A/N: Italics indicate flashback

                Mornings (or late mornings at least) in San Jose are usually sunny, but on that day the rain was pouring down, leaving the sky dark grey as the raindrops pelted against Chanyeol’s hotel room window. Chanyeol opened an eye to a monotonous grey shade that covered the ceilings above him. When he sat up, the room was dark, even with the curtains open and it stank of booze, cigarettes and or some sort of rather ungodly scent. The bedroom sheets scraped against his as he tried to remember what happened the night before.

                His boxers laid on the floor next to someone else’s. He picked it up and put it on, face slowly frowning in disgust as he felt the dampness around the crotch. He just wanted something to put on, he can deal with hygiene later.

                He walked out of his room and saw Baekhyun in the living room, holding a whisky glass in his hand. He was twirling the glass precariously in his hands as he clutched his knees close to his chest, staring into the glass as if he was looking for answers to life’s many questions. He was wearing the hotel bath robe which was too big for him his legs could fold in and the robe draped over it like a blanket. His eyes were a little red and dark circles were forming under it. He sniffed and Chanyeol realized he was crying.

                “Baek?” he called out meekly. Baekhyun lifted his head and looked at Chanyeol. His head dropped instantly and he shifted further into a corner, taking a strong sip of his whisky. He grimaced as the strong alcohol burned his throat while Chanyeol sat next to him.

                “Is there a need for more alcohol so early in the morning? Are you trying to cure your hangover with another hangover?” Chanyeol joked. Baekhyun gave no response and Chanyeol knew something was wrong.

                “Baekhyun? Is everything okay?”

                “Yeah.” He lied. Chanyeol leaned forward but Baekhyun held him back with his hand on his chest. If memory serves Chanyeol right, he bedded Baekhyun last night (and he was a whiny, begging little in bed too) and now he was too embarrassed to be kissed?

                “Is it me? Did I do something wrong last night?”

                “No.” Baekhyun put down his glass. “You didn’t do anything.”

                “Then what is it?”

                No answer. All Baekhyun did was stare at his fingers with his head down.

                “Does this have something to do with the screw up you made six months ago?”

                Baekhyun lifted his head slowly, his red eyes looking up at Chanyeol, dishevelled, messy and probably stank of alcohol (then again he wasn’t any cleaner). “Six months ago, we were assigned to hunt for a man named Jung Yunho.”

                “You have a new case Baekhyun, this time it’s regarding Jung Yunho.”

                “The famous jewel thief and con artist?”

                “Yeah. Our mission was to bring him back alive so that he could be prosecuted. We tracked him down for a few weeks before one of our alliances spotted him in Hawaii.”

                “He has stolen over 20 million USD worth of priceless jewels, art work and embezzled more than 300,000 USD from his rich clients when he posed as a buyer of art.” Suho explained when he handed Baekhyun the case file.

                “My job was to go there and bring him back, regardless of the method.” Baekhyun’s cold fingers were wrapped around each other. “I knew he was going to a club there, so I went in, getting ready to do the usual thing. My plan was to seduce him, handcuff him and bring him back.”

                “Did something go wrong?”

                “No one told me what a charmer he was.” Baekhyun laughed pathetically. He was laughing at himself. “I met him on the dance floor and he swept me off my feet. That night, I gave him my body, and I gave him my heart.”

                Yunho was a dance machine. He owned the dance floor with so much charisma and charm that everyone in the room was in love with him. He spotted Baekhyun dancing a few feet away from him and smiled. He was tall and handsome, with legs that went on forever. As they danced closer and closer, Baekhyun felt a strong arm around his waist and a deep voice in his ear.

                “Hey gorgeous.”

                “He sang songs of love, telling me how beautiful I was and how he had never seen anyone like me. I just…I had never met anyone like him before. He took me off guard and made me believe for a minute there that he actually liked me, and love existed, even in the most twisted, lustful form.” Baekhyun’s voice became smaller as he told his story, and his eyes became smaller and smaller.

                “Ah…Yunho…”

                “ Baekhyun…” beads of sweat dripped from the tall man’s forehead as he ed into the smaller man beneath him. “You are so tight babe, so juicy, so delicious…” he bent down to catch one of Baekhyun’s s in his mouth.

                “More please…god…” Baekhyun wrapped his legs around Yunho, fingers practically scraping the skin off his back.

                “You are so beautiful. So so beautiful. Where have you been all my life?”

