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MULTIVERSE PROTECTION AGENCY (MPA) HEADQUARTERS - DIMENSION X
Soobin looks good —that’s all Yeonjun can think as he sits in this uncomfortable folding chair and half-listens to Kim Namjoon drone about timelines and variances and “the preservation of the multiverse.” It’s the same lecture he insists on giving before every mission brief and it lasts at least twenty minutes on a good day, forty if he’s feeling particularly verbose. Yeonjun could probably recite it in his sleep, so he has twenty to forty minutes to try not to stare at Choi Soobin, who looks good.
Very good.
He’s let his hair grow back out from that awful bowl cut he was sporting six months ago and now it’s swept off his forehead in gentle, silky waves. He’s wearing dark slacks and a black turtleneck that cloak him in an air of sophistication, contrasted by sneakers for modern flare and a long blue coat that probably sweeps dramatically around him when he walks and he bought to feel mysterious.
He chews on his already red, glossy bottom lip as he scribbles in the notebook perched on his crossed legs—brow furrowed in concentration as though he’s listening to the lecture and not doodling the same cartoonish rabbit over and over again, making its features more distorted and scary with each new iteration.
The dark circles under his eyes are probably from staying up too late gaming with Hueningkai and not because he was too restless to sleep. He seems fine, put together, not like he misses Yeonjun at all. Not like he’s been missing Yeonjun for one year, five months, and seventeen days.
Yeonjun glances down at himself, reassessing his own choice of armor. He didn’t know Soobin would be here today, otherwise he thinks he would have worn his new sequined-accented sweater that hangs artfully off his frame and sparkles in the right light and he would have paired it with the black skirt that highlights his long legs, maybe incorporated some heeled boots. He would have made sure he was stunning, made sure Soobin had to look at him.
Soobin used to look at him constantly, all hunger and worship, but Soobin hasn’t glanced at him once in the last fifteen minutes.
It stings.
He shifts in his seat, subtly adjusting the sit of his baggy, way-too-casual black shirt across his shoulders. The lecture is winding down, which means they’re about to get their actual mission assignment. Halfway through a sentence, Kim Namjoon pauses and blinks at them.
“Neither of you are paying attention, are you?” he sighs, rapping his long fingers on his little podium.
“No,” Yeonjun says. “It’s the same lecture every time, hyung.”
“It isn’t,” Namjoon insists.
“It is,” Soobin argues, but he looks sheepish, quickly closing his notebook to hide his doodles.
Namjoon sighs again—a defeated sound, a man accepting the fact that yes, he needs to vary his mission briefing material, and Soobin and Yeonjun probably aren’t the first people to tell him this.
“Fine,” he says, rubbing his temple above the wireframes of his glasses. “Here’s the short version: we’ve picked up a weird anomaly on our sensors but we can’t tell which strain it’s coming from. We just know that it involves some variation of the two of you. So you need to go find the source.”
“Us?” Yeonjun says in surprise. “Together?”
“Isn’t it dangerous for us to check on variances of ourselves?” Soobin asks.
“Yeah,” Yeonjun agrees, carefully not looking at Soobin. “Send one of the other teams. Kai and Taehyun, or Beomgyu and Jeongin.”
Panic twinges sharp in his gut, like a knife poking at the lining of his stomach. He hasn’t worked with Choi Soobin in one year, five months, and seventeen days. The last twenty minutes are the most time they’ve spent in proximity to each other since The Worst Day. His new partner, Wooyoung, is an old friend and loud and forceful and all the things that Choi Soobin wasn’t. He prefers it this way.
But Kim Namjoon is looking at them with terrible sympathy. “I’m sorry,” he says, confirming Yeonjun’s long-standing suspicion that gossip about The Worst Day has wound its way to all corners of the agency. “But it has to be the two of you. This anomaly is originating from a variant of yourselves. You might be the only ones who can stop it. You won’t be actually interacting with any of the other timelines. Just look in on them, observe, stay cloaked where you can. Report back what you find.”
Soobin closes his eyes. The line of his jaw remains a tense curve and Yeonjun always used to know what he was thinking. Now, all he has is speculation. Is Soobin angry about working with him? Does Soobin hate him still?
When Soobin reopens his eyes, they’re calm. His face relaxes—his professional mask sliding over his features.
“Yes, hyung.”
Namjoon nods. “I’ve sent you all the data we have on the anomaly. You can pick which strain to start with.”
“Yes, hyung,” Yeonjun says in his own professional voice. If Soobin is fine with this, then Yeonjun will be too.
Completely fine.
Aggressively fine.
Finally, Soobin turns to him, twisting in his chair. “I’ll analyze the data and pick a strain,” he says.
He’s the better analyst of the two of them, always has been, so Yeonjun makes his mouth smile and his head dip in agreement. “Sure.”
“Give me two hours,” Soobin says, rising. Yeonjun thinks he might have gotten taller somehow, or maybe it’s Yeonjun who shrunk. “I’ll come find you.”
“Okay,” Yeonjun manages to say and Soobin sweeps out the room—the coat fluttering dramatically behind him as predicted.
It does make him look mysterious.
Kim Namjoon gathers up his papers, still shooting Yeonjun sympathetic glances that grate against his skin. What do the rumors say, he wonders? Stupid Choi Yeonjun, blew up his own life? Look at him, throwing away everything good he had. Look at him, drifting through the corridors wearing too much beige, looking like a washed out ghost—as though he didn’t do this to himself.
“Take care, Yeonjun-ah,” is all that Namjoon says.
Yeonjun pries himself from the chair, wincing at the crick of protest in his back.
Two hours.
He could go down to the training rooms and practice some hand to hand. He could go to the little cafe just outside headquarters that makes the best Americano he’s ever tasted, even if the paint is constantly peeling off the walls and the barista is probably at least a century old. He could try to run his own analysis on the data—make himself useful.
In the end, he does two things:
- Goes home to change into better armor.
- Goes to find Beomgyu.
Fortunately, their friend group stayed intact after The Worst Day. No one chose sides, no one cut anyone else off. They just got more careful with their words, started making omissions about where they’d been or what they were doing.
“Oh, I was gaming,” Kai will say and purposefully leave out with Soobin.
“I made bulgogi, do you want some?” Taehyun will ask and decline to mention that he shared it with Soobin first.
It’s like a stupid, intricate dance they’re all involved in, but Choi Beomgyu refuses to keep to the same rhythm.
“I knew this would happen,” he says through a mouthful of pork in the communal dining hall that everyone uses when they’re too lazy to cook in their own apartments, which is almost always.
Next to him Jeongin sighs in disgust. Beomgyu elbows him and Jeongin elbows back, face softening into something more fond. They have an easy camaraderie that Yeonjun envies. He and Wooyoung are close, but it was easier with Soobin. Until it wasn’t.
“That we would work together again?” Yeonjun asks, arching an eyebrow.
Beomgyu nods, swallows noisily. Jeongin’s nose curls, but the fond smile doesn’t entirely disappear.
Yeonjun hasn’t seen Beomgyu in nearly a month and in that time he’s cut his hair much shorter and dyed it a reddish brown. It suits him, but almost everything does.
“It’s fate,” Beomgyu says. He thinks they’re both idiots who are making themselves miserable for no reason and he’s said so at least eighteen times in the last year. “And the agency’s not that big.”
Yeonjun shakes his head. He hates confiding in Beomgyu but it’s better than confiding in Taehyun, who will impart some wisdom that will make Yeonjun feel like the younger one, or Kai, who will offer no advice but intense and wonderful cuddling that will both sooth Yeonjun and make him feel worse.
Beomgyu has never pulled his punches.
So when Yeonjun says, “I don’t know how to do this,” he knows that Beomgyu will level him with an unimpressed look and say “it’s just Soobin” like Yeonjun is a moron.
“It’s never been just Soobin,” Yeonjun argues.
“Well now it is,” Beomgyu says, pointing his chopsticks at Yeonjun. “You reduced him to that. Don’t start making him into some boogeyman, hyung. You don’t get to do that either.”
“The break-up was mutual,” Yeonjun mutters—his most used line of defense in the last one year, five months, and seventeen days.
“Sure it was,” Beomgyu says with the same note of disbelief he’s always had. “So suck it up, hyung. Do this mission. Then go back to avoiding him. It’ll be fine.”
Yeonjun sighs, knowing that Beomgyu is right. He steals some of Beomgyu’s pork as a consolation, ignoring Beomgyu’s indignant squawk and attempt to stab him with his chopsticks. He finally turns his attention to the mission itself and feels a fresh twinge of apprehension—that knife cutting a few centimeters deeper.
An anomaly caused by them? Or targeting them?
And targeting them— together, a unit. Suggesting that in other universes they haven’t fractured. In other universes, they found a way to persevere. In other universes, they were smarter, braver, better.
That knowledge tastes sour on his tongue, like curdled milk.
Beomgyu looks at him, far too knowing, but all he does is grudgingly offer Yeonjun another bite of pork.
_ _
“I’ve run my analysis,” Soobin says exactly two hours later, that damned professional mask still firmly in place. “We should start with Strain 4.”
“Okay,” Yeonjun says and lets Soobin lead, like he so often used to.
_ _
STRAIN 4 - SEOUL, 2021
The gateway opens in an alley that smells like fermented kimchi and cigarettes. Soobin tapped a bunch of commands into his little tablet at lightning speed before stepping through, and now they’re both dressed in jeans, jackets, baseball caps, and facemasks, just like so many of the pedestrians passing by on the sidewalk at the mouth of the alley.
“We have to walk,” Soobin says. “This is as close as I could get us without causing any disturbances.”
Yeonjun loves walking through cities, cataloging the differences and similarities between strains, so he doesn’t mind. But he isn’t expecting to leave the alley and run into a giant digital billboard of himself. Well, himself, Soobin, Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Hueningkai. They’re all dressed in similar grunge outfits that make them look like rockstars and singing and dancing in some kind of abandoned, derelict warehouse with a wall of dirty windows and far too many speakers. TOMORROW X TOGETHER runs across the scene in bold letters. 0X1=LOVESONG (I KNOW I LOVE YOU), 31 May 2021.
“Holy shit,” Yeonjun says, jaw dropping open. “We’re an idol group?”
“Seems so,” Soobin says, squinting critically up at the giant version of himself dropping to his knees and singing like he’s had his heart ripped out.
Yeonjun whistles. They look good. Very good. He wonders if they’re successful. Judging from this billboard in the middle of Gangnam they probably are, but he also knows he’s not supposed to look up too much information about variants of himself and there’s a reason those rules are in place.
“Let’s go,” Soobin says, pulling his cap lower over his eyes.
Right, they’re famous here. Yeonjun mirrors him, hoping the facemasks and plain clothes will render them invisible, since their cloaking devices run on limited power and should be preserved for emergencies.
No one gives them a second glance as they swim upstream through the river of people all absorbed in their daily lives. It’s morning, rush hour, so the city is in transition: everyone moving from home to school and work and other appointments. Soobin consults a map on his little tablet—now disguised to look like a smartphone—and turns down one side street, then another. Yeonjun tucks his hands into the fabricated pockets of his jacket and focuses on keeping up with Soobin’s long strides.
“Here,” Soobin announces, stopping in front of a nondescript apartment building on an equally nondescript street. Its sleek, modern veneer suggests wealth, though—a stepping stone on the way to the dwellings of the truly rich in UN Village, Hannam, or Seongbuk-dong.
It definitely looks like their idol group is successful. Yeonjun experiences a strange mixture of relief and pride.
Soobin, meanwhile, just squares his shoulders like he’s preparing for a battle and marches right through the front doors. The apartment complex is fancy enough to have a concierge, who startles at the sight of them approaching.
“Soobin-nim,” she says. “You’re back?”
“Sorry,” Soobin says with a quick bow. “I forgot something. Had the manager take me back. Can you let us up? I also forgot my card.”
It’s a flimsy excuse but it’s also Soobin and he’s endearing in every universe. All it takes is a sheepish crinkle of his eyes above the mask and another bow for the concierge to let them past the gates and summon the elevator for them, pressing the button for their floor.
“Thank you,” Soobin says and gets a fond smile in return.
No wonder he became an idol in at least one universe. Yeonjun’s charm is a bit sharper, more calculated, and doesn't always get him as far, he thinks. But maybe that’s because Soobin also has no problems with letting people underestimate him.
The elevator spills them out onto a tiled hallway with lots of fake plants and artisanal wall sconces. Soobin consultes his tablet and takes a left, stopping in front of a door at the end. He punches in the code and slips inside, holding the door open for Yeonjun to follow.
The atmosphere is strange, tense, but Yeonjun knows that if he opens his mouth, he’ll just end up babbling so he presses his lips together and focuses on taking in the apartment around him. It’s immediately obvious that five young men barely out of their teens live here: a messy jumble of shoes at his feet, clothes flung over various surfaces, dirty dishes piled up in the sink, food sitting out on the counter.
“Wow, they’re messy,” Yeonjun says, poking a sweater that definitely needed to be washed several wears ago.
“They’re busy,” Soobin counters from the kitchen, peering at pictures and takeout menus pinned to the fridge. “And if my calculations are right, also twenty.”
“I don’t think I was ever this messy at twenty.” Yeonjun picks up a container of rice and wrinkles his nose at the strange smell. He decides a little kindness would be fine and puts it in the trash for them.
“You were,” Soobin says, but his tone is gentle.
Probably because at twenty, Yeonjun was traumatized from experiencing the end of his entire world and struggling to adjust to life in a city that existed in a timeless void, working for an organization whose agents casually jumped through universes and timelines like they were playing demented hopskotch. He had memory problems, weekly breakdowns, and one notable therapy session where he just screamed until he lost his voice—a little messiness was understandable.
Six years on, he looks back at his twenty-year-old self and feels both enormous sympathy and deep embarrassment.
“Well I at least did my dishes,” he huffs, not wanting to dwell. “And what are we looking for anyway?”
Soobin has his scanner out, but he’s not really using it. He shrugs now. “I think we’re supposed to just see if we sense anything off. It’s why they sent us instead of a different team.”
Right. Well Yeonjun’s always been much better at the intangible parts of this job than the math, spreadsheets, calculation, analyses, and paperwork. Soobin hates all of that stuff, too, but he’s adapted to it better than Yeonjun—though they still don’t talk about the time they found Soobin sobbing in the library over a computer terminal, trying to determine if a shared ice cream between two children was going to cause a strain destruction and so stressed out that he was collapsing like paper.
Yeonjun fed him, took him to bed, letting the computer run the projections on its own with Taehyun’s supervision. He curled around Soobin in the quiet dark of Soobin’s apartment and pressed his mouth to Soobin’s neck to feel Soobin’s pulse against his lips and fell in love.
Now, he ignores the deep, thrumming ache in his chest, beating like a second heart, and runs his hands along the apartment walls, tracing the edges of photographs and posters. He touches his own face rendered in grainy polaroid with his hair radiant pink and his arms wrapped around Soobin, their noses scrunched in laughter.
They seem happy here. Nothing feels off or wrong.
He’s crouching to examine a collection of albums on a small shelf in the living room—it looks like TOMORROW X TOGETHER is about to release their fifth one, good for them—when Soobin shouts from one of the bedrooms. Yeonjun surges to his feet, rushing to the source of the sound before his brain can fully catch up.
Soobin’s pressed against the wall of the bedroom that looks like it belongs to his counterpart, hand over his chest and eyes wide.
“Are you okay?” Yeonjun stops his own hand halfway to Soobin’s arm. He hasn’t touched Soobin in one year, five months, and seventeen days.
“I’m fine,” Soobin says and points to the floor. “He just startled me.”
Yeonjun glances down and jerks in surprise at the sight of a tiny creature scuttling across the hardwood. “Holy shit, what is that?”
“A hedgehog,” Soobin says. “TXT me has a pet hedgehog.”
Said hedgehog stops its scurrying and peers up at them. It looks demonic. Yeonjun scans it, just in case it happens to be their cosmic anomaly but all the readings come back normal.
