“Oh, please do feel free to stay…as long as you’d like.”

Sunggyu visibly cringed as he sat there on the bar stool facing away from the kitchen bench where his sister was obviously being charmed by no other than the greasy younger male.

“Ah-h, Minah-shi, i-“

“Please, Woohyun, do call me noona.” Minah battered her eyelids as she turned to give her younger brother a torturous smirk.

It was then that Sunggyu snapped up and decided to break free from his mobile, speechless state and stormed towards the couch where his sister and arch nemesis (or so he thought) were sitting.

“Alright, let’s go. Come on, Woohyun. Noona tell the kids I said bye and I hope the place will be immaculate when I come home tonight.”

“Yeah yeah, will do. It was an absolute pleasure to meet you, Woohyun. I hope we will see each other very soon.” Minah gave a knowing glance as she popped the toddler back on her hip as she walked over to the kitchen to make breakfast for her children.

“Sunggy-“

“Shut it, we’re leaving. Now. Hurry up before my sister starts drooling all over you.” Sunggyu angrily huffed and formed a small pout which the younger did not fail to miss.

“Sunggyu, you know I only have eyes for you.”

“Shut the hell up and pick a place with good coffee, I’m starving.” Sunggyu rolled his eyes and finished tying up his leather shoes before shutting the door firmly in its place.

“Aye aye, Captain.” Woohyun smirked as he pressed the elevator button.

Archer’s coffee shop, 8:15 am

“So.” The young man started, as he placed his coffee cup down. The chestnut haired man continued skimming the morning paper as his coffee, black with no sugar, stood alone and untouched.

“I’m thinking that we should have dinner tonight.” Woohyun ended as he lightly twirled his pen between his forefinger and middle, still not looking at the man seated opposite him as he tried to finish his Sudoku puzzle.

Sunggyu remained silent, his eyes still scanning the black and white letters right to left religiously. He picked up the metal spoon beside his cup of coffee and twirled it around, swishing the black liquid around in circles.

Woohyun gave a light grin as he finished his puzzle, placing the last digit into the square box with a satisfied full stop, as if it were the end of a sentence.

“So, how about it?” He waited expectantly, for the first time since they sat down for breakfast he stared at the older man.

Sunggyu stopped twirling his spoon, folded up his newspaper, neatly bending the sheets into a perfect rectangle before picking up his whole cup of coffee and proceeded to scull the whole cup.

Woohyun smiled as he clasped his hands together and waved his hand towards the waitress, signalling for the bill.

“Great. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

The office, Shim & Kim, 10:46 am

 “Tell me about how you met.”

“It was back in our trainee days, when neither of us were well known. We had spent most of our high school lives together with a few other boys who stayed in our dorm as well. Because we were the same age, we got put together in the same training group, and our scheduled rehearsals would be together as well. I don’t know, we got along well and we became best friends. It was stupid, really, how we got caught, because it was the first time we even felt anything, romantically speaking, for each other. We were drunk, we were just told that we would debut soon and we had to start training even harder. One thing led to another, and let’s just say one of the dance instructors found us in an uncompromising position and dobbed us in. Our managers were furious, they had to fight and convince the CEO that they had already wasted too much money, time and effort on us. It wasn’t worth it to let us go, so they kept us. But we weren’t allowed to stay in the same dorm anymore, and they decided to debut me as a solo. Kibum and I found every free moment we could to be together, we would disguise ourselves and sneak out at night just to spend time together. We spoke about what happened and decided that our mutual feelings for each other needed to be kept secret.” Jonghyun sighed as he took a sip of his iced water.

“Did they ever find out about your secret meetings?” Sunggyu twirled his pen as he continued to nod and give his client his full attention.

“I don’t think so, we were very discreet in hiding, we went to really far away places, away from our dorms and the company building.”

“Fans?”

“No, not once did anyone catch us.”

“Okay, go on.”

“Ss-o after that, you’d think SM were homophobic or something, because they treated us both like crap. They would overwork us, train us for hours on end and it was lucky if we even got a bit of sleep. They also cut our salaries. As a solo artist, I was only entitled to 0.1% of total earnings, including advertisements and dramas.”

“Clear breach of contract there, Dongwoo, have a flip through the clauses tonight and highlight the fine print.”

“Got it, boss”

Jonghyun looked down as he sighed, his thumbs twirling as he thought about the whole ordeal.

