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Chapter Text

Jisung yanked the doorknob off his bedroom door.

He held it up to his face and squinted at it through groggy eyes.

"The hell?" he muttered. He let it drop to the floor with a clang. He stared at his knob-less door, annoyed he'd have to stick his hand in there to get it open.

Trudging down the hall to the bathroom, he groaned at the massive headache pounding behind his eyes.

"Did I get wasted last night?" he tried to remember as he entered his bathroom. Nothing out of the ordinary came to mind as he picked up his toothpaste. He was about to shrug off the headache as unusually early caffeine withdrawals, when he managed to squeeze the tube so hard that toothpaste sprayed all over the walls, mirror, and his shirt.

He stood frozen for a moment, his eyes wide in surprise. He looked down at his toothpaste-covered t-shirt.

"That's never coming out," he sighed before scooping a bit off with his toothbrush.

A little more alert, he stepped back into his room to change into more professional clothes. But when he tried to take off his t-shirt, it nearly split in two in his hands.

"What the hell!?" he yelled in frustration, staring at the tatters in his hands. He hung his head with a groan and threw the toothpaste-stained rags to the floor. "Am I on some kind of prank cam?" he asked nobody, buttoning up a dress shirt with hasty fingers. He was late as it was, he didn't have time to worry about his ruined shirt.

"Intern," one of the employees at the research facility called, snapping Jisung out of his memories of that morning.

"Yes?" he answered, wiping his glasses with his shirt. They were so dirty he could see better with them off, but as much as he wiped they weren't getting any cleaner.

"Did something happen yesterday?"

Jisung tilted his head at her. ‘Something’ could have meant anything from the chief of his division getting his coffee a degree colder than he would’ve preferred to the lab rats staging another uprising.

"In the botany section?" she prompted at his confusion.

Jisung tried to think back to the other day. His superiors had sent him to take measurements of the experimental GMO'd plants like they did every day, and nothing unusual happened. He measured the height of about a dozen tea plants, noted them on his clipboard, and then went back to his desk.

Except… if he really thought about it, it didn't go quite like that.

When he stretched the measuring tape from the base of the tea plant to the top of its highest shoot, a spider crawled up onto his hand. He gasped, frantically shaking his hand to try and fling it off.

"Get off, get off, get off," he muttered nervously.

When he chanced a look back at his hand, the spider was gone, but it had left behind a purple bite mark. Jisung grimaced, a hiss escaping his teeth from how grotesque the wound looked. He gave his hand a final disgusted shake, before gathering his tape, pen and clipboard up in his arms and leaving the encasement as fast as he could.

That had been his final task that day.

"Did something happen after I left?" he asked.

The employee winced. "Sort of." She escorted him down the hall, and Jisung gaped at the destroyed greenery inside the roundabout encasement. So did the rest of the employees in his division.

It looked like a cloud of locusts had descended upon the site and then left without a trace.

"How did this happen?" a woman remarked in disbelief.

"Ask the intern," a man scoffed in reply.

Jisung looked over at them. Apparently they'd all heard he was the last one in there, and decided to pin the devastation on him. He looked back at the sight. "I didn't- What would I even- I have no idea what happened," he stuttered, wandering into the encasement. He ogled the destroyed plants, chunks taken out of almost all of them. On the floor, in the midst of all the carnage, something bizarre caught his eye. Crouching down, he saw that it was the spider that had bit him, purple and bloated to the point of bursting.

"What's he looking at?"

"I can't tell."

"He's seriously screwed," a third person cringed on his behalf.

Jisung glanced back at the murmuring crowd before picking up the spider between two fingers. "I think..." He swallowed, rising to his feet again. "I think this thing did it."

"Do you expect me to believe that?" the division chief later asked monotonously in his office.

Jisung knew he was so fired. "It- I mean, look at it," he said, signaling to the dead spider on his superior's desk. "That doesn't seem very natural to me."

"And you saw nothing else before you left?" Jisung shook his head. "Nothing?"

"Can we just get this over with?"

"...Excuse me?"

Jisung could have argued how stupid it was to act like it was somehow his fault. What were they even suggesting, that he'd planted some bug to sabotage the chamomile plants? Or even that he was the one that had gotten snacky on the job? But he was constantly getting shut down and silenced at this internship anyway, like that time he'd told the head researcher he was assisting that his proportions were off.

'And that's why the acids aren't reacting.'

Famous last words, before he'd gotten the upbraiding of a lifetime for being "disrespectful" and "undermining my intelligence."

So, he decided to take the situation as a blessing in disguise and say: "Tell me I'm fired so I can go home already."

The division chief smiled without his eyes. "You think it's your time that's being wasted? You have any idea the resources that were being used on those things?" But he seemed to think better of lecturing Jisung on the intricacies of genetically modified chamomile plants and sat back. "Fine," he barked. "Get out of here. And get this off my desk," he said sharply, brushing the spider onto the floor.

Jisung didn't stand, eyeing the dead spider.

"Oh my God. Do you want it?"

"Yes, sir."

He looked him up and down with disdain. "Just take it, you little..."

Jisung scooped it up in cupped hands and hurried out of the room.

When he trudged up the steps to his apartment later Jisung sighed, tucking his permanently smudged glasses into his pocket. Obviously he didn’t like that internship much, but it had been something to do, and might have even helped him get a real job.

"Like a real adult," he mumbled to himself as he unlocked his front door. But when he entered, his natural instinct took over— namely, to not think about responsibility. Undoing the top button of his dress shirt, he collapsed on his couch with arms sprawled in opposite directions. His eyes drifted shut, and he had the thought it was far too early to be this tired already.

Reluctantly, he got to his feet again and started to unbutton his shirt, figuring he should at least change before he fell asleep in his work clothes. But when he drifted into his bedroom and saw his door missing its knob and his t-shirt a mangled, toothpaste-stained mess on the floor, the memory of his random burst of strength that morning slammed into him like a cold bucket of water.

"How did I even do that?" he said to himself incredulously, glancing between his door and his shirt. He really should have been more concerned at the time, but that headache had seriously clouded his priorities.

Could it have been because of that bizarre spider?

It was a strange thought. But he'd had a weirdly hard time getting that tape off his fingers, too, almost like his hands were even more adhesive than the tape was. He looked down at his hands and jolted.

While absentmindedly unbuttoning his only white dress shirt he'd ripped it at the chest. "Oh come on," he groaned. "That's not work appropriate at all.”

He shoved it off for a clean, non-toothpaste smeared t-shirt he'd scooped off the floor. Careful to pull it on slowly, he didn't breathe until his arms were completely through the sleeves.

That stupid spider.

He grabbed a cloth off his cluttered desk, went to go run it under hot water, and started scrubbing at the toothpaste-stained tile of his bathroom.

“Enhanced strength, sticky fingers… My vision,” he realized with a start.

Looking at his hand, he was amazed that he could see practically every hair, wrinkle, and scar on it without his glasses. He tapped his face, making sure he really wasn't wearing his glasses. "Huh," he let out. Maybe it wasn't that they were dirty.

He took them out and, gently, slid them over his nose.

