Cipher

Buzzing phone woke him up. Tao wanted to reach for his mobile but pain ran through his body making him hiss. He felt drained blood on his face. Tears came to his eyes again. Funny that first thing he thought about, was that he needed to clean up what his father left on his door mat and carpet.

Zitao slowly stood up, ignoring the phone, and started collecting cigarette ends from his doormat. He didn’t even bother to look into a mirror which was next to the door. Tao knew how he looked, he saw it enough times by now. He put what he collected into a trash bin and loosen his bowtie. He could feel, that his shirt was stiff from his blood, so he took off his damage clothes and went to take a shower. With one fluffy towel around his waist and other drying his hair, Tao started putting his clothes back on their place. He also chose ripped jeans, Stussy world tour tank, 5cm reversible leopard-polka dot hoodie, Jill by jillstuart military cap and hi-top sneakers from Gucci, to wear. Boy kneeled, still in towels, and tried to wash stains from the carpet, before he dressed up. It didn’t came out completely but he decided to deal with it later.

He finally picked up the annoying phone, which was buzzing all damn time.

“Where the are you, Tao?” Perfect. Sehun’s voice was the first thing on that lovely morning he want to hear. Zitao didn’t know what on Earth anyone could want from him, especially, there was nothing more he could do in that mission. He only wanted a day off, was it too much to ask? He should have one, Junmyeon promised.

“At home, face.”

“Well, that’s enough loaf around, er. Work is waiting.”

Tao just hang out. He wasn’t in a mood to making any excuses, especially that Sehun was obviously tensed. He ignored furious buzzing of his phone and few messages he got, sure, they were all from Sehun. He used the make-up magic to cover up a nasty shiner and hoped no one notice his cut lip. Or at least won’t give a damn.

“You can’t be serious!”

“I’m sorry, agent Huang, I’m not pleased as well.”

“Bull, Jun! It’s un-ing-believable!” He didn’t care, they were among people and he should pretend that they were in real boss-deputy relationship. He didn’t care about appearances that Junmyeon was trying to keep so desperately.

“Language!”

For his sake, atmosphere in the office was so tense, that no one bother to checking out on him. Junmyeon even hadn’t scolded him, when he walked in, too busy with all the people, that had already been there. Tao only saw Junmyeon’s frown and his narrowed eyes but it wasn’t a time for this and if he was lucky, he could escape, before boss ask him any question. Sehun and Baekhyun asked him quiet ‘what’s going on’ and ‘everything’s alright?’ but he only nodded and they dropped it, as they had bigger problem right now.

“There are only minor leads but no serious evidence. No judge let us arrest him with such a weak data. It’s not your fault, Zitao.” Baekhyun patted his shoulder. Boy couldn’t help but winced a little. Fortunately he had more reasons than his pain for that, so nobody really noticed.

“That man is just damn cautious. We still have one day, if we just could decrypt that data…” Chanyeol added.

“He uses asymmetric cryptography program and no single file is decrypted… I just don’t get it. That doesn’t make any sense!” Sehun cried. Tao shot him a long glare, not understanding a word. Like the rest of them probably.

“Translation from geek, please?”

“No one keeps encrypted data on their own personal computer! They are mostly just protected with password or something. And they are encrypting while sending between devices to prevent information theft. But here? Whole files are encrypted. Even things like stupid photos from the Internet. Even though we’ve got his program, different files have different keys. There’s like tens of them. We managed to decrypt minor files but once which would be important have high level security… We are trying our best but it’s a good code and without keys, it may take ages before we do it” Sehun snorted.

Tao just couldn’t believe his whole fabulous work was for nothing. Nothing! That damn Wu Yifan was going slip through their fingers again.

“No! I’ll go there and I’ll find the keys.”

“And how exactly you want to do this?” Baekhyun mocked.

“I can sneak there…”

“You know, you can’t.”

“… so I’ll go there and excuse myself that I’ve… lost something at the party!”

“And how it’ll help you get inside the house?”

“Well, he was obviously attracted to me, so I could…”

“Use your charm? Please, he wanted to get to your pants and you rejected him, as far as I know, twice!”

Tao winced. Baekhyun had his point, but that wasn’t a reason to give up yet.

“So what, for a good of the case, I can…”

“Do what? Get into his bed and sneak the information after?” Junmyeon hissed.

“Or maybe ask nicely, when he stick his into you, Taozi?” Baek started to fake with ‘Yifan, will you tell me the secret’ in between. He barely avoid Tao’s deadly kick, thanks to Chanyeol, who caught younger in tight grip. What he didn’t avoid though, was their boss’ hand smashing his head.

Tao was wiggling and hissing in pain, trying to free himself from iron arms.

“Lemme go, hyung!”

“Not gonna happen.”

Seeing that Chanyeol had no intention to lose his grip, boy calmed himself to keep himself from pain. He didn’t blame his hyung, he couldn’t know. And Tao wanted to keep it that way, so he tried to hide pain winces and whimpers that every tiny Chanyeol’s move caused.

“Anyway who said I would go there as a bottom?” Tao shot daggers with his eyes into Baekhyun.

“Oh please, go into a den of the lion? He’s a total top, no way, he would let you dominate, ‘little one’ ” Sehun imitated Yifan’s mocking tone. “You are either stupid or naive. Or both, .”

“Don’t” Junmyeon cut, shooting Tao warning glare before younger could threw back the insult. “I’m sorry, I have to agree with agents Byun and Oh. It’s a stupid idea.”

“Sure, because doing nothing is better!” Tao snapped. He didn’t regret, even though Junmyeon looked seriously angry. And it needed a disaster to make Junmyeon angry. In that case a chain of little disasters. It wasn’t really smart thing to make Jun angry, but Zitao didn’t care. “Let’s just play guessing game with Enigma!”

“It's not doing nothing and it's called science, , but you will never understand that,” Sehun growled.

“ you!”

“Enough,” Junmyeon raised his voice and the room went so silent that basically there crickets could be heard, when everyone looked at him surprised. Junmyeon pinched a bridge of his nose. “This conversation is pointless. Meeting is over. We should let It’s do their job.” Sehun nodded to him. People started to leaving. “Agent Huang. You won’t do anything, unless you want do get suspended.” Junmyeon warned. “Stay home and rest.”

“You shouldn’t have called me in first place,” Zitao snapped and stormed out. On the corner of his eye, he could see, Junmyeon was about to follow him but Sehun saved him by stepping in his way.

“You know it’s not your fault, right?” Chanyeol tried to comfort him, apparently wanted to walk him over to elevators.

“That doesn’t make it more okay,” Tao grumbled.

“Yeah, I know.” He rubbed back of his head. “Just don’t torment yourself about it too much. That’s the job. We do not always win.”

“Sure,” Zitao snorted, pressing ground floor button. He also started to press door closing button furiously, when he heard ‘stop the elevator’. Unfortunately, Chanyeol was so kind, to push his big hand between the doors and let his boss inside.

“Thank you.”

Chanyeol only saluted, not aware of Tao’s deadly glare.

“You,” Junmyeon hissed, reaching his hand to grab Zitao’s ear. “We’re going to have a little talk right now.”

And like a little child, younger one was dragged back to the boss office in accompany of his own whimpers and secret chuckles of their co-workers.

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A/N :: sorry for a techno-nonsense xD

Tao's outfit:

$495 $32 ~$30 $24