                “Waiting…for this…ah…moment…oh god…” Baekhyun moaned, wanting to feel more of every sensation. Tears welled up in his eyes.

                “You are exquisite Baekhyun. So beautiful.” He kissed Baekhyun’s already swollen lips with so much passion and fire they could have melted in their place. “I want you to be mine.”

                “Take me Yunho.”

                “You are mine Baekhyun.” And they kissed again.

                “After he ed me, he tied my hands together and handcuffed me to the bed. He kissed me, telling me he was going to give me a surprise. He tied my legs to the bed posts, gagged me and he started putting his clothes on. He knew who I was all along.”

                “Baek…”

                “Wait, what are you…”

                “Thanks for the nice sweetie.” Yunho’s voice was laden with sarcasm as he grinned, zipping up his jeans. “But there’s a billion dollars waiting for me downstairs and I need to get it.”

                “You…”

                “You think I didn’t know you were sent to spy on me?” Yunho laughed, grabbing Baekhyun’s chin in his hand. “I’ve seen people like you all my life, standing at the club trying to look all y to get my attention, thinking you could fool me. Well it doesn’t seem to work did it sweetheart?”

                “You…you ing…” Baekhyun struggled with his bonds. Yunho had tied all four limbs to all four posters of the bed.

                “Au contraire sweetheart, I ed you, and I did enjoy myself. Wasn’t the best but it will suffice.” Yunho pulled out Baekhyun’s wallet from his jeans that were lying on the floor. “I’ll be borrowing a couple of hundreds. Consider this a small fee for giving you the time of your life, and boy are you a needy in bed.”

                Baekhyun was ready to cry at this point.

                “He stole my money and threw my phone in the fireplace. Then he…” Baekhyun’s voice caught at his throat. “He plugged in a USB into the TV opposite the bed. It was a video of us a few minutes ago. He filmed us in the bed, him ing me like some cheap o directed by students. And it was on loop. ing. Loop.” Now he was crying. “He left me tied up, , exposed and forced to watch a video of myself being ed by a man who took my heart, screwed it inside out and made me watch it over and over again.”

                “Faster Yunho…”

                “Yes…oh god yes…”

                “You’re so big…more I need more…”

                “ me please. me Yunho.”

                “Take me. Do what you want to me.”

                “Yes…oh god…ah….”

                “Do you know how ridiculed I felt? In the video, I was and curling my toes, begging him to go faster, like some amateur in a cheap o. I had never regretted anything as much as I regretted that. It felt like I was being punished with a cruel reminder of my dirty, heinous deeds.” Baekhyun wiped his tears. Chanyeol wanted to reach out and wipe them himself but he could only sit there and listen.

                “My colleagues in Hawaii found me and rescued me. There was a tracking sensor in my phone that would trigger an emergency call if anything happened to it. They found me, but in the meantime Yunho fled Hawaii. It took us another month to track him down again. When we did, his body was found on one of the tracks of the London underground system.”

                “He was dead.”

                “We failed our mission. We didn’t bring him back alive.” Baekhyun sniffed. “Suho was so mad and upset with me. Since then I have been forced to do small, local cases because Suho was worried that my would one day deceive me and I screw up again. I needed to work on this case so badly because I wanted to prove to Suho and to myself that I could do this and that I was born for this.”

                “Do you know how much trouble you are in Byun Baekhyun? I am facing lawsuits, scandals, questioning from our foreign counterparts and millions of dollars lost by our client, all because your libido took over your head!” Suho had flung the contract papers on the ground, yelling at him in fury back in headquarters.

                “Sir, I’m so sorry…”

                “It’s going to take a lifetime of sorrys to get you out of this. From now on you are no more Special Agent Class 1. I’m dropping you to Class 2.”

                “But sir!! I worked so hard all these years and what about all the other successes I had?! The missing Pearl of Orient?! The case of Professor Lee Taemin?! The attempted assassination on the president?!?!”

                “I warned you about screwing up and your promiscuous behaviour for months now. I told you one day your would get you in trouble and I was right. Don’t bother trying to reason with me. You are on temporary downgrade until deemed fit.”

                “I’m sure you…”

                “And then you came in!” Baekhyun threw his hands in the air, still crying away. “You just stood there looking all tall and handsome in that stupid trench coat and…and…just looking at me with those eyes that you do all the time. God I must have thrown myself at you last night.”

                “Baekh…”

                “I am a . A dirty, foul-mouthed, cheap as .” Baekhyun sobbed lightly. “Look at me!” he gestured to himself. “And do you know what the worst part is? I think I’m falling in love with you.”

