Kyungsoo wakes up in the morning, his back cold, his comforter nowhere to be seen and a handgun pointed at his face. 

“Who are you? What are you doing in my hotel room?”

A boyish voice comes from a pair of full lips.

For the past three years Kyungsoo has been practically living inside his manga. Which perfectly explains why the first thing that crosses his mind is not, who the hell dressed a guy as Black Falcon and brought him in my room, but more in the lines of, have I actually been swallowed by my own manga.

Aloud he says, “Kai?” and hopes Baekhyun and Chanyeol won’t pop up from behind the wardrobe and call him an idiot to have fallen for such an obvious prank.

The good news is that his two assistants don’t come out from behind some part of his bedroom’s furniture. The bad being that there is a gun still pointed at him and if this guy is a fan, dressed as Black Falcon, he’s sure taking the role very seriously. 

Kyungsoo has met a couple of overenthusiastic fans before, in award ceremonies and costplay conventions. People dressed as Black Falcon, probably because it required the minimum amount of effort (just a black hoodie, converse shoes and a gun). None of those fans had ever tried to threaten him with their gun, not even as a joke.

Kyungsoo has never had a gun pointed at him before, so he takes note of the feeling, in the off chance that he doesn’t die today and actually gets to use this incident as reference for his action scenes.

It feels relaxing. With a gun so close to his face and zero fighting skills, his life is most definitely not in his own hands. Like being diagnosed with an incurable disease, he senses a great wave of sadness approaching him, but doesn’t bother running. This is a dead end, in more than one ways, and the idea calms him. 

The silence seems to bring Kai more on edge. “How do you know my name? And what-”

“Your name? That’s easy. I came up wi-” The gun plunges closer to his face, now almost touching his nose; which is only slightly funny in that context.

“Don’t interrupt me!” Kai’s imposter bellows, eyes narrowed with an intensity Kyungsoo thought impossible (except for the part where it’s very, very possible and happening right in front of him).

Or else he is hallucinating.

Kyungsoo used to laugh at people so obsessed with their stories that it drove them crazy and now it’s happening to him. He vouches to never make fun of other artists so casually, if he lives through this.

“What are you doing in my hotel room and how do you know my name?” The dark-skinned boy who is half-sitting on Kyungsoo’s bed, half-standing, repeats.

Kyungsoo makes a face close to annoyance. He knows Kai is supposed to be that way. Abrupt and headstrong and downright rude, when he’s dealing with the bad guys. But he didn’t know it felt so frustrating to be on the receiving end of this rudeness.

“Okay, first of all, this is not your hotel room. This is my bedroom. My bed, my life. Mine. Look, look around for a second. There are posters on the walls and clothes all over the floor... This doesn’t look nothing like a hotel room.” Kyungsoo knows that, if he’s really seeing Black Falcon (in his hallucinations- but that’s a bridge he’ll cross when he gets to it), the guy must remember the lack of a JJ Lin poster from the hotel wall and more importantly, the lack of Kyungsoo’s Iron Man t-shirt from the floor.

“And, like I was saying, I know your name, because I came up with it. Together with the alias Black Falcon.” Kyungsoo did not make Kai stupid. So he must know that when someone gives such unbelievable explanation, he must really be telling the truth.

Reality is stranger than fiction, or whatever this quote goes like.

Kai raises one very dark eyebrow and pulls the safety off his gun with a click. “You have ten seconds to explain this logically, before I shoot your face.”

Kyungsoo wishes he was one of those people who knew how to smooth-talk under pressure.

He’s never met one of them in real life, yet he has faith in their existence somewhere outside police dramas and the pages of his own manga. Life would be too disappointing if they didn’t exist.

“Um, there has to be at least one easy way to say this and not make you freak out and kill me.” He improvises. 

“But I have no idea what that is. And I know your gun is actually empty, probably, so I’m just gonna say this and see how it goes.”

He takes a deep breath, takes in the shock and rage on the handsome face he used to only see on paper and blurts, “You are a character from my manga. Your life is written by me. People go to the bookstore and buy the adventures of Black Falcon in paperback. You’re fictional!”

