated him a little for looking that good before noon. Maybe a little more than just a little. 

Jeongguk looked up, those round eyes of his instantly meeting Yoongi's bleary ones. "Damn," he grinned. "You look rough, hyung."

Yoongi raised an eyebrow, but otherwise did not respond, crossing both arms over his chest under the fabric of the blanket and judging him silently.

The younger man noticed, because of course, that he did. When Yoongi remained unmoving, he put down his data pad and silently held his gaze with a rather puzzled expression.

Perhaps Yoongi watched for a second too long. He admired Gguk's messy ponytail, the lip ring that caught a faint blue glow of the holographic light outside, the angry bruise that Yoongi himself had left under his jawline. And allegedly, he was the bad influence. Bullshit.

Finally, the blond blinked. "Coffee," he demanded, turning on his heel away from the dangerous territory and towards the kitchen. 

"Echo," Jeongguk called out, already busying himself with unscrewing another plate from the bike's side. "One iced americano, Yoongi's profile."

The request made Yoongi narrow his eyes as he leaned against the kitchen island. It lit up immediately, the coffee machine coming to life with Echo's purple glow. "You know I could've done it myself, right?"

Jeongguk didn't even look up. "Efficiency is sexy," he chuckled breathlessly, struggling against a stubborn screw that clearly refused to cooperate with him. Much like Yoongi usually did.

"You're insufferable," Yoongi mumbled with annoyance. Just then, the coffee machine beeped, and Yoongi was finally able to wrap his hands around the only cup in the entire apartment that fit so perfectly in them. Of course, it was a cup Jeongguk gifted him once. A smiley emoji cup... for manifestation, apparently.

"You seemed pretty into it last night," Jeongguk shrugged casually.

Yoongi, on the other hand, nearly choked on his first sip. "Shut up," he muttered, already wiping the iced americano puddle off the counter using the fabric of Jeongguk's old shirt.

"Aw, don't be shy now, hyung."

Yoongi contemplated suicide or murder... whichever came first. "Couldn't shut up last night, won't shut up now either."

Jeongguk must've heard him as he stood up from the ground and, having taken one last look at the bike, directed his steps towards the kitchen. "That's because, unlike you, I'm emotionally honest."

Without thinking, Yoongi grabbed the thing nearest to him, which turned out to be one of those sealed lunchboxes that Jeongguk always packed with him to work, and threw it in Gguk's direction, making a disgusted face when the younger man caught it flawlessly. 

"Would either of you like me to play last night's audio logs for analysis?" Echo chimed in to Yoongi's horror.

"NO!" both of them snapped at the exact same moment, so loudly that Jeongguk's ears started ringing at the silence that followed afterwards.

"Would you like me to present you with a standard report instead?" Echo persisted.

"No," Jeongguk shook his head, already able to feel that blush creeping up his neck. "No, Echo... No report."

"Would you like me to remove this task from your list of preferences?"

Yoongi narrowed his eyes as he took a slow sip of his coffee. Jeongguk wouldn't look at him. In fact, he just stood there, leaning awkwardly against the counter. It felt so good for once to see Echo targeting Gguk instead of him with all this passive-aggressive bullshit.

"Preferences, huh?"

Jeongguk swallowed, pride wounded. He drummed his fingers against the surface and then sighed with the kind of defeat acceptance that Yoongi could respect. "No... leave it on the list."

A moment of awkward silence.

Then, Yoongi put the cup down. "I live with a literal pervert," he announced, not yet ready to show how amusing it was to him that Jeongguk kept some weird records of their sexual life. 

"I'm not a pervert," Gguk insisted as he followed Yoongi with his eyes. The man walked past him and made his way towards their bedroom to no doubt change into a fresh set of clothes. Jeongguk pushed off the kitchen counter and stalked after.

"If I'm a murderer, then you can be a pervert," Yoongi shrugged, pushing the bedroom door open and immediately turning to face the digital closet to the right.

As Yoongi scrolled past multiple t-shirt options, Jeongguk finally caught up to him, this time leaning his shoulder against the side of the wardrobe.

"Are you mad with me?" He asked after a beat, clearly worried.

"Nope," Yoongi responded lightly.

"Are you weirded out?"

"Nope," same tone. "You've done way too much weird shit in the past for me to be suddenly weirded out by something like this."

Yoongi finally selected a long, gray, knitted sweater with holes along its sleeves, which were purposely made to look as if something had torn the fabric. For the bottom half, he chose a pair of black sweat shorts perfect for lazy days at home.

He was aware that Jeongguk kept staring as he changed from yesterday's clothes into fresh ones. "What?" he turned finally once he was fully dressed. 

And the biker literally looked at him like a scolded puppy would. A tiny frown, head hunched over, uncertainty painted all over his innocent face. "... I'm sorry."

Yoongi snorted. "Don't be ridiculous," he attempted, simply walking past Jeongguk, but soon was being stopped by the younger man's hand pulling him by the wrist. Yoongi made a small disapproving noise, but let himself be pulled, and soon he was facing Gguk again.

"I'm serious. Be honest with me."

Yoongi looked down at the hand curled around his wrist and then up at Jeongguk's nervous, embarrassed expression. Was it normal for him to feel guilty? He sighed before reaching for Jeongguk's face with both hands and pulling him in for a kiss. This one differed from all the kisses they shared last night. It wasn't as hurried, nor was it hungry. Open-mouthed, but slow.

Stunned at first, Jeongguk blinked and then kissed back, automatically backing Yoongi up against the glass closet panel. 

"It's kinda fucked up," Yoongi chuckled low in his throat, tongue playing with Jeongguk's lip piercing. "But it's also kinda hot that you do that... In a weird way."

Then, Yoongi laced his cold fingers at the nape of Jeongguk's neck at about the same time that the younger man reached for his thighs. Both sucked in a sharp breath of regret and broke the kiss.

Jeongguk's hands awkwardly hovered around Yoongi's hips, unsure if he could touch the blond at all. Meanwhile, Yoongi lifted his palms and hissed at the sight of the damage his nails had done to the younger man's neck last night. "Jesus... I did that?"

Jeongguk exhaled through his nose. "Yeah," he nodded with one of those smug grins. "It's not that bad, though. I'll live... I'm more worried about your thighs, to be honest."

Yoon rolled his eyes. "Instead of being worried, next time you might want to eat something beforehand."

Gguk watched as Yoongi nonchalantly slipped away under his arm and made his way back towards the workshop. Naturally, he followed.

"You were grinding your teeth in your sleep!" he called out after Yoongi, who rolled his eyes at the remark.

Yeah, well. He stopped sleeping well a long time ago - sometime between now and when he was born. "Why are you following me everywhere like a lost puppy?" he grumbled in response, not planning on acknowledging Jeongguk's concerns.

"Nightmare?" Gguk insisted.

Yoongi entered the workshop, triggering the lights that made him squint instantly. "...Why weren't you asleep, huh?" he mumbled, hands already rearranging his workbench.

"Because," Jeongguk leaned against the edge of the table. "You were grinding your teeth."

Yoongi looked up, annoyed, fingers playing with that strange device that the biker brought home yesterday, and he had yet to figure out. "Drop it."

It was like a threat. The ultimate line that Yoongi drew, although nowadays he was drawing quite a lot of them. Too many for Jeongguk's liking.

"You know," the younger man started casually as he turned and made his way back to the bike. "One day, I'm stealing you out of this place, so you can stop having those nightmares."

Not this again. Yoongi's shoulders tensed immediately as he stored the device in the desk's inventory, then once again placed Echo's half-finished speech pattern module that he's been working on for ages. "Don't start with this."

"I'm serious."

"Jeongguk-"

"There's more out there than this city."

Yoongi laughed bitterly, hiding his face in his hands. Every time they argued about this, to Yoongi, it felt like talking to a wall that talks back a lot but doesn't listen. 

The topic has been a bone of contention between them ever since Gguk brought it up a few months back. Leaving. An unrealistic concept that the younger kept clinging to more tightly than to the reality at hand. He wanted better, and Yoongi could understand that, but there was no better anywhere. Never has been.

"Out there is wasteland and starving colonies," he sighed, suddenly remembering his parents.

Yoongi was born into a family of Deviants. Not Rebels, only affiliates of the Rebellion. Nobody liked the affiliates, ever.

They weren't loyal to anyone except themselves - like family clans of some sort. Rebels feared doing business with them, worrying that they might be betrayed by people not bound by their rules and regulations. They only ever worked with Deviants when they possessed some extraordinary skills, rare on the market. Skills like Yoongi's.

To the government, well, they were way too unpredictable. Where the rebels always fought for a clear cause, which was overthrowing the government, the Deviants had their own hidden goals and private affairs. 

Yoongi couldn't imagine ever leaving the city despite growing up in a household where both his parents spent their entire lives planning an escape. They got absolutely slaughtered while attempting to scout out the route one day. Never came back. 

Jeongguk, on the other hand, was born into an influential family of a government accountant. He got his brain chip before all his baby teeth fell out, went to a luxury school, and soaked up all the indoctrination that there possibly was. Still, the propaganda wasn't enough to keep him away from Yoongi, whom he met at the age of sixteen.

Finding each other was a life-opening experience for both of them.

Seeing Jeongguk's outrage at the unfairness and bloodshed he had no idea about earlier made Yoongi realise that not everyone was lucky enough to be properly educated from early childhood. Some people grew up swallowing government lies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Many of those people wanted to change.

Jeongguk wanted to change... and he has, immeasurably.

After his parents' death, Yoongi never thought that he'd ever have someone else he'd care for, but ultimately Jeongguk stumbled into his life, and thank god that he did. 

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do," Yoongi rubbed his hands over his face and turned to look outside the window at the illuminated city. At the gap between the center and the outskirts. At the smog floating above the monumental buildings. At the industrial hum curving around corners and casting shadows of beauty and progress over the starving districts.

They had gotten lucky. So lucky that Yoongi wasn't ready to sacrifice their safety just yet, even if it killed him inside.

The hum of the apartment cut in between them like a blade. Jeongguk went quiet for a moment, polishing something irrelevant. His expression hardened slightly. 

"You know, staying here may be the safe option, but nothing changes," Jeongguk shrugged, too quickly, too suddenly, agitated. "We're stuck in this endless pit of misery."

A moment of silence passed between them during which Yoongi's shoulders drooped. "It was home first before it became this."

Jeongguk's jaw tightened, voice slightly raised now. "Doesn't mean you owe it your corpse."

Yoongi blinked, as if waking up from a trance, fingers automatically pulling up one of those holographic panels with statistics. "And running doesn't fix anything."

Jeongguk laughed, bitter and definitely annoyed. "No," he agreed, using way too much force to place the polished part back on a suspended cart. "But it keeps us alive long enough to have something other than just this monotony."

Us.

The word landed between them heavier than it should've. Neither acknowledged it, although both held their breath for a longer moment. 

Jeongguk exhaled first, through his nose, with the kind of attitude that Yoongi refused to comment on. "Forget it," he mumbled, words barely audible in the busy space of the workshop.

Yoongi wanted to say something. Wanted to explain that staying wasn’t about loyalty to the government or the city’s corruption or even to the Rebellion.

It was because someone had to stay.
Because if everyone who cared left, then Aetherfall belonged entirely to monsters.
But most of all-

Because if he imagined leaving with Jeongguk... He might start imagining a future he wasn’t sure they were allowed to have. So instead, he said nothing.

Jeongguk kicked lightly at the bike stand. This conversation never once went well. They've had it a thousand times already, always with the same outcome, so he decided to change the subject, which came fairly easily.

"Help me recalibrate this before I commit vehicular homicide?"

Yoongi stared at him from his swivel chair, eyes unreadable as always. "Move," he grumbled eventually.

Jeongguk grinned instantly. "There he is."

Yoongi shoved him aside unceremoniously, sliding beneath the holographic diagnostics panel.

Their shoulders bumped.

"You've misaligned the torque distribution," Yoongi diagnosed after taking a look at Gguk's work. 

Echo cut in, all too proud to stay quiet. "Exactly as I've said before."

Jeongguk let out an offended laugh and crossed both arms over his chest, insulted. "So now you're on its side?"

"There's no side. It's correct," Yoongi mumbled gently, calm as ever.

"I adjusted for it," Jeongguk pointed with his finger towards the rear chain tensioner, as if trying to prove Yoongi wrong.

The blond looked at it, blinked, then looked back up at Jeongguk, blinked again - unimpressed. "You did it badly."

"Not badly," the biker tried arguing.

"Gguk," Yoongi interrupted him pityingly.

Jeongguk blinked, eyes wide and ego bruised. "What," he shrugged, frustration radiating off him.

Yoongi had to hold back a chuckle because if he did smile right then and there, Jeongguk would literally throw a fit of humiliation and misery. He was always looking for opportunities to prove himself, which Yoongi found too endearing to ruin. "Trust me, that's going to fail under pressure."

Jeongguk clicked his tongue as his eyes swept over the holographic stats pad.  "You wanna fix it?" he asked.

There it was. Not quite a challenge, not quite an invitation. It was something in between that made Yoongi raise an eyebrow. "You're asking for help?" he crossed both arms over his chest.

"I'm offering you a chance to prove you're not just criticizing for fun."

Yoongi mentally rolled his eyes. How could he possibly find someone so petty attractive?

"I'm always right, just so you know."

"Yeah?" Jeongguk leaned in just slightly, but close enough to call it provoking. "Then show me."

Yoongi feared no eye contact, and so when he reached past Jeongguk for one of the tools, he held it. "Alright, child."

After a few moments of literal torture of Jeongguk's constant whining and arguing, Yoongi promised himself to lock the biker outside the apartment next time.

"Shift this," Yoongi said, nodding towards the interior of the exposed side panel. At that point, his hands got all greasy, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows so as not to ruin the sweater.

Jengguk leaned forward, scanning the panel, and then turned to Yoongi with a defiant expression. "Say please."

Yoon didn't even look at him, just sighed and got up from the ground. "Do it or break your spine later, see if I care."

Gguk huffed at him, as if he was absolutely aiming for that reaction, but ultimately took the wrench and did what Yoongi requested. Well, he kinda thought that he did, but it's intention that really counts, right?

"Not like this," Yoongi shook his head slightly as he watched from above.

"I'm literally doing what you told me to," Jeongguk stopped working and looked up at Yoongi from his spot on the ground.

"Yeah, but you're doing it wrong."

Jeongguk put the wrench down, discouraged. "Hey," he started, his tone falsely conversational. "Do I ever do anything right?"

"Don't be dramatic," Yoongi mumbled and crouched back down to help him. "You need to angle it," like a babysitter, he pushed the wrench back into Jeongguk's hand and guided his wrist toward the screw.

It took him a moment, but once they were done with the setup, Yoongi pulled back to examine their work. "Now, try it," he motioned towards the machine, taking a few cautious steps back.

Meanwhile, Jeongguk turned the engine on, and it hummed to life - smooth this time. Clean and stable. 

Yoongi watched as Jeongguk checked the displays, the frame, and whatnot... like a concerned owner examining their pet after a vet's appointment. "... Okay, that is actually better," he admitted, pride wounded.

The blond dusted his hands off in a triumphal gesture. "Obviously."

Jeongguk hummed, wiping his hands on a rag. Then, he looked up at Yoongi, shifting weight onto his left side. For a moment, it seemed as if he wanted to add something, but once he finally opened his mouth, probably to thank Min or apologize, the comm pad in his pocket buzzed faintly.

"Work," he sighed after checking the notification.

And just like that, Jeongguk's hopes for a super romantic date with a bit of grease, heavy tools, and holographic numbers got ruined. He hurriedly pocketed the comm pad and crouched down to check if everything was properly tightened on the bike.

"Okay, what kind?" Yoongi moved immediately to pop the weapon storage open.

Then it reached his ears. 

"It's solo."

Yoongi lowered his arm before it managed to reach his handgun, then turned slowly with a displeased frown on his face. "Huh?"

"Look, it's a solo cargo shipment," Jeongguk double-tapped his hand against the steering bar and watched the Revenant compress into a tiny, pocket-sized portable. "But I'll make it quick and be back ASAP. Okay?" He turned, hands already pulling the dirty tank top off his body.

He made his way to the bedroom before Yoongi could even respond.

The blond blinked, and then, before he knew it, he became the one following Jeongguk. "Is it from Namjoon?"

Jeongguk shook his head and threw on a baggy zip-up hoodie. "No, it's private, but it says the connection was Rebellion-approved."

Yoongi leaned against the doorframe and watched as his roommate fussed over his hair, putting it up into a ponytail and then letting it down just to try again. "Wow... but is it a job or a date?"

Jeongguk stopped for a second and gave Yoongi a pleading glare. "God forbid a man wants to look okay."

"You looked fine before," Yoon shrugged, puffing out his cheeks as he exhaled and made his way back to the workshop after Jeongguk. "Take the knives."

"Don't need 'em," Jeongguk claimed with confidence as he checked the magazine of his handgun before slipping it behind the waistband of his pants.

As the younger man reached for the ammunition, Yoongi stubbornly opened a sub-storage panel and grabbed the throwing knife satchel he always made Jeongguk carry. Well, anytime they went together anyway. They rarely worked separately due to Jeongguk's origin - not many people trusted Converts on their own, and Yoongi often served as Jeongguk's vouch on more confidential missions. 

The blond counted the knives, then slipped each one into a separate tiny compartment in the sheath. "Take them anyway," he stopped Jeongguk just short of the front door.

The younger man stopped and looked at Yoongi before finally grabbing the sheath with that annoyed grimace of his. "Fine, whatever. It's just a quick shipment," he grumbled while attaching the holster to his belt like he usually did.

"Good boy."

Jeongguk snorted and defiantly shook Yoongi's hand off his head as the blond's fingers patted his hair. "Thought you were gonna nag me bout the gear."

Yoongi walked him back to the entrance and watched as Jeongguk laced his heavy boots. "You won't listen to me anyway, so why bother," Yoongi opened the hidden storage shelf that stored both their helmets and handed Jeongguk his. "Just be careful, huh?"

"I'm always careful, hyung," Jeongguk winked, in response, receiving a light punch to his shoulder. "Auch," he mumbled. "What're you gonna do without me?"

"Probably finally get some work done," Yoongi opened the door using his own biometrics and practically pushed Jeongguk outside. "Let me know when you're on your way back."

This was sweet, Jeongguk thought to himself as he stared at the guy who practically saved his life, now standing in the doorway of their shared apartment, worrying about his safety and awaiting his return home. He was so grateful to have met Yoongi and found somewhere where it all made sense to fight for something better.

Spontaneously, Jeongguk leaned forward to peck Yoongi on the cheek. "I will," he pulled away, helmet already halfway on his head as he descended a couple of glass steps at a time. "Don't miss me too much!" he called out before disappearing from Yoon's sight completely. 

The older man stood there for a moment longer, stunned. "Yeah... I'll try," he hummed eventually, before locking the door and turning on his heel to face the empty apartment.

A beat.

"What does he use them for?" Yoongi asked casually as he reentered the workshop and sat back down in his swivel chair in front of the module. "The reports, I mean."

Echo hummed softly. "Jeongguk hasn't clearly stated his reason, but if I were to speculate, I'd say improvement."

Yoongi looked up with his eyebrows raised. "One day, he's gonna start biting chunks out of me, isn't he?"

"Canibalism is prohibited in the city of Aetherfall."

Yoongi nodded faintly, hands already reaching for a tiny screwdriver. "I sure fucking hope it is."

Yoongi got to work pretty quickly, but, as one does, he got distracted at one point. 

The device Jeongguk brought home from Club Halcyon kept bugging him. It made no sound whatsoever, no vibrations, no beeps. He had no idea if the thing was on or off or what purpose it could serve, as it had no markings, numbers, visible scanners, receptors, or diodes. The sleek exterior made it look harmless, but Yoongi worried, still. Why can't he get inside? Why does it repel Echo's scanners?

He sat in absolute silence for a few long minutes, contemplating. It killed him that despite considering himself an advanced engineer, he still couldn't solve this mystery.

"I'm missing something," he mumbled, scrolling silently through the report he submitted to the headquarters. 

Target's name, location, injuries, weapon specifications, numbers, numbers, numbers... stop.

Yoongi's fingers stilled. 

'(...) according to the target, those transactions are always signed with a symbol described by him as three vertical lines and a singular horizontal spiral-like shape.'

Yoongi tilted his head as he stared at the line. He had completely forgotten about this. It sounded similar to a signature he's seen before somewhere, but still couldn't quite remember where. "Echo," he called out. "Run a database search for a signature made up of three vertical lines and a horizontal spiral."

"Processing," Echo informed as a sudden purple wave illuminated the workshop. "No results found."

Yoongi rubbed his lower lip with a finger, deep in thought. "External connections?"

"Doesn't appear to be a government-affiliated symbol," Echo continued. Meanwhile, Yoongi reached for one of his sleek, digital pencils to sketch out the symbol from Minsoo's description on his stats pad. "There are thousands of signatures available for viewing in the systems of many public institutions. Should I scan those as well?"

Yoongi clicked his tongue. Such a search could take up to a few hours, quite a lot of computing power, and still turn out to be useless. Yoongi had seen this symbol before, which meant it was likely a document he came into possession of at some point, as Yoongi always keeps spare scans of everything he signs.

"No, don't do it," Yoongi circled the symbol he drew, marking it as important. "Search the spare drive, send the results to my comm pad, and enter standby," Yoongi instructed as he pushed off the chair and made his way towards his and Jeongguk's bedroom. "I'mma just quickly replace the speech pattern module and boot you back up in no time."

The lights flickered from blue to purple again.

Yoongi doubted he would find any results on the spare drive as he rarely used it in the past. It mostly contained video recordings, voice memos, and old stuff he struggled to part with, like letters from his brother and childhood memories. Still, it was worth a shot.

Yoongi rounded the corner from the living area towards the bedroom at the exact moment when he heard his comm pad beeping after receiving Echo's research file. Then, Echo's generic notification came.

"Standby mode activated at 2:41 pm."

Then, the apartment went quiet, which Yoongi wasn't used to anymore.

Back in the day, when Echo wasn't nearly as advanced, he used to disable the system a lot, not to overload its servers. Now, it wasn't necessary anymore. Echo has become a part of the family and an almost inseparable part of his life, even with its snarky comments.

Yoongi opened a hidden compartment where he stored tools compatible with Echo's hardware, and as he collected the stuff he needed, something suddenly shifted.

The blond stopped as a sound similar to footsteps reached his ears. Now, with most of Echo's functions disabled, there was no electrical hum or distracting lights, allowing him to listen closely. 

"Jeongguk?" Yoongi called out cautiously, hoping that maybe Gguk had forgotten something or was already back from work, but nobody responded.

Chills ran down Yoongi's spine as he heard another, similar sound. Second set of footsteps, lighter. More than one person. His heart skipped a bit, and his stomach flipped dangerously. Now they knew that he heard.

In seconds, Yoongi abandoned the tools he had picked up earlier. He took a small step towards the bedroom door on which he settled his eyes and refused to look away. 

The thought of strangers lurking in his space right now made him feel sick. He and Jeongguk rarely ever invite people, and nobody's been over in ages, which only made Yoongi more suspicious as to how they could have gotten in. It was practically impossible to bypass Echo's front door security system.

Quick, think. Weapon storage on the other side of the apartment, Jeongguk gone, door likely hacked. 

Yoongi took a deep breath, then exhaled shakily before making his way out of the bedroom.

As he stepped into the corridor, everything seemed fine. The door was closed, the view clear, and everything seemed to be in its place. Then, a shadow flickered somewhere from behind, and Yoongi knew that one of them had just cut off his way back into the bedroom.

Unfazed, he advanced towards the workshop with eyes focused solely on the weapon storage wall. Just a few steps... and yet, still too many.

Yoongi's legs carried him up to the elevated workshop area, no lights greeting him now, Echo in standby. It was exactly then that the attackers made themselves known. Yoongi picked up on the echo of someone's heavy steps and, still unable to reach his gun, grabbed the closest thing to him. The wrench that Jeongguk left on a tray before leaving.

Yoon hurled it blindly while turning. It definitely hit someone, the man's curse reverberating like a gunshot in the silent space of the apartment. 

The second one was already moving. 

The moment Yoongi noticed movement in the corner of his eye, he ducked, pivoted, and reached for the hidden panel under the workbench, fingers sliding into the seam where a compact blade had always been stored for situations such as this one.

A hand caught his wrist mid-motion, and before he could react, it twisted his wrist with no mercy. Sharp pain shot up his arm. "Fuck!" he cried out with a hiss.

Then, reacting on instinct, he drove his knee up, catching someone in the side, a hiss, a stagger, loosening grip.

Yoongi wrenched free and, in the last second, took hold of the hidden, tactical switch blade.

Everything became a blur as he wrestled a buff, masked figure just shy of his workbench - blade in one hand, the man's chin in the other. His muscles strained and shook under the hold the guy had around his wrist.

Then, he gained the advantage by pushing his fingers into the attacker's eye. The stranger yelped, letting go of Yoon's wrist. Of course, the blond took his chance to escape by stabbing the fucker in the shoulder and pushing past him to get up. 

"Piece of shit," he heard somewhere behind his back.

A dodge to the left, then a sharp pivot. The whole situation seemed to have caught them off guard, and Yoongi wasn't complaining. He squeezed right past another person and drove forward, slamming his shoulder into the nearest body, shoving hard, aiming for the door.