                “Oh Baekhyun,” Chanyeol took Baekhyun’s hands in his and kissed his cold fingers. “I am so sorry about what happened to you. You didn’t deserve that.”

                “Yes I did, I’m…”

                “You are not a .” Chanyeol bought one hand up to clean his tear-stained cheek. “You are beautiful and y, but you are not a . Yunho was a conman, and he cheated you. It was not your fault, you couldn’t have helped it.”

                “God Chanyeol I’m scared…what if this hurts?”

                Chanyeol knows Baekhyun isn’t talking about .

                “I’m scared too Baekkie. Heck I just had a wonderful night with a man who could easily throw me off a bed or poison me in my sleep. I am in love with someone who is too dangerous for me. You can jump off buildings at terrifying heights. You can scale walls and lie your teeth through the toughest security. You can do just about anything, even falling in love.”

                “But how can you love someone like me?”

                “I don’t know, but…” Chanyeol kissed Baekhyun’s hand again. “That’s not going to stop me.”

                An awkward silence envelopes the room as Baekhyun tries to stop crying and Chanyeol his arms. “You don’t have to do this.”

                “What?”

                “You don’t have to do this.” Chanyeol repeated. “Don’t rush into something you’re not ready for. We don’t have to be in a relationship to prove we are in love.”

                “I just want you to hold me.”

                Chanyeol scooped Baekhyun up in his arms. He carried them to the bed where he placed Baekhyun down gently. He wrapped his arms around the smaller man and felt his tears on his chest. His hands travelled down to Baekhyun’s waist, unravelling the robe around him. He ran a hand down his back, feeling his strong muscles under his touch. The bumps and curves made by scars and dried up wounds tainted his perfect skin. Baekhyun was no longer a fighter, a spy, a seducer or even a smartass. He was a boy. A boy who had been hurt. A boy who wants to be loved. He was just a boy.

                The robe was on the floor. Their bodies were pressing against each other, lips pressed against each other, hard and soft all at the same time, as if they couldn’t be close enough to each other. They revelled in the simplicity of it all, the feeling of just being safe. When you have lived your life on a wire all this time, it must feel like heaven to feel safe.

                They did not bother getting out of bed until much later. They didn’t bother to answer Taehyung or Jungkook’s phone calls. They had a few more hours until their flight, and all they wanted was to just be with each other.

************************

                “Let me get this straight, you are a sociopathic cheater?” Jongin’s eyebrows furrowed together.

                “My psychiatrist claims that my lack of parental guidance and watching my mom cheat on my dad has led me to be this way.” Jongdae sat back in his armchair, twirling the glass of juice in his hand. His servant served the guests two more of the freshly pressed orange juice.

                “That explains your compulsion for flirting, and I am assuming that your marriage to Hani was not 100% consensual? If not you wouldn’t be doing this.” Jongin pressed on.

                “I was rather fond of Hani when I first met her and I still am as a matter of fact.” Jongdae clarified. “She is a beautiful woman, smart and kind. I thought she would make a great wife, so I proposed to her, to which she kindly accepted.”

                “But you married her for money.”

                “The Dame was the most influential business woman of her kind, any bumbling idiot on the street would know that if you married into her family then you have got it made.” Jongdae set his glass down firmly. “We had plans for a business together and what better way to do it than as a family?”

                “Hani said you plotted against her.”

                “Granted yes I didn’t include her in the plans for business with her mother but why should I? This was a long drawn out contract between her mother and I, I was sure she would understand.”

                “On average, how many nights do you actually spend with her?”

                “It’s hard to say.” Jongdae scratched his head. “I would say 3 at most.”

                “Were you aware Hani was unhappy?”

                “I was, but I didn’t know she was unhappy enough to ask for a divorce. I told her before we were married that I was a sociopath and she accepted. She said she would pull through it for me. It must be tougher than she imagined.”

                “Clearly.” Kyungsoo rolled his eyes discreetly. “When we were at you house earlier, we over heard a fight between you and Hani. You had caught them in bed together and you said something about them not being able to be together. What is it about them that they cannot be together?”

                “Isn’t it obvious? She’s a world class supermodel and he’s a driver. It’s like chalk and cheese.”

                “I don’t think it’s that simple sir.” Kyungsoo shook his head. “You know, don’t you?”

                “And if you do, that means the Dame did too.”

                “You mean…” Jongdae fidgeted in his place.

                “Exactly.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the secret was. Jongdae hesitated for a while and sighed.

