Soonyoung loves this, this feeling. The rush and the exhilaration and the feeling of invincibility that comes with dreaming. Soonyoung knows he’s good at it, good at what he does. Has one of the best teams in the business working with him and an unbroken streak of successful extractions.

But more than the job and the money that comes with it, Soonyoung knows that he would never be able to give up dreaming if it means losing all of this.

The sky above stretches endlessly beyond the bay and the setting sun bathes the entire ocean in varying shades of pink and purple and gold. It’s like all the colours are alive, saturated and glowing bright enough to touch, and Soonyoung feels like a haze has fallen over his eyes and he can’t blink away the glare that is lining the edges of his vision. The city is buzzing in the background, distant white noise, and there’s a feeling of serenity that envelopes him as he swings his feet from his seat on the edge of the bridge.

“You’ve outdone yourself Minghao,” he says with quiet admiration. The Chinese man shoots him a grin as he settles in next to him.

“ Xie xie ,” and in the blink of an eye the sky is dark and stars fill the void overhead, shimmering lights in the sky reflected in the water and merging with the blinking lights of the city. Soonyoung feels so breathless with awe that he can’t tell up from down; he feels like he’s floating in an infinite sea of stars. He lays flat on his back, vision immediately filling with the dark muted blues and greys of the night, and physically feels the whole view like a punch to his gut. “Like something out of a fairy-tale no?”

“Like something out of a fairy-tale indeed,” Soonyoung laughs. “Wait till Jun and Chan see this. They’re gonna themselves.”

Minghao laughs, and leans back to lay next to Soonyoung. “You think it’ll be good enough?”

“For?” He turns to shoot Minghao a knowing look. “For the job, or for Junhui?” He doesn’t need to look to know that Minghao’s blushing hard at his statement and he laughs a little at how absolutely sickening the two of them are.

“You’re not clever Kwon Soonyoung,” and he can hear the pout in Minghao’s voice. “Get out of here and ask Junhui to check on the level so we can get this over and done with.”

“You just want him here so you two can - ”

He absolutely deserves it, the hard shove Minghao gives him, but Soonyoung hates free-falling (that er Minghao knows this) and feeling his skull crack open when it impacts the ocean at maximum velocity is definitely on his top ten worst ways to die (somewhere between being run over by a car and being eaten alive by a tank full of hungry sharks).

There’s a pounding in his head when he wakes, and he blinks his eyes blearily against the light.

“Morning hyung, you’re back early. How’s the level?” He rubs his temples and tries to alleviate the headache he can already feel is going to bother him for the rest of the day. Goddamn Minghao and his ing pettiness.

“It’s good, Minghao’s pretty much got it down.” He lets out a tired sigh and nods over to Junhui. “He wants you to go take a look.”

Junhui just shrugs and settles in Soonyoung’s vacated seat, raising his eyebrows when Soonyoung keeps glaring at something beyond his shoulder. “You look pissed off.”

“That er pushed me off the Golden Gate Bridge, of course I’m pissed off,” and Soonyoung does not appreciate the loud obnoxious laugh that Junhui lets out at his statement.

“What’d you do to him? Eight doesn’t do that unless provoked so clearly  you provoked him.”

“Just for that I’m cutting your time in half. No time for you two to f- ”

Junhui shoots him a scandalised look and hurriedly covers Chan’s ears. “Hush the baby’s listening!”

To his credit, Chan remains unfazed and just hits the button on the PASIV, watching unimpressed as Junhui slumps over in the chair. “You can wake them up however you want to later,” which makes Soonyoung grin, his day immediately feeling ten times brighter. He wraps an arm around the younger boy and musses up his hair affectionately.

“Have I ever told you you’re my favourite?”

Chan just rolls his eyes. “Whatever hyung, just make sure you clean up everything once you’re done. I need a ing coffee.”

 

---

 

The extraction goes off without a hitch, because of course it does. How could anything go wrong with Junhui running the extraction, Chan on point, Minghao designing the levels, and Soonyoung as their forger? Soonyoung always likes to brag that they have an unbeatable combination of talent, and it definitely shows with how effortlessly they’ve been pulling off job after job these days.

When they’ve packed up and are celebrating with dinner at the barbecue place down the road, Junhui absently notes that Seungcheol’s team is pretty strong too. “Wonwoo is a pretty good point man, no offence Chan,” to which the younger boy just waves him off in favour of stuffing his face with another wrap. “Vernon is getting good at level designs too.”

“No way Mingyu beats me though,” Soonyoung had chimed in with a mouth full of food. “I heard he still can’t forge old people for .”

“Then shouldn’t Jihoon hyung’s team be the strongest one?” Minghao pipes up. “Jihoon hyung is arguably the best point man in Korea, and Jeonghan hyung and Jisoo hyung could probably give you a run for your money.”

Chan nods his head in agreement. “They’ve got two forgers who also run the extractions. Seokmin hyung maybe isn’t as talented as Minghao hyung, but they’ve got Seungkwan hyung as their own chemist! Like how cool is that?”

