The minute hand on his wrist watch moves too slow for his liking. Bored, Baekhyun puts a foot on the cylinder lock before swinging a leg up the top of the cage that housed the slaves for their trade tonight. He bends one leg to sit comfortably on the metal bars, with the other one suspended on air. The checkered tiles look far away from up here. The slaves are peacefully sleeping beneath him.

There's the sound of a car pulling on the driveway and soon, the new client is striding towards him.

Baekhyun has never seen that face before. He’s been warned that the new client looks like trouble, but Baekhyun’s only ever known the headquarters’ four walls; he doesn’t know how trouble would look like. 

Black from head to toe? A pair of tight jeans too distressed to be able to cover the knees? A band aid on the side of the nose bridge? Are these the reasons why they said this man looks like trouble?

Park Chanyeol, Baekhyun recalls the brief details given to him in a few sheets. They were generic. Jongin took note though, that Park Chanyeol always escapes from the cops.

“Why do they look like they’re dead?” Chanyeol points his chin towards the slaves inside the cage. Baekhyun is curious at the deep voice of this supposed trouble.

“Morphine,” he simply says, thinking a word alone can explain everything. He jumps off the cage.

The Chanyeol guy nods. A snap of fingers and another guy emerges from the car, holding a briefcase presumably loaded with cash. Baekhyun knows the drill.

When Baekhyun hands Chanyeol the key to the cage, their fingers brush.




 

If Baekhyun is honest to himself, he doesn’t like working in this industry. But one thing you should know about him, is that he doesn’t want owing other people. And that principle is the single factor that drove him to agree being one of Jongin’s men. 

When he’s been roaming around the streets, homeless and hungry, only Jongin spared him a glance, rolled down the window of his Rolls Royce and opened the door to the shotgun seat. Before that moment, Baekhyun’s dreamt of singing in front of an audience- a crowd applauding at the end of his song- and not this, being in an abandoned circus and exchanging people with stacks of bills.

But this is the road he travelled, and this is also the road where he’ll die, he guesses. It’s been a couple of years, dealing a cage of slaves from one client to another, in behalf of Jongin who hides behind shadows to protect the business, somehow. 

Maybe at some point, he’s been grateful, but he’s also thought about what would have become of him if he didn’t get into the seat of that car that day. And maybe he should be grateful with what he has now. Not all people can get a second chance at living, even if it’s by gripping a knife.




 

It’s not uncommon to have a client order from them a second batch of slaves. It’s uncommon, however, for any of these clients to take an interest on Baekhyun. It's to the extent that Chanyeol comes unaccompanied by anyone anymore.

“You look soft,” Chanyeol says with Baekhyun’s chin tilted upwards between his forefinger and thumb. “Maybe even prettier than the slaves you trade to us.” The way Chanyeol is looking at him makes Baekhyun wonder if this is how the slaves feel when Jongin personally checks upon them. 

The drugged slaves locked up inside the metal bars lie unconscious behind him. Baekhyun didn’t really want to drug them, especially when he’s already talked to one of them before, but it was Jongin’s order.

Baekhyun holds his breath when Chanyeol inhales the scent on his neck, Chanyeol’s nose tracing a line on his skin almost tickling him. Baekhyun tries hard not to think that Chanyeol’s lips are pressed against his collarbones, as light as a feather touching him.

“Maybe you’ll be traded as a slave someday?” Chanyeol whispers. 

(This is not exactly Baekhyun’s ideal place to get intimate, inside this abandoned circus tent with its checkered floor collecting dust.)

Nimble fingers Baekhyun’s shirt from the top, and when they try to do something more, Baekhyun stops them. “Who knows if I’ll be inside that cage someday?” He throws the hand away from him in contempt. “Right now, I’m not a bed slave for you so you better keep those hands to yourself before I shoot each finger off their knuckles.”

Baekhyun draws his revolver as if to prove a point, but Chanyeol just chuckles, raising both hands.

“Just saying." There's a smirk playing on Chanyeol's lips. "Because I’d be the first to buy you out of that cage, if ever.”




 

The third time Chanyeol gets a cage of slaves from him, he almost witnesses something despicable: Park Chanyeol, with one of the slaves hunched before him, her nails digging crescents on his leather jacket and a whining mess against the steel bars.

