Happy birthday, fantasy49!

Even though Lay had told him that the man in front of him had been Seoul’s most ferocious gang leader, was estimated to have personally killed nearly four hundred people and organised the deaths of almost double that again, made millions through money-laundering, and had been the most successful pimp in Korea for the best part of a decade, Sehun still found it almost impossible to believe that he was a criminal, or, for that matter, at all dangerous.  For a start, he was at least a head shorter than Sehun, and he’d breezed into the registrar’s office, impeccably dressed in formal attire, with a cheery and perfectly polite “Hello, I’m Kim Minseok”, and from his pinchable cheeks to his shoe size, he looked completely and utterly harmless.  The man had a smile that reminded him of Scrat the Squirrel from Ice Age, for heaven’s sake.

And then he’d shaken his hand and Sehun had thought his bones were going to be liquidated.

Sehun managed to keep his eyes from watering at the pain, but there was no mistaking the malicious glint of satisfaction that shot through Kim Minseok’s eyes as he let go of Sehun’s hand.

“Let me guess,” Kim Minseok said, “you’re here with the bride.”  He gave a theatrical sigh.  “My side’s going to seem rather empty.”

And with that, he turned to greet Semi.

Sehun was utterly confused and more than a little disturbed, but, as he observed to his sister when Xiumin waltzed on to greet the person conducting the marriage ceremony, perhaps it wasn’t going to be as bad as it had at first seemed.  Prison could change people, after all.

The ceremony itself went by in a blur, vows exchanged seemingly before anybody had time to blink and with an awkward pause when Xiumin was told he could kiss the bride (he declined on the grounds that he had a cold that he didn’t want to pass over to her, which made Sehun oddly happy), and then they were back at the police station for the ‘reception’ and all the fluffy pretences were dropped.

“Remember, your head,” Siwon warned over the rim of his mug, since everybody was drinking coffee as champagne felt a long way from appropriate.

That was when the first scowl came out in Kim Minseok’s expression, and Sehun found himself wondering if this was such a good idea after all.  The smaller man’s face darkened like a storm cloud had rolled across it, and it was frightening.

“I’m aware,” he snapped back at the chief inspector.  “Just give me the keys to the bloody apartment and I can get out of this hole.”

Yixing popped up beside him, and Xiumin leant away from him with heart-stopping glower.

“What?” he grated at the police officer.

“I’m driving you two over, and then I’m leaving you with the car as well,” Yixing told him with a sunny smile.  “It’s tracked, of course, and we’ll be able to tell if you ever try to do a runner in it alone, so—”

“Let me guess,” Xiumin cut in, “it’ll blow up on me if I leave Seoul or if I’m driving around in it by myself for longer than half an hour?”

Yixing looked thoughtful.  “I don’t know, actually.  Kyungsoo!”

A narrow-shouldered man with jet-black hair looked up from his conversation with Jongin.  “Yes?”

“Did you put explosives on the car?”

“Which one, the Honda or the Merc?”

“Yes,” Yixing concluded.  “So be careful.  Kyungsoo will probably detonate them on you if you try to remove them.”

“Probably?”  The technician raised an eyebrow.  “If he’s lucky, the explosion will blow him apart and he won’t feel anything.”

“Oh, what did you use?” Yixing asked with interest, making everybody in the room blanch.

The right side of Kyungsoo’s mouth twitched up in a forced smile for a second or two.  “I’ll tell you once you’ve dropped them off.”

“Fair enough.”  Yixing shrugged.  “Semi!  Let’s go.”

Reluctantly, Semi turned to Sehun for a hug.

“Where are you going to be staying?” she asked.  “In case I need to get away?”

“A friend of the man who runs the internship course is putting me up in his condo,” Sehun said.  “Freaky coincidence, but he’s also the cousin of the man you saw killed, and he was more than happy to take me in.  I’m not sure exactly where the place is, but I’ll text you once I have the address, okay?  Love you.”  He kissed her on the forehead.  Semi turned away, and he abruptly caught her hand.  “Ring me if he tries anything, you hear me?”

Smiling, Semi nodded.  She squeezed his hand affectionately and he let go so she could follow Yixing and Xiumin out of the room.  Yixing was whistling and swinging the keys nonchalantly around his little finger.

“Boyfriend?” Xiumin asked conversationally, falling in step with Semi and jerking a thumb back towards the room they’d just left.  Semi shook her head.  “Family, then?”

“Family friend,” Yixing supplied before Semi could give any kind of response.

“I’m pretty sure the girl’s not mute; I’d like to hear her speak for herself,” Xiumin said levelly.

Yixing glanced back at them over his shoulder.  “You heard her voice at the wedding.  And it’s pe