“I think his name is Odi,” Soobin says, bending over the cluttered desk shoved in a corner of the room to thumb through a polaroid book. “That’s so cute.”
“He’s definitely not cute. He’s plotting something.”
Soobin looks at Odi with an expression that says he’s clearly contemplating trying to pick him up. Yeonjun gears up to stop him, certain that Odi will be able to tell that this isn’t his Soobin and raise all hell.
The front door opens.
Shit.
Yeonjun exchanges a wide-eyed glance with Soobin, turning to face the open doorway behind them. On the other side of it, Kang Taehyun regards them with a furrowed brow. His hair is silver and he’s missing the jagged scar that their Taehyun has running down his cheek to his jaw, but his large eyes and sharp nose are the same.
“Yeonjun hyung?” he says, then glances over Yeonjun’s shoulder. “Soobin hyung?” A glance back at the front door. “But you….?”
Yeonjun lurches forward, snapping his fingers in front of Taehyun’s face as he says “ sleep ” with magical suggestion layered into his voice. Taehyun’s eyes roll back in his head and he collapses unconscious into Yeonjun’s arms. Yeonjun hefts him into a bridal carry and takes him back to the front door.
“We should go,” Soobin says, hovering behind him.
“I know,” Yeonjun hisses, carefully setting Taehyun back on his feet and leaning him against the wall.
He’ll wake up in about twenty seconds, thinking he just stepped through the door and had a brief, dissociative moment. Seeing Yeonjun and Soobin in the apartment will feel like a strange dream—something he’ll brush aside as his imagination or some weird deja vu when he encounters his universe’s Soobin and Yeonjun again.
Even now, Yeonjun can hear footsteps in the hall and his own voice calling Taehyun’s name, laced with impatience.
“Let’s go,” Soobin says, beckoning to the blue gateway he’s already opened.
Yeonjun steps towards it. Something moves in the shadows at the end of the hall—a flicker of blue and green, a jolt of wrong trilling down Yeonjun’s spine. He stops mid stride, peering into the darkness in an attempt to get a better look.
“Did you see—”
The keypad on the front door beeps; Taehyun starts to stir, blinking; and Soobin grabs Yeonjun’s arm, hauling him through the gateway into—
STRAIN 57 - SPACESHIP ELYSIUM, 2077
—the shiny corridor of a spaceship. Yeonjun’s sneakers squeak loudly against the metal floor and as he stares at the white walls stretching out on either side of him, panic crashes into his ribcage like a sledgehammer.
This can’t be his strain, can’t be the Monarch where he spent the final weeks of his life before the Cataclysm caught up with them and the last hope for humanity perished in a maelstrom of fire, rock, and darkness. He died in a corridor just like this—white streaked with black ash, his blood running between his fingers, the stars visible through the hole in the ceiling above, the rasping rhythm of his oxygen mask loud in his ears, the knowledge burning in his chest that he couldn’t move, couldn’t save himself as everything began to go dark—
“Yeonjun!” Soobin’s fingers press into the sides of his face and Soobin’s voice echoes in his ears, low and urgent. “Hyung, look.” Soobin turns his head to a poster on the wall. “Look.”
Yeonjun blinks at the poster. It’s one of those minimalist retro designs that he thought only existed in movie and video game versions of space—a huge ship soaring through a blue sky and a beautiful, forested planet below. Bold font beseeches travelers to: SEE THE GALAXY! THE ELYSIUM WILL TAKE YOU ON A YEAR OF WONDER!
Oh. Space is gentle in this strain, it seems. Calm enough for tourism.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Yeonjun mumbles as his lungs start working again. He wheezes in another shaky breath. “A year of wonder?”
Soobin’s hands drop from his face and his mouth quirks in a faint smile. “It’s not the worst poster I’ve ever seen.”
Yeonjun shakes out his jacket, straightening. He doesn’t miss Soobin’s touch, not even a little. “So are we space tourists in this strain?”
Soobin taps a series of commands into his tablet. “No, we work for the space tourists.”
One final command and Yeonjun’s outfit changes again into a tight blue shirt and loose black pants. The shirt is comfortable but the pants are as shiny and ridiculous as the corridor they’re standing in. At least his outfit doesn’t have lace detailing on the sleeves like Soobin’s.
“I want to believe I look cool,” Yeonjun says, fighting a grimace. “But I don’t think I do.”
“You don’t,” Soobin says. “Let’s just look around.”
“This is a giant ship,” Yeonjun says, pulling his own tablet out of his pocket. “We should split up.”
He needs a minute, anyway—to fix his armor back on after that near panic attack and the sear of Soobin’s skin against his own.
Soobin’s frown conveys his true opinion on the idea, but he says, “Fine. Just go back to headquarters if you run into any trouble.”
“Yes, hyungnim,” Yeonjun says with a salute, voice a little sharper than he meant it to be.
Soobin’s frown deepens. Yeonjun refuses to feel guilty.
The ship is massive, like a floating city. Yeonjun passes an entire indoor park, too many shops and restaurants to count, three lounges, two pools, and four sports fields. Everywhere, passengers laugh, drink, and waltz by in dazzling outfits that look right out of the 1920s. It’s surreal, but Yeonjun’s seen far, far weirder during his time with the MPA.
Several times, he’s stopped by guests asking for directions, asking when the ship will be taking off again, asking if an issue with their room can be taken care of immediately. Yeonjun deflects as much as he can and probably sends several groups wandering off in the complete wrong direction. Oh well, everyone here seems to be dripping in wealth and probably deserves a minor inconvenience messing up their day.
He constantly consults his scanner, but again, nothing feels off or wrong and all the readings are fine.
“Yeonjun hyung!” A familiar voice shouts as he’s passing through an honest-to-gods cobblestone square lined with luxury fashion shops. He turns, startling at the sight of Choi Beomgyu approaching him, clad in the same uniform and sporting a manic glint in his eye.
Shit.
Yeonjun glances around for a potential escape route, but Beomgyu’s too fast, latching onto his arm just as he moves to duck into one of the shops.
“Oh no you don’t,” Beomgyu says, pulling him back. Why is this strain’s Beomgyu so strong? “You promised me details, hyung. Don’t think you can avoid me.”
“Details?” Yeonjun asks.
“About last night! You said you’d tell me how it—hey, wasn’t your hair red yesterday?”
“I dyed it,” Yeonjun lies, reaching up to touch the blond strands resting on his forehead. “Was getting tired of the red.”
“Hmm, well it doesn’t look terrible, I guess.”
“Thanks,” Yeonjun mutters. Choi Beomgyu is the same in every strain, it seems. “Now, I have to go to work so—”
“Nuh-uh.” Beomgyu yanks him to a stop again. “ Details.”
“About what?” Yeonjun asks, exasperated.
Beomgyu shakes him. “About your date. With Soobin?” He pauses, frowning. “Hyung, don’t tell me you chickened out.”
The sledgehammer is back, breaking Yeonjun’s ribs a second time, pushing them up into his lungs. Suddenly, he’s back at Headquarters and Beomgyu is grinning at him, mischief-eyed but uncharacteristically tender, and saying, see, Yeonjun hyung, I had a feeling about the two of you while Yeonjun blushes a terrible scarlet. He can close his eyes and see Soobin on an observation deck, lit by the glimmering trails of thousands of falling meteorites, smiling at him so wide that the dimples dig deep into his cheeks and his nose scrunches up. He can feel the press of Soobin’s mouth against his own and hear the deep rasp of Soobin’s voice in his ear whispering we should do this again.
“I didn’t chicken out,” he blurts to Beomgyu, though he has no idea if that’s true. He wants to believe that this strain’s Yeonjun has some guts. “It went fine.”
Beomgyu shakes him again. “Yah, that’s not details! You’ve been pining for months and I had to deal with it. You owe me.”
“Later,” Yeonjun says, finally extracting his arm from Beomgyu’s grip. “I’ll tell you all about it. Once our shift is over.”
Then it will be the other Yeonjun’s problem to deal with.
“Fine,” Beomgyu sighs, put upon. “But I’m holding you to that.” He points a threatening finger at Yeonjun’s face. “Even if I have to chain you to a chair.”
Yeonjun draws an X over his heart. “I’ll pay for your drink.”
Beomgyu whistles. “Wow. It really must have been a good date.”
“Yah, get lost. I have work to do.”
“Sure, Yeonjun- ah.”
Beomgyu darts away, laughing, as Yeonjun reaches out to smack him. Alone again, Yeonjun squeezes his eyes shut and tries to rub the ache out of his chest, tries to wrestle the memories back into their rickety box he’s been getting better about not opening. He needs to find his Soobin and get out of the strain.
Where are you? He types into his tablet.
No response. He pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a grounding breath, and starts retracing his steps. He’s halfway back when he spots Soobin heading towards him from the direction of the indoor park.
“Soobin-ah!” He calls, darting around a group of men in three piece suits and ridiculous hats who all look at him like he’s a bug disturbing their perfect afternoon. “ There you are.”
Soobin frowns at him. “You were looking for me? Why? We’re taking off in thirty minutes, you should be on the bridge. You’re on nav rotation this week, remember? And wait, did you dye your hair? You look good.”
Yeonjun’s heart spontaneously grows legs and takes a nosedive right into the pit of his stomach.
ABORT! His brain screams like a claxxon. ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!
He opens his mouth, not sure what’s going to come out, and blurts: “I just wanted to see you.”
Soobin’s harried expression smoothes out into something tender and affectionate and oh, once upon a time his own Soobin used to look at him just like this. Like he was special. Like he was cherished, wanted, loved.
The knife inside of him cuts deeper than it’s ever gone before—right to bone.
“It is good to see you,” Soobin murmurs. “I had a great time last night.”
He leans in before Yeonjun can stop him and Yeonjun shakes at the hot press of Soobin’s lips to his cheek.
“We should do it again,” Soobin says with a wink while Yeonjun blinks stinging eyes, desperate to keep from crying.
“We should,” he manages to get out. “Tomorrow?”
Soobin laughs. “Tomorrow,” he agrees. Another fleeting kiss, right on the corner of Yeonjun’s mouth. “Now get to the bridge. Before you’re late.”
Yeonjun salutes, just to get another laugh from Soobin, and then makes a show of turning in the direction of the bridge, pathetically grateful for the glowing signs pointing the way. As soon as he rounds the corner out of Soobin’s sight, he slumps against the wall and claps a hand over his mouth to stifle the sob trying to climb up his throat.
Gods, Elysium Yeonjun is gonna owe him big.
In his pocket, his little tablet buzzes.
I found our quarters, Soobin’s written. Nothing special. Heading back now.
Yeonjun wonders if Soobin found evidence of the date. If he ran into Elysium Yeonjun and had to weather being kissed too. He decides not to bring it up because he’ll end up asking something stupid like remember when we loved each other like this and Soobin’s moved on. Soobin will just look at him with pity and say that was a long time ago and the knife will cut even deeper—saw right through him.
Heading your way, he types back.
Fortunately, he doesn’t see anyone else he knows on the return journey but it still feels like someone is watching him, following him, hiding whenever he turns his head to look. By the time he arrives and sees Soobin waiting for him, he’s jumpy, unsettled. This corridor is too quiet and there is something dark humming beneath the too-bright lights.
“Do you feel anything weird?” He asks Soobin.
Soobin frowns. “No? Everything seems normal here.”
Yeonjun shakes his head. Maybe he’s just going crazy. Again. “Okay, let’s go. Next strain.”
Soobin looks like he wants to protest, but he closes his mouth without speaking and opens another blue gateway. Yeonjun steps through first this time, emerging onto—
STRAIN 22 - AMSTERDAM, 2025
—a beautiful, tree-lined street running parallel to a murky canal. Yeonjun turns in a slow circle, taking in the colorful row houses, the cyclists, the distant sound of a tram clacking along its track. Soobin brandishes his tablet again, changing their clothes back to what they were wearing at Headquarters. The black turtleneck somehow looks even better than it did before, perfectly flattering Soobin’s lanky frame, and Yeonjun hates it.
“What are we doing in Amsterdam?” He wonders, choosing to focus on that.
The last time he was in this city, it was to stop a magician who had somehow acquired actual powers and decided to use those powers to turn all the canals into lava. But this strain doesn’t look like it’s gone off the rails, won’t need trimming or redirecting or resetting, and he tugs the sleeves of his sweater over his hands, wishing that Soobin had given him a coat to better combat the fall chill.
“I think we’re foreign exchange students here,” Soobin says, consulting the files on his tablet. “Or we’re just on a trip. But either way, we’re in college. Grad school, specifically.”
And together. Always, somehow, together.
“College. Fun.”
Even if his universe hadn’t been dying a terrible death, Yeonjun doubts he would have wanted to go to college. In every strain, it’s seemed mind-numbingly boring.
“Maybe we should actually check on our counterparts this time,” Soobin suggests. “Instead of just sort of wandering around.”
“Do we have enough energy for cloaking?” Yeonjun asks, fishing around in his pocket for the little circular device that will allow him to render himself invisible. It’s fully charged, which usually means that it will function for at least two hours.
“Mine’s fine,” Soobin confirms.
“Do you know where they are?”
Soobin holds up his tablet-phone, showing off a map with a little pulsing dot a few blocks away.
“That’s terrifying,” Yeonjun says.
Really there is a lot about the MPA that’s terrifying and they all just choose not to dwell on it because a) they want to preserve what’s left of their sanity, b) there is always way too much weird shit going on, and c) the agency did allow all of them a second chance at life.
Soobin shrugs. “It’s useful for now.”
Yeonjun can’t argue with that. “Lead the way,” he says.
Soobin starts down the street, then pauses, looking at Yeonjun with a critical eye. Yeonjun swallows and glances down at himself. Is something wrong with his outfit?
“What?” he asks—more defensive than he means to be.
Soobin taps on his phone again. Yeonjun startles as a coat materializes over his shoulders, spilling down his back and sides. It’s a carbon copy of one of his favorites: black and sleek but baggy enough to be comfortable. His heart flips over, but he tells it that this doesn’t mean anything. Soobin is just being Soobin: considerate, professionally polite—the unofficial leader of their little group, always looking out for them in his own quiet ways.
“Thanks,” he still murmurs.
Soobin nods, all business again.
The map leads them down a handful of small, winding streets, deeper into the city. Soobin stops in front of a bright, narrow red row house, perched in front of another canal. It looks right out of a postcard.
“We should cloak now,” Soobin says.
He checks their surroundings, but they’re alone on the street so he presses his little circular device to his neck. The air around him shimmers, like heat waves in the desert, and then he disappears from view. Yeonjun mirrors him, wincing at the weird, static sensation that prickles across his skin as the device activates, almost as if his appendages have fallen asleep. Soobin reappears once Yeonjun is completely shielded, shaking his hands out with a grimace on his face.
“I hate cloaking,” he mutters, then steps forward to examine the front door. “But I think I can replicate the key pretty easily.” He drops into a crouch and holds his phone up to the lock, scanning it.
Yeonjun drifts closer, waving his arms to get circulation going again. “These things should make us able to fade through walls at least.”
Soobin grunts in agreement. He’s so absorbed in his work, he doesn’t notice the sound of movement from inside the house. Yeonjun hears the telltale creak of feet against old hardwood and grabs the back of Soobin’s coat, hauling him backwards just as the door swings open and another Soobin bursts onto the street in an explosion of anxious motion.
This Soobin has reddish brown hair that’s long enough to nearly cover his ears and he pushes it back from his forehead with both hands, sighing. He’s dressed in a white suit with a beautiful purple flower pinned to one of the lapels and he looks about their age, maybe a little younger—handsome face drawn taut by distress.
Yeonjun scrambles out of the way, still dragging his Soobin, as Amsterdam Soobin paces in a short line along the sidewalk in front of the house. Ten steps, turn, ten steps, turn.