Freedom or... almost.

Something hard drove into the back of his knee, which instantly buckled, letting him tumble to the ground not further than three meters away from the front door. "Shit, Ech-"

A hand fisted in his hair, yanking hard and dragging him back towards the living area.

Yoongi lashed out blindly, elbow, sharp and precise, connected with something solid. A curse. Another painful tug. Then someone grabbed the back of his head while another person took hold of his wrist, and slammed his forehead against the solid floor.

Yoon's grip on the switchblade loosened as white exploded behind his eyes. "Echo-" he tried calling out weakly, which obviously would've done nothing until standby got manually disabled. 

"Just hold him down!"

"Where's the other one...?"

"There should be two of them here."

The distorted voices in his head felt like a dozen knives stabbing his brain at once. Painful, disarming.

Panic flickered - breath hitching dangerously, control of his own limbs slipping. "Echo!" he yelled desperately, throat going sore just before someone placed a gloved hand over his mouth.

Then, a sting to the neck so powerful that everything felt like it exploded into tiny particles scattered all over his consciousness, a drug, most probably a sedative.

"No..." Yoon's body jerked away instinctively, and his arm muscles attempted to escape the tight grip. He had trained for worse, he could-... if only he could do anything. His legs no longer responded the way they should, and the apartment blurred, stretching into streaks of lights and shadows.

His breathing grew uneven, with only occasional whines of discomfort slipping out as someone kicked his side and then pulled at his hair for the mere cruelty of it.

His fingers flexed, barely able to move in this drugged state he found himself in. 

He must've passed out for at least a minute, waking up to the feeling of floating somewhere between life and death. He recognised the white light of the lobby and the exact turn on the staircase one always needed to take when descending from their floor.

He was being carried down the same stairs that Jeongguk descended when he left for work.

Then, nothing. Oblivion.

When Jeongguk got back on the Revenant, it was a few minutes past 5 pm. 

The job went well, and he delivered the package safely to one of the warehouses in District 12. The recipient turned out to be a bit of an odd fellow, but Jeongguk didn't mind a few minutes of awkward small talk as long as it paid well, and that it did.

"Echo-" he started as he mounted the interceptor and pulled on his helmet. Nobody responded.

Jeongguk pulled the visor down only to see the same notification he had seen over half an hour ago - "Standby mode activated at 2:41 pm."

He frowned. Usually, Yoongi lets him know about all the repairs and updates he plans if they are to take more than a few minutes to run. Well, it's not like he couldn't drive himself home without Echo's help, but this smelled fishy. 

Jeongguk pulled out his comm pad and chose his and Yoongi's chat.

'Omw home. What's up with Echo?' he typed in the bar and hit send.

Then, he was off, weaving between self-driving cars and around the corners of wonderful skyscrapers that looked just as beautiful as they did depressing. 

During Gguk's drive home, Echo's status remained in standby, and Yoongi did not respond. He didn't even read the message. In fact, he has been offline since morning, suggesting that he hadn't used the comm pad even once after Jeongguk left, which felt largely unrealistic, considering that with Echo unavailable, it was his most portable and accessible tool for quick research.

He got off the bike on their driveway, as he usually did, and compressed the machine before hiding it safely in his pocket. Then he tilted his head up, eyes trailing up the side of the apartment tower, stopping at their floor, at their window.

Not wasting any more time, he pulled off the helmet and, holding it under his arm, he made his way inside and up the stairs before finally reaching the door numbered 37. 

"Yoongi?" Jeongguk called out as the door clicked open.

No usual greeting from Echo, no complaints or insults from Yoongi.

Jeongguk let the door shut, then put his helmet away in its usual place. Before he could step further inside the apartment, his eyes fell upon a smear of blood over the floor, not that far away from the entrance, Yoongi's bloodied switch blade abandoned a few steps away.

His heart skipped a beat, and before he could restrain himself, Jeongguk stalked towards the workshop where Yoongi would normally be.

"Yoongi?!"

The space was dark, still, wrong. 

Passing through the living room space, he was caught off guard. Broken glass, Yoon's favorite vintage chair overturned, flower pots on the floor with dry soil scattered everywhere. It looked as if a storm had absolutely ruined the space. Normal struggle wouldn't have done this. Someone was deliberately going through stuff and looking for something. 

Jeongguk's wide eyes took in the demolished space, not sure what to do. His breathing turned ragged, and his legs almost tripped over one another. Yoongi was gone, and his brain still struggled with the mere idea of that.

Then, the workshop. He stumbled over the steps and almost choked on the gasp that ripped out of his throat.

Splatters of blood, signs of struggle. 

"Fuck!" Jeongguk kicked the maintenance platform so hard that it rattled. "Echo!" Then he remembered the standby mode. 

Now it all made sense.

Echo had entered standby mode as instructed by Yoongi at 2:41. Jeongguk looked towards the now broken speech pattern module that the blond had been working on for weeks, now in pieces on the floor. "He wanted to replace it finally," Gguk mumbled, turning around to face the open space of the apartment. "The tools," he nodded to himself, already jogging towards the bedroom.

There they lay on the ground. It looked like Yoongi managed to take all of them out and then... just left them lying on the floor, most probably distracted by something else.

Jeongguk bit on his lower lip nervously as he stopped in the bedroom's doorframe, eyes scanning the floor. 

His wrench lay there, forgotten, almost touching the couch. "He probably beat the shit out of them," he kept talking to himself as more details caught his eye.

Whatever had occurred, Yoongi made it to the workshop, attacked the burglar with Gguk's wrench because Jeongguk refused to believe that it could have been the other way around, and managed to get to the switchblade. "Someone got stabbed," Jeon mumbled as he followed the pattern of blood droplets that painted the ground.

Then, the blade was abandoned near the entrance... most likely involuntarily. Yoongi got disarmed, and the smear of blood on the floor could've been anyone's, really.

Careful not to disturb any evidence, Jeongguk almost threw himself at Echo's concealed control panel and slapped it so hard his palm stung.

There it was.

Standby mode. 

Jeongguk switched it off with a singular motion of his finger, and Echo's blue lights flickered into life after approving Jeongguk's fingerprint scan.

"Echo!" Jeongguk called out, his shaking hand pulling on the messy hair as he surveyed the destroyed area where he had safely left Yoongi almost four hours ago.

"How can I help you, Jeongguk-"

Before Echo could even finish. "Where is he?! Wha-... What happened?!"

A pause.

"Please, clarify your request."

Jeongguk laughed bitterly as he leaned against the wall for support. He was starting to feel lightheaded. "Echo, YOONGI... WHERE THE FUCK IS YOONGI?!"

Purple lights flashed as the AI quickly processed. "Min Yoongi is not present within the apartment's boundaries," a pause. "He departed the apartment premises at 3:21 pm."

Jeongguk froze. His entire brain short-circuited, and for a moment, it felt as if everything was happening in slow motion; as if the realisation was happening in slow motion.

"Tracker?" Jeongguk managed to spit out, his mouth going dry.

"Disabled at 3:27 pm."

Jeongguk rubbed a hand down his face. How could this have happened to him? He leaves the apartment once in a blue moon without Yoongi, and the one time that he does, he comes back to broken furniture, silence, and empty space.

"... Was it someone Yoongi trusted?" He asked, voice almost entirely devoid of emotion.

The AI hummed. "Unlikely. Three masked individuals - two men and a woman. All armed."

Jeongguk pushed off the wall, eyes wandering from one camera to another, wide and full of rage. "Then why the FUCK would you let them inside!"

"I've confirmed the biometric authentication process. All required security parameters were met."

Jeongguk blinked. It wasn't possible. Only his and Yoongi's parameters could open the door; nobody else's. "What?" Gguk whispered in disbelief.

"Although standby mode temporarily disabled the cameras located within the apartment's premises, I've stored footage from the door camera. Do you wish to-"

"Playback, now," Jeongguk demanded before the system could even finish its sentence.

The lights dimmed, and the windows turned opaque. Echo effortlessly loaded the door camera view over one glass wall. The recording's timestamp read 2:45, minutes after Yoongi switched Echo to standby mode. Could this have been planned? But... how could they have known?

Jeongguk walked up to the sofa and, careful not to bump his foot into anything, leaned against it for support as he watched without blinking, too afraid to miss out on small details. 

Three figures climbed up the stairs, just as Echo had stated. Jeongguk wasn't so sure about their gender, though. One could've been a woman or a smaller guy, like Yoongi... Jeongguk clenched his hand into a fist.

They worked fast, probably afraid to be noticed by neighbours. Jeongguk watched in horror as Yoon's face appeared in the view. Well, not technically Yoongi's, but a near-flawless digital replica of one. Voice mimicry, fingerprint scan, and iris scan - they easily broke past all the security measures, and the door clicked open, willingly... silently, no greeting, because of the standby mode.

"They cloned him," he whispered, so stunned that he didn't even realise that small pools of tears started gathering in the corners of his eyes.

Echo remained silent as it time-lapsed the video, and Gguk watched the numbers changing in the corner of the screen. He counted - 34 minutes and 17 seconds. That's how long those people spent inside the apartment. Could Yoongi have been putting up that much of a fight?

Then, there it was. "PAUSE!" Jeongguk called out to echo as Yoongi's unconscious form appeared in the frame. 

He was being carried by two of them, eyes barely open, but Jeongguk could tell that already gone. There were dark streaks of blood trailing down Yoon's temple and neck. His head was lolled to the side, a torn sweater hanging loosely on his body. God, maybe it was good that the cameras inside were disabled. Gguk wasn't sure if he could take the sight of Yoongi fighting for his life and failing.

It felt like a giant knife had just pierced through his heart. He couldn't take a proper breath and could no longer trust his legs with a task as basic as standing. "They fucking cloned him and then carried him out," he mumbled.

Heart pounding in his ears,
Hands shaking with rage,
Head struggling to come up with a plan.

He wanted to do everything. To torture these people, break all of their bones, pull out all their hair one by one, rip out all their nails, and make them beg for mercy before executing them for what they did.

But he had no idea who these people were, what they wanted, or how they somehow cloned his roommate. He's never felt this helpless in his life. It felt like grieving because it's already been more than two hours since Yoongi's disappearance. He could as well have been already dead.

Jeongguk took a deep breath, then exhaled with his jaw already set and hands pushing him off the ground where he had fallen.

"DO SOMETHING!" He kicked the nearest wall.

"I'm sorry, Jeongguk..." Echo responded hesitantly after a moment of silence, which made Gguk laugh bitterly and run a hand through his already ruined hair.

Hopeless and in absolute shambles, Jeongguk frantically made his way back to the workshop. "There has to be something," he muttered to himself, pushing past furniture and throwing items off the shelves as if clues were supposed to be hidden underneath them. "They must've left something, Echo."

"I've cross-alayzed Yoongi's DNA sample from my storage with blood traces left after the struggle."

Jeongguk turned, eyes once again chaotically turning from one camera to another. "And...?" He asked almost pleadingly.

"Only about 18% of all blood traces belong to Yoongi. None has been located in the workshop."

Jeongguk blinked slowly, then threw his arms into the air. "How is that helpful?"

"Yoongi's blood is smeared near the door and nowhere else in the apartment," the AI explained calmly, trying its absolute best to work with what little information it had. "Means that I can thoroughly analyze the rest of the blood traces and attempt cross-reference."

Jeongguk nodded, half present, half absent. "Do it... a-as quickly as possible."

Then he started pacing the space around him. What was he supposed to do? Where does one even start in this situation?
He felt like something feral trapped in a too-small skin.
Blood rushed in his ears.
His chest hurt.

Everything at once.

He leaned against Yoongi's workbench, feeling like he was going to be sick.

Stop.
STOP.
STOP!

Then, his eyes swept the desk, one singular tear droplet peeling away from the tip of his nose and landing on the reinforced surface of the desk. There it was, the mysterious device that he himself brought home from goddamn Club Halcyon. Jeongguk sniffled softly as he picked up the innocent-looking thing that somehow managed to survive the catastrophe and remained untouched amidst the chaos.

Yoongi kept talking about it, worrying about it, and now Jeongguk was starting to get a weird feeling. 

His jaw set as he picked up the thing and threw it onto the ground before pushing his elbow against the hidden wall panel that opened their weapon storage. He was done playing this cat-and-mouse game, Jeongguk decided as he picked up Yoongi's XX-Unit0 handgun. He kept his eyes focused on the device while reloading the magazine, as if the thing was going to disappear the moment he looked away.

Then, shots. At least three were fired.

The first one bounced off the device, but Jeongguk remained undeterred. The second made a small dent, but it was the third bullet that pierced the outer layer and went straight through, the electric current burning the cables inside and causing a short-circuit in the internal components.

Finally, the latches inside the device gave out, and it most literally fell apart.

Jeongguk took a deep breath in and then exhaled hard as he put the gun away and approached the mess he had just made on the ground. "Echo," he called out, nudging it with the sole of his heavy boot. "Can you scan it now?" Gguk asked as he kneeled to take a closer look.

Echo's lights turned purple as it processed Jeongguk's request. "I've never seen something like that," it responded eventually.

"Explain."

"I've located multiple devices inside what seems to be a case transparent from the inside but opaque from the outside." Jeongguk swallowed hard as Echo continued. "I've distinguished a tracker, some kind of a conceiled scanner, and a voice recording device all powered by a quantum battery."

That explained a lot. For example, how they managed to fake Yoongi's biometric data.

"So what you're saying is..." Jeongguk trailed off, fingers gently picking apart the burned parts.

"It's an advanced stalking kit-"

"That I brought home," Jeongguk finished what Echo probably wasn't going to say out loud.

Something felt bitter on his tongue, like the taste of regret or delusion or the sudden loneliness. He could've stopped this. Could've taken this seriously like Yoongi thought he should've. This was his fault. He had failed.

Mind started racing.

He needed the rebellion.
Needed intel.
Needed transport.
Needed weapons.
Needed-

He needed Yoongi. The apartment felt enormous suddenly; too quiet, too empty. 

His tools were still scattered over the desk, his coffee cup from that morning shattered on the kitchen floor, his stupid blanket draped over the headrest of the sofa. Every trace of him was still present there... except for him.

Jeongguk sank to the floor, his back sliding down the glass turned opaque, his hands in his hair, shaking fingers scratching painfully at his scalp like a punishment.

Then, very quietly, he started to panic. Yoongi has always been there - the brain of all operations, always ready to come up with a brilliant solution to the dumbest problems. He always knew what to do. Jeongguk didn't, especially when his vision blurred and his lungs forgot how to breathe properly.

What would Yoongi do?

The question sounded ironic in his head. Yoongi couldn't save himself; he needed to move and to act. But how if he couldn't even get up to stand on his own? How, if he didn't even know if Yoongi was still alive?

He bowed forward, pressing one shaking hand against his mouth.

"Please," he whispered to himself, not entirely sure what he was asking for.

"Jeongguk," Echo's voice cut through the silence like a painful reminder. It sounded like a blur or like his imagination, somewhere behind a cloud of thick fog, and so Jeongguk didn't respond at first, wiping away the tears flowing involuntarily down his cheeks.

Echo's voice softened when it didn't get a response. "Jeongguk, your heart rate is dangerously elevated."

"S-shut up," Jeongguk snapped somewhere between gasps for air and the hairs sticking to his wet cheeks.

"You need to breathe. Let me introduce a technique that might help yo-"

"Fuck, just shut up!"

Then, silence. Jeongguk's weak sniffling filled the space, heavy and almost defeated. Almost.

The sound died down eventually, replaced by the quiet drumming of raindrops against the windows behind Gguk's back. Another ten minutes must've passed like this before he let out a broken laugh.

Tears burned hot behind his eyes, but he wiped them away angrily before heavily lifting himself from the messy ground of their workshop. Something switched, something hardened at that exact moment. Something dangerous and wild. Cold. Deadly.

"Echo," he muttered, voice almost devoid of emotion.

The AI hesitated before responding. "Yes, Jeongguk?"

"Keep the apartment on lockdown until I'm back," he ordered, legs already carrying him towards the front door like a man on a mission. "Don't let anyone without the emergency password in," he grabbed his helmet, using a bit more force than necessary.

"Of course," Echo's lights blinked purple again before settling on a steady blue glow. "Where are you going, if I may ask?"

Jeongguk pulled on the helmet, visor already pulled down. "I'm going," he started, "to make them pay."

The door clicked shut after him, and steps echoed off the empty space of the lobby as he descended with purpose. Whoever he was dealing with chose the wrong guy to test. This was only the beginning, and Jeongguk was going to make sure of it, he promised himself as he mounted the Revenant.

The Rebellion had no permanent spot, no main headquarters. They changed hideouts and regrouped each month, depending on where in the city they would be carrying out their activities at a given time. Of course, Yoongi and Jeongguk remained informed, and although Jeongguk had never been there before, he directed his bike towards the old docks.

"You will arrive at your destination within the next three minutes," Echo instructed.

"Do you think he is still there?" he asked hopefully, voice unnecessarily raised as usual when communicating with Echo through the private channel.

The AI considered for a bit. "Considering his consistent habit of staying at work late with paperwork, I've calculated a 62% chance that he is still there."

Jeongguk nodded as he approached the glowing warehouse in Area V3. "Good."

"State your business here," Jeongguk heard as he approached the main gate.

Shit.

"2109JJG38," the biker recited his identification number as if from memory, hoping that this would be enough.

"Okay," the guard sighed through a set of speakers that Jeongguk couldn't quite locate before continuing, "Jeongguk, Jeon," the man's voice read his name almost mockingly, no doubt looking at Gguk's file at the moment. "State your business here," he repeated.

Jeongguk rolled his eyes, which hopefully wasn't visible through the visor of his helmet. "Is Kim Namjoon in?"

"Look," the guard snapped, impatient. "Whatcha want, punk?"

"It's classified information," Jeongguk responded sharply, voice unwavering. "I need to speak with Kim Namjoon. It's about Min Yoongi."

A beat of silence.

He knew this would work. Namjoon and Yoongi had known each other since childhood, and his name surely must've been mentioned on some special list.

They used to see eye to eye, with the only difference being that Namjoon believed the Rebellion was the future. Yoongi, on the other hand, believed that no formation could stay uncorrupted forever, but he did trust Namjoon.

Jeongguk'd seen them arguing about it in the past. There was once a time when Namjoon remained surprisingly persistent in his attempts to get Yoongi to join the Rebellion's ranks... to get them both to do it, actually. It seemed, however, that he had made peace with the fact that Yoongi wouldn't ever accept a foreign code over his own priorities.

The gate lifted slowly. "Come through."

Jeongguk bowed his head appreciatively in response as he twisted the wrist on the steering bar and securely made it onto the premises.

Despite the late hour, the building seemed to be filled with people when Jeongguk finally made it inside.

Quiet chatter, someone yelling from the other side of the upstairs corridor, digital crates, and holographic panels with inventory information floating near the side exits. 

One thing was clear: Yoongi would've hated this place during the day. With those giant rooflights and no light regulation, his migraines would no doubt be unbearable.

Jeongguk sighed as he pushed the thought away. He was on a mission.

The biker's never been to a rebel outpost on his own, only ever with Yoongi. He wasn't as familiar with those people, nor was he liked by them. That became painfully clear after he took the first few steps inside the building, and some heads immediately turned at the sight of a foreign face.

His eyes swept the floor quickly. A certain woman with a clipboard immediately caught his eye. She looked like a person who had everything under control... Jeongguk hoped. 

"Excuse me," he approached purposely, but was visibly overwhelmed by the new environment that he'd found himself in. The girl looked over her shoulder at him, and only then did Jeongguk notice a flickering earpiece on her lobe - he cared none. "Is Kim Namjoon still in?"

He did NOT have time to stand uselessly and wait around for people to finish their conversations.

The woman frowned, quickly excusing herself from the conversation she was having via the earpiece. "What?" she snapped towards Jeongguk, putting her interlocutor on hold.

"Is Kim Namjoon still in?" he repeated, nodding towards the upper floor, where no doubt Namjoon's little corner would be located.

The woman blinked silently, her perfectly even eyebrows lifting as she scrolled down the clipboard. "He is," she confirmed, to which Jeon's eyes lit up almost instantly. "Did you have an appointment scheduled with him?"

Jeongguk bit his lower lip. He really didn't have time to explain to every single person in his way that this needed immediate attention. Instead of responding, he just adjusted the helmet under his arm and walked right past her, taking two steps at a time on the staircase.

"Hello?!" the woman called after him. "He can't see you right now!" Jeongguk could hear her heels tapping angrily against the metal steps.

He ignored her completely. "Kim Namjoon?!" His voice echoed off the upper floor walls, earning him at least a few frightened looks. These people here had all the time in the world, didn't they now? "I'm looking for Kim Namjoon-"

The girl caught up to him and tried to pull him back towards the staircase by one shoulder.

"Jeongguk?" the voice came from behind them, from the stairs, surprised as if the owner had just seen a ghost.

The speed with which Jeongguk turned around to face him almost knocked the poor woman over. Namjoon immediately reached out to catch her, but she caught her balance before he managed to do so.

Kim Namjoon. He's changed a bit since Jeongguk last saw him. His hair was shorter, pushed back with hair gel, but definitely a little ruined after a whole day spent in the dense air of the lower districts. He was wearing a pair of spiky metallic glasses, a leather one-arm bolero harness over a tactical compression shirt, and cargo pants. Looked like he had just come back from a training.

"Hyung," Jeongguk mumbled, stunned. "I-I need to talk to you. Now."

Namjoon shifted the tablet under his arm as he blinked slowly up at Gguk, too slowly. "...What are you doing here?" 

Jeongguk looked around, suddenly noticing all those rebels gathered around. "Uh," he swallowed. "It's a private matter."

Namjoon nodded and, with a single gesture of his arm, directed Jeongguk towards what must have been his office at the moment. "Okay, let's talk."

So Jeongguk fell into step, taking a turn whenever Namjoon instructed him to, and eventually he found himself in Kim's office, pulling the door closed behind him.

There was hardly any more privacy at all. Namjoon's office was separated from the rest of the second floor by modular walls, half glass, half actual wall. Jeongguk noticed all the perfectly aligned paper books and binders... as if he was watching Yoongi's workspace. Pristine, organized, vintage. He could see how these two stayed friends for so long.

Namjoon put his tablet back on the desk and sighed as he leaned against it. 

"What is it?" he asked almost carefully, eyes looking up at Gguk askance.

Jeongguk stepped forward and placed his helmet down on one of the backless chairs. "Listen, I..." he stuttered, then ran a nervous hand through his now loose hair. "They took him."

Both of them blinked in the silence that suddenly settled. Jeongguk was devastated, hands shaking again. Namjoon, on the other hand, looked like he was calculating. Like he was taking something in. "What?" he rasped eventually. "What do you mean, 'they took him?'" 

Jeongguk opened his mouth, then closed it helplessly as if looking for one word that would explain the amount of unbelievable horror that he had just experienced and had yet to understand. "Masked people, armed," he spat out, nervous. "I was-... I left him alone and then-" he shrugged."I came back from work, and he was gone," Jeongguk raised his voice in frustration. "Ruined furniture, everything... They hurt him- he... he was bleeding."

A beat of silence as Jeongguk approached the desk and slammed his shaking fist against it. "I watched them carrying him out of the apartment FUCKING unconscious," Gguk hissed through clenched teeth.

Namjoon watched carefully, silently, face dangerously still. Jeongguk couldn't read him as well as he had hoped to be able to, but there had to be something... some obligation. "When," he stated more than asked.

Jeongguk turned abruptly to look at the digital clock on the wall behind him. "Around..." he hesitated. "A little less than four hours ago."

"How," again, more statement than question.

Jeongguk laughed with a bitter chuckle. "They fucking cloned him, can you believe that?" he stood there for a moment, wide eyes scanning those Namjoon's, weirdly calm for a person whose friend had just been kidnapped. Maybe he was used to such casualties. A tough man, Jeongguk told himself. "They cloned him using that... the- the fucking thing!"

"What thing?"

"One that I found on Minsoo the other day," he shook his head in disbelief. "I brought it home, do you get that? It's my fucking fault."

Namjoon visibly exhaled and sank into his fancy chair. "So... the government?"

It came out weird. Unsure. Made Jeongguk's eyebrows squint, his eyes narrow. "Obviously. The guy worked for internal logistics, of course, it's the fucking government," he blew up, perhaps unnecessarily so, then pointing his finger at Namjoon, not in accusation but simply for emphasis. "If anyone can help me find him, it's you."

There it was - trust. Namjoon's eyes flickered to the side as he picked up one of those slick, white tablet pens and turned it between his fingers. "I'll look into it, okay? As fast as I can."

Jeongguk exhaled sharply as he pushed off the glass desk. It almost felt as if someone had just lifted a giant rock off his heart. "Thank you," he stammered out as most of his muscles relaxed, now shaking visibly in both rage and grief.

Namjoon nodded once, acknowledgement or understanding passing through his eyes before it was gone. "I'll need time," he added, late, fingers already reaching back for the tablet.

Jeongguk blinked, stunned. What was that supposed to mean? "He doesn't have time."

"He has no other choice," that hit harder than it probably should've. Jeongguk opened his mouth to argue, but Namjoon stopped him with a slightly softer tone now. "Rushing in blind will get you killed."

"I don't care," Jeongguk scoffed under his breath before he could stop the words from coming out.

