IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE DISCLAIMER, READ IT HERE. I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS. 
 

[Monster - EXO]
 

Sehun is lying. It would be odd for a police officer to not lock her door. Sure, people make mistakes, but it’s unlikely that Byul would. Seeing the flicker of uncertainty flash across her face, though, is worth it to Sehun.

“How did you—why?”

“How did I get in?” Sehun laughs at the unfinished question. He didn’t think she would change in the last few days, and she hasn’t. She’s still naïve. Almost refreshingly so. “I’ve done so much over the last few years that finding your residence isn’t particularly difficult.”

She steps back again, her back hitting the wall and making it easy for Sehun to keep her from running. He closes her off and tilts up her chin with a single hand, forcing her to look up at him, which she does with narrowed eyes.

“As for why...” He touches his thumb to her bottom lip lightly. To his delight, she parts her lips, which somehow heightens her innocent look. “Am I not allowed to want to see you again?”

She doesn’t pull away, and he’s not sure if that’s because she is so shocked by his presence or because of something else. Attraction, perhaps?

“Aren’t you going to run? Or maybe call the cops?” Sehun pauses, mainly for dramatic effect. “Oh wait, you are a cop. So why aren’t you calling for backup?”

“What do you want from me?” Her eyes are much more steely than he expects. “Haven’t you humiliated me enough?”

“You’re not running,” he murmurs, leaning closer. He slips his fingers from her chin to trace over the marks on her neck. She winces a little as Sehun presses down on a mark, but she doesn’t stop him as he leans forward, brushing his lips against the bruise.

“What are you doing?” Her voice drops to a whisper, and he smiles against her skin. His hand finds her hip, pulling himself closer.

“Kissing it better,” he breathes over the lobe of her ear before dipping back down and tracing the hickeys he had left on her neck and shoulders. Obviously it doesn’t work that way, and he wants nothing more than to point out that a police detective went to work with the marks that he, a wanted criminal, left on her body. But that would accomplish nothing. Instead, he breathes in a hint of her perfume, threads his fingers through her hair, and presses himself against her as he continues to wear down her boundaries.

He knows he’s winning when she gasps as his tongue barely grazes against a tender spot.

Sehun pulls back slightly to see her eyes fluttering open again to show her blown pupils. Gone are the resistance and hesitation and the fright from him showing up uninvited to her apartment. He closes the distance between them, slanting his mouth over hers and groaning in satisfaction as she slowly kisses him back.

He can’t say he’s too surprised when ten minutes later, they’re on her bed and he’s tossing her pink silk to the side as she arches into him.

There’s supposed to be some sort of satisfaction or buzz after having with someone, or so Byul had thought until now. The initial fear that she felt when she first saw Sehun has lessened, but her heart is still racing.

And he’s still here.

Pretending to sleep is no easy feat, especially because she is already so close to passing out from working all day. However, she can’t afford to do that as Oh Sehun is next to her, fingers tracing a trail from her outer thigh to her ribcage.

“I know you’re awake, Byul.”

Internally, she curses. She could do with some time to gather her thoughts. “What do you want?”

Sehun chuckles at her harsh tone, making her feel as if she’s being dismissed. “Don’t be like that. I’ll tell you what. I’ll do you a favor.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Why would I want a favor from you?”

Byul can feel him move over her to murmur in her ear, “What if I give you a hint to the case?”

As tempting as that sounds, it’s illogical. She has no way to verify if he’s telling the truth, or if it’s anything that could be logically deduced from what the team knows about the case. She can’t bring in new inferences from data that doesn’t exist, nor can she trust the man that is the target of police investigation.

His hand flattens against her hip, rolling her from her side to her back, forcing her to look up at him. He has an obnoxious smile on his face. “What could go wrong?”

“You would waste my time and give me a false lead,” she answers bluntly.

“I’d like to think I have more honor than that.”

“You steal for a living.”

“Do I?” He hums, eyes lighting up with mischief. Byul decides that she really doesn’t like Oh Sehun. He’s belittling. “Maybe you should trust me a little more.”

His suggestion is too ironic to even amuse her.

“Chen.” Sehun tilts his head to the side and then lowers himself so his lips are about to brush over hers. “Chen. That’s your clue.”

And instead of his mouth meeting hers, he slides down to attach his lips to her neck again and nips at her skin. She’s expecting more, almost dreading more, but he pushes away and dresses himself, leaving her to try to figure out what his hint means. Too bad she’s too preoccupied in her relief that he’s going.

It takes a few minutes, but he finally disappears from her room, and she can hear the faint sound of her closing front door. She gets off the bed, throwing her sheets off with a shudder. The last place she wants to be is on her bed at the moment, and something about it is almost repulsive. Something is wrong. Something feels so wrong.

The first time she had any sort of physical interaction with Sehun, she had prepared for the possibility. This time, he had showed up unannounced in her apartment, and she had no sort of authority because she didn’t have a way to detain him or arrest him for trespassing.