The door opens again and this time another Yeonjun appears—black hair, also dressed in white, but a lacy skirt and loose, gauzy top that he’s hastily thrown a bright pink sweater over. It’s weird actually seeing a variant of himself as a fully realized human and not a pristine face on billboards and photographs. From this close, he can make out the bags under the other Yeonjun’s eyes that he hasn’t fully managed to erase with concealer; the shimmery smear of his eyeshadow; the spot on his lower lip that’s been worried by teeth.
“Soobin-ah,” he says and their voices are the same. Yeonjun’s said Soobin’s name just like this so many times before: affectionate, firm, and nervous all at once. “Jagi, are you okay?”
“Sorry, hyung,” Soobin says, sighing again—a punch of air. “I just needed to get some air or I was going to punch Beomgyu.”
That makes Yeonjun laugh and his shoulders relax. “I can’t blame you.”
“I don’t know why we let him help organize any of this.”
“He didn’t really give us a choice.”
Soobin shakes his head, pushes his bangs off his forehead again. It seems like an instinctive gesture. “Are you sure it’s not too late to elope?”
Oh. Oh.
Next to him, Yeonjun’s Soobin sucks in a sharp breath of realization. Yeonjun curls trembling fingers into Soobin’s sleeve and doesn’t dare look at him. He can’t see whatever expression might be on Soobin’s face, because if it’s anger then he’ll crumble to pieces right here in the street.
His counterpart laughs and floats over to cup Amsterdam Soobin’s face. He looks so in love that it’s sickening, stroking his thumbs across the bones of Soobin’s cheeks. “Sorry, but no. We have to be at the courthouse in like thirty minutes.”
“That’s plenty of time,” Soobin protests.
“Our friends will never forgive us.”
“I don’t care.”
“And I want witnesses. I want to show off. So bear with me for one day?”
Soobin’s big hands come up to cover Yeonjun’s. He looks disgustingly in love too. This is terrible. Yeonjun wants to melt into the cobblestones and become one with the dirt and sediment. Next to him, Soobin is doing an amazing impersonation of a statue. He might not even be breathing, but again, Yeonjun isn’t about to check.
“Of course,” Soobin says. “I’m just being whiny. I want to show off too.” A pause. “Jagiya.”
Yeonjun grins, blinding. It’s so strange, watching his own face, seeing from the outside what he looks like when he’s this happy.
“Good.” He pulls Soobin down into a kiss and Yeonjun’s Soobin makes another low sound like he’s been shot clean through. “Then put up with Beomgyu for a few more hours and we’ll be married and have the entire apartment to ourselves.”
“Thank god,” Soobin says. “I won’t murder Beomgyu, then. Maybe.”
“We can push him in a canal after the ceremony.”
And there are Soobin’s dimples. Yeonjun almost forgot what they looked like. “Deal.”
Then the two of them just stand there, staring at each other like idiots with dumb smiles on their faces.
“You look amazing,” Amsterdam Yeonjun says after an excruciating eternity during which Yeonjun contemplates pushing them into the canal or just sprinting away and not stopping until he’s found a strain where he never met Choi Soobin at all.
“So do you,” Soobin says, hands slipping down to brush the fabric of the skirt, to curl around Yeonjun’s waist. “This is really happening.”
“Finally,” Yeonjun says, years of a relationship contained in his voice.
“Finally,” Soobin echoes with the same joy, the same wonder, the same relief.
The door bangs open again and Kai stumbles outside, glancing around frantically. He’s dressed in a lavender suit, hair all fluffy, eyes huge. “There you are!” He exclaims when he sees them.
“We were just taking a breather,” Yeonjun protests.
Kai takes his hand. “Hyung,” he says with great sympathy but also urgency, “we don’t have time for a breather. We have to leave in like fifteen minutes and we haven’t done Soobin hyung’s makeup yet. Everyone is climbing the walls.”
Yeonjun grimaces. “Shit.”
Kai reaches for Soobin with his free hand, drawing him in too. “So please come back inside. Taehyun and I can’t contain Beomgyu hyung any longer.”
As though he heard, the second-story window slides open and Beomgyu sticks his head out. “Yah! Stop being sappy idiots and get up here! We have to take pictures too!”
“We’re coming!” Yeonjun shouts back.
Taehyun’s head appears beside Beomgyu’s. “We have thirteen minutes,” he says and he sounds calm but his eyes have a manic, stressed sheen to them.
“We’re coming, we’re coming,” Soobin says, letting Kai drag them to the door. “Weddings are so stressful.”
“But worth it,” Kai says, squeezing his hand.
“Yeah,” Soobin murmurs, voice softening. They reach the threshold of the house. He glances at Yeonjun—all love again, and Yeonjun radiates it right back at him. “So worth it.”
The door closes. The window shuts. Soobin wrenches his arm free from Yeonjun’s grip and stalks away without looking back.
“Let’s go,” he says, terse. Furious. “I’ve seen enough.”
Yeonjun sways, telling himself not to break. Then he feels it: that hum in the air, that whisper of darkness, that chill of wrong wrong wrong running down his spine. It draws his gaze to the canal, to the shadows beneath a bridge a few meters away and the pair of mismatched eyes looking back at him—luminous blue and green.
He wants to tell Soobin but Soobin has already opened a gateway, leaving Yeonjun no choice but to follow him through to—
STRAIN 105 - THE DYING PLANET SOLARUS, 2148
—a city in chaos. Ash and smoke stings Yeonjun’s eyes, coats his tongue and throat, and the ground beneath his feet rumbles like a living thing. He coughs, pressing a hand to a nearby building to anchor himself as he struggles to get his bearings. People run past, swarming down the street in a roiling, screaming mass. The bright flame of fires dots the black night and overhead it sounds as though the sky itself is being torn open.
Yeonjun cranes his head up and gasps at the giant, crumbling moon blotting out the stars. Pieces of it hurtle through the atmosphere, slamming into the earth with a deafening crash. More buildings crumble, people shriek, and Soobin’s hand finds his arm.
“What the fuck is this!” Yeonjun shouts above the din. They’re still cloaked, but it can’t protect them from the wrath of their environment and Soobin’s face is streaked with soot, expression impossible to read beneath the grime.
“Solarus!” He shouts, as though that really explains anything. “The end of it!”
Another building explodes nearby and Yeonjun throws his arms over his head, crouching low to the ground as the street bucks beneath his feet. “Why the fuck did you bring us here!”
“It’s where the trail led!” Soobin insists. “We’ll be fast!”
“You’re insane!”
“Come on!”
Soobin heads deeper into the city, towards the heart of the chaos and death, and for a moment Yeonjun considers abandoning him to his madness. Only for a couple seconds, though, because it’s Soobin and Yeonjun will follow him into a hundred apocalypses. He jogs to catch up, trying to take in more of surroundings.
This was a beautiful city before the moon decided to crash into it—all gothic architecture, intricate spired roofs, delicately carved stone exteriors, and gardens that were probably once peaceful but are now ablaze. The crowd seethes around them as people try to find shelter, anywhere that might save them. As they cry and shout and fight against an inevitable end.
A building topples up the street, kicking up a maelstrom of dust, and Yeonjun skids to a stop, throwing his arm up to protect his face from the ensuing explosion of gas lines erupting. His cloak flickers, unable to handle so much atmospheric input, so he pulls the device from his neck and stuffs it back into his pocket.
Someone who isn’t Soobin grabs his shoulder, trying to shove him aside. He shakes them off, hooking his foot around the man’s calf and wrenching him to the ground with one swift, powerful motion. Someone else slams into his back, yelling in terror, and Yeonjun elbows them away, staggering out from the worst of the crushing throng of people.
Fuck. Where the fuck is Soobin? Is he still cloaked?
Blinking against the sting of smoke in his eyes, Yeonjun frantically digs his tablet out of his pocket and turns on the tracking for their alternate selves. Two blue dots appear, even deeper into the city. Yeonjun coughs on an ash-filled inhale and forces himself into a run again, hoping that Soobin will be heading in the same direction and nothing happens along the way because he can’t lose Soobin like this, he won’t.
He ducks through the shattered remnants of a library, dodging both falling debris and fleeing pedestrians, and weaves down a rubble-strewn alley that leads him back to a bigger thoroughfare. The shattering moon looms above them like a vengeful god, larger and larger pieces breaking off to strike the planet, and the earth shudders beneath him again as the crust shifts from the gravitational force.
But the blue dots are closer now, he’s almost there.
He drops into a crouch to worm his way through more debris and crushed buildings, narrowly avoiding a sparking, severed power line. His sweater tears against a jutting piece of metal, destroying one sleeve and opening a jagged line along the side. He winces as the metal scrapes his skin, too, but adrenaline is coursing through him so strongly that he barely feels the pain.
His brain is a frantic mantra of Soobin, Soobin, Soobin.
The street he emerges onto is decimated, no buildings left intact and a smoldering crater punched right through the middle. At the edge of the crater, Yeonjun sees Soobin’s tall, willowy silhouette, and he forces his aching body into a sprint again.
“Soobin-ah!” His voice gets lost beneath the continuous thunder of explosions, of the planet itself beginning to break apart, and the distant, approaching roar of the moon. Soobin doesn’t turn around and he doesn’t react when Yeonjun grabs his shoulder.
Yeonjun follows his gaze into the crater and oh. This strain’s Yeonjun lies at the bottom, trapped beneath chunks of mortar and stone, and this strain’s Soobin kneels at his side, grasping his hand. They’re both covered in blood and dirt and Soobin is clearly trying to stay calm while Yeonjun’s life slips away.
Yeonjun can’t hear them either, but he can read their lips. Can see, through the haze of smoke, his counterpart turn his head and say: you have to leave me. Solarus Soobin shakes his head frantically, saying no, no, no in response as he tightens his grip on Yeonjun’s hand, pressing it to his forehead. His shoulders bend with grief, hitch with sobs, and suddenly Yeonjun is back on the Monarch, bleeding out in an empty hallway.
He would have liked someone to hold his hand as he died. He never would have wanted it to be Soobin.
“We have to help them,” his own Soobin rasps. “They’re going to die.” His gaze darts around, frantically searching for a way into the crater.
Soobin doesn’t remember his own death, not like Yeonjun does. He said once that he doesn’t even remember the last couple weeks of his original life. He woke up with a blank slate, memories erased by the trauma, and so his heart bleeds more easily—and so Yeonjun forces himself to grab Soobin’s arm and pull him back.
“Soobin-ah,” he says, aching. “They’re already dead.”
“No,” Soobin snarls, trying to wrench his arm free.
In the crater, Solarus Yeonjun’s hand goes limp in Solarus Soobin’s grip and Solarus Soobin screams like his heart has been ripped right out of him. Yeonjun tries to tune it out, even though it pierces his skull like a bullet, ringing through his ears.
He has to get his own Soobin out of here before they die too.
“There’s nothing we can do!” he shouts, dragging Soobin further away from the crater where Solarus Soobin has laid down, curling himself protectively around Yeonjun’s body to wait for his own end. “We have to go now!”
Soobin digs his heels in. “There must be something we can do! We have to—” he glances back towards the crater and stops, sucking in a stunned, watery breath.
Yeonjun turns in the same direction, still clutching Soobin’s torn jacket sleeve, and in the shadows are the same mismatched eyes from Amsterdam, staring at them. Only this time they’re accompanied by a sharp-toothed, cheshire grin.
“What—” Soobin starts to say, but in the sky above them, another giant moon chunk pierces the atmosphere and slams right into the center of the city.
The whole planet rocks from the impact, nearly throwing Yeonjun off his feet, and the resulting shockwave kicks up a new maelstrom of dust, debris, and fire that hurtles towards them in a towering, terrifying wall.
“Fuck,” Yeonjun gasps, wrenching his tablet out of his pocket and summoning a gateway.
“Hyung!” Soobin shouts as the wall gets closer, only a few meters away now and closing so fast, too fast, come on… .
The blue gateway shimmers into existence. Yeonjun practically throws Soobin through it and jumps in after—the fire searing the back of his shirt and neck, singing the tips of his hair as he crashes to his hands and knees on—
YEONJUN’S APARTMENT - DIMENSION X
—the floor of his own apartment, coughing and wheezing and gasping for breath. Next to him, Soobin rolls onto his back with a groan, and he’s alive. They’re both alive. Holy shit.
They should probably talk about what just happened—the eyes, the smile, witnessing their counterparts dying horrible, untimely deaths—but Yeonjun’s head is a mess and his heart is even worse, and before he can remind himself why this is a terrible idea, he’s crawling over and kissing Soobin.
It's an awful kiss—they both taste like ash and blood, still shaking against each other—but it’s still Soobin’s mouth opening under his, and Soobin’s fingers coming up to scrape against his back, and gods Yeonjun has missed him for one year, five months, and seven days. Or maybe it’s been longer than that, time is such a funny thing. Yeonjun feels like he’s missed Soobin for decades, for centuries—so who knows how long it’s actually been? All that matters is Soobin groaning against him now, pulling him closer instead of shoving him away.
Yeonjun pushes his tongue into Soobin’s mouth and his hands into Soobin’s grime-streaked hair, throwing a leg over Soobin’s so that he can straddle him properly. Soobin’s fingers slide down his back to his waist, his hips, then his thighs, pressing down hard enough to bruise. Yeonjun hopes that he does bruise, that he’ll have marks on his skin to prove that this is real—a reminder he can carry for days.
He grinds against Soobin as the kiss deepens. He would feel pathetic over how fast he’s getting hard if he couldn’t feel Soobin’s own erection through the layers of their clothing. Maybe, just maybe, Soobin has missed him too. Or at least missed this.
He shifts his mouth so that he can run his lips along Soobin’s jaw and suck a trail of marks into the column of his throat. Soobin tips his head back to give him better access, gasping a gorgeous symphony to the ceiling. The wood floor of the living room is hard against Yeonjun’s knees and they’re probably getting dirt all over, dangerously close to staining the rug, but Yeonjun doesn’t want to stop.
He wants Soobin to fuck him right here, before his brain comes back online.
But Soobin pushes him back, murmuring, “wait, wait.” Yeonjun’s heart sinks.
“We should rinse off at least, right?” Soobin continues. It’s hard to see his expression in the darkened apartment but he sounds a little out of it—in that hazy space Yeonjun used to be able to push him to with the right words, the right touches. “‘M filthy.”
At least he doesn’t want to stop. Yeonjun shudders in relief and leans down to rest his forehead against Soobin’s. “Yeah,” he breathes. “Come on.”
They help each other stand up and Yeonjun leads Soobin by the hand to the small hallway off the living room and into the equally cramped bathroom. He doesn’t turn on the overhead light, not wanting to break this strange atmosphere. Instead, they get undressed by the dim flow of the nightlight plugged into the wall outlet. Yeonjun’s shower gives a protesting squeal as it turns on, then groans again before switching to warm water.
They have to press up against each other to both fit in the stall, but this is something they’ve done dozens of times. Soobin sleep-soft and clingy, running his hands all over Yeonjun’s body while Yeonjun tried to wash his hair.
They don’t quite look at each other now, stuck in an awkward, shuffling dance as they take turns under the showerhead scrubbing the grime from their hair. Soobin still touches him, at least—careful fingers tracing the scrape on his side from Solarus, getting rougher as they slide down his hips to curl around his cock.
Yeonjun swallows a curse at the first practiced stroke, bracing himself against the wall to counteract his buckling knees, the way his legs turn to jelly from Soobin’s touch. Soobin presses up against his back, scrapes teeth across his shoulder, and rubs a thumb over Yeonjun’s slit—digs in just enough to make Yeonjun hiccup out a quiet fuck. He’s barely touched himself in the last year, only had two unsatisfying flings beyond that, and nothing has compared to Soobin. This just proves that nothing ever will because he’s already pathetically overwhelmed, just from a few pumps of his cock and Soobin sucking a mark against the underside of his jaw.
“We should—” he tries then has to stop to gasp as Soobin’s hand dips further between his legs, touching along his inner thigh. “Bed. We should take this to bed. You should fuck me.”
