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Kyuhyun startles awake in his office chair. He whips his head around, but there’s nothing there.

He’s alone in his office. He listens for something, anything, but it’s completely silent except for the ticking of the clock.

“I could have sworn...” He mutters as he sits back and shakes his head. Ghosts and odd noises. He must be cracking from the stress of the job. The sounds must be due to office construction projects or something. Maybe the next floor up is having some work done.

He checks the clock on the wall. It’s already almost seven in the morning. Jessica will be out at her desk.

Kyuhyun creaks open his office door and grumpily shuffles over to the coffee maker. He ignores the scathing look Jessica gives him for sleeping in his office again and starts brewing his favorite blend. He doesn’t know what it is, exactly; he just knows it’s the one in the blue package. Jessica would know what it was, but he’s never really cared enough to ask as long as it’s still there.

Jessica keeps on typing over at her desk, judging him from afar with pursed lips. He diplomatically pulls out another mug and pours her a cup.

“Morning, Jessica,” he says once he takes his first sip of coffee and regains the ability to speak. “Is there construction going on in the office?”

She stops typing momentarily and looks at him oddly. “No,” she says. “The only construction going on right now is in the inner mountain sites. This building has been cleared until next year’s assessment.”

“Oh.” He sets her coffee down on her desk.

Her eyes narrow. “Why?”

Kyuhyun shrugs and takes a long drink of coffee.

Jessica studies him like she’s trying to solve an astrophysics equation written on his forehead. She picks up her coffee and drinks from it without breaking her fixed stare.

Kyuhyun gets this look from her all the time. He’s so used to it that it just rolls off.

He sits on the edge of her semi-melted desk and lovingly cradles his coffee mug in both hands. “Anyway, Jessica, about the magician who summoned me yesterday,” he says. “We’re having a scheduling meeting today at twelve, his time.”

“Where does he live? What’s the time difference? What’s his name?” She asks, grabbing a pen and scribbling on a pad of paper with one hand. Always sharp as a tack, his Jessica.

“Seoul. It looks like we’re about four hours behind, from his watch. And his name is Sungmin. Lee Sungmin.” Kyuhyun’s lips twitch up into a smile as he remembers the look on Sungmin’ face when he’d introduced himself with a handshake. A handshake. He’d been the only magician Kyuhyun had ever worked with that had ever offered him something as polite as a handshake. He huffs an amused breath out his nose, his eyes crinkling, and rubs a thumb idly on his warm coffee mug.

When he looks back at Jessica, she’s got a raised eyebrow and a calculating smirk on her face.

He blinks and the smile drops off his face. “What?” he asks defensively.

“Oh, nothing,” she says innocently, with a mischievous sparkle in her eye.

“Jessica,” he says warningly.

“Just let me know when to call the wedding planner,” she says. She starts doodling little hearts around Sungmin’ name on her pad of paper with a straight face.

Kyuhyun is too proud to sulk. He frowns instead. “Jessica,” he says sullenly. He hopes he’s not blushing. He goes purple when he blushes.

She shoots a grin at him. “That wasn’t a denial.”

“Hmph.” He finishes his coffee. “Anyway, I’m going to bring my schedule along to the meeting and write in everything we decide on together.”

“Ooh, together,” Jessica teases.

Kyuhyun ignores her like the professional CEO he is, even though he knows for a fact that he’s now blushing dark purple. “And,” he valiantly goes on, “we’re going to have lunch, so don’t order anything for me from the cafeteria today.”

“Lunch daaaaate,” she says while waggling her eyebrows.

Kyuhyun sighs in the exasperated way he does when his assistant is being especially ridiculous. “The meeting is in about an hour, and I need you to divert my traffic from sales to Azazel. Also, I need to change.”

Jessica rolls her eyes. “You’re no fun. Consider Azazel on the case. You have a freshly pressed suit hanging up in the coatroom, with a couple of ties to choose from.”

“Good,” he says with a note of finality.

“You should go with the silver tie,” she continues as if she hadn’t even heard him speak. “It matches the purple of the suit and brings out the silver pinstripes. It also complements your suave debonair aura. Change your shoes to black, of course. You don’t want him thinking you don’t know how to match your shoes with your suit. And be sure to touch up your hair a bit. There’s shampoo in the emergency care pack I put in your desk, and you can use an employee shower down the hall. Go get him, tiger.”

She dismisses him with a flick of her wings, and turns back to her work.

It occurs to him that he’s never going to get the last word with her.

Kyuhyun rinses out his coffee mug and follows her orders to the letter.

-

It’s a calm day, and the clouds float past on the surface of the lake as fish dart around underneath. Not that Sungmin sees it. He’s nose deep in a new article on dimensional transportation and its effects on organic chemicals as he walks around his grounds.