Soonyoung just huffs under his breath. “I’m still better than the devil twins though.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” and Junhui pushes a wrap into Soonyoung’s mouth, silencing his grumbling. “You’re probably the best leader of the three. I can’t imagine how the others put up with Seungcheol hyung or Jihoon. They probably never listen to their teammates and have huge sticks up their asses.”

Exactly! he tries to say around the food in his mouth, but it ends up sounding like garbled nonsense, and earns Chan a few stray pieces of flying rice.

“Gross!” Chan whines, and smacks Soonyoung in retaliation.

“Their teammates probably can’t hit them the way we hit you either,” Minghao notes, and gets a punch from Soonyoung for his efforts.

“Whatever,” he replies with a roll of his eyes, but feels considerably lighter as Chan starts whining about the rice in his hair.

Junhui looks at him knowingly, and Soonyoung feels the tension in his shoulders bleed out when Minghao leans into him, seemingly unconsciously (but they all know better, Minghao is just a huge softie inside).

Best team or not, Soonyoung is still ridiculously proud of all of them, of how far they have come individually and as a team. Seungcheol had once told him that of all the teams, Soonyoung’s is the one the works the best as a unit, with each member playing their own role so well and working off of each other so seamlessly that he couldn’t actually tell that each member had distinct set of jobs.

“It’s so cohesive you know, all of you know what you’re supposed to do individually but also how it works as a group,” Seungcheol had mused one evening, and Jihoon had only been half listening but he’d nodded in agreement. “Ji help me out here.”

Soonyoung had looked over to Jihoon then, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I was just complaining about how we ed up our recent extraction, and you start praising my team instead?”

Jihoon had shaken himself out of whatever he’d been working on and sighed, looking at Soonyoung like he was the biggest idiot in the universe. “Think of your group as like, a dance team. Each of you know what you need to do, but you guys also know how what you’re doing fits in the bigger picture. It’s your team’s biggest strength. Don’t sell yourself and the rest of your teammates short.”

“But the extraction - ”

“ - ed up, we know.” Seungcheol huffs a short laugh. “But you still got the information. None of you were compromised. Chan forgot the name of the pet dog but Junhui covered for him. Minghao messed up one of the curtains but Chan got it changed before the mark noticed. Junhui almost gave himself away with the gun in his coat but you drew the attention to yourself instead so he wouldn’t be caught.”

“Your team’s got each other’s back,” Jihoon continues levelling a finger at Soonyoung. “So stop griping about how you guys aren’t getting as many jobs as us and focus on perfecting your dance. More than mine and Seungcheol hyung’s team, your team can somehow read each other without having to say much and I would literally kill to have that kind of telepathy with my own unit.”

So Soonyoung had stopped complaining, and started running his team through drills that would focus on their strengths, and now here they are with one of the highest unbroken streaks of successful extractions to date.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he tells his teammates drunkenly that night, when they’ve dragged themselves back to their hotel and demolished as much soju as they could bring themselves to buy. “You guys, you’re the best team.”

“Watch it, your gay is showing,” Junhui had snickered from where he was lying face down on the couch.

“Says the one in an actual gay relationship,” he quips back, before all the air is forced out of his lungs when Chan dramatically drapes himself all over Soonyoung.

“I knew you loved us hyung!” he yells into Soonyoung’s ear, earning a whack on the head from Minghao who is curled up next to Junhui on the couch.

“Shut the up you asshats, we have an early flight tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

And as Soonyoung falls asleep with Chan curled up on his back like a kitten, he thinks about how right Seungcheol and Jihoon had been all those years ago, and wraps an arm around Chan, snuggling the out of him.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

---

 

Soonyoung bumps into Seungcheol’s team one evening, and he’s ridiculously excited to see them again despite having met them just earlier in the month.

“Cheol hyung!” he whisper shouts across the restaurant, earning a couple of glares from a few well-dressed patrons. Seungcheol perks up and catches his gaze from across the room, eyes squinting from the force of his smile.

“You should be more discreet,” Wonwoo chastises as he slides into the seat next to Soonyoung. “I thought you would have learnt a thing or two from Minghao after all the time you’ve spent together.”

Hansol and Mingyu seemingly appear out of nowhere and fill the seats opposite him, both wearing bright, if tired, grins. Soonyoung takes comfort that they both look considerably happier to see him than walking gloom-cloud Jeon Wonwoo. Seungcheol rounds off the table with a few charming smiles and bashful apologies when the waitress stutters about not being able to fit five people at a table, and clasps Soonyoung on the shoulder.

“Soonyoung! We haven’t met in so long. How are you doing?”

“Good, good,” and he reaches over to ruffle Mingyu’s hair, considerably longer since they last met. He notices the way Wonwoo glares from his periphery and stores away that information for future blackmail. “How’ve you guys been? Busy?”

Mingyu launches into a story about a recent client, (“I’m telling you hyung, it’s something about those rich types; when they refuse to meet you and just want to send you a check for the information, the job is somehow always worse”) only briefly interrupted by the waitress coming back to take their orders, blushing hard when Seungcheol earnestly thanks her for her time.

“What would Jeonghan hyung think of that,” Soonyoung ribs, and the expression that crosses Seungcheol’s face is entirely too soft and too open for someone who has been a thief for the majority of their life.