The suggestion spills out before he can stop it and Soobin pauses. “Yeah?” he asks, sounding surprised and oh is that too much? Is Yeonjun being too needy?
“Yeah,” he says, in spite of the gnawing insecurity. “If you want.”
If Soobin doesn’t want, he’ll offer his mouth instead. He’ll gladly get on his knees for Soobin right here in the bathroom, just to keep him a little longer, just to touch him a little more.
“Bed,” Soobin agrees, reaching past Yeonjun to turn off the shower.
Yeonjun tries not to sob in relief. Instead he focuses on getting them both haphazardly dried off with the one good towel that he owns and dragging Soobin into the small, warm cocoon of his bedroom. Soobin still looks incredible spread out on his sheets—wet hair clinging to his forehead and long limbs taking up too much space. Yeonjun wants to kiss every centimeter of him, from his sharp collarbones to the sinewy muscles of his biceps to the soft plane of his stomach to the knobby caps of his knees. He wants to pinch his dark nipples and get a hand around the impressive girth of his cock until he’s moaning—those breathy, quiet sounds that he can never contain, no matter how much he tries to muffle himself.
“Stop staring,” Soobin mutters defensively, snapping Yeonjun out of his lust-filled daze. He draws his legs up, starting to close them, and Yeonjun grabs his knees to stop him.
“Sorry,” he says, rubbing down Soobin’s thighs in soothing strokes. The knife twists at the reminder that he doesn’t have the same right to look anymore, to take his time. He swallows down the you’re beautiful that’s on the tip of his tongue and pushes Soobin’s legs open further instead.
Soobin makes a questioning sound that trails into a low groan when Yeonjun fits his mouth over the head of Soobin’s cock. He whimpers at the tang of precum on his tongue, at the stretch in his jaw as he carefully slides lower. It’s been so long. Soobin’s thighs twitch on either side of his head and he feels the duvet shift beneath him as Soobin grabs it.
Yeonjun wants Soobin to fuck his throat but he settles for fumbling until he finds Soobin’s hand and putting it on his head—a clear invitation to pull his hair.
“Shit,” Soobin breathes and sinks his fingers in, tugging sharply. Yeonjun moans around Soobin’s cock and opens his mouth wider, sliding down, down, down until he can feel Soobin slip into his throat and his eyes water.
He holds there until his gag reflex becomes too much and he needs to come up for air. He hiccups and pants, glancing up to see Soobin staring back at him with wide-eyes and flushed cheeks, chest heaving from the effort of holding himself still.
Do you want more? Yeonjun wants to ask. I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll be better for you.
But he just takes Soobin back in again and closes his eyes, focusing on bobbing his head, of the rhythmic, perfect slide of Soobin’s cock in his mouth, the ache at the corners of his lips, the twinge along his jaw, and the wet mess of spit and precum smeared up towards his cheeks. He must look like a wreck, he thinks—all that carefully constructed armor gone.
It’s too quiet. They used to talk all the time during sex, because Soobin was surprisingly brazen once he got over his initial shyness and he loved to fluster Yeonjun into a giggling, helpless mess. Now he’s just tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, swallowing most of his sounds. It hurts, it makes Yeonjun desperate to push further, take more, break down all of Soobin’s walls.
But Soobin rasps “stop” when Yeonjun tries to deepthroat him again—voice still smoke-rough. “I’ll come.”
Right. Soobin is going to fuck him.
Yeonjun pulls off again with an embarrassing cough, realizing that giving a blowjob after so much smoke inhalation was probably a terrible idea.
“Supplies are in the drawer,” he says through a second bout of coughing, gesturing to the nightstand while also trying to wipe his face.
Soobin hesitates, then reaches for him first, rubbing his back and helping get some of the mess off his face—concern pinching his mouth. It’s horrifically embarrassing and Yeonjun pulls away, gesturing again to the nightstand. Soobin’s expression shutters, but he knows exactly which drawer Yeonjun means and extracts the lube and a packet of condoms that Yeonjun purchased the last time he and Soobin had sex and hasn’t looked at since.
Yeonjun turns onto his back, wriggling towards the middle of the bed. Soobin presses a hand to his stomach. “Wait,” he says, not quite meeting Yeonjun’s eyes. “Not like this.”
“Oh,” Yeonjun swallows. “How?”
Soobin slides an arm under him, levering him up, and turns him so that he’s on his hands and knees facing the headboard. His heart gives an awful lurch, spreading an ache down his chest all the way to his stomach. Soobin—who used to hold him close and press their foreheads together, grinning against his cheek—doesn’t want to look at his face while they fuck.
It’s fine, Yeonjun tells himself, stubbornly blinking away the sudden sting of tears. He’s fine. Choi Soobin isn’t going to see him break.
“C’mon,” he says, relieved that his voice is steady, “hurry up.”
Soobin huffs at him, but Yeonjun hears the click as Soobin uncaps the lube bottle and then a slick finger is pressing between his cheeks, rubbing over his hole. It’s good, a spark of heat in his gut, and he groans when the finger presses inside. Soobin’s fingers have always been long and perfect, filling him up so well, and Soobin still remembers the right way to curl them to brush Yeonjun's prostate, take him apart.
“Fuck,” Yeonjun gasps as Soobin slips a second finger in alongside the first and rubbing inside Yeonjun deep.
It’s a little too fast. The stretch burns, undercut by a sharp edge of pain, but Yeonjun revels in it. Just like the marks, he wants to feel this tomorrow. He wants the memory that it happened, that he got Soobin one more time, even if it wasn’t exactly in the way he hoped for.
He wishes he could see Soobin’s face. Is Soobin enjoying this? He’s so quiet, so withdrawn, when once he would have kissed down Yeonjun’s back, nipped playfully at his ear. But what did Yeonjun expect? This thing between them died one year or forever ago, and Yeonjun’s just clinging to a phantom, still too pathetically in love to be strong enough to resist.
A third finger joins the first two, opening him up even further, and it’s torture. His head is spinning and he’s so hard it’s starting to hurt—just from the constant, maddening press of Soobin’s fingers to that spot inside.
“I’m ready,” Yeonjun says when he starts to tip too close to the edge.
Soobin’s fingers retreat, creating a horrible empty feeling, but Yeonun focuses on the crinkle of Soobin opening the condom and then the weight of Soobin draped over his back, lining himself up. A loud moan punches out of him when Soobin begins to push in and the burn increases tenfold. Fuck he forgot, somehow, how big Soobin is.
The first time they did this, Soobin was so nervous about hurting him, going slow enough that Yeonjun wanted to scream, even as he was hopelessly endeared by Soobin’s attentiveness.
Soobin doesn’t go slow now, but he doesn’t rush, either. He sinks deeper with each steady thrust, until Yeonjun feels like he’s splitting right down the middle and all he can do is drop onto his elbows and tremble against the sheets.
“Say something,” he begs when Soobin’s finally fully seated, hips flush with Yeonjun’s ass, and panting into the sweaty skin of Yeonjun’s back. “Please.”
“You feel good,” Soobin groans. His voice sounds shaky, wet at the edges. “You feel so good.”
“You can move,” Yeonjun hiccups. “Please move.”
Soobin fucks him relenteless—hands brutal on his waist, hips snapping into him over and over again until he feels cracked along all of his seams, an open wound. It’s too much, it’s everything. And when Soobin angles just right to hit his prostate, he nearly shouts, shoving his face into the mattress to hide the sound.
It only takes a few more thrusts for overwhelm to crash into him with the force of a tidal wave, and fuck, he’s not going to last, not even going to need a hand on his cock.
“Soobin,” he whines, unable to articulate anything else, “Soobin.”
Soobin’s breathing changes, an indicator that he’s close, too, and he presses his forehead between Yeonjun’s shoulder blades, wrapping an arm tight around Yeojun’s waist as he thrusts once more then goes still, spilling into the condom. Yeonjun can feel the heat of his cock even through the barrier of the rubber, and it’s all he needs to come messy on the sheets, half-sobbing through his orgasm.
The sound of their mingled, shuddering breaths echoes loud in the apartment as they come down from the high of their orgasm. Soobin makes a faint sniffling noise, still draped over Yeonjun, and Yeonjun’s back feels wet, though he can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears. Soobin pulls away before he can shift to look at him, carefully slipping his cock free.
Yeonjun presses his face back to the bed, shivering through the sensation of his hole clenching around nothing and the emptiness gnawing at his gut again.
Come back, he thinks nonsensically, stay inside me forever.
He desperately tries to build his walls back up while Soobin disposes of the condom and pads to the bathroom to get a washcloth. He thinks his mask is mostly in place by the time the bed dips with Soobin’s weight again, allowing him to sit up and take the cloth from Soobin’s outstretched hand.
Soobin looks washed out in the city light filtering through the windows, eyes hooded by shadow. He’s got his mask on, too, and Yeonjun has no idea what he might be thinking. He wants to claw it off Soobin’s face—get to the bloody truth underneath.
“I should go,” Soobin says at the same time Yeonjun blurts, “Stay the night.”
Soobin’s eyes widen again and Yeonjun decides to be stubborn. No backing down. He raises his chin in defiance and repeats, “Stay. Just the night.”
Soobin worries at his bottom lip with his teeth, but eventually he nods. “Okay,” he whispers. “Just the night.”
Together, they change the sheets and wash up. Yeonjun lends Soobin a pair of clean boxers, then collects their filthy, ruined clothes and shoves them into the empty laundry basket. They lay down side by side in the double bed—Soobin taking the left like he always used to—and the space between them might as well be an ocean instead of mere centimeters. But it’s Soobin who crosses the divide, rolling over to wrap his arms around Yeonjun, burying his face in Yeonjun’s neck.
Yeonjun’s heart twinges with stupid, pointless hope as he brings a trembling hand up to pet Soobin’s head.
Exhausted and lulled by Soobin’s breath on his skin, sleep pulls him under quickly, into oblivion.
_ _
His dreams are disjointed, terrifying things. He flickers through the different strains, cupping Soobin’s face in Amsterdam, kissing Soobin’s mouth on the Elysium, gripping Soobin’s bloodstained hands on Solarus as he feels his body start to slow, his lungs and heart shutting down. He gets stuck there, on Soobin’s face twisted into a rictus of grief and terror, and wakes with a sobbing, half-choked scream.
It takes a few precious minutes for the lingering haze of the nightmare to fade and his body to remember it can breathe, it isn’t dying again, but when he’s finally clear-headed he realizes that the bed is empty.
Soobin is gone.
Yeonjun squeezes his eyes shut, desperately listening for other sounds in the apartment. Maybe Soobin had to go to the bathroom or is making himself food. But everything is quiet, still, and Soobin’s side of the bed is cold, the covers drawn back up.
Soobin left.
It’s the final blow, the knife sawing through bone and sinew until it’s carved a hole all the way through him. Everyone is probably going to be able to see it now: the crater at his center that Choi Soobin created. Stupid. Pathetic.
How could you let yourself be reduced to this?
He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes hard enough that spirals burst across the darkness of his vision and grits his teeth against the rising sobs, determined not to cry. He won’t cry about this. He got Soobin for one more night and now it’s really, finally over. That’s all.
A knock sounds on his door, startling him. For half a second, he thinks it might be Soobin. Maybe he actually just went out for coffee since Yeonjun’s cupboards are embarrassingly empty. But the second set of raps is light and playful, distinctly Wooyoung.
Yeonjun sighs, extracting himself from the duvet. He’s still only wearing a pair of loose boxers but he can’t be bothered to find pants and a shirt so he settles for snatching his robe off the hook in the wardrobe and wrapping it around himself on his stumbling path to the front door. When he yanks it open, he nearly gets Wooyoung’s fist in his face—raised for a third round of knocking.
“Aish,” Wooyoung exclaims, dropping his arm. Then he does a long, terrible scan of Yeonjun from head to toe and his eyebrows disappear beneath his black bangs. “Jagi, you look terrible.”
Somehow, that’s what breaks the dam, turns the lock on the floodgates. All of Yeonjun’s earlier resolve evaporates and his chin wobbles, expression scrunching up as the tears come in a vicious torrent.
“Oh dear,” Wooyoung says as Yeonjun weeps in the doorway, leaning against the frame to keep himself upright. “Aish, darling.”
Wooyoung shoulders his way inside, closing the door behind him and kicking off his shoes. “Aigoo,” he murmurs, reaching up to pet Yeonjun’s wet cheeks. “It’s okay, just let it all out.”
Yeonjun shakes his head. This is so fucking embarrassing. He wants to go back to Solarus and let a moon meteorite crush him into oblivion, but he’s stuck here sobbing his guts out and unable to stop while Wooyoung turns himself into a human whirlwind, bustling Yeonjun into the kitchen. He shoves Yeonjun onto a stool at the breakfast bar, pets his tangled hair with a series of soothing noises, gives his shoulder a comforting bite through the robe, and disappears into the bedroom.
Yeonjun plants his elbows on the smooth granite countertop and keeps right on crying—snot everywhere, loud hiccups wracking his torso, overall horrific. At least Wooyoung won’t judge him. Tease him endlessly, but not judge him.
Wooyoung rematerializes with a box of tissues he must have unearthed from the depths of Yeonjun’s bathroom cabinets. He sets them pointedly on the counter in front of Yeonjun then turns his attention to the fridge, pulling it open.
He stands there for a minute, absorbing the bare shelves. “Yah! Choi Yeonjun, how are you feeding yourself?”
“Takeout,” Yeonjun hiccups, giving up on the last shreds of his dignity. “And instant ramen.”
This part of the city is very similar to 21st Century Seoul and there’s a great convenience store two blocks away, run by a kindly ahjumma who always gives him discounts and was born in the Three Kingdom’s Period. Yeonjun spends a shameful amount of money there every week instead of cooking like he always tells himself that he will.
“Fucking—” Wooyoung starts, then trails off with a shake of his head, probably deciding that Yeonjun is too pitiful to curse at right now. “Well you have eggs, at least. And two vegetables that I don’t think are rotten.”
“You don’t have to cook for me,” Yeonjun protests. It comes out garbled because he’s also put his hands over his face to hide the worst of his mess.
“Shut up,” Wooyoung says with great affection, flicking on the induction plate. “Finish crying.”
Yeonjun thinks he’s about done. He feels wrung out, dehydrated, and he’s given himself a headache.
Great.
He slumps forward onto the counter with a low groan, finally extracting some tissues to wipe his face and blow his nose. The granite is cool against his overheated cheek so he stays there, listening to the sizzle of vegetables and eggs as Wooyoung pushes them around an oil slick pan.
He’s mostly gotten his breathing under control by the time Wooyoung presents a misshapen omelet to him.
“Eat, jagiya,” Wooyoung says.
Yeonjun moans in protest. “Might throw up.”
Wooyoung pokes him hard in the arm. “Eat.”
“Hate you,” Yeonjun mutters, petulant, but he forces himself to sit up and take the chopsticks Wooyoung has also provided.
“Love you too,” Wooyoung says.
The first bite of egg is torture and Yeonjun has to swallow down a rush of bile. The second is fortunately easier and by the third, his stomach has stopped protesting and remembered that he’s hungry. The omelet is good—Wooyoung also managed to find gojuchang somewhere in his cupboards, and the spice clears out his stuffy sinuses. He cleans the plate, chugs the glass of water that Wooyoung hands him, and feels a little more human again, instead of a jumble of broken pieces.
“So you fucked Soobin?” Wooyoung asks when he sets the glass down.
Yeonjun frowns. “What makes you say that?”
Wooyoung levels him with a withering, unimpressed look—the same one that has been known to send junior agents running and make Park Seonghwa sigh with resigned exhaustion. “Jagi, don’t insult me.”
Yeonjun accepts defeat. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “We fucked. I asked him to stay. He did. Then he didn’t.”
And now it’s over. He needs to bury it for good. Figure out how to stop being so hopelessly in love.
“Junie,” Wooyoung sighs and Yeonjun curls in on himself defensively.
“I know, okay?” he snaps. “I know it was stupid.”