He thinks about it for a second. “Well, more or less… I’m still debating whether I’m hallucinating or not.”

“Are you crazy?” Kai deadpans and Kyungsoo really wonders about that.

“I wasn’t last night.” He replies, sounding affronted. “And for god’s sake, take down the gun. I told you, I know it’s not loaded. You’ve never shot anyone in your life, I doubt you’ll start today.”

Honestly, Kyungsoo doesn’t doubt it all that much.

He admits he, too, would be pretty pissed, if he found out that his dangerous lifestyle (there had been fistfights and machine guns and drugs; Kyungsoo is not proud) was designed by a short, big-eyed guy to fill the pages of an action manga. 

Kyungsoo hasn’t watched the News in a long time. Still, he knows people shoot other people for a lot less than that.

But Kai doesn’t shoot.

In fact the gun retreats, away from Kyungsoo’s face, until it disappears somewhere inside the other’s clothing. 

Kai fixes a steely glance on him and orders, “Show me.”

Kyungsoo frowns in concentration, working hard to get up from his bed, put on some pants and interpret Kai’s words, all in one go.

“Show you I’m not nuts?” He questions, finally pulling up a pair of gray sweatpants. They’re probably dirty, he’s been wearing them for over three days, but now’s not the time to feel disgusted with his own hygiene.

The tall boy spends only one, excruciating, embarrassing second eyeing Kyungsoo’s One Piece boxers and then, clearing his voice, he clarifies, “Show me your manga.”

Kyungsoo does a small victory dance in his head, oh right, yes of course, why didn’t I think of it before, the manga, yes, why am I so dumb, and takes a cautious step further away, towards the door of his bedroom. 

“Good point. Let’s do that.” He nods reassuringly, like Kai is a barely stable mental patient who needs constant encouragement. “Follow me to the kitchen.”

If Kai is wondering why there is a kitchen in a hotel room, he doesn’t voice the question. In fact he seems strangely quiet and unpanicked (how do people say ‘not panicked’? Kyungsoo used to know that, but he’s too far gone now, to recall the word).

“Is this your house?” The guy asks, blankly and Kyungsoo nods again.

“My house and my studio. The room over there is where I draw Black Falcon.” He points a finger at the door to his office, forcing himself to stop checking Kai’s reaction for every single thing he says.

Kyungsoo is not anymore someone conscious of his actions.

In highschool, and even more before that, he hid a lot. Didn’t talk to many people, or said the things he really wanted to say, which were different versions of, you’re all infuriating, can you stay away from me. 

For a big part of his life Kyungsoo was sure he was shy and introverted. Thought he’d never stop following, with the corner of his eyes, every other person in the room, wondering if they were glaring at him. Have they noticed I’m gay, do they hate me, is that guy sitting so far away because he likes it there, or is he avoiding me, Kyungsoo had developed a push-and-pull relationship with the rest of the world. He disliked people on a good day (found them unbearable on a bad one), but didn’t let –couldn’t handle letting- them hate him.

Of course a lot happened since then.

He moved away from his hometown and met Baekhyun (who made introversion, a difficult task to achieve), found actual friends and realized that, no one really despised him and even if someone did, frankly, Kyungsoo didn’t care about it anymore. That’s what made him stop hiding.

And then he got his own manga and a team of assistants that are supposed to cater to his every need (but don’t) and an editor, called Joonmyun, who actually does and he has gone from being self-conscious to having other people be self-conscious around him.  Kyungsoo no longer watches others to check whether they like him.

Until he suddenly does.

He suddenly does. And he’s almost forgotten the sensation of being on his toes around someone, when it comes back to him full-force.

He watches Kai run his eyes around the apartment, in a look that should be curious, but is more guarded than anything else. Kyungsoo stumbles on the chair’s leg and dives forward, like the dumb protagonist of a 90s comedy show, until he gets hold of the table and steadies himself. He makes a silent pact with himself to not blush about it.

