A/N: Hey, readers! It's my 4th anniversary writing Markjin on AFF, and one thing I wanted to do to make this year special was incoporate more reader requests into my posts. Keeping with that theme, my first 4th anni goodie comes from the most rquested fic type from my twitter followers--when I asked what fics they most wanted to see from me, mystery/crime/detective was the overwhelming lead! As a murderino and lover of true crime shows/podcasts/forums, I couldn't help but go for this route!

I know I'm known for my weekly updates, but for this fic, I'll be making monthly updates (though perhaps one or two months will get double updates), so it'll take us through to the end of the year.

I hope you enjoy :D

"OK," BamBam said, getting his camera into position. "I'm all set for you to begin the conclusion, guys. Ready...set...ACTION!"

Jinyoung gazed into the camera with solemn eyes as he began his closing lines. “This new eye-witness testimony, as sketchy as it seemed, could have proven to be another twist in this already very twisted case. Luckily for the remaining members of the Lockett family, his appeal was rejected, and he remains, to this day, behind bars.”

“And that concludes today’s episode of My Men of Mystery,” Mark finished. “Join us next week for a very special episode where Jinyoung and I go on site to investigate a local unsolved murder in person. Do you know which one I’m talking about, Jinyoung?”

“I can’t imagine,” Jinyoung said drily. “Could it be the one you’ve obsessed over for the past year?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been obsessed with a lot of murders this year, haven’t I?” Mark grinned at him wryly. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“I’m sure the viewers are screaming it at their screens as we speak. The Daphne Cromwell case.”

“Bingo. As many of you know, in January of this year, a woman named Daphne Cromwell was brutally murdered in the cellar of a local winery just twenty minutes away from my house. The murder took place on the very same day as the White Road Massacre, a mass shooting which claimed the lives of twenty-five individuals and captured widespread media attention, leaving the Cromwell murder buried and forgotten in its wake. But our community is still looking for answers to this senseless crimes, and maybe it’s up to us to find them.”

“Let’s see what we can uncover at the infamous Lonely Lane Winery next week,” Jinyoung concluded. “We look forward to joining you there to investigate this chilling unsolved case that hit-” a dramatic pause- “a little too close to home.”

“….aaaaaaand CUT!” BamBam said from behind the camera in his best Hollywood director voice. “That’s a wrap!”

“What, we don’t have to reshoot anything from the beginning this time?” Mark asked, stretching out his limbs.

“I know, for once in your life you two didn’t mispronounce anything or stumble over your words until you were spouting gibberish,” BamBam said, setting down the camera. “A miracle, I know.”

“We just like to make the video editing process that much more fun for you, oh long-suffering manager,” Jinyoung said.

“You joke now, but just wait until next week when you’ll be doing your own filming. Then you’ll remember what a challenge it is to put together shots where you’re both looking camera-ready and not giving off a resting-weird-face.” He rolled his shoulders, then yawned. “I’m going to take a nap before editing this. I uploaded the last episode we shot if you want to check that out, but don’t forget that you two need to prepare your script for the Cromwell case for me to check in a few days. Later.” BamBam threw up a dab, then swaggered out of the room to pass out on the lobby couch of the little studio they used to film once a week.

Jinyoung and Mark shared an amused glance. “Well,” Jinyoung said. “I guess I’ll get to work on the script if you want to check out the feedback on our new episode?”

Mark nodded. He’d always been in charge of monitoring their YouTube comments, as Jinyoung was too terrified of trolls and anti-fans to look himself. Mark thought this was cute, but needless: everyone liked Jinyoung and had nothing but good things to say about him. Nonetheless, he pulled out his phone and began scrolling through the early responses to the new video, an overview of a case that had resulted in a false confession and wrongful conviction that had recently been overturned. Most of the comments were railing against the incompetence of the police involved in the case and the bulldog prosecutor who had put an innocent man behind bars, but in the middle of scrolling, he reached the comments that always appeared somewhere on every one of their videos.

Ahhhh, another satisfying week of Markjin. Any other shippers here?

-Markjin4Eva11147-

Did you see how Mark looked at Jinyoung at 5:02 in the video??? So much honey in his eyes <33

-MyWomanofMystery-

Did anyone else see the Markjin moment at 10:05?

-CrimeStopperLady07-

These types of comments always made Mark beyond relieved that Jinyoung never read their Youtube comments or checked out anything at all where criticism could potentially show up, for that matter. Jinyoung had no idea that there was anyone out there who shipped them, that Mark had accidentally given him honey eyes at 5:02, or that the moment at 10:05 was anything more than a companionable squeeze on the shoulder between two friends.

It was bad enough that Mark felt guilty as charged every time he read them. He was, after all, a repeat offender in letting his overwhelming crush on his partner in crime leak out pretty much indiscriminately. Their whole Youtube gig existed in the first place because of said crush. He and Jinyoung had been classmates at university as criminal justice majors, and when their class had been given a group assignment to practice outlining the facts of a case in the clear, convincing way one would have to address a jury, Mark had practically fallen all over himself to make Jinyoung his partner. It had been such a blast working with him and putting together their video presentation that Mark’s feelings had only gone from bad to worse because of the whole experience.

As it happened, one of their fellow classmates had enjoyed their video so much that he’d sent it along to his friend in the Digital Communications and Multimedia department, and that friend, BamBam, had announced that he was going to make Mark and Jinyoung Youtube stars or die trying. “You guys are, like, made for this,” he insisted. “You’ve got the knowledge, you’ve got the passion, you’ve got the photogenic pretty faces, you’ve got the chemistry, and now you’ve got me and my mad video editing and promotion skills—there’s no way this isn’t going to work!”

Mark and Jinyoung had both been skeptical at the onset, but somehow it had worked. At first it probably had been their photogenic, pretty faces and BamBam’s credibly fantastic editing that had scored them a dedicated female following that seemed more devoted to doing gif sets of them on Tumblr than focusing on the cases themselves, but that at least got their names out there until the true crime devotees caught on that My Men of Mystery was a great source for informed, in-depth looks into fascinating but lesser-known cases other channels weren’t necessarily covering.