“I just think you should tell him that you’re still in love with him,” Wooyoung says.
Oh, Yeonjun can’t do that. Not after the Worst Day—Soobin standing in the middle of the kitchen where Wooyoung is now, rendered soft in the morning light and regarding Yeonjun with empty eyes. Not after the desperate olive branch of we can still be friends only to have Soobin pack up and disappear from his life like he was running away from an apocalypse; not after their slow death before that—a thousand cuts, smothering each other until Yeonjun finally said I don’t think we can do this anymore and Soobin nodded in awful agreement, didn’t offer a single word of protest. They ended with a whimper, not a bang, and somehow that was worse. Yeonjun doesn’t know how to come back from that.
How can you fix something if you still don’t really know how it broke?
“No,” he says to Wooyoung now. “It’s better this way.”
As soon as he manages to stitch himself back up, he’ll be fine. Everything will be fine and time—strange, unpredictable, impossible—will numb the heartbreak, smooth the jagged edges back down until Yeonjun looks whole again .
“You’re an idiot,” Wooyoung says. “But I’m not going to argue with you.”
“Thank you, darling,” Yeonjun says. Wooyoung has had to pick up far too many pieces of him in the last year and a half, but he’s never complained and Yeonjun is stupidly grateful to him for it.
Wooyoung comes around the counter to wrap his arms around Yeonjun, nuzzling his neck. “I love you, even though you’re a fool. Take today off? We’ll restock your fridge. It looks so sad.”
Yeonjun shakes his head. It sounds tempting but, “I can’t. This mission is important and I have to give a report, at least.” Convey what he saw, especially on Solarus.
Wooyoung sighs. “I knew you were going to say that.” He gives Yeonjun one more comforting squeeze, a kiss to the back of his head. “Fine, get dressed. I’ll come in with you.”
“You’re on leave,” Yeonjun protests.
“And I’m bored.” Wooyoung pulls away and makes a shooing motion. “Go on. Wear something nice. And wash your face, your eyes still look all red.”
Yeonjun sags off the stool, honestly glad to have someone to order him around. This way he can focus on getting himself dressed and washed up and not think about anything else. He pulls out the black skirt that he wishes he’d worn yesterday and a black top with sleeves long enough to fit over his hands, covering up the lingering scrapes and cuts from Solarus.
In the bathroom, he avoids his reflection, bending over the sink to splash water on his face. He’s too tired to bother with concealer so the redness and dark circles will have to naturally fade. Most people will probably be focused on the slash across his cheek and above his eye, anyway.
Wooyoung eyes him critically when he returns to the living room with his skin clean, hair brushed, and two painkillers working their way through his system.
“Do I pass?” he asks, turning in a slow circle. Hopefully he just looks tired and not like he slept with his ex whom he’s still in love with, then cried his guts out the morning after.
“Almost,” Wooyoung declares.
He darts into the bedroom. The sound of the closet banging open echoes through the apartment, followed by a string of muffle curses. Yeonjun feels a smile twitch across his lips in spite of everything—the storm of Jung Wooyoung is always a good distraction. It was Wooyoung who got him fantastically drunk the night after the Worst Day, helping him forget about Soobin for a whole six hours. And it was Wooyoung who rubbed his back while he cried and threw up the next morning, murmuring, it’ll get better, jagiya, I promise.
“Aha!” Wooyoung exclaims, returning with a pretty green sweater vest. “Here,” he says, helping Yeonjun into it. “A little color so you don’t look like the personification of Death itself.”
“I’m pretty sure Death is a lot taller,” Yeonjun mutters in protest, but the color does look nice.
“I wouldn’t know,” Wooyoung says. “I didn’t get a good look. And you’re practically a giant, you just keep forgetting.” To prove his point, he rocks up on his tiptoes and kisses Yeonjun affectionately on the cheek. “But come on, darling. Into battle.”
“Why couldn’t we have just dated?” Yeonjun complains as Wooyoung herds him toward the door.
“Please,” Wooyoung snorts. “We would have killed each other dead and you know it. We can’t flirt like this if we’re dating.”
Uncomplicated, teasing, skimming across the surface of a lake instead of diving into the depths. Wooyoung has a point—perhaps they both love too intensely to ever be in love with each other. But maybe, he thinks, there is a strain out there where they are, where they took the plunge together and didn’t drown. It’s one of the few comforting things about the multiverse: for every terrible strain, there is a happier, more peaceful one—an Amsterdam for every Solarus.
“Yah,” Wooyoung says, flicking his cheek. “Get out of your own head and put your shoes on. The boots.”
“Okay, okay,” Yeonjun swats him back and crouches to wiggle into the lace up boots that he’s always liked pairing with this skirt. “I’m ready for battle,” he declares.
It’s only half a lie. He still feels akin to a planet breaking apart inside but at least his armor’s repaired.
He can totally do this.
_ _
They take the train in, even though they have teleporters, because there is something relaxing about the ride through the city. Yeonjun loves watching it pass by in all of its sprawling, eclectic glory. It’s a reflection of all the people who have ended up here, snatched from their original strains to live out second lives either working for the MPA or keeping this strangle pocket dimension running smoothly. So one neighborhood echoes 21st century Seoul and then the train curves on its invisible, magnetic track and enters medieval Europe—the buildings boasting gothic architecture and pointed spires, like dozens of towering needles. As they get closer to headquarters, they pass through a ward styled after the Tang Dynasty in China, which in turn brushes up against another from the 2500s—all sleek glass and buildings molded into twisting, fantastical shapes.
It seems new districts spring up all the time, from all sorts of regions of Earth and the universe beyond, spanning hundreds of eras. Yeonjun is always on the lookout for new areas to explore. It was something he and Soobin used to love to do together in their limited time off—a break from the crush of the MPA, a chance to chase their own warped version of normality. He remembers Soobin dragging him through a district that looked like an exact replica of Gyeongbokgung Palace, but now boasted a library and numerous shops.
Giddy, childish excitement lit up Soobin’s whole face.
And Yeonjun was so fucking in love.
MPA HEADQUARTERS - DIMENSION X
Wooyoung leaves him just inside the front door with another kiss on the cheek. “Call me if you need anything, okay?” he says before he goes. “I’ll come glare at Soobin for you.”
Yeonjun doesn’t really want anyone to glare at Soobin, but he nods. “Thank you. For everything.”
“Literally don’t mention it, jagi,” Wooyoung says. “You’ll pay me back one day.”
Probably the next time Wooyoung, San, and Yeosang hit one of their turbulent phases and it’s Yeonjun's turn to pick Wooyoung off the floor, glue his pieces back together. For now, Wooyoung vanishes with a jaunty wave, no doubt to go bug Seonghwa, and Yeonjun heads for the archives.
On principle, he’s never liked the archives because he doesn’t like reading, or studying, or writing reports. But he’s also a professional who doesn’t half-ass things and the archives are so vast that it’s the perfect hiding spot from Soobin.
Min Yoongi looks up from his usual place behind the reception desk when Yeonjun pushes through the absurdly gigantic front doors, arching an eyebrow. “Choi Yeonjun, did you get lost?”
“Hyung,” Yeonjun whines, “you know I’m here at least once a week.”
“Not by choice.”
“But I still show up.”
Yoongi hums in acknowledgment, setting down his book to give Yeonjun his full attention. “What do you need?”
Yeonjun perches on Yoongi’s desk, having long ago gotten over his intimidation once he learned how much of a marshmallow Yoongi actually is. Predictably, all Yoongi does is sigh at him in half-hearted admonishment.
“I think Soobin and I are being stalked by something.”
That wipes all the lingering annoyance from Yoongi’s face. “What kind of something?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you might.”
Because Yoongi knows everything. There is rampant speculation that he’s not entirely human, even though he insists that he was born and died in a previous strain like all of them and he just likes to learn. It’s impossible for a human brain to hold all the information that Yoongi’s does. The archives are full of dataclips, books, scrolls—endless knowledge from thousands of universes—but most agents just ask Yoongi if they need to know something. He’ll usually be able to tell them or point them in the right direction, better than any computer.
“Describe it to me,” Yoongi says, dark eyes sharp and attentive.
“I didn’t see it fully,” Yeonjun says. “But it’s popped up in multiple strains. Mismatched glowing eyes and this…really creepy smile.”
Yoongi frowns. “That’s not a lot to go on, Yeonjun-ah.”
“But is there something besides us that can move across strains?”
Yoongi leans back in his chair, relaxing into what Yeonjun’s come to recognize as “knowledge-sharing-mode.” Not quite the lectures that Namjoon’s prone to, but Yoongi in this mode can still talk for hours. “Plenty of somethings. There is still so much about the multiverse that we don’t understand. Deities exist in some universes, magical abilities, entities from the depths of the cosmos. We’re far from the only beings with the ability to strain-jump.”
“Hyung,” Yeonjun complains, “you’re supposed to tell me exactly what I need to know. That’s why I came down here.”
Yoongi huffs at him, an amused sound. “Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. I’m not actually omnipotent.”
“You’re close enough.”
“Looks like this time you’ll have to keep digging. See if you can get closer to it, then maybe I’ll be able to help.”
Yeonjun sighs. He was hoping for an answer so they could wrap up this mission and he and Soobin could go back to staying carefully out of each other’s lives. That aching, simmering pain was better than the current bloody viscera his heart has been reduced to.
“Okay,” he murmurs. “Thanks anyway, Yoongi hyung.”
Yoongi crosses his arms, doing that thing Yeonjun hates where he stares right through all of your defenses to your core, making you feel microscopic in the process. “Is there anything else you want to talk about, Yeonjun-ah?”
“No,” Yeonjun insists because the last thing he wants is to delve into the knotted mess of his and Soobin’s relationship with Min Yoongi. Wooyoung seeing the wreck of him was bad enough, but Yoongi? Yeonjun would never recover.
“Mm.” Yoongi crosses his arms. “No, I guess it’s not me you should talk to.”
Yeonjun rubs his forehead in exasperation. “ Now please stop knowing things.”
“Neither of you are subtle,” Yoongi says. “It’s not some secret knowledge, all I need to have is eyes.”
“We’re working on it,” Yeonjun mutters defensively.
“Fine,” Yoongi says. “Just make sure that’s something you do together.” Yeonjun grimaces, but Yoongi doesn’t push him further. Just leans over and pats his knee. “Friendly advice, Yeonjun-ah,” he adds with a gentleness that both calms and rankles. “From someone who has lived in this weird, second life of ours for a very long time.” He pauses to shake his head. “Well, I guess as much as time can be measured here. The point is, don’t just let go, okay? We’ve lost so much, it’s important we hold onto the things we do have.”
“Okay,” Yeonjun says, torn between the urge to hug Yoongi or flee, never to return again. In the end, he settles for a hug because he enjoys the disgruntled noise that Yoongi makes and how solid Yoongi’s arms feel around him. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Yoongi says in an echo of Wooyoung, patting Yeonjun’s back. “Take care of yourself, Yeonjun-ah. What we do isn’t easy.”
Yeonjun thinks of Solarus and shudders. “Yeah. It really isn’t.” But he’s not alone, and for that he’s forever grateful.
Even as this awful gulf between him and Soobin keeps widening.
_ _
On his journey out of the archives and to the mess hall for some desperately needed coffee, Yeonjun resolves to be a fucking adult about all of this. He’s going to sit Soobin down and they are going to talk about last night like mature, responsible people. And maybe that discussion will lead to other things and Yeonjun will finally be able to admit that he’s still in love—pry that confession up from the bloody depths of his chest.
The resolve actually lasts all the way through spotting Soobin at the end of one of the long, wooden tables, surrounded by Hueningkai and Taehyun, and sitting down across from them. Soobin looks terrible: bloodshot eyes, rumpled clothes, messy hair. Like he didn’t get any sleep last night, like he crept out of Yeonjun’s bed in the middle of it and slunk back home. Kai and Taehyun are also shooting Yeonjun extremely loaded looks, but he can’t decipher what they’re trying to say, only that it’s probably accusing.
That’s fine. He’s got this, they’re going to talk. He takes a deep breath and opens his mouth.
“I think I’ve got a lead on whatever’s stalking us,” Soobin says, clipped, all business—not quite meeting Yeonjun’s eyes.
The resolve evaporates like vapor.
Yeonjun curls his hands into fists against his thighs, hidden beneath the table. Taehyun is pointedly looking back and forth between him and Soobin, expression screaming: do something! But Yeonjun’s not brave enough. Soobin wants to pretend this never happened and he would rather do that than ask about it and have to hear it was a mistake come out of Soobin’s mouth.
“I see,” he says, more of a croak than an assertive statement. He coughs. “What is it?”
“I got Taehyun’s help this morning,” Soobin continues. Taehyun stares down at his food, fingers tight around his chopsticks. “And I think we’ve narrowed down the potential origin strains to two. We should be able to find the source if we explore them.”
Great. More strain-hopping. More alternate versions of themselves, either tragic or wonderful. Yeonjun can still Solarus too clearly if he closes his eyes and is resigning himself to the fact that he’s going to need to schedule some therapy sessions after all of this—endure Kim Seokjin’s probing, knowing questions. But fine, whatever, just get the mission over with.
“Okay,” he says. “Where do we start?”
Taehyun drops his chopsticks with a clatter. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Me?” Yeonjun asks.
“Yes.”
Kai looks like he’s trying to decide if he should intervene or leave them all to this mess, anxiously glancing at each of their faces in turn with his food-laden chopsticks frozen halfway to his mouth. Soobin tugs on Taehyun’s sleeve. “No, Taehyun-ah—”
Taehyun ignores him. “Right now.”
“Okay,” Yeonjun says again, avoiding Soobin’s face.
Taehyun leads him out of the mess hall and down a corridor to a relatively secluded alcove, framed by large windows looking out at the city. Yeonjun braces himself for a lecture as Taehyun crosses his arms and stares at him, but Taehyun opens with “how are you?” in a surprisingly gentle voice.
“Yah,” Yeonjun protests. “Do I really look that fragile?”
“You look terrible,” Taehyun says flatly. “And Soobin hyung looks even worse. He showed up at mine and Huening’s apartment at like 4am this morning, dressed like he’d just been through an apocalypse, and he’s been in stubborn focused mode ever since. Which means he’s running from something, my guess is you.”
“This mission’s been hard,” Yeonjun says, hopefully that will be enough of an explanation.
Taehyun’s frustrated expression says that it isn’t. “I know it has. It’s not the type of mission any of us like being assigned. But you’re both tough. And professionals. It’s more than the mission getting to you. What happened last night?”
“We slept together,” Yeonjun mumbles in defeat, because if Taehyun doesn’t get it out of him, he’ll send Beomgyu or Kai and that will be worse.
“Hyung,” Taehyun says with such a pronounced blend of exasperation and disappointment that Yeonjun suddenly feels like a child being admonished by his parents. It’s disconcerting coming from one of his dongsaengs and it makes his hackles rise again.
“I know,” he snaps. “I know, okay? I’ve already heard it from Wooyoung and from Min Yoongi, I don’t need it from you, Taehyun-ah.”
“Then do something about it!” Taehyun exclaims. Someone walking past in the hallway startles, glancing at them, and Taehyun bows in apology before he turns back to Yeonjun with fire in his eyes. “Soobin is miserable,” he hisses in a hushed tone, “ you’re miserable, we’re all miserable. Please put an end to it before we lose our minds.”
“You saw Soobin back there,” Yeonjun argues. “He doesn’t want to talk. He wants to get this mission over with so he can go back to pretending that I don’t exist.”
Taehyun blinks at him in disbelief. “Is that what you think?”
“Of course that’s what I think, what else would I think?” Soobin was the one left last night, who cut off all contact after the breakup, who always seems intent on running as far away from Yeonjun as possible.
“Gods, you’re both ridiculous,” Taehyun mutters under his breath. “Hyung, he stayed at our apartment for a week after you guys ended it. I’ve never seen him cry that much. If you think he’s not affected by this, you’re wrong.”