Baekhyun knows her, the slave. He's talked to her before while he checked up on them having lunch and she asked if she could drink one of the guard's leftover apple juice. But now looking at her being manhandled by Chanyeol, tears of pain pooling in her eyes, Baekhyun wants to break bones. Chanyeol’s bones.

Maybe he chooses to break his own bones when he decides at the very last minute to throw a punch on Chanyeol's face and effectively pushing him away from the sobbing girl.

“Next time you bed any of these slaves before your boss does, make sure they’re not crying while you’re ravishing them.”

Something in Chanyeol’s eyes changes then. There’s amusement in his gaze as he regards Baekhyun this time and Baekhyun feels needles prickling at his nape.

“So what if I want to bed them before my boss does? You’ve already sold the slaves to me, Baekhyun.” Baekhyun notes that his name sounds strange on Chanyeol’s lips. “Are you trying to play the hero by punching me?”

“That wasn’t my point, stupid.”

“So what if-” Chanyeol doesn’t get to finish what he was gonna say because Baekhyun lands another blow on his cheek, like a slap, and then on the other, to put some color on that pale skin. And then on the stomach, until Chanyeol lands on his back on the floor without even giving a fight. Until Chanyeol loses his consciousness.

Baekhyun hasn’t even looked behind his shoulder yet to look apologetic to his almost acquaintance before there is the unmistakable sound of sirens.

“Well, .”

It’s complicated. If Chanyeol would be caught, he would be endangered. Chanyeol could tell the police who he trades the slaves with. Jongin had said, “make every transaction clean.” But there wasn’t ever a ‘clean’ transaction when you’re in this line of business. Baekhyun pulls out his gun and shoots the slaves in between their eyebrows, three of them inside the cage, their blood splattering all over the dusty floor, before he looks at Chanyeol’s body lying by his feet. It would have been so much easier to pull the trigger.

In spite of himself, Baekhyun hauls the body on the passenger’s seat of Chanyeol’s Phantom. Baekhyun briefly wonders if everyone in the industry owns a Rolls Royce.

He almost breaks the meter when he steps on the throttle and Chanyeol, crouched over the dashboard, is lurched backwards with the sudden movement. Baekhyun strays his eyes from the road to look at Chanyeol blinking the stars away. The sound of the sirens makes him step on the throttle with an urgency.

They’ve left the perimeter of the circus but Baekhyun’s still not slowing down. The sound of the sirens still keeps coming, not at all fading. A bullet hits the side view mirror and Baekhyun’s heart hammers inside of him.

“, that thing costs more than all of their cars combined,” Chanyeol mutters beside him.

“What do you have to worry about?” Baekhyun snaps irritably. Chanyeol should just be grateful the bullet didn’t land on him. “You can ask your boss to buy you hundreds of those when you-”

“Just focus your eyes on the road, damn it.”

They turn around a block, Chanyeol leaning forward just in time for Baekhyun to hear another gunshot. He’s pretty sure there’s another bullet that hit Chanyeol’s car. 

There’s no sound of complaint from the other, and Baekhyun doesn’t know where the bullet has landed so he assumes they’re pretty safe, no flat tire or something. 

His foot starts to hurt with exertion on the throttle, pushing the car to two hundred kilometres per hour. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow down even when the sound of the sirens completely fades away. 

They’ve gone a long way, he thinks, turned at unpredictable corners that he doubts the police could follow them here. His foot is still pressed on the accelerator. Their chasers’ Toyotas seem too slow compared to the Phantom Baekhyun is driving right now.

There’s a pant beside him. “What happened to the slaves?”

“Shot them all. You can’t get a refund.”

“You killed them?” Chanyeol scoffs. “How are you better than a man who tried to force himself on one of those slaves?” Chanyeol tries to laugh, but ends up groaning. He sounds like he’s…

Baekhyun slows down in the middle of nowhere and parks the car on the side of the road. He looks over at his only companion, crouching on his seat and pressing a hand on his arm. There’s blood on Chanyeol's palm, trickling down his hand.