His mind seems reluctant to follow the order, but thankfully Kai is already too busy with the contents of the table to notice the deep crimson on his face.

“I-Is this me? From yesterday night?” Again, Kai’s face puts together a grimace of the most concentrated disdain and Kyungsoo sighs.

“Yes, it’s the chapter where you’re following Kim Woojin- No wait. Kim Woojin was the one behind the robberies in chapter 45. This one is a low rank member… Park Sangchul. Right, that’s the name.” Kyungsoo remembers that. He can pretty much recite the past five chapters to Kai and prove he’s the creator of Black Falcon without much effort.

Which is what he’s planning to do, up till the heart of what he just thought hits him like the proverbial ton of bricks. He realizes, in shock that he’s actually, seriously, no jokes, treating Kai like the living and breathing embodiment of Black Falcon.

Which is no good, really.

He struggles to find that point in time when his ironclad logic ruled off crazy fan and prank from the useless assistants and even hallucinations from working late, only to accept, with open arms, the scenario where his manga character has jumped out of the comic and come to live with him. 

He can’t find it.

“Are you-” Kai seems disoriented. “Have you been following me?” He asks messing his raven hair and biting his lower lip.

The Kai from Black Falcon messes his hair often, when he loses the target he’s been tailing, or when he gets a ticket for parking his bike in the wrong place. But the Kai, Kyungsoo used to draw, never bites his lips.

Lip-biting, in Kyungsoo’s head, is tightly linked to nervous kids and seductive young women while they flirt; categories which cannot, under any circumstances, accommodate Kai.

And here the guy is, doing it anyway, as if he’s not the same masculine character Kyungsoo has shaped with his bare hands.

“Here,” Kyungsoo hands over a copy of the previous volume, opened on page 34. “This is last month, when you were kidnapped and led to the Syndicate Headquarters. Do you still think I’m following you? In there?”

Kai shrugs, somewhat defensively and Kyungsoo is pretty sure his manga’s Kai is not defensive either. “The Syndicate has surveillance cameras. If you’re one of them, you could have checked-”

“Oh my god, no. How did you even think of that? Why did I ever make you smart?” Kyungsoo cannot but be disappointed at how different everything feels when it happens to him. He imagined it would be more exciting to see Kai interrogating someone, but in reality it feels irritating, like chasing one’s tail. Maybe it’s because Kai’s mind is shaped to deal with cunning criminals, instead of snarky manga artists.

That would explain the miscommunication perfectly, but Kyungsoo is too annoyed to accept it.

Angrily, he fishes for another volume from his personal library to make Kai see the truth once and for all.

Kyungsoo has a personal bookcase for his manga alone, even though he didn’t mean to get one in the first place (the apartment already had a bigger one which is currently stuffed with art textbooks and crime novels). However his editor had insisted. Had said, it was a matter of pride for an artist to keep at least a couple of copies from every volume in his house and got Kyungsoo a bookcase for his birthday.  Kyungsoo appreciated the gesture, but was pretty sure he had asked for Death Note handmade figurines instead.

The volume he’s looking for is an old one, published around two years ago, and it’s one of Kyungsoo’s favorites, mostly because it contains scenes from Kai’s childhood. He’s placed it on one of the lower shelves, because, there, it feels almost secure, away from curious eyes and, more importantly, flailing hands.

He feels a wave of fondness as he picks it up and opens it, anger melting a little inside of him.

Kyungsoo shakes his head, disposes of the feeling and says, “Ok... Ok, take a look at this. It’s a flashback from back when you were at the orphanage. Now we’re only a couple years apart, so there’s no way I actually spied on you when you were five. Right?”

Kai takes the book and the ends of his fingers go white from clutching it too hard. Kyungsoo can’t even begin to understand what he must be thinking right now.

Until Kai actually speaks.

“Then you… For real. You… I’m a character. I’m from inside it… from- from your manga? Those pages you made, is-” Kai bites his lips again, “is that all? My whole life is in there and that’s… that’s all?”

The question feels like a physical blow and Kyungsoo wants nothing more than to dodge it. He could never really handle guilt. Deny everything, he prompts himself, it’s basic survival skills, he knows that and still he doesn’t follow his own advice.

