“You’d think they would have more interesting things to discuss than same- marriage. Aren’t we approaching some sort of disastrous fiscal cliff?”

It’s hard to keep a straight face sometimes, especially when Woohyun is growling through Sungyeol’s earpiece with that annoyed tone he gets around children and improperly behaved toy dog breeds. Unfortunately, half of the Senate is nearby, and Sungyeol can’t crack so much as a smile without attracting attention. Instead, he inclines his head down towards his right shoulder and mutters under his breath, “There is no fiscal cliff. That’s something the media invented to scare people.” Woohyun huffs into the microphone from his end and falls quiet.

This meeting has been dragging out for over four hours now, and Sungyeol wouldn’t even be here were it not for the Vice President deciding, last minute, that he needed to sit down with several Republican officials and try to talk some sense into these idiots. The Secret Service isn’t nearly as glamorous as it appears in the movies. It’s mostly boring, with a side of obnoxious, to follow the leaders of the country around and play fly on the wall – elephant in the room – to their negotiations. Sungyeol decided at eighteen that he hated politics, but his background with the Seals made him perfect for this job. He’s protecting people – that’s just what his family do. And he pissed Sunggyu off last week, so here he is.

So instead of bullting around the office with Woohyun and the rest of their division, his feet are going numb and he’s got an itch under the leather strap of his shoulder holster that he can’t get to without causing some kind of national incident. He’s contemplating the pros and cons of rubbing his shoulder against the expensive-looking wood paneling behind him when the senator from Wyoming stands up and announces a Security and Exchange Commission meeting in half an hour. The Vice President relents, and he looks as exhausted as Sungyeol feels. ”We’re moving, Hyun,” Sungyeol says quietly. He hears the quiet rustling of a book’s pages from across the line and forces back a smile. ”Did Harry put his name in the goblet thing?”

“No, but I suspect that Snape may have done it,” Woohyun says, then, “ him back to the West Wing, and then our fearless leader is recalling you for the day.” Sungyeol would whoop in victory, but the senator from Delaware is eyeing him like a steak and no. Just, no.

The drive back to the White House is uneventful, and Sungyeol gets back to headquarters an hour later to find the office bustling with activity. There’s a big summit coming up in Washington in a few days – some foreign diplomats arguing over the storm brewing in Syria, most likely – that’s got everyone flustered and snapping at each other with more force than usual. Sungyeol finds it easiest to just focus on his assignments and avoid the cluster that is headquarters during times like these.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to avoid their director when he comes teetering out of his office with a raised eyebrow high enough to make Sungyeol’s calves ache in sympathy and fixes him with a smile. Oh, that’s never ing good. ”Lee Sungyeol,” he says calmly, and Sungyeol’s never been terrified of anyone the way he is of Kim Sunggyu. Hell, even Woohyun is scared of him, and he used to kill people in North Korea for a living. ”It’s been brought to my attention that your home address has changed. You’ll need to file the necessary paperwork, of course, but in the future I’ll need to be informed of these things before they happen. We need to know where you are at all times.” And ain’t that just creepy as hell?

Sungyeol swallows down the protest he can feel building behind his ribs and nods deferentially. ”Yes, sir.”

Sunggyu gives him a long look before turning and walking off, probably to torment more of his agents, because he runs a tight ship – best in the country – but he’s a slavedriver. Whatever. At least he’s not breathing down his neck anymore. Sungyeol makes a beeline for the stairs and practically runs down two flights to reach the basement. There’s a keyswipe entry and some fumbling with his keys, and he can hear Woohyun in his ear still, tapping out the beat to what sounds like Rock of Ages while he types. ”Hey. You catch all of that?” Sungyeol asks quietly.

Woohyun snorts and the typing continues as he speaks. ”It was a matter of time, really. He’s also bound to notice that we have the same home address, now. You can thank Sungjong for that.”

ing Lee Sungjong. ”Did you piss him off, again? You know he’s been after your for like six months now, right?”

“I’m well aware of his interest. I simply don’t return it. And I didn’t anger him – you did.”

Sungyeol balks and mutters a curse as he pushes through yet another security door. ”What the hell did I do?”

“Yeol, when aren’t you pissing someone off?” It’s delivered in the flat, monotone voice that Sungyeol’s come to associate with Woohyun, but it still stings.

“Whatever. Let me in.”

“You have a key.”

“Yeah, and I’m lazy. C’mon, hyung. Open the damned door.”

There’s a metallic click, and Sungyeol shoves into Operations. The place reminds him of every cliche nerd basement fortress that he’s ever seen on TV, but it’s infinitely cooler. Sungyeol’s not sure if that’s because the information generated here keeps him alive on a daily basis, or if it’s because this is generally where Woohyun lives. Speaking of, his handler has his boots propped up on the edge of his desk, a thick hardcover book in his lap, and he’s wearing one of Sungyeol’s cardigans. ”What are you, my psychotic girlfriend?” Sungyeol drawls as he crosses the mostly- empty room and drops into a chair beside Woohyun. They get the comfortable chairs down here, which makes sense considering how many hours a day the handlers spend sitting on their asses, staring at computer monitors and video feed. ”That’s not even a clean shirt.”