“You got shot?” Baekhyun checks for the compartment under the seat and finds some gauze. He grabs them and leans towards Chanyeol, pressing the sheets on the wound where the bullet has kissed his skin.

“It’s just a missed shot.” Chanyeol tries to make it sound little.

“A missed shot that still cut your skin. You’re bleeding.” Baekhyun’s brows furrow. If Chanyeol’s arm didn’t catch the bullet, it would have hit him.

“We bleed to know we’re alive.”

What the hell... Baekhyun doesn’t know a lot of things. He doesn’t know if Chanyeol was trying to lighten the atmosphere by being poetic.

“Give me your arm.” Baekhyun makes a tourniquet around his bicep and when it’s tight enough, Chanyeol pulls his arm back into himself. “Stop moving, I haven’t even tied the knot yet.”

Then Baekhyun registers the warmth of Chanyeol’s breath against his cheek, the firm muscles where his elbow is leaning on, the proximity of his ear and Chanyeol’s lips. He tugs at the knot a little bit too harshly before stumbling backward, but of course Chanyeol catches him by the shoulder with his good arm, before his back hits the steering wheel. Baekhyun looks up in time so that their gazes meet, and his breath is taken out of his lungs as if he’s drowning-

He inhales too much air by the time he breathes again. He turns away from an amused Chanyeol, and he doesn’t want to think that his cheeks are burning.

“You know, you’re pretty funny. You make acquaintances with the people you’ll later sell as slaves, then you try to defend them from or something more horrifying their owners could do to them, but you shoot them dead just so the police couldn’t get them.” Chanyeol says Baekhyun’s funny, but he’s not laughing.

“I don’t like it. But it’s my job. And I owe him my life, so I need to follow his orders.”

Chanyeol nods. “I don’t like that I’m doing this either.”

“So why are you doing it?”

“Same reason as you.” Chanyeol looks at him. In front of them where the car is facing, the sun is setting and the last bits of light cast shadows on Chanyeol’s face. He’s paler right now; the gunshot wound probably drained his blood more than they think it did. Baekhyun finds his gaze drawn to the slope of Chanyeol’s nose, the pained expression of trying to contain how much the wound hurts by biting his bottom lip, or clenching his teeth. Baekhyun’s gaze lingers on those plump lips as he speaks, “It’s something I need to do.”

There’s nothing that follows those words, and Baekhyun thinks it’s better not to ask. He lets go of what he felt moments ago. They should get that wound treated.




 

Someone told Baekhyun he’s been summoned by Jongin. Before opening the door, Baekhyun rolls the kinks out of his neck, trying to relax his composure. He steps inside to face the back of Jongin’s chair. When his boss turns around, there’s a small smile gracing his face. Baekhyun can feel the ghost of a lump on his throat.

“Come here, Baekhyun-ah.” There’s no danger in his voice. But living in here for years taught Baekhyun that Jongin doesn’t give away his plans. His voice, the words he uses, his smile – no one can figure him out just by judging those.

Baekhyun steps forward. And Jongin still beckons him with a finger. Closer. Baekhyun leans forward until Jongin grabs him by the shoulder. The edge of the desk between them digs through Baekhyun’s stomach. He can hear Jongin take a sharp breath. And then the words whispered into his ears, “I think you smell somehow different.”

The sound of Baekhyun's gulp is almost audible. He wills himself not to stiffen or else Jongin would know. “How so?” The moment his shoulder is freed from Jongin’s grip never comes; instead, he is shoved face first into the desk, cheek pressed against its cold surface.

Jongin nuzzles his nape from the spine to his hair. “You smell like the leather seat of some kid’s cheap car.”

Instead of thinking about a reply he knows his boss would just see through, Baekhyun thinks about how Jongin categorized one of his own cars as cheap. Maybe a car’s worth is just a few coins for Jongin who probably earns that much money every hour.

“When have you stopped listening to me, Baekhyun-ah?”

And the tone of Jongin's voice, the disappointment lying there. Jongin's never had to use that line on him before, because Baekhyun was always obedient. And now, knowing that he has disappointed the one person he wants to be useful to...

“I’m sorry, master.” Baekhyun manages to contain his sob. Jongin pushes him impossibly further on the desk.
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