Yeonjun swallows, imagining Soobin folding his long body on Kai and Taehyun’s worn out couch, Soobin crying for days, Soobin heartbroken. It seems impossible. Soobin was so composed when they decided to end it, when Yeonjun told him that they should. But Soobin always holds things so close to himself, doesn’t he? He deals with things on his own and comes back when it’s over, no matter how many times he’s been told that he can lean on other people.
Fuck, Yeonjun can’t process this right now.
“We have to finish this mission,” he tells Taehyun. “Then we’ll sort everything out.”
Taehyun sighs. “You’d better. I’m not putting up with this anymore. Beomgyu, Huening, and I are staging a protest.”
Yeonjun winces. They’ll probably be joined by at least Wooyoung. And Changbin, who Yeonjun once went to a gym session with a week after the breakup and ended up crying in the locker room like a fool. And maybe Jeongin, who Yeonjun is sure Beomgyu has gossiped to on more than one occasion, if the periodic sympathy Jeongin has expressed towards him is anything to go by.
“Fine,” he agrees. “We’ll talk after the mission. If we don’t, you’re welcome to stage a formal intervention and invite half the fucking MPA.”
“Oh I will,” Taehyun says and it sounds like a promise, not a threat. His expression softens as he reaches out to squeeze Yeonjun’s arm. “I just want you both to be happy, hyung.”
Yeonjun’s eyes burn again. He blinks stubbornly, swallows down the stone in his throat. “Thanks, Taehyun-ah. Me too.”
But does happiness mean getting back together? Yeonjun has no idea.
_ _
Soobin looks up anxiously when they return to the table, cutting off his hushed but intense conversation with Kai. Kai shoves another bite of food into his mouth, probably to keep from blurting anything out.
“Everything okay?” Soobin asks.
“Everything’s fine,” Yeonjun lies and Taehyun nods in agreement. “Where do we start?”
STRAIN 11 - SEOUL, 2020
Yeonjun steps out of the gateway onto an empty subway platform at Yongsan station, which is closed for the night. The walls are lined with digital screens, all boasting birthday messages for Heuningkai.
“Fuck, we’re idols in this universe too?”
Soobin closes the gateway behind them. “Yeah, but something’s different in this strain. Can you feel it?”
Yeonjun can: a cold prickling through his veins, a sense of vast, empty darkness like a sea trench, a presence that doesn’t belong, that’s dangerous and wrong. On his tablet, all of his readings are going haywire.
“What?” he says, squinting at them in surprise. He’s never seen data like this and if it’s correct, then this strain is disintegrating. But not ending? “This doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t fully understand it either,” Soobin says. “But we need to find our counterparts.”
They jump the turnstiles and climb the steps into a rainy summer night—water coming down in a torrent, enough to turn the streets into miniature rivers. Soobin materializes raincoats and Yeonjun’s glad he decided to switch back to the sturdy pants he tends to wear on field work or his nice skirt would have been completely ruined.
“Are we close?” he shouts to Soobin above the downpour, tugging the hood of his jacket up over his head and feeling water steadily soaking into his jeans.
The weather means that Gangnam is quieter than it normally would be, but a steady stream of traffic still rushes past on the street and a few pedestrians scurry towards their destinations, sheltered beneath umbrellas. No one pays them any mind, too focused on escaping the rain.
“Yes,” Soobin says and points up the street. “Only a couple blocks.”
They half walk, half run the whole way, seeking temporary refuge beneath various awning and recessed doorways. The building that Soobin’s tracker leads them to isn’t a dorm like Yeonjun was expecting, but a corporate skyscraper.
“Company building,” Soobin explains. “We should cloak.”
Once again, Yeonjun weathers the annoying sensational process of activating his invisibility shield. “I swear it never gets better,” he mutters to Soobin, and Soobin sighs in agreement.
He looks so tired, especially drenched from the rain, and in a better universe, Yeonjun would still have the right to touch him. To pet his cheek and promise to cook for him when they get home and earn a soft smile as a reward. In this one, he merely crouches to hack the keycard mechanism on the front door and ushers Soobin into the hushed, empty lobby.
“They’re on the third floor,” Soobin murmurs.
They ride the elevator in painful silence. The wrong feeling increases with each floor, pressing down on Yeonjun’s sternum, digging into his spine. Soobin pushes his hood off, running anxious fingers through his damp hair. The elevators ding open, revealing a hallway full of closed, numbered doors.
“Practice rooms,” Soobin whispers in explanation.
They drift down the corridor to one on the far end of the hall. Yeonjun peers through the little window and sees himself standing in the middle of the room, dressed in sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt. Blond hair a more yellow tone than his, a few less piercing in his ears, expression guarded. Soobin stands across from him, in similar casual attire, hair a silvery purple. They’re talking, but it’s hard to make out the words through the barrier of the door.
“We have to go in,” he whispers to his Soobin and carefully, cautiously eases the door open, slipping inside as fast as he can.
The sound of the door clicking shut behind them still draws the attention of their counterparts.
“What was that?” Yeonjun asks, brow pinched in concern.
“It’s probably just the ghost,” Soobin says. “Huening-ah keeps talking about her.”
Yeonjun shakes his head. “Huening-ah didn’t actually see anything.”
“You don’t know that,” Soobin says, and then exhales in a loud burst of breath. “Anyway, please don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject,” Idol Yeonjun argues, drawing himself up to his full height and glaring at Soobin. He reminds Yeonjun of himself several years ago—so many serrated edges that he turned into weapons to protect himself. “The door literally fucking closed on its own. But sure, whatever. You really want to end this?”
Crouched next to him, Yeonjun’s own Soobin tenses. Idol Soobin just looks devastated—radiating the weariness of someone at the end of a long fight, on the edge of defeat.
“We have to,” he says. “We have to, hyung. It’s…it’s becoming too much, isn’t it? Too obvious. We’d risk everything. Our careers. The others.”
“So we’ll get better at hiding it,” Yeonjun says, desperation creeping into his voice. “That doesn’t mean it has to end.”
“It does, ” Soobin insists. He seems on the edge of crying but his voice is firm. “I can’t hide it. And knowing I can’t is just…it’s driving me insane. That plus the dreams—”
“Dreams?” Yeonjun asks. “What dreams?”
“Terrible dreams,” Soobin murmurs. “Terrible futures. I don’t understand them.”
Yeonjun reaches out, radiating concern, and Soobin shifts away, closer to the mirrors. “Soobin-ah….”
“It’s fine,” Idol Soobin says. “It’s fine, that part doesn’t matter. But this has to stop. Please, we have to stop.”
Yeonjun’s Soobin is staring at his counterpart with wide, upset eyes while Idol Yeonjun freezes like he’s been slapped across the face. Yeonjun feels the pain echo in his own body, remembers it’s better to end it and Soobin’s terse agreement.
“You…do you not love me anymore?” Idol Yeonjun whispers.
Idol Soobin laughs—a horrible, choked sound. “I love you too much,” he hiccups. “But this isn’t just about us, it never has been. So please, hyung, please don’t make this harder than it is.”
Idol Yeonjun squeezes his eyes shut, shuddering. “Okay,” he whispers after a long, terrible pause. “Okay, it stops.”
No, Yeonjun wants to say, wants to reach out to them. No, don’t do this to each other. But his own Soobin grabs his shoulder, turning his attention to the wall of mirrors. They’ve begun to ripple, like the surface has turned to liquid. Their counterparts don’t seem to notice, still focused on each other, which means that potentially the effect is only visible to them.
What? Yeonjun mouths to Soobin.
Soobin shakes his head and heads over to the mirrors. Behind them, Idol Yeonjun stalks from the room, slamming the door closed behind him, and Idol Soobin curls up into a tiny, pitiful ball in the corner, crying softly into his knees. Yeonjun aches to comfort him, to press kisses to the top of his head and assure him that things will somehow get better, even if Yeonjun doesn’t know that for a fact.
His own Soobin only spares a brief glance at his sobbing alternate self before he clenches his jaw and sinks a hand right into the mirror.
“Soobin,” Yeonjun hisses in alarm, darting to his side.
“It’s the veil,” Soobin whispers back. “The barrier between strains. It’s fraying.”
Yeonjun sucks in a startled, sharp breath. The metaphysical veil is essential, he got that hammered into him during his training. So much of their work with the MPA is to keep the universes separate because if strains start to cross each other without the veil protecting them, it could lead to war, chaos, the eventual collapse of the entire multiverse. Yeonjun lurches forward and grabs onto Soobin’s shoulder, following him through the mirror and into—
STRAIN 12 - DESTROYED SEOUL, 2023
—a darkened hallway, hazy with smoke, blinding white light burning at the end. Still clinging to Soobin, Yeonjun struggles to catch his footing amidst the debris scattered across the ground, nearly tripping over a large piece of metal. The darkness is so powerful here, enough that he can taste it beneath the ash, feel it coalescing in his lungs like a tangible, viscous substance.
This is it. The epicenter.
They reach the end of the tunnel and the light gives way to another apocalypse: twisted, smoking heaps of metal and rubble, a sky so choked with ash that it blots out the sun, the burning husks of destroyed skyscrapers on the distant horizon. Yeonjun realizes that they’re standing in what’s left of a stadium, pockmarked, crumbling seats rising on either side and a stage cracked into pieces.
He turns to Soobin, wide-eyed. “What planet is this?”
“Earth,” Soobin whispers, looking equally terrified. “Seoul.”
Yeonjun closes his eyes, reaches for the inner steel that several years of this job has fused into him. He has seen the endings of dozens of strains, but it never gets easier. The grief never entirely numbs. He feels Soobin brush past him, hears the crackle of cement and debris breaking loose as Soobin climbs onto the remains of the stage.
“No,” Soobin breathes suddenly, and the horror in his voice prompts Yeonjun to follow his precarious path up the steps.
He’s not surprised to see the battered, broken corpse of his counterpart sprawled in the shadows of the stage. The same shade of blond as the idol in the practice room, blood running in streams down his face from a cracked skull. Soobin retches like he’s about to be sick, lurching forward.
“Soobin, wait!” Yeonjun calls because the darkness is the strongest down there, still waiting for something. Perhaps for them.
Soobin doesn’t listen, jumping down to kneel next to the body, reaching out to touch a cold arm with a faint noise of distress. Yeonjun leaps after him, landing in a crouch in the rocky dirt. “Soobin-ah,” he says, curling a hand around Soobin’s arm. “Soobin-ah, he’s already gone.”
They arrived in time for an ending, and a start. Because past Soobin, Yeonjun spots those eyes again, peering at them from an opening punched into the stadium wall. He stands and puts himself between the thing and Soobin, reaching for the pocket device that will morph into any weapon he desires with a single touch
“What are you?” he asks, shaping it like a demand. “What do you want?”
The thing in the shadows laughs and it sounds like his own voice. The darkness twists, morphs, and another version of him steps into the hazy light, dressed identical to the Yeonjun dead on the ground. But his feline eyes glow blue and green, like incandescent poison.
“That’s a difficult question to answer,” the thing wearing Yeonjun’s skin says. “I’m many things. I want many things. Most of them aren’t for ants to know.”
“Ants?” Yeonjun asks.
The monster grins. “Humans. Such short flickers of life. Gone in a blink.” He makes a poof gesture with one hand and nods at the corpse. “It’s tragic.”
“Did you kill him?” Soobin asks, rising slowly to his feet. “Did you do this?”
“Such simple questions.” The monster’s head cocks at an unnatural angle and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong seeing his own body moving like this, his own face contorting this way. “Such simple minds. But you two are interesting, jumping strains the way you do. I suppose I can give you a hint.”
The monster shoves its hands into the pockets of its black pants and rocks back and forth on the heels of its booted feet. “Picture it like this: a boy was afraid of a great evil, threatening to destroy his world. So he made a deal. This was part of the terms.” A gesture towards the burning world around them.
“This still looks like total destruction to me,” Yeonjun says.
“No, not total,” the monster argues. “You of all your versions should understand. There are doors upon doors, strains upon strains, worlds upon worlds. This is just one ending. One burned thread in a tapestry.”
“There’s more you want,” Soobin says, hand twitching near his own weapon device. “Isn’t there? You’ve been to other strains, seen other versions of us. This doesn’t end here.”
The monster laughs again. “No, of course not. It begins . Doors opening, barriers crumbling. The boy was an ant and he couldn’t understand, his world was too small. But you should also know that there are greater and more terrible things than me in the multiverse.”
The monster points at the sky. Yeonjun cranes his head up, squinting through the smoke. Thunder rumbles, a flash of lightning illuminates the clouds and the giant shadow flying through them.
“Gods,” Soobin gasps.
“Possibly,” the monster agrees. “In some universes.”
“That’s a dragon,” Yeonjun says, feeling the first burst of hysteria.
“It’s many things too. This is how the boy saw it, so you see it the same way.”
Yeonjun tears his gaze from the dragon casually cruising over their heads and back to the monster. “This is what he was trying to stop. What he wanted your help with.”
“Yes,” the monster says.
“And you burned his world in return?” It seems brutal, horrific, cruel.
“One world for all the others. If the veil holds.”
This isn’t the whole picture, the whole truth. Yeonjun can see the deception in the manic edges of the monster’s smile.
“Why stalk the other versions of us?” Soobin asks.
The monster laughs derisively. “Oh, it was only one of you I was interested in. You were extra baggage. You two just happen to be tied together in so many strains.” A snort. “Perhaps there really is such a thing as fate.”
Its burning gaze turns to Yeonjun. “But you see: cause enough ripples and the MPA always sends an agent to investigate. It’s so predictable. So human.” The monster holds out its arms, a grin stretching its mouth too wide. “Sure enough, here you are. You came to me.”
“No,” Soobin snaps, trying to get in between Yeonjun and the monster.
Yeonjun blocks him. This is obviously his fight and if this thing wants to take him, then he’s not about to go quietly nor is he going to let it harm Soobin in any way.
“Enough,” he says, drawing the device from his pocket and pressing the button to unfold a long, wicked scythe, crackling with energy. “This ends here.”
“Yeonjun,” Soobin says, voice low with warning.
Yeonjun doesn’t listen, rushing forward with a fast, calculated swing of the scythe, designed to take the monster’s head off. Instead, the monster casually raises a hand and grabs the blade, stopping it mid-arc. Yeonjun gasps in surprise, trying to push against the unseen force holding him back. His boots scrape against the dirt but the scythe doesn’t move, doesn’t even tremble.
“Ah, ah, ah,” the monster tuts, heedless of the blood running down its arm. It leans in close, breath freezing against Yeonjun’s face. “A pity. You see more than most, more than him,” a nod to the dead Yeonjun, “but there’s still so much you don’t understand.”
The dragon roars; the monster shifts its hand and the scythe shatters into a thousand shards, all suspended in the air like glittering snowflakes; the temperature drops, in spite of the fires still around them—streams of icy mist encompassing them as the sky darkens to inky black; Soobin screams his name—
—and the world falls away.
MPA HEADQUARTERS MEDICAL WING - DIMENSION X
Yeonjun wakes up to the familiar sight of the mosaic-tiled ceiling of the MPA medical wing and the less familiar sight of Hueningkai’s worried face, peering down at him.
“Yeonjun noona,” he says, relief shaking through his voice. “You’re awake.”
“Did I die again?” Yeonjun croaks, trying to remember if he can come back from a second death. What did the MPA handbooks say? Taehyun would know, he memorized them just so he could recite passages to annoy Beomgyu.
“No,” Kai says, rubbing Yeonjun’s stomach through the scratchy hospital blanket. “Just got pretty beat up. Soobin hyung got you both through a gateway before the strain collapsed.”
“Soobin,” Yeonjun gasps, trying to sit up. Soobin was screaming for him. “Where’s Soobin?”
Kai pushes him gently but firmly back to the mattress. “Soobin’s fine, he’ll be back soon. Please don’t move too much. You broke an arm and like three ribs.”
