The neon lights were thumping over the figures and sending a static buzz scattering, enveloping the whole street.  The thudding beat of the bass flooded out of doorways where people milled and stumbled, laughing and clutching each other to stay upright in their swirling world. 

                Kangin seemed to be the only source of stability emanating in that night.  Even the buildings themselves had a certain tilt that added to the precarious nature of the whole street.  While the smoky chaos moved around him, Kangin cut a straight path, occasionally letting his eyes pass over the buildings to either side of him.  There was no sense of uncertainty in his motions.  He seemed to know exactly where he was going even though he didn’t actually have anywhere he planned on being.  The reason for his head movements were made clear by the amused half smile on his face:  he was enjoying the swirl of the night. 

                Slowly, his forward movement ceased altogether, as his eyes fell on a scene playing out around the corner of one of the darker buildings.  Three men were surrounding a smaller male who they had seemingly backed into a wall.  Kangin let his small eyes linger on the scene for a moment, debating whether or not it was worth his time.  He usually stuck to the mantra that if someone was stupid enough to get into a fight, they should deal with it themselves, including if that person was himself.  Yet, he also didn’t like an unfair fight.  He was still wondering what to do when he saw a fist connect with the jaw of the ‘one’ part in the three-against-one fight.  Kangin cringed slightly with sympathy at the noise and that might have been the end of his involvement except that one of the men had caught the smaller one as he crumpled slightly under the hit and Kangin decided he did not like the look of this “fight.”

                “Hey,” he shouted to distract the three instigators.  They watched him darkly as he lightly jogged over, but their eyes turned uncertain as they took in his size.   He always got that look, Kangin had noticed.  People were intimidated by him.  It came in handy, but it could also be annoying.

                As he arrived at the scene, he threw a glance at the slight man in the larger one’s hands:  his shirt was halfway ed and a dark bruise was already starting to appear on his face which was obscured by his messy hair.   Yeah, Kangin didn’t like the look of this at all.

                “You got a problem?” one of the guys asked. 

                Pulling on his jacket in a way he knew looked threatening, Kangin answered, “Yeah, actually.  I’m just wondering what you guys are up to?” 

                “None of your business,” snapped the one who was still holding onto the smaller man.

                Kangin crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.  The three fighters shifted uneasily. 

                “What does it matter to you?” the middle one, who was probably the leader, wondered.  He sounded much less certain than before.  One of the other men was pulling at the leader’s arm and whispering something to him urgently.  The leader hesitated and looked over his shoulder.  Taking advantage of the hesitation, Kangin jerked toward the trio threateningly and they immediately scattered, taking off down the street. 

                Allowing a little smile to play on his face as he watched them flee, Kangin then returned his attention to their unfortunate, or rather fortunate, victim.  The thin man was still leaning against the wall where he’d fallen when the leader had let him go.  He gingerly pressed the back of his hand to his nose, pulling it away to look for blood.  He found none.

                “You okay?” Kangin asked gruffly. 

                “Fine,” the other answered, his wavy brown hair still obscuring his face. 

                Sighing more at the rudeness than the lack of thanks, Kangin stretched out his hand to help the other stand.  It was this motion that finally made the smaller man look up at him, his hair swung away from his face and Kangin paused. 

                He knew that face:   the delicate, feminine features were only slightly obscured by the discoloration of the developing bruise.   Long ago, that face had been framed by ludicrous, girlish, red curls but even though the hair had been neglected and hacked away, allowed to return to its natural color, he still knew for certain who it was.  It was the eyes:  they had grown dull, it seemed, over time, but they were still frighteningly dark and spider like. 

                “Kim Heechul?” Kangin said in surprise.  It wasn’t a real question.  He knew who it was.  He just never expected to see his one-time roommate here of all places.  Thinking again, he realized this was exactly the sort of situation he’d have expected to find his less than ideal roommate if he had ever bothered to think about him.

                “Maybe,” the thin man answered, stumbling slightly as he stood by his own power.  He immediately fell back against the wall and started chuckling to himself as he buttoned his shirt back up. 

                Shaking his head, Kangin realized that the smaller man was drunk off his .  Rolling his eyes, he figured he should have known as much, but he was still harboring a vague disappointment.  He eyed the strange man, feeling conflicted.  Ideally he would have liked to turn around and walk away:  he had never been a fan of Heechul.  Yet he couldn’t find it in himself to just turn and walk away.  If he left the defenseless flirt out there on his own, it was almost guaranteed he would wind up in some kind of trouble again.

                Sighing deeply, Kangin reached out and took the smaller man’s arm. “Come on,” he grumbled. 

                Heechul snatched his arm away and glared back up at him, “Do I know you?”

                “You honestly don’t remember me?” Kangin said with disbelief.  He knew they had only known each other for like, one semester, but he was still offended. 

                “Dude,” Heechul said, waving his arm drunkenly, falling out of his former clarity, “I don’t even recognize myself right now.”  He started giggling again and as he did his knees buckled. 

                Kangin begrudgingly caught the lithe man as he feel forward into him, still giggling like a child.

                “Come on,” Kangin sighed again.  “If you stay out here you’ll get picked off faster than the last bit of birthday cake.” 

                Heechul snorted a laugh as Kangin half carried him down the street.  “Of course you would say that, fatso.”

                Suppressing a flash of anger, Kangin gruffly jerked the smaller man into a more upright position.  “Shut up, She-chul .” 