That made Namjoon look, his eyes snapping back up at Jeongguk - calculating and precise. So much so that Gguk suddenly felt as if he was being interrogated. "You don't mean that."

"I do."

"You don't," Joon sighed, fingers moving quickly over the digital keyboard or whatever. Jeongguk couldn't quite see the screen himself from where he was standing. "I’ll start an internal check,” Namjoon continued. "See if anything’s been flagged. Movement, chatter, unusual activity."

Jeongguk nodded instantly, grateful.

"You keep your head down," Namjoon continued. "Don’t draw attention. If this is bigger than it looks, the last thing you want is to be visible."

"Alright," Jeongguk agreed, his brain already strategizing, thinking ahead, planning, and picking apart ideas. "I can check the outer sectors," he said. "Black markets, transit routes... Surely someone had to move him."

Namjoon hesitated again, probably worried about Jeongguk's safety. "Do what you can," he mumbled eventually, elbows propped on the desk and fingers laced together into a tent as if he was about to bargain.

Jeongguk was already on his way to the door, ready to sweep the town and look into every single corner of every single street. "I'll contact you."

"Don't," the word slipped out from Nam's mouth, making Jeongguk pause with one hand on the door and the other still at the back of the helmet he was already adjusting on his head. He turned slowly with a puzzled expression. "I meant, I'll reach out first. Don't worry about it, wait for my call."

The biker tilted his head, making a few seconds of eye contact with Namjoon, who offered him a small, somewhat encouraging smile.

For a moment, Jeongguk wanted to ask 'Are you going to be okay? Do you want to talk about it?' After all, Namjoon has known Yoongi for far longer than Gguk, and they'd spent their entire childhood together, but the man seemed to have wanted some privacy at the moment, so Jeon just nodded once more. "Okay."

In a matter of seconds, he pushed the door open and smoothly slid out of the office, wasting no time at all before making his way downstairs. In fact, he practically tripped over his own legs on the stairs and again when crossing the threshold of the front door.

"Echo," Jeongguk's voice came out stable and confident as he called for the AI.

"Yes, Jeongguk?"

"Next destination point is District 7, especially the northern area. Request for directions," words flew out of his mouth like a string of spells as he mounted the bike. "Quickest route."

"Of course."

The thought that he might already be too late, that Yoongi's body might already be cooling somewhere under a bunch of dirt and rubble, made his stomach turn. Alive until proven otherwise, he repeated in his own head and circled the parking, making his way to District 7 with plans to work his way down horizontally rather than vertically over the city.

After four days without Yoongi, the apartment no longer felt like home.

Jeongguk left everything exactly as it was and kept walking around the mess, refusing to clean up the blood or pick up overturned furniture. It felt meaningful, like a crime scene where he could've still missed something. It felt like evidence of Yoongi's existence. 

In fact, after three days of non-stop searching, asking, threatening, knocking on doors, and slowly losing his mind... He barely had time to stay at home at all. He only came back to shower, rearm, switch clothes, and stare at maps projected by Echo until his eyes burned.

The rest of the time, he spent outside in underground bars, in black-market weapon dens, and at contacts who owed favors.

Namjoon never called back as he had promised. Jeongguk hadn't received a single message from him since the very moment he left the rebel outpost the other day. He hadn't called either, hoping to get back in contact with him soon. Maybe he was busy? He did say that he needed time. But how much longer could they wait for a miracle to happen?

To Jeongguk, it just felt like he was wasting time, running in circles, and silently pitying himself. 

He drank too much, slept not at all, and ate only when Echo reminded him enough times that the alerts became impossible to ignore.

The apartment's AI watched as Jeongguk kept wasting away. If it weren't there, he would've probably already gone crazy, judging by the way he cut his hair short because it kept bothering him during boxing, and sat for hours watching the same video clip from the front door camera until he could no longer look at it.

His and Echo's conversations became clipped and professional. Like work partners. No longer friends. 

He told himself he put it behind them, but somewhere deep down, Gguk still struggled to forgive Echo for not reacting, even if it couldn't have done anything to prevent this. It wasn't its fault, nor was it his... but someone had to take the blame, and Jeongguk was too much of a coward to live with this heavy responsibility of risking Yoongi's life.

Now, he stood in the workshop, drenched in sweat, driving his fist into the hanging bag hard enough to make the chain groan back at him in retaliation. His skin split over healing bruises, blood smeared over leather.

Echo's voice hummed through the space calmly. "Your right hand requires immediate treatment, Jeongguk."

"Shut up."

"Swelling has increased by twenty-two percent."

Silence followed by more silence, followed by passive aggression. Feeling pain shoot down his arm was better than feeling absolutely nothing while staring into the darkness and thinking about the most precious thing to him that he failed horribly and now was paying for it as he should.

Then, the sound of the call tore through the room unexpectedly, making Jeongguk freeze mid-swing. He looked back towards the kitchen counter where he had abandoned his comm pad.

"Who is it?" He asked, holding his breath, practically begging whichever god was listening for it to be Kim Namjoon.

"Unknown external source."

He exhaled a shaky breath. Not Namjoon. 

"Block it," Jeongguk spat, quickly regaining his composure.

Echo cut in again. "I've located the source downtown at Liminal Boulevard 62fx-003," the AI let the information settle. "It's your father's address."

That made the biker go still for a moment. Whatever this man wanted from him now couldn't have been good news. Gguk had left him way back in his past and wasn't planning on awakening old demons. Still, there was a tiny chance that he knew something... heard something. After all, Jeongguk suspected that not a lot had changed since the time that his father took delight in infiltrating the inner circles of the upper class for money and fame. 

"Put him through," Jeongguk nodded, changing his mind.

He used the black tank top that clung to his sweaty torso and back to wipe away the sweat from his brow and cheeks as he leaned against Yoongi's desk, watching Echo's light turn purple for a moment.

A holographic interface lit over the workbench, audio only. Good. Seeing the man who lied to him every chance he got would've surely made Jeongguk punch something that wasn't exactly meant for punching.

For a second, neither of them spoke, Jeongguk's eyes staring into the oblivion indifferently with both arms crossed over his chest.

Then. "Jeongguk?"

The biker's jaw set in no time, fingers squeezing near painfully around the wrap on his hand.

"...How did you get this line?" He started calmly.

"I asked the right people-"

"Oh, I'm sure you did," Jongguk snorted. "Ask them to lose it."

A beat of silence during which Jeongguk himself did not understand why he hadn't hung up just yet. Most probably, it was this stupid hope he kept clinging to. This stupid hope for something useful. Anything.

"I've heard about Min Yoongi," there it was. Jeongguk's heart skipped a beat instantly as he looked wide-eyed in the direction of one of Echo's cameras.

"Yeah?" he tried playing it cool, not sounding as desperate as he was in reality. "What did you hear? And why do you care all of a sudden?"

"You’ve been seen asking questions in places you shouldn’t be."

Jeongguk probed his inner cheek with his tongue, holding back a bitter chuckle as he stared at the ceiling. So he did hear about Yoongi... Because one of his friends told him that his abomination of a convert son keeps asking around like a police dog. "Good," he retorted.

"You've been threatening people."

"Even better," he snarled.

Silence again. Then, the man sighed heavily, as if he knew that this was going to go that way from the beginning, and Jeongguk hoped that he did. On top of being heartless, he couldn't have been delusional as well.

"Come home," the man offered, softer.

This seemed to have done it. Jeongguk flinched as if he had just been bitchslapped across the face from both sides. "... What?"

"Come back home," the man repeated. "To your family, to your legacy. This is where your place is-"

"I don't have one," Jeongguk cut in, head shaking as he furiously unwrapped the bloodied bandages from around his palms. "I don't have a family."

"Nonsense-" the father raised his voice.

"You know who my family is?" Gguk snapped as he started pacing the space around them, so much space that suddenly felt both too vast and too narrow to contain all of these emotions within his heavy heart. "Yoongi is my family. How about that?"

"Min Yoongi is dead," the man snapped right back, matching Jeongguk's hostile tone. The biker could almost see the wrinkles forming on his forehead through the way he started speaking - no more deceiving. Pure honesty,

"Jeongguk-" Echo pitched in, trying to let Jeongguk know that his heart rate jumped very suddenly, but Jeon didn't let it finish.

"Say that again."

"Min Yoongi is dead. You are chasing after a dead man," Jeongguk's lip quivered weakly before he moved.

The punching bag crashed sideways as he drove a bare fist through its suspension arm. Metal shrieked. The whole mount tore free and slammed into the floor, making a whole lot of noise that the other man surely must've heard on the other side of the call.

"Structural damage detected," Jeongguk ignored the announcement, letting himself slide down one of the glass walls, breathing hard and clenching one hand over the other - the one that probably needed immediate medical attention now, judging from the pain.

"Look at you... You'd step over anyone if it kept your shoes clean, wouldn't you?" he chuckled.

"Control yourself."

"Yeah, you totally would," he nodded more to himself than to anyone else before continuing. "You hear one rumor and call me now, not because you care, but because you’re embarrassed."

His father’s tone hardened, "You are exhausted and irrational.”

"Yeah?" A smile touched Jeongguk’s mouth, twisted, one that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You should see me rested, old man."

"Please, if there should be one time when you listen to your father, let it be this one, Jeongguk-ah," the way his father pronounced his name with that pathetic attempt at sounding affectionate made Jeongguk feel sick to his stomach.

"Your fucking friends hurt him, okay?" He grunted as he lifted himself from the ground and walked over to Echo's manual control panel. "If he's dead-" Jeongguk's voice wavered. "Tell them that if Min Yoongi is dead, then they'd better leave the goddamn city."

His finger cut the line, and only then was he able to take a normal breath. One that came out of him sounding more like a pathetic sob than anything else.

Jeongguk placed a flat palm over his heaving chest, unable to keep his emotions down. His bloodied hands carding through somewhat unevenly cut hair, his clothes soaked through with sweat and tears. He couldn't remember ever feeling so guilty. So lost. So hopeless.

Jeongguk crouched down amidst the mess that marred the once pristine floor. 

"Your heart rate is elevated, and your hand needs immediate medical attention."

"No kidding," Jeongguk sniffled through thick, salty tears that just kept coming and sliding down his cheeks all the way to the line of his jaw, where Yoongi would always leave kisses and hickeys. With each breath he took as he lifted himself from the ground wearily, he could feel the void inside his chest growing and sucking in all there was left of happiness and joy. All the memories, not so long ago he could still look upon and smile at, were now scarred by this painful longing. By the regret that he couldn't nurse nor could he ignore.

The shower Jeongguk took alone that night hurt like hardly anything else ever did before - physically but also mentally.

He stood under the burning-hot stream of water for what felt like hours on end. He switched between running soap onto his knuckles long after the blood had already disappeared and leaning against the wall for support while choking on his own breath, his own tears. There were just things in life impossible to move past, and Jeongguk got to experience it firsthand.

Echo lit up purple just as Jeongguk exited the shower, hair no longer long enough to be slicked back, standing in wet spikes on his head.

"What is it?" he asked half-mindedly, fingers carefully wrapping bandages around the gauze on his knuckles. They bled badly and hurt awfully, but that's what Gguk was aiming for, right? Feeling something different than grief and longing.

Echo spoke after a moment of silence. "I've successfully concluded my research across all available public records, cross-referencing the blood samples collected from the apartment's floor."

Jeongguk's head snapped up, and he caught himself in the mirror, all swollen eyes and pink cheeks. His heart almost stopped for half a moment. "And?" he asked, impatiently turning to look into the nearest camera.

"All blood samples, apart from Yoongi's, belong to one man." A clear, holographic image appeared in the mirror. "Ian B. Hwang. Late thirties, a warehouse engineer technician by education, lives with his girlfriend approximately 20 minutes from your location," a beat. "He's a mercenary."

The last word dropped louder than it should have.

Jeongguk squinted as he looked at the guy. Patchy beard, square eyes, a scar running down his temple, and hair parted in the middle. "Government affiliation?"

"No information available."

Jeongguk grimaced, then gestured with his less injured hand. "Okay, calculate route."

The AI obeyed and once again switched from calming blue to a lively purple. Meanwhile, Jeongguk peeled the towel off his body and hurriedly made his way to the bedroom for a change of clothes. 

A mercenary could mean two things. First, his motives might not have been politically motivated, but he still took the job for the bag. Second, his actions have been politically motivated, in which case he was an even bigger scumbag. In both scenarios, however, he was going to get what he should've seen coming.

"Quickest route calculated," the AI hummed gently while Jeongguk pulled on a black turtleneck and a leather bomber jacket. " I should warn you. According to my assessment, you shouldn't mount the Revenant in your mental and physical condition, Jeongguk. It might negatively affect your health."

Jeongguk did not respond, and Echo probably wasn't expecting him to. His mind was already on the road, legs carrying him straight to the workshop. Gun.

He opened the weapon storage as he usually did, elbow carelessly slamming into the hidden wall panel. He immediately reached for his usual gun, tucking it into his waistband.

Then-

"Yoongi set a reminder: take throwing knives with you."

The notification hit Jeongguk harder than it should have. He blinked, stunned, eyes drifting to the leather satchel placed on a weapon rack. He wished Yoongi were there to nag him about the knives personally. He wished Yoongi would shove them into his hands like he always did. Taking them willingly almost felt wrong. "When did he set it?"

"The reminder was set on April 12th, 2156."

Jeongguk's mind raced as he put each throwing knife in its assigned compartment of the holster. The reminder's been on ever since they started living together. Yet Yoongi has always been there to remind Jeongguk himself, to the point that Gguk had no idea the notification existed until now. 

"Delete it," the biker mumbled as he tied the leg strap of the holster around his thigh a little tighter than he normally would. "I won't need it anymore."

The Revenant's blue neons smeared across the dark cover of Aetherfall's night. The downtown kept pulsing with light and noise behind his back, as Jeongguk ventured into the depths of the lower districts, where his bike illuminated each alley that he passed, lighter than the nearby signs and streetlights.

Visibly less technologically advanced, this part of Aetherfall had become home to criminals who wished to disappear from the authorities' gun sight and blended in perfectly with the locals. From giant skyscrapers and suspended highways, the cityscape slowly transformed into old, flickering neon signs and discarded electrical parts scattered in shadowy corners.

The Revenant's tires screeched over the surface of the road, rear wheel skidding to the side as it stopped in place. The sole of Jeongguk's chunky boot caught on the ground from one side as the weight of the machine shifted between his legs. He looked like the grim reaper himself, still and terrifying, with only the visor reflecting a faint glimmer of light from the nearest street lamp.

"Which floor?" he muttered to Echo, head slowly tilting upwards in the direction of the roof as he counted.

More than an apartment tower, the building looked like a total den, but who knew maybe something surprising waited on the inside. If he were a rat secretly working for the government, hiding in a starvation-stricken neighborhood, he would've chosen a low-profile base as well. There was no reason to underestimate Ian yet.

"Tenth," Echo hummed in his ear, and Jeongguk's head instantly stilled. His eyes, however, jumped from window to window; every single one as dark as oil. Not a single light, seemingly abandoned."Look for number 107."

"Tell me that he's there right now," Jeongguk killed the engine and silently dismounted before activating the cloaking field.

The machine seamlessly blended into the bleak surroundings, another one of Yoongi's genius ideas. 

"My thermal camera detected no heat signatures within the apartment," Echo announced.

Not the best info. In fact, Jeongguk quietly cursed to himself. Maybe he went all this way for absolutely nothing... Well, he wouldn't know unless he checked. 

"Okay, here we go," he muttered quietly to himself, legs already carrying him in the direction of the main entrance as if no other option existed.

The door automatically slid open as he approached, revealing a dark hallway with at least two dying lightbulbs. The white space of the hall flickered in front of Jeongguk's eyes seconds before he stepped inside. 

It's been a while since the last time Jeongguk had to rely on himself alone. The comfort of Yoongi's presence next to him was gone, and the feeling, or lack thereof, made his stomach flip uncomfortably. Gguk quickly swallowed it down as he climbed the spiral staircase sideways, keeping his eyes focused on the railings of the upper levels just in case.

Gradually, as he ascended the stairs, Jeongguk noticed the paint peeling off, and the air smelling like mold, fried circuits, and wet concrete. By the time he reached the landing, his breathing was steady and his heart slower than it should’ve been. That was the problem now, the silence, the calmness. He couldn't afford to let his guard drop.

The door number 107 clicked open in four seconds, with an amateur lock that stood no chance against Echo's skills. Jeongguk slipped inside and closed it behind him.

At first, everything was cloaked in darkness with a faint hint of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. "Smoking's bad for you, Ian," he murmured to himself as his eyes slowly adjusted to the lack of proper lighting, allowing him to look around. "Will get ya killed one day... This or abducting the wrong people."

The place turned out smaller than he had initially anticipated, judging by the look of it from the outside. One room with a divider wall - a kitchenette, stained sink, old terminal rig, mattress on the floor. Messy in the lazy way of someone who thought no one important would ever come over. Hard to believe that a woman willingly chose to live there.

Jeongguk moved fast, immediately pulling out drawers first, rummaging through closets, and peeking under the mattress. As his frustration grew, the biker tossed everything behind him with increasing force.

Receipts.
Cheap pills.
Burner chips.
Two loaded magazines.
An old lipstick.

Nothing. He found absolutely nothing.

"Echo," he panted out, the visor coming to life with a gentle blue.

"Nothing that could be of use," the system responded before Gguk could even ask his question.

"Fuck me," he mumbled, impatient.

A few more things went flying across the room before Jeon's eyes finally settled on a funny-looking air vent. It looked crooked, and the upper-left corner was completely unscrewed from the wall, leaving a gap big enough for Jeongguk to slide his fingers through and grip it properly.

It's what he did next, crouched by the wall, and with enough energy pulled the cover right off. Dust sprayed as the air duct opened before him, dark and seemingly empty. 

Jeongguk hummed, considering. Who leaves an air vent easily accessible like that, barely screwed to the wall unless they use it? Nobody.

He stuck one arm inside, fingers sliding and groping along the smooth sides of the vent until the fingertips hooked over a thin edge of something. Then, slick tape over the rectangular shape of what Joengguk instantly suspected to be a card of some sort.

He ripped it off and pulled it out gently. Looked like a microdrive he had seen on Yoongi's workbench dozens of times before. He pocketed it quickly, having no time for conducting a deeper analysis now.

Then, the hallway outside creaked, causing every single one of Jeongguk's muscles to stiffen as he listened in for confirmation. Could've been anyone... Could've been Ian.

Echo spoke when the person approached the entrance. "Single approaching heat signature," the AI warned.

Jeongguk rushed towards the wall beside the front door, definitely not as gracefully as Yoongi would have done it, but effectively enough to get himself out of sight for the surprise element of his show. 

The man entered muttering to himself, carrying a plastic bag that smelled like synthetic noodles and cheap liquor. Unaware, he pushed the door shut and made it about two steps in.

"What the-" he started, looking at the absolute mess that Gguk had made of his stuff, but then his sentence was cut short with a head over the back of his head that drove him straight into the wall.

The bag exploded across the floor. "It's not as fun when someone does that to you, huh, Ian?" 

The man reacted faster than expected - instant elbow to Jeongguk’s ribs, heel stomp to the foot, head snapping back into the helmet on Jeongguk's head, and stunning him for a few short seconds. Now it felt fair. Now it felt like he was actually doing something useful and correct, he thought to himself.

His fingers squeezed in the guy's hair, the other hand wrapping tightly around the arm that stabbed him between the ribs, and forcefully swung him around - away from the wall and deeper into the apartment.

The man staggered and lost his balance before landing roughly on the hard floor, cluttered with various items that probably made it feel all the worse. As he landed, Jeongguk's eyes followed the gun, which slipped out of a poorly strapped holster and clattered towards the kitchenette.

As the man crawled for it, Jeongguk was already moving. He caught the mercenary's wrist, slammed it once, twice, three times against the surface of the floor until his fingers opened with a pained groan, and the gun fell loose.

"What's wrong, you didn't like my surprise?" Jeongguk demanded as he twisted the man's arm behind his back and pulled him up by a shoulder.

"Hey, fuck you, man," the mercenary breathed out, following Gguk's lead and getting up onto his knees into a kneeling position. "I ain't done nothing!"

Jeongguk, who was now crouched behind him, stared at the back of the man's head with uncanny calmness. "...You took something from me."

"Oh yeah?" The man let out a breathy chuckle as he struggled against the grip around his arm. "You needa be more specific. There are quite a few things that I've taken."

Jeon's jaw set as he yanked the man up and not very gently pulled him towards the kitchen counter, against which he bent him over, chest splayed out on the ceramic tiles. "Does Min Yoongi ring a bell?" Silence followed Jeon's question, accompanied by a singular grunt of pain as Jeongguk's knee drove into the back of Ian's. "You can either talk now or after I free you from that unnecessary second arm."

Too distracted by rage and frustration, Jeongguk didn't notice that the man's other arm, which initially clung to the edge of the counter, eventually sneakily reached towards the knife sheath wrapped around Jeon's thigh. He only realised what was happening once the sting of pain shot through his side.

He hissed softly, head tilting down to see a single one of his throwing knives piercing the skin just above the wing of his pelvis. Before the stunned biker could react appropriately, the man was already pushing him off, hand pulling the knife out as it broke loose from the tangle of limbs.

White pain spread behind Jeongguk's eyes, but there was no time for injury assessment now as they both hit the floor hard in the desperate attempt not to lose grip on the other one. 

Gguk ignored the wet feeling of blood soaking through his clothes as well as Echo's notification about the need for immediate medical attention, because there was a more important issue at hand. 

The man slashed wildly, but Jeongguk managed to lean away in time to avoid another knife wound. In return, he punched the mercenary in the throat mid-swing and then immediately after in the mouth. Blood sprayed as the man hunched over and spat blood all over his hand.

That was Jeongguk's moment, if there's ever been one. He took a swing and, with a powerful strike to the forearm, disarmed the man.

Still, the man fought. Desperate people always did.

"Where is he," Jeongguk panted as he once again pulled the man into a standing position, he himself having trouble lifting his body from the floor now with an open wound in his abdomen.

In retaliation, the man spat blood all over Jeongguk's visor, to which he immediately responded by headbutting the mercenary, both hands now clutching the fabric of his shirt. "Where is he," he repeated. No answer came, just a bloodied, spiteful smile.

Jeongguk slammed him against the sharp edge of the counter, eliciting a pained cry as the cabinets rattled underneath. "Min Yoongi," he hissed, staring straight into the mercenary's panicked eyes through his dimmed visor. "Where."

The man’s gaze flicked toward the door, and before Jeongguk knew it, Ian made his last escape attempt. He wrestled against Jeongguk's arms, lifting his shaking leg with the knee conveniently hitting the biker's gushing abdominal wound.

Gguk doubled over, holding his breath for a hot second before he collapsed sideways against the counter. He was pretty sure he saw literal stars for just a moment before his vision returned blurry and swaying.

The man pushed past him, his weak but hurried steps carrying him towards the front door.

Jeongguk watched in slow motion as his target slipped away, one arm propped against the counter and the other subconsciously reaching towards his sheath. He pulled one of the throwing knives from its compartment. He almost hadn't worn it today.

Yoongi's voice echoed in his head like a fever dream or a drug-induced hallucination: Bring them. Stop acting like you're above carrying tools.

He'd rolled his eyes every time, but not then and there... although he probably needed to watch them closer in the future. Now his thumb ran over the grip, arm moving before thought.

Despite his vision swimming lightly, Jeongguk aimed with narrowed eyes. The knife left his hand in one clean motion, a silver blur in the thick air of the cramped apartment, before the blade buried itself high in the man’s back. He staggered, then lifted his hand towards the sudden intrusion. Before collapsing to the ground, his eyes met Jeongguk's through the visor. Then, he was falling.

It took Jeongguk a moment to push himself off the counter, one hand insistently putting pressure on the open wound.

"Listen up, government whore," he insisted through clenched teeth as he straddled Ian's unmoving body. "This is not a game that you think it is, okay? I'm gonna gut this place raw until I find out where Min fucking Yoongi is. Understood?"

Blood bubbled at the man's lips as it opened. "Not... g-g...overn...m-ment."

Jeongguk stilled. "What?"

The man coughed violently, most probably choking on his own blood, his body shaking as he suffered internal bleeding.

"Not... the...th-... gov...e-ernm..." his hand twitched weakly upward as he blinked up at Jeongguk. His lips kept moving for a few short moments, but no sound came. Only lips moving.

Two syllables. Or three? Maximum four. Jeongguk even narrowed his eyes, trying to make out what the words were. Unfortunately, the man spat blood and coughed between whatever he was attempting to say, and so the lip movement turned out absolutely incoherent.

Jeongguk leaned closer. "Say it... c'mon," he coaxed, desperate.

Again, nothing but silent lip movement.

A name? A title? A location? Could've been any of the above. It also could've been an insult or something completely irrelevant, but at that point, Jeongguk needed to cling to some sort of hope.

The man’s eyes unfocused, his head lolled sideways. Then came his final breath.

Gone.

Jeongguk stayed there a moment, gripping the dead man's bloodied shirt in the middle of all the mess they had made and trying to stabilise his breath.

Not government.

If not the government, then who? How high were the chances that Yoongi had made enemies Jeongguk wasn't aware of? Moderate, he decided in his head. Not very promising prognosis.