"Woah." They really were making his vision, for the first time, worse.

"Okay..." he said to himself. Going to his room he picked up a pen and pad. "Super strength, adhesive fingers..." he scrawled, "and 20/20 vision." He clicked the pen closed.

"Cool." He threw his glasses back on the table and ran out the door.

-

"Pick up, pick up, pick up!" he yelled at his phone. He redialed the apathetic number as he ran down the sidewalk, uncaring about the looks he drew.

"Sorry, your call could not be completed,” the robotic voice said as he stepped onto the crosswalk.

As quick as a bolt of lightning, Jisung instinctively turned to his left.

A car was about to hit him.

He sat back on the asphalt, dazed and breathless.

The car had hit him.

He blinked up at the headlights that shone directly in his eyes.

People panicked around him.

He managed to rise to his feet, just as the driver of the car stumbled out of it with profuse apologies.

Jisung looked down at his body. He kicked his legs out. He flailed his arms. "The hell?" There was no soreness, no bruising, no pain.

“Shouldn’t someone call an ambulance?” someone cried.

Only searing embarrassment.

"I-I don't know what's wrong with me,” the driver stuttered, scared out of his mind. "I have no idea why I did that, please just-"

"No, no, it's okay," Jisung said, looking up at him.

The man stopped in his tracks, only now realizing the guy he'd hit with a car was perfectly fine. "What?"

“How is he standing?” someone in the crowd of onlookers asked.

"I'm alright," Jisung said, before turning around to push through the bystanders that had coalesced in the few moments since the car had hit him.

“Rea-Really?” he gaped.

-

"Minho!" Jisung yelled, banging on his front door.

The door yanked open. "What, what, what!?" his friend yelled with equal force.

Jisung looked at him with comically wide eyes. "What do you have a phone for?" he asked much more quietly.

"I threw it away," he deadpanned.

"Just let me in," he groaned, shoving past him into his apartment.

"What, what is it?" he asked, shutting the door behind him. "Did your washer explode?"

Jisung looked at him for long enough to visibly weird him out.

"I got fired."

Breaking out of whatever weird hypnotism the both of them were in, Minho opened his freezer. "Why?" he asked, lifting a water bottle too frozen to drink out of to his mouth.

Jisung had decided—after being hit with a car and emerging without a scratch on him—he would maybe keep the superpowers to himself for now. The last thing he needed to throw on his best friend's plate, already full of cover stories to write and important people to interview as the star reporter at the Blazoner, was all… this.

"I poisoned the tea plants,” Jisung explained.

Minho snorted.

"I'm a murderer."

"I can see it in your eyes," he said with a laugh.

Given what he'd been through in the past 10 minutes, that statement made Jisung uneasy.

"What?” he asked with a small, suspicious smile. "I just meant about you being a plant murderer."

Oh. So he'd made that face out loud. "Ah. Yeah no, I know what you mean," he said, consciously pulling the corner of his mouth into a pseudo-smile.

Minho sized him up for a second over his frozen water bottle. "So what are you gonna do now?" he asked, putting the bottle back in the fridge.

"Gosh, I don't know," he said, slowly pushing his arms across the table. "Maybe I'll…” He planted his face on the table. "Keep my options open for a while," he said vaguely.

"You can't stay jobless," Minho said bluntly, still looking through his fridge for something that was actually drinkable.

"No that's not what I meant," he said, shooting his head up to meet Minho’s eyes.

"Then?"

Jisung glanced away, thinking of how to word it. "Something came up."

-

Super strength, adhesive fingers, 20/20 vision, enhanced durability, he ran over in his head when he got home. That is, after getting dragged into listening to Minho's rant about his brother's impossible work schedule. Somehow, he'd never even said what his brother did for living.

Jisung gasped, his mind jumping to the spider he'd kept in his pocket all day. He scrambled to scoop it out, worried he'd managed to squish it with all the running around he'd done. But when he placed it on his desk with cupped hands, he was relieved to see it was still all in one piece.

One fat, bloated piece.

"Gosh, this thing ate a lot," he muttered to himself, examining the way its abdomen bulged out abnormally. But something else was strange. Squinting down at it, he saw there were little red dots, standing out all along its abdomen. Their distance from each other wasn't evenly spaced out, as if they were brought on by some external force.

"It's not like any spider I've seen before," he noted. Maybe it was brought in from some foreign country? Or maybe it was sick, and that's why it looked and acted so unusually.

"Then-" He looked down at himself nervously. "Did it infect me with something!?" he yelled with a jump. He pulled his laptop out from under his bed and searched for 'spider disease.' But nothing aligned with even one of the symptoms he'd experienced; nothing about super strength or sticky hands or perfect vision. Definitely nothing about walking away from a car crash unharmed. He sat back with a huff.

"What the hell am I?" he asked nobody.

-

"What are you doing back here?"

"Heyy, sunbae," Jisung said cheerily to the employee at the research facility trying to go home. "How have you been?"

"It's only been a day since we last saw each other," the man said suspiciously.

Jisung rebooted.

"Right, and has it been a good day?" he asked, his tone and gestures far too animated.

"Are you trying to get your internship back already?"

"Oh, no, no, not at all. Actually I was just thinking about what a big help you were while I was here," Jisung said with a smile. "I wanted to let you know."

"Oh,” the man said. Jisung’s already phony smile turned awkward with the two of them standing around in silence. "Okay," the employee said at last, putting away the last of his supplies.

Not even a 'thank you'?

"And, you know, I wasn't here long." Jisung watched the man for any sign of a reaction, but he wouldn't even look at him. Tough crowd.

He looked off wistfully to the left. "There was this one machine, it was," he shook his hand in the air, "so cool."

He glanced back over at his superior—his former superior, he corrected—who was still competing for the title of worst brick wall.

"I never got to see it in action," Jisung said mournfully. "So… do you, you know, think..."

"Do you need to check if your weed is laced or something?"

"What!?" he choked, in genuine shock that the employee even knew what any of those words were. "No," he coughed, "no, it's not that. Well it is the composition machine, it's just..."

The employee held up a hand. "I don't care, as long as it's not something that will get me in trouble," he said, standing and walking in the direction of the machine in question.

"Thank you, sir," he said politely as he followed behind him.

On the other side of the facility, the employee unlocked and opened the door to the composition room that housed the machine. Jisung had really never been there before, but the roundabout style of the room was familiar to him. "This lab really likes its circles," he said to the employee.

The man looked back at him expectantly.

"What?"

He gestured impatiently to the machine.

"Oh, right, right, right," he said. He gently pulled the spider out of his pocket, half-terrified he'd squished it for real this time and blown his chance of figuring out what was happening to him.

But just like before, its fat, purple little body emerged intact.

"That's… disgusting," the man said, opening the little chamber where materials were placed to be analyzed for the chemicals they were made of. Jisung dropped it inside, wondering if it should be stood up on its legs.

It probably didn't matter, he thought as he stepped backwards.

He went back and corrected its position anyway.

The employee glanced at him, before coding the commands into the machine's input panel. "You want to see what this thing's made up of," he prompted.

"Yes."

"Only this thing."

"Yes."