“I’m sorry,” He says earnestly. “I don’t even know how I brought you here. Your whole life is in here and I took you out. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s what you’re apologizing about? Really?!” The guy crosses his arms, unconsciously wrapping them around the book he’d been clutching minutes ago. In a different context Kai might have been hugging the manga fondly and Kyungsoo might have been tempted to give him an autograph (or his number). However, right now it looks more like Kai is using the book as a shield against Kyungsoo, who is apparently a threat to his life.

Whatever reaction Kyungsoo was expecting for his apology, this is definitely not it.

“What do you mean?” He asks, because he’s genuinely troubled.

“I think you have a lot to apologize for, before you say sorry about this.” Kai waves a hand at the both of them.

Kai has nice hands. Nice arms, muscle-y but not buff, sort of strong in a natural way. There are no sharp corners on them, or hard lines. Everything is smooth and tanned and beautifully shaped, making Kyungsoo feel stupid for having kept this image of Kai hidden from his readers for so long.

But that’s not right. This is the perfectly worst moment to be thinking about his manga and his readers.

He can’t be obsessing over work, while there’s a pretty real (he checked when he gave him the manga) guy standing in his kitchen, demanding apologies for all the things Kyungsoo has unwisely made him do for the past three years.

There must be some code of conduct, somewhere, declaring that if a fictional character comes to life and asks for explanation as to why he’s been put through hell for your entertainment, you are not supposed to be thinking, mhm, now that I see him up close, I can definitely go back to drawing life-threatening situations where he looks ten times better than he used to. Then again who would think to make a code of conduct for such a situation?

“Oh! Oh right. Well, hm. I’m sorry for… for making you an orphan. And I’m sorry that you didn’t get to go to college, because you had no money. And for getting you involved into a crime syndicate. And for creating that syndicate. For killing that nice old man you used to talk to in the street outside your house. He was at the wrong place on the wrong time, I swear! Also, I’m sorry for getting you kidnapped. And for having those thugs beat you up. And for burning the movie theatre in your neighborhood during that one explosion, even though I knew how much you liked it. I didn’t mean to do that.” Kyungsoo inhales.

“Well, I did, but it was back when you were just a drawing. When I thought you were a drawing. Anyway, I’m sorry.” He finishes, sensing warmth rising, from the hem of his T-shirt, to his neck, up till the tips of his ears. “Are you satisfied now?” He grunts trying to hold in his embarrassment.

Kai sighs. “Yes. Pretty much.” He then looks thoughtful. “Now am I to understand that in this real world, there is no Syndicate terrorizing the people?”

Kyungsoo cannot hide the smile that’s escaping, to save his life. “Seoul is relatively safe.” He agrees brightly, feeling the awkward air dissipate between them. Well, not completely, but it’s a start.

“So what do you do around here for fun?” Kyungsoo does not even need his night glasses to see the smirk on Kai’s face.

“Actually, there’s a movie theatre around the corner that hasn’t exploded, yet. And if Chanyeol is to be trusted, they’re playing Pirates of the Caribbean in the morning screening.” He replies almost instantly, like this is really the best thing to do at a time like this.

Kyungsoo admits that for a lot of people, the circumstances of this morning would look like a pretty big crisis. The sensible thing to do would be to ask questions, or go have his head checked, or something. Going to the movies is just his way of trying to escape the huge mess that is threatening to shipwreck his life like a canonball. Which is a childish thing to do and usually, he doesn’t do childish.

Yes, but usually, Kyungsoo amends, I don’t wake up to find Black Falcon on my bed with a gun. He needs a little time to adjust to this, before he begins looking for explanation and possibly the help of a good therapist. So movies it is.

“This is my favorite movie.” Kai doesn’t exactly smile, but his face is bright enough to assure Kyungsoo he said the right thing.

“I know.” Kyungsoo grins back and picks up two jackets.

A/N: Oh my god! Guys what is this even? Why are you being like this, making me mushy... 

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