He replayed the lip movement in his head again, again, and again, but nothing particular fit. It was too messy, too irregular in the mercenary's repetitions.

He shoved the body aside and held his breath before dragging himself up with one forearm braced against the wall. "Echo."

"I recorded visual data," the AI responded

"Run the lips," he breathed out weakly, already resting the back of his head against the wall. He needed to rest for a moment, just a short while. He knew he'd be fine in no time and, most importantly, he'd be back on track.

"Already processing," Echo reported, a purple icon flashing in the corner of Jeongguk's visor.

Good. At least one thing in this city worked as it should.

When he stepped back into the hallway, the pale dawn was beginning somewhere far beyond the smog, the lies, and the artificial illusion of normality.

The corridor lights buzzed overhead as Jeongguk guided himself towards the staircase, one hand on the wound and the other feeling the firm wall to his left.

His hands were all covered in blood, his own as well as Ian's, but it didn't matter. Yoongi might've been tied up somewhere, experiencing even bigger suffering and worse torture than a knife wound and a headache. To Jeongguk, finding him was worth every single sacrifice. He won't stop until Yoongi is back home and safe. 

No other options were under consideration. 

His chest felt heavy and tight with the kind of anger that no longer felt hot. It became cold, ruthless, merciless. Focused on one thing and one thing alone. Like a machine with an objective.

He took the stairs down slowly, at times needing to brace both arms at his sides for support. "Echo, cover off," Gguk ordered as he stumbled through the front door and barely caught his balance before collapsing right there on the sidewalk in front of the building.

Echo’s voice came softly through the comm.

"There are several possible matches for Ian's lip movement. Do you wish to see the list now?"

Jeongguk swung a leg over the Revenant's seat, back curling in on itself at the sudden wave of pain that shot up Jeongguk's torso.

"No," he squeezed out between his gritted teeth. "I'll review it at home."

"Jeongguk," the AI added almost hesitantly.

A sigh that proved Jeongguk already knew what to expect. "What," he snapped.

"I recommend you sleep."

The biker's glove smeared his blood all over the starting button, the Revenant's low electric hum smoothly coming to life in its natural habitat.

"Recommend something useful," he retorted, already accelerating. To him, sleep was just another distraction that he couldn't let himself fall for. He was letting precious time slip through his fingers with every second spent on distractions such as this one, which was unacceptable. Yoongi needed him, and he needed him now, not after a nap.

The Revenant was pushed to its very limits on the way back home. Being Yoongi's creation, it has never disappointed Jeongguk, and that time wasn't different.

On his way up to the apartment, Jeongguk took the elevator, which might not have been quite as challenging as the stairs, but he certainly did feel like he was about to vomit with every movement.

Eventually, he did find himself shirtless on the bathroom floor with a curved sewing needle between fingers of one hand and a blood-soaked towel swug over his forearm. Echo advised him to go for interrupted sutures, so that's what Jeongguk did. Usually, Yoongi has been the one stitching him up, but Gguk's done it just about enough times on Yoongi to know what to do.

Washing hands, latex gloves, needle driver, 90° angle. Clockwise wrist tilt, then wrap the thread twice around the driver and pull until it's tight and secure. Then, knot. Hurt like absolute hell, but he made it through, and about an hour later, he exited the bathroom with sweat trickling down his forehead and blood still stubbornly hiding under his fingernails.

"Low infection risk, but I will monitor the wound for the next 72 hours and alert you should I notice any change."

Jeongguk nodded silently as he descended onto Yoongi's workshop chair. He leaned back in it, allowing himself to spread his legs under the table and close his eyes for just a few short seconds. 

He couldn't believe how many things over a trivial day actually reminded him of Yoongi. The way rooms were lit, how people smelled, the weapon choices he made, and the surrounding technology. He never considered himself to be dependent on such a profound level, and yet there he was, missing Yoongi because nobody complained, nobody scolded him, and nobody cared.

Nobody ever cared quite as much as Yoongi did, even if he did his best to appear soulless and cruel; Jeongguk never quite believed this act.

"Echo," he spoke, lower lip trembling ever so slightly at the sudden wave of emotion that washed over him. "Play the lip movement clip."

The ambient blue turned purple, matching the vibrant palette of the early morning sky hidden behind a cloud of pollution and forgotten feelings. Soon enough, the recording of his encounter with Ian started playing on the weapon storage wall.

Jeongguk turned in Yoongi's swivel chair, narrow, tired eyes blinking up at the looped clip of Ian mouthing something inaudible.

"There are dozens of possibilities," Echo started, displaying a depressingly long list of possibilities, some more, some less related to Yoongi's abduction. "The word or short sentence undoubtedly begins with a consonant and ends with an alveolar 'n'. It is most likely a three-syllable word. Unfortunately, there's a 87% possibility that it's a name, which doesn't help in narrowing the search."

Jeongguk rubbed a hand down his face, eventually resting his index finger against his lower lip, pondering. "It could also be someone that I've never met," he muttered. There was really no point in guessing something as abstract as a name. Yoongi knows quite a lot of people.

Gguk shifted in his seat to lean forward on his knees, but quickly abandoned the idea as something painfully poked his freshly stitched wound under the fabric of his fresh hoodie.

"Oh my fucking god," he squeaked, barely holding back from groaning in pain as he reached into his pocket to retrieve whatever had just performed an assassination attempt.

It was the micro drive card. The one he had found hidden in Ian's air vent, thin and tiny in a way that made it disappear if more than two fingers held it.

"That is a micro drive card," Echo offered, probably a little confused after such a long pause.

"Yeah, I know what it is," Jeongguk hummed, already turning in Yoongi's chair to face the workbench again. "Can you scan it?" the biker asked as he gently placed the card at the very center of Yoon's digital workstation.

The rectangular platform came to life in a purple hue as Echo processed Jeongguk's request. He watched, unblinking and with both arms crossed over his chest, deep down hoping for something. Anything at all.

"No security measures apply," Echo informed. "It's a drive that contains a collection of private .PDF and .p7m files, many of which appear to be contracts signed between Ian B. Hwang and various institutions as well as private people."

Jeongguk raised his eyebrows. This sounded promising and perhaps a little too good to be true. The next request came out of his mouth before he could even fully form a thought to ask about it. "Search all files for Yoongi hyung's full name."

The light once again switched from blue to purple, as Echo conducted a thorough search. "One match found."

Jeongguk's heart nearly jumped out of his chest at the news. "Send it here. Right now," he straightened up and turned on Yoongi's stats pad just as the notification pinged.

He opened the file at the speed of light, wandering eyes scanning the text from all sides at once before reading from the beginning. He stilled, once noticing something odd. Yes, Yoongi's name was there, conveniently placed right next to his.

"What the actual-" Jeongguk trailed off as he stared at the document in utter disbelief. 

"It's an abduction job contract with yours and Yoongi's personal details," Echo summarised. "According to this document, the mercenaries had a 7-minute time slip and violated the terms and conditions set by the opposite party who issued the document by inflicting visible physical injuries on Yoongi's body. Not to mention, they failed to achieve the main objective as you weren't present in the apartment at the moment."

Jeongguk blinked at first, then zoomed in on the date. "It was signed twelve days ago."

"Correct."

Jeongguk scrolled down the page again, clearly stunned. "Which means it was signed long before the Club Halcyon mission," Jeongguk swallowed loudly. "And by someone who doesn't like me any more than they like Yoongi."

Then, Jeongguk reached the bottom of the page, and his eyes swept over the signatures. One was very simple: Hwang's last name. Then, the one next to it looked more like a fancy family emblem than a regular signature. No name, just the sign. Three vertical lines and a horizontal spiral wrapping around them like a serpent. No name, just the signature.

"Yoongi searched for something matching this description approximately forty-five minutes before he left the apartment premises on the day of his abduction," Echo offered as it no doubt followed the movement of Jeongguk's fingers when he zoomed in on the signature.

Jeongguk, now definitely way too hopeful because of what could've just been a series of incidents, minimized the document's view and pulled up Echo's search history. Each search had a date and location assigned, so finding Yoongi's search history from Friday was like taking candy from a baby.

"He did... but why?" That's when it clicked into place, and Jeongguk remembered the exact moment when Minsoo mentioned something similar - three lines and a spiral. "He knew and didn't tell me."

The realisation dawned on him harder than it should have. Would it have changed anything had Yoongi told him? Probably not. He clearly considered it important or meaningful since he deliberately searched Echo's drives for it. Jeongguk wouldn't have helped, but it wasn't that. He didn't like being left out, which didn't happen that often... maybe that's part of why it hit him so hard.

"That's not all," Echo chimed in. "I've stored Yoongi's doodle in a draft folder. He drew it around the same time I conducted my research on the origin of the described signature." Echo pulled up the file on Yoongi's stats pad without even being asked.

It did look similar. As if he had known it closely once, but the memory gradually distorted in his head.

"Any sources that remain unsearched?"

"No, all of my drives have been thoroughly checked for this symbol. Zero results."

Jeongguk drummed the tips of his fingers against the surface of the workbench as he tried to think of any possible solutions that Yooni might've skipped. But how could he have forgotten about something so important? Yoongi was basically a genius, which didn't do much to help.

"Has Yoongi ever deleted any documents whatsoever?" He asked carefully, eyes wandering from Yoongi's dried-up smear of blood near the entrance to the wrench that he had left lying halfway under the sofa.

"No. All files that once went through my systems are regularly sorted and organised on my hard drive or the spare drive, where Yoongi mostly keeps childhood correspondence and older, less important documents."

Jeongguk's tongue clicked as he considered his options. Eeny, meeny miny... his eyes landed on Yoon's overturned vintage chair that he hadn't had the heart to move. 

He blinked, slow and measured. Then, his eyes moved towards the old, framed watch collection. Brows furrowed, lips parted as if the thought was already forming at the back of his throat.

Finally, the Tamagotchi with its round shape and an outdated design. The one that he got Yoongi hours before everything went downhill. The one he drove such a long way to purchase for Yoongi because, despite being a tech spec who singlehandedly modifies bikes and builds AI systems from scratch, Yoon has always been fascinated by vintage stuff that fell out of use years ago.

Then it clicked.

"Echo," Jeongguk started carefully. "Does Yoongi keep physical copies of any documents? You know, on paper."

The AI paused for a short second, everything briefly flashing back to purple as it searched its core memory for an answer to a question nobody's asked in a long time. "He does," the system confirmed. Jeongguk jumped up almost instantly at the news, regretting the sudden movement once a strong feeling of discomfort spread over his abdomen. 

Jeongguk's eyes lit up. "Where."

The space of the workshop flickered to purple before settling back on the calming blue. "I'm not sure," the AI admitted. "Those, however, might not be relevant at all. I've found four exact mentions of those paper documents in my database, the most recent one dating back to 2153." It paused, then continued, "Ten years have passed."

Jeongguk nodded softly, legs already moving across the room with a clear objective.

If Yoongi kept old paper documents, then it was either out of sentiment or out of obligation. Gguk doubted his roommate would've ever bound himself to a ten-year-long responsibility, so maybe he kept it for blackmail? It wouldn't have been out of character for Yoongi to collect evidence like this in secret. Since he failed to mention both the signature and the documents to Gguk, he had a new reason to believe they were somehow connected. It wasn't often that Yoon kept secrets from him, or at least Jeongguk wanted to believe so.

Jeongguk knew that Yoongi wouldn't have just put those documents in a random, convenient spot. He knew the blond probably hid them well... but could he have chosen a more conceiled place?

After an hour of rummaging through all the possible hidden drawers and storage compartments installed in their bedroom, Jeongguk switched to searching under furniture.

Obviously, it had to be their bedroom. It was the only place in the entire apartment where they never invited strangers. In that sense, the workshop felt too obvious, the living area too exposed, the kitchen too risky, the bathroom too isolated to be controlled. In all of those places, someone could've accidentally found something, but not in their bedroom.

"What remains?" Jeongguk signed, pulling himself up into a sitting position after screwing the lower panel of the digital dresser back on.

"I recommend you try searching in a different room," Echo hummed.

Jeongguk ran a hand through his short hair, agitated. It couldn't be. "No, it has to be here." The biker got up and walked over to the door against which he leaned his back to get a better look at the room.

"They could've taken it."

Gguk blinked, eyes travelling towards Echo's nearest camera in the left corner of the ceiling. "Huh?"

"The people who took Yoongi. The state of the apartment afterwards suggests that they might've been looking for something. If your theory, that these documents are related to Yoongi's disappearance, is correct, then there's a high chance they were ordered to retrieve them," the AI concluded.

Jeongguk bit on the inside of his cheek, frustrated. He hasn't really thought of such an unfortunate scenario.

He started pacing again, the mess around him leaving little space to move freely. 

Every time he encountered an obstacle like this one, Jeongguk was losing hope. Every short stop felt like a gynormous step back because Yoongi didn't have that kind of time on his hands. And this wasn't a simple stop. If someone actually took those documents, then it was a first real step back, and Gguk couldn't accept the eventuality.

Was looking for something that may have long since been gone an action a sane person would've chosen?

In Jeongguk's head, it suddenly stopped being about the documents.

He swallowed hard.

"Goddammit-" Jeongguk threw the screwdriver across the room unnecessarily hard.

The tool bounced off the wall with a mechanical click, and before it even fell onto the soft mattress beneath, a small, round storage drawer materialized before Jeongguk's eyes. 

The biker stood still for a few long seconds, unsure of what had just happened. He's never seen Yoongi opening that. How many secrets did he need to uncover before he could finally get his normalcy back?

"Echo?"

"I wasn't aware of this locker's existence," the AI informed. "It's not linked to my system, nor has Yoongi ever mentioned it. Now, come to think of it, it's possible that he kept it a secret for security reasons."

Jeongguk approached the newly discovered hideout cautiously. Even from a few steps away, he could already see a glass vial with something faintly yellowish, rolled up tight to fit the container. The retractable drawer had a perfectly round shape that Jeongguk found hard to believe blended in with the wall so sneakily. Yet, he never suspected it to be there, so it certainly fulfilled its function.

"I can't believe he's never told me about this," he mumbled more to himself than to Echo as he ran his fingers along the lines of the construction, one knee propped up against the edge of the bed.

Sharp design and precise measurements, but nothing along the lines of Yoongi's usual advanced creations. A simple 'push-to-open' design - a combination of mechanical spring-loaded triggers and ball-bearing slides that would only respond to a person who knew where to push... or got frustrated enough to start attacking the walls.

Jeongguk's fingers wrapped around the vial as he took it out of the drawer. He tried the cork, and when it did not budge, he tried harder. Sadly, none of the attempts worked.

"It's glued shut," Jeongguk mumbled seconds before taking a wide swing and smashing the glass over the bedroom floor. 

Luckily, it wasn't tempered or reinforced, so it easily scattered over the sleek surface, some of the tiny shards sliding under furniture here and there.

The biker didn't care. He crouched in front of the mess and carefully retrieved the rolled-up pages. With his back pressed against the side of the bed, which lit up in calming blue hues at the hint of Jeongguk's touch, he wasted no time, immediately scanning all seven pages almost simultaneously.

All of them appeared to have been old job contracts, some dating back to May of 2149. At the time, Yoongi wasn't even of age yet. Some were simple tech services for small devices, others involved mentions of stolen identity, murder, and weapon trade.

The one constant was that they all appeared to have been written on a typewriter and, weirdly enough, all signed with the same signature - three vertical lines and one horizontal spiral wrapping around them. 

"Those are job contracts," Echo chimed in, no doubt having already run its research. "Old ones, written on a typewriter, most likely not to leave a digital trace, and avoid using anyone's distinctive handwriting."

Jeongguk blinked down at the papers. "Not all of them are signed by Yoongi," he pointed out. 

"You're right. Not all are signed by Yoongi, but all feature the linear signature present on Ian's drive."

Gguk was quiet as he read through the contents, eventually realising that Yoongi most likely prepared all these documents on his own typewriter, some for himself, some for a close friend. Someone with whom he was close enough to back their bribery attempts and money laundering. Someone he trusted and felt obliged to support. Someone like-

"Kim Namjoon," Jeongguk read aloud, stunned.

The name stood out among other words like a poisonous apple, which immediately left a bitter taste at the back of Jeongguk's tongue. He couldn't believe it. He simply couldn't.

All the puzzle pieces started suddenly falling into place. "He bribed and cheated his way up not for the future of the Rebellion, but for the profit of it..." Jeongguk's breath hitched. "Echo, he was the one signing Minsoo's checks for... What? To manipulate the scenario?" The biker ran both hands through his hair, eyes wide in disbelief as it all dawned on him at once. "He planted that stalking kit on Minsoo; he signed under mine and Yoongi's death sentence... A-and I went straight to him for help."

"Jeongguk, your heart rate is dangerously elevated. Remember to take deep breaths."

To Gguk, this felt like the end of the world. There were so many questions he needed answers to, and any time a discovery was made, it seemed like countless new ones kept appearing in the places of the ones already answered. It felt like an endless cycle. Like a maze.

He hid his face in his hands, eyes closed, as he tried his best not to freak out. 

Yoongi helped Namjoon get his position, believing that a few illegal actions against the Rebellion could shape a better future for Aetherfall. Meanwhile, Kim stabbed him in the back and took advantage of the power, treating the Rebellion as his private money-making and propaganda-spreading machine.

"W-why..." Jeongguk sniffled, head falling back against the edge of the mattress, and his round, puffy eyes scanning the bedroom ceiling as if it held answers to at least some of his questions. "Why would he... To his friend, Echo, why the FUCK would he do something like this to his friend!"

"I'm not sure, Jeongguk," the system responded softly. "But you were also his target. We should choose our next steps carefully, as there's a high chance he might try to come after you now that he knows you're alive."

Silence followed as Jeongguk rolled the papers back together in his hands. His face remained unreadable and cold despite his wet eyelashes and trembling lips.

"Call him," he ordered eventually, having pushed the papers back into the hidden wall storage, this time no longer protected by a vial.

"I strongly advise against any communication attempts with-"

Jeongguk cut in. "Don't care. Call him right now."

Echo hesitated as Jeon made his way out of the bedroom, skillfully stepping over all the mess he had made. He stopped in the very center of the apartment's open space, now filled with a gentle morning light, his hands in his pockets and eyes focused on something far in the distance. He was waiting for the confrontation.

Echo's lights turned purple along with the sound of Namjoon's ringback tone filling the space.

First ring.
Second ring.
Third ring.
Jeongguk could feel his palms sweating.
Fourth ring.

"Voicemail," Echo eventually informed.

Jeongguk clenched his teeth, leaning back against the headrest of the couch. "Try his office."

This time, the AI did not argue, and soon a similar ringing sound reverberated across the room. It only took one ring for Namjoon's digital secretary to pick up, and when she did, Echo displayed the interface above the coffee table. "Hello! You've reached Kim Namjoon's private office. My name is Mina. How can I help you?"

"Hi, Mina. It's Jeongguk, ID number 2109JJG38. I-uh..." he exhaled lazily. "Namjoon and I have a private matter to discuss. Could you please put me down on his schedule for the nearest free slot this week?" he kept his head level and voice steady as fingers drummed against the fabric of the sofa.

"Hello, Jeongguk. Unfortunately, Kim Namjoon is unavailable until further notice due to his urgent private matters." Jeongguk's narrowed eyes flickered towards Echo's camera. "Do you wish to receive a notification once he returns to his standard work schedule?"

Gguk cleared his throat, the sudden dry feeling almost making him gag. "You know what? It's fine," a pause. "Let him know that I've called, though... And that I've made some progress in my investigation. He'll know what I mean."

Mina went silent for a few short moments, processing the request. "Of course! I'll make sure the message gets to him as soon as possible. Is that all?"

Jeongguk nodded more to himself than anyone else really. "Yeah, it is," he motioned for Echo to cut the call before Mina could respond to him. "Echo, we need to do a biometrics re-scan. Just in case."

"Good point. Do you wish to do it now or after your breakfast?"

Jeongguk turned to look outside one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Yet another beautiful day beginning in the stunning city of Aetherfall, where only the strongest get to survive, and only the luckiest get to die. A morning once filled with bickering and coffee and Yoongi, now filled with all the stuff Jeongguk couldn't quite let go of instead, and topped off with a bitter layer of regret.

"Let's do it now. I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten anything in-"

Gguk mentally muted the AI, his mind already rushing to all the things he had to do that day. It felt like a lot, but at the same time, not enough, and something was telling him that it wouldn't ever be enough.

That day, it felt like something finally snapped within Jeongguk. He appeared more focused, but less talkative. He cleaned the entire bedroom, got rid of the blood stains that had turned a terrible brown shade at some point, picked up overturned furniture, and rearranged Yoongi's workbench like it was an altar.

At last, he and Echo spent around two hours going through every single weapon in their storage, even the ones Jeongguk refused to touch in the past, and discussing their specifications and characteristics. Jeongguk definitely took Yoongi's words to heart. If he was going to get him back, he needed to get over his pride and start using real tools. He needed to get smart. Needed to get one step ahead of the fuckers who robbed him.

But how could he possibly get over himself when just a few hours ago his shaking finger deleted Yoongi's biometric data from the database? He cried for a long time. Then dissociated for about half an hour before deciding that he needed to channel that anger through something different than vulnerability.

Again.
Again.
Again.

Skin split over healing bruises as Jeongguk spent another one of his afternoons smacking the living shit out of a heavy punching bag. 

"Ugh, fuck," he swore under his breath at the sharp prick of pain in his wrist. Echo's diagnosis was pretty clear. It's sprained, it had explained. Then the system went on listing all the consequences of not resting and elevating it, but Jeongguk didn't care, too far gone in his rage.

It didn't even hurt this bad, he kept telling himself, which might've worked at the beginning, but as the pain got worse, even he stopped believing it.

The bag swung as he hit it harder and then crouched down with the fingers of one hand wrapped protectively around the swollen wrist.

Wasn't this what he had wanted? Pain kept him moving. Pain meant he wasn't sitting still.

Pain meant he wasn’t imagining Yoongi somewhere underground with blood in his mouth and hands on him, and no one there to stop it.

"Jeongguk, Yoongi would've wanted you to apply a pack of ice over that injury," the AI insisted as it watched Jeongguk's curled figure swaying centimeters above the ground. "You can't save him with one hand wrapped in a wrist splint."

His black tank top was absolutely soaked through with sweat. Eyes puffy, cheeks flushed, and breath uneven, but those eyes remained unmoved. Cold and focused.

Still, Echo's comment must've struck a nerve. Jeon looked up, blinking slowly at the nearest camera, then wearily lifting himself from his resting position and making his way towards the kitchen while unwrapping the tight handwrap from around the injured hand.

He knew Echo was right. Yoongi probably wouldn't have been proud of Jeongguk's ways of mourning, but unfortunately, he wasn't there, and until he came back, Gguk had to do whatever was necessary to survive the madness; sometimes that involved splitting his knuckles open and drowning his sorrows in heavy liquor.

With a heavy sigh, Jeongguk wrapped the cooling pack around his wrist, which felt both like torture and heaven. It made him feel weak and dependent. Now he had two injuries slowing him down and not even a single coordinate of Yoongi's exact location.

Leaning against the kitchen island, he took a swing of a chilled beer. 

"Jeongguk," Echo's voice reached Gguk's ears again.

He ignored it.

"Jeongguk."

"Not now," the biker snapped, forearms propped against the counter and head hanging low as sweat trickled down the spiky strands of his hair and pooled over the surface of the kitchen counter. He felt tired. So fucking tired. If he could close his eyes for just one second, then he'd be back at it...

"Incomming transmission."

His head snapped up, every single muscle in his body locking into place in a singular moment. "What?" He almost gasped. A million thoughts ran through his mind - Yoongi trying to contact him, Namjoon ready to discuss conditions, and his father with his constant whining. Could've also been anyone else.

"Encrypted video file received through a rebel subnet."

Jeongguk’s pulse spiked, and his mouth immediately went dry as he put the beer aside and pushed away from the counter. "The fuck are you waiting for. Play it."

The main wall screen lit with a video player interface. The screen remained pitch black for the first few seconds of the recording. Then, the first frame of the video.

Jeongguk recognized Yoongi even under all those layers of restless exhaustion, blood, and bruises. He literally forgot how to breathe at the sight of him.

Chained to a metal chair beneath brutal white interrogation lights that no doubt caused him extreme migraine pain. His face was bloodied, his lip split, and one eye marked with an inflamed, vertical scar. Jeongguk noticed purple bruising peeking out from under the collar of the same sweater he was wearing that unlucky Friday.

The biker staggered forward like he’d been physically struck. Even just looking at Yoongi in such a condition made him feel sick. The once nearly-white hair now looked dirty. His face was thinner than before, if that was even possible. And those eyes... those feline eyes that never let anyone have the last word, now one undoubtedly scarred by a blade. They were still sharp, looking back at the camera with the kind of agony only Jeongguk could truly recognize.

"No..." Gguk shook his head in disbelief. He blinked at least a few times, hoping to open his eyes to a less brutal sight than this. "God, no," he whispered to himself, unable to fully peel his eyes away from the screen.

A man off-camera spoke. "State your name." His voice was a generic one and probably not real. A simple voice changer, if Jeongguk had to guess. Amateur move.

In response, Yoongi spat blood onto the floor with a smile forming on his lips afterwards. It was everything Jeongguk ever admired about Yoongi - crooked, mean, defiant, spiteful. "Go die," he croaked out. The man struck him hard enough to snap his head sideways.