Sunggyu gave a small glance at Sungyeol before leaning closer towards his distressed client and spoke softly.
"Jonghyun you need to understand that I am your lawyer, and only yours. I am not liable for Kibum, I can't do anything for him. Kibum is still part of SM."
"They sent him away, Sunggyu. What do I do?"
"You stay strong and fight back. And when we win, and I say when, you'll get him back. Okay?"
"Yeah." He castes his eyes downwards towards his fumbling fingers, his tears threatening to fall.
"We'll win, right?"
"Of course we will, I'm Kim Sunggyu." I smirked as Jonghyun gave a light chuckle and nodded his head in agreement.

After his meeting with Jonghyun and the rest of his clients, Sunggyu let out a loud sigh and buzzed Dongwoo into his office.

“Dongwoo.”

“Yes, Boss?”

“Remember when I first gave you that e case?”

Dongwoo paused before he gave a small cough and a grin, already knowing where this topic of conversation was going.

“Yeah?”

“I need you to do something for me again.”

“Illegal again?”

“Hush, we do not use the word illegal, okay Dongwoo? Let’s just say we’re bending the rules a bit.”

“Merely compromising the situation right?”

“Exactly right. We’re just… compromising the law”

Dongwoo nodded as he kept his grin, reaching out his hand to pick up the key that Sunggyu slid across the wooden desk. Sunggyu kept his face expressionless and cleared his throat before picking up a pen and continued to sign and note documents needed for his next meeting.

The assistant took it as his cue to leave and turned to walk back to his desk. He had a slight hop in his walk as he excitedly planned out his night, it had been a while since he had such a thrilling assignment. He was just about to close the door behind him when he heard his boss whisper in a low voice,

“Find out every damn dirty secret they have."

“Will do, Boss.”

SM entertainment office, 1:06 am

“Who the hell are you?” The Kim assistant widened his eyes as he heard a soft knock at the door that he had just silently opened with the key given by Sunggyu. He sighed as he turned around with a frown.

“Dongwoo? Jang Dongwoo?” A tall, light brown haired man stood in a trench coat with his eyebrows slightly raised in surprise.

“Who’s asking?” Dongwoo narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but let his guard down as he realised the man wasn’t an authorised personnel either. He was also very good looking, if he might add.

“I know you, you work for Kim Sunggyu. The one who’s also working on the SM case.”

“Also? So you’re working for SM?” Dongwoo immediately took a step forward and tried to look intimidating.

“Hell no, I’m just a detective, or should I say consultant.” The other male held up his hands in defence as he watched Dongwoo try to keep a straight face despite knowing that the man was a mere secretary.

“If you’re working for them, why are you sneaking around in the middle of the night?”

“We’d all be dead before SM discloses all their files to us. They have piles of pages documenting scandals and exploitation orders. I was planning on snatching a key from the security guard, but luckily for me I saw you sneak past and knew you’d have a key.”

"Yah, you could go to jail for this." All signs of intimidation and suspicion were gone from Dongwoo’s face as he casually gave a look around, mentally skimming through files and looking for the relevant tab in the piles.

“We’re both in here, unauthorised in the middle of the night, I think we’re both going to go to jail if we get caught. So how about we just forget this ever happened and get out of here and grab a coffee?" The light brown haired man smirked as he realised it would be unwise to try and find a file with the so-called enemy in the same room. Eh, we’re already here. Might as well, right?

“Sure, ladies first.” Dongwoo winked as he gestured the other male to go past first. The taller man scoffed and rolled his eyes before walking straight through the glass doors, unsuspecting of Dongwoo’s sly actions as he grabbed the large manila folder on the desk, which he had found before getting caught, and quickly hid it underneath his oversized coat. He smirked as he quickly typed a text on his mobile.

Kim residence, 1:20 am

Got it, Boss.

Sunggyu smiled as he crept underneath his blankets, snuggling into the warmth of another as he let the other man’s arm wrap around his waist with a contented sigh. 

#

unbeta-ed but wanted to finally spit out a chapter before the year ended.

merry christmas! hope you all still read this haha im so sorry about being inactive all the time, uni is just crazy and i can't put this as a priority no matter how much i wish i could. thank you all for sticking around (if you are reading this) and thank you for being great readers! i love you all and cannot even begin to say how much i appreciate you all and your comments. please give me feedback or even let me know what you think! i love to reply to comments and would love to know my readers, silent, old and new :) 

hope you all have the merriest of all christmas' and a happy new year celebrated well with family and friends! <3