Minseok’s Sunday at least started off more peacefully than the Saturday had, no betrayed friends breaking into his garage or runaway teenagers for his wife to pick up in the early hours of the morning.  For the first time in months, Jaehwan was willing to go to church with him rather than dragging his feet about it (though that may have had something to do with the fact that Taeyong happily hopped in the car when he found out where Minseok was off to, because the teenager knew that faith now played a very important part in Minseok’s life), and Jaera was equally happy with her ‘big cousin Taetae’ coming along for the ride and spent most of it gurgling happily to him rather than attempting to communicate properly.

Things kind of went downhill from there.  Semi was in a state when he arrived home, and Luhan was sitting on top of the piano in the living room, looking slightly disturbed.

“He looks familiar,” Taeyong said, gesturing at Luhan when Minseok poked his head into the living room to check where his former blood brother was.

“Leave, just leave,” Minseok groaned, almost clutching at his head when Jaera burst into tears at the sight of her mother crying and Jaehwan started complaining loudly about the fact that he wasn’t allowed to watch TV right at that moment.  “Taeyong, please just go and run around the garden and preferably take Jaehwan with you.”

The second Taeyong was gone, Luhan eased himself down from the piano, opening his mouth to say something, but Minseok closed his eyes.

“I don’t even want to know,” he said with resignation.  “Not right now.”

It took a little while to calm Semi down.

“When’s he leaving?” she asked Minseok tearfully.  “I don’t want him in the house, Minseok, he’s scaring me.”

Minseok rubbed her back soothingly.  “I need to talk logistics through with Lay,” he told her.

Clearly unsatisfied, Semi leant back against Minseok, taking deep breaths.  Minseok thought for a moment that she was going to insist that Luhan needed to leave, but when she spoke up, something else entirely was on her mind.

“Are there any peppers in the house?  I need something really spicy right now.”

Minseok wanted to laugh.  Distress apparently forgotten, Semi looked around as though the peppers were hiding from her in the study they were both sitting in, and then got to her feet.  Seconds later, she gave a surprised little squeak and one of her hands flew to her stomach.

“Look, look, look!”  She grabbed Minseok’s hand in excitement, yanking it closer to place it beside hers.

He blinked at her, unable to feel anything under his hand.  Semi pouted in frustration.

“It was kicking,” she said, disappointed.  “The baby was definitely kicking.”

Right on cue, there was a little kick that both of them definitely felt.  Semi’s pout broadened into a grin and she looked up at Minseok.  He planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Can I have those peppers instead of a kiss, please?”

Laughing, he kissed her again.  “I think the baby wants them more than you.”

Once the peppers were delivered (again, Minseok would never understand pregnancy cravings, but Semi had taken to snacking on raw peppers when she’d been pregnant with Jaera, so it wasn’t as strange a request to him as peanut butter), he went in search of Luhan.  He found him poking around in the utility room.

Luhan sensed his presence before he could ask him what he was doing and spun around.

“Your wife is crazy,” he said immediately, eyes slightly wide.  “I thought she was going to kill me with a piano book.”

Minseok sighed.  Semi normally wasn’t violent.  “What did you do?”

“Nothing!”

“You must have done something.”

“Well, I don’t know what it was, then.  Aren’t pregnant women just hormonal?”

Minseok winced at the generalisation.  “Semi’s usually just hungry when she’s pregnant.”

“I think your version of hungry is different to mine.  Unless you mean hungry as in out for blood.”  Luhan looked like he was genuinely convinced by what he was saying as he opened the door of the tumble dryer and took out some clothes.  Minseok saw that they were the ones he’d shown up in.  Either Semi was being ridiculously nice to Luhan or the man was still being his usual do-it-myself character.  “Wouldn’t surprise me if she was,” he muttered, almost under his breath.  “She seems to hate me.”

“With good reason, Luhan.”

He shrugged uncaringly as he straightened up, a brief wince of pain flashing across his face.  “I never actually killed her.”

“It took her years to get over the trauma of having Byun Baekhyun sent after her.”

“Yeah, but he was always a ing psychopath.”

“You were the one who stuck him on her.  She still has scars on her arm.”

“Look.”  Luhan slammed the clothes down on top of the dryer.  “I don’t need a lecture from you of all people about what’s happened in the past—”

“Luhan, you’re an escaped criminal and you’re in my house.  At least show some respect.  God only knows how long you’re going to be staying, and you could at least try to be civil.”