Yoongi laughed, breathless and utterly unamused, but Jeongguk's vision flashed white with rage. He's never felt such a profound need to punch a wall before, never wanted someone else's death so badly in his entire life.

The interrogator tried again. "I'm gonna ask you some questions now. Sounds fun?"

"You already did," Yoongi licked the dried blood from the left corner of his mouth, eyes looking up at the interrogator askance.

"And you lied," the man sighed deep behind the camera, no doubt fed up with Yoongi's antics. Jeongguk knew that the blond most probably made their time together unbearable.

Yoongi's lips twitched into yet another sinister grin. "Allegedly."

A pause followed. Then, a sound of a heavy door closing in the background. Yoongi's gaze went up, and so Jeongguk guessed that another one of his captors walked inside. "Let’s try again, shall we?" He spoke in an even lower tone.

Yoongi leaned his head to the side, which Jeongguk used to find absolutely infuriating. Now he would've done anything to see it live with his own eyes again. "Sure. Third time’s the charm, right?"

"Who do you work with?" They knew and asked anyway.

Jeongguk couldn't quite tell if, at that stage, Yoongi already knew this had to do with Namjoon, but he sure didn't hesitate before answering. "Independent contractor."

Technically, this wasn't even a lie. Just not the entire truth.

"What kind of work?"

Yoongi blinked exceptionally fast, which earned Jeongguk's attention. He narrowed his eyes as the blond kept talking. "Repairs. Modifications. Systems optimization... This and that," his tone came out flat and unremarkable as if he was bored by this entire thing.

"You operate alone?"

The question made Yoongi hesitate. Jeongguk could tell he had thought about the answer for a bit longer than he had for the previous questions. "No," a singular lip movement followed by rapid blinking again.

"Who else?" 

Yoongi sighed. "Clients. Contacts. People who pay me," he counted, sounding unimpressed at the very least. 

Blink, blink, pause, blink.

At that point, Jeongguk had finally caught up to the fact that Yoongi's blinking wasn't just caused by harsh lighting. He had assumed that at the beginning, considering Yoon's sensitivity to light and recurrent migraines. However, the repetition eventually became all too clear when Jeongguk realised that with each roll of his eyes, the pattern persisted.

"D...I..." Jeongguk mumbled to himself.

"Names," one of the interrogators demanded.

Yoongi seemed unfazed. He stayed silent, refusing to answer the question, which, judging by the amount of bruises and blood littering his pale skin, he had done more than once already.

"Names," the man repeated.

"Fuck you."

"S...T..."

Something shifted in the background. Then, one of the men appeared in the frame. Yoongi's eyes stopped blinking as he cautiously followed the man's posture until he disappeared behind his back.

Jeongguk's sharp eyes noticed Yoongi's throat moving as he swallowed hard. It made his blood boil, and his fingers nearly painfully squeeze into fists.

Next thing he knew, Yoongi's head was being turned towards the camera by his hair, forced to look at the lens. It's when Jeongguk knew the questions were about to get personal. "C'mon... D I S T something," he mumbled, unable to look away from the recording, because if he did, then he might miss the most important detail.

"You live with someone."

This one wasn't a question, and it made Jeongguk's heart skip a beat. It could've been that they only kept Yoongi alive to somehow get to him and then neutralize them both. In such a case, much depended purely on what Yoongi had told them.  

Jeongguk caught D, I, and S again as soon as Yoongi started blinking at the camera. "Do I?" the blond countered with a tilt of an eyebrow

"We know you do."

Yoongi smiled, slow and measured, and then shrugged softly with that stiff exhaustion present somewhere in the movement of his shoulders. "Then why ask?"

"T..." Jeongguk muttered, following the pattern of Yoongi's blinks slowly.

Meanwhile, the other man seemed to have gotten up or moved, as his shoulder became visible in the frame. He was wearing what Jeongguk would've guessed was a sleeveless compression shirt, a round tattoo peeking out from underneath the fabric.

He probably moved closer to Yoongi to intimidate him, but Min didn't even look at him, obediently staring at the lens and carefully forming another letter using Morse code.

"R... Okay, so probably district," Jeongguk whispered to himself reassuringly.

"Who is he?" The interrogation continued.

Yoongi let out a quiet laugh, and Gguk could tell that he was getting nervous. "Oh, we’re doing this now?" His gums flashed in the pale light of the room.

"I...C...Okay, okay. Which district," Gguk kept talking to himself. Yoongi couldn't hear him, but that didn't matter, because he got to see him, and now he knew that Min Yoongi was, in fact, alive. 

"Answer the question."

Yoongi tilted his head again, eyes flickering away from the lens and up, most likely studying the face of his interrogator. He stopped blinking again, jaw clenched and eyes locked in a stare-down. Warning, threatening. "A roommate," dismissive and easy, but what they both genuinely seemed to have believed until recently.

"Okay, smartass. Name?"

"Don't know," Yoongi shrugged, doing what he thought was buying him time by playing dumb.

The heavier one behind Yoongi moved faster this time, letting go of his hair and instead leaning forward to wrap his arm around the blond's neck. 

Yoongi instinctively took a deep breath in, and his arm muscles twitched weakly in an attempt to lift, quickly defeated by the restraints around his wrists.

Jeongguk watched helplessly as Min's face slowly turned a faint shade of pink. The blond's lips were parted, eyes wide and panicked, and his hips squirming and buckling in the chair as he fought for a breath. After what felt like eternity, the guy released him at the motion of the other man's hand. 

Yoongi gasped for air desperately, a few deep coughs escaping his mouth as he doubled over.

"Name," the man repeated more firmly this time.

Yoongi's head got yanked upwards by the hair again. He looked even weaker now, but clearly refused to let them see it, masking pain behind a mask od defiance.

Instead, his eyes narrowed, and his lips closed around the rapid panting as he attempted to stabilize his breath. "Jeon or Jun... Something, something," he hummed, pretending to be lost deep in thought. He was pretty good at acting dumb. Jeongguk had to give it to him. "Hyun? Hyung? Hun?" He made it messy on purpose. "Huh, you know? He changes it a lot, I'm not sure what it is now."

"What does your... Jeon-Jun Hyun-Hyung-Hun do?"

Yoongi shrugged slightly, focusing on the lens yet again. "Breathes. Eats. Talks too much. Argues a lot. Sometimes he does this weird thing, where-"

"For work. What does he do for work?" An interrogator cut in, voice already audibly irritated with Yoongi's antics.

Min clicked his tongue, then pouted innocently. "I got no idea."

If Jeongguk didn't know better, he'd guess that Yoongi somehow enjoyed himself. The ridiculous facial expression made him snort through the pool of tears already gathering at his waterline. This was the Yoongi he knew, and it was comforting to see that he could still stand up for himself, even when tied to a chair and tortured by a bunch of white lights.

"He rides a pretty illegal bike, doesn't he?"

Yoongi stilled for half a second before inhaling and exhaling in that slow, nonchalant way, making it look like he was considering something. "You know, I wouldn't say illegal. Just... improved."

"You modified it. Correct?"

Yoongi's smile returned. "Why, you want one too? That's too bad, this one is one of a kind," he shrugged. "I'm afraid I won't be able to recreate it."

The heavier guy moved from behind Yoon's back, grabbing the front of the blond's shirt and pulling him forward slightly, threateningly. Yoongi didn't resist, just let it happen, unbothered.

"Where is he?" Yoongi tilted his head at the man

"How could I possibly know? Haven't seen him in a while, believe it or not."

They kept staring at each other for about ten more seconds before the thug released Yoongi, letting the chair's legs rattle against the floor as it tilted back before catching balance. "You’re asking the wrong questions," he added eventually, a cunning smile plastered on his face.

"Oh, yeah?" The other man noted something down on a holographic pad, half visible in the frame for a short couple of moments. "What should we be asking?"

Yoongi smiled, eyebrows raised now. "Depends what you're looking for."

"The truth."

Yoongi let out a quiet laugh, followed by a nod, soaked through with sarcasm as if that was the answer he was already expecting to hear before the guy even opened his mouth.

"No, you're not," he claimed. "You already know what you want me to say," he continued. "You’re just waiting for me to line it up nicely for you. You're waiting for me to say it so you can use it against me," a pause followed. "You won't get that... But you knew that before you dragged me here, didn't you?”

His voice was so controlled that even Jeongguk could feel goosebumps rising on his skin.

The lighter of the two spoke this time. "You're not in a position to be difficult."

Yoongi looked back at the lens. He repeated the sequence: pause, blink, pause, blink, pause - C and T. Then, nodding his head softly for each pause, movement barely visible, pause, pause, pause, pause, blink.

Nine.

"Echo," Jeongguk instantly got up from the floor where he had been crouched the whole time, his knees slowly giving up on him from the uncomfortable position. "He's held in District 9. Mark that on a fresh map."

Echo's lights turned purple as the system processed. Meanwhile, Yoongi rolled his eyes and started the sequence yet again, beginning with D. "I disagree," he hummed.

The room filled with the sound of chair legs scraping against the floor and steps echoing off the walls. 

Then-

"You think he'll come for you."

The statement, because it could hardly be called a question, landed harder than it probably should have, and Jeongguk could swear that he saw Yoongi flinch. He observed Min's face closely, noticing the exact moment when he made a mistake in the code, and, frustrated, started again. "Who?" he asked calmly, acting clueless.

The man leaned closer, challenging. "You know who," he hissed in that lowered, whispering tone of voice. 

Yoongi's expression didn’t change, but Jeongguk's heart stuttered anyway because he knew he would. No matter what it took, he would bring Yoongi back home. "You better know I will," he forced the words out through clenched teeth.

Yoongi's fingers curled slightly around the frame of the metal chair. 

"He is stupid... but not that stupid," Yoongi barely managed to finish his sentence before the video cut abruptly to black.

Then, silence. Jeongguk blinked up at the video player that switched back to the first frame, eyes wide and mind still struggling to comprehend exactly what had happened. "District 9," he mumbled to himself, trying to think of any specific places where a person could be held captive without drawing unnecessary attention from the outside.

The room became impossibly still, and Jeongguk stood unmoving as he processed. 

Seeing Yoongi again felt like someone had drawn a knife through his heart. 

"Play it again," he demanded, and Echo obeyed.

He watched every second again, this time with some parts slowed down or enhanced to notice the small details like accents, background noise, machinery hum, or camera distortions.

By the end of the second viewing, Jeongguk was shaking from rage so profound that it almost felt chemical.

Near the end of the video, he paused the last frame of Yoongi looking straight into the camera lens - dried blood on his temple, dark circles underneath his eyes, and all. It felt so surreal after so many lonely days, being able to look into his eyes, even if they were only there on screen, and knowing that he was still breathing, still fighting.

Silently, Jeongguk walked up to the screen, close enough to touch it. His fingers hovered near Yoongi's bruised face on the glass, almost afraid that he would cause Yoongi unnecessary pain by touching it.

Jeongguk swallowed hard. "You stubborn asshole," his voice came out shaking and rough, but almost gentle. Almost affectionate.

Echo spoke softly, as if it were afraid to ruin the moment. "Metadata extraction already in progress. The video may contain traceable environmental signatures."

Jeongguk nodded once, distracted. His gaze penetrated Yoongi's image and now focused on his own reflection instead. He looked feral. Eyes hollow from exhaustion, unevenly cut hair still faintly damp with sweat, mouth set into a tight-lipped grimace. He didn't even have the time to notice how much those past few days had changed him.

That's probably because he didn't care. The price played no role. He would've done all of that again.

"They sent this because they want me angry," he murmured, tossing aside the cooling pack that had managed to get warm by that time. Well, at least his wrist no longer felt as if it was going to fall off any second.

"Likely," Echo confirmed.

"They want me reckless."

"Likely. They might be planning an ambush or an assassination. This could be an attempt to lure you in."

Jeongguk nodded his head as he rolled the injured hand in a circle. Still hurt, but Jeongguk could work around that. "Good," he stepped away from the screen, making his way towards the bathroom to take a quick shower and change into fresh clothes."They made a mistake," he added with the tiniest but at the same time most devastatingly maniacal smile one could ever imagine.

Echo's processing lights flickered purple. "How so?"

"Because now I know he's alive," he mumbled, throwing the sweaty tank top on the floor. "And I know where to look."

The apartment lights dimmed automatically as every available surface transformed into data. Walls became screens, tables projected schematics, and the glass windows darkened to eliminate glare. Echo rerouted processing power from nonessential systems until the apartment itself hummed with computational strain.

Jeongguk stood stubbornly amongst it all, the sleeves of his leather jacket rolled up, exposing the lower part of his tattoo sleeve. He washed, he changed, he drank a can of some disgustingly sweet energy drink. Now he was focused, leaning against the wide workshop table, which was half covered by the Revenant's statistics, half by a detailed map of District 9.

The interrogation footage hovered in the air before him, no longer as enormous as it looked before on the main wall of the apartment.

Paused.
Rewound.
Paused again.
Rewound.

Echo spoke in clipped intervals as it ran its own analysis. "Audio filtration complete. Isolating background frequencies," the AI informed, just as the room filled with static.

Jeongguk frowned and narrowed his eyes as he listened for any abnormal sounds or noises specific to certain areas.

There it was, a low mechanical hum - rhythmic and undoubtedly industrial. "Again," Jeongguk motioned with his hand for Echo to replay the clip, eyes closing for better focus. "There," he pointed out. "That’s not ventilation, is it."

Echo flickered purple. "Frequency matches large-scale hydraulic lift systems."

"Okaaay..." he sighed, scrolling down Yoongi's stats pad as he researched industrial-strength lifting systems. "Freight elevators?"

"High chance," Echo confirmed. "Probability sits at around 85%."

"Good," Jeongguk pinned the freight elevators as an environmental characteristic next to District 9's map. Then, he lifted his head to see Yoongi's stone-cold expression paused in the interrogation footage. "Visual enhancement on wall reflection," he ordered the system.

The image sharpened near instantly, Echo's skills remaining unmatched. Gguk's eyes trailed over the metal paneling and the line where it met the concrete floor with its sickening gray color. Then, a small smear of something reflective in the very corner of that unenthusiastic room. It made Jeongguk narrow his eyes while he zoomed in.

"Might be rainwater," Echo chimed in after a few seconds of silence. "Which would suggest recent exterior exposure."

Jeongguk's breath caught. That's good, that's perfect, his mind raced. "So...?"

"Unlikely to be a subterranean structure," the AI finished for him.

"So magazines, warehouses, storage facilities," Jeongguk counted under his breath.

"Cross-referencing structures within District 9, containing freight elevators and weather exposure points."

Maps exploded with red markers, dozens of them. "Too many," Jeongguk swore under his breath.

"Are you sure about District 9?"

Without hesitation, Jeongguk nodded firmly once. "Yeah. There's no way that was just simple blinking, not with the... the head movement and all," he sighed.

"Then there might be more to it," Echo informed, carefully.

As Gguk turned to face the display, he was met with the sight of a waveform appearing beside the floating footage. Echo cut the frame, centering it around Yoongi's left side, where the chair was tilted at an angle, allowing one to see Yoongi's restrained hands.

"Yoongi taps his left hand against the chair thirteen times over the duration of the recording."

Jeongguk frowned, leaning further forward against the side console. He's already watched it three times; there's no way that he could have possibly missed something like that. "What?" He mumbled in disbelief.

Echo replayed the footage again. The movement of the hands was barely visible and not audible at all amidst other noises in the same room. Undoubtedly, however, Yoongi's bony fingers were tapping lightly against the metal armrest of the chair.

Not random - measured, intentional.

"No fucking way," Jeongguk whispered, awestruck, as he zoomed in on the footage even closer. He's seen this before. He definitely has.

"He may be attempting another form of coded communication."

Jeongguk stared silently at the cut frames, absolutely stunned. "Play audio with taps isolated," he requested hurriedly, eyes closing briefly to hear better.

Tap.
Tap-tap.
Pause
Tap.
Pause.
Tap-tap-tap-
Pause.
Tap-pause-tap

Jeongguk’s eyes widened suddenly, shaking finger pointed at the floating footage. "He's counting train intervals."

Echo's processing lights flashed purple for longer than usual. "Clarify."

"He used to do that back when we were staking transport lines along the wall. Said if you can hear train frequency, you can estimate the distance from rail hubs." Jeongguk let out a breathless chuckle, shaking his head in disbelief at Yoongi's genius even in such critical situations. "I haven't seen him do it in years, Echo."

After a moment of silence, Echo rerouted the initial prompt immediately. "Cross-referencing District 9 industrial freight zones within proximity to elevated rail infrastructure."

Jeongguk watched as the number of blinking markers gradually decreased on the map, his hands unknowingly squeezed at the edge of the workbench in anticipation. At first, to thirty. Then, twelve. Eventually, seven markers were left.

Jeongguk rubbed both hands over his face and exhaled a breath he had no idea he was holding. "Okay... That's better."

For the first time in days, hope hurt more than fear. There was just too much to lose now. All these sacrifices he had made could easily be for nothing if someone made the wrong move, if he made the wrong move. Hope meant there was something to lose again, and Jeongguk's only stake in this game was Yoongi, whom he couldn't afford to lose. He just couldn't

Echo's voice came softer just then. "You have not slept in fifty-three hours. You have barely slept in the last seventy-two hours. Are you aware of that?"

"Don’t start now," Jeongguk's voice came like a warning, elbow already pushing the hidden weapon storage compartment open. It was time to gear up.

The AI, however, persisted, all too invested in the lives of the people, which it came to view as family. "Fatigue is impairing cognitive response."

"I said don't start," Jeongguk snapped before he put down the gun he had been reloading and braced both arms against Yoongi's workbench. 

"You will not save him if you collapse first," Echo's words pierced the silence.

Jeongguk went still, head bowed, and fingers absentmindedly scratching against the rough surface of the table. For a moment, he said nothing, trying his best to keep emotion at bay. He wished he could be technical and professional about it, but he couldn't. That void within his chest felt like it was swallowing him whole right then and there, feeding on all these lonely moments of self-reflection.

"You know what's funny?" He spoke again eventually, a dry, humourless laugh escaping him in retaliation to that lump in his throat that made it near impossible to breathe properly. "I always thought if one of us got taken..." he swallowed, tilting his head up to look once more at the paused image of Yoongi, bruised, bleeding, but still defiant. "It'd be me."

The confession came out quieter than expected, the suddenly tiny apartment filling with emotion it struggled to contain fully. "He's smarter than I am, you know? More careful. More paranoid. Better at surviving," Jeongguk inhaled shakily. "He would know what to do... I-If it were him here, not me, then he would've already figured it out."

"If they kill him-" That did it. His voice broke with a muffled sob, arms bending weakly as he leaned his forehead against the table. His eyes squeezed almost painfully, projecting a palette of abstract colors behind his eyelids. "If they kill him," he cleared his throat. "I won't survive it, because..."

Jeongguk laughed again, softer, his voice swaying from both exhaustion and overwhelmingness. "B-because..."

The word caught in his throat, refusing to come out easily. 

Then, barely audible, "Because I love him.”

Jeongguk's heart stuttered in his chest as he realized that it was the first time he acknowledged the familiar yet totally foreign feeling. The one that made him worry when Yoongi refused to wear a jacket on a cold morning, and the one that filled his stomach whenever they lay in bed wrapped in each other. It was the same feeling that made him feel sick now, when he could no longer tell where Yoongi was and what was happening to him. The same feeling that longed to get him back home.

The yearning, the joy, the sickening worry, the dreamy butterflies, and the heart-wrenching distress at his absence. That's what it was. Love.

Jeongguk let the truth hang there, raw and undeniable.

"I love him so much it makes me feel fucking sick," he hissed through clenched teeth, fist rattling the metal support of the table as he hit it against the counter. "And he's gonna come back and act as if nothing changed and pretend we're still just two idiots sharing a bed because neither of us can sleep alone-"

Jeongguk took a deep breath, glossy but furious eyes opening once again, looking up at Yoongi's bloodied face, paused in the footage. "But if... No, WHEN I get him back-" he swallowed heavily, voice dropping. "He's never doubting what he means to me again."

Echo's processing lights flickered purple for just a short second - private recording stored, timestamped, and protected for later, for Yoongi. "Understood," the AI hummed in response.

Jeongguk inhaled sharply, dragging himself back together with the sheer force of his will. "Delete that from active memory," he breathed out, wiping his red-rimmed eyes as if nothing had happened.

"Of course," Echo lied. The system marked it as software instability for later evaluation by the administrator.

Jeongguk's expression hardened instantly as he sent the exact coordinates of all probable holding sides to his comm pad, Echo already converting them to a format that the biker's helmet visor could accommodate and navigate. 

"Gear up protocol," Gguk ordered as he swung a semi-automatic sniper rifle over his back.

"Weapons systems online," Echo informed methodically.

"Good," Jeongguk nodded, satisfied, then glanced once more at Yoongi's frozen image on the recording. "I'm bringing you home, asshole," he sighed softly, holstering the last throwing knife. His eyes were cold enough to rival the city beyond the glass as he looked away and directed his purposeful stride towards the front door. "I promise."

The darkness of District 9 swallowed Jeongguk like a long-awaited meal, taking turns channeling and muffling the Revenant's mechanical glow. The way the wheels kept spinning against the cracked asphalt, the way the biker's weight adjusted perfectly to the friction and speed of the machine, the way the world spun around him as it shot down each street methodically, it all felt like the place had been waiting for him. It felt like something was giving him this slice of freedom simply to steer hope within him.

It felt like a test.

After a few hours in that area, Jeongguk quickly found that the streets were far more hostile than the residents, each corner imitating the previous ones near-perfectly. A disguise meant to play with his head and convince him of defeat to the point where he started doubting his reliance on Echo's navigation.

"Echo," he called for the system after swinging his leg over the bike. "I've got a task for you."

The area was surrounded by industrial infrastructure, most of which was either abandoned or in the process of demolition. Some people lived here. It was the main place where the government of Aetherfall gathered all the displaced workers, jobless, and replaced by much more efficient machinery.

Those people made a stable life for themselves here, and Jeongguk hated to disturb what little peace they had, especially as a Convert. He felt horrible. Still, he was on a mission, all night jumping over wire fences and crawling between leaning walls. Tried to be as mindful as possible, not interrogating every single passerby.

"Yes, Jeongguk?" Echo chimed in, earpiece locking into place as soon as he put the helmet back on.

Jeongguk leaned forward, starting the engine again, finger already crossing another location off the list. "One of those guards had a tattoo sleeve similar to mine. Not sure how long, but covering at least half his bicep," he took off, voice automatically rising as the wind picked up around the Revenant's sleek design. "Find it, examine it, and keep searching the surrounding area for it... There's no way they keep sitting by him 24/7," he sighed, hopeful. "Maybe we'll get lucky."

"On it."

The lead came in at 03:38 in the morning. The Thursday sun hadn't yet peeked over the wall, and Jeongguk was halfway through dismantling an old contact's jaw. He stumbled upon the man totally unexpectedly and, having been recognized, had no other choice. His presence in District 9 couldn't have been discovered by anyone connected with Namjoon.

Echo's voice cracked through his earpiece. "Tattoo design match located. Yoongi's interrogator has been located two blocks east."

Jeongguk froze for a split second, then released the half-conscious man without any explanation and ran as if his life depended on it.

He reached the guy about two minutes later. He would definitely recognize him among other people, the tattoo peeking out from underneath the short-sleeved button-up, but fortunately, there were no other people around. Just him, smoking a cigarette under what Echo marked on the map as a local gambling den. He was probably taking a break from a game, judging by that careless smile plastered on his face.

Laughing, as if he hadn't done god-knows-what to someone whom Jeongguk would set himself on fire for.

Jeongguk stopped at the mouth of the alley, eyes focused on his target. The man must've noticed him, but clearly didn't think Jeon was anything more than a regular local. 

"Got another one to share?" Jeongguk hummed, helmet still on and visor covering his identity pretty effectively. 

The guy turned his head, smile disappearing, and eyes carefully scanning him from head to toe. He seemed conflicted - either by the sudden, oddly timed request or Jeongguk's attire. He even looked over the biker's shoulder, searching for a motorcycle that wasn't there.

"Sure," he nodded. Voice matched. It was definitely him.

As the man reached into his back pocket, Jeongguk took advantage of the distraction. He moved like a bullet. The side of his palm hit a pressure point where the man's neck met his shoulder. He let out a stunned yelp, cigarette pack flying to the ground right out of his hand. As he went down on one knee, Gguk's leg took a swing, arm bracing against the guy's shoulder, as he hit him hard in the face.

Jeongguk caught him by the collar before he hit the ground, yanking his unconscious body up and then into the alley between the den and the neighbouring building. He couldn't really afford to find a fancier place. Being seen with an unconscious body in a district like this one would probably not work out well for him, he'd imagined.

The alley branched off into a few deeper locations, a few of them still in use and locked. Some abandoned and barricaded, poorly.

The early morning sun pierced through the cracks of the barricaded windows and spilled over the floor as Jeongguk finished tying up the stranger. By that time, the man had managed to regain some of his consciousness, and the biker made sure to enjoy every single groan of pain at a knot tied too tightly or an 'accidental' shove.

"Man..." the stranger mumbled drowsily. "I'mma fuck you up."