“We ran into them a week ago,” Vernon pipes up excitedly. “They have some big thing planned, Seungkwan was telling us about it. He didn’t go into detail, but it’s got the whole team running themselves ragged.”

Soonyoung’s thoughts drift to Jihoon then, a luxury he barely allows himself, and can already picture the tired eye bags and the perpetual frown. He abruptly misses the other boy something fierce, and tamps down the urge to ask for more specifics.

“We didn’t see Jeonghan, or Jihoon,” Seungcheol offers apologetically, and Soonyoung offers him a small smile in thanks; Seungcheol had always known what Soonyoung was thinking, no words needed, and Soonyoung has always been grateful for that. “But whatever job they’re working on, I think it’s a pretty big one. Knowing them, they’d probably drop off the grid for awhile during and after.”

Soonyoung doesn’t need to tell them that the last time he’d seen anyone from the team had been almost six months ago, and the last time he’d seen Jihoon specifically had been even longer than that. Back then, they hadn’t even had time for anything more than a hurried greeting, Jihoon rolling his eyes at whatever cheesy thing Soonyoung had concocted, but there had been something fond tugging the edges of his lips that Soonyoung refuses to forget. (Or maybe he made it up entirely, he can never tell.)

Wonwoo is still glowering from next to him, but there’s something sympathetic about the way he asks after the rest of Soonyoung’s team. Taking the out for what it is, Soonyoung launches into a story of their latest job, being ridiculously dramatic about how Chan had almost gotten run over by a car in one of their dreamscapes.

And for a moment, Soonyoung feels, well not entirely alright but still okay, even if the worry about Jihoon is lodged like a particularly pesky thorn in the back of his brain. They eat expensive food and drink too much expensive wine, and at the end of the night Seungcheol picks up everyone’s bill.

“You can treat me next time,” he offers over Soonyoung’s protests. “Get your team over and we could hang out, just like old times.”

There’s an unspoken moment that passes between them, a product of knowing each other upwards of a decade, where Soonyoung watches Seungcheol with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia under the orange glow of the streetlamp. A passing car illuminates Seungcheol’s face, throwing his expression into sharp relief, and Soonyoung is suddenly struck by how grown he looks.

There are lines of exhaustion that has begun to take shape at the corners of his eyes, and his face has lost all its baby fat, now all prominent angles and sharp planes. Soonyoung is pretty sure he looks a lot more grown too, no longer the young eighteen year old kid that had met Seungcheol all those years ago, who had clung to the one hyung that had looked after him all these years.

But there are things that haven’t changed either, like the way Seungcheol smiles, how it transforms his entire face, how it makes his eyes sparkle and causes him to seem larger than life. And Soonyoung takes comfort in that when he pulls Seungcheol in for a hug.

“When we meet next time,” he whispers into the fabric of Seungcheol’s shirt, a goodbye without it really being one. The entire team takes turns pulling Soonyoung into a hug (Wonwoo wrinkling his nose in distaste when Soonyoung plants an obnoxious kiss on his cheek) and Soonyoung waves them off as they vanish into the sea of people crowding the sidewalk.

Jun complains about not inviting him to dinner (“Seungcheol paid? And you didn’t invite us?”) but the atmosphere feels lighter that evening, and they stay up till the early hours of the morning swapping stories about their training days, only falling asleep when the first light of morning starts to peek through the curtains of their room.

 

---

 

It’d been him, Seungcheol and Jihoon first. The three of them picked off the street when they’d turned eighteen. Well, when Soonyoung and Jihoon turned eighteen. Seungcheol had been there a year earlier and had been waiting for the military to assign him to a unit, as promised, when he’d finished his basic training as one of the top recruits.

Needless to say, he was not happy when he’d been presented with both Soonyoung and Jihoon, fresh out of basic.

“What the kind of unit is this,” he’d hissed, and Soonyoung had shrunk back in fear when he saw the anger flash in his eyes. But Jihoon, ever stubborn, bull-headed Jihoon, had just jutted his chin out and challenged Seungcheol instead.

“Well, you’ve got us, so deal with it.”

They hadn’t been cohesive for a long time, but after months of shedding blood and tears in training after training, their Sergeant had finally deemed them functional enough, and cleared them for some Top Secret stuff, complete with the capital letters and everything.

When they first experienced dream-sharing, they hadn’t known how much it would change their lives.

It brought them closer, something about being in each other’s heads and sharing thoughts and consciousness broke down barriers the way no other team-bonding activity did, and the three of them grew so close that they became inseparable. Wherever Seungcheol went, Jihoon and Soonyoung would be not far behind, and the three of them formed the Korean military’s very first, and very best, dream-sharing unit.

Being the first also came with a lot of downsides, namely that they became guinea pigs as the higher-ups tried to figure out what the possibilities of dream-sharing were. Their very first series of training sessions took place in war-zones. Explosions, dirt, blood, over and over and over.

Soonyoung remembers those days when he would die in a bomb explosion, with a bullet through the head, or in one particularly gruesome scenario, with his arm blown off while he slowly bled to death. He’d watch both Seungcheol and Jihoon die as well, over and over and over, until some nights he’d sit awake in his bunk afraid to fall asleep.