                “She asked me to keep this a secret.”

                “How long have you known that Minseok was her son?” Kyungsoo asked.

                “For several years now. Not too long after Minseok first started working with them. I didn’t believe her, but she even showed me the results of the DNA test she secretly took.”

                “And she never said a word?” that seemed rather odd to Jongin.

                “It would have ruined her career and marriage. The entire family dynamic, including its heirlooms would have to be changed. Sehun was poised to take over the family company at that time and it would have been dangerous to reveal that Minseok was her son.”

                “Why didn’t she tell Minseok?” Jongin wondered, writing down some more.

                “She didn’t feel like she had the right.” Jongdae shook her head. “The events of the earthquake haunted her for years. She lost her first love and her first child. She failed to recognise him when they found his body and she cursed herself for not being able to protect her child. She felt like everything was her fault. She was a failure as a mother, in her words at least. She was going to leave him everything.”

                “She did? Why was this not mentioned in the will?”

                “She probably didn’t manage to, but she had that intention.”

                “She told you all this?” Kyungsoo asked.

                “We spent many hours together working on the formation of the company and the earthquake model. Perhaps it was because I was an outsider she found it easy to confide in me.”

                “And you never spilled the beans?”

                “I may be a sociopathic cheater but I am not a tattle-tale. The Dame trusted me and that trust I shall honour. If need be, I will take her secrets to my grave.” Jongdae crossed his legs. “I’m telling you this because you need to find her killer, but trust me if it were anything else I would not say a word.”

                “I can see why you are so revered in this business.” Kyungsoo had to admit that even if Jongdae was a cheater, his attitude to others was highly commended. There were not many people like him left in this world and for that he admired him a little.

                “Thank you.” Jongdae gave Kyungsoo a look and raised an eyebrow. Kyungsoo could feel a deep blush forming and a set of eyes boring into his head. If Jongin’s eyes were lasers there would be holes everywhere.

                “I do like our little interviews like this. Not even the newspapers give me this much courtesy.” Jongdae laughed. “Perhaps you should come by more often.”

                “Excuse me, I would appreciate you not trying to flirt with my boyfriend.”

                “Boyfriend?”

                “Jongin!” Kyungsoo looked at him in shock and elbowed him, but Jongin took his hand instead.

                “I’m sorry I had no idea you two were involved.”

                “It’s quite alright, we are professionals after all.” Jongin smiled, holding onto Kyungsoo’s hand tightly while the smaller one just sat there confused.

                “Jongin, why did you say that to him?” Kyungsoo asked him later as they exited the building.

                “I’m just trying to establish boundaries that’s all.”

                “Jongin,” Kyungsoo looked at him. “Are you jealous?”

                “Jealous? Why should I be? Just because he’s a successful millionaire who is smart, handsome, has four Lamborghinis and a place in Switzerland with his own private helicopter? Please I am not jealous. Pft.”

                “You are so bad at this Jongin.” Kyungsoo laughed, teasing him gently. “The man is a sociopath. I’m not interested in him.”

                “And if he wasn’t a sociopath and single would you be?”

                “Come on Jongin this is lame.”

                “No no I’m just saying because you know even I would date him.” Jongin mumbled, making strange puffing noises with his lips and snorting a little. “I’m just a poor reporter living on a dwindling pay check and canned soups.”

                “Jongin,” Kyungsoo pulled his arm and looked at him. “For the last time I’m not interested in him.”

                “Oh sure, that makes me feel so much better.” His voice dripped with sarcasm but Jongin didn’t have time to come up with a clever retort. He soon felt Kyungsoo’s lips on his and it felt perfect.

                “It should, because I like you you .”

                “If you think a kiss is going to make me feel better than you are just going to have to kiss me again.”

                “Jongin come on. We are in a lobby for heaven’s sake.”

                “Kiss me now or I’m not going anywhere.”

                “Jong…” Jongin leaned forward to pull Kyungsoo into his arms and kissed him, feeling his plump lips on his as his eyes fluttered close. Kyungsoo was confused because he thought he should be doing this, but no matter. He closed his eyes and kissed him back.

                “Are you happy now?” he asked Jongin as they parted for air.

                “Very.” He smiled wide and held his hand, walking out of the lobby for the whole world to see.

A/N: I am actually really excited to hear what you guys think about this chapter because I have been working on this for a long time XD Please leave your comments down below!

And I recently just realized I have over 500++ subscribers now. Thank you so much!!!!!