Sehun begins to regret his decision just slightly in the extended silence that follows his greeting. Not because he’s scared of his connection to the man with the fierce eyeliner standing in front of him, but because he has a feeling the next time everyone stops to stare at him in silence won’t go so well. He really should stop stepping out of the line and making bold moves like this.

Jongin is the first one to react. “Hyung? You know him?”

Sehun automatically reverts back to his normal sidekick-let-Luhan-do-all-the-explanations mode. “Uh. No. Yes. Nyes. I mean. Kind of. Uh - ”

“Of course we know each other.” The man’s face splits into a wide grin (or as wide as someone’s smile can be after he walks into his girlfriend cheating on him with someone who looks as sleazy as Jongin), and he swings his arm around Sehun’s shoulder. “Sehun-ah, you can’t just coldly reject your hyung after all those times we spent practicing our own model poses in front of the mirror after showers. We’re practically blood brothers. I’m hurt.”

Jongin makes a vague choking sound that’s half between and splutter and half between a suppressed laugh. Sehun feels his face turn red in mortification. He doesn’t even want to turn around to see what Luhan’s facial expression is, although judging from previous experiences, Luhan probably doesn’t care (as usual).

“Um. Yes,” he mumbles, staring down at the floor, or you know, anywhere except at someone else. “Uh. Hey everyone. This is Baekhyun. He’s kind of my hyung except we’re not actually related uh. Yeah. Baekhyun, the sleazy looking guy hooking up with your girlfriend that you just tried to murder is Jongin. He’s a high school classmate.”

“I’m not sleazy,” Jongin protests, before Tiffany (Sehun had forgotten that she was even there) shoves Jongin aside and marches up to Baekhyun.

“Where were you,” she hisses. “You didn’t answer any of my texts or any of my calls.”

“Oh well, uh I was busy,” Baekhyun replies casually, but his eyes dart nervously. He seems very nonchalant about having just walked in on his girlfriend cheating after all the initial fuss, Sehun observes. “You know, walking around and doing some errands.”

“You mean meeting that Taeyeon girl?” The entire restaurant becomes even more silent than before, which Sehun didn’t think was possible. Ohh. Either everyone had been silenced by the shockingly spicy dishes or they were all too busy watching the drama unfold in front of them to pay attention to their food.

“Hey, uh, Tiffany-ah.” Baekhyun’s voice gets quieter and an octave lower, and he looks around nervously at all the people staring at them. “I think we should take this outside. You know, where no one is watching.”

“You started it first! You barged in here and caused the commotion.” Tiffany’s voice rises about half an octave and Sehun winces. Out of the corner of his eye, Chanyeol-the-crazy-waiter (who is still there) looks like he’s gazing at Baekhyun with a very interested gleam in his eyes, but Sehun hopes fervently that he’s just imagining it.

“Now, now, let’s take this outside,” Luhan helpfully contributes out of nowhere, slinging his arms around both of them (Luhan touching people!?!?) and pushing the angry couple to the exit. Luckily for him, both appear too surprised to react.

Sehun stares at him. Jongin shrugs and follows. Strangely, Chanyeol does as well, and Sehun thinks that maybe he wasn’t really imagining it when Chanyeol was looking at Baekhyun with that gleam in his eyes. Hopefully it’s because Baekhyun is also another secret spy and Chanyeol has more plastic blue sushis that self-destruct and blow up bubble tea shops. Because that sort of thing seems really common in this sort of sleuthing world he’s been dragged into. And because Chanyeol totally doesn’t look like he has the hots for Baekhyun. At all.

He should really stop deluding himself about a lot of things, Sehun concludes as he sighs and follows everyone else out the door.

“Excuse me, who are you?” Tiffany asks, once Sehun reaches everyone else in the shadows of a (totally not sketchy) alleyway, arms crossed as she stares at Luhan. “And you,” she continues, giving Chanyeol and Sehun each a suspicious glare.

“Never mind that,” Baekhyun says abruptly, which causes Tiffany to scowl even deeper. This cues Sehun to tune out the rest of the ensuing argument, although he does end up hearing a lot of phrases like “you’re always cheating on me with Taeyeon!” and “you don’t care about me at all!” being thrown around. After a while, Sehun realizes that Jongin and Luhan have facial expressions similar to ahjummas watching their favorite late night dramas. Finally, Tiffany stalks off angrily while Baekhyun looks sheepishly back at everyone else.

“Hey, if she ever doesn’t respond to you, I still have her number,” Jongin ventures after a long minute of awkward silence (awkward silences are starting to become a recurring theme, Sehun thinks).

Baekhyun doesn’t even bother pretending to be offended. “Nah, I was a terrible boyfriend to her. Not that she was a great girlfriend either, but you know, we both had uses for each other. Guess we’ll both find someone new now. Anyways, what’s up?”