They never said anything, but Soonyoung knows the three of them were slowly but surely losing their minds to the repeated violence, the endless repetition of a scenario beyond their control. He was sure the military counselor could tell as well, because the three of them were placed under constant watch, as though someone was just waiting for one of them to lose it and go berserk.

The last time they were put through the simulation had been the worst, but the dream is seared in Soonyong’s mind like a brand. He remembers not being able to feel his arms, or his legs, and as he lay prone on the ground he could make out Jihoon’s body a short distance away, half his face blown off but chest still rising and falling with stuttered breaths. I need to kill him and get him out of this, was all Soonyoung could think. I need to wake him up, I need to save him, I need to -

The ground shook with the force of another explosion, and every jostle sent a sharp pain running down his spine. Through the dust cloud, he could see Jihoon open his mouth in a silent scream.

“Seungcheol!” he’d tried to yell, vision blurring. “Seungcheol help him!”

And then suddenly there was silence, and through his fading vision, he could make out that he was in a room. A sterile white room, fluorescent lights washing out the walls and floor, and his ears ringing from the sudden absence of noise.

“Jihoon!” Seungcheol chokes out, and Soonyoung can see that his leg is broken in three places as he hobbles over to them. “Soonyoung - Soonyoung oh god.”

Soonyoung watches as Seungcheol swiftly puts a bullet through Jihoon’s head, visibly flinching when Jihoon drops motionless to the ground, before rushing over to him.

“Hang on, hang on I’m going to get you out of this.”

And the last thing Soonyoung remembers is the taste of blood in his mouth and Seungcheol’s wide tired eyes before he blinks himself awake in the military base.

He wakes to Jihoon screaming his lungs out at their Sergeant, who is holding his hands out placatingly. Seungcheol is sitting awake a distance away heaving his lunch into a bucket, and Soonyoung feels -

Soonyoung feels numb.

A bone deep exhaustion hits him then, and he watches, expressionless, as the people in-charge leave the room to discuss something. Jihoon is strung out, small frame vibrating in anger, and Soonyoung reaches out to him with the need to just touch and hold him to know that this, this is real.

“Oh god,” Seungcheol breathes, and he can feel the warm solid chest of their hyung enveloping the both of them in a hug. Jihoon is still shaking, but Soonyoung can feel a wetness on his chest that means that he’s crying, and Seungcheol is sobbing behind him, getting snot and tears into his hair.

Sandwiched between the two people he trusts the most in the world, Soonyoung closes his eyes, buries his face into Jihoon’s neck, and cries his heart out with them, feeling years older than his mere nineteen years of age. Cries his heart out for his two best friends, for all the lives they’ve lost, for this endless cycle of pain and death that they can’t seem to escape.

“Never again,” Seungcheol promises, and Soonyoung feels Jihoon’s grip on him tighten. “I’m never letting us go through that again.”

 

-

 

(Somehow Seungcheol keeps his promise.

In their last dreamscape, unknowingly, Seungcheol had constructed a bomb shelter to keep both Soonyoung and Jihoon safe. They could tell, by the gleam in the higher-ups’ eyes, that they had been intrigued with the new development, but Soonyoung had felt more exhausted than anything.

That had been the start, unbeknownst to them. The start of extraction, and after a month of downtime for the three of them, they’d found themselves back in a shared dream, slowly but carefully constructing the world around them for themselves.

For the first time, there is no blood, no screaming, no deafening noises. When Soonyoung wakes, it is to a quiet beeping on the PASIV, indicating that the timer is up, and the look the three of them share after is more comforting than anything.

“Told you I’d figure a way out,” Seungcheol tells them jovially over lunch. Earning an eye roll from Jihoon and a light laugh from Soonyoung.

That night, the three of them squeeze into a single bed and fall asleep like that, limbs tangled and breathing in sync.

That night, they don’t dream.)

 

-

 

“Hyung!” Chan hisses into his ear, and Soonyoung masks the staticky noise with a loud sigh.

“Mr. Lee, we would all appreciate if you could keep your breathing quiet,” the yoga instructor at the front frowns at him disapprovingly, and Soonyoung grins apologetically.

“Hyung, you there?” and from the tone of his voice, this is urgent. So Soonyoung sheepishly excuses himself from the studio and rushes to the bathroom with his phone pressed against his face to hide the earpiece lodged in his ear.

“What’s up?”

“The mark is on the move, I’m not sure where he’s going, but he booked a last minute flight to Japan and there’s no return date on the ticket.”

“ing hell,” Soonyoung curses quietly, locking the door behind him and starting to pace. “I’ve barely had any time to watch his wife, I only know what she does during yoga!”  The last part is said with a loud groan, and Soonyoung startles abruptly when someone taps his shoulder.

“If you were watching women do yoga, you should be way more discreet about it,” and Soonyoung turns to find an unimpressed Jihoon watching him from the sinks, arms crossed and a single eyebrow raised.

His heart soars and he can already feel the smile threatening to split his face in two despite the bomb Chan just dropped on him. “Jihoonie! Woozi! Oh my god it’s you! You’re not a product of my dreams are you?” and he’s overly dramatic about it, but he feels like if he doesn’t overdo it he might explode from how happy he is.