"I'd like to see you try," Jeon huffed, placing his sleek helmet on an empty crate opposite the chair where he tied Yoongi's captor. "Echo, start the recording."

The helmet lit up with a pulsating purple hue as the first frame showed the guy's terrified expression when he started to realise what was going to happen.

Jeongguk, on the other hand, shimmied out of his jacket, which soon found its place thrown over the back of another chair. Jeongguk, however, didn't sit in it. Instead, he crouched in front of him, eyes examining the split from the impact lip and wandering eyes. He seemed calm, but wasn't.

"Excuse my poor manners," his voice came out a bit rough, lip ring catching light as he smiled a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "But I didn't think an introduction was necessary. At least from my side."

The man's eyes widened before he quickly composed himself. Jeongguk couldn't help but quirk an eyebrow at that. "I don't kno-"

"No, I know you know," he assured, tone almost conversational. "Say it." The man's lips fell open, but no sound came for a long moment. That is, until Jeongguk pulled himself up and gripped the man's hair punishingly hard. "Saaaaay it..." he drew the word out, chuckling to himself and pulling even harder when the stranger hissed in pain. "Don't be shy."

He must've been somewhat unsettled by Jeongguk's odd behaviour, wide eyes scanning the helmet's visor, not sure where the lens recording him was located. "J-JeonGguk Jeon...?" The entire name came out of him more like a question than an answer. Unsure, hesitant.

Gguk nodded. "See? Not that hard," he walked around the chair, stopping behind the man's back and smiling towards the visor. "Okay, class!" he called out towards it. "Lesson one," he stroked over the man's shoulders gently, too gently. "This is why you don't hire fucking mercenaries to kill your friends," he patted the man's shoulders one more time before reaching down his thigh to unclip a singular throwing knife.

The first scream came in less than half a minute later. Jeongguk crouched right in front of him, fingers firmly wrapped around the grip as he drove the blade even deeper into the man's knee. "Hey... Hey, Johnnie. Eyes at the camera, please," he mocked, his free hand grasping the thrashing man's chin and directing it straight ahead.

"You sick fuck-!"

"It's not my fault we're here now," Jeongguk huffed as he twisted the knife, causing the man to let out a chilling cry. "You need to be more careful about what you steal and from whom, buddy." The biker pulled the knife out, blood floating out and down the man's leg, soaking through the denim. "You made me do this."

"Did he cry?" Jeongguk panted out as he hit the man again with a metal pipe across his face. "Was he begging you to stop, too? Huh?" Gguk let the tool fall to the ground, arm shaking from both fury and strain. 

Johnnie spat blood all over his knees and the ground, already looking like he was at his last breath. And Jeongguk? He took his time making the guy suffer as Yoongi had.

He walked another circle around the chair, pacing. Then, leaned forward with arms propped against his knees. His face was speckled with blood that wasn't his, his hair disheveled, and his eyes sparkling with something animalistic, almost feverish. 

He wiped his face with the tattooed arm, palms too bloodied to help with the cleaning. He remembered the time when Yoongi was still with him, still safe... Back then, he could hardly imagine enjoying taking someone's life. But this? This felt good in a dangerous way. Good in a way that messed with his mind, and he had to remind himself that enough was enough.

"Okay," he rasped, turning briefly to look at the helmet, making sure that it was still recording. "Location," he said, sitting in the other chair, Johnnie's swollen eyes looking at him with both exhaustion and horror.

He watched as Jeongguk tossed another knife into the air and flawlessly caught it in his hand. Skilled, horrifying. Made his throat dry and chest tighten in an unbelievably uncomfortable way. He opened his mouth to speak, lips shaking from pure pain. "I-It's a port office...AX530," he stuttered out.

Jeongguk looked him up and down. Missing two fingers, cheeks sliced open, one knife stuck in his thigh, face battered in a way that made Jeongguk doubt whether this was still Johnnie. "Floor."

The man licked his lips nervously. "F-fourth..?"

Jeongguk frowned. "You fucking answering or asking," he snorted.

"A-answering, answering," he nodded eagerly.

"Okay," Gguk wiped away a single drop of sweat that ran down his temple, smearing blood over it instead. He seemed amused by the man's terror, briefly turning around to face the camera. "Namjoon hyung! I think you need to pay 'em more in the future!" He called out, almost laughing now. Then, leaned forward on his knees in Johnnie's direction. "Where's his money now?"

The man's entire body stiffened once Jeongguk turned his attention to him again. "H-huh?"

"Where. Is. His. Money. Now." Jeongguk separated each word as if the speed was the problem here, deadly eyes looking straight into Johnnie's.

The man sniffled helplessly, fingers flexing against the restraints. "Please-... My-y, just-... Let me go, I'm sorry."

Gguk sighed and bowed his head for a second, as if silently processing his next move. A small nod followed, his body wearily lifting from the chair. "Everyone's sorry when you really persuade them enough to be," he shrugged, dusting his hands off.

Then, the biker ominously disappeared behind Johnnie's back. The man's breathing immediately quickened, becoming unstable. He blinked at the camera, visibly distressed, no longer being able to tell what was going to happen. "Hey...Hey, I SAID I'M SORRY, ALRIGHT?!"

Jeongguk's jaw clenched as he wrapped an arm around Johnnie's neck, tight.

"FUCK, MAN. I-I TOLD YOU EVERYTHING! I DID..! I...!" Gguk listened to the cries, to the begging, and to the thrashing as the loop around the mercenary's neck tightened. He suddenly remembered Yoongi just the night before he so suddenly disappeared. Yoongi told him that he hated it when the targets begged for their lives. That he hated when they asked him for mercy.

Jeongguk adjusted his stance and grip, searching for that leverage point, and when he found it, he pulled. Hard.

The man's struggles ceased, and as Gguk let go of him, the chair fell to the ground with a whole lot of noise. How could he possibly feel sorry? He couldn't find it in him. Couldn't find Yoongi's warm forgiveness. 

He missed him. He missed him so much that his mind felt like it had become a tightening spring ready to snap.

He nudged the man's shoulder with the tip of his boot - nothing, not even a single sound. Dead. He nodded once to himself, technical, but guarded, and walked over the dead body, deliberately wiping his boots on the ruined clothing.

"This message is for whoever is watching... and Kim Namjoon, of course," he brought one hand up, bruised knuckled, wiping darkened splashes of blood from the corner of his mouth. "You took something precious from me," Jeongguk reached for the helmet, holding it up to his face. "If he is not breathing when I get there-" he paused, eyes briefly flickering to the dead body visible in the background. "-then I'm gonna make what I did to your poor guy over there look merciful compared to what I'll do to you."

Then he exhaled, his cheeks filling with air briefly before that tight-lipped grin returned to his face. "And Yoongi..." he looked straight into the lens, eyes now sparkling with a fresh kind of anticipation. "I'm on my way. Hold on for me just a bit longer."

The recording stopped at exactly thirteen minutes and ten seconds.

"Can you send it back to them?" he mumbled to Echo, fingers more smearing the blood than really wiping it away as he tried to make himself look a bit more presentable in the reflection visible in his visor.

The helmet flashed purple as Echo worked. "Yes, but it won't be very legal."

"Good," Jeongguk nodded, putting the helmet on, then reaching for his jacket and the rifle he had yet to use. "Send it when I'm already on my way there... Make them think they got time."

Yoongi sighed heavily to himself. He gave up on sitting straight, what felt like days ago, but sitting hunched over in that same uncomfortable chair didn't feel any better either. At least he managed to keep his head down this way, limiting the amount of harsh lighting that reached his eyes, which not only made his head pound but, after so many days, left him super irritable.

The lights would've been enough of an inconvenience for a few hours each day, but they rarely ever went off. Additionally, the room had no windows and no vents. Before catching District 9's specific name, he could only guess that they moved him to one of the industrial zones, judging by the train intervals he managed to count and distance estimations based on these calculations. Luckily, he's had some practice with that.

"And?" Namjoon's voice was empty and cold as he entered the room, carrying a set of papers that Yoongi suspected was only there to intimidate. "Had any time to decide?"

Yoongi snorted to himself.

It was exactly three days ago when he was shown a picture of what looked like Jeongguk's lifeless body, allegedly found by an elevated railroad point with a paper note. It was full of apologies, regrets, and love confessions, all written in Jeongguk's handwriting that Yoongi would recognize anywhere. 

It also sounded nothing like Jeongguk, which left him with three options. Either he never actually knew Jeongguk, which sounded odd considering they've been friends for the last ten years, someone was playing him and Namjoon, or it was Namjoon who was playing him.

Three days ago, Yoongi decided that Namjoon's abduction story no longer fit the scenario.

According to Joon, he was leading active negotiations with the government for his freedom, but that would 'leave him under permanent protection of the Rebellion', which could bind him with the resistance front forever. It stood against everything Yoongi believed in. 

He refused, but Namjoon insisted, seemingly worried for Yoongi's safety.

Why wasn't he worried about Jeongguk's safety? When Yoongi asked, Namjoon claimed Jeongguk denied help from his Executive Protection program. Why didn't he insist? Why didn't he do something? It smelled like a bunch of lies or very poor leadership that Yoongi never suspected Namjoon of.

"Two minutes after you asked the first time was enough." his voice was rough and slightly hoarse from disuse. "No."

Namjoon sighed, one hand reaching for the sunglasses that he folded and slid into the front pocket of his jacket. Yoongi could really use those right about then, mostly to shield his apparently injured eye from more light exposure. Still, he had his pride.

"I think he would've wanted you to live on, you know? Stop with this hunger strike bullshit and let me help you, goddamn it."

Yoongi's face scrunched in pain, Kim's raised voice bouncing off the sides of his head like a boomerang. "You clearly don't know him. He's pretty egotistical," he chuckled, not very amused, refusing to use the past tense to refer to Jeongguk.

A beat of silence. The air thickened, frustration palpable from both sides.

"If he had jumped off a cliff, would you have done it too?" Namjoon asked, with an ever-so-subtle hint of mockery in his voice.

It was a bait, one that was supposed to nudge him just enough to challenge such an immature assumption. "Probably," Yoon croaked out, against all expectations, eyes glued to the concrete floor. "According to you, he clearly can't take care of himself. Needs someone to watch his fucking step for him."

Namjoon sighed again, fingers squeezing around the bridge of his nose. "Yoonie, it's not what I mean-"

"I don't give a fuck what you mean, okay?" Slowly, Yoongi straightened up, a pained groan escaping him as he leaned his back against the metal backrest. "Look, I don't know who sent you these photos, but they're not real," Yoongi shrugged. "He doesn't talk like that; he wouldn't write that stuff ever," he insisted firmly despite clear exhaustion written all over his face. 

A pause.

Yoongi stared deep into Namjoon's eyes, testing him, looking for deceit or any signs of trickery. "Someone wants me to think that he's dead," he stated boldly, red wrists straining against the bounds. Namjoon looked away first. That told him enough. "Would they be asking me so many questions about him if he were dead?"

"I've known you...all these years," Namjoon changed the topic not-so-smoothly as he reached for his papers, gaze averted sideways even with Yoongi stubbornly seeking out eye contact. "I would've never guessed you could be that delusional."

"Yeah, all these years..." Yoongi nodded along. "I would've never guessed that you'd be the one lying to me," Yoon countered.

Namjoon didn't react at first, or wanted Yoongi to think that he didn't, gathering his stuff silently. He looked unusually tense, though. That's how Yoon knew he had struck a nerve.

"I think," Kim opened his mouth again eventually, knuckles of one gloved hand already knocking against the plain, white door. "That you could use some sleep. You're starting to babble."

The door slid open, and one masked, definitely armed man, ready to escort Namjoon out, appeared in the doorway.

Yoon snarled, ugly and unbridled. "Why the lies, huh?" He called out after Namjoon's retreating form, utterly unconvinced. "What's up with the lies?? Did you do something to him?! WHERE IS HE! ANSWER ME! FUCKING ANSWER ME, KIM NAM-" the door slammed shut, cutting Yoongi off.

His heavy breathing filled the space, squinting eyes scanning the spot where Namjoon had stood just seconds ago. He was so done with all of this. With the headaches, with all the questions, the screaming, the hitting, the kicking, and the lying.

Yoongi usually trusted and followed his gut, but now? How could he possibly trust it when it kept sending him totally different signals than the person he thought he trusted. 

"Tell me where he is!" He squirmed against the restraints hard, causing yet another red line of bruising to form instantly around his wrists. "Fuckin-" the word got cut short, exhaustion taking over.

He doubled over again, muscles aching and shaking from prolonged inactivity. Yoongi rested his forehead against his knees, no longer paying attention to the pull that the restraints had around his bruised, scraped skin when he moved.

He just needed a moment. Needed to rest, to take a nap, and hopefully wake up from this nightmare in which he is left alone in the whitest room he's ever seen, no windows, no contact with the outside, no light adjustments, no pain killers, a concussion, and an apparent eye injury.

Yoongi closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then exhaled.

If he was ever near the feeling of craziness, then it was definitely the state his mind currently found itself in. 

Beep.

Yoongi frowned, but didn't move.

Beep, beep.

His eyes slowly opened, and his head lifted towards the access terminal panel located near the door, approximately two meters away from him. He was quick enough to catch two command prompts disappearing off a white screen.

Weird.

It wasn't even on before. From what Yoongi had observed, the door had been disconnected from the system before he even got there. He could only guess that the floor he was on was no longer in use - not a rare occurrence in the general area of District 4.

However, the responding operating system could mean one of two things. It either got overlooked or is awaiting maintenance. He immediately thought of the dock area. 

Then, his tech-induced trance was put on hold when the screen suddenly flashed to life with an image. Yoongi squinted at first, trying to make out what it was. 

Then the frame moved, and he quite literally couldn't believe his eyes.

Maybe he was dreaming? Possibly hallucinating. Perhaps even subconsciously reshaping what his eyes were seeing to fit his needs... but there was absolutely no way that he was looking at Jeongguk, bloodied up in a boarded-up room, holding a metal pipe and talking like something that's just barely escaped from hell to a man whose cheeks had been cut open and face hit so many times that it started deforming.

He definitely looked different. Tired, thinner in the face, with his hair cut shorter than ever before. Still, he looked suspiciously alive for a dead body shown to him by Namjoon. The sight made Yoongi's heart stutter. 

No mercy.
No fear.
No hesitation.

With a chilling realization, Yoongi couldn't recall ever seeing Jeongguk so pissed before. He was always the one debating whether murder was necessary, the merciful one. Yet, there he was, beating the shit out of a stranger, shaking hands, feral eyes and all.

It stirred a new kind of hope within him. Even though initially he wanted Gguk to stay away from this mess, nothing's ever felt as rewarding as seeing him defy that wish. 

Most of all, he knew that Jeongguk was alive, and that was already something worth fighting for, even if this particular Jeongguk seemed a little rough around the edges.

The door slid open, and a few guards pushed inside in a hurry. Surely Echo must've breached the building's pathetic security locks, broadcasting the video over all available projectable surfaces. Yoongi figured from the way these men weren't even slightly surprised by what they saw on the panel.

Yoongi's bruised mouth twitched upward weakly. 

One guard sneered while two others tried their best to communicate via comms with the rest of the security. "This funny to you?"

The blond did not look away, nor did he react, fingers curling into fists around the restraints as he watched his roommate brutally choke a man his size before snapping his neck with a loud, blood-curdling crack. It made him flinch, but not look away. "No," he shook his head softly, his deep voice as rough and hoarse as ever.

Meanwhile, Jeongguk's face appeared closer on the recording. "If he is not breathing when I get there, then I'm gonna make what I did to your poor guy over there look merciful compared to what I'll do to you," he said.

Yoon's skin got covered in goosebumps within seconds because Gguk wasn't bluffing or joking. He meant it, the dark eyes and blood splattered cheeks a living proof that there were no wrong moves in this war now. He had torn through the very veins and muscles of this rotting organism of a city to find him, and perhaps somewhere deep down, Yoongi never started doubting that he would.

"I think," he started, not once looking away as the video restarted. "That you should run." Then, he smiled, split lip catching on the bloodied teeth, while butterflies fluttered in the pit of his stomach. "You are so fucked."

The port office headquarters building rose out of the industrial coastline of District 9 like a bruise, disturbing the pristine line where the horizon met the sky.

Jeongguk had killed the Revenant's engine three blocks away and left the bike safely hidden under the cloaking field as he himself set up his vantage point atop one of the neighbouring buildings, choosing a lower one on purpose. 

"Thermal scans indicate twenty-three hostiles on-site. Interior schematic uploaded to visor," Echo spoke through the earpiece. 

"Kim Namjoon?" He hummed back, mind occupied as he scoped the area of the building. 

"He is not our objective."

Jeongguk's jaw tightened as he observed the entrance. His video presentation must've caused quite a commotion, considering all the people regrouping so hurriedly. "He is a secondary objective."

Echo remained silent for a longer moment. Clearly, they disagreed on that aspect. Echo considered focusing on Yoongi's rescue mission a far more beneficial approach, increasing the probability of success. Meanwhile, Jeongguk clearly remained distracted by his thirst for revenge. "Jeongguk-"

"Is he in there?"

Echo's lights stubbornly flashed purple as it processed. "I've marked Yoongi. Upper East Quadrant. Fourth floor. Vital signs weak but stable."

The biker sighed heavily, watching the crowd outside the port office building thinning out until most of the security was likely assigned to detail inside. "If I see him inside, I'm taking care of him regardless of whether or not you provide me with the information beforehand."

"Pursuing him is lowering your chances of successfully achieving the main objective. I advise against chasing distractions, Jeongguk."

Gguk bit his lower lip. It wasn't as easy as Echo made it seem. After all, this could be his last chance to confront Kim about the entire incident. This could be his last chance to deliver justice. "We'll see when I'm inside."

With that, he pulled the trigger.

The tiny poisoned cartridge hit its target seconds after being released from the barrel. "Not bad," he muttered to himself, already reloading. He's never used these things before and doubted whether Yoongi had, but the effect was instant. Sedation, then toxins slowly spread through the system and eventually start melting the internal organs, silently taking the prey's life. 

Another shot, then another. Then Joengguk was moving, lowering the rifle and leaving it along with his helmet hidden under the edge of the roof's railing as he himself shot towards the unprotected skylight through which he got up onto the rooftop in the first place. He needed to be quick and reach the back entrance before anyone from the inside realised what was happening.

The back entrance was being guarded by two guys, one of whom was busy playing with his comm pad. As the other man kept pacing along the line of the building, that one stood at a slight angle to the left corner of it, occasionally shifting his weight from one leg to the other - easy target. Gguk just had to time it right.

As the pacing guard turned to the right, Jeongguk jumped the other one from behind, knife to the jaw, and the body lowered silently. The second one fell to the ground silently when a throwing knife pierced right through his forehead, a small choking sound falling out of his wide-open mouth when Jeongguk walked past. He left them there to bleed out.

"I'm not sure how this works," he whispered to Echo, fingers placed over a reinforced white door that allowed entry to the building from behind. There was some kind of a lock on them, which Jeongguk definitely expected to encounter. That's precisely why he chose to wear Yoongi's gloves with neuro-connected rings.

The comm pad strapped to Jeongguk's forearm buzzed. "Higher," Echo instructed, and Jeongguk obeyed, for once. "To the right," he moved his hand again.

Something snapped into place, then a short mechanical buzz followed before the door swung open in front of him. "You're a genius," Jeongguk blinked once before slipping inside undetected.

Immediately, he was met with a dark stairwell halfway, which led out of the basement and onto what looked like the ground floor. The third guard stood with his back turned to Jeongguk on top of that same staircase, fingers wrapped around a pulse semi-auto.

Preferring not to use firearms until detected, Jeongguk drove his elbow to the side of the man's neck, which caused him to stumble to the ground. "Wha-" that's about how much he managed to spit out before a knife tore into the side of his face.

At first, the left eye slowly filled with blood, which then started trickling down the side of his face through the corner. The man blinked, stunned, lips moving without sound, and once Gguk withdrew the drenched in blood blade, he collapsed to the ground with a strained yelp.

"Alright, you said the fourth floor," Jeongguk muttered, legs carrying him deeper inside the building. "Stairs or elevator?"

Just then, as Jeongguk rounded the corner, he stopped in his tracks mid-step.

The ground floor was littered with security, especially around the area of an old ID card access control system, no doubt long out of use. "Staircase," Echo's answer came via the comm pad. 

"Yeah," Gguk silently turned around, navigating the layout he had only seen for a few seconds via his visor. Good thing he had a photographic memory.

He moved through the building like an execution, no wasted motion, no witnesses; a true man on a mission.

Then-

Jeongguk successfully stepped onto the fourth floor, his feet making a muffled sound against the ground as he moved across the space in a crouched stealth position.

It was the final stretch. He simply couldn't fuck it up, Jeongguk thought to himself as he rounded yet another corner, which he thought was clear. Echo's warning came late, and before the biker realised what happened, a shock of pain tore through his side.

Immediately, he tucked, asserting a near-prone position on the ground. 

"I know that you're there!" The shooter called out, cocking his weapon and approaching one step at a time. "State your identity!"

Jeongguk let out a shaky breath as blood soaked through his compression shirt. It wasn't looking great, he quickly assessed.

"You are injured," Echo offered on the comm pad.

"No fucking shit," he snapped, shaking fingers searching his lower back for an exit wound. None found. "Any main blood vessels hit?"

"Negative," the AI assured. "Still, immediate medical intervention is recommended."

Jeongguk nodded to himself, hand pressing against the wound to hopefully minimize the bleeding. "Noted," he unholstered his gun with a free hand. "Later."

"I said, state your identity!" the man hollered louder, his voice closer than before.

Jeongguk didn't hesitate. He rolled onto his back, careful not to alert the enemy to any movement, one leg pushing off the wall on a long exhale. The blood served as lubrication as he slid across the white floor, aiming straight for the man's head the moment he left his cover.

Three shots, all his, all silent. 

The body dropped to the ground.

Jeongguk blinked, one shaking arm pushing his entire body weight off the floor in no time. 

He reloaded while running. They knew he was there now, and occasional sounds of alarms reached his ears from lower floors. Surprisingly enough, the injury helped Jeongguk focus better. It motivated him. The limited time he might've had caused him to produce more adrenaline as he slowly approached the back rooms of floor four.

"Seventeen down," the message from Echo bloomed across his comm pad. That meant six to go. 

And one of them had to be Namjoon, the thought echoed at the back of Jeongguk's head.

As on cue, something flashed in the corner of his eye. A side corridor. Movement.

He turned cautiously, and that split second felt like it was happening in slow motion. He locked eyes with none other than Kim Namjoon himself. 

Jeongguk's steps stuttered, which visibly took Namjoon off guard. 

They both moved at the same time. Jeongguk bolted after Namjoon, and Kim darted down the hallway, dropping everything that he had been holding.

"Jeongguk, you're straying from the objective."

The biker ignored Echo's warning, bouncing off the wall at the end of the corridor and rushing after Nam's form that just disappeared behind yet another corner. "You can't run from me, motherfucker!" he called out, successfully jumping over an out-of-use gate and continuing his chase.

Namjoon didn't respond, clearly navigating the building like he knew it by heart. 

"STOP!" Jeongguk yelled, pushing past yet another door and kicking an overturned swivel chair out of his way. "It's okay to give up, you know?!" He chuckled, breathless, rounding yet another corner at high speed.

Namjoon made it to the restricted access zone, furiously slamming his C5-level clearance badge against the scanner. 

Jeongguk was about two seconds late. As the reinforced glass door shut close behind Kim, he slammed against them like a rabid animal. "You think this is it?!" Jeongguk mashed his fist against the surface, watching Namjoon's wide eyes as he took a few steps back from the glass. "What, you scared, bitch?" he spat. 

"Jeongguk-" Echo tried interfering.

"You did this to me!" he screamed, now kicking the door with the sole of his heavy boot. "I'm gonna gut you open, put you back together, and then tear you apart again, yeah? Make sure you feel what I felt," now he was smiling that terrifying grin, one arm smearing his own blood over the glass where he leaned his forehead.

He truly looked like a creation molded from hatred, blood, and poison.

"I'd like to see you try," Nam's voice came muffled from the other side as he turned on his heel to exit the premises, shaken as if he had just encountered death itself.

"Yeah, run!" he called after him, voice raw and hoarse. "RUN! Leave the fucking city, and I'll find you anyway, motherfucker!" He rattled the door, attempting to breach it one last time.

When that failed. "Echo," he started.

The comm pad lit up. "Access denied."

Jeongguk's eyes narrowed. It was doing this on purpose. He almost had him and...

The biker took one last glance at the glass door, then slowly started walking back, a bitter taste of defeat spreading at the back of his throat. "Yeah, okay... Fuck you too."

Then he turned, and he ran.

Eventually, they made it back to the main corridor of the fourth floor, holding wing. 

The last pair of guards shouted over themselves as Jeongguk carved them through from a distance. The pain started slowing him down, adrenaline running low as he pulled the throwing knives out with a pained grunt. 

"This it?" He panted, one bloodied glove already hovering over the white surface of what must've been the door to Yoongi's holding cell. 

The comm pad lit up purple again before commands appeared on the screen. "An old, biometric lock. Was reset today, lacking the administrator's data. System error," Jeongguk cursed under his breath. "I must have triggered it today, accidentally."

"Can you open it?"

Echo processed for a few seconds. "Twenty-five seconds to override."