"Okay, it's starting."

Jisung peered inside the chamber, the employee's eyes on him judgmental.

"Do you think this is like a microwave, man?"

Jisung glanced at him, then back at the spider.

"It's not gonna spin around like a TV dinner. Just relax," he said, opening the door that led outside.

"Where is, wh-where are you going?" Jisung stammered.

The man pulled a face. "Home?" Jisung must have looked worried, because the man added, "I'm gonna lock the door and leave it open. Just close it when you leave. And you know your way out of here.”

"And the… thing?" he gestured at the spider.

"Whatever you want with it," he said. "Just don't leave it in there," he called, already halfway down the hall.

"Right," Jisung breathed, looking back at the chamber.

He didn't know how long it would be, but he didn't think he'd be able to concentrate on anything else either way.

After a few minutes of sitting and nervously picking at his teeth, his nails, his thumb, the machine beeped.

A little like when your TV dinner is done.

When the control panel flashed a list of materials and percentages, Jisung jumped up from his seat to read it. Lots of carbon, obviously. But there were also strange combinations of … chemical cocktails.

Jisung stopped breathing. They looked like man-made poisons.

But when he read further on, there was also an unnatural amount of testosterone. And though the list of toxins was long, the strange and haphazard combinations they were bound in would have practically every toxin canceling out at least one other.

Jisung sucked in a breath. Whoever had tried to pump the thing full of fatal amounts of poison hadn't done a very good job of it. It seemed like he'd be okay.

"What a relie-'' he started, but when he tried to let go of the panel, he almost took it off the wall.

"WOAH, woah woah, stay," he panicked, pushing back at it. He tried to slowly peel his fingers off the panel, but they were practically glued on.

"Come on," he whined, resisting the urge to shake his hands off of the panel. He breathed in, trying to relax and focus on getting them unstuck. "I'm gonna be fine," he reassured himself. "I don't have a spider disease." His hands slowly came off the panel.

"I'm just gonna live with super strength. And maybe my hands will never stop being sticky." His hands stopped moving again.

"Please!" he yelled in frustration, on the brink of rattling the analyzer. He huffed in a breath. Only happy thoughts.

"Kittens, cotton candy, uhh," he screwed his eyes shut, "Iced americanos, baggy shirts." He snapped his eyes to his hands.

"YES!" he cheered at seeing they were his own again. Fighting the urge to run, he shut the door to that room behind him and took his normal shortcut off the grounds of that facility.

The thought of coffee subconsciously guided him to the nearest cafe.

"Iced americano," Jisung told the pretty cashier taking his order.

"Size?" she prompted.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, deep in thought as he ran through every pro and con of each size.

"...Medi- no, small. Um." He shifted his weight to his other leg. "Large?"

"Is that a question?" she asked.

"No, no I'll have a large."

"It'll be ready in a moment," she said before turning to the equipment behind her.

Drifting away from the counter, he nodded slowly.

Should he be a cashier? Going back to retail sounded like hell… but there was no way he was getting a job in science like he wanted anytime soon. He sat down in the closest booth with a thump. Maybe he should've tried harder to keep that internship.

He sighed. Not to mention what he was gonna do now that he was Superman. Maybe he'd be a bodybuilder. Or a rock climber.

"But I hate exercising," he muttered to himself as he tried to stand to go to the restroom, before colliding directly with some guy too plugged in to his phone to realize Jisung was there.

Of course, Jisung was the one in the wrong. He could tell when he started angrily: "Dude! What the-"

But he cut himself off.

"Dude," he said in an awed hush. "What the hell?"

Jisung had caught the guy’s phone, earphone case, and stylus before they hit the ground.

"How did you do that?" he asked, meekly taking his things back.

"I don't… know," Jisung said honestly.

"Iced americano," the cashier called.

Jisung glanced back at the guy—his face still pulled in awe at his reflexes—before stepping towards the counter.

Super strength, adhesive fingers, 20/20 vision, enhanced durability, and perfect reflexes.

He bounced his leg under the table.

He guessed that would explain why he could quickly tell that car was coming at him, even if he’d been too shocked to act on the reflex.

Jisung took a pensive sip of his coffee before scrawling something on the back of the cafe receipt.

"Skater." He shook his head. "What? I can just do that."

He hummed to himself, pressing the end of the pen to his teeth.

"Bodybuilder?" he seriously entertained, typing the word into the search engine. But looking through the pictures of guys who could bench press ten of him, he grimaced. "Definitely not." He typed in Olympic sports. Being an Olympian sounded like too much work, but maybe the list of sports would give him an idea of something he could do to earn money.

Jisung quickly scrolled past all the winter sports, not wanting to do anything that would make him have to stand out in the cold for hours on end.

"Swimming, boxing, rowing," he read to himself as he scrolled along. "BMX, horses, archery." He wasn’t particularly impressed by any of the ideas. He sighed; maybe he was being too picky. It didn’t help that he’d never liked any sports to begin with. Couldn’t that spider have bitten some gym junkie instead?

"Tennis, gymnastics, bik-" He sat up straight. "Gymnastics," he punched into the search engine. It was perfect, he thought to himself, scrolling through pictures of Olympians flipping and flying, some of them even suspended upside down, midair.

He swallowed. That part wasn’t as exciting a prospect, but if he could tank a car, there was no reason a fall from that height should do any more damage.

Chapter Text

So gymnastics was a bust.

It had been going great—incredibly great!—when Jisung was learning all the moves and routines like it was his destiny, foretold from the beginning of time and a part of every one of his past lives. He was even earning money from competitions and live performances—and it was only a little embarrassing when Minho found out where he'd been getting the money to not be complaining about his bills piling up everyday.

He was going home from a group performance with his teammates late one night, feeling on top of the world as he rambled on the phone with Minho: “You should have seen me,” “I might even be able to save for a new phone,” “When are you finally coming to watch me??”

Minho, half dead from exhaustion and desperately trying to end the conversation, only said: “Soon, Han,” and hung up.

Han looked at his phone, surprised. “Wow,” he said simply. But he was in too good a mood to be put down by the abrupt end, having to resist the urge to start skipping down the street from unbridled glee.

So he almost missed it when, up ahead, some thugs were hassling a guy for money in the middle of the street.

He stopped in his tracks, the darkness of the night the only protection he had from getting spotted. He quickly crouched down and snuck towards the far side of the street from them. Behind the comically perfect cover of some metallic trash cans, Han could hear their conversation.

“What are you doing out with 2 million won?” one of them asked, his excitement at hitting the jackpot thinly veiled by his cruel amusement.

“Please, please, please,” the victim begged. “I need that. I-I'm on my way to pay off medical bills.”

Han held his breath, trying not to be heard but also to not breathe in the stench of the garbage beside him. If he could just sneak behind them, he'd be able to get away unseen.

“Oh, oh my God, well in that case!” another mocked, the unfeeling edge in his voice prickling the hairs in the back of Han's neck. He scooted over as silently as he could.

”Gosh, I guess we should give it back!” a third joined in, before a rattling noise rang out that scared Han out of his skin.

He'd knocked one of the lids off the trash cans.