Sehun pulls himself away from deciding whether Chanyeol’s expression had brightened after hearing Baekhyun talk about finding someone new. Also, considering how passionately Baekhyun was arguing just a few minutes ago, he’s surprised that the older man got over the breakup so quickly - but then, Baekhyun had always been very spontaneous (cue embarrassing memories of practicing makeup ads in the bathroom together). “Hyung, what are you doing in Shanghai? I thought you were still in Seoul.”

“Oh my new boss is Chinese. Works in Shanghai. Thought I’d pick up some great girls but Tiffany...well there’s always Taeyeon!” Baekhyun’s expression brightens up but for some reason, his eyes keep on sliding over to Chanyeol. “Hey, you haven’t introduced me to your, uh, friends.”

“I already introduced you to Jongin - he’s a high school classmate. This is, uh, Luhan. We work together. And that’s Chanyeol. I don’t really know him or why he’s here but uh - ”

“Just your high school classmate,” Jongin grumbles under his breath, and Luhan tugs at Sehun’s sleeve with a slightly hurt expression in his eyes.

“Why didn’t you introduce me at all at the beginning?” he whispers, and Sehun has to put all his willpower into not blushing because goddammit, Luhan looks so cute when he says that.

Fortunately, Baekhyun apparently had stopped listening to Sehun at the word Chanyeol because he’s currently staring at the curly-haired crazy waiter with a very interesting glint in his eyes. Sehun isn’t sure if this is a good or bad sign (although he’s leaning towards catastrophic).

“You. Chanyeol. What do you do?”

He puts messages in plastic sushi figurines and blows things up! Sehun wants to shout, but Chanyeol merely shrugs and hands Baekhyun a slip of paper. Then before anyone can react, he disappears into the shadows of the alleyway, leaving Baekhyun standing there dumbfounded.

“Huh,” Baekhyun says slowly, “there are a lot of numbers on this. It looks like a phone number.” His face slowly widens into a smile and Sehun swears he hears something that sounds like I’ve found someone to mess things up with.

“Sehun.” Luhan tugs at his sleeve again and leans in to whisper something. Sehun is so distracted by Luhan’s lovely, beautiful face right next to his that he barely catches onto what’s being said. Jongin makes a very audible snicker that makes Sehun want to punch him, except for the fact that Luhan is in the way. “Baekhyun is Tiffany’s boyfriend right? And Tiffany said that her boyfriend has connections to the office we traced the hacking to. This is our lead for the case.”

Right. Sehun had completely forgotten that they were standing here in a sketchy alleyway behind a sketchy cafe in a sketchy detective chase. “Hyung, can we see your boss?”

“Huh? Why?” Baekhyun looks completely caught off guard by the question. . Sehun hasn’t told Baekhyun that Luhan’s a detective, and if Baekhyun knows of anything sketchy his boss has been doing, telling him that would be a complete disaster.

“Uh...you’re a weapons dealer right?” Sehun finally blurts out, having searched within the deep recesses of his mind. “Do you still do that?”

“Yeah, I do.” Baekhyun looks at Sehun expectantly, as if he wants Sehun to provide him with a more detailed explanation of why they need to meet his boss. Based on Jongin’s expression, Sehun definitely looks like a struggling fish trying to find air at the moment.

Luhan steps to the rescue. “I’m a historian researching weapons right now and I think your office has some things to do with the book I’m currently writing. Would you like an excerpt? My main focus is on - ”

“Oh yeah, Luhan’s really into his research,” Sehun says hurriedly before Luhan launches into an entire lecture about weapons. He has no doubt the detective has a very in-depth knowledge of weapons from all his studies, but Baekhyun might be so inundated by Luhan’s explanations that they’ll end up going to the office in the next century. “So hyung, how about it? Could you take us to see your boss?

“I can take you to see my boss,” Baekhyun says slowly, “but there is one condition. You see, we have to find him first. He went missing a few days ago.”

Sehun and Jongin exchange looks while Luhan looks pensive. Something is suspicious, Sehun thinks - perhaps Baekhyun’s boss is hiding because he’s had a hand in something extremely illegal? Like illegal weapons dealing - although Sehun isn’t sure if weapons dealing is all Baekhyun does. Maybe there is a good lead onto the case at the office.

“He’s quite a handful too,” Baekhyun sighs, and shoves his hands into his pockets. “You’ll see when you meet him. Tao.”

so like angie and i may or may not have put off updating this fic for two and a half years ahahaahah please don't kill us we're sorry ;_; 
i've basically forgotten how to write so sorry for subpar quality of writing and storyline in this chapter we are heading back into the flow and hopefully next chapter will be more interesting >: umm yeah well thanks to all 500+ of you who have stuck with this story for so long even though we never update ahahah ;___; <3 - bluu