He’s greeted with an eye roll, but there’s a smile tugging up one corner of Jihoon’s mouth, and Soonyoung is just so grateful and thankful to see him alive.

“Where have you been my little pumpkin pie?” he continues dramatically, clutching at Jihoon’s arms and pulling him closer. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

“ off Hoshi,” but there’s something soft about the way he says it that makes Soonyoung’s stomach perform a flip. “Is that Chan on the line? Is everything okay?”

“Jihoonie hyung!” Chan practically screeches into Soonyoung’s ear, the younger boy one of Jihoon’s biggest and most fervent fans. “Soonyoung hyung, let me say hi!”

“Hush now Dino, you know we don’t have time,” and his smile turns a little apologetic to Jihoon, who just shrugs and waves him off. “Let me talk to Jihoonie, then I’ll meet you at the airport in an hour’s time yeah?”

Chan huffs a little over the line, grumbling about Soonyoung keeping him all to yourself you , before the line goes dead, and Soonyoung lets out a quiet laugh, running his fingers through his hair.

“You okay?”

The way Jihoon is looking at him, worry twisting the edges of his mouth, makes a warmth spread through Soonyoung’s ribs. “Hey, I should be the one asking you that. You dropped off the ing grid for more than half a year,” and the accusation comes out a little more hurt than he intended.

“I know, and I’m sorry. I promised both you and Cheol hyung that I’d check in every two months at least, but we were being followed and found that someone had been tracking us for awhile. We needed to disappear to get things sorted out.”

The way Jihoon says it, nonchalantly and with a small shrug, makes something fierce rear its head in Soonyong’s chest, but he pushes down the anger and lets out a soft breath instead. “You could’ve let us know anyway. Junhui or Wonwoo would’ve been able to help you guys out.”

He shakes his head, and Soonyoung recognises the stubborn set to his mouth. “We were fine. It all worked out anyway.”

“Still, that doesn’t mean - ”

“Just drop it okay, Soonyoung?” Jihoon sighs tiredly. “I don’t - Look, I haven’t seen you in over six months. Let’s not fight about stupid .”

Soonyoung gives in, drops the topic and leans forward to bury his face in Jihoon’s hair. “We just worry about you is all. You gotta take better care of yourself.”

“Says the one with eye bags the size of China,” Jihoon retorts, but it’s muffled into Soonyoung’s shirt.

He can feel how stiff Jihoon is, hands clenched at his side, and Soonyoung indulges himself a second longer before pulling away, trying not to show how much the lack of reciprocation hurts. (Years ago, Jihoon would have pulled him in too, fingers running through his hair and heartbeat warm against his chest. But that was Jihoon then, and this, here, is Jihoon now. )

“Cheol hyung wants us to meet up again,” Soonyoung says instead, when the silence stretches between them a little too long and a little too thin. “Could be fun, Chan won’t admit it but he misses Seungkwan a lot.”

Jihoon lets out a soft little laugh, and Soonyoung desperately tries to memorise the sound, knowing that he probably won’t get the chance to hear it again for a long time. “I’ll let the rest know, see what we can do.”

Soonyoung’s phone vibrates then, with a message from Junhui that just reads flight in fifty.

“You should go, don’t miss your flight,” Jihoon mumbles, hands stuffed in his pockets. Soonyoung watches the way they curl and uncurl beneath the fabric, and lets out a small sad smile.

“Don’t be a stranger Lee Jihoon,” he orders, mussing up Jihoon’s hair and dodging the half-hearted punch that Jihoon throws his way. “Take care of yourself yeah?”

And then he’s ducking out of the bathroom, doesn’t stay to hear Jihoon’s reply or to watch Jihoon’s expression. Ducks out of the bathroom and hails the first taxi he sees on the street corner, leaving the yoga studio and its bathroom stall far behind.

Doesn’t look back because he knows he wouldn’t want to leave if he did.

 

-

 

(The extraction goes off without a hitch, despite them being severely unprepared for it.

They do their usual, with Minghao watching Junhui’s back, and Chan watching Minghao’s back, and Soonyoung watching Chan’s back, all four of them stepping in and out of line as they walk through the maze of the dreamscape to find the information locked away in an old treasure chest hidden beneath the floorboard of the mark’s childhood home.

Soonyoung is able to forge the mark’s wife perfectly, because ten minutes before boarding an unmarked email with an image attachment finds its way into his inbox. When he opens it, he recognises the handwriting as Jihoon’s, with notes like limp on right leg and tucks hair behind left earwhich is more than Soonyoung needs to impersonate her.

He replies to the email with a cheeky ah, so you’re the one that’s been watching women in the yoga center and can already picture the eye roll that will be the response to his email.

He doesn’t expect a reply, knowing that Jihoon is not one to respond to Soonyoung’s nonsense, but finds himself surprised by the short message: stay safe Soonyoung-ah . He stares at it for a good minute, emotions a whirlwind in his mind, before Junhui nudges him and asks him to shut his phone off.

“Flirt with your lover boy later,” he whispers to Soonyoung, to which Soonyoung rolls his eyes in response. “See! You’re even rolling your eyes like him.”