“What the hell was that?” Thug #3 asked, his voice quickly approaching Han's hiding place. His heart leapt into his mouth as he laid down, scrambling to throw any stray pieces of cardboard and old newspapers over himself. With one tiny crack to peer up through, he saw the ugly, scarred face of the mugger, scanning for what had made the noise. Han swallowed thickly.

“It must've just been a cat, stop being so jumpy and get back here,” Thug #1 said harshly, evidently the ringleader.

The guy who was getting surrounded starting talking again, making Han cringe. What was wrong with this guy, doesn't he have any self-preservation skills?

“Really, I won't be able to make that much back, just pl-” The merciless collision of fist against ribs made Han jolt. But instead of jumping in like some quiet voice in him was urging him to, he was only glad that that thug's eyes were off of him, giving him the opportunity to shift back on his feet, and silently pace the other way, palms clammy with nerves at his near miss. When he was safely behind the corner of a nearby shop he chanced glancing back, and his heart sank.

The guy was on the ground, being kicked at and hit at every angle but still trying his best to stumble to his feet, his defiance only seeming to fuel the thugs' anger.

Han instinctively took a step forward, but to do what? Get involved in someone else's fight?

A solid kick to the teeth had Han bracing himself against the wall.

But terrible things happened all the time, it didn't mean he had to take it all on himself. If he stepped in now, would he step into every fight he ever saw? All that for what reward, a word of thanks? Certainly not any real cash reward.

He convinced himself it wasn't his problem, and took off sprinting in the direction of his apartment. He didn't stop running, even opting for the stairs, until he was in front of his door, and heaved.

He didn't sleep well that night.

In the morning he turned on the TV for once, just to have something playing in the background to drown out the incessant thoughts in his head that he told himself were nothing more than intrusive, useless thoughts. He was cutting an apple into way too small pieces when a news story came on.

A man, 21, was found dead right in Han's neighborhood, the victim of a mugging. The police found that he lived with his mother, and his younger sister was in the hospital.

Han groaned. That poor guy was getting mugged and he hadn't even been lying. It really was for medical bills. He shut the TV off and threw the remote at the wall, hot waves of guilt coming over him.

Within a few days Han was out of a job, unable to focus on any routines until he'd finally told his teammates to find a replacement, but at least he had… webs. To make the compound he'd had to sneak back into the lab he used to intern at and borrow their supplies. Borrowing them, Han told himself. After some trial and error and one unfortunate case with a webbed-up stray cat outside the lab (he'd never stop being sorry to Meows), he came up with something sturdy enough to hold him, but light enough to carry around in shooters on his wrist.

His first real use of them was to climb up onto the roof of his apartment building that evening.

From there he could see the hospital he'd found out that guy's little sister was staying in—Ayoung, he'd learned.

He'd made an anonymous donation of 200k won, nothing compared to the actual amount, but it was the money he'd made that night after splitting everything up between his teammates and him. Not even being cheap and factoring how much he'd have left of that after taxes, like the weaker, selfish part of him had considered doing for a moment.

It wasn't his fault terrible things happened. But being the only one with the power to stop it, and throwing away the chance was on him. Only on him.

Han pressed down on the buttons in the center of his palms to see how far his webs would go, and when they finally hit a building, he grabbed on hard and jumped.

-

Dressed in a terrible DIY mask, a red hoodie and some arm warmers, Han was going to try his best. After a few days of trying to get the hang of things, swinging on webs, swinging his fists, etc. etc., he started patrolling the area around his house. On one night like that, Han was perched up next to a security camera that he kept making thumbs-up and finger hearts at.

Soon enough, from his vantage point, Han eyed a group of shady men, hoods up and whispering conspiratorially to one another, following someone at a distance.

"Finally," he said to himself, tensing to act. "Some action tonight." One of the men forced the guy they were following to turn around and started demanding something, confirming Han's suspicions. He swung down behind them and yelled “Hey!” From there he could tell the guy they were hassling was young, probably a student. "You don't have anything better to do on a Friday night?"

The bald one gave the others an amused smile, though Han suspected it wasn't the kind of funny where they were laughing with him.

"The hell are you?" Baldy said, walking towards Han and leaving the student behind.

"Leave the kid alone, and I'll spare you,” he said in his toughest voice. Which sounded like he needed to cough.

The student, for his part, didn't seem the least afraid of any part of this, eyeing the situation with a kind of bemused curiosity.

"Spare me?" he laughed. "I'm the one who's showing you mercy by not beating you."

"Ahh, scary words!" Han cried. "My worst fear," he trembled.

That did it.

The guy closest to him swung at his face, thrown to the ground easily enough by Han just pulling him forward and off balance.

The next guy came at him with a punch to the stomach.

"Aghughhugh," Han groaned, mortally wounded. "Just kidding," he said, straightening up and punching him in the temple. He knew from experience that getting hit there made even focusing on your hand impossible. Too much experience. "Though that's a rare one, people don't really go for the gut punch."

"You're such jokes!" Baldy yelled at his henchmen before coming at Han with two consecutive swings.

"Oo! Ah!" he voiced, avoiding both and shoving him.

He stumbled backwards, surprised. "Did you just… push me?"

"Yeah."

"Have you never been in a fight before?"

"No sir, so please spare me sir," he mocked, baiting him into another punch where he could grab him and throw him to the ground. He landed with a thud and a groan. "Oh don't whine, it could be worse." He paused. "Usually they have knives, none of you even had a knife?" The only response he got was groans from the ground. Looking up he was surprised to see the student still eyeing the scene. "Hi," he greeted, walking up.

"Hey..." the kid responded, watching the dazed men scurry away.

"Don't worry about them," Han said. "They won't bother you anymore."

"Oh, I'm not worried about them,” he said vaguely.

"...Cool," he nodded hesitantly. "You don't mean you're worried about me, right?"

"No," he said, sizing him up. "But who are you?"

"I'm Spiderman," he answered brightly, happy to say it out loud.

"You're British?" the guy clocked, semi-correct.

"That's my accent, but I'm-" Han mentally slapped himself. What was the point of a secret identity if he was gonna tell the first random on the street he was from Malaysia? "Who's to say?" he dumbly added. He shook off the topic like water. "Hey, but, what are you doing out here this late?"

"Going home."

It was pretty late, even for anything after school. "From an academy?"

The kid laughed oddly, the sound not exactly humorless but still off. "I'm not a high schooler."

Oh. "Then do you happen to live at home while you're studying?" Han didn't know what made him so interested in this stranger.

"I'm not in school at all," he said.

"Really? You seem so young." It was rude of him to keep badgering the kid, but he wanted to figure him out.

"I'm 22. University is just beneath me."

"Oh," Han laughed, the sound strangled. "Right..." The leery glint in this kid's eyes was really starting to get weird. He'd probably overstepped. "Well, I gotta go now, Mr..."

"Jeongin. I'm Yang Jeongin."

"See you around, Yang Jeongin," he said, taking off in a flash.

Chapter Text

Han always approached everything too hard, too fast, too much. As he hung upside down off the edge of a residential building miles away from his apartment, tangled up in his own webs in broad daylight with his arms uselessly pinned against his chest, he figured that was probably why his life was the way it was.

