Jongin does fall asleep for a quick cat nap, but his body is accustomed to being wide-awake during the midnight hours, so he is up and alert half an hour later. He slides out of bed and gets dressed, leaving Kyungsoo to continue dozing amid the sheets.

He brews a plain cup of coffee in his kitchen. His fingers drum on the countertop as it drips down into a mug, lips twitching into a half-smile as he thinks about the fancy machine back in the office that Dyo gifted him. The other navigators better not be leaving the spouts uncleaned after using it, lazy asses.

As he sips his drink at his kitchen table, Jongin’s mind methodically flicks through his options for what comes next. Kyungsoo’s words from earlier replay in his head:

“You could do just about anything you want to, if you can step past the fear of what might happen.”

He pulls out his phone with resolve. He has some calls to make.

---------

Ding. The elevator announces his arrival on the fourth floor.

“Hey you! I can’t believe we missed all the excitement!” Wendy is a ball of enthusiasm, long hair bouncing as she rushes to greet Kai when he emerges from the elevator.

“Baek’s been blabbing, huh?” He shouldn’t be surprised.

Chen pokes his head around the corner from his workspace. “Well hello there, lover boy,” he simpers. “Gossip time!”

“Aren’t you supposed to be working? It’s…” Kai checks his watch. “Only 4am.”

“Paperwork can wait. I want to hear all about this dramatic storm out of the office to rescue your dreamy Dyo,” Wendy squeals, tugging him by the wrist into the break room. Chen looks pouty but follows right behind.

“I wasn’t dramatic , I was appropriately concerned about my partner,” Kai corrects her calmly.

“Pffft,” Chen blows a loud raspberry before he starts imitating Kai’s voice. “ ‘The coffee machine was for me, from Dyo to meeee !’ ” He limps over to the espresso machine and clutches it in a possessive hug, pressing his cheek against the chrome and fake ugly-crying. He quits acting and straightens up a moment later. “No wonder you babied this thing, always polishing it and treating it like your firstborn son.”

“Okay, first of all, I never hugged the machine. And second of all, you guys are just slobs. I simply provide the recommended maintenance in the user manual.”

“After every cup,” Chen snickers.

“It’s the factory guidelines to keep it under warranty!”

“Boys!” Wendy claps her hands to interrupt them. “Let’s not bicker. Give us the scoop. What exactly happened when you met?” She props elbows on the table and sets her chin on her hands, eagerly leaning forward for the info. “Was it love at first sight?”

Seeing as how he only confessed his feelings the day before and is a private person, Kai should balk at the question. But given what’s ahead, he wants to share the truth. “It was more like love at first listen, to be honest.”

“All that denial before, and now you’re straight to the point. Wow, who are you and what did Dyo do to our Kai? Spill !” Chen pulls up a chair, next to Wendy, equally intrigued.

Kai concisely recounts the general sequence of events of getting disconnected, requesting permission to initiate a rescue mission, Baek assisting, finding Dyo, and foiling a plot that put civilians in danger.

Chen waves the words aside. “Don’t give me the stale mission debrief. You know we want the goods on Dyo.”

“Is he handsome?” Wendy asks with a wink.

“He better be. Baekhyun told me he walked in on you two in bed the next day.”

Wendy cutely covers his mouth in shock as Kai blushes and clarifies, “ Not like that.”

“Aw, did you two just talk until the sun rose?” Chen teases, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“He doesn’t have to kiss and tell.” Wendy swats Chen’s shoulder playfully. Kai doesn’t miss how her fingers graze down his suit jacket afterward. “But the important thing is, you’re an item now, right?”

Kai can’t hide the grin the spreads across his face. “Yeah, we are.”

She squeals delightedly. “We ship it. We ship it hard.”

The ringing endorsement feels nice, but Kai’s done being in the spotlight for now. He shifts the conversation over to the duo’s endeavors. “What about you guys? What happened with your big joint mission?”

They answer simultaneously.

“Ah, it was a mess.” “It was awesome .”

Wendy laughs at Chen’s excitement, shaking her head fondly. “Okay, you tell the story then,” she says.