He doesn’t reply, but doesn’t deny it either, and decides to treat the entire team to Japanese food once the job is completed and their payment safely in the bank.

“You’re in a good mood today,” Minghao muses over dinner, which earns him a lot of eyebrow waggling and complaints from Junhui and Chan respectively.

That night, if he closes his eyes, he can picture Jihoon’s fond smile, his quiet laugh, and his soft voice saying “ Stay safe, Soonyoung-ah ” as he goes to sleep. He doesn’t dream naturally anymore, can’t dream naturally anymore, and for the first time ever, desperately wishes he could just because he knows that if he could, he’d see Jihoon’s crinkled eyes and be able to feel his heartbeat against his palm.

As it is, he goes to sleep clutching his phone against his chest, heart feeling fuller than it has felt in months.)

 

---

 

He, Jihoon and Seungcheol perform their first extraction on the Sergeant, based off of notes given to them by their counterparts in the American military. Despite the shock on his face when they accurately tell him the name of his childhood pet, first girlfriend, and the exact coordinates of a secret military base, there is something like pride that shines in his eyes as he reports the results to the higher-ups.

Espionage, he tells them. They are ushered out of the room and don’t get to stay to hear the rest of that meeting.

Seungcheol plays the role of the extractor and the architect, creating increasingly complex dreamscapes to escape notice from their marks as they continue to experiment on various higher-ups who can’t seem to believe that something like this could work. Jihoon runs point, with his photographic memory and no-nonsense attitude that saves both Soonyoung’s and Seungcheol’s asses more than once.

And Soonyoung, Soonyoung discovers forging.

He doesn’t intend to, just can’t help but watch the way Jihoon responds in that deadpan way of his and tries to imitate his signature single eyebrow raise the next time they are in the dreamscape.

Jihoon startles abruptly, and Soonyoung can’t tell what’s wrong, especially with the way Jihoon is gaping at him like a fish out of water.

“Jihoon?” and Seungcheol is looking between the two of them, lost. “Wait, wait. Why are there two Jihoon’s?”

So Soonyoung discovers this entirely by accident, but he takes to it like he was born to, stepping in and out of people’s skin so effortlessly that even Jihoon looks envious.

“Yeah you’re a genius, now get your stupid chest out of my face,” Jihoon hisses through his teeth when Soonyoung figures out he can be a womanin the dreamscape.

He is abruptly endeared by how red Jihoon’s face is, tips of his ears burning hot, and Soonyoung laughs loud and bright and uninhibited in a woman’s voice. “Aw come on Jihoonie. Don’t you like me like this?”

“What are you two - ” and Seungcheol does a double take when he sees the pout on female-Soonyoung’s face coupled with Jihoon’s blush. “You know what, I don’t even want to know. Get your asses in gear, we’ve only got two more hours to get the layout perfect for later.”

Jihoon takes that as his cue to slip out from behind Soonyoung’s still female form and storm out the door, slamming it shut after him. “Geez, what crawled up his and died?” Soonyoung grumbles, shifting back into his usual appearance.

“Give him a break, he’s been running himself ragged studying those American notes,” Seungcheol replies with a wry twist of his mouth. “Now come on,” and he slings a comforting arm around Soonyoung’s shoulders, leading him out. “Let’s run through the dream one more time yeah?”

 

---

 

Minghao slips into his bed one evening and curls up behind him. Soonyoung feels comforted like this, being cocooned into his blankets, and briefly feels bad that Minghao has to do this for him, when he should be the one looking after him.

“Stop worrying hyung,” Minghao whispers, and starts to sing a soft Chinese lullaby that lulls Soonyoung to sleep despite not knowing what the words mean.

He’d been restless these past few days, holed up in their shared hotel room and unable to have any contact with the outside world. An extraction had gone wrong, terribly terribly wrong, and when they’d woken up it had been to guns aimed at their heads and all their research shredded and burned in a poor imitation of a bonfire.

He should’ve known something was wrong, could feel it in his gut when there hadn’t been any return address on the email sent to their inboxes with the information on a new job. Should’ve known something was wrong when Chan kept hitting wall after wall on both their mark and their employer. Should’ve known something was wrong when Jihoon had sent him a single line of email: get out.

But no, he went against his instincts and the signs, riding the high of successful extractions and convincing himself that they could pull it off.

All it ended in was a bullet through Chan’s foot, and an experience far too close to death for his liking. Junhui had been holed up with Chan in a separate room looking after him as he sweated and gritted his teeth through the pain (no tears, Chan being ever the fierce, stubborn kid he'd been at eighteen), leaving Soonyoung and Minghao sharing their own room.

The first few days pass by in a haze with Soonyoung barely eating and staring blankly at the badly patterned room wall as Minghao force feeds him his three meals a day. It passes, it always does, the guilt that builds and lodges itself hard and heavy in Soonyoung’s throat whenever something s up. But it still , and Seungcheol used to that if he wanted to, his mind could run scenario after scenario (what if after what if ) endlessly for days if not kept in check.

And that’s what his brain has been doing.