Like how he got way too intense whenever he liked someone; it was probably why Minho—Lee Minho who'd only told Han not to starve to death when he'd heard he quit his job out of nowhere—was the only one who'd stuck around him so long.

How he overestimated everything about himself; it was probably why he'd come at a biochemistry degree with so much enthusiasm, only to drop out of university less than a year later from burnout.

And it was probably why he thought he could pull all-nighters not just to patrol his neighborhood, but the entire district of Gangdong.

Han sighed. Too busy going over every single life decision that had led him to this moment, he didn't even notice he was slowly slipping.

Creeeeeeak. “I should go back to school,” he said to himself wearily. Squeeeeeeeeeak. “Maybe if I j-”

Han let out the most ungodly scream known to man. He flailed through the air for some kind of purchase and only hit every. single. rail.

When he landed on the ground with a sad thump and a broken ego, Han debated laying there facedown. Begrudgingly he dug his fingers into the ground beneath him and turned onto his back.

“Should I quit?” he said to no one, the familiar question acid in his throat. As quickly as the thought had come, he got to his feet and shoved the idea away. Because if nothing else—if he didn't have a conscience, if he wasn't determined to use the best and worst thing that had ever happened to him to the fullest—Han still wanted to prove to himself he was actually capable of committing to something after it stopped being so easy.

So, after that mini mental pep talk, he shot up the building again and scoped for trouble from the rooftops. Luckily for him, it was never far in this part of the city.

He looked down on a small, secluded parking lot where a man with an atrocious mohawk smashed the driver-side window of a car and climbed inside.

“Doubt he forgot his keys,” Han muttered. Backing up towards the far edge of the rooftop he stood on, he took a running start, flipped off his hands, missed his footing and

“SHIT!”

knocked himself so far off-balance he soared gracelessly through the air. “Oh God, oh my God,” he breathlessly let out; it was so not his day. Out of pure survival instinct he pulled in his limbs to center himself and, to his utter shock, landed right on his feet. He looked up at the car thief, ecstatic someone else had seen his brand new trick.

"Wasn't that amazing!?" he beamed. "I didn't even know I could do that!"

"What, what the hell," the thief gaped, stepping out of the car on wobbly legs.

"Oh yeah, and stop stealing that,” Han said more sternly. “It's illegal."

The car thief was a lot softer than he looked, bolting as soon as he was told to stop committing a crime.

"God, I wish it was always that eas-" Han's head was violently shoved down with a resounding thunk! He slowly turned around, head ducked the entire time, until he met the alarmed eyes of a second thief. "Are you- Was that a joke?" he sputtered in complete disbelief.

"Uh-uh-uh," he said like, I don't know.

"Neither do I," he said, grabbing the guy by his long greasy hair and shoving him towards the brick wall. "That was dirty. I could have died you jerk."

"Please, please spare me."

"Well of course, I'm not some monster," he said as he webbed him to the wall.

"What is this!?" he yelled, panicked.

"Would you relax? It's just sulfur and chlorine."

The guy's eyes went huge with fear as he struggled to get out of the spiderweb.

"Okay, okay, that sounds really bad but I just m- Stop screaming, dude, it's harmless." Han sighed. "No style at all," he said as he pulled up 112 on his phone, bemoaning the state of criminals these days.

When it took a moment for the operator to pick up, Han locked eyes with the thief. Busy line, he mouthed. 

"Oh, hi,” he greeted. “There's a car thief here. His friend ran—rough by the way," he sympathetically told the guy, "but I've still got him here.

“Yeah he assaulted me," he said, a pearl-clutching hand to his chest.

"But I'm fine, I just need the police. 15 minutes?” he repeated, unable to keep the smile out of his words.

“Amazing, thanks! Hey, by the way, has anyone ever told you 112 operators are the real heroes? No? You are," he smiled before closing his phone.

"A- a flip phone?" the thief asked.

Han tilted his head at him. "Did you work up all that courage just to ask that? Yes it's a flip phone, defeats the purpose of-" He gestured down at his costumed self, "all this if my phone is just traceable."

"A-ah," he said as he shook.

"Good question though, there's no such thing as a dumb question, keep 'em coming."

"Please leave me alone,” he said through clenched teeth.

"Why are you afraid of me?" Han asked, severely offended. "I'm not doing anything to you even though you whacked me in the back of head with a-!" He looked around. "What even was that?"

"A… bat," he answered.

Han couldn't hold back his laughter at his straightforwardness. "You're chatty, the guys I catch normally don't talk to me this much."

The thief nodded, putting his eyes to the ground.

"No, it's great, go on!”

Silence, save for the man's labored breathing.

“Fine, I can take a hint. See you la-" Han cut himself off. "Well, I guess I won't. Because you'll be in jail."

Han pointed with his index, and then at himself with a thumb. "And I'm not going to go see you that would-" He pulled a face. "That would be weird." 

He went to pat his new friend on the shoulder, but he flinched away from him. "Come on, don't be like that,” he said, dejected he hadn't immediately charmed this criminal away from his life of crime. “I've gotta go,” he saluted. “Bye!” and in a shot he was up the wall and half a block away.

Within 15 minutes, when the police came, the criminal had already given up holding himself up on his legs, opting to put his full weight on the webs that weren't going anywhere

"Jesus," one of the two cops on the scene said as he got out of the car, eyes glued to whatever was trapping a grown man to the wall.

"Please help me," he croaked as they approached. "It's in my socks."

"My God..." the older cop awed, eyes traveling the entire extent of the webby mess. "The one who called in, he did this to you?"

"Yes," he nodded vigorously. "That freak said it's all sulfur."

The younger cop stepped back, pushing his superior back with a hand to his chest.

"Please!” the thief begged. “You have to help me, I don't wanna die."

"If we don't know what that is, we need to wait for an expert to get you out of that," the younger cop said.

"I don't have that kind of time!" the thief yelled furiously.

"And we do?" the older cop asked.

Something seemed to dawn on the thief. "Oh my God, are you leaving me here?"

Just as he said, the older cop pulled away his junior by the shoulder, walking back towards the car. "Minkyu, it must be that guy, right?" he asked gravely as the man shouted at them to Get me the hell out of here!

"The vigilante," Minkyu confirmed. He turned back to look at the swearing man to the wall stuck to the wall like a fly. "The one with a spider theme."

"How strange,” he said thoughtfully. “Vigilantes usually kill their marks."

"We don't know that won't kill him, Kyung. Let's get the doctor here as soon as possible."

-

Han swung into his room through the window he always left open. He was running low on web fluid, so he'd just grab the extra cases he kept in his wardrobe to-

Rustling came from outside his room; without thinking he threw himself at the door.

”Han?”

Crap. It was Minho.

“Give me a sec!” he yelled, pulling off his hoodie, toeing off his pants, and shoving it all under his bed faster than he'd ever done anything.

“What's-” The doorknob started turning.

“I'm changing!” he yelled, and it was the truth, but that never stopped Minho from barging in anyway. “I'm serious, just-!”