Yeonjun frowns, registering the metal brace on his left arm for the first time, encasing it in a glowing blue energy field from wrist to elbow. Now that he’s focusing on it, he can also feel a similar buzz of energy along his torso. “Huh. I don’t feel anything.”
“You’re on a lot of drugs,” Kai says with great patience.
Right. Of course. He lowers his healing arm and tries to sort out the murky jumble of his brain. They were in Seoul, in the ruins of a stadium. A variant of him, dead in the dirt of another apocalypse. A fucking dragon in the sky. A weird cosmic entity wearing his face, wanting him for some purpose. The practice room in Seoul—two people breaking apart in yet another strain. And the mirror, the weakened veil.
Oh shit.
He tries to sit up again, ignoring the twinge in his ribs that gets past the protective wall of painkillers.
“Whoa,” Kai lurches forward in his chair to grab Yeonjun’s shoulders. “Hyung, what did I just say?”
“I have to go report,” Yeonjun insists. “It’s urgent.”
“It can wait,” Kai says. “At least let Taehyung look you over again.”
Yeonjun loves Hueningkai dearly. He’s sweet, gentle, remarkably calm no matter what insane shit this job chooses to throw in his face. He gives incredible hugs and has a stockpile of comforting plushies that he will let you snuggle if you’re having a terrible day. But he’s also not nearly as fast or as nimble as Yeonjun and Yeonjun takes advantage of this, pulling free of Kai’s grip and rolling off the other side of the bed.
The painkillers still absorb most of the protest from his injuries, allowing him to shove his feet into a pair of hospital slippers and book it from the room before Kai recovers from his shock.
“Hyung!” Kai shouts after him. Yeonjun doesn’t slow down, tearing past an equally shocked Beomgyu and Taehyun, who look like they’re returning from a coffee run.
“Was that Yeonjun hyung?” He hears Beomgyu ask as he skids around the corner and into the elevator that will take him to Namjoon’s office. He huddles against the wall once the elevator begins its rapid, silent journey, bracing his good arm protectively around his middle.
The panic grows stronger with each illuminated floor number. The veil was tearing—two strains bleeding into each other, one of those strains ending before its time. An unknown force was trying to lure him in and he brought Soobin right into the middle of all of it. He has to warn someone.
He has to protect Soobin.
The elevator doors slide open and he stumbles out, bumping into a startled Hwang Yeji, carrying a stack of data tablets. “Sunbae?”
“Sorry!” Yeonjun calls over his shoulder without slowing down. Gods, this is probably going to be the talk of the whole agency for at least the next month—hey remember that time Choi Yeonjun went running through the halls dressed in nothing but a hospital gown? Did he lose his mind again?
He can’t really bring himself to care.
Left around another corner, then right, avoid the large potted plant, and there are the wooden doors to Namjoon’s office, illuminated by a beam pouring from a grand skylight. Yeonjun grabs both handles, wrenching them open like he’s the protagonist in a drama. Namjoon looks up from behind his desk, startled.
“I need to report,” Yeonjun gasps. “Soobin….”
Soobin rises from the chair across from Namjoon’s desk—banged up but intact, eyes wide with alarm. “Yeonjun? Why aren’t you in the medical wing?”
“Did you run here?” Namjoon exclaims.
A part of Yeonjun is starting to feel very foolish but the rest is still panicking. “Maybe,” he says. The painkillers are steadily wearing off and he’s really feeling the throbbing ache of his arm and ribs now. “But I need to report.”
“Soobin’s already turned in your report,” Namjoon says, firm but with an expression of compassionate understanding. “It’s okay, Yeonjun-ah.”
Yeonjun shakes his head. Why can’t he breathe properly? A little running shouldn’t take so much out of him. “That thing—”
“We understand the severity of the threat,” Namjoon assures him. “Please trust this has the MPA’s full attention. Your part is done for now. You’re both officially on leave.”
“It was targeting me,” Yeonjun hiccups. Soobin has drifted closer to him, hovering anxiously like he’s afraid Yeonjun is about to collapse. It’s probably not an unfounded fear, unfortunately. “And it could affect more than me, now.”
What if it just starts with him and the ripples expand? Through the strains to other versions of Soobin? Of Hueningkai, Taehyun, and Beomgyu? What if one choice, by one Yeonjun, somehow dooms them all?
“But you’re not in this alone, you’re a member of this agency.” Namjoon finally rises from his chair, resting his palms on his desk. He looks commanding, even with his glasses, fluffy hair, and nerdy sweater. “Let us protect you, okay?”
“And the other mes?” Yeonjun asks, thinking of Solarus, of a ruined Seoul. Some strains die naturally because that is part of the twisting march of time, but others? “The versions of the other boys? Will you protect them too?”
“The ones we can,” Namjoon promises. “So go rest, Yeonjun-ah.”
Yeonjun nods, but it’s Soobin’s hand on the back of his neck that finally calms the terrified, half-feral part of him that was born on the Monarch —the part so desperate to survive, even after dying, who isn’t willing to trust anyone or anything, no matter how much he’s told that he isn’t alone anymore.
Soobin’s fingers are warm against his skin and Soobin’s voice is soft as he murmurs, “it’s okay.” He glances over at Namjoon. “I’ll take him back to medical, hyung.”
“Please do,” Namjoon sighs. “And don’t let him leave until Taehyung signs his release form.”
Soobin nods and then one of his long arms goes around Yeonjun’s waist and Yeonjun is being steered toward the doors. Out in the hallway, Soobin gives him an assessing look that’s undermined by the bruise ringing one eye.
Yeonjun points a threatening finger at him. “Do not carry me.” He wants to keep some shreds of his dignity after all of this, thank you.
“Would you accept a piggyback ride instead?”
Yeonjun pauses to consider this. It would still be humiliating, but the painkillers are definitely out of his system now and his body is very mad at him for the stunt he just pulled. The idea of walking all the way back to the medical wing is daunting, and he supposes that being carried on someone’s back is a little less humiliating than bridal style.
“Fine,” he concedes.
Soobin drops to one knee in the middle of the mercifully empty corridor and Yeonjun awkwardly climbs onto his back, grateful that he at least has boxers on under this gown. Soobin’s fingers on his bare legs are still torture. Maybe Taehyung or one of the other doctors will drug him up again so that he can forget about all of this.
Until then, he settles for burying his face in Soobin’s shoulder and stubbornly keeping his mouth shut throughout the entire return journey. Soobin doesn’t talk either, just holds him steady, and the silence takes on mass, weight, pressing down on them until it’s hard to breathe.
Taehyun, Beomghyu, and Hueningkai accost them as soon as Soobin passes through the sliding doors into the medical wing, buzzing around like anxious bees.
“Is he alive?” Beomgyu asks.
“Did he really run down a corridor just now?” Taehyun wants to know.
“I’m sorry. I tried to stop him,” Kai says mournfully. “He’s too fast.”
Yeonjun flaps a hand to let them know that he is, indeed, alive. Soobin marches him all the way to his abandoned bed, but graciously kneels to let Yeonjun slide off his back instead of just depositing him on the mattress like a sack of rice.
Of course, as soon as he’s settled Kim Taehyung descends like a furious, mythological angel. Taehyung’s anger doesn’t burn like Hoseok’s, but sometimes Yeonjun thinks it’s even more terrifying in its frigidity, in the way that Taehyung is capable of just staring at you until you feel tiny and insignificant, groveling to apologize. Everyone at the MPA is born of trauma and death and is terrible at taking care of themselves, which is probably why Taehyung was installed as the head of the medical department. Not only is he an amazing doctor, but all the patients are so scared of him that they’ll actually follow his instructions.
Yeonjun cringes under the weight of Taehyung’s dark gaze. Taehyung arches one perfectly shaped eyebrow, questioning and imperious, and the words spill out from Yeonjun’s mouth unbidden.
“I’m sorry, hyung, but I had to report, it was important.”
The eyebrow ticks higher.
“I was worried about Soobin,” Yeonjun adds. Then, a little defeated, “and panicking. A bit.”
At that Taehyung softens with a faint sigh. “You aggravating all your injuries doesn’t help anyone, Choi Yeonjun.”
Yeonjun winces. “I know.”
“You kids,” Taehyung mutters as though Park Jimin doesn’t have at least a dozen stories ready at all times about Taehyung’s reckless agent days.
He checks the metal cuffs around Yeonjun’s arm and wrist, fine tuning the settings of the healing energy field. Then Yeonjun has to lay back so that Taehyung can do the same for the bands around his torso. The others continue to hover, drifting in and out of Yeonjun’s line of sight as they all do some kind of half-coordinated dance around Yeonjun’s bed.
“Well, at least you didn’t disrupt the fields too much,” Taehyung says. He allows Yeonjun to sit up, rattling a clear bottle full of bright blue pills at him. “Painkillers. Do not take more than what’s prescribed or I’ll know.”
Somehow, Yeonjun absolutely believes that. He nods obediently.
“I should make you stay here overnight for the stunt you just pulled—”
“Hyung—”
“But I’ve decided to be nice. Go home, Yeonjun-ah. Rest. Book at least one post-mission counseling session in. I’ll ping you when you can shut down the fields in a few days. Don’t come back to work for at least two weeks or I’ll ban you from the building.”
Once again, Yeonjun knows that Taehyung will make good on that threat. He has before.
“Okay,” he agrees, relieved to be allowed back to the comfort of his own apartment. “Thank you.”
Taehyung turns to the others. “Soobin-ah, you better book a counseling session too.” Soobin salutes. “And please make sure they both rest.”
“We will,” Taehyun replies, threatening promise in his voice, and Beomgyu and Hueningkai nod in support.
Yeonjun resigns himself to at least a week of constant, stifling attention, but he’s learned to cooperate. Last time, he tried to escape before his designated rest period was over and Taehyun tied him to his own bed in retaliation.
“Good,” Taehyung says, consulting his tablet. “Then you’re officially released.”
Hueningkai’s arm slides over Yeonjun’s shoulders, heavy and comforting. “Come on, noona,” he says. “Let’s get you home.”
YEONJUN’S APARTMENT - DIMENSION X
Yeonjun goes home. He lets Taehyun pour him into bed and Hueningkai arrange a few plushies carefully around him like fluffy guardians. He tolerates Beomgyu adjusting his curtains and dramatically fluffing up his pillows. He tries not to let it hurt that Soobin hangs back, barely entering the bedroom—just standing on the threshold like a gangly, sad ghost.
Come here, Yeonjun makes sure not to say. Lay down with me.
It’s how they used to recover from missions together: tangled up in bed, under the protection of several layers of covers—Soobin’s breath warm against his neck, Soobin’s soft stomach beneath his palm, Soobin’s mumbled, sleepy insistence that he wasn’t drooling on the pillow.
Yeonjun wants to press his mouth to the bruises and cuts on Soobin’s face. He wants to tell him: thank you for trying to save other versions of me, even if I don’t matter anymore. Soobin is good and kind, heart all bloody, and he was about to put himself between Yeonjun and an unknown entity responsible for the end of a universe. But now he won’t even look Yeonjun in the eye, and Yeonjun desperately wishes he could decipher what this all means.
“We’ll let you sleep,” Taehyun declares, with pointed, warning glares at everyone else. “And come by in the morning.”
“Okay.” Yeonjun can feel himself fading again—the painkillers and exhaustion both kicking in.
“Sleep well, hyung,” he thinks he hears Soobin say, but maybe that’s just a figment of his imagination.
_ _
Over the next two days, Yeonjun’s apartment turns into a revolving door of people arriving to take care of him. Taehyun cooks him breakfast and checks the readings on his braces, sending the data to the medical center.
“I’m sorry,” Yeonjun tells him, guilt sitting heavy in his stomach. “I think you might end up involved in all of this now too.” The five of them are often together in strains, not just Yeonjun and Soobin, and Yeonjun wants to protect them, even logically knowing that they can all take care of themselves. Taehyun was employee of the month for nearly a year, just for his sheer, terrifying levels of competence.
“It’s okay,” Taehyun says, shrugging. “I love you. I imagine other mes love you too. They’d want to be involved. I want to be involved, if any of you are at risk.”
I love you, he says so easily and it makes Yeonjun’s chest tight. He has to hug Taehyun for it, holding him close—until Yeonjun’s ribs protest and Taehyun forces him back to bed.
_ _
Hueningkai comes that evening and climbs into bed next to him, carefully wrapping around him like a huge, gentle octopus. Yeonjun is still tired, bowled over by painkillers that have loosened his tongue and brought all the squishy, sentimental parts of him to the surface.
“Thank you, Huening-ah,” he says as Kai rests his head on Yeonjun’s shoulder, “for sticking around. I know Soobin’s your best friend.”
“Shut up,” Kai says without any heat. “You’re all my family. Of course I wasn’t going to choose sides.” He snuggles closer—perfect, suffocating warmth. “Besides, I think you both just ended up hurting yourselves. It makes me sad.”
Soobin is closed walls and locked doors, and Yeonjun can’t tell if he’s hurting. But if Kai says that he is….
What a mess they’ve made. What a wreck of each other.
“Sorry,” he whispers into the protective, comforting darkness of the apartment.
“Oh, hyung,” Kai says—so much sweetness, truly the best of them, “it’s okay. But I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”
And Yeonjun is starting to realize that, but what if Soobin never comes back?
_ _
It’s Wooyoung the morning of the second day, bustling around his kitchen, helping him shower, being a loud and bossy and wonderfully distracting presence.
“Only you, darling,” he says as he towels Yeonjun’s hair dry. “Only you would attract the attention of a universe-devouring cosmic entity.”
Yeonjun grimaces. “I don’t want to be special.”
“Too bad,” Wooyoung says and plants a wet kiss on his cheek. “You know you always have been.”
They’re all special, in a fucked up way: plucked from their broken, dying strains and reshaped into new beings with new purpose. Perhaps this was inevitable.
“Aw,” Yeonjun teases through the pain those thoughts cause, “I knew you thought I was special, jagi.”
Wooyoung bites him for that—playful teeth scraping his shoulder, drawing laughter out of him for the first time in days.
_ _
Beomgyu takes the shift after Wooyoung, making Yeonjun wonder if they’ve all written up some kind of schedule and shared it around. Knowing Taehyun, it’s a definite and likely possibility.
Beomgyu insists on heating up ramen for him, ignoring Yeonjun’s protests that he’s capable of doing it himself. Then he hooks up the projector in Yeonjun’s living room that’s been gathering dust and cajoles Yeonjun into getting his ass beaten in multiple games.
“Wow,” Beomgyu says after the sixth round of annihilating Yeonjun, “you’ve gotten worse.”
“I haven’t played in ages,” Yeonjun grumbles. “And I’m playing with my non-dominant hand.”
“Uh-huh,” Beomgyu teases. “You were always pretty terrible, though.”
“Yah!” Yeonjun kicks him, sending him crashing into the arm of the couch with a dramatic shriek. “I’m a decent player, I’m just not obsessed like you, Huening, and Soobin.”
Soobin’s name breaks bitter on his tongue and Beomgyu picks up on the resulting atmospheric shift.
“You’re both so dramatic,” he sighs. Hypocrite. “Just talk. It won’t kill either of you.”
“It might,” Yeonjun mutters, petulant.
Beomgyu pokes him with socked toes. “Dummy. How can you be so smart about some things and so idiotic about others?”
“Leave me alone.” Yeonjun smacks him with a pillow. “We can’t all be Taehyun.”
“Of course not, that would be terrifying,” Beomgyu shudders. “But you can be smarter than this. Talk.” Another poke. “To.” Poke. “Him.” Poke, poke, poke.
Yeonjun brains him with the pillow again, hiding a wince when a protesting twinge runs up his bad arm. “I’m working on it. Start another game, I’ll beat you this time.”
Beomgyu rolls his eyes, but presses the button to start a new round. “Sure, hyung, keep telling yourself that, if it brings you comfort.”
“I will!”
He doesn’t, or any time after that, but it is distracting. It keeps him from thinking about his injuries or the mission or Choi Soobin for a whole four hours and that’s the real victory, in his book.