At the sight of the message, Jeongguk exhaled with relief. He leaned his side against the wall, eyes reluctantly trailing over the bullet wound in his abdomen, which could've already been infected. Looked pretty bad and felt even worse, but it wasn't the first time someone tried to put an additional hole in him. He'd be fine, Jeongguk told himself as the mechanism inside the door started clicking and snapping, occasionally making some weak humming noises like a computer.

Jeongguk inhaled and exhaled as he planted himself in front of the door, hand pressed against it, the other gripping the handgun like a lifeline.

Three more people rounded the corner. Their blood slicked the floor and walls, and pained cries echoed through the space. Jeongguk didn't even blink as he delivered the shots.

"How much longer?" He hissed to echo, performing a one-hand press check. A bullet was still in the chamber. If he counted correctly, this was his last one. But according to Echo's calculations, there were two more people somewhere in the building.

"Override complete," the message flashed over his comm pad screen, and at the same moment, the lock behind his back disengaged with a sharp click.

Jeongguk wasted no time, sliding the door and leaving it ajar for their escape route. "Echo, watch the corridor," he ordered, jogging past a short hallway, which finally led him to another door. He pushed without hesitation, stumbling inside like a drunkard. 

He caught himself against the ground, where another small pool of blood managed to form around him before he lifted himself off the ground wearily.

Then, his head lifted to assess the surroundings. His eyes met the ones he thought he would never see again. The feline eyes that always looked at him like at a precious gem. The same cunning, sharp eyes that always rolled at his antics sarcastically. The ones that widened whenever he got hurt, as they widened just then and there.

"Fuck... You're bleeding pretty bad," Yoongi croaked out. He was still tied to that same chair Jeongguk saw on the video, head hanging, back hunched over, several bruises and cuts all over his neck, face, and legs. 

Jeongguk forgot the world existed. He scrumbled from the floor in a matter of seconds, dropping onto his knees in front of Yoongi. "Hyung," his voice sounded almost weak, weavering, on the very verge of tears.

He cupped Min's face in his bloodied palms, shaking fingers hovering over the skin as if he were afraid that he would hurt him with a single touch.

"Yeah?" Yoongi chuckled, tilting his head gently, resting it against Jeongguk's palm with a sigh of relief. 

The younger man's mouth opened, then closed, and opened again as he searched for the appropriate words. His eyes trailed over the red cut over Yoongi's eye, the bruises from fingers around Yoongi's jawline, the dirty hair stuck to his temples, the blood crust, shaking lips, and weak posture. "I-" Jeongguk swallowed. "I found you, I can't believe I found you," he repeated like a prayer.

"Took you," Yoongi rasped, muscles finally giving up, relying on the stability of Jeongguk's arms alone, "long enough."

Jeongguk made a broken sound that might've been both a laugh and a sob. "Shut up."

The biker proceeded to gently prop Yoongi's chin against his shoulder as he himself blindly reached behind the chair, knife already in hand, to cut the restraints biting into the blond's skin painfully.

"Fuck.. I'm sorry," Gguk mumbled, hearing Yoongi's pained hiss, even if he was unsure of what he had done.

"It's fine," the older man's words were muffled by Jeongguk's shoulder, where he hid his bloodied face. "Just get them off."

Jeongguk nodded softly, fingers working as gently around the restraints as it was physically possible.

The bindings snapped eventually, and without any warning, Yoongi collapsed forward, unable to hold himself up after so many days of doing so. His muscles felt useless, weak, and longed for even only a few minutes on a soft mattress. Still, he managed to lift both shaking arms and wrap them around Jeongguk's neck.

"Can you walk?" The biker asked hurriedly, one arm supporting Yoongi's back as he slowly lifted both of them. 

"Not really," Yoon admitted, legs swaying as his bare feet touched the ground with Jeongguk's help. 

Jeon nodded slowly, wandering eyes travelling across the room, as if searching for another option. "Can I carry you?"

Yoongi hesitated, and Jeongguk could almost hear his eye roll, even if he couldn't quite see it. "Don't get oversentimental about this, though."

"Echo, get the Revenant," Jeongguk ordered, one arm wrapping securely around Yoongi's back and the other one grabbing the underside of his knees to pick him up. "God... Sorry- I'm so sorry," Gguk kept repeating, fingers loosening their grip on Yoongi's body to the absolute minimum when the blond inhaled sharply.

"Stop apologizing to me and move, idiot."

Half dead and still just as sarcastic. Jeongguk huffed a small laugh to himself. Thank god, he thought. 

It turned out that carrying a fairly immobile, injured person in your arms while also being injured yourself is not the greatest experience of a lifetime. Jeongguk did his best, though.

As they walked out onto the corridor, Yoongi couldn't help but raise both eyebrows at the sight. "Holy shit-" he mumbled.

Despite his slightly blurred vision, he could still make out the brutal scene. The bodies, the blood. It kept swirling under Jeongguk's boots with every step that he took, and not one had wavered. It was a kind of violence that Yoongi had never seen him turn a blind eye to.

Yoongi could only stare as he adjusted his loose grip around Gguk's broader shoulders.

"Don't look at it-"

"No, I heard the shots. It's just-" he shrugged softly, cheek pressed against Jeongguk's. "This looks insane."

"Yeah," Jeongguk agreed as he rounded a corner towards the elevators that would eventually take them to the ground floor. "I feel a little insane."

Jeongguk's comm pad beeped. "Take the restricted area door, quicker route," Echo offered, which instantly made the biker frown.

Now the AI could open it, but not when he needed it to do so.

"Namjoon was here," Jeon started as he made his way down the same corridor that he had earlier chased Kim through. "I saw him. If it weren't for Echo, I would've gotten him."

Yoongi made a small acknowledging sound. "I figured something wasn't right when he tried to tell me you killed yourself."

Jeongguk's expression momentarily flickered in surprise, hand hesitating before letting go of Yoongi's back briefly. "I shouldn't be surprised. He's done far worse," he chuckled bitterly, fingers splaying over the access panel to the right where Namjoon previously had slammed his clearance card. 

"Meaning...?"

The comm pad flashed purple as Echo processed the information needed for lock disengagement.

"Meaning," Jeongguk pushed the door open with his shoulder once Echo managed to bypass all the security measures, careful not to bump Yoongi's already battered body against any surface. "He was paying the government to create commotion."

Yoongi remained quiet for a long moment until they reached the side entrance door that led outside. "Wha-... Why?"

"To make the Rebellion look far more important and heroic than it actually is?" Jeongguk shook his head in disbelief as they approached the Revenant. "I'll tell you all about it when you're safe at home, alright?"

Yoongi nodded weakly and tightened his grip on Jeongguk's shoulders when the younger man gently lowered him onto the pavement.

Suddenly, everything felt overwhelmingly real. The slow drizzle that had started some time ago; the bright morning light that felt a hundred times better than the fluorescent white lights he was forced to endure for so long; the fresh air, which in Yoongi's lungs felt like the most real breath he had taken in his entire life; the slick feeling of the Revenant's plates as Jeongguk carefully held his hand out for Yoongi to grab and mount the bike behind him, his movements gentler than he'd been with anything during the last week.

It all made his head spin, his eyes burn, and his stomach turn, so many sensations overlapping one another, and yet Yoongi wouldn't ever trade it for anything else. Even in the face of unsure and uncomfortable freedom, confinement under the control of the unknown felt even more frightening.

Yoongi clung to Jeongguk's back, cheek pressed between his shoulder blades as he watched the port office building disappear in the distance behind them once the biker gunned the Revenant's engine.

"Escape route plotted," Echo's voice rattled in Jeongguk's earpiece. "Anti-pursuit path uploaded. I'm taking you home."

Every single one of Echo's instructions Jeongguk obeyed flawlessly: left in fifty meters, jump incoming, take the lower rail route. All with one hand steady on the controls and the other reaching behind every few seconds to make sure that Yoongi was still there, still breathing.

The apartment recognized Jeongguk before the door fully opened. The locks disengaged, the air filters adjusted to clear the city grid and chemical residue from the threshold, and the lighting switched to Yoongi's usual preference: dim and soft. 

Yoongi stepped inside on his wobbly legs, one hand still occasionally reaching for Jeongguk's supportive arm.

The bike ride felt refreshing and finally let him breathe real air, not filled with the scent of disinfectants and white paint. This one time, he did not complain about the lack of protective gear, holding onto Jeongguk's black leather like a lifeline instead. 

"Welcome home, Jeongguk," Echo greeted as usual.

Of course, not hearing his own name made Yoongi frown. Jeongguk noticed immediately. "Oh, I needed to delete your biometrics from the system after they replicated them."

Yoon, who had been leaning on Gguk the entire way up in the elevator, paused before making his way deeper into the hallway.

His narrowed eyes found Jeongguk's, eliciting a breathless chuckle from the biker. "What?" Gguk asked, patiently pausing until Yoongi resumed walking.

"Was it the...?" Yoon motioned vaguely in the air, his still somewhat shaky fingers sketching the rectangular outline of the gray device Jeongguk had already destroyed and forgotten about a long time ago.

The younger man frowned, blinked, and then mouthed a short, silent 'oh' before nodding his head in confirmation.

Yoongi seemed to be taking the information in for a bit, probably rethinking all the times when he voiced his horrible gut feeling about the mysterious item to Jeongguk. Then, as if nothing had happened, he took another step and finally let go once he was able to lean against one of the walls for support.

Home.

After all these days, home felt like an awfully foreign concept. Everything looked, smelled, and felt like it used to. Sure, the place was a little messy, and yet something distinctly Jeongguk had soaked through it.

Yoongi swallowed heavily, just then realising how close to tears he actually was, eyes tracing the opaque glass walls. His gaze swept over the furniture, the heated floors, and the high ceilings. It all made his throat tighten in emotion.

Naturally, the vulnerability pushed him to avoid confrontation. He turned towards Jeongguk on his heel, and just then, he could finally see him in a more bearable lighting.

Sure, he was partially covered in blood and looked like he had skipped at least a few full nights of sleep. What caught Yoon's attention, though, was the hair - short and ridiculously uneven in places. Brutally practical and yet completely wrong. How could he have gotten rid of the wolf cut? Yoongi loved it so much.

"You absolutely butchered yourself," he snorted, not very amused, one hand reaching out to brush through what was left of Jeongguk's luscious locks. "I hope you do realize that."

Jeongguk looked up, halfway through kicking off his boots, the lip ring catching a tiny little sparkle of light. "Uh... You're welcome for saving your life?"

"I liked you with long hair," Yoongi huffed, his bony fingers pulling on the strands somewhat playfully. 

"Okay, you're being so ridiculous right now," Jeongguk sighed with mild exasperation, gently pulling Yoon's arm away. "I feel like my hair is not the main issue here-"

"Why did you cut it?"

The younger man rolled his eyes, weight shifting from one leg to the other as he looked away. "I don't know," came a quiet mumble finally, one hand rubbing down his tired face.

"Jeongguk found his long hair to be distracting during more intense boxing," Echo reported as if it were an important technical detail to be shared. It also sounded quite thrilled to be talking to Yoongi again.

The blond raised his eyebrows in surprise, before abruptly flinching and forcing himself to relax his facial muscles. The giant cut over his eye probably still hurt even at the smaller movement, the realization making Jeongguk wince in discomfort. "You should sit down, yeah?" He changed the topic, one arm already reaching for Yoongi's lower back and attempting to guide him gently.

Yoongi, however, persisted. "It framed your face so nicely," he sighed, weakly resisting Jeongguk's pull.

"It was in my eyes," the biker sighed, pulling away just enough to look at Yoon's face again. "You'll get used to it."

"I won't."

A beat of silence passed, during which Jeongguk's annoyance slowly settled. Yeah, his lower half might have been hurting terribly, and Yoongi might have been a big baby about a changed hairstyle. Still, he missed it so terribly. Finally, that empty void inside his chest felt like it was piecing his emotions back together, bit by bit, instead of swallowing him from the inside. Healing.

He didn't even realize he was smiling until Yoongi's weak swaying pulled him out of the trance. "Alright, now you should really sit down," he cleared his throat, focus snapping back into place as he put his bloodied arm around Yoon's back, careful not to hurt him.

"You should stop bleeding all over the floor," Yoongi countered, but this time obediently let himself be led towards the couch, where he sat down at the very edge. Then, with a slow exhale, he lowered his back against the backrest, eyes closed and head lolling back with the kind of relief that radiated off of him.

Meanwhile, Jeongguk wasn't sure what to do with himself. He turned towards the bathroom, hesitated, then towards Yoongi, reached out, hesitated again.

"Jeongguk, your wound needs immediate medical attention," Echo reminded, the sharp, pulsating pain intensifying as if on command.

"Right, right, right," the biker mumbled to himself, shirt already halfway off as he wearily made his way to the bathroom, back hunched over, leaving Yoongi alone for just a few moments and allowing him to rest in peace. They had some patching up to do.

With a lot of help from Echo, Jeongguk managed to get himself fixed up. The wound wasn't very deep, and the bullet missed all vital organs. Anyway, he had seen worse, even with all the dramatic bleeding.

By the time they were done, the bathroom looked like a murder scene, and Jeongguk refused to let Yoongi sit in all that mess. That's why he brought all the essential tools to the living room instead. Soon, shirtless and with his stomach wrapped in fresh bandages, he was leaning over Yoongi's head and gently checking the knife wound that ran over his eye.

Echo turned the light down to the minimum, adjusting its temperature to a warm hue.

"Your iris looks like it collapsed," Jeongguk hummed, running his finger alongside the scar. "Can you see anything with that eye?"

Yoongi blinked once Gguk withdrew the tiny penlight from over Yoongi's head. "Yeah, but it's all blurry," Yoongi paused. "And it's gotten worse."

"The trauma to your eye and head has led to your iris deforming," Echo assisted. "I've identified the condition as iridodialysis."

Jeongguk exhaled through his nose as he put the penlight away. "Treatable?"

"Possibly." The AI switched from purple back to blue as Yoongi pulled himself up into a sitting position again. "Unless you've experienced severe vitreous hemorrhage or retina destruction."

"Okay," Gguk nodded in understanding, running an agitated hand through his short hair. "At least it makes you look a little more badass," he let the joke slip, head bowed over a medkit spread on the coffee table.

Meanwhile, Yoongi watched as the younger man soaked a piece of gauze in chlorhexidine.

It all felt absurdly domestic and entirely surreal, having the fluffy brown blanket wrapped around his shoulders again, Jeongguk fussing over him like a concerned puppy owner, and not being in constant pain. Subconsciously, he curled his back further into the comfortable pillows Gguk had so carefully arranged around him.

"You're shaking," he could see it even with his impaired vision and eyes half-lidded from exhaustion. 

"I'm not," Jeongguk immediately denied the accusation, folding the piece of gauze gently between his fingers before sliding closer to Yoongi and almost revenantly dabbing it over the scrape on his temple. 

Silently, Yoongi watched him closely. The split knuckles on both of his hands, the old bruising blooming under one eye, the stiffiness in his shoulders, the way he kept wincing whenever he overstretched a muscle located too close to the bullet wound. "You are."

Jeongguk's tongue darted out as he attempted to stick a round Band-Aid perfectly over the small injury. "I'm angry."

"I can tell," Yoongi's head tilted when Jeongguk looked away again, the biker's hands clumsily dropping an ointment tube as he was trying to unscrew the cap, not very successfully. Yoongi's gaze narrowed. "What happened to your hand?"

The answer came too quickly. "Nothing," Gguk hummed, trying his best to sound light and conversational as he picked the tube back up.

Of course, Echo chipped in, ready to ruin the intimate moment. "Moderate sprain."

Jeongguk closed his eyes before Echo even finished talking. He sighed as if he had been fully expecting this. "Echo," he reprimanded the system through gritted teeth. 

Unfazed, the AI continued. "Additionally: a shallow, self-stitched stab wound, several untreated contusions, dehydration, caloric deficit, and sleep deprivation exceeding seventy-two hours." 

Very quickly, the room went surprisingly quiet.

Jeongguk could feel Yoongi's murderous glare on him before he even turned to face him, hands discreetly placing the ointment tube back on the coffee table.

"Seventy-two," came Yoon's deep voice, and oh boy, had Jeongguk forgotten how terrifying Min could be whenever he chose to be the calm kind of angry.

Automatically, the biker lifted both hands slightly, not enough to make him wince this time. "Okay, in my defense-"

"You got stabbed."

"More of a poke."

"You did not sleep."

"I was busy."

"You did not eat."

"That's not true. Just... not a lot."

"Energy drinks and alcohol aren't generally considered food," Echo chimed in, cutting their rapid exchange of accusations short.

Yoongi's eyes widened. "Jeongguk," he said the biker's name as if he were a child to be scolded.  

Sensing danger, Jeongguk did the most disarming thing that he could possibly do. He leaned on his arm, propping his own chin against his shoulder, and smiled weakly. "I found you though."

The anger on Yoongi's face fractured around something significantly softer, his eyebrows relaxing at the sight of that bunny smile he had missed more than his bed or his comfortable lighting adjustment setup... or even the heated flooring. 

"...You're like a fucking child. Can't leave you alone for a few days," he sighed, annoyance replacing softness as he looked away first. "You're an idiot."

"Yeah," Jeongguk nodded in agreement. "Your idiot," he added, fingers reaching once again for that same tube of ointment. 

Yoongi didn't comment, afraid of saying something that would sound a bit too raw.

He missed all the things he had once considered trivial more than he could have ever imagined, and despite being so emotionally unavailable, Yoongi realized with a broken heart that nothing could ever replace his normalcy: no perfect creation, no eternal peace, and no made-up paradise. If anything was ever home, it was this. It was him. It was Jeongguk.

Min's lower lip quivered softly, a movement not prominent enough for the biker to notice, but vulnerable enough for Yoongi to instantly push it away.

Eventually, after more than a dozen apologies from Jeongguk and more than a thousand insults from Yoongi for every single apology he received, they were done.

Yoongi felt like a piece of crushed porcelain carefully put together by its owner when Jeongguk insisted on drying his hair using the lowest setting available on the blow dryer. His eyes focused on his own reflection in the mirror while the biker's hands gently carded through his hair that definitely needed some well-deserved touch-up. 

With all the blood, dirt, and grime gone, Yoongi could almost recognize himself again, despite the blurriness in his right eye.

For a moment, it was just the two of them surrounded by the comforting hum of the hairdryer and the gentle feel of fresh fabrics wrapped around their warm bodies.

"It was Namjoon," Jeongguk broke the silence as he put the blow dryer down and instead picked up a hair brush to comb through Yoon's damp strands of hair. The younger glanced up at Yoongi, searching for a reaction in the mirror, his gaze lowering down to Min's hair once he failed to find it. Then, he continued, "It was all supposed to be a cover-up for his past sins."

Then, finally, something similar to recognition flashed across Yoongi's face. "How do you know?" He asked, the tone of his voice implying that he already knew the answer to the question.

"Well," Jeongguk cleared his throat. "The signature Minsoo told us about turned out to be his. Found it on some old documents you kept from the old days and, apparently, were searching for."

A beat of silence stretched between them for a longer moment after Gguk's admission.

"I used to think of him differently, you know," Yoongi started and, as on cue, Jeongguk's hand stilled in his hair. "I used to think a few sacrifices were worth saving this city. That he was a person who truly wanted to change the system for good."

"Still, you never trusted him completely. If you did, you would've joined the Rebelllion, wouldn't you?" It wasn't ever about saving the city, hyung-" Jeongguk's sentence was cut short by Yoongi's hiss at the way the biker subconsciously pulled at his hair. Gguk swore and loosened his grip immediately. "Sorry."

Yoongi recovered quickly. "It's fine, keep talking."

Jeon swallowed deeply before reaching for the hairdryer again. "He wanted you in the Rebellion since I can remember... According to those documents, for longer. You know, legitimize him, build systems, cover tracks."

Yoongi's bitter laughter interrupted Jeongguk's speech. "That he did."

"When I kept pushing you to leave," he shrugged. "That automatically made me a problem. If you left, his dirty career history would no longer be safe. He couldn't possibly control what happens to those documents and information... Or so I figured."

"But I wasn't going to leave."

Jeongguk exhaled through his nose, probably reflecting on all the past conversations they've had about this. "I know this, but he doesn't," Gguk unplugged the hairdryer and put it neatly away into one of the push-to-open drawers. "To be fair, I'm surprised he's never done anything about it before."

"He's not the kind of guy who does things spontaneously," Yoongi ran his own hand through his now dry hair, eyes travelling from his own face to Jeongguk's in the mirror. "This was thoroughly planned. I've seen disgustingly realistic photos of you, dead. He kept begging me to sign with the Rebellion for protection too."

Jeongguk's eyes widened. "That was his last attempt at silencing you after he realized that I'm alive, out of reach, and he's running on borrowed time... He's paranoid, Yoongi," he laughed a short, unamused chuckle, gently turning Yoongi around by his shoulder. 

They held each other's gaze, silent agreement.

Then, Jeongguk leaned forward, arms bracketing Yoongi against the floating sink counter. His expression darkened in the already scant lighting emitted by the backlit smart mirror. "I'm going to kill him," the words dropped between them heavily.

As Yoongi stared intensely into Jeon's eyes, he knew that this was no performance - he really meant it. This beautiful idiot, who had bled his way through the very depths of Aetherfall's corruption, slicked bowels. Who had carved himself down to raw nerve and purpose.

Purpose only fueled by what Yoongi couldn't yet know was pure, unadulterated, gut-wrenching regret.

"But, if you tell me not to," Jeongguk swallowed loudly, fingers curling around the edge of the sink behind the blond's back. "Then I won't."

Yoongi inhaled sharply. He knew Jeongguk well enough to predict right then and there that even if he listened to a prohibition like that one, he wouldn't ever truly be able to let it go anyway. He'd just bottle it up somewhere deep.

He looked away, somewhere far behind Ggk's tattooed shoulder. He thought back to Namjoon. To his face. To the room. The betrayal that he felt now, knowing how big the stakes truly were. Then, the image of Jeongguk losing his mind for nearly a week, starving, beating himself up, refusing sleep, and tearing himself apart to find him.

It made him feel sick all over again. It made him feel rage.

His answer came cold, voice low and methodical. "We do it properly, no sloppy revenge fantasy. We plan, we calculate, and we attack when we're absolutely sure."

Jeongguk went still, eyes watching Yoongi like a soldier ready for orders.

"We take everything."

"Everything?"

Yoongi nodded. "His rank, people, reputation. His money. Everything," he paused, eyes travelling back to those Jeongguk's - deep and dark enough to get lost. "Then we decide how merciful we feel."

Something distinctly dangerous lit behind Jeongguk's exhaustion. "Hyung," He smiled one of those crooked smirks that often meant trouble. "You're absolutely terrifying."

Yoongi smiled back, both arms crossing over his chest in a triumphant pose. "Glad you've noticed."

The first week back together felt a bit out of place for both of them. Not wrong, but not perfectly peaceful either. 

While Jeongguk kept working, Yoongi made sure to fix what should've been fixed a long time ago. New, fresh biometric layers with his name featured back in the system, backup fail-safes nested beneath backup fail-safes. Passwords, codes, anything one could really think of. Echo, having learnt its lesson, observed everything with nearly obsessive vigilance. No door unlocked without a password, no system override without an additional code.

It's fair to say that Min Yoongi had singlehandedly rebuilt the apartment into a fortress. Despite his wonderful work, neither of them slept well. Of course, they've tried, but trying wasn't enough when both their minds remained in a constant fight-or-flight.

Most nights ended with one or both awake before dawn, staring into the darkness before the complete, utter exhaustion won by force.

But they were together, alive, and healing. Learning how to exist again, painfully, slowly, but together. 

Jeongguk knelt at the side of the couch, carefully applying a fresh bandage over Yoongi's eye. His touch had changed, Yoongi found. Still gentle and careful, but confident and steady. He knew what he was doing. Had some practice.

"You've been hovering again," Yoongi complained, but didn't really mean it. It felt good to be noticed again. It felt good to know someone cared. 

Jeongguk didn't budge from his perfectly measured position. "Shh, I'm caring for the weaker over here."

Yoongi snorted to himself. "I'm gonna stab you. Clearly, you haven't had enough of it yet."

After finishing the fresh dressing, Gguk sat back on his heels, scanning it with medical precision. Even as Yoongi lifted himself into a half-sitting position on his forearms, Jeongguk's eyes still traveled after him.

"Echo said eyedrops twice daily," the biker reminded. 

They were trying to manage Yoongi's condition and the complications related to it since at Yoongi's stage, it quickly turned out to be untreatable. Echo researched all options, and they settled on the one widely deemed most effective.

"Echo also thinks I should consume Brussels sprouts voluntarily," Yoon grimaced.

"Correct," Echo cut in.

Yoongi glanced up into one of the cameras while Jeongguk smiled faintly, fingers screwing the cap back onto the tiny dispenser. It had become a softer thing between them lately. Fewer arguments, not as many quarrels, and significantly more smiles. The intimate kind that doesn't need to be loud to be understood. The kind that one wears when they've almost lost something they never knew they couldn't survive without.

Jeongguk stood, dusting his hands off and adjusting the zip-up hoodie that hung loosely around his shoulders. "I'm grabbing your meds."

"Aren't you enjoying this too much?" Yoongi chuckled as his gaze followed Jeongguk out of the room.