To make it worse, he probably knew that she couldn’t call for backup, because they would question why the Kyrie was in her apartment, to which he would say she had been tampering with the case. After months of poring over his case, she knows that he hasn’t been known to show violence, so he most likely would not have caused her physical harm. But she consented anyway, because she wanted to spend time near him in order to get some idea of his logic and thought process. And that way, she would get to understand a little more of how his brain worked, or didn’t work.

That isn’t to say she didn’t like any of his actions, because she didn’t mind them. But now that he’s gone and she can be truthful to herself, she can admit that consenting was the easiest course of action in order to get more information from him. Despite his attempt at coercion, she knew as soon as he touched her what one of his intentions was. And she decided to go along with it so she could get inside his head a little more--understand him a little more. If he wants to think that he’s in power and she can be easily swayed by him, that’s fine. It’s not true, but it’s fine.

She’s doing her job. Nothing else.

But still, something about Oh Sehun’s presence makes her feel so disgusted with herself that she pads to the bathroom and turns the knobs so the hot spray from the shower rains overhead.

As much as she wants to think about his clue, her own thoughts keep pushing matters of importance aside. She doesn’t understand why her legs are shaking so much, and she braces herself against the slippery tiled wall, trying to get a grip on herself.

For some reason, she feels so, so…

She can’t put her finger on it. Put down? Uncertain?

Ah, no.

Small. She feels small in every sense of the word. She’s smaller than Oh Sehun, and at the moment, she just feels like a child who has gotten a toy police badge ed into her grubby hands and is playing at the fact that she could change the world and make it a better place. She’s no longer the person described as a brilliant young detective. She’s no longer on par with the employees on Junmyeon’s case.

She’s small. And that hurts.

Byul doesn’t second-guess herself much. But when she does, it’s an overwhelming feeling of struggling to keep her head above the waves. Even if she knows how to swim, there are riptides and dangerous currents that make her knowledge useless, and right now, it feels like Oh Sehun is one of them.

So why would the riptide pull her back to shore with a clue? It doesn’t add up, unless he has some kind of ulterior motive. And instead of thinking about his clue that he claimed to so generously give, she’s questioning his reasoning and herself.

Byul scrubs at her skin, leaving it red and almost as agitated as her thoughts. She exhales, asking herself what would Junmyeon do in this situation.

First, Junmyeon would call someone. He wouldn’t necessarily talk about work, but it would help him relax. Then, when his nerves were calmed, he would make a list of everything he knows.

In a lot of ways, she knows that Junmyeon is her opposite. He’s patient and sticks closely to the rules, while she’s rash and has no issues going down paths that are usually left untouched. If there’s something that overlaps in the Venn diagram of their personalities, it’s their absolute obsession with the case.

Byul twists the knob off, shoving her sopping wet hair out of the way as she towels herself dry. She’s about to open the door to the rest of her apartment before she remembers that Sehun had popped up uninvited, and she has no idea if he came back. Wincing, she wraps her towel a little tighter before scurrying to her closet and pulling on clothes quickly.

Her fingers wrap around her phone before she heads back to the kitchen and throwing away the plate of food that Sehun had touched. She pulls out milk and cereal instead to appease her rumbling stomach and takes a bite of the sugary goodness as she checks the lock on the apartment door, relocking it once, twice, three times before she’s satisfied.

Her phone lights up with a text that she ignores, choosing to scroll through her list of contacts instead. She’s about to tap on Junmyeon’s icon, but decides that’s not a good idea because he’s probably still working. She taps on Mina’s contact information instead, calling her as she cradles the phone between her ear and shoulder to keep eating.

“My Chihuahua tried to attack a huge seagull today and they were pretty much the same size.”

“Hello to you too.” Byul swallows her cereal. “Did he attack anyone else today?”

“No, but he tore the framed picture of the department to shreds. I’m lucky I have another copy,” she yawns. “I can’t sleep, so good thing you called.”

“Me too,” Byul lies.

“You’re lying,” Mina says immediately. “You’re thinking about something.”

Mina always has a funny way of just knowing a person’s immediate thoughts. When she’s in the interrogation room, it could be considered creepy, but Byul knows that her intentions are good. “Maybe.”

“Maybe you should get a Chihuahua that likes to attack people.”

“But he doesn’t attack Minseok?”

“He has good taste, okay?” Mina huffs back into the phone, forcing a small smile from Byul.

“He attacks Kyungsoo though, doesn’t he?”

“Who?”

Byul’s smile grows wider. “He’s a good guy, Mina.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about. Anyway, do you want to come over tomorrow? I want pizza and there’s a deal for buying three, and I know we can knock out two in one night at the very least. Or maybe we can go to a bar? I could blow off some steam after meetings of updates all day tomorrow with Junmyeon’s supervisors.”

Bar.

Bar.

Now that Mina has taken her mind temporarily off Sehun and made her feel just a little bit better, she can focus more on the problem at hand. And the mention of a bar reminds her oh-so-clearly just who Chen is.

“Mina,” Byul says slowly, rolling each syllable over her tongue as her mind goes a mile a minute. “I think we’re going to have a late night tomorrow from work, but I’ll make it up to you because there might be a bar involved.”