Their chemistry—or how “shippable” they were, as their fans put it—likely also played a major role, given the amount of “Markjin” comments that followed after their every move. Pretty much every one of their videos featured them dorking out together over their cases or passionately trashing the suspects they hated the most. According to BamBam, they were experts at playing off each other—they could always keep the conversations and energy between them flowing, and if one of them made an off-script remark, the other always had a quick and clever response and was never at a loss for what to say.

Mark loved their show, and he loved working with Jinyoung. However, the downside of becoming a Youtube celebrity was that it completely threw a wrench in all his plans to confess to Jinyoung. It would have been a lower risk thing to do back when they were only classmates, but now that they had this massively popular show together, Mark’s feelings carried the risk of throwing off their whole dynamic if they weren't reciprocated. He didn’t even want to think of what it would be like trying to work with Jinyoung if he confessed and wound up rejected by him.

“So, how are those Youtube comments looking?” Jinyoung asked, glancing over.

“Pretty good,” Mark reported, tucking away his phone. “Everyone got really passionate over this one, especially the bumbling police factor. Speaking of which, all our viewers found my bumble pun hilarious, unlike someone I know."

"Sorry, but puns are the lowest form of humor."

"You're the lowest form of humor."

"Oh wow, witty comeback, Mark. What's next? 'I am rubber, you are glue'?"

Mark stuck out his tongue, and Jinyoung rolled his eyes, and they both elbowed each other at the same time. A second later, and they were both grinning, and Mark's head was flooded with pink. God, I love this guy. I really, really love this guy. 

Before the atmosphere could get any more fluffy, Jinyoung waved his notebook where he was starting to outline their case notes on the Cromwell murder under Mark's nose. “I think I’ve got a pretty good intro going, but this is your passion project. Did the initial investigation pull up anything on suspects or motives here?”

“Not very much,” Mark admitted, draining his mind of any lingering pink. “Daphne’s husband had an airtight alibi, and her daughter was across the country attending university. The police questioned a neighbor since it seemed like he and Daphne had butted heads in the past over property lines, but the guy passed a lie detector test and didn’t really seem to have anything to do with it.”

“What about Daphne’s business partner at the winery, Charlotte? The one who’s giving us access to the winery next weekend?”

“I really don’t think she’d hire us to pack up the winery and film a Youtube video about the murder if she was the one who committed it.” Mark pursed his lips. “Unless, you know, she intends to murder us while we're on the premises to keep us from implicating her, but that would only implicate her more, so I don’t see why she would.”

Jinyoung shuddered. “OK, I’m bringing a can of mace, a pepper spray shooter, and a self-defense knife just because you said that.”

“It would be better if you brought a self-defense snow shovel,” Mark said, grinning. “There’s supposed to be heavy snowfall next week.”

“Maybe I’ll tape my self-defense knife to the handle of the shovel. Make it like a bayonet, or something.”

“You’ll just wind up stabbing yourself, Jinyoung, and this winery isn’t anywhere close to a hospital.”

“It also isn’t close to anywhere where someone can hear us being brutally murdered by Daphne’s killer.” Jinyoung made a few notes about the cleared suspects in his notebook, and added a question mark next to Charlotte’s name. “All right. So…any other suspects on your radar?”

“Just one. During the investigation, it came out that Daphne’s husband Quincy Cromwell had an affair about five years before the murder. Daphne had found out about it and apparently drove out to the mistress’s home to rail against her right in the middle of her driveway. It could be that the mistress was involved in her death, or else Quincy Cromwell was having another affair that police haven’t discovered yet.”

“Waiting five years is very belated revenge, don’t you think? And who would have an affair with a guy named Quincy?”

“All very valid points,” Mark said with a laugh. “Hopefully we’ll actually get some answers.”

“It’s snowing,” Jinyoung said, gazing out the passenger window.

“I did warn you, didn’t I?” Mark asked, turning his car down Lonely Lane. Just as the name suggested, it was a long country rode with basically nothing on it other than farmland, which was now being blanketed in a thin layer of snow. His GPS told him that the winery itself was still four more miles down the road.

“I should get some shots of it for cinematic purposes. I’m sure BamBam could use it when he’s editing whatever we wind up shooting today.” Jinyoung rolled down the window and stuck his cellphone and selfie stick partway out to capture the snowy Lonely Lane as they drove down it.

After four more miles, they at last reached a painted sign that read “LONELY LANE WINERY” with a “CLOSED—PROPERTY FOR SALE” sign tacked beneath listing the contact information of the real estate agent.

“It’s a bit of a shame, really,” Jinyoung said as Mark turned into the parking lot. “One owner gets bludgeoned, and the other is forced to close up shop a year later because people don’t want to drink at the murder winery with the killer still at large.”

“Hmm… maybe there’s a business rivalry aspect of this, considering there’s five competing wineries in the area who are benefiting off of Lonely Lane’s downfall.”

“Let’s work that into our theory list.”

Mark parked the car and hopped out into the snow. Already, he could see Charlotte Carney, Lonely Lane’s former co-owner, on the winery’s front deck, waiting to let them inside. She was bundled into a thick black parka, her long auburn hair tucked into her hood.

“I’m glad you made it,” she said, sighing in relief as they approached. “I was a bit worried about the road conditions. Did you run into any problems?”

Mark shook his head. “The roads are still pretty clear.”

“Glad to hear it.” She handed Mark a key ring. “Here you are. The silver key right here will get you into the winery, and the small copper key unlocks the cellar. There will be boxes and wine cases in the cellar and back room on the main floor for you to pack up our—my—remaining inventory. I just ask that you wrap any glasses with bubble wrap to prevent breakage, and to take inventory of everything you pack for my records. I set aside one bottle of wine for you at the tasting bar to thank you for helping me with packing—it’s a chardonnay with a red bow around the neck. I don’t mind if you use some of our glasses to drink it, as long as you clean up afterwards.” She took a breath. “Anything else?”