Luhan looked thoroughly disgruntled, but his stance was wary.  Even though he’d pretty much thrown himself at Minseok’s mercy by showing up at his house, he was still reluctant to trust him completely.

“Lay said you wanted to stay here, so put in some effort.”  Minseok sighed and rubbed his temples.  “It’s really important for Semi and the baby that they’re both in an unstressful environment, and your mere presence is stressing her out.  You spent a year trying to kill her, so she’s obviously going to be uneasy around you.  Be nice to her.  Apologise, even if you don’t mean it yet.  She’ll feel a lot safer, and then you won’t feel the need to hide on top of the piano – which is probably only going to irritate her more, by the way.  That piano’s more precious to her than I am.”

A lightbulb seemed to go off in Luhan’s head.  “Oh yeah, she got annoyed with me because I took the back off and was fiddling around with the strings.”

Minseok closed his eyes in despair.  “This is like having an extra kid in the house.”

Yixing and Jongdae both dropped round later in the day, catching the tail end of lunch and insisting on joining the table for food.

It was a very awkward meal.  Luhan had appeared at the beginning of it to take his plate and eat by himself, but had reappeared for seconds and Semi had told him rather frostily to sit down.  Jaera threw a fried egg at him for making her mummy cry earlier (Minseok was pretty sure Luhan wanted to throw a fried egg in return, but he managed to restrain himself); Taeyong started asking awkward questions about where he had seen Luhan before; and Jaehwan actually started up conversation with Luhan.

“I’ve never seen you,” he said, “so you’re definitely lying about being Daddy’s best friend.”

Minseok had to shut the whole thing down before Luhan started spilling the beans about the first twenty or so years of their lives.  After that, they ate in silence until the new arrivals showed up.  Jongdae made a couple of valiant efforts to improve the mood, but Yixing, less optimistic, sensed it was a lost cause and didn’t even try.

After lunch, the men retreated to the observatory that overlooked the garden, the atmosphere only slightly less awkward.  Luhan was noticeably tenser, trying to pretend his injuries were negligible as he sat in the corner of his wicker chair, looking like he was prepared to bolt at any moment.  Yixing was fiddling with his phone as Jongdae finished up a bowl of ice cream he’d taken with him.  After checking that the house was unlikely to explode if he was busy for a few hours, Minseok closed and locked the door into the rest of the house and propped himself up against the table by the chairs with an expectant glance at Yixing.  It took the policeman several moments to notice it.  He sat up with a start, tucking his phone away.

“Well,” he said, “Kyungsoo’s been in contact.”

“And?” prompted Minseok.

“It’s good news and bad news.  Sangchu and various other syndicates appear to have infiltrated the police in our absence,” he gestured to himself and Jongdae, “and as a result, police security is notoriously lax.  He’s locked down various sensitive files.  Hopefully nobody was looking into them before that happened.”

Luhan’s mouth twisted into a hint of a smirk.

“Anyway, that’s not the important part.”  Yixing sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees and propping his chin up with his hands, tapping his fingers against his lips for a few moments.  “Weiyi was seen on local TV in Seoul this morning.”

Luhan jolted like somebody had sent several volts of electricity through him.  “She’s been found already?”

“No,” said Yixing.  “And that’s the problem.  There’s a drought in Seoul at the moment, and lots of people are passing out in the streets from heat .”

“There’s been a lot of news coverage on it,” Jongdae agreed.

“Weiyi just happened to be one of the people picked up off the street and caught by camera.  She’s probably in hospital somewhere; Kyungsoo’s trying to find out.”

Blinking rapidly and clutching at the arms of the wicker chair, Luhan looked between the three men.

“But… sh— she’s safe, right?  That— means she’s… safe?  Heat … it’s not that serious, right?”

“If they got her to hospital in time and it wasn’t bad, then she should recover,” Jongdae said.  “It classifies as a medical emergency, but a lot of people only experience it mildly and recover quite quickly.”

Luhan shot an anxious glance at Minseok and then sank back into his chair, apparently comforted just a little.

“Safety-wise….”  Yixing sighed.  “The problem was that this was on national TV.  Luhan, you said Sangchu was looking for her.”

Whatever comfort Luhan had felt fled his body as he sat up again in horror, mouth dropping open.

“Ah, how do I…?”  Yixing grimaced.  “Kyungsoo says that he saw Heo Youngsaeng wandering around hospitals.  Based on what Minseok told us when Heo Youngsaeng was interfering with Semi, and that Suho was Sangchu’s blood brother—”