Chen rubs his hands together and jumps right in. “So this was a total infiltration. We were going straight into the headquarters of a rival spy agency and retrieving all the they stole from our warehouse a few weeks back.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I bet you were part of at least a few of the retrieval missions for some of the gear, since Tao said he’d recovered a few items from one of their satellite offices before,” Chen explains.

Ah. The ‘sensitive toasters.’

“Was this agency DD?” Kai asks.

“Yeah.”

Dammit. This company policy of typically not sharing info across missions or across navigators is really not doing them any favors. How does it help for agents and navs to go in blind to the bigger picture? He ought to file a motion with the executive committee to get this changed, except after today, it doesn’t really--

“Hey,” Chen snaps his fingers to get Kai’s eyes back on him. “You still want the story or are you busy daydreaming of Dyo’s di--”

Kai picks up a sugar packet off the table and frisbee throws it straight at Chen’s mouth to interrupt. He blocks it but it serves its purpose, disrupting his sentence as he chuckles victoriously at getting a rise out of Kai. “What happened when you got there?” Kai asks, steering them back on topic.

“We had an elaborate plan to get virtually every agent inside first, then take them down from the inside out.”

“Which never sat well with me,” Wendy pipes in.

“True. But given the building layout and where the equipment was, it made sense to start inside and do an interior sweep to eliminate all the enemy operatives we anticipated would be there,” Chen argues. “Only… that was false info that we had gotten over wiretap. We ‘knew’ what they wanted us to know.”

Kai’s eyebrows twitch. “It was a trap.”

“Yep. With a little help of a mole.” Wendy crosses her arms and glowers, looking especially put out. “I hate it when Baekhyun’s right.”

“So it was Yeri? Wait, did he reach you guys in time?? Was anyone hurt?” Kai sits up straighter, suddenly worried for his regulars.

“Baekhyun moreso confirmed what we already had deduced by the time he called. Almost all the agents were inside, and things seemed amiss right away. There were no enemies showing up on the radar,” Wendy explains. “Xiumin was the first to suggest they were using our stolen cloaking tech.”

“But luckily, they didn’t realize what they had stolen was only the beta version. The one we used in the training mission last month for the “ambush Tao’s room” challenge. Thanks to Kai’s careful notes in the post-training report, our R&D specialists were able to go back and address the flickering issue that gave away our positions when we were in close range. So equipped with the updated version, we were successfully cloaked and not coming up on DD’s screens, while blips from their people would flash red every so often on ours, giving us the advantage. Once we discovered this, Yeri started making small ‘mistakes’ that would cause little noises to give away our position, trying to play it off as cute mishaps by a newer operative. Lay and Tao didn’t buy it and were exchanging thoughts in Mandarin over the line... which I happen to know just enough of to catch their drift.”

“He’s a hero,” Wendy beams before laying a heavy smooch on Chen’s cheek.

Kai does his best not to gag at the fawning.

“And I appreciated the hero’s welcome you gave me later that night,” Chen says to her with a naughty grin.

“Oh come on, is it really necessary for me to hear this?” Kai considers bailing and heading for his desk. But he does want to know how his agents fared.

Wendy blushes and hides her face in Chen’s shoulder. “Just finish the story,” she chastises weakly, not daring to look at Kai. Chen pecks the crown of her head affectionately and turns back to him.

“The moment the cloaking flickered and revealed four enemies flanking them like they knew where to be, Tao and Lay were ready to immediately take down Yeri and retreat to regroup. Turns out… DD didn’t have nearly as many agents stationed there as we thought in pre-planning. They led us to believe they’d be fully stocked there in order to lure all our agents out of Seoul, where evidently they had planned the Insadong attack. They figured they had the advantage over us since they a) knew we were coming, b) had Yeri as a traveling mole who’d switch sides once fighting broke out, and c) had cloaking to hide their positions while we walked right into their trap.”

“And if everything had worked… Prudence might have assumed the real traitor and mole was Dyo since he was here and could’ve assisted with Insadong. So Prudence would’ve been without any field operatives,” Kai reasons. Damn. Their agency could’ve ended up framed for a civilian attack and had no way