“Is there anywhere you don’t want us filming?” Jinyoung asked.

She thought for a moment. “I would keep it contained to the tasting room, if possible. I do assume you want to film at the…scene…correct?” She shuddered a little. Mark remembered that she had been the one to discover Daphne's body.

“That was the plan,” Mark said carefully. “If it’s all right with you?”

She nodded grimly. “I’ve seen your videos before, so I’ll trust you on this. That’s the reason I called you up in the first place. Well, I did need the help packing this place up, but I wanted to spread more awareness about what happened. I want there to be some leads so the case doesn’t go completely cold. I think I owe that much to Daphne after all the years we’ve been business partners. It just depresses me to no end that nothing ever amounted from the police investigations.”

“Do you have any theories yourself?” Jinyoung asked, pulling out his notebook.

Charlotte bit her lip. “Well…I don’t think Quincy did it, but let me tell you, their marriage was…how should I say this…toxic, perhaps? She was controlling, and he had a wandering eye, so they seemed constantly on the verge of self-destructing to me.”

“We heard that he’d had an affair five years ago,” Mark said. “Were there others?”

“It’s hard to say for sure. Daphne was always suspecting him of running around on her, but that was the only one he actually confessed to. Knowing Quincy, there were probably other occasions. But he was just good at not getting caught red handed.” Charlotte frowned suddenly. “Not that I’m accusing him of getting away with murder. He was on a business trip at the time, and it couldn’t have been him, at least not directly. But I wouldn’t be surprised if an infidelity on his part tied into it.”

Mark nodded. It had always seemed like some manner of crime of passion to him, so he wouldn’t be surprised either.

“Anyways, I just hope getting the word out will help,” Charlotte finished. “And if you boys have any further questions, feel free to give me a call. But for now, I need to head over to the real estate agency to discuss the listing. When you’re done for the day, don’t forget to lock up and stick the key under the welcome mat. I’ll come pick it up in the morning.”

They said their goodbyes, and Jinyoung unlocked the winery door and opened it up so Mark could step in. He’d been there a few times in the past since his parents were big into wine tastings, but it was strange to see it practically empty. Charlotte had already sold off the remains of the gift shop and taken down all the wall decorations and local artworks that had made the interior so beautiful. All that was left was a single bulletin board with only two things pinned up on it: a list of phone numbers—an asset liquidator, the real estate agent managing Lonely Lane, a bank representative, and a van company—and a newspaper clipping of Charlotte and Daphne holding an award naming Lonely Lane Signature Ice Wine the 2017 winner of the award for the best ice wine produced in North America.

“She died at the peak of her success, huh?” Jinyoung said a bit sadly, looking at the photo. “It’s hard to wrap my head around, sometimes. How alive she looks in this photo and knowing how horribly she died.”

“It’s rough, I know,” Mark said gently. “But that’s why we’re here. To make sure people don’t forget. To make sure her story gets told.”

Jinyoung nodded wordlessly, then shook his head as if to clear away his thoughts. “So, what’s the agenda now that we’re here? Packing first? Filming our intro in the tasting room? Heading straight down to the cellar and getting the gruesome bits over with?”

“Let’s do the intro first,” Mark said. “Then do our filming in the cellar, then do some investigative packing, then film any concluding bits.”

“Investigative packing?”

“Yeah. Packing while also hunting for clues. You know, like…angry letters from business rivals, undiscovered shards of bloody glass. Things like that.”

“Sounds good.”

They went into the tasting room, the part of the building Mark remembered best. It almost had a ski-lodge type feel with the huge, cushy sofa situated in front of a brick fireplace where groups could lounge around and drink wine with a cheese platter, especially during the chilly fall and winter seasons.

“Looks like we can go for the whole fireside chat vibe,” Jinyoung said. “At least, that’s what I feel BamBam would recommend.”

“How is the lighting in that area? Is it bright enough?”

“It’s definitely dim, but in the kind of atmospheric way BamBam normally shoots our videos. I’ll set up the tripods and see how it looks.”

While Jinyoung worked on the cameras, Mark went back out to the car to get their recording microphones and helped with the set up. They did a few practice shots to test the equipment and work through the kinks they normally didn’t have to go through thanks to having a recording guru on their team.

When all was in working order, the two plopped down in front of the fireplace, ready to begin.

Mark began with the opening. “January 16, 2018, 8 PM. Fifty-one year old wife and mother Daphne Dolores Cromwell was bludgeoned to death in the cellar of Lonely Lane Winery, of which she was co-owner. The murder weapon, a bottle of Lonely Lane merlot, was used to club Daphne over the head, and then its shattered remains were impaled into her chest repeatedly, at least eight times according to investigators. She was found the next morning at 6:00 AM when Lonely Lane co-owner Charlotte Carney came to the building to open up for business for the day. She noticed the door to the cellar, which was usually locked up in the evening, was hanging wide open, and went down to investigate. There she found her business partner sprawled on the ground, lying in a pool of merlot and her own blood.”

“The police investigation turned up very little in the way of evidence,” Jinyoung continued. “There were no fingerprints on the murder weapon. There were no witnesses on the remote Lonely Lane who reported seeing a car arriving or leaving the winery. There was no DNA or fibers or any incriminating evidence left behind by the killer. The police interviewed hundreds of persons of interest, but to this day, there is no central suspect in this case. Was it a random act of violence? Was it a crime of passion? Did Daphne know her killer, or was it a complete stranger? These questions remain uncertain, but one thing is for sure: a killer still remains at large.”

“Jinyoung and I are here today at the site of the killing, what once was the Lonely Lane Winery which Daphne Cromwell co-owned,” Mark said, gesturing broadly to the scene around them. “Though there was a surge of interest in the business after Daphne’s death, business slowly tapered off due to fears of the building being haunted, or the possibility of a killer still lurking in the cellars. Co-owner Charlotte Carney recently put the property up for sale, but before the place is completely packed up, we’re here on a hunt for clues as to who could have killed Daphne Cromwell and why.”

