Chapter Text
I’m so bored!
Wang Suo knows that being a super spy takes patience. One of his first memories of the orphanage was watching Spy Games!, and the moment he saw it, he knew what he was destined to be.
Cool Guy Super Spy Suo: Esper.*
Being a spy is all about finding out information, and ever since Wang Suo first realized not everyone was able to hear thoughts like he could, he realized it was meant to be. And now he has been adopted by a real life spy—Tracer!
At the orphanage, listening to Papa’s thoughts about the mission, Wang Suo knew this was the chance he had been waiting for. Step one, help Papa on his mission. Step two, become a super spy. Easy.
And now, Papa has left him alone while he goes to do Important Spy Stuff.
Wang Suo races into Papa’s office, tugging the heavy suitcase Papa hid in the closet and laying it carefully on the floor.
Guns and bombs! That has to be what is in the locked case. He types in the numbers he heard in Papa’s head as Papa carefully hid it all away from the bad guys.
1-8-2-3
*click*
It’s not guns or bombs as Wang Suo had hoped, but the pile of cords and equipment is just as exciting. It looks like one of the tools they would use in Spy Games!, and he sees a blinking red light in front of a keypad.
It’s a secret spy communication device! This is so cool!
Wang Suo thinks to himself, tapping his chin thoughtfully. What to say…
*This is Tracer.*
They'll have no idea it’s him, not Tracer. Wang Suo giggles to himself with excitement. Being a super spy is fun!
*Come and get me!*
There. That is the kind of message they send in Spy Games!, right? Wang Suo is absolutely sure he has seen an episode like this before. Perfect, he nods to himself, crossing his arms over his chest just like Papa does.
Looking around, Wang Suo realizes the mess he's made and gulps. Papa will know that he touched his stuff! If he is bad, Papa will return him.
Suddenly, Wang Suo is mentally back in the Bad Place. Logically, he knows it’s just a memory, but his heart pounds with fear anyway.
“#085, you can’t tell anyone about your powers. You know that, right?”
Wang Suo hated the Doctor’s sharp voice. Hated the way his glasses glinted in the bright lights of the cold examination rooms that Wang Suo spent all his time in before he managed to get away. Even the orphanage was better than this.
“We’re the only ones that will protect you, #085. Now tell me—what card am I holding?”
“But I want to draw!” he would wail, just wanting the Doctor and all others watching him to go away. It never stopped. Day after day of testing is all that he could remember, and all the tests hurt the boy’s head. Why wouldn’t they just leave him alone?
“No!” The hand swiped the green and red crayons away from him as he sobbed. “Drawing doesn’t matter! You need to learn how to use your powers for the greater good.”
Tears well up in Wang Suo’s eyes, and he sniffles, rubbing at them and trying to keep his feelings in check. The Doctor would scoff whenever he cried, saying that tears were for babies, and Wang Suo isn’t a baby.
No. It’ll be fine. He just needs to put everything away like it was before. Wang Suo will keep his special power a secret, and he’ll do such a good job helping Papa with his mission that Papa won’t have any choice but to keep him as his super spy sidekick.
Just as Wang Suo scrambles to start putting things away, he hears the door open. But instead of the normal click of the lock, it's a loud crash. Eyes widening, he moves faster to gather up the super spy tech before Papa discovers him, but it’s too late, the office door slamming open.
But the man who enters the room isn't Papa.
Wang Suo freezes in fear to see the large stranger, and the man looms over him before snatching him up. Struggling against the painful grip, he kicks out at the nasty man so he can escape just like the super spies do. But there's a scratchy, smelly white cloth pressed to his face and then everything begins swimming into a black nothingness.
“That’s not Tracer.”
“He wasn’t there, boss.” The man’s whiny voice is grating in Wang Suo’s ears, like nails on a chalkboard.
Wang Suo’s head feels heavy. “What’s happ’ning?” he tries to ask, but the words all come out wrong.