Too late. “Oh, you weren't kidding,” Minho said nonchalantly when he walked in.

“What's wrong with you??” he asked, pulling on a random oversized t-shirt he got off his bed. At least his Spiderman things were out of sight.

“We started working with this source-”

Wow, Han awed mentally. No pleasantries, no Hi, what's up?, just straight to the point.

“Are you listening?” Minho asked.

”Always,” Han said dryly.

“It might not be the life you dreamed of, lab coats and eating chemicals or whatever you do.”

Han had to keep himself from snorting at the random thought.

“But we started working with this source for conservation efforts. He's having an open dinner tomorrow. Maybe you could come with me?”

Han peered at the business card in his hand. “Jeong Seongmin?”

”Yeah, heard of him?”

”Never,” he said as he took the card. “But I guess anything's worth a shot.” Han suddenly remembered he was still trouserless with an intruder in his home. “Now would you get out of my house?”

”Hey, I'm giving you an opportunity here and this is how you treat me?”

”Yeah, now get out,” Han said as he pushed Minho out of his bedroom and toward the door.

”I trekked all the way over here because you weren't answering your phone-”

”Minho-ya, it's a 5 minute walk from your place,” he said, placing his face against Minho's back in defeat.

“So? That's farther than I walk to the convenience store and this is how you treat me?” he said, unable to help his laugh.

It was so hard to keep up a semblance of annoyance against that laugh. “Come on, I have somewhere to be,” he tried.

”Would you be offended if I said I didn't believe you?”

”I wouldn't believe me either,” Han relented. Spidermanning could wait a while longer, he supposed. So while Minho 'cooked' (hung around in his kitchen for 10 minutes talking without doing anything) Han turned on the TV (and obviously put on some pants), when a news report flashed on the screen. Han sat up straight, turning up the volume.

“Police have officially acknowledged the existence of the masked vigilante known as 'Spiderman,'” the news anchor stated, a blurry picture of him taking up the whole screen. It took everything in Han not to visibly cringe or complain about the terrible picture. Still the fact they were using his name at all was cause for celebration. “-After a man was found stuck to a wall in Gangdong-gu with a previously unknown compound officers have unofficially dubbed 'arachnicide.'” Awesome name, Han thought, if it didn't imply debilitating poison.

”Never thought something like this would happen here,” Minho said.

”Where did you think it would happen?” Han asked.

“Like, the States. New York City,” he said in English, completely butchering the pronunciation of 'city.'

Han fought back a laugh as he turned his attention back to the TV. “As the man turned out to be a wanted criminal with three counts of assault and robbery, he was taken into custody and is expected to face trial soon. However, the police emphasize this is not a condonation of vigilante action and-”

Han switched the channel to whatever was playing a terrible movie they could laugh at together. “Kind of sounds like one to me,” he said with a smile.

“Are you falling in love?”

”Sorry?” Han choked.

“What's with that look on your face?”

”I just- I think it's-” Be natural. “Chill, what he's doing. Spiderman.” Chill?? he mentally yelled at himself.

“Okay… Oh, I said I'd make something.”

”I know.”

The refrigerator door opened behind him. ”Do you know you only have one egg and some butter in your fridge?”

Han did finger guns at him. “No I did not.”

-

Minkyu walked out of the police superintendent's office with his head held high, his face the picture of calm, collected composure.

But as he slowly closed the door behind him, his entire frame melted into dejection.

When he slunk into the office his team was stationed in, Kyung Taeko asked: “No luck?”

”My face give away that much?” he asked sarcastically, slumping into the nearest chair. “I told you you should've talked to the superintendent,” he said moodily, picking at his fingernails. “Old people always have more in common with each other.”

”I'd hoped your sweet face would soften him up,” Kyung said.

Minkyu leveled him with a look, his entire face scrunched in disappointment.

“My fault.”

Minkyu sighed and put a hand through his hair. “This is insane right? Literally insane?” he asked with wide eyes.

“It is,” Kyung agreed diplomatically.

“People- I mean kids,” He punctuated the word with an open hand for severity, "-are treating that Geomi like he's some kind of god," he said, refusing to say the name Spiderman out loud.

Why English, was this the States? Even through the literal translation it sounded dumb, so Minkyu made up his own name for that guy who liked spiders so much. But surprisingly Geomi wasn't much of a hit.

Minkyu sat up and looked right at Kyung. "I know you don't have Twitter, being-" He gestured vaguely at his forty-year old superior. "But you should see the kinds of stuff people say on there. He's even got an account on there! Thousands of followers!”

”...That doesn't sound very smart of him,” Kyung noted.

”No, so it's probably not his,” he conceded, “but still! People would listen to that guy, they love him without question. Whatever he ends up doing with all that power won't be good.”

”Really, Minkyu, I'm not the one to convince,” Kyung said. “Did you tell all this to the superintendent?”

Minkyu sat back in his seat. “Not in so many words.” He'd stuck to more data-driven figures about how many criminals Spiderman had manhandled in just a few weeks and spelling out the specific clause that deemed vigilantism a crime.

”You probably weren't emotional enough about it.”

Minkyu scoffed. “How's emotional gonna help us secure a team to track this guy down?”

”Not everyone's as logically minded as you,” Kyung said. “Next time, show him you're actually passionate about these cases.”

Passion wasn't the word Minkyu would use to describe his feelings, but he let it slide.

”It might help more than you think,” he added.

”He didn't seem very open to a next time,” Minkyu grumbled. In fact Superintendent Koo had seemed as convinced as anyone else of Spiderman's inherent inability to do wrong, discouraging Minkyu from doing anything to stir up the public's wrath against anyone who disagreed with his methods. “He's just as complacent as everyone else here is.”

”Ouch. I thought we were a team,” Kyung said to lighten the mood.

Minkyu cracked a smile at the attempt. “Not you of course, sunbaenim,” he said, exaggerating the honor in his address.

“We'll figure this out soon, Minkyu, don't worry.”

”Yeah,” he nodded, casting his gaze out the window, the daytime skyline stretching out before him. “Yeah, soon.”

-

When Han got in the taxi stopped outside his apartment that Saturday evening, Minho didn't hide how he eyed his outfit.

”What?” he asked, self-consciously straightening his tie.

“I should have come over earlier,” he sighed with a vague head shake before leaning forward to give the driver the address of Jeong Seongmin's dinner party.

“What, why, what's wrong with my clothes?” Han asked, looking down at his outfit. Between his black slacks, brown sweater vest and matching tucked in tie, it wasn't a showstopper, but he was presentable. At least by his maybe too-low standards.

“Han, you're supposed to be my date and you look like catering.”

”Is that some innuendo...” he said with a small smile.

Minho hit him in the shoulder. “You look like a waiter!”

He blinked blankly, taken aback by Minho's apparently real interest in his fashion choices. “What's wrong with my outfit?” he asked with wide eyes, glancing down at it again.

“It's just...” Minho gestured broadly.

“What, everything?”

He gave a small nod.

”Everything??” Han scoffed, in disbelief that Minho was being so openly judgy in that moment. It's not like they had time for him to go back inside and change. “I didn't know you were such a master of fashion,” he said as he sunk down into the seat and crossed his arms, before they fell into an incomprehensible conversation about fashion and colors and patterns—a bunch of things they both pretended to be experts about.