Possibility after possibility, alternative after alternative. If only he had done something different, if only he had been more thorough, if only if only ifonly -

He wakes to their hotel room bell ringing and Minghao shifting quietly to check on their visitors. Soonyoung keeps his eyes closed and listens out for any abnormalities, a gun cocking maybe, or a low threatening voice.

Instead, he hears a loud “ Haohao! I’ve missed you!” which he recognises as Jun, and then the soft murmuring of multiple voices. As good a time as ever to check on Chan, he thinks grimly, berating himself for being so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t gone to check on the younger boy.

When he steps into the living room however, he finds that it’s filled with more people than their usual four-man team. Jeonghan is reclining in the one armchair in the room, fussing with Seungkwan over Chan’s bandaged foot. Jisoo and Seokmin are tangled together as they chat with Junhui and Minghao, and Soonyoung’ eyes eagerly track over the entire group to find -

“You ing idiot,” and ah, there he is. Despite how visibly angry Jihoon is, Soonyoung can’t stop the smile that makes its way to his face. “Stop smiling stupidly at me like that. I told you to get the out and instead I have to find out through a friend that Chan has a bullet hole through his foot?”

Jihoon looks, well he always looks good, but now he looks well rested, and if their previous meeting in the bathroom of the yoga studio hadn’t happened, Soonyoung would never have guessed that Jihoon had been running himself into the ground to keep his team safe.

“Hyung!” Seokmin perks up from the sofa and rushes over to envelope him in a hug. “Oh my god hyung, you look terrible!”

“Thank you for the compliment DK,” Soonyoung replies drily, and hooks his fingers into Seokmin’s belt loops to keep him close just for a minute longer. “If you didn’t already have a boyfriend, I would’ve thought you were hitting on me.”

“You do look terrible Soonyoung ah,” comes Jeonghan’s soft concern, eyes furrowed with worry. “Have you been getting enough to eat?”

And that’s how the nine of them end up scattered across the living room floor, making their way through eight boxes of large pizzas. They don’t talk about the botched mission, which Soonyoung is grateful for, but he catches Jihoon throwing him looks the whole night, looks that say you’re not getting out of our unfinished conversation which Soonyoung desperately tries to ignore.

When they are full and Soonyoung excuses himself to use the bathroom, Jihoon follows after him with some terrible excuse and corners him in the corridor.

“We’re talking about this,” he hisses. “I don’t care where or how, but we are gonna talk about it.”

Soonyoung just sighs, expression dropping and running a tired hand through his hair. “There’s only one place I feel safe enough to talk this through, you know that.”

Jihoon’s lips thin out, and Soonyoung feels all kinds of fond at the stubborn press of his mouth and the clench of his fists. “Fine. Fine. I’m in room 817. Come find me.”

Soonyoung watches Jihoon walking away, and closes the door to the bathroom with a sigh, head thumping back against the wood and palms pressed into his eyelids.

He looks into the mirror and tries to shift, tries to convince himself that he’s in a dream, that everything that’s happening now is not real (is too good to be true, and too terrible that it must be a dream). He thinks of the old man he saw on the street this morning, of the news anchor he saw on the afternoon news, of the hotel staff who'd welcomed them in her white uniform and polite smile. His reflection stays stubbornly unchanged.

He can’t tell if he’s disappointed or not to find that he’s wide awake.

 

---

 

He remembers the day he’d fallen in love with Jihoon.

He remembers, because it had been both the best and worst moment in his life.

It had been something extraordinary, and everyone who said they fell in love in ordinary moments can go  it because falling in love should never be ordinary. Because Soonyoung remembers being chased by a group of heavily tattooed men with yellowing teeth, yelling at him and brandishing knives as they hollered for him to “Get back here so we can skin you and feed you to the dogs!”

He’d ducked behind a dumpster, holding his breath and praying that they wouldn’t find him, before there is a loud roaring and -

- here Jihoon is, hair slicked back and wearing a black leather jacket, swinging a motorcycle round the bend in the road and casting Soonyoung a stern look.

“Get on,” he’d said, and god Soonyoung’s insides had shriveled up there and then. He’d obediently hopped onto the back of Jihoon’s motorcycle and they’d driven away together amidst the storm of bullets, Soonyoung’s arms tight around Jihoon’s waist.

“I didn’t know you could drive a motorcycle,” he yells over the wind rushing past his ears.

Jihoon shrugs as he takes a hard left. “I can’t,” before he books it down the sidewalk.

People are diving out of their way, and Soonyoung yells out the occasional, “Sorry!” and “Coming through!” as Jihoon winds his way around the small alleyways, the roar of their pursuers fading further and further away.

Soonyoung feels breathless with exhilaration, heart pounding a mile a minute, and he can see Jihoon’s equally large grin in the mirrors of the bike.

Oh god, he thinks. Oh god, he’s gorgeous.

Just as quickly as that thought enters his brain, the back tire gives way and the bike comes to a skidding halt, throwing both Soonyoung and Jihoon against a wall. When the stars clear from his vision, Soonyoung desperately crawls over to Jihoon, and the red blooming on Jihoon’s white shirt steals the breath from his lungs.