There’s whooping on the other side of the line, and Byul hangs up and tosses her phone on to the corner of the small couch, leaving the cereal bowl on the small side table as she ties her damp hair up.

She has work to do.

Junmyeon rolls over, squinting at the rays of sunlight that are peeking over the horizon and into his window. Half-dazed, he thumbs at his phone, squinting even more at the brightness, and then frowns at the text.

Byul: I need a warrant tonight
Byul: I haven’t figured out what for yet

Typical.

The nightmare in the form of her texts make him want to burrow back under the covers, but he’s not that lucky. No, he has a long list of meetings today, and he and everyone else on the team are going to be grilled for their plan for the next month. And even though they have several ideas about the item that is going to be stolen, the team hasn’t pinpointed the exact artifact yet.

Byul is supposed to be joining in all the meetings today, so what does she need a warrant for? In less than ten hours, Junmyeon doesn’t think she could have found any leads, but could she have picked up on something?

Junmyeon sits up slowly, scrolling through the rest of his notifications. The last thing he wants to do at the moment is put on his suit for the agenda today, and his phone buzzes in his hand.

He taps to accept, answering with a sleepy “Hello?”

“How early can you get to work today?” Byul’s voice is crisp and she sounds like she’s had at least two cups of coffee. “I need this warrant and I need to come up with a good enough reason.”

“What does this have to do with our case?”

“Trust me. It does. There may be a connection with Oh Sehun and a location that he frequents, but I have no idea how to get a hold of the owner of the location or a warrant because all I have is this gut feeling, and I need to go through the archive to see if there’s a connection with Oh Sehun and any other high profile cases or any other cases with this location.”

Suddenly, Junmyeon is much more awake. He kicks his covers off, tosses his shirt to the side, and pulls out fresh clothes so he can run to the office.

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Can you get me some coffee?”

“Byul, we have to go.”

“Five more minutes,” Byul mutters, flipping through the thick binder holding all the evidence about a case labelled with a yellowing slip of paper with the words ‘Jay Park.’

“Now, Byul,” Minseok presses and she sighs, bookmarking the case and standing up while smoothing out her skirt.

“You’re so eager to get to a meeting that we’re going to be grilled at.”

“I’m so eager to not start off the meeting being grilled for being late,” Minseok corrects, fiddling with his hands as he does when he’s anxious. “This is our last chance, and our superiors know that. On top of that, Junmyeon is going to be feeling the most pressure.”

“I trust Junmyeon.” She follows Minseok down the hall and toward the elevator. He presses the up button twice. “He rises to the occasion.”

Minseok shoots her a meaningful look that Byul ignores. “Doesn’t mean that he won’t be taking the impact from the higher-ups.”

The door opens, revealing Chanyeol on his phone. His eyes flicker up in recognition, and he tucks his device away as Byul narrows her eyes, stepping into the elevator as she asks a simple question. “Minseok, are we a team or not?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“An easy one. Are we?”

“Yes.”

“Then when Junmyeon starts getting the brunt, we have to step in to take the blow as well.”

Minseok’s mouth twists as he considers her words. “You’ve come a far way from the person you were when you joined the case eleven months ago.”

“No,” she corrects him, a hint of a smile on her face. “I’m still the same person. I just learned to work with a team. Junmyeon beat that into me.”

Chanyeol shudders. “If Junmyeon didn’t get you to open up to the team, Irene’s glares might have.”

Irene, however, is one of the nicest people Byul has met. She just doesn’t seem to extend that inclination to Chanyeol. Without her, Byul would have no idea how the larger office ran, and considering she came from a small place on the outskirts of town, she had been over her head.

The door opens to the twelfth floor, and Minseok leads the way to the meeting room. Curious eyes from other employees follow them, and Byul in a deep breath at the glass windows separating the conference space from the rest of the floor. They are either being shown off, or they’re being scrutinized. Either is possible, but the latter is much more likely.

Junmyeon is already sitting down, flanked by Donghae and Irene. Mina sits a few seats down from the three and Kyungsoo is pacing nervously. Their superiors are nowhere to be seen, and Byul pushes into the room only to feel the overwhelming waves of tension. Irene gives her a curt nod, and even her usually blank face gives away her nervousness with her pinched eyebrows. Mina, however, is faking cheerfulness and waves before her eyes flicker to Minseok. Even she fails to give him a wide smile, and that’s when Byul realizes just how weighted this meeting is going to be.

She pulls out a chair as Kyungsoo slumps into the spot next to her, rubbing at his eyebrows. He’s not even officially on the team, but the superiors would be stupid to not recognize the talent and well-rounded knowledge that he brings to the group.

“Byul,” he murmurs, leaning forward so only the two of them can hear.

“What?”

“The superiors like Junmyeon, Donghae, and Irene. Notice how they’re sitting in the middle of our side?”

She nods, eyes raking in the positions of the seats. “So I’m supposed to stay quiet?”

As the most recent hire and member of the team, she hasn’t gone to any of the previous meetings. She doesn’t know the protocol, and even though she severely dislikes the idea that Kyungsoo is suggesting, if keeping her head down me