He makes it through all the treatises in the magazine by the time he returns to the mansion. Each article is marked with underlined sections, his opposing arguments and questions scribbled in the margins. It’s the beginning of another couple of responsive essays he’ll send in to the scientific journals later this week.

Sungmin drops the magazine on the foyer’s hitchcock table and picks up the phone. He spins the finger wheel, just 0 for operator.

A woman answers right away. “Operator. What can I do for you today?”

“Yes, hello.” Sungmin double-checks the name on the article. “I would like to place a person-to-person call to a Doctor Lee Eunhyuk.”

“One moment please.” There is a pause as she looks up his information. “You will be connected directly.”

“Thank you.”

Eleven rings go by until Sungmin hears the unmistakable sound of the phone being picked up.

“Hello, is this Doctor Lee Eunhyuk?” Sungmin asks.

“Uhm, yes, it is. That’s me. Sorry, who is this?” He sounds harried. Probably in the middle of another experiment, if Sungmin has to guess.

“Hi! This is Lee Sungmin. I just read your new article on magical genetics in Magic Monthly.”

“Oh, thank you, um, so you did you have a question about – ” There is a silence. “Wait, did you say Lee Sungmin? As in, Mage Doctor? Like, the magician Lee Sungmin?”

Sungmin grins. “That would be me.”

There’s a quiet “Oh my god – ” and some strange, clunking sounds, as if Doctor Eunhyuk had just accidentally run into a door or toppled over a table.

Then things seem to level out over there, and Eunhyuk gets his breath back. “Doctor Lee, can I just say I am a huge fan of your work, and I have read all of your scholarly papers, and it is such an honor that you read my article and wow I really think you are one of the great minds of this – ”

“Oh, you are too kind.”

“ – age, and, uh. Really, though, I mean, your paper on the potential applications of the Aerugo sigil was just mind-blowing, and your molecular studies basically, uh, changed the whole magical and scientific communities forever, and your paper on magic genetic inheritance made me want to be a scientist, and oh, oh my god, I’m probably word-vomiting, I am so sorry.”

Sungmin laughs. “Quite all right. Oh, and please, do call me Sungmin.”

“Call you – oh, oh my god, thank you, thank you so much, I will. And you can call me Eunhyuk, of course, I mean, uh, yeah.” Eunhyuk sounds breathless.

“Well, Eunhyuk,” Sungmin says. “I have just read through your results on comparative organic molecular work.”

“Thank you so much,” Eunhyuk says fervently. “Do you – that is, would you – uh, what are your thoughts?”

“Oh, it was marvelous. I thought your analysis was very well-worded, and quite logical.” Sungmin flipped open a treatise to the article in question. “I did have a question for you, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“Absolutely no trouble, none, yes, please,” Eunhyuk says. He seems to be calming down a bit, with his speech pattern leveling out.

Which is a bit ironic, given what Sungmin is about to say next.

“Would you like to work with me on a project I had in mind?”

-

Kyuhyun stands up straight in front of the full-size mirror in the company bathroom, keeping one eye on the door just in case a random employee walks in.

He can’t seem to get his hair to behave. Kyuhyun wishes he had a comb or something – he drags a hand over his wet hair to try to flatten it more, but a bit in the back is still stubbornly sticking up. It almost looks like one of his horns, with the way it’s twisting into the air. His tail twitches with annoyance the longer he looks at it.

He straightens his tie one more time before nodding to his reflection. Most of this will have to do, but that small bit of hair. “Maybe Jessica has a comb,” he mutters.

He goes back to the office – remembering just in time to get the journal from his dirty suit – and goes up to Jessica’s desk.

She’s typing away, as always.

“Do you have a comb?” Kyuhyun asks.

She takes in his hair with a badly disguised smile and a raised eyebrow. “Do I have a comb,” she repeats.

He raises an eyebrow right back at her and gruffly gestures at the back of his head where he knows the calamity still reigns.

The grin grows on her face. “Why, so you can go back to the bathroom and try to comb it down for twenty more minutes?”

Kyuhyun scowls at her. “It will only take a second. I’m not going to go make off like a criminal.”

“No, I know that. The question is, are you going to go make out like one!” Jessica giggles.

Kyuhyun plants his face into his palm in mortification. He is the CEO of this entire company. He controls thousands of enormous metallic fields per day. He has been called on to fight human wars for centuries. How has it come to this? Ridiculous. His life is a shambles. He is a disgrace to all demonkind.

“Oh, fine.” Jessica lobs a comb at him. It bounces off his chest before he can catch it. “Go obsessively brush your hair.”

“Fine,” he snaps. “I will. Your pun was still horrible.”

She doesn’t even blink. “My puns are still much better than yours. Now go clean up that third horn you’ve got there. You only have about ten minutes left before you’re summoned, and I want that comb safely back in my desk before you cross over.”

He self-consciously reaches for his hair before stopping himself. Third horn? Is it really that bad? “Fine, fine,” Kyuhyun mu