“The brat’s waking up. Hey, kid, where’s Tracer?” The first man’s voice is gruff, and Wang Suo lets out a whine, shaking his head quickly when a rough hand pats his face.
“Don’t touch me!” he shouts. “Papa!”
A bright light is shining over him when Wang Suo finally manages to pry his eyes open, and the boy can barely make out shadows hovering over him. Blinking, his eyes begin to adjust, and he glares at them hotly as he begins to make out faces. There’s at least half a dozen people, all dressed like bad guys from his show. He peers closer, feeling his heart pound fast as he makes out shapes at their sides. Guns! Just like in Spy Games!
“Man, he looks scared but you wouldn’t know it by smelling him.” A scrawny pockmarked man leans forward, sniffing at his neck. “Did he get his glands removed? I don’t see any suppressants.” He tugs at Wang Suo’s collar as if to check, and Wang Suo jerks away, but he can’t move far. His hands are tied behind him, and for a moment, he worries he’ll fall as the chair tips, but when he stops moving, it steadies itself again.
“Yeah, I could barely make out a scent.” The rumbly voice from before comes from his left, and Wang Suo’s head whips over to see a large man lighting a smelly cigar. He coughs as the smoke is blown in his face, and the man’s face breaks into a sneer. “You a card shark, kid? Got some blockers on you?”
“Maybe he’s Tracer in disguise,” the whiny voice calls out from the back.
The big man that the whiny voice called “boss”—Wang Suo can tell he’s an alpha from his noisy thoughts, if not his scent—laughs as if the other man just told a hilarious joke, but Wang Suo doesn’t get it. He doesn’t look anywhere near as big as Papa. And how do sharks play cards?
Wang Suo knows he’s never had a very good sense of smell. Strong scents like perfumes and burnt food, that is never an issue, but pheromones were never very easy for Wang Suo to tell apart. The other kids at the orphanage told him he “didn’t have a smell” and that’s why he wasn’t any good at scenting others. They would tease him, saying that he was broken when he couldn’t tell them what they smelled like.
“Smell is the most important sense we have! How will you ever find anyone to love you when you can’t even tell how they’re feeling? When they can’t tell how you’re feeling? Nobody is going to want a defective kid like you.”
But he wasn’t defective! Wang Suo wanted to shout at them that his special power told him everything his nose didn’t. But he had discovered quickly at the orphanage that nobody believed him when he said he heard their thoughts, telling him he was creepy or a liar when he told them something he heard. And when he went to all the other families, none of them believed him either, saying that he must be going through all of their private things when they weren’t around and turning him back in for being a snoop. For being weird. For being… broken.
For a moment, Wang Suo’s heart sinks, his lip trembling. Maybe he is defective. Everyone keeps saying so.
“Aw, he’s gonna cry! You gonna cry some more for your ‘Papa’?”
The mean man is taunting him, but his words race through Wang Suo like an electrical charge. Papa doesn’t think he’s broken! Papa said he needed a kid just like him for his Special Mission! The big alpha leans in front of him close enough that Wang Suo tries to move his head back, but to no avail. This close, he can make out a jagged scar running down one side of the man’s face, the cigar clenched between yellowing teeth.
He looks like—he looks like—a Real Life Bad Guy!
Wang Suo can’t stop staring at him, all thoughts of crying banished. It’s just like in Spy Games! But right now, Wang Suo doesn’t have to be the super spy. He’s the one about to be rescued!
Shoving down his fear, Wang Suo sticks out his tongue at them. “Papa’s going to get you!”
There’s silence, followed by a cacophony of laughter and jeers.
“Do you think he’s Tracer’s kid?” asks the pockmarked man, slouched to the side. He sounds like he doesn't really care, looking tough on the outside, but Wang Suo can hear his frightened thoughts racing like a hamster in a wheel.
Fuck this better not be Tracer’s kid! He’ll kill us!
His fear just gives Wang Suo more confidence, and he grins cheerfully at the man. “He will.”