“As most of our viewers know, this is one of your obsession-level mysteries,” Jinyoung said, turning his gaze to Mark. Mark met it carefully—this was usually the part of the show that the shippers honed in on, as Mark apparently got a “soft, tender look” or “honey eyes” whenever he looked at Jinyoung, even if they were discussing homicide. “So, what is it about this case that gets you so much? The fact that your own house is twenty minutes away? The fact that you’ve visited this winery before and may have even met Daphne Cromwell? The potential ghost factor? We all know it's your life ambition to meet an actual ghost.”

“I think the lack of clues, motive, and viable suspects on this one is what really gets me, though of course I wouldn't mind a haunted element other than the fact that if anything even slightly creepy happens, I'll freak out and you'll film it for the whole internet to see and never let me live it down,” Mark said.

"I don't know," Jinyoung said with a grin. "Normally I'd do that, but since there's a killer on the loose in this case, if something creepy happens, I'll be freaking out right alongside you, and we'll both look like idiots."

"They'll have to change our show to My Men of Meltdowns."

"In which two grown men lose their sanity over a creaking floorboard"

Mark grinned at him before realizing his smile was far too big and endearing, then quickly rearranged his face. “But back on the lack of suspects issue, in most of the cases we look at, there’s usually at least three strong or convincing possibilities. I’d say with most homicides like this, there’s a clear suspect, but the struggle is finding the evidence to nab them. In this case, there’s pretty much nothing to go on. Daphne hadn’t locked up the winery yet, so it would have been easy for the killer to get in whether she knew who it was or not. She was also bludgeoned from behind in a sneak attack, so it was likely that Daphne may not have even seen her killer directly.”

“But I thought they stabbed her in the chest?”

“I’m glad you pointed that out, Jinyoung,” Mark said, his too-big, endearing smile slipping right back onto his traitorous face. Jinyoung’s attention to detail was one of the things he loved most about him both in a professional sense, and in a personal one. “There were several disturbing aspects in how Daphne was killed. For a better understanding, why don’t you and I go to the actual scene? The wine cellar.”

Jinyoung grimaced. “This is the part I was not looking forward to.”

“The police already cleaned up the mess a long time ago. It should just look like a regular wine cellar.”

“Tell that to my brain, which will be expecting a killer to leap out at us the entire time we’re down there. I really might lose my sanity over a floorboard.”

“Come on, Jinyoung, I believe in you!” Mark said, pumping his fist. They held each other’s gazes for what was probably a beat too long. If they were in the studio, BamBam would surely be yelling “CUT!” and berating them for dreaded long pauses.

“I unfortunately can’t arm myself with your belief in me, Mark, as much as it means to me,” Jinyoung said, finally.

“Didn’t you say you were going to pack a self-defense knife?”

“I was worried about carrying it in my back pocket and stabbing myself in the .”

“And any harm to Jinyoung's , ladies and gentleman, would be a heinous crime indeed,” Mark said to the camera. A little healthy fan service never killed anybody, after all.

Mark looked up at the camera Jinyoung was doing his best to carry steadily down the cellar steps with them after they’d prepared to switch locations. “This is the very same path walked by Charlotte Carney the morning of January 17^th when she discovered the body of Daphne Cromwell at 6 AM. As you can see, the lighting is very dark, so she switched on the overhead light at the bottom of the stairs like so-” Mark flipped on the lights. “Then she saw the puddle of merlot that reached the bottom of the steps. Rather than stepping into it, she peeked her head around the corner. That’s when she saw the body lying face up right there, next to the wine cabinet to the right.”

Jinyoung maneuvered the camera to get a zoom-in of the exact spot. “I can’t imagine how horrifying it must have looked,” he said. “And how terrifying it must be to, you know, be the one to discover a dead body. I wonder what the physical reaction to that feels like. Do you scream right away, or does your body need to take a moment to understand what it’s even seeing?”

“In this case, there was definitely some confusion, as the presence of spilled merlot made it hard to identify the presence of blood. They were apparently mixed together to the point where it may have initially looked like Daphne spilled wine, slipped on it, and was knocked out cold when her head hit the ground. It wasn’t until Charlotte came closer and saw the wounds on Daphne’s chest that she called in to the police.”

“So you said Daphne was hit in the back of the head, correct?”

“That’s right. Physical evidence from the scene made it pretty apparent how it played out.” Jinyoung got into position so Mark could give the viewers a reenactment. “The killer crept down the stairs while Daphne was stocking wine into the cabinet with her back to the stairs. They picked up a bottle from the cubby to the left of the stairs and swung it into her head once, forming a sizable crack in the bottle and forcing her to fall forward, towards the cabinet. Daphne lifted up her hands to either side of her head to protect herself, and the killer swung the bottle again, breaking it completely and hitting both her head and her left hand as evidenced by the shards of glass found in that hand by investigators. The killer then dragged her by her legs to pull her body away from the cabinet, then rolled her onto her back. She was presumably unconscious at this point, but not yet deceased. The killer then stabbed her with the broken wine bottle until she was dead.”

“Overkill,” Jinyoung said. “Which would normally suggest a crime of passion, but…”

“…but crimes of passion are usually committed by those who know the victim personally, and all of the people who were closest to Daphne have supported alibis.” Mark turned to the camera grimly. “Let’s go over the very small suspect list, shall we?”

“You know, this feels weird,” Jinyoung said, wrapping up a wine glass in bubble wrap and placing it into a box.

“What does?”

“Going from talking about a violent murder to packing up wine glasses.”

“Well. That’s what we came here to do.”

“I know. It just feels weird. That’s all.”

“I honestly feel kind of weird about it, too,” Mark admitted. “But the packing excuse is our one big chance to see if we can find something the police might have missed.”

“True. I seriously hope we can find something. I just hate thinking about that poor woman lying out here all night in that pool of blood and merlot.” He shivered. “It’s all drafty and creaky down here.”

