Sanghyuk wondered if the tears running down his face were real or if he was just that good of an actor.

Hakyeon wasn’t dead, not really. Taekwoon had insisted on pretending he was though. The bomb had been in Hakyeon’s office after all. He was the target of the attack. If people knew that he had survived, then whoever was to blame would just try again. They’d been lucky that no one had died, but next time they might not.

Sanghyuk had agreed to the idea, had wanted to spare Hakyeon the pain of any more attempts on his life.

But this whole funeral sure wasn’t sparing Sanghyuk.

Even if the coffin was empty now, it almost hadn’t been. Sanghyuk still remembered standing outside the surgery room while Hongbin and a four other doctors tried to save Hakyeon’s life. He remembered hearing Hongbin yelling things through the door. He remembered someone saying something about flat lining. Several times in fact.

He’d almost lost his husband and this whole funeral garbage was just one huge, painful reminder of that.

To make it worse, most Overwatch agents really thought that Hakyeon was dead. They kept coming up to him and offering their condolences. No one outside of Sanghyuk, Hongbin, Taekwoon, Wonsik, and the four doctors – Jooheon, Sana, Hyemi, and Jinyoung – knew that Hakyeon was alive. All of the tears and condolences and grief……it was enough to push Sanghyuk to the edge of a break down.

After everything that had been happening the past few weeks, he sure felt like he was going crazy.

And then there was all the reporters surrounding the event!

Most of them seemed to completely miss the point of the whole thing. They couldn’t care any less about the pain of the Overwatch members. They just wanted to pester them with questions about Overwatch’s future. It was so disrespectful that Sanghyuk wanted nothing more than to throw them all out. But Taekwoon had ordered him not to. He’d told Sanghyuk that they needed the media circus at the funeral, they needed coverage on every new network. It helped the idea that Hakyeon was dead, helped keep him safe.

Sanghyuk still hated it.

“Get me out of here,” Sanghyuk whispered to Shownu once the coffin was being buried, “please.”

“Alright,” Shownu nodded, grabbing Sanghyuk by the elbow and pushing people out of the way.

Halfway back to the dorms, Shownu was starting to lose his temper with the reports trying to stick their camera and microphones in Sanghyuk’s face. That was when Wonho, Hongbin, Jackson, Mark, Iihoon, and Peniel stepped forewords, moving to form a human shield around the pair. Dahyun and Momo rushed forewords to try and take some of the attention off of Sanghyuk, a move copied by Yuna, Chanmi, Sungah, and Sojin. As the crowds began to thin and reports started to lose interest, the Overwatch members started to fall back. They all knew that Sanghyuk was close to breaking and they wanted him to have some space when he did.

Hongbin stayed close, however. When Sanghyuk broke, there was no telling what he might say. What secrets he might accidentally spill. Hongbin needed to be there to do damage control in case Sanghyuk said something he shouldn’t to someone who couldn’t know the truth.

Shownu got Sanghyuk to the doors of the dorm before the dam broke and Sanghyuk fell to his knees sobbing. His partner rushed to catch him and drag him inside, looking around to make sure as few people as possible had seen it. The very last thing anyone needed was the image of a hysterical Sanghyuk on the news, unsympathetic journalists talking about it and acting like they knew a damn thing about what Sanghyuk should be doing or feeling.

“Hey,” Shownu said, hugging his friend once he was sure they were safe, “hey, it’s ok. Just let it out, alright? You did great out there, Hyukkie. I’m so proud of you. Hakyeon would be proud of you, too.”

“He’s not proud,” Sanghyuk sobbed, “he’s angry.”

“Why would he be angry?” Shownu asked, beyond confused as to why Sanghyuk would say something like that.

“He doesn’t want to pretend he’s dead,” Sanghyuk cried, “but Taekwoon thought it was better this way. He was so mad. If he…if he sees the news coverage…..if he sees me crying……..he’s going to be so angry that I had to be there. That we had to stage this funeral.” A small part of Sanghyuk’s brain reminded him that he wasn’t supposed to be telling Shownu the truth, but he’s stress from the past several weeks was clouding his judgment.

“What?” Shownu whispered, eyes wide as he tried to process what Sanghyuk was saying, “are you…..are you serious?” Was this the truth? Or had the grief driven Sanghyuk delusional?

“He is,” Hongbin’s voice said, the doctor sighing sadly as he made his way over to the pair, “Hakyeon’s alive.”

A/N: I know it kind of cuts off at a bad time (or maybe it doesn’t and it’s all just in my head haha). See, I started writing Hongbin explaining the truth to Shownu, but a couple lines in I realized……I already wrote all this stuff at the start of this part. Having all that 2 times in the same chapter felt…….like a really bad idea. So part 49 is gonna be all about Shownu finding out the truth and reacting to it.