“No,” he’d whispered, hands frantically pushing against the blood bubbling from the hole in Jihoon’s chest. “No no no nononono - ”

“Soonyoung, Soonyoung ,” but Soonyoung’s eyes had just been trained on the hole in Jihoon’s chest, on the way Jihoon’s breathing was becoming laboured. He couldn’t, he couldn’t -

What would he do if Jihoon died?

“ Soonyoung ,” and that’s Seungcheol, a hand warm on his shoulder, expression grave. “It’s just a dream Soonie. It’s just a dream. Jihoon’s okay yeah?”

“ - a dream,” Soonyoung had whispered back, and startled when Seungcheol immediately put a bullet through Jihoon’s head. “Wait, wait - ”  But Soonyoung looks down and there’s no one in his arms, no brains on the sidewalk, no blood on his clothes.

He wakes with a gasp, and Jihoon is by his side in an instant, but the Sergeant is watching Soonyoung warily, like he expects him to snap there and then.

Seungcheol draws the curtains around their small room, granting them as much privacy as they can in their dimly lit military bunker, and the three of them are once again huddled on a single bed as Soonyoung murmurs to himself over and over and over.

“That’s why I told them we need totems Cheol hyung,” Jihoon whispers urgently, but all Soonyoung can focus on is Jihoon’s heartbeat, beating firm and steady and alive beneath his ear. “We’re not gonna be able to tell what’s real and what’s not the longer we spend down there.”

Seungcheol had nodded in understanding, casting a glance at Soonyoung hesitantly.

“Go talk to them, I’ve got Soonie,” Jihoon nods firmly, hands rubbing soothing circles into Soonyoung’s back.

“ - thought I’d lost you. Forever. ” But it’s barely more than a whisper, and apart from their shared breathing Jihoon doesn’t acknowledge that he’d heard it either.

Minutes pass that feel like hours before Seungcheol returns, and Soonyoung is escorted away for a counseling session and a dose of relaxant.

Jihoon , he thinks, oh god Jihoon .

Because somewhere along the way, somewhere between countless hours gritting their teeth through real life training and dreamscape scenarios, Soonyoung had fallen - head over heels fallen - in love with Lee Jihoon. Lee Jihoon who is all stoic lines of professionalism, who scowls when Soonyoung pokes fun at his height, but who will stay up with Soonyoung when he can’t bring himself to close his eyes. Who looks out for Seungcheol as much as he looks out for the two younger ones, who works twice as hard as everyone else to take care of both Soonyoung and Seungcheol.

Lee Jihoon, who’d once punched Soonyoung for messing up a dreamscape they’d been rehearsing for weeks, but who’d also left out a bag of ice and the last slice of apple pie from the canteen for Soonyoung as an apology that night.

Lee Jihoon who ing glowed when he’d been riding that motorbike, eyes dangerous and teeth bared in a grin as he rescued Soonyoung in that alleyway.

Lee Jihoon who was as beautiful as he was fierce, who was all fire and sharp angles and barbed words, who Soonyoung has never seen cry apart from that one time.

Lee Jihoon, who was the strongest person Soonyoung knew.

And Soonyoung, oh god Soonyoung , was irreversibly, irrevocably, in love with him.

 

---

 

“I’m an idiot,” Soonyoung tells his reflection. He knows he’s been staring at the mirror for far too long, trying to prolong the inevitable confrontation with Jihoon. Room 817, ing hell.

It’s been seven years, going on eight, since he’d first met Jihoon, six years since he’d realised his feelings. Six years since he’d resigned himself to this fate (because falling in love in this line of work could only be a liability), this fate of watching Jihoon from afar, close enough to touch, but never close enough to belong.

And yet, and yet.

“You okay in there hyung?” and it’s Chan that knocks, snapping Soonyoung out of his musing. With a deep, fortifying breath, he puts on his best game face before pulling the door open.

“I’m good,” and Chan doesn’t look convinced, but at least some kind of relief does spread across his expression at Soonyoung’s words.

“Jihoon hyung’s waiting for you,” is what Chan offers, along with a small smile. “You probably shouldn’t keep hyung waiting, he tends to get grumpy if you make him wait too long.”

He chuckles at that. “He does, doesn’t he,” and he winces at how wistful it sounds, clearing his throat and ruffling Chan’s hair as he carefully maneuvers himself around his injured foot. “Listen Chan - ”

“You have nothing to be sorry about hyung,” Chan interrupts firmly, and Soonyoung feels the way his chest tightens as he sees that familiar stubbornness in Chan’s gaze. “This wasn’t your fault. It happened, but we’ll be better if it happens again in the future. We’ll be prepared.”

Soonyoung doesn’t know how to tell Chan that this isn’t something you can be prepared for, with too many variables and too many uncertainties and too many ends that don’t quite meet. But he pulls the younger in for a hug anyway and murmurs into his shoulder “We’ll be better. We’ll be better. ”

When he steps out onto the corridor and finds himself face to face with the door to Room 817, he hesitates, finger hover uncertainly over the doorbell. He wishes Seungcheol was here, he always knew how to mediate between him and Jihoon when they fought, but he thinks back to Chan’s determined words and Minghao’s warmth and Junhui’s steady gaze and takes a deep breath.

He’s got this.

He rings the bell.