“The wind is pretty strong outside, and it’s already a freezing day to begin with. Maybe it’s not usually this bad.”

“She died in January. It probably was this bad.” Jinyoung paused. “I keep thinking about what Charlotte said about her relationship with her husband. The whole cheating thing. I wonder why she stayed with him?”

"That's pretty common, though, isn't it? If people are kind of blindly in love with someone, sometimes they're willing to stay with them through anything. It's easier for them to blame the person their loved one cheated with than to blame the loved one themselves."

"Would you do that?"

"What? Give someone a pass on cheating?"

"No. Would you cheat on someone?"

Mark stared at him blankly. "Of course not."

"It's not an 'of course not' subject. I would assume most cheaters say they won't cheat and then do it anyways."

"They know in their heart of hearts that they're capable of it, even if they don't admit as much. But there's no way I would be capable of something like that."

"Why?"

"Because if I had the person I wanted to be with, there's no person on earth who could give me better than what I already had."

"Oh? And who do you want to be with?"

The question had popped out so suddenly that Mark didn't know how to even begin to respond. He just froze in place and stared at Jinyoung blankly.

"What?" Jinyoung said innocently. "There has to be someone, based on how you phrased it."

"Why are we talking about this again?"

"Just wondering how much of a Quincy Cromwell you are."

"I'd say 0%. I've even got a cooler name, right?"

Jinyoung laughed at that. "Sure do."

"What about you? Do you think you'd ever give in to a wandering eye?"

“No. If anything, I’d worry more about being a Daphne-type.”

“How so?”

“You know. Loving someone so much that I’d run the risk of letting them get away with more than they should.” He laughed a little. “That’s why I suppose I need to find someone who-” His words suddenly cut off abruptly.

“Someone who…?” Mark turned to look at him. Jinyoung had pulled out the protective foam from the wine case he’d just opened, and was now staring wide-eyed into the bottom of the case. “What is it?”

“There are papers in the bottom, here,” Jinyoung said, reaching down to pick them up. “Old newspaper clippings.”

“What a weird place to stash something like that. What kind of articles are they?”

Jinyoung brought them closer to his face, squinting. “They’re a little faded, but…this one seems to be about a store opening? There’s a snapshot of a woman at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.”

“Is it Daphne from when Lonely Lane opened?”

“No… doesn’t look like her. The caption’s kind of hard to read, but I think it says-”

Jinyoung was cut off a second time, this time by the overhead lights abruptly cutting off and the sound of the nearby heating unit shutting down. The cellar was pitch black to the point where Mark couldn’t even see the faintest outline of Jinyoung anymore.

“!” Mark yelled. He knew the power outage was most likely thanks to the snowy conditions, but his imagination couldn’t help but conjure images of the killer cutting the power and leaving them scared and defenseless.

“Mark?” Jinyoung’s desperate voice came from the right. “What are we supposed to do?”

“Maybe we should give it a minute and wait for it to come back on?”

“Please don’t make fun of me, but I don’t want to sit here a second longer by myself. I am scared less right now.”

“Do you have your cell phone on you? We could use the flashlight.”

“I set it down on the bottom step of the stairs when we started packing. Next to yours.”

“OK, so that’s not going to work, then.” Mark took a breath. “How about we take a ‘Marco Polo’ approach to it? You call out, and I’ll try to follow your voice until I find you, all right?”

“All right.” A pause. “Mark.”

Mark scooted forward on his knees in the direction of Jinyoung’s voice, waving his hand out in front of him. “Jinyoung?”

“Mark,” Jinyoung called out again. They repeated this a few more times until Mark’s hand eventually connected with Jinyoung’s arm. Jinyoung immediately latched onto him tightly—his body was shaking a little, but that may have been because the lack of functional heating in the drafty cellar was beginning to kick in.

“What now?” Jinyoung asked.

“We find the stairs.”

“How? They can’t play Marco Polo with us.”

“No, but they weren’t that far from where you were packing. We just need to feel around for a bit. I’ll take the lead. Put your hands on my shoulders from behind so you don’t lose me.”

“I can’t even see you clearly enough to tell what’s front and what’s behind, Mark.”

“Here.” Mark found one of Jinyoung’s hands and guided it into position. “Don’t let go, OK?”

“Trust me, I am not intending to.”

Mark scooted forward in increments with Jinyoung following slowly behind him, clutching to his shoulder so tightly that he was probably leaving welts. Mark waved his arms around, at first not connecting with anything other than open air, and then finally hitting the wall. He d around a bit more until he finally found the light switch next to the stairs, which unsurprisingly wasn’t functional, but gave him the positioning he needed to find the stairs and both of their cell phones. He hit the flashlight button, filling their immediate surroundings with light.

“Thank god,” Jinyoung said, exhaling. “Can we get out of the cellar before I have a heart attack?”

“Right. We should probably just get out of the winery in general and come back to finish up another time. It’s not a good idea for us to stick around without heat.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Unfortunately, when they made it upstairs and looked out the windows, it became fairly evident that there was no way they were going to be able to leave. In the hours since they’d arrived, the ground—and Mark’s car—was now buried in snow. Unless they dug the car out with shovels they didn’t have, trying to drive would result only in spinning wheels and frustration. The driving conditions would be whiteout level anyways, so it would be unsafe to drive even if he somehow miraculously got the car out.

“Looks like we’re stuck here,” Jinyoung said. “Now what?”

“Build a fire so we don’t freeze to death.”

“What about the potential starving to death issue?”

“Well, I know Charlotte left us a complementary bottle of wine. Perhaps snacks were also included.”

“OK. You build the fire, and I’ll hunt down some food. But please keep talking or humming or singing or whatever so I can hear you and know you’re still alive.”

“All right. Take your phone with you, just in case.”

Mark grabbed some firestarter logs from the basket near the fireplace, hauled them up into the grate, and lit them with the nearby lighter, all the while singing ‘This Little Light of Mine’ for Jinyoung’s benefit. A few moments later, Jinyoung returned from the kitchen with the bottle of wine, two wine flutes, and a bag of biscotti. “This will have to do,” he said.