Woohyun glances down at his own chest, picks at the front of the cardigan idly, then shrugs and tosses his book onto the desk. He sits up straight in his chair and stretches lithely, and Sungyeol winces at the audible cracks and pops he hears from Woohyun’s protesting joints. His shirt rides up, exposing dark inked Cyrillic over his hip and disappearing up his ribcage. Sungyeol knows that it spells out the name of Woohyun’s brother because the first thing he’d done when he’d been confronted with bitter eyes and a week’s worth of stubble was pull up Woohyun’s file. The damned thing read like a Bond movie, complete with explosions, murder, espionage, and too much tragedy for one twenty seven year old guy. Recruited into the KGB directly out of college – computer programming, of all things – Woohyun had served his country for years before accidentally getting mixed up with the wrong sorts of people and coming home one night to find his older brother ing murdered in his bed. Sungyeol doesn’t know the particulars of what happened to get Woohyun out of the North Korean KGB and into the US Secret Service – classified, and so far above his paygrade that it’s ridiculous – but he’s one of the most dangerous people Sungyeol’s ever met.

Sort of hard to believe that when Woohyun spent the better part of today waffling between complex security algorithms and reading him particularly notable excerpts from children’s literature over an untappable line, but Sungyeol knows damned well what Woohyun is capable of. He’s probably got a confirmed kill count to rival Seal Team Six. Sometimes it’s just difficult to remember that when Woohyun makes the scrunched cat face he’s pulling right now, sliding his headset off so that it hangs around his slim neck, and Sungyeol’s eyes are drawn automatically to the nasty scar ringing Woohyun’s throat.

While Sungyeol’s initial aversion to having Woohyun assigned as his handler was due to the guy’s piss-poor attitude – and in Sungyeol’s defense, Woohyun had come across as a drugged up serial killer with a vendetta when they’d first met – his biggest point of contention had arose when he’d asked Sungyeol his name and the dude had raised one hand and spelled it out with his fingers. Turned out that the wicked scar around his throat wasn’t just for picking up chicks, and Woohyun had lost more than his brother and his life back in North Korea. Whoever had slit his throat hadn’t been ing around; they’d definitely tried to kill him. Instead, the attempted murder had severed his vocal chords completely and rendered him mute. So when Sunggyu had informed Sungyeol that he had a new handler – two weeks to the day after his last one had died in a car accident, the poor son of a – he’d also ordered him to learn American Sign Language and work with Howon to develop a simple text-to-speech program so that they could communicate over the radios. The voice in his ear during missions and assignments wasn’t really Woohyun but a computer-generated proxy that allowed him to guide Sungyeol through his work as effectively as verbal communication.

The first month had been absolute hell. Woohyun was a snarky bastard, writing out stilted and angry messages on Post-Its and leaving them on Sungyeol’s desk in lieu of actual conversation, and he seemed hellbent on proving to Sungyeol that he was just as capable as any of the other handlers. Dongwoo and Howon took him under their collective wing, all of the female agents seemed acutely swayed by his eyes, and Myungsoo inducted him into his comic little clique almost immediately. Even Kibum had offered his elementary knowledge of signing to the other handlers in exchange for candy. It was as if the entire division had lost its damned mind. After four weeks of forced communication and their colleagues’ treating him like a social pariah, Sungyeol had finally marched down into Operations in a fit of fury and demanded that Woohyun quit ruining his life, signing the entire tirade with fumbling hands, because Sungyeol wasn’t an idiot. He was a quick learner, adaptive, and sign language was the same as field stripping a rifle or driving a car.

It seemed that his effort was really all that it had taken to win Woohyun over. Ten months later, they’ve developed their own language, a strange dichotomy of actual signing and rude hand gestures that convey thoughts as well as any voiced conversation. Sungyeol depends on the voice proxy for missions and assignments, but once the headset comes off, Woohyun is all swiftly- moving hands and facial expressions. He’s comfortable with Sungyeol, and that just about tops Sungyeol’s list of that is awesome. The mutually-antagonistic coworkers stage had made way for tentative friendship, camaraderie, shared purpose, and eventually became.. this. Sungyeol’s still not quite sure what to label it. He knows that Woohyun is his best friend, his partner, and just recently his roommate. That stems more from Sungyeol’s generally laziness than anything else – his own apartment is in Woodbridge, and that’s too far to drive when he’s just got to come back to DC proper at the asscrack of dawn. Woohyun, meanwhile, has a studio loft in Union Station. He also has an enormous bed and doesn’t mind sharing.

Not that they’re ing. Because they aren’t. There’s no reason that two dude can’t sleep in the same bed without it being weird. Hell, Sungyeol spent thirteen years sharing space with Daeyeol and another seven in real close quarters with a team of his fellow Seals; it’s almost part for the course. And if it helps them both sleep better – Woohyun got accustomed to having a warm body beside him, and Sungyeol can relax knowing that he’s got an ex-KGB agent next to him – then neither of them are in a hurry to overanalyze the fact that they wake up sprawled over one another every morning. It’s just a thing that happens, and Sungyeol’s not going to give himself
an aneurysm trying to decipher some hidden meaning in Woohyun’s crazy octopus limbs. Dude’s a clingy sleeper, not his soulmate.

“Daeyeol wants to meet up at the bar on Fifth in half an hour. Said something about it being a special occasion,” Sungyeol says, apropos of nothing. “You’re driving.” He tosses Woohyun the keys of his car and doesn’t wait for a response, just pushes to his feet and reaches up to loosen his tie because it’s slowly strangling him. Woohyun reaches up and smacks his han