They talked so long Han hadn't even realized they were at their destination until the taxi came to a stop in front of the entrance of a towering hotel.

“Woww,” he awed as they got out of the taxi. “This is what they give reporters?” he asked as he came to stand by Minho on the other side.

”Just if you're good,” he smiled, buttoning up his black jacket, straightening out his black tie, brushing the hair out of his face only for it to fall right back in his eyes.

“It'll be alright,” Han assured him, sensing the preening was an outlet for Minho's nerves. “Rich people don't bite.”

”That you know of,” he said as he adjusted the collar of his white shirt.

“Stay still, you're messing up your hair,” he said, trying to brush back the strands he'd alienated. “I know I don't look great,” he admitted, a little guilty about his initial defensiveness. “Sorry about that.”

”It's nothing,” Minho said, looking down at him.

”It's your first time around these kinds of people, I really should have tried harder.”

”It's your first time too,” he said as he brushed Han's hand away. “Let's just go,” he said, leading the way through the glass doors to the foyer.

Han had to hold back an embarrassing gasp. Obviously it was a fancy hotel, but this was extravagant. Luxurious. Another level of fancy. The floor they walked on was buffed to an inch of its life, reflecting his stunned face and Minho's purposely blank face back at him. The ceiling soared above them with not one, not even three, but five chandeliers hanging from it that doused the room in gold light.

“Who needs five??” Han whispered, grabbing Minho's shoulder.

“I don't-” Minho turned around, looking for something. “I don't know.”

Columns shot up on either side of them, starting on a modest rectangular base before meeting the ceiling above them with gold finishes, the space beyond them holding plush couches and wooden tables and-

“Minho, there's more!” he pointed. “There's thirteen chandeliers in here!” Beyond even those were velvet curtains with, yep, more gold finishes, all closed tight to would-be intruders, which is a little like what Han was starting to feel like standing there in his forty dollar outfit.

”Han!” Minho said like he'd been calling his name for a while.

“What?”

“Where… do… we go…?” he asked, barely contained stress behind his words.

“Uh…” He craned his neck to look around. There was barely anyone in the room to ask, and none of them looking very approachable.

“I'd try the reception counter first, boys,” a man said behind them, scaring both Han and Minho so badly they jumped out of their skin.

“Sorry, sor-” Minho cut off his own apologies, recognition settling in his eyes. “Jeong Seongmin,” he said before bowing hastily. He elbowed Han to follow.

“Uh, hello, sir,” Han greeted clumsily.

Jeong Seongmin bowed back, much more graciously and composed than they did. “You're the reporter from the Blazoner,” he stated. “Lee...?”

”Minho,” he finished for him. “And this is my friend Han Jisung,” who bowed again, for lack of anything else to do. “He's a very gifted STEM student.”

Han had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from reacting. STEM? Way to be specific. And wrong, when he'd dropped out of university two years ago.

“He's the ace of all his classes, and he has an especially pointed interest in conservation and wildlife, so when he'd heard it was your party he was ecstatic to come along.”

Han nodded, trying not to laugh. He had to hand it to him; for being out of his mind with nerves he was BS-ing this a lot better than he ever could. And now he knew that if he ever needed a cover story Minho was the man for the job. Of course, he'd probably only need a cover story that had to do with Spiderman, and he wasn't going to let the person closest to him get involved with something so draining, not to mention potentially dangerous.

Minho pinched him in the side, snapping him out of his monologue. Oh shit it was his turn now.

”Oh, yeah,” Han nodded. “I have a lot of respect for the work you do.” Minho's eyes were burning a hole in the side of his face. “For all those… plants. And animals.”

Not noticing or otherwise ignoring the lack of confidence in those words Jeong Seongmin asked: “STEM, did you say?” Actually he was ignoring all that fluff and flattering they made up. A little rude, considering all the effort that had gone into it. “What area do you specialize in?”

”Biochemistry was m-”

Minho shot him a look so withering he almost passed out then and there.

“-is, is my degree, but I also do some technical engineering.”

“A biologist, huh?” That was certainly one way to interpret his words.

“...Yes,” Han confirmed hesitantly. Whatever would make him look better.

“Please,” Jeong Seongmin said, holding up his arm to gesture in the direction of one set of the velvet curtains to their right. “Let's go inside, shall we?”

Han and Minho glanced at each other, before heading where they were guided.

The rest of the night went just as smoothly. Which is to say they were out of commission in record-breaking speed.

“I like you,” Han said when they'd found their seats.

“Thank you,” Minho responded to the out-of-the-blue statement.

“I think I'll hate myself if I just sit here looking at all these rich people next to you.”

”So will I,” Minho said, looking around at the other invitees in the spacious dining room. "I think we might be the youngest people here."

Han swallowed down some gross red wine with a grimace. "Yeah, by twenty years."

"More like forty," he said before standing.

So began the two introverts' mission to try to talk to as many people as they could, and to hype the other up to do the same to mixed results. And also to eat as much weird rich people food as they could, which went a lot better.

By the time they left a few hours later, the party was still fully in swing but their social batteries were completely drained.

Sitting on the steps outside the hotel, waiting for the taxi Minho had called to show up, Han started thinking back. “Hey but… don't you think that guy was kind of looking at me weird?”

Minho, leaning back on the pottery of some very expensive looking plants, pulled his tie left and right to loosen it. “It would really help if you specified,” he said.

“Jeong Seongmin. I thought he kept looking at me.”

Minho, drained and slightly buzzed, turned towards him expressionlessly.

“Yeah, kinda like that,” Han joked.

“Now that you mention it, I guess,” he said, kicking at the pebbles by his feet. “He was kinda strange to you.”

"Right? I wonder if he knows me from somewhere."

"Maybe he's just a strange person," Minho said. “That's not a crime.”

“Which is good for us or you'd be serving a life sentence,” Han joked.

Minho bared his teeth in the approximation of a smile. “You'd get the death penalty,” he said flatly. “Oh, the cab's here,” he said brightly.

Chapter Text

Waking up to scroll through the dozens of notifications he'd gotten overnight, Han had the thought that his phone had never busier than after he became Spiderman.

Not in the sense that friends and girls were blowing up his phone at all hours of the day; in fact his friend count had stayed a resolute 1 from the day he'd gotten bit.

But since he'd taken up the masked moniker, he'd managed to gain something of a small following. Admirers—could he even call them fans?—publicly applauded his crime-fighting efforts over the past few weeks, calling him more responsive, more effective, friendlier, quicker, down-to-earth, a hero for the average people-

Okay he was getting sidetracked. To put it simply, he was preferred to the police force.

“Just so I'm not out of touch,” he murmured into his pillow, scrolling through the notifications of the most influential posts under any and all Spiderman tags he followed. He couldn't help smiling at the praise though, almost feeling ridiculous. Was he about to start kicking his feet and twirling his hair?

And sure there was the occasional lonely conspiracy theorist or a middle-aged skeptic. But Han could hardly bring himself to care about their opinions when people his age, practically his own neighbors, approved of him and cheered him on.