He poured them both a glass of wine, then the two of them collapsed onto the sofa beside each other. “Well,” Mark said, exhaling. “This was not exactly part of the plan.”

“I’d say ‘at least we finished most of our filming,’ but considering that Charlotte’s paying us to pack, I feel a little guilty that we didn’t make very much progress on that part.”

“We can always come back.”

“After this, I’m losing my will to. But I guess we promised, so if we have to, we have to. As long as we don’t come back during another snowstorm.”

“Now that, I can agree with,” Mark said, nibbling into his biscotti. It was a little stale, but better than nothing.

Jinyoung shivered. “The fire’s nice, but it’s still freezing.”

“We should probably put our parkas back on. Oh, and there was a blanket covering the log basket. It’s not very big, but you could use that.”

“We’ll share it. I’m not about to have you freezing to death on me. I have a feeling your survival instinct is better than mine, so I need you not to go Jack-Nicholson-at-the-end-of-The-Shining on me.”

They both wormed into their parkas, and Mark threw the flannel blanket over as much of the two of them that he could cover. At first, this left them each with a leg poking out, but then Jinyoung wrapped his arms around Mark’s torso and swung his legs over his lap until they were practically on top of each other, which left them fully covered by the blanket, but also left Mark barely able to think or breathe. The only thoughts that could stay in his head longer than a few moments at a time was that Jinyoung smelled fantastic and that he had better do anything in his power not to react to him physically given the infinitesimal distance between Jinyoung’s leg and his crotch.

“Warm,” Jinyoung declared. “At least for now. You do realize we may have to stay here over night, right?”

Mark nodded numbly. He didn’t want to think right now of sleeping snuggled up against Jinyoung and the 100% chance of an awkward this would cause.

“Let’s just pray for the electricity to come back on before we need to worry about sleeping. Actually, maybe it would be better just to pull an all-nighter. I’d probably have murder nightmares the second I closed my eyes.”

“I’m for an all-nighter, too, if it comes to that,” Mark said, sighing in relief. “I don’t think these are the best sleeping conditions in the world.”

“Definitely not.” Jinyoung paused. “I'm so glad you’re here.”

Mark’s heart sped up at the softness of his tone, but he was not about to let the reaction get any bigger, so did his best to laugh it off. “Could you imagine doing this alone? I would probably be hiding under the couch and shrieking at every noise I heard.”

Jinyoung laughed, and Mark could feel the entire physical movement of it with how Jinyoung was pressed up against him. “Me, too. But I’m glad in particular that it’s you, you know? You’re probably the only person on the planet who could calm me down enough the where I’m only a fraction as afraid as I would have been normally.”

Mark’s brain was going white. It was all too much at once—the physical closeness of Jinyoung, his sweet smell, his even sweeter words, the press of his thighs just inches away from his groin, the arms locked tightly around him the way a lover would even though they weren’t and he knew it in spite of his body and mind desperately wanting to be fooled.

Any second now, he was going to lose it. He needed a distraction, something to get them both off this line of conversation. “By the way, what happened to those newspaper articles you were looking at?”

Jinyoung bolted upright, sliding his legs off of Mark, much to both Mark's immense relief and disappointment. “Right, I set those down on the table when we made it upstairs. They’re probably nothing, but we should take a look at those, right? It would at least give us something to do for a bit.” He jumped off the couch to hunt them down, and Mark immediately crossed his legs to prevent him from getting anywhere near his lap when he came back.

Jinyoung returned a moment later with the articles and sat back next to Mark, just pressed up closely against his side instead of on top of him this time.

Mark his cellphone flashlight again, and the two of them studied the top article together. Like Jinyoung had said, it featured a picture of a woman in a business suit cutting a red ribbon. The headline beneath it read LOCAL PHILANTHROPIST OPENS HOMELESS SHELTER DOWNTOWN.

Mark read the article about the philanthropist, a woman named Marcia Olsen, and her game plan to reduce the high rates of homelessness in the city. The address of the homeless shelter was circled in blue ink, but other than that, it was just an ordinary newspaper article.

“Maybe Daphne was into volunteering?” Jinyoung guessed. “Or maybe she wanted Lonely Lane to do a sponsorship with the shelter?”

“Maybe. Let’s check out the next article.”

The second article was about the local craft market and spotlighted a painter, Selene Hartford, whose artworks reminded Mark a bit of the movie Coraline—doll-like and spooky. The painter herself was gorgeous, but in a waifish and reedy way. It looked almost like you could knock her over just by breathing on her.

“Huh,” Jinyoung said, looking closer at the article. “The address of the craft fair is circled again.”

“Hmm. Maybe this is like a to-do list type thing? You know, stop at the homeless shelter to ask about volunteering, then stop at the craft market on the way home?”

“Plausible.” Jinyoung flipped to the next article. The third didn’t have a picture, and seemed different from the other two content-wise. It was about a growing vandalism problem in some dinky neighborhood not too far from where Jinyoung lived involving teens spray painting houses, knocking mirrors off cars, and throwing eggs at garage doors. Once again, there were details of the article circled—the name of the neighborhood, and the name of a woman who’d had her house vandalized and provided a quote for the article, Branka van Houten.

“I know that name,” Mark realized.

“She was on our suspect list!" Jinyoung said, eyes widening.

"Right! Branka van Houten was the woman Quincy Cromwell was having an affair with five years ago, the one the police found out about. The one Daphne got in a screaming match with.”

They both went silent for a moment, then both looked at each other at the exact same moment. “Wait," Jinyoung said. "Could these articles all be about women Quincy Cromwell was sleeping with?”

Mark flipped through the articles again, his mind whirring. "It would make sense. She’s circled the locations where she can find them and go pick a fight with them in person. Branka’s article didn’t offer an exact address, but the quote gives the words that were spray painted on her house, so as long as Daphne knew the street name, she could pick out the right house.”

“Mark, what if one of these women killed her? I know Branka was cleared, but what about Marcia and Selene?”