The man’s eyes widen, his mouth opening just as the door to the warehouse flies open, thumping against the wall.
“Who’s there?” the big man calls out, tossing his cigar to the floor and whipping out a shiny gun. Wang Suo stares up with shining eyes. It’s dark in the warehouse, the only sound the stuttered steps of a lean figure wearing a black hoodie shoving a struggling man dressed in Papa’s nice suit in front of him. All eyes follow the body shoved to the ground, and the big alpha smiles widely, reaching down to tug the black bag off the man’s face.
“Finally got you,Tracer,” he says with satisfaction. “Time for us to have a little chat.”
Wang Suo giggles to himself when he hears the angry shout from across the room when the man’s face has been revealed. The minute the men all turned away, Papa—because of course it is Papa in the hoodie, Wang Suo can tell from his thoughts and knows he should stay quiet—untied him, racing quietly towards the exit with Wang Suo held safely in his arms. Wang Suo sighs, leaning against him, but he can’t stop the sniffle once they are back in the sunlight.
“Kid, are you okay?” Papa is still talking funny even though there’s nobody around for him to try to trick anymore. His face is still hidden by the hood, and Wang Suo nods quickly. He’s a big boy. He’s fine now that Papa’s there to save him.
“Mn,” he says firmly, screwing his face together in determination. He can hear that Papa is still unsure, but Papa has to go take care of the bad guys, so he sets Wang Suo down carefully.
Wang Suo sticks his thumb in his mouth. He hasn’t sucked his thumb in a long time, back when he was a little kid, but it’s been a long day. Papa didn’t bring Director Leo for him to cuddle with, so it’s probably okay if he acts a little childish right now. Papa doesn’t say anything about it, just sighs and pats him on the head.
“We, uh, we’re a group of professional hide and seek players. You know what hide and seek is, right, kid?”
Wang Suo doesn’t like Papa calling him kid, but Papa is acting like they don’t know each other, so he’s willing to play along to be a good helper.
“Uh huh.”
This was a mistake. I risked the whole mission to come here, I’m not fit to be called a spy.
The words hit Wang Suo like a punch in the gut. Papa—didn’t want to save him? Papa thought he should have just left him to the bad guys?
“There’s a police station around the corner, that way, okay? Smart kids would go find a place to hide there. Are you a smart kid?”
He nods solemnly, staring at the ground and trying not to cry.
“Okay, then go, and wait for us to come find you, okay?”
I’ll make sure they put you in a better orphanage, Suo’er. You deserve better than this. Better than that shithole you came from, but better than me as well. I didn’t become a spy to do this to a kid.
Wang Suo sniffles again. This whole thing was a lot scarier than he thought it would be. The Bad Guy was really bad, and he had been thinking of a lot of bad things he could do to hurt Papa. He wants to be a super spy like Papa, but he’s only a little boy. Maybe this is too much for him right now. Maybe Papa is right. Maybe he doesn’t belong here.
As Papa pushes gently on his back, urging him to run towards the police station to find “a really good hiding spot,” Wang Suo takes a faltering step in that direction, then another. He starts to jog away towards safety, still hearing Papa’s thoughts behind him.
I hate crying. I hate seeing you cry.
The thought makes him stumble. He didn’t want to cry, he was just scared. Papa isn’t mad at him for crying, is he?
Wait—oh.
Suddenly, in his head, he sees a little sobbing boy. A little sobbing boy who looks like—Papa?
I didn’t realize. That’s why I hate to hear children crying. Because nobody held me when I cried all those years ago.
The little boy isn’t in one of those spy shows that Wang Suo watches. He’s in a scene that looks more like a nightmare, but it feels as real to him as a memory, though he knows it is not one of his own. The little boy is surrounded by wafting smoke and the stench of blood, broken bodies lying in crumpled piles around him as battered tanks roll by on either side.
Alone and in despair, with no one offering to save me. Feeling so powerless that the only thing I could do was cry. I thought I’d put the past behind me, but it’s been there the whole time.