_ _
By the third day, he’s restless and anxious—tired of being cooped up in an apartment that now feels too small, shrinking with each hour dragging by. He sends his readings to medical and finally gets the all clear to take the braces off. It’s a relief to be free of the energy fields, even if he still has instructions not to exert himself for at least another week.
He would sneak out to go for a little walk, but he’s afraid that Taehyun might have installed cameras by the front door to monitor him so he decides not to risk it. Instead he settles for tidying the apartment: changing the sheets and bedding, cleaning out the expired food from his bridge, setting his little vacuum on its usual meandering journey, even rotating his fucking couch cushions.
All of that only takes about two hours, though, and then he’s back to metaphorically climbing the walls.
Ugh.
He’s standing in the middle of his bedroom, trying to decide if he wants to cave and call someone to come over—whoever’s next on the rotation—or just go back to bed when a knock sounds on the front door.
Which is strange. Everyone in his life who stops by on a regular basis has the passcode and usually just lets themselves in, especially if he’s injured. The only exception is Wooyoung, who likes to be annoying, but that wasn’t a Wooyoung knock.
He drifts to the door, wondering if one of the hyungs has stopped by to check up on him and pester him about that counseling appointment.
But it’s Soobin standing in the hallway.
Yeonjun’s heart immediately tries to climb up his throat and right out of his mouth. He’s suddenly aware of his current disheveled state and the fact that he didn’t bother to brush his hair this morning and there is definitely a kimchi stain on this sweatshirt. Soobin’s got that long blue coat on again—the one that makes him look mysterious. It still has a faint singe mark on the collar from Solarus. The bruises are gone from his face except for a faint ring around his left eye that Yeonjun doesn’t know how he got. It seems like he hasn’t really brushed his hair either, or slept much.
You both just ended up hurting yourselves, Kai’s voice echoes in Yeonjun’s head.
“Hey,” he gets out around his heart still lodged in his windpipe, “come in.”
Soobin crosses the threshold. Toes his sneakers off.
“How are you?” he asks, stilted.
“Okay,” Yeonjun replies, just as awkward. “Braces came off today.”
“That’s good.”
They linger in the entryway and Yeonjun grits his teeth against the desire to shove Soobin back out the door and hide under his bed. He is an adult and the hyung and they need to do this. Soobin actually came, which is more than Yeonjun expected, so Yeonjun should take the lead now.
Get over yourself.
“Do you want anything to drink?” he asks, leading Soobin into the living room.
Soobin shakes his head.
“Eat?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Yeonjun runs a hand through his messy hair, trying to gather his thoughts.
Soobin beats him to it. “Why did you break up with me?” he blurts.
It comes out raw, aching, like Soobin has torn it from somewhere deep inside of him. The walls are crumbling enough for Yeonjun to see pockets of desperation lurking underneath—in the reflexive clench of Soobin’s hands and the defensive curl of his shoulders. Like he’s trying to disappear or prepare himself for a fight, and he’s not sure which instinct to lean into.
Then the question really hits Yeonjun—buries itself between his still-healing ribs. “I thought you wanted me to.” But no, that isn’t fully fair. “I was worried that we were suffocating each other.”
They were mission partners and in a romantic relationship, together all the time, and maybe that was the source of their slow death. It felt like too much and yet a strange distance crept in: Soobin curled too far away in bed, silences that stretched too long, words that grew too many sharp edges—a slow shift into unrecognizable versions of themselves. They were everything to each other, after already being berths in a storm of trauma and new life, and maybe that was an impossible burden. It crushed them.
“I thought,” Yeonjun continues, “that some distance would help. We’d get better. See things more clearly. I didn’t expect you to just leave.”
He’d thought that, after Soobin agreed with him, they were on the same page. They understood each other. They would stay friends, learn to stand on their own, and then figure out the messy tangle of their feelings. Except Soobin stopped contacting him, requested a partner change, and pulled up every stake he’d planted in Yeonjun’s life with brutal finality.
“I loved you too much,” Soobin says now—heartbreak all over his face, an echo of the Idol version of him in a dance practice room too late at night. “I didn’t know how to be friends. So I ran.”
Oh that hurts. Loved. Past tense.
“I thought you hated me,” Yeonjun says, unable to look Soobin in the eye as he forces the confession from his mouth. “I still worry that you do.”
“Oh,” Soobin whispers. He sways forward, like he wants to come to Yeonjun—close the small distance of living room floor between them. In the end, he straightens, holding himself back. “No. I wanted to. But I didn’t fight for us either. I couldn’t blame it all on you.”
“Why?”
Soobin’s smile is wry, twisting, almost a grimace. “I worried about the same things—that I was suffocating you. That I was too much. We were too much. And then you said you wanted to break up. Confirmed all of my fears.”
Yeonjun almost wants to laugh. Beomgyu would, if he were witnessing this. Right before he bashed their idiot heads together.
“It was too much,” he points out. “It wasn’t healthy.” It didn’t feel good for weeks before the end and Yeonjun doesn’t know much about relationships, but he doesn’t think they’re supposed to feel like you’re slowly drowning on dry land.
“It wasn't,” Soobin agrees. He looks away, at a spot on the rug at their feet. “It’s probably better this way.”
Except Yeonjun is fucking miserable. And Soobin looks fucking miserable, like his heart’s in shreds.
“Why did you leave?” Yeonjun asks. “After we had sex? You said you would stay.”
Soobin cringes, looking guilty. “I couldn’t. It hurt too much. I—” He swallows. Sniffs. “I thought it might be just stress relief for you. Getting out what happened on Solarus but I…I think I might be a little heartbroken still.” His breath hitches loudly in the middle of his words. “I couldn’t be there in the morning. I had to…to put myself back together. I shouldn’t have said yes. I’m sorry—”
He looks so small, in spite of his height, missing vital pieces of himself. That hole in the middle of Yeonjun burns at the edges. His heart is still settled in his throat and he lets his body carry him forward, lurching across the room to press his hands to Soobin’s cheeks—catch the first of his tears.
“Soobin-ah,” he groans, cradling Soobin’s precious, messy face. “I still love you so much.”
Soobin’s wet eyes blow wide, stunned. “W-what?”
Yeonjun feels stupid, reckless, hysterical. “I miss you so much,” he says. “I miss you all the time. I thought you moved on. I thought you were fine, you didn’t want me anymore.”
Soobin’s trembling fingers curl in the front of Yeonjun’s sweatshirt. “Idiot,” he says, in that blunt, sometimes scathing way of his. He gives Yeonjun a small shake that’s still rough enough to clack Yeonjun’s teeth together. “Idiot hyung.”
“Am I?” Yeonjun asks, terrified and hopeful.
“Yes.” Soobin lets go of him, backing up a step so he can scrub an arm over his face. “The distance didn’t help. It just made me miserable.” He shakes his head. “I was fucking miserable. Why do you think I made sure not to be around you? I thought you’d be able to tell immediately. That I’d seem so pathetic—unable to get over this and just be friends.” He hiccups out a laugh and Yeonjun wants to pet him again, just to erase the lines of distress on his face. “I owe Huening and Taehyun so much for putting up with me.”
“Did you really cry on their couch for a week?” Yeonjun asks.
“I ruined two of their pillows,” Soobin mutters with another vicious scrub to his face. “Ugh, hate crying.”
“I cried all morning, when I woke up and you were gone,” Yeonjun admits. “Wooyoung had to come reassemble me. Again.”
Soobin frowns at him, looking gutted. “Hyung.”
“Not your fault,” Yeonjun promises, because they’ll end up somewhere awful if they try to start assigning blame now. “We’re both stupid.”
“Not entirely,” Soobin says. “You’re right. It was too much, in some ways. Trying to work together, being in a relationship, dealing with all of this.” He sweeps a hand to encompass what Yeonjun assumes is the general craziness of life at the MPA and their own respective traumas. “I think you were right, we needed a step back. We should have just talked about what we wanted that to look like. Together.”
Yeonjun drifts closer again, though he resists the urge to touch until Soobin gives him some signal. “I’m so sorry, Soobin-ah. That I broke your heart.”
Soobin smiles at him—all tender, an echo of the boy on the Elysium, standing on the cusp of new love. “I’m sorry I broke yours.” He reaches out to take one of Yeonjun’s hands, long fingers interlacing with Yeonjun’s. “I still love you, too, by the way. If that wasn’t super obvious already.”
“It’s still nice to hear it,” Yeonjun murmurs—his heart finally settling back to its proper place in his chest.. The hole closes a few centimeters, the knife dulls.
He squeezes Soobin’s big hand tight and rocks up to press his forehead against Soobin’s. Soobin shifts to hold his waist, keeping him close. “What now?”
“Come to bed with me?” Yeonjun asks, because his still-healing body gets tired too easily and all this emotion has left him emptied out and desperate to be horizontal. “Recovering isn’t the same without you as a pillow.”
“I am an amazing pillow,” Soobin agrees and oh, there are his dimples. Yeonjun pokes one in delight and it deepens—a flush spreading across Soobin’s cheeks.
“I’ll cook for you later,” he says, even though all he has is instant ramen. “We’ll figure the rest out.”
“Okay,” Soobin agrees.
He strips off that pretty coat, laying it on the sofa, and allows Yeonjun to lead him to the bedroom. They crawl under the covers fully dressed and this time, Yeonjun wraps himself around Soobin, resting his head on Soobin’s chest.
“You’d better be here when I wake up,” he says, trying to sound threatening but mostly just sounding afraid.
Soobin’s fingers stroke through his hair. “I will. I swear. Sleep, hyung.”
“Do you know what the worst strain was?” Yeonjun murmurs instead of obeying.
“Amsterdam,” Soobin whispers back. “Seeing you dead was…was horrific, but seeing myself marrying you? Gods, that hurt.”
Perhaps it shows something fundamentally wrong with them: that they were more upset by an adorable pre-wedding moment instead of witnessing versions of themselves die horrible deaths. Another counseling session is definitely looming but….
“Yeah,” Yeonjun agrees. “Yeah that was awful. Our alternate selves are disgusting.”
Soobin laughs, a low rumble beneath Yeonjun’s cheek. “Sickening. And I…I saw you, another you, on the Elysium. He thought I was his own Soobin.”
“What did he say?”
Soobin’s hand moves to Yeonjun’s back, an anchoring weight. “He thanked me for going out with him the night before and asked if I wanted to go out again.” Soobin sighs. “I said yes.”
“Good, I told the other you yes too.” Yeonjun closes his eyes with a tired hum. “Couldn’t ruin their romantic potential because we were a mess.”
“No, that would have been too mean,” Soobin agrees. “Now sleep, hyung-ah.”
“So fucking bossy,” Yeonjun huffs.
“You’re worse,” Soobin says mildly.
Yeonjun would argue, but he’s asleep before he can get any more words out.
_ _
He wakes to an empty bed again and feels his chest pull taut with panic.
No, why would Soobin leave? After all of that? Soobin isn’t cruel, it wouldn’t be for revenge, right?
A clatter echoes from somewhere in the apartment, followed by Beomgyu’s voice—too loud for the early morning hush draped in the air. “So you two finally got your heads out of your asses?”
“Why are you still here?” Soobin’s voice answers, exhausted.
“I’m gloating,” Beomgyu replies. “Let me savor this.”
Yeonjun sags back against the pillows with a gasp of relief, rubbing his chest. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.
“You’re going to gloat forever,” Soobin says with weary acceptance. “You don’t need to stay here to do it.”
“You’re so mean,” Beomgyu whines. “After I brought you food?”
“You brought Yeonjun food.”
“Because I didn’t think you’d be here!”
“Well I am and I’d like you not to be.”
“Fine,” Beomgyu relents. There’s a sound that might be him jumping off the counter. “I have to go spread rumors at work anyway.”
“I hate you,” Soobin mutters.
“You love me,” Beomgyu replies. He pauses, voice going serious. “And it’s good that you look happy again.”
“Ugh,” Soobin groans. “Get out.”
“Bye, love you!” Beomgyu calls cheerfully, but instead of going out the front door his footsteps pad into the bedroom.
Yeonjun closes his eyes, trying to pretend to be asleep, but Beomgyu just bends over him in the bed, enveloping him in an awkward half-hug and planting a kiss to the top of his head. “I’m happy for you, too, hyung,” he whispers in Yeonjun’s ear. “Took you both long enough.”
Afraid that if he tries to say anything the words will come out coated with embarrassing tears, Yeonjun settles for squeezing Beomgyu’s arm in silent thanks. Beomgyu pats him on the head and finally leaves—the door lock beeping behind him.
Yeonjun hauls himself out of bed with a groan, wincing at the protest in his joints and muscles. He’ll need to also make sure he does some careful stretching to keep everything that’s healing from getting too stiff. For now, he drifts through the apartment to where Soobin’s standing in the middle of the kitchen, stirring a pot of ramen on the stove. He’s got a pillow imprint on one cheek, black hair a riot, and he’s gorgeous, taking up space in Yeonjun’s life again.
“Hey,” Yeonjun protests, a sleepy croak. “I was gonna cook for you.”
“I can manage ramen,” Soobin says with a smile over his shoulder. “And I couldn’t keep sleeping. We were out for like sixteen hours.”
“Probably needed it.” Yeonjun takes a seat at the breakfast bar. “Just don’t tell anyone.”
“Never show weakness,” Soobin agrees solemnly. “Besides, we’re about to be the talk of the MPA. Again.”
“Ugh.” Yeonjun grimaces. “We need another magical accident to happen or something. Like that time all the teleporters went haywire.”
Everyone was ping-ponging all over the city, never knowing where a gateway would take them, and it was twenty-four hours of absolute, demented chaos.
“Give it another couple weeks,” Soobin says sagely. “Something always happens.”
And there are still the unfinished threads of their mission—an unknown threat, burning strains, Yeonjun with a target on his back. He still wonders if whatever deal his counterpart made set all of this in motion, or if the entity was simply using that Yeonjun to get to the one he really wanted. And that’s not even considering the darker threat—some sort of deity? Or a dragon? Powerful enough to destroy an entire strain. Also targeting alternate versions of them.
He wants to go back to Seoul and wrap all of those boys up in his arms. Find a way to protect them. But maybe they’ll figure out how to protect each other.
Soobin puts a steaming bowl on the counter in front of him. The noodles are slightly overdone but Yeonjun doesn’t complain as he stuffs them in his mouth, too touched by the fact that Soobin cooked for him, that Soobin is here.
“I’ve been thinking,” Soobin says, leaning on the counter. “We shouldn’t go back to working together. Unless they need us for stuff related to this whole dangerous-cosmic-beings mess.”
“Agreed,” Yeonjun says around another mouthful of noodles. “Wooyoung would kill me anyway.”
He’d been ecstatic when Yeonjun requested they be partners, saying that he always knew they’d be a badass team and he was desperate to get back out in the field since his old partner retired. He also thinks that Changmin and Soobin work well together—at least that’s what he heard when he once went looking for information about Soobin during a depressed bout of weakness.
Soobin crosses his arms. “So where do we start?” He laughs quietly. “Or rather, re-start, I guess.”
Yeonjun dials back to the Gyeongbokgung Palace district, to the scrunch of Soobin’s eyes and the giddiness enveloping his whole face. Back to Soobin lit by a thousand meteors. Takes in Soobin now—all his blurry, softened edges, all the nerves lurking beneath his casual calm.
Strains die and flare to life, worlds upon worlds, doors upon doors—a constant cycle of beginnings and ends spinning out into the cosmos. Hold on to what you have, Min Yoongi says in the cradle of the towering archives.
“A date,” Yeonjun says to Soobin in the cocoon of this gentle morning. “Let’s go on a date.”
Sunlight breaks through Yeonjun’s curtains, painting Soobin in gold. His smile lights up his face just as much—brilliant warmth.
“I’d like that,” Soobin says. He leans across the counter, smile turning playful. “Take me on a date, hyung.”
And just like that, they begin.