“It’s possible.” Mark’s heart was pounding again, for entirely different reasons. “Very possible. If she was verbally abusive towards them for sleeping with her husband, one of them may have gotten revenge.”

“Still…these articles on Marcia and Selene aren’t recent, just like the one on Branka. I mean, they’re already faded with age and everything. Daphne probably cut them out and confronted these women over five years ago, but was only murdered recently. Why would they wait so long? Wouldn’t they have gotten over it already?”

“Maybe they were waiting for an opportunity.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. Charlotte confirmed to the police that Daphne basically always locked up alone. They would have had the opportunity to commit this exact crime for years, and it’s not like they didn’t know who she was given that they were ing her husband. If they Googled ‘Daphne Cromwell,’ the winery would have probably been the first thing to show up back then.”

“Huh.” Mark flipped through the articles again. When he got to the spotlight on Selene Hartford, he noticed there was a paperclip on top. He assumed it was the continuation of the article on another page, but when he pulled it out, he realized it was an entirely different one. One with a headline that read: COMMUNITY DEVASTATED BY SUICIDE OF POPULAR PAINTER, CELEBRATES HER LIFE IN ART

“Oh ,” Mark said. He looked at the date of the article—it wasn’t that long after the original had been written, detailing her promising career. “Looks like we can cross Selene off as a suspect.”

“She killed herself?”

Mark read through the first few paragraphs. “By jumping off the roof of her apartment. Looks like she had a history of depression, and art was like a therapeutic outlet for her. Unfortunately, it sounds like her demons got the better of her.” He read the next paragraph, his brows furrowing. “Listen to this, Jinyoung. ‘Hartford is mourned most of all by her roommate and best friend Derrick Chase. ‘She was like a soulmate to me,’ said Chase. ‘We weren’t seeing each other, but I loved her passionately, and I wish I’d had the chance to tell her so while she was alive. I wish I could have saved her from her own despair.’ Chase also insists that Hartford was doing well just weeks before her suicide, and was driven back into depression by a confrontational encounter Chase alleges happened just a few days prior to her fatal jump. ‘A woman came to her booth at the craft market and asked to speak to her in private about a personal matter. I took over the booth while she was away for about ten minutes. When she came back, she was shaken and in tears. She wouldn’t tell me who the woman was and what they’d talked about, but it upset her a lot, and days later Selene was…gone. I’d recognize her, though. I'd know that face anywhere. It's her fault that Selene is dead. Selene was getting better, but that woman pushed her right off that roof.’ Chase reports that he informed the police about the encounter, but as no foul play was suspected in Hartford’s suicide given the witnesses that saw her jump of her own volition, they are not pursuing a larger investigation’.”

There was a moment of silence as they both processed this. “Daphne confronted her about the affair," Jinyoung said slowly. "And whatever she said was bad enough that it pushed Selene to the brink with her depression."

"So that gives Derrick Chase the motive," Mark said with a nod. "But he had no idea who she even was."

"But he saw her face...the face of the person he blamed for the death of someone he loved. There's no way he'd forget it, and..." Jinyoung froze. "Mark."

"Yeah?"

“That article we saw on the bulletin board in the entrance…the one about Lonely Lane’s ice wine winning that national competition…the one with Daphne’s picture…”

“Uh-huh?”

“When was that dated?”

They looked at each other, then both jumped to their feet and raced to the entrance. Mark aimed his flashlight at the article, and they both leaned in at the same time and said at the same moment, “January 14, 2018.”

“Just two days before Daphne’s death,” Mark said, his head practically spinning.

“He must have seen her picture in the newspaper-” Jinyoung gasped out.

“-and recognized her as the woman who made his ‘soulmate’ upset and maybe drove her to suicide-”

“-and decided he was going to kill her in vengeance for Selene-”

“-and knew right where to find her and maybe staked out the place-”

“-and realized she locked up completely alone and would be vulnerable with no one to help her-”

“-and that he would probably never be connected to it because no one knew that Daphne was the woman who had visited Selene that day but him.”

The two stared at each other again, their mouths hanging open in shock. “Jinyoung,” Mark said in a hushed voice. “Did we just…”

“…set fire to this cold case? I think…I think maybe we did.” He took a breath. “We need to call the police.”

“Right now? I don’t think they’ll be able to make it out.”

“They don’t need to. It’s not as if this Derrick Chase guy is a flight risk. He’s gotten away with it for this long, he probably thinks the case will be one of those eternally cold ones. We just need to call in to their tip line on the Cromwell case and let them know what we have.” He paused. “Although…I guess that tip line is probably a land line, so the call won’t be able to go through until the power comes back. Maybe we’ll have to wait until the morning.”

Mark bounced on his heels, still feeling the flood of energy that had come from their realization. He’d originally become a criminal justice major with the thought of becoming a police officer, but after the slight change in plans that came along with his successful YouTube career, he hadn’t really assumed that he’d actually (potentially) solve an actual murder. Much less one that had gone cold after being examined by actual investigators. Especially not while filming for an amateur YouTube program. “What about the show, Jinyoung? Do you think we should film about any of this?”

“We have to let the investigators handle it first.”

“I know. I don’t mean preempting them by releasing the video before they’re able to investigate Derrick. Justice comes first—we can delay the video, if necessary. But do you think we should, you know, film about the evidence we found to document our experience here and the conclusion we reached? Then, after the police arrest Derrick, we can release our own version of the exposé?”

Jinyoung thought for a moment, then smiled. “I don’t know. The whole ‘regular Joes on YouTube actually find evidence that led to an arrest’ would be a lot of pressure to live up to.”

“Hey. If anyone can do it, it’s us, right?”

Jinyoung’s smile got bigger. “Oh, definitely. Stick around longer with me, partner, and this is just scratching the surface of what we’ll be capable of.”

