He almost startled right out of his skin at the easy greeting from his house mate. Casting an uneasy glance at the gangsters standing opposite him, Kyungsoo’s gaze reluctantly shifted back to Chanyeol. He attempted a smile. “Good morning,” he greeted, voice stilted despite his best attempt to sound normal.

His pulse quickened as he watched Chanyeol pluck the banker’s envelope right out of one of the mobster’s hands. Instinctively, he snatched the envelope back before one of the cronies decided to pull a gun on either of them. “It’s a new service,” he lied, shoving the money at the nearest thug with an uneasy glance at the trio. “Convenient, right?”

He prayed that the other boy didn’t pick up on the uneasy tremor in his voice. Kyungsoo’s heartbeat was hammering in his ears now and his chest was beginning to feel uncomfortably tight. His vision was even going a little fuzzy around the edges.

He had to get the men out of the cafe before they could cause anymore trouble. He couldn’t risk dragging Chanyeol into the middle of his mess.

He was so busy cursing out the offending beam that it took him a while to register the voices coming from the bakery, only catching the question at the very end.  But it was enough for Chanyeol to shut his mouth and immediately press against the wall to hide from sight.

“I’m not gettin’ any younger here, kid,” the first thug taunted, still leaning against the counter. He plucked one of the business cards from the neat pile beside the register and began to scrutinize it. “Do you do birthday cakes?” he flipped the card over, inspecting the back, “Y’see my neice has this thing coming up and--”

Before the man could finish, Kyungsoo finally felt the safe handle give beneath his grip and wrenched the tiny door open. He made quick work of retrieving the banker’s envelope inside and straightening, throwing it on the counter before the the three mobsters.

“It’s all I have,” he declared, doing his best to stand tall and keep his voice stern. “Take it and go.”

He cast the whiskey one last, longing look, before letting his flat gaze shift back to the man in front of him. Instinct had him reaching for Hyunwoo to curl a hand beneath the shorter man’s elbow when he almost lost his footing in the puddle of scotch that Jongsuk had so carefully avoided. He didn’t think twice about such casual contact.

Hyunwoo didn’t seem to notice either way. Instead, he was busy working himself into a full-blown rant, making Jongsuk feel as if he were right back in high school. He barely felt the swat to his arm as Hyunwoo batted his hand away from the bottle of whiskey waiting for him on the counter.

The finger jabbing into Jongsuk’s chest did catch him off guard though. It had been years since anyone had the gall to lecture him so blatantly, and even longer since anyone had dared to touch him so casually. His guards were as taken aback as Jongsuk felt. From the corner of his eye, he saw the men straightening and reaching into their jackets, and Jongsuk quickly held up a hand in their direction.

He shot the pair a look and shook his head in dismissal.

If Hyunwoo noticed, he didn’t show it. His rant continued on undeterred. What he was actually saying went completely over Jongsuk’s head. There were too many medical terms for him to bother following. He might have been able to if he’d cared enough to try, but Jongsuk was instead letting himself be distracted by the familiar fire in the other man’s eyes.

(Later, he’d blame that moment of weakness on the blood loss).

It’s only when he felt himself being maneuvered backwards and shoved back into his seat that Jongsuk realized Hyunwoo might not be too far off base with all of his fretting after all. As much as he’d like to pretend that he had allowed the smaller man to herd him back towards the bar stool, Jongsuk honestly hadn’t had much of a say in the matter at all. Once his weight was settled on the stool, his vision began to blur at the edges, the sudden wave of vertigo making his stomach churn uncomfortably.

Jongsuk continued to sit impassively in his place behind the desk, eyes tracking Key’s movements as he edged towards a chair, perching carefully on its edge. Much to his amusement, the dealer immediately began to fidget in a tell-tale sign of nerves. For a moment, Jongsuk simply watched Key’s fingers drum an anxious beat against his knee. 

His lips then curled into a small, sharp smile. 

“I trust I don’t have to tell you when our supplies are running low, Key,” he replied, voice cool and even and giving absolutely nothing away. Jongsuk tilted his head as if in thought. “Unless you have something else on your plate that’s demanding your attention?”

He reached for a folder neatly waiting on the corner of his desk and pulled it closer to him, settling back in his chair and flipping it open with a practiced flick of his thumb. The way that Jongsuk was currently seated, Key had no hope of catching a glimpse of the folder’s contents, and there was no visible label on the cover to give him so much as a hint. 