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                Leeteuk was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea and reading over his work when the apartment door clicked open. 

                “You’re home early,” he called glancing at the clock on the wall.  His voice was genial enough, but if Kangin was home early from a night out it meant one of two things:  he had, thankfully, decided not to drink or something had gone wrong.  Leeteuk waited tensely as he anticipated his flat mate’s response.

                ‘Yeah, well, I brought you a present.” 

                Confused, but fairly confident that Kangin wasn’t drunkenly babbling, Leeteuk stood and walked down the foyer toward the door.  He was surprised by the sight that greeted him.  Kangin had a semi-conscious man tucked under his right arm and a scowl on his face.  The scowl was familiar, the, no doubt, drunken man…not so much. 

                “Care to explain?” Leeteuk asked nonjudgmentally, eyeing the stranger and his roommate with a wary eye. 

                “Shut up, it’s not like that,” Kangin grumbled.  “You remember my roommate freshman year…the one before you?” 

                “Shechul?” Leeteuk guessed uncertainly.

                Looking properly embarrassed, Kangin admitted, “That was a nickname.   It’s Heechul.”

                “Ah,” Leeteuk responded with slowly dawning recollection.  “He’s the one that freaked you out because you thought he was watching you and because he looked so much like a woman that you wondered if they’d assigned you the wrong room.”

“Bingo,” Kangin said, shaking his head at the memory. 

“So…” Leeteuk prompted, looking at the mess under Kangin’s arm. 

“Oh, right, sorry.  So I just saved his sorry from some thugs and I figured that you like taking care of people so…Do you mind if he crashes here for the night?   He’s the kind of idiot that we’d hear about on the news tomorrow if I had left him out there.” 

A small smile crinkled Leeteuk’s eyes and he had to bite his tongue to stop himself from laughing.  Kangin pretended to be tough, but underneath it all, he was a huge softie and couldn’t help but look after those weaker than him.  He could try and mask his concern, but Leeteuk saw right though him.

“Of course,” he finally said.  “He can stay in the guest room down the right hand corridor.”  Kangin nodded and started to move in the direction Leeteuk had indicated.  Although they technically lived in an apartment, they had crap loads of space in the huge building.  It had belonged to Leeteuk’s family and he had inherited it some time ago.  The two of them had moved in their junior year of college after a slight crisis, but that was about 5 years ago now.

The apartment had a lot of rooms, so it didn’t escape Kangin’s notice that Leeteuk has picked the guest room closest to where they slept.  Leeteuk had always been sickeningly caring, Kangin mused.  Although he guessed it made sense.

Arriving at the door, Kangin went into the guest room and dumped Heechul unceremoniously on the bed.  Leeteuk snuck in a few moments later carrying a glass of water, a bag of ice, and the bottle of Tylenol. 

“What are you doing?” Kangin wondered curiously as Leeteuk sat on the bed next to the mostly unconscious man.

Explaining as he went along, Leeteuk said, “Well, first of all, he’s going to need some ice for that face.”  Leeteuk carefully rolled the unresponsive Heechul onto his side so that the angry bruise on the right side of his face was exposed.  “And if you left him on his back like that he’d probably throw up and choke to death,” he wisely corrected as he picked up the bag of ice and folded it inside of a towel, pressing it against Heechul’s face.  “The Tylenol and water is for tomorrow.  It won’t do any good now.  Fun fact:  never give a drunk Advil, they’ll just bleed to death.” 

Kangin nodded slowly, impressed.  “How do you know all this stuff?” 

“I live with you,” Leeteuk answered teasingly. He looked up and gave Kangin a smile, but it didn’t reach all the way to his eyes.

Looking away and running his tongue over his teeth, Kangin deflected the comment. 

Leeteuk returned his attention to the unconscious man in his care and lifted the ice pack from his cheek to check on the bruise.  It did seem a bit better than before.  He figured it was probably because the kid was so pale, but the bruise looked pretty nasty. 

“Can you grab a blanket from the cabinet,” he asked his roommate.  Kangin grunted a response and shuffled to the other side of the room. 

Leeteuk turned his attention to Heechul’s shoes and untied them, slipping them off and placing them on the floor.  He could just sleep in the rest of his clothes, he decided. 

Kangin returned with the blanket and Leeteuk threw it over Heechul, tucking the ends under the mattress so it was less likely he’d roll off the bed and hurt himself.

“Is that it,” Kangin wondered impatiently. 

“Should be,” Leeteuk responded.

“Good, cause I’m tired,” Kangin turned and started for the door.  “Night,” he called over his shoulder as he left the room and headed toward his room on the left side of the guest room.

“Night,” Leeteuk answered, standing up and heading not toward his own room, but to a padded rocking chair in the corner of the room.  He grabbed a blanket off of the back of the chair and sat down, curling himself up for the night.

A/N  SO I'm guessing this is how you do an author's note... XD  Um, yeah Chapter One.  I don't know what to tell you except being a filthy American my knowledge of Korean culture is fairly...limited...so expect fatal errors all over this story which is supposedly set in South Korea.  Subscribe if you like it, if you don't, you can tell me why.   I update quickly and I have about 8 chapters in reserve just in case I get lazy.  I also know the whole plot so... that's good I guess.... :D  What do ya'll think?   OH, and sorry about that formating glich...I'm too lazy to fix it.  XD