Wang Suo runs around the corner, then waits a moment before peeking back. Papa has turned around, his fists clenched at his sides as he stares at the warehouse they both just left.
How did I not see that? My mistake wasn’t coming back to get Suo’er—that’s the only thing I did right. But I never should have gotten him involved in the first place. Fuck Yuehua. Making a world where kids don’t need to cry, that was the whole reason I became a spy in the first place.
Wang Suo watches his Papa stride back into the dark, broken down building with long, sure steps. Despite not being able to “see” anything, the mental voices are loudly setting the scene for what Papa is doing.
No, what is he, NO!
OW OW OW OW!
Fuck, where did he— *crash*
Finally, there is silence, and he wonders if it’s finished. But then he hears the mean alpha’s thoughts from earlier.
How dare you threaten me? How dare you threaten my daughter? I’ll kill—
It’s too much, and Wang Suo’s head is pounding so hard that he finally stops listening. It’s more thoughts listening than he’s done in a very long time, and he’s tired and exhausted after such a frightening day.
He is tempted to do what Papa said. Tempted by the thoughts of a nicer orphanage. Maybe at a place like that, Wang Suo could find a normal family like in some of the more boring shows. But he can’t get that crying child with Papa’s dark eyes out of his head.
Making a world where kids don’t need to cry, that was the whole reason I became a spy in the first place.
He wants to be like Papa. He wants to keep other kids from ever having to cry. So Wang Suo sits and waits. There’s no more shouting, no more loud noises from the warehouse. Just birds chirping as they fly overhead, and some ants milling around something sticky dropped by the side of the road. He trudges over to watch them, and the shadows are starting to grow longer when his attention is pulled back to the building.
Footsteps slowly trudge out of the warehouse, and he sees Papa come out, his hoodie ripped and torn. It was black, but it now has dark wet patches in it that Wang Suo tries not to pay too much attention to as he runs forward.
“Wh—!” Wang Yibo lets out a surprised huff as the boy rushes towards him, arms wrapping around his legs like a boa constrictor. “What are you still doing here? I mean, uh, I just got here! But wait, why are you here?”
Wang Suo stares up at him in surprise. Oh. Papa is a liar.
It makes sense. That’s what a super spy like his Papa would have to be, but it’s funny to hear him tell these lies nonetheless. He’s not very good at it, but Wang Suo can help him. He’s had to learn how to protect himself, and he’ll protect Papa too.
His papa is still staring down at him in confusion, and Wang Suo slips one of his hands into Papa’s big hand, tugging at it to get him to move.
“Some men wanted to play hide and seek,” Wang Suo tells him, and Papa seems to relax.
“This place is out of business. And empty. Nobody is in there,” he says dumbly, and Wang Suo nods as if he believes him.
Papa is a really big liar.
“Did you, uh, have fun?” Papa asks him tentatively, and Wang Suo thinks for a moment as they keep walking, swinging their hands together.
“It was scary,” he finally says, biting down on his lower lip. He can feel guilt emanating from Papa, and he gazes up at him quickly, shaking his head. “It was scary, but I want to go home with you, Papa.”
“Are you sure about that?” Papa’s voice is quiet, but his thoughts are too loud to ignore.
This is a bad idea. He would be better with a real family.
Wang Suo is sure. “With you, Papa!”
For a long, terrible moment, Papa seems undecided, and Wang Suo sniffles, letting his lip tremble more for effect. “If you leave me again, I’ll cry!” he threatens.
He’s been through so many families, no wonder he’s worried I’ll leave him too.
Papa doesn’t like tears, but Wang Suo can hear from his thoughts that Papa is more worried about him than upset about his tears. It makes him feel warm and fuzzy inside to have someone care like that about him, and Wang Suo is sure that he’s making the right choice to help Papa.
“All right,” Papa says with a sigh. His hand drops to rest on the boy's hair, ruffling it lightly as he pats it. “Let’s go home.”