Mark woke up to a flood of sunshine hitting his face from the winery windows. He blinked his eyes, trying to reorient himself. He and Jinyoung had tried for the all-nighter, and had stayed up into the wee hours using their cell phone flashlights to illuminate the evidence enough to record with the bigger, battery powered cameras BamBam had lent them and recording the audio of them explaining the dots they’d connected. Of course, their whole theory had yet to be proven, but Mark was convinced they’d found their guy.

After that, they’d stayed up a few hours more just talking about the case and poor Selene, the forgotten victim in the whole mess. They must have dozed off at some point in the very early morning. Sure enough, when Mark glanced down, Jinyoung’s head was in his lap, and he was sound asleep.

Mark gazed down at him for a long moment, his heart stirring. It had been a wild night, and he was truly grateful that he’d gotten to share all of it with Jinyoung. They’d done something big together, something that would provide closure to so many people and peace of mind to the community as a whole. He felt like it had brought them closer together, too—they weren’t just business partners now, but two people whose team work and support of each other had gotten them through a power outage in the murder-winery with no heat and barely any food with an answer to the mystery that had haunted Mark for so long.

He ruffled his hand through Jinyoung’s hair affectionately. I am so, so happy that you’re here with me, too, he thought.

Jinyoung blinked awake, then sat up. “Is the power back on?” he murmured sleepily.

Mark got up and tried a power switch. The overhead lights flickered on. “Looks like it.”

“Can we get our car out?”

Mark looked out the window. “Unfortunately, we still don’t have shovels. I’m going to have to call a plow to clear the road.”

“Do that, please. Ask if he can bring some food, too. I think this qualifies as an emergency.” Jinyoung rolled off the couch. “I’m going to call the cops, and then Charlotte.”

“Are you going to tell her about what we found?”

“The basics. But mainly I’m going to tell her that we’ll stick around to keep packing while we’re waiting for the road to be plowed, and ask her if there’s any more food hidden around this place. I’m seriously going to die.”

“No you won’t. I won’t let you.”

“Are you offering me your body?” Jinyoung flushed a little. “I mean, in a cannibalistic sense? As sustenance? So I don’t starve to death?”

“Uh…I wouldn’t go that far. I was thinking more along the lines of providing mental strength to take your mind off food.”

“Hmmm. I’m sure you of all people could provide a distraction good enough to accomplish the otherwise impossible.” Jinyoung smiled. “But first, go on and call the snow plow.”

It took until the afternoon for the plow to clear the road enough for Mark’s car to be rescued, and by time that happened, an on-duty police officer had arrived on the location to follow up with them on their call to the tip line and collect the evidence they had uncovered. The officer had reacted impassively to Mark and Jinyoung’s information—that was the professional way to handle it, after all—but noted everything down and promised the lead would be followed up on.

Mark and Jinyoung hadn’t expected the fallout from their tip to happen quickly, and so had rushed home to call BamBam away from his time off to pull together another mystery and script to make up for the fact their planned episode would have to be delayed. They’d taken a risk by alluding to a breakthrough in the Cromwell case to make up for not coming through with the promised content right away, and luckily for them, it wasn’t long before Breaking News appeared online and on TV announcing that Derrick Chase had been arrested for the first degree murder of Daphne Cromwell. In spite of the lack of physical evidence, the district attorney decided that there was circumstantial evidence enough to indict him for murder, especially after a search warrant of his house yielded letters he’d written to the deceased Selene telling her of how he’d “whacked the ” that had “pushed” her off the roof, describing details that were a near perfect match to the murder of Daphne Cromwell.

“All right,” Mark said, checking his phone one evening over dinner with Jinyoung in their apartment. “Looks like BamBam just uploaded our Cromwell investigation. It’ll be awhile before comments from people who actually watched the whole episode show up, but I’ll let you know how it goes.” Mark wondered idly if there would even be Markjin comments on such a bombshell episode—probably, given that the whole thing had unfurled with them alone together in a remote building in the middle of a snowstorm. If only they knew about the snuggling for warmth that had gone down behind the scenes, they’d truly lose it.

“BamBam also just texted to let us know we’ve got interviews lined up since the police have already released how they got their breakthrough lead,” Jinyoung sighed. “We’re not going to be able to rest for awhile, huh? After all this is over, how about we run off somewhere for awhile? I know, let’s go to Korea. I can introduce you to my parents, take you on a beach getaway in Jeju, fatten you up with ramen…”

Mark definitely liked the thought of that, but tried not to let it show too obviously. “Come on, Jinyoung, I know you’d miss our show if we ran off.”

Jinyoung shrugged. “Maybe a little. But we could do a special where we presented the mystery to my parents together…”

“That could be fun. As long as you taught me all the correct murder mystery words in Korean.”

“Maybe I’d pretend to teach you, but in actuality they’d be dirty words, and I’d get you saying them on camera. To my parents.”

“You’re horrible.”

“That’s me. Jinyoung, the horrible half of My Men of Mystery.” His expression grew serious. “I’m glad this case got closure, and I’m glad we helped. But as for being interviewed about it…I don’t know…will people get mad at me for kind of thinking now that Daphne Cromwell was kind of a horrible person? I mean, I don’t think she should get a pass for what she did to Marcia, Selene, and Branka just because she’s dead. Not that they necessarily did a good thing by cheating with a married man, but Quincy was an equally responsible party in that, and maybe they didn’t even know he was married…God, I just don’t know. But she shouldn’t have just let that situation go on with the only solution being hunting down his mistresses and screaming at them. Or am I bad for thinking that?”

Mark shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think we can both agree that she didn’t deserve to be murdered over it, but still…that toxic relationship she was in had far reaching consequences that wound up being fatal not just for her.” He paused. “Still, I’m surprised you’re so angry with her, considering that you said you’re worried that you’re like her.”

Jinyoung nodded. “And maybe that’s why I’m angry. I don’t want to see myself as capable of being that terrible.” He set his chin in the palm of his hand and looked at Mark. “But in the end, it just makes me surer than ever. I absolutely have to choose someone who’s 0% like Quincy Cromwell, huh?”

A/N: Stay tuned for another goodie coming this evening EST :D