Jongsuk took his time scanning the page in front of him. 

He was wrestling with something. If only Jongsuk could figure out what it was. 

He remained impassive as Hyunwoo neared, holding his ground, doing what he thought was an excellent job of keeping his thoughts to himself. Judging by the scowl furrowing Hyunwoo’s brow, he wasn’t too far off. 

After a brief staredown, Jongsuk allowed himself to be led towards a bar stool. He made sure to avoid the mess of spilled scotch, though he’d be a dirty liar if he didn’t admit to sending the puddle of expensive liquor a mournful glance. It was a shame to see such a good scotch go to waste.

It was also safer to focus on the mess of spilled liquor rather than the hand curled around Jongsuk’s wrist. He would stubbornly ignore how cool Hyunwoo’s fingers were as they pressed against his pulse, because if he didn’t, he’d get lost in his head again. He’d remember pinning those hands against crisp hotel linens as he sank into welcoming heat, would remember them scrabbling at his back and leaving marks that stung for days. He’d remember them carding through his hair as Jongsuk half-listened to the late night Batman reruns on tv. He’d remember those hands waving him off from the other end of a skype call, shooing Jongsuk to class one last time. 

No. No, it was definitely safer to focus on the scotch. 

It’s an old idiom, one that Jongsuk heard countless times as a child and one that he’s found himself remembering often as of late. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that he first heard the saying from his mother. It was one of many lessons that she drilled into Jongsuk’s head as a kid. Oddly, it was perhaps one of the ones that’s stuck with him the most in the years since. 

Because as it turns out, details love to screw you over. 

Take tonight, for instance. Out of all the things that demanded Jongsuk’s attention, he’s forced to attend to this mess before he can move onto a single one of them--because someone fucked up a simple job. 

The clean up should have been an easy in and out. There shouldn’t have been a bit of fuss. All the crew needed to do was dispose of a body and splash a bit of bleach around an apartment already crawling with rats and festering with filth, and whatever evidence was left at the scene would have been compromised. After that, they only had to toss the apartment and steal whatever valuables they could find (if any, Jongsuk recalls wryly), and the upstanding members of the SPD would have been none the wiser to the events that had transpired in that shitty little rooftop apartment. 

Unfortunately, Jongsuk is dealing with imbeciles, and the job wasn’t finished before the police arrived on the scene. And rather than finishing the job, two of the punks ran with their tails between their legs and disappeared into the woodwork. One of Jongsuk’s boys was left at the scene to take the fall. 

Unfortunately, Jongsuk expects the kid to start singing like a canary any minute now, and he needs to see to it that there’s a distinct lack of evidence to support his involvement in the hit. He wasn’t about to trust one of his lackies with to clean up this particular mess, not now. So here Jongsuk stands, wasting his Wednesday night in some SPD techie’s apartment, waiting for the guy to get out of the goddamn shower because Jongsuk is hardly in the mood to blackmail someone while they’re cornered and naked in a bathtub. 

He can see the appeal, of course. He just isn’t in the mood for games. 

His eyes raised when the door clicked shut behind his visitor. 

Jongsuk’s expression remained impassive, carefully controlled, revealing nothing of his amusement as he watched the other man cross the room in a few powerful strides. Despite the certainty of his steps, Key was doing his best to avoid meeting Jongsuk’s eyes, keeping his own trained to the floor in a textbook display of submissiveness. Not that Jongsuk believed for a second that there was anything submissive about the man standing on the other side of his desk, of course. 

That was part of the problem. 

He sat back in his chair, eyes narrowing as he scrutinized Key. Key was useful; he knew his trade and was business savvy, his tongue as sharp as his wit. The problem was that he was also becoming unpredictable. When news had reached Jongsuk’s ears of his dealer’s budding relationship with a certain Cottonmouth dealer... Well, it was sufficient to say that Jongsuk was far from thrilled. 

Jongsuk folded in his hands in front of himself, thoughtful. 

“I did,” he finally replied, toneless. He offered no further explanation, choosing instead to let Key squirm for a bit longer. He allowed the silence to stretch heavy between them. Jongsuk found that allowing a person’s nerves to loosen their tongue was sometimes a rather effective way to get the ball rolling. Of course, he doubted that Key would make things that easy for him, but for now he was content to sit back and wait.