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“You should have called me!”
Kai doesn’t say anything, just grits his teeth and finishes tying the tourniquet around his arm. It’ll hold until they reach Soobin.
“Ning,” Yeonjun insists, hand heavy on his knee, eyes heavy with concern, voice heavy with words still left unsaid.
“I told you not to baby me anymore,” Kai finally snaps, “and I told you I can handle the mission by myself. Look at the road, hyung, or we’ll go out in a car crash because of a stupid scratch.”
“A scratch,” Yeonjun repeats, sounding strangled, “you got fucking stabbed.”
“Well I’m sorry I can’t handle a 17 to 1 fight as easily as you can,” Kai says petulantly, and Yeonjun mutters something about being careful as he continues to floor it. The rest of the way back to their base is spent in suffocating silence.
Yeonjun corners Kai in the hallway after he’s reluctantly discharged by Soobin, though not without a healthy scolding.
“Can we not do this now,” Kai says tiredly, head resting against the wall. “Soobin-hyung already called me a dumbass in twelve different languages. And I only knew four of them.”
“Because he’s worried,” Yeonjun says with a frown as he grabs Kai’s wrist, carefully pulling up the younger’s sleeve to inspect the wound. Soobin’s work is as meticulous as always, but Yeonjun’s heart still hurts to know that it was needed in the first place, even though it’s inevitable. All chicks fly out of the nest eventually. “You—”
But there’s a satisfied glint in Kai’s eyes, a calm that comes from a job done well. All chicks fly, but they hadn’t been willing to let go yet.
Yeonjun doesn’t want to let go yet.
He swallows his words and shrugs his hoodie off to drape it over Kai. It’s cold and Kai is only wearing a thin tee after being divested of his blood-stained jacket back in the clinic.
“Congratulations, Ning,” Yeonjun says past the lump in his throat, past the superimposed image of a younger Kai, just as stubborn and eager to prove himself as he is now. “You completed your first mission. Hyung will treat you.”
Kai finally smiles, lines and edges melting away as he lets himself slump against Yeonjun.
“Thanks, Jjunie.”
This is the Kai who makes Yeonjun’s heart tremble and ache. The Kai who’s cuddled against his side, arm flung across Yeonjun’s stomach, dozing peacefully in the cot that’s just a little bit too small for the two of them. He knows that this Kai is just as dangerous as the one he drove home, injured but proud, but he doesn’t want to accept that Kai has long since left the nest, choosing peril over safety just like the rest of them.
He doesn’t need Yeonjun anymore.
Kai’s fingers curl around his shirt in his sleep, and Yeonjun’s heart flutters at that too.