Though—Han shuddered at the traumatic memory—he had once found… a certain post: someone fantasizing, in graphic detail to say the least, about what he must look like under all those layers, about how his m-

He'd never scrolled past a post faster.

But despite it all, he was glad he was using his abilities to make a difference, that his life was worthwhile for once.

Leave it to Lee Minho, of course, to bring him back to reality.

Han
Han
Han, he spammed gracelessly.
Are you there?

Yes, I'm here, he typed out with an annoyed huff.

That guy's asking for you
You sure you don't know him?

Who

Jeong Seongmin-ssi read the short, ominous text. What did that guy want with him on a Monday morning?
Can I give him your number?

Han sat up in bed with a start. Even though he was sitting in his own home he felt strangely self-conscious: he wasn't wearing a shirt, and he hadn't even brushed his teeth.

Now? he asked, hoping his despair wasn't coming through in text form.

Yes now, he texted bluntly.

Fine, he responded before scrambling out of bed to put together a semblance of professionalism that was capable of transferring across the phone line.

“Hello?” he answered the phone a minute later, wiping his mouth of Listerine with the heel of his palm.

"Hello,” the man on the other end replied. “This is the young biochemist I spoke with the other night?"

Han wasn't anywhere close to being authorized to even be in a real lab by himself, but what would he say after all that fluffing up the other night, 'Reports of my competence have been greatly exaggerated'?

"Y-yes,” he hesitated. “That's me."

"If you'll excuse my forwardness, I'd like to meet with you tonight,” he said.

“O-oh,” Han said, not sure what else to say.

“If, of course, your schedule allows,” he added.

Han looked over at the perpetually blank calendar in his kitchen, hung up on his refrigerator door for appearances. "Uh, yes, I'll be free," he answered, rubbing his eye. "What will this meeting be about?"

"Don't worry, you'll be compensated for your time and labor.”

That was not at all what had been on his mind. "Oh,” he said with a smile. “Thanks for letting me know!" Now it was all that was on his mind.

"I'll send you the address. Be there at 9 pm."

Nine was bizarrely late—”Sounds good, Mr. Jeong!"—but Han would take what he could get.

Jeong Seongmin hung up, leaving Han standing in his bedroom, wondering what his life was going to look like after that day.

Later that day, Han scanned the address he'd given to the taxi driver. Swinging around the district had given him a lot more awareness of the streets and neighborhoods around him, so it was easy for him to tell at a glance that, wherever Jeong Seongmin wanted him, it was farther out from the city than he was used to being.

Rather than theorize about what this guy he'd met once wanted with him so late and so out of the way from the rest of the city—he mentally facepalmed, he really should have pressed for details earlier—he pulled up his texts to Minho.

wyd, Han started.

Are you on your way?

Yeah. Okay forget not thinking about it. Did he say what he wanted with me?

No
He walked into the office and before I could even say anything he was asking about you
You must've been pretty popular at that party

Han and popular were two concepts on parallel planes; they did not intersect.

Doubt

When Jisung arrived at his destination, he stepped out of the taxi with an air of caution. He couldn't tell what the actual building he was supposed to be was, the three-way crossroad lined with one-story identical buildings with garage doors facing out. The dim light of the streetlights was no help.

Right as he was debating getting back in the taxi, a loud rumbling sounded out at his side and Jisung nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Hello!" Jeong greeted, coming out of the garage he'd just opened and meeting Jisung with an enthusiastic handshake. He couldn't even tell how Jeong would have been able to tell he was there.

"Hello..." Jisung responded, looking into the garage behind. It seemed set up as a makeshift laboratory, with screens, vials, and test tubes everywhere.

"I apologize for rushing you, but I'd like to get right into the work,” he said, gesturing behind him.

Jisung nodded. So would he.

"I have a strong interest in conservation, as you can probably tell,” he said, leading him into the garage-lab. “And I have a lot of resources to invest in it.”

If the extravagant dinner was anything to go by, he wasn't wrong.

“But I'm not very gifted at the technical parts of it all, the science and math behind it." He looked at Jisung with an almost sheepish grin. "I've been looking for a kind of brain for a while. To help me with some roadblocks I've encountered. Your background as a biochemist will be very helpful."

Yes. His very experienced background. "What problems are you trying to solve?" Jisung asked.

Jeong awkwardly smiled again. "Just some wild ideas I'd like to test out if I can. All you have to work out is this," he said, pulling up some documents on the huge screen closest to them. "Ways to safely spark these kinds of reactions within living organisms,” he said as he pointed to blurbs of information. “How to cancel out catalysts like these. Things like that."

Jisung leaned toward the computer screen. Some of them looked intuitive enough, problems he might have actually solved if he'd gone a few more months at university. Others, with what seemed like dozens of conditions, seemed way above his pay grade.

"Mr. Jeong," he prompted.

He was slow to respond. "Yes?" he said stiffly.

"I'm not...” He cast his eyes back up to the glowing screen. “-saying I won't do it. I'm just curious why you're hiring a student to do these kinds of things for you. I mean, don't you have connections and… stuff like that?"

Jeong was quiet again. Jisung was starting to get a little nervous, sitting with this stranger in an even stranger garage. But he didn't want to not ask and later find out he'd secretly been the brains behind some murder cult, as insane as the thought was.

"I thought you might wonder," Jeong finally said.

Am I about to be sold for my organs? Jisung thought with sudden alarm.

"I hope this doesn't diminish your confidence."

Oh, God, here it comes. The buyers are around the corner.

"I just preferred to give you the opportunity, as someone with less experience." For the first time since Jisung had arrived, Jeong turned to properly face him. "I hope you don't feel patronized, it was never my intention."

"Oh," he said dumbly. "Oh, that's very kind of you, sir."

Jeong smiled. "Thank you for understanding. People often take my words the wrong way."

"Same for me," he said honestly.

Dude, he texted Minho a bit later when Jeong had gone to his own corner of the garage to work by himself. I totally thought I was about to get serial killed.

What??
When???
Where????

By your source!

LOLLLLL You watch too many movies lol

Jisung huffed a laugh before stuffing his phone back in his pocket, shifting his attention back to the easier tasks in front of him.

-

Minkyu burst into the new floor he'd been assigned. "Kyung!"

"I know!" said the man who was already sitting there.

"They're really giving us a team!” he said, leaning against the door frame for support. “Oh my God, I'd been planning out a speech for you to give the superintendent and everything!" he said with relief.

"A-A speech?" he stuttered.

"Yeah,” he smiled. “Something about your wife dying and you needing to finish this case before she goes."

Kyung's face was suddenly unreadable. "...I've been divorced four years, Minkyu."

"No, I know." They stood there looking at each other a moment, his joke not having landing nearly as well as he'd hoped. "Do you have the names?" he asked abruptly, coming over to where Kyung sat in front of a computer.

"They should have emailed it to me..." he said, looking through his work account.

"Print it out,” he urged. “I want it to feel official." 

Kyung double-clicked to send the single-page document to the printer. 

"Man,” he sighed. “I wonder how it'll feel to be