"Watching you suffer? Always!" The biker called out after disappearing into the bedroom.

Yoongi hummed a soft, approving sound as he sat up properly, allowing himself to lean back against the couch. He watched the horizon of the city, grateful for the cozy blanket around his shoulders, the warm shade of the surrounding lights, and the room-temperature coffee he's been sipping for the entirety of the morning. 

He watched the cars drive by, passing one another on the elevated highways; he watched the smog gathering over the lower parts of the city. He watched the usual life he's been witnessing all the same with his own eyes ever since he became conscious enough to understand. 

But, perhaps a week ago, he understood something much greater than he ever had before, because for the first time, he looked at it all and felt nothing: no loyalty, no hatred, no longing. He felt free, no longer shackled by what was an obligation dressed up as sentiment.

"Yoongi," Echo's voice momentarily filled the space of the living area.

Min blinked, torn right out of his reflection. "Hmm?" He raised his eyebrows in a puzzled expression.

The AI hesitated briefly, purple lights flashing for longer than usual. "I have something important to show you."

Yoongi frowned, taken off guard by the serious tone. "Okay... If this is another nutritional recommendation-"

"It is not."

Confused, Yoongi watched as the hologram of a video player appeared projected by Echo right above the coffee table, with no further warnings or explanation. He even instinctively reached for the cup of coffee, moving it to a far corner of the table, not to obstruct the view.

Black screen.

Statics.

Then-

Jeongguk, hunched over some maps and holographic statistic panels. He was bloodied, exhausted, with furious, wide eyes and fists curled around the edge of the workshop table firmly enough to look painful. 

"If they kill him-" a quiet sob reached Yoongi's ears as he watched Gguk lean his forehead against the table on the recording. "If they kill him, I won't survive it, because..." Jeongguk laughed bitterly, his voice wavering. "B-because..." The word caught, and for a moment, the video became so still that Yoon was sure the screen froze. 

Then, Jeongguk's expression cracked completely, all stripped away to reveal what's been hiding beneath this entire time. The confession came like a physical blow. "Because I love him.”

Yoongi forgot how to breathe, and surely if he were holding that cup of coffee, he would've already dropped it. Unblinking, he stared at the holographic video player as Jeongguk continued speaking in an unstable tone. "I love him so much it makes me feel fucking sick," he hissed through clenched teeth, causing goosebumps to rise on Yoon's pale skin. 

"But if... No, WHEN  I get him back-" he swallowed heavily. "He's never doubting what he means to me again."

It felt surreal, watching Jeongguk swaying against the workbench like a man drowning, staring at the paused image of Yoongi as if it were sacred.

The video ended, leaving Yoongi absolutely frozen, his eyes wide and palms sweaty. His heart was pounding enough to hurt. He actually couldn't believe what he'd just heard.

So many conflicted emotions bubbled into life in the pit of his stomach that the mix almost felt life-threatening. Almost felt like the world was ending. Because, in a way, one was, and it was giving life to a new, much clearer one.

"Echo," Yoongi managed to stammer out, too stunned to find the right words to describe what he needed at the moment.

"Yes?" The system hummed back to life.

Unfortunately, before Min could fully gather his thoughts, the bedroom doorway slid open, and Jeongguk stepped out, holding medication and a glass of water he'd poured for Yoongi that morning, which the older did not finish.

Immediately, Jeongguk stopped in his tracks, realizing that Yoongi was staring at him as if seeing a ghost. "Wha-" he started, sentence cut short as his eyes traveled higher, to the holo screen where he could still vaguely see his own silhouette from the last frame of the recording.

His eyes widened as he connected the dots. "Echo," his voice came like a warning... Or more of a threat perhaps.

"Yes?" The machine answered, unbothered by being caught.

"You fuckin-"

"I deemed transparency beneficial." 

Jeongguk turned red so fast it was almost violent. "Turn it off-" he demanded. "Turn it off right now-"

"No."

The biker ran one agitated hand through his hair, as he sent one of the cameras a wide-eyed look. "ECHO-" he insisted, sweaty fingers squeezing around Yoongi's med bottle.

Meanwhile, Yoongi stood, ignoring the remains of pain that still sometimes strained his muscles, and moved slowly, taking one step, then another. "Did you mean it?" The question came so softly and genuinely that it felt like a bullet penetrating Jeongguk's heart. It made his breath hitch and throat tighten.

The room stopped. Jeongguk found himself forgetting how breathing worked as he slowly turned away from the corner camera and towards Yoon instead. Still, he wasn't able to face the blond, head bowed, and a faint blush creeping up his neck. "Yes," the answer came quietly, Yoongi's med bottle trembling in his hand.

Another step, and another, until Yoongi wasn't further than a meter away from Jeongguk. 

"I-I didn't want-... Well, you know," Jeongguk chuckled nervously as he attempted to explain himself, one nervous hand scratching at the nape of his neck in an awkward gesture. "I didn't want you hearing it like that."

He looked down at himself: a zip-up hoodie and sweats with a tiny stain near his knee, surrounded by the routine of their daily lives. God, he wanted it to be special, not this. But, then again, can anything be more special than the life you've regained after losing it so abruptly?

"Did you mean it," Yoongi's voice came sharper just then, more insistent. The tone made Jeongguk's head snap up, round eyes finding Yoongi's feline one.

"Yes," he said louder, trying his absolute best to ignore that his knees felt weaker than before, and his eyes struggled to hold eye contact. This time, his voice did not crack. The word hit like a gunshot - raw, certain, honest. "I meant every fucking word."

Yoongi stared with his mouth parted around a silent word. He was standing before loyalty personified, something he's never seen before. A man who voluntarily became a killing machine with no mercy and then bandaged his wounds with trembling hands, apologizing for every touch. Delicacy so authentic it bordered on violence.

For once, Yoongi did not hide and did not deflect. He stepped into Jeongguk's space, head tilted up gently to look at him - really look. 

"Then listen carefully, because I'm only ever saying this once," he wet his lips with his tongue, eyes trailing down Jeongguk's face, those round eyes, the soft curve of his nose, the adorable, pink lips, the three little moles on the right side of his face. "You made me realize, as much as I tried to fight it, that I've never loved anyone as egotistically as I love you-"

Jeongguk's face shattered, his breath hitching. He couldn't remember the last time Yoongi opened up to him like that, serious and genuine, staring right into his eyes as he confessed. 

"You asked me so many times to leave this city," Yoongi continued, his lower lip trembling softly as he reached out with both hands, cupping Jeongguk's face in his palms. "I'm asking you now," Jeongguk's eyes brimmed by the time Yoongi finally whispered the last few words. "Once we're done with all this... Take me somewhere else."

Gguk made a broken sound, followed by a singular tear sliding down one rosy cheek. 

Before Yoongi could react, the biker's lips were on his in no time, hands reaching for his slender thighs.

Once lifted, despite the pain and slight discomfort, Yoongi locked his legs around Gguk's slim waist, fingers carding through the younger man's unevenly cut hair greedily.

Jeongguk kissed hard and desperately. As if that kiss was an answer to every prayer he'd never dared speak aloud, like a man starved and thirsty, who couldn't possibly wait another second. As if Yoongi was the only thing in the entire world, the very center of it.

Meanwhile, Yoon kissed back with equal force, despite the bruises, the pain, and everything still healing. He couldn't possibly let go, having been holding onto the most valuable part of his life. One that he could not possibly function without. 

Echo, for once, muted itself wisely, deciding to bother them later about how it was right the entire time. 

Outside, Aetherfall blazed and rotted and screamed for salvation beneath poisoned skies and blood-stained undergrounds, but inside, wrapped in dim, warm lighting and each other, two men who had survived the worst of the city finally chose something else.

Not war.
Not fear.
Themselves.

Yoongi realized he had many regrets about his past - trusting the wrong people, letting them exploit him. However, he's never felt as restless about regret as when he thought back to that white room at the port office headquarters in District 9, where his story could've easily ended. He's never felt as devastated about regret as when he realized how much he would've regretted not ever being honest with the person he cherished most in his life when he still had time. 

He's realized that regretting 'what could've been' is something he could not possibly afford when it came to Jeongguk.

The rain hadn't stopped for three days straight, clinging to the city like a second skin, slicking the streets and blurring neon into smeared ribbons of colors.

The bad weather, however, couldn't stop Jeongguk and Yoongi from working like a well-oiled machine.

"Give me the left stairwell then," Yoongi circled the corner of the blueprint with his index finger. 

He looked better now. Fresh, focused, slowly regaining his weight from before the abduction. He grew out his hair and dyed it a dark brown with Jeongguk's help. It suited him well, the younger quickly found. Meanwhile, Gguk kept his short hair in a mullet, with a subtle undercut that Yoongi was eventually forced to make peace with.

"No."

Yoongi slowly looked up from the holographic spread he was inspecting over the kitchen counter. "No?"

Joengguk didn't even budge from where he checked the magazine of his main handgun across the space. "No," he repeated, fingers wiping along the barrel of the weapon before he slid it into the waistband of his slacks.

Yoongi blinked, his gaze sharper with the scar that healed fairly well over the past month. He found it a powerful weapon during many arguments. "You're aware I asked, not petitioned."

"Yeah," Jeongguk nodded once before making his way over to the elevated kitchen area. "And I denied your request," he shrugged before leaning against the kitchen island himself.

Echo, sensing the usual pattern, dimmed the planning display that neither of the men was looking at now. "I predict this discussion will repeat the previous six with ninety-eight percent accuracy," it announced all too cheerfully.

At that moment, Yoongi made a 'shush' gesture with his hand towards the nearest camera, not even looking at it. Disrespectful.

The mission itself was simple. A mid-level broker who handled encrypted financial transfers and identity laundering for high-profile clients in the northern districts. Amongst them, none other than Kim Namjoon. If anyone could lead them to him, it was this man.

The plan covered the usual: get in, extract the target, regroup at a chosen location if necessary, interrogate, disappear - routine. Except the routine, now included Jeongguk hovering like a man possessed. 

"Okay," Yoongi pushed himself up on one arm, the other one resting against his hip as if he were preparing for an argument of the century, and of course, head tilting like a curious cat's. "Why?"

"You're not taking a point through the vent," Jeongguk shook his head firmly.

Yoongi huffed a breathy chuckle. "I literally fit better."

"No," the younger insisted, not once daring to look up at Yoongi.

"You're ridiculous," Yoongi pushed off the kitchen island, and as he took a few steps to walk around it, Jeongguk turned and stalked towards the workshop instead. He chased right after the biker.

Gguk made a small sound of acknowledgement, steady hands reaching for a knife sheath. "Yeah, I'm not the one who got tortured for six days and now wants to push himself until he drops dead on a mission."

Yoongi froze with his arm hanging in the air, where he was just about to turn Jeongguk around by his shoulder. The apartment went silent as he stared into the younger man's back while he sectioned the throwing knives.

Jeongguk's jaw tightened immediately. He hadn't really meant to say it.

The AI's lights flashed a gentle purple as it prepared to defuse the situation. That is, until Yoongi spoke. "I know why you're doing it."

Gguk remained silent, hands methodically strapping the leather holster around his shoulder.

"And I know I'm not at one hundred percent yet," he leaned forward, clipped words ghosting over the skin of Jeongguk's neck. "But if you keep treating me like glass, I swear that I'm going to shoot your stupid ass myself."

A pause. 

Jeongguk exhaled through his nose, straightening once he was done with the knives. "You'd miss," he challenged.

Yoongi blinked, then looked down at the knives he'd been trying to get Jeongguk to use for ages. He couldn't believe his reminders were no longer useful. "I never miss," he replied, quieter. Almost a whisper. Intimate, weirdly so.

Then, Echo interrupted, both of them snapping out of the odd trance. "Mission departure recommended in four minutes if you intend to arrive on schedule."

Looking up at the nearest camera, Jeongguk slowly nodded, then glanced down at Yoongi again. Healing bruises almost fully faded beneath his collar, weight not quite regained yet, movements careful in a way only someone who knew him intimately would notice.

But those eyes, those captivating eyes that stared at him with dangerous defiance despite all the issues. 

Jeongguk lifted one hand, thumb running down the line of Yoongi's scar before he finally relented. "Fine."

Yoongi smirked, eyes turning two tiny lines.

"But if you overdo it-"

"Jesus Christ," he pushed Jeongguk's arm away, already turning back towards the kitchen counter.

"-I'm carrying you out over my shoulder!" Gguk called out, doing his best to sound as threatening as possible.

Yoongi's smirk widened into an intimate grin that Jeongguk unfortunately couldn't see. "That sounded vaguely romantic, boyfriend."

While the word hit Jeongguk like a literal grenade, the very tips of his ears turning red in a matter of seconds, Min remained seemingly unfazed, patiently tidying their previous workstation. In his stomach, however, a swarm of butterflies awakened yet another time that day.

They had plenty of time to get used to the new status of their relationship, yet neither could help but feel like nothing had really changed. They just labeled what they've been circling the entire time, and perhaps that's what made it so special - the awareness.

"That's insane," Jeongguk mumbled as his arms blacketed Yoongi against the counter from behind, chin resting on Min's shoulder.

"We are a little insane."

"That's true," the biker agreed softly. Then, he leaned forward, lips pressing gently against Yoongi's cheek and stealing a kiss right off of it. It was soft enough to make Yoongi's heart ache. Soft enough to elicit a rare smile. "Let's go kill someone, boyfriend."

Their location was a data lounge. It glittered like all expensive things usually did - all glass, silver, sparkly drinks, fitted tuxedos, and false glamour. Music played low through the floors filled with corporate criminals under holographic waterfalls. Private booths glowed behind frosted partitions. 

Jeongguk looked criminally good in fitted black formalwear: suede lapels, ornate silver gauntlets decorating the sleeve cuffs. A tie, Yoongi had already managed to wrinkle before they'd even arrived.

Min looked worse. Meaner. Sharper. No tie, first button left open, black shirt, and suit. A brooch studded with tiny rhinestones was pinned to the cropped jacket.

They blended in perfectly.

Their conceiled earpieces buzzed. Yoongi designed them to look as small as possible, and technically, they could pass as jewelry pieces after a few improvements he's implemented. Echo was finally able to communicate with them verbally instead of sending messages via comm pads, which was far more functional. 

"Target identified," it announced. "Booth seventeen. Two guards. Internal surveillance loop active."

Both men, although on two separate sides of the room, instantly made their way towards booth seventeen.

"Remember, minimal casualties," Yoongi murmured to the earpiece as he squeezed effortlessly past the busy crowd.

Meanwhile, Jeongguk stole a slim glass of champagne off the nearest silver tray. "You say that every time like it's ever mattered."

"It matters to me."

"Liar."

Naturally, everything went wrong in under six minutes. The broker spotted them way too early and ran like a startled deer. 

Jeongguk did not hesitate at all before vaulting over the booth divider after him. "Minimal casualties my ass-" he grumbled to the earpiece, earning a loud sigh from Yoongi, who no doubt trailed somewhere behind.

Gunfire erupted, screams followed, and party guests scattered. Amidst it all, the broker bolted through the kitchen corridors, and Jeongguk pursued like a hungry predator wrapped in violence - fast and brutal. 

Yoongi swore to himself and followed through the parallel service hall, hacking the security doors as he ran. "Echo, cut him off-" he panted out, pushing past yet another evacuation exit.

"Route projected," the AI informed calmly. "Take the left turn."

Yoongi complied, turning left and running past a shortcut - a paid lounge. He burst through the side doors, and the broker bumped straight into him. They both went down with curses and pained groans. Yoongi, however, recovered quickly, and before Daejin could even raise his weapon, Min drove an electrified palm into his throat. 

The man dropped, convulsing, Yoongi's deadly half-pam glove wrapping around his windpipe like a constrictor.

Seconds later, Jeongguk skidded around the corner, eyes wide and breath uneven. He stopped dead in his tracks and just stared for a few moments at the unconscious broker.

In the meantime, Yoongi dusted off his cropped jacket and adjusted the brooch, just for the show of it. "Looks like you need to work on your efficiency, Jeon Jeongguk," he smirked smugly.

The biker blinked slowly, then barked out a short laugh. "You're so fucking hot when you're violent," he shook his head in exaggerated disbelief just before crouching next to the body to tie the man's limbs with zip ties.

Yoongi got up and peeked out from behind the corner, making sure that they had enough time. "Don't say that ever again. Definitely not in public."

"No, I can say it whenever I want," Jeongguk tightened one zip tie over another around the broker's limp wrists before searching him to get rid of all possible weapons. "Boyfriend privileges."

"Leave your bullshit for later," Yoongi rolled his eyes despite the pink hue that mysteriously appeared over his cheeks. "We need to split up and meet up at the spot."

Jeongguk made a pouting face like a hurt puppy, but seeing how little time they had, he quickly nodded along, throwing Daejin's gun and pocket knife aside before lifting the man's unconscious body up and over his shoulder. "Take the longer route, I'll take the shorter one."

Yoongi turned, unimpressed. Of course, he was to take the longer route. Jeongguk considered it safer. Always have. "Stop doing that."

But Jeongguk was already on his way, jogging backwards in the general direction of the east exit. "I love you!" he called out.

Yoongi blinked, then jumped at the sudden sound of a gunshot that definitely came from the ballroom. "Echo, estimate longer route prognosis," he mumbled, crouching a bit as he headed west. "... And tell the child I love him too."

"Already processing," Echo hummed in Yoongi's ear. It was time to get the fuck out of there.

About forty minutes later, Jeongguk made it to Yoongi's chosen location. An abandoned parking structure on the very outskirts of the trade district.

The rain had persisted, breaking the surrounding turf down into an unpleasant, muddy swamp. Jeongguk dragged the man through it without mercy, enjoying the half-choked protests and the way sticky mud clung to the man's no doubt expensive clothes.

The biker's fingers fisted in the back of Daejin's collar as he yanked him forward. "Walk, motherfucker."

"I-I am walking-" Dae whined, mud splashing over his mouth as he once again landed in a muddy puddle. He still seemed somewhat dazed, a little confused as to what had happened to him.

Jeongguk pulled him up using sheer force and then shoved him forward again, snickering under his breath. "Then do it better."

Concrete open to the city air greeted them as they finally made it out of the mud and onto the cracking driveway. Rain blew between support pillars, overhead lights flickered as they struggled against the fading storm, buzzing faintly now and then. It was a forgotten skeleton, where no police officer in Aetherfall would be brave enough to look for them.

Privacy without effort.

They climbed together onto the highest level of the parking, Jeongguk hurrying Daejin to go faster. Well, he definitely didn't want to arrive after Yoongi. He was the one responsible for delivering the cargo. If anyone should be waiting for anyone, it should be Daejin waiting for his justice.

Eventually, once they made it to the highest level, Jeongguk grabbed the broker by both his shoulders and shoved the man against the nearest car hood, hard. The impact knocked all the air out of Daejin's lungs, making him gasp for it like a fish out of the water.

Jeongguk didn't bother tying him to anything. The zip ties still sat relatively tight around his wrists, and he could definitely work with that; there was no need to waste time and effort.

With one hand planted at the back of the broker's neck, Jeongguk forced him down, cheek pressed to cold metal mercilessly. "Don't move," he mumbled casually, eyes scanning the horizon in search of Yoongi.

Min arrived a moment later, in no rush at all. He looked relaxed, an umbrella held loosely over his head like an afterthought, and still the rain didn't touch him. He stepped into the dim light of the floor as if he belonged there, flaws and all.

Unbothered, he closed the umbrella and set it aside by one of the pillars, then straightened and examined the scene in front of him.
Jeongguk holding a man down like rubbish, by his neck alone.
Daejin shaking, wide-eyed and utterly terrified, all covered in mud or some other kind of clay.
Yoon could never really get over Gguk's sadistic tendencies.

"Wow," he mumbled, slipping both hands into pockets as he approached. "This is messy."

In response, Jeongguk beamed with tongue pushing against the inner side of his cheek. "You love it."

Yoongi's eyes travelled down Jeongguk's face, stopping briefly at those pink lips stretched around the biker's bunny smile. "I tolerate it," he mumbled before folding his back slightly to Daejin's level of sight, then continued. "Kim Daejin. Mid-tier freelance data broker. Sloppy encryption habits."

Daejin's voice shook when he finally spoke up. "I-I don't know y-you people-"

Jeongguk pressed him down harder, nails digging into the man's skin like teeth. "It's pretty lame, lying like that."

Yoongi crouched, elbows propped up against his knees. "Let's save time," he grumbled. "You sold a flagged data packet to a Rebellion member by the name of Kim Namjoon about two months ago."

The following silence was filled with rain and Yoongi's intense gaze as he stared straight into Daejin's soul. Bone-chilling, even Jeongguk could admit that. 

"I sell a lot of-"

Yoongi cut in, not letting the man fully finish his sentence. "It was tagged with a ghost watermark. Military-grade obfuscation level over amateur civilian encryption," he reached out and mockingly wiped a tiny clod of mud away from Daejin's cheek. "And you don't have the skillset for that, I fear."

Daejin's breathing stuttered, and Yoongi noticed, sending him a smile that did not reach his eyes.

"Unfortunately for you, that data packet helped the wrong people break into my home, Daejin," Yoon clicked his tongue, wiping the mud-covered finger clean against the broker's already half-ruined jacket. "Who?"

The question rang like a gunshot in the surrounding space, and despite that, Daejin remained quiet, trying his best to ignore Jeongguk's painful grip when it suddenly intensified.

"You're doing that thing where you think silence helps your case," Gguk whispered to the man's ear, immediately noticing goosebumps that rose atop it. "It doesn't."

Daejin clenched his jaw in a sudden, unexpected surge of courage. After all, Jeongguk had already classified him as a coward. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Gguk didn't outright hit him. He didn't need to. Instead, he shifted his grip, fingers of his free hand yanking at the man's jacket as he dragged him up just enough to slam him back down onto the hood. Metal rang under the impact, making the broker cry out like a child. The sound echoed off the concrete, breaking the fragile silence of the night.

"Okay- okay-" the man stumbled over his own words, face scrunching up in pain.

Yoongi didn't flinch. In fact, he didn't react in the slightest. Just watched, like a professional who's definitely seen and experienced worse.

Daejin panted, rain dripping from his hair and sliding down the hood of the car to eventually hit the damp ground beneath. 

"I-I didn't ask questions. J-just moved it," he rushed out. "Standard relay, nothing more."

Yoongi blinked slowly, filing the admission away. "From who," he asked, words clipped and cold.

Daejin hesitated, his eyes wandering from one corner of the empty parking lot to the other. "I don't-"

Jeongguk has had enough, apparently. He yanked Daejin up and away from the car. The man lost his footing and stumbled over his own legs, but Jeongguk did not stop. He kept pulling him towards the open edge of the level, even when Daejin's knees hit the rough concrete.

"This refreshing your memory?" he quirked one eyebrow, pulling the broker up by the torn fabric of his dress shirt, and then casually holding him by it at the very edge of the construction.

"JANE VORTEX!" He exclaimed like a man on fire, shaking hand wrapped around Jeongguk's wrist as if it were his very last hope. "JANE VORTEX! It was Jane Vortex! Please, don't let me go, fuck! Don't let go!"

Yoongi stood up, dusted his jacket off, and then approached them with both arms crossed over his chest. "Okay," Yoongi made a mental note of the name. "Where should I look for her?"

"She owns a restaurant! S-sleek High, downtown... I-I've got a business card inside my jacket," he panted out, suddenly real helpful.

Jeongguk looked over his shoulder at Min, and upon receiving a confirmation in the form of a short nod, he reached into the suit jacket and checked each pocket for a thin card, which he eventually found. "I got it," Jeongguk mumbled, reading the blurred letters from the already soaked piece of paper.

Yoongi exhaled slowly. "Okay, we're done."

Instantly, Jeongguk yanked Dae back inside, his body rolling over the floor as the biker crouched down to face him. "You should leave the city," he whispered, a crooked grin stretching over his face. "Tonight."

It was a threat dressed up as a suggestion. Warning under the cover of advice.

Daejin swallowed loudly and nodded his head furiously, grateful to be alive. 

"Good luck," Jeongguk added before he got up, stepped over the guy's wiggling body, and quickly joined Yoongi's already retreating form. 

They walked in silence for a bit, Yoon's umbrella folded and swung over his forearm. "Should have killed him," he mumbled.

Jeongguk smirked, finger tapping against the edge of the card. "I thought you said minimum casualties."

Yoongi rolled his eyes, comm pad already pulled out, checking the restaurant's location. "Echo, pull up all available information on the establishment and the owner of Sleek High."

"In the mood for a fancy dinner date?" The biker chuckled, eyes observing Yoongi's side profile as they walked.

"Mhmm, dunno," Yoongi turned the comm bad off and slipped it inside the back pocket of his pants. "Do they serve information there?"

The biker shrugged, eyes finally meeting those Yoon's, his scar casting a thin shadow over the eyebrow. "I guess we're about to find out," Gguk hummed as he intertwined his fingers with Yoongi's bony ones, squeezing gently.

And just like that, two lost souls could finally grow together, healing in their own time and learning from mutual pain. It was an odd reality that still left them with many questions, some that would go unanswered for a very long time.

Ahead of them, more names, more blood, and more people to hunt. Beyond all that, future life awaited, somewhere outside Aetherfall. Somewhere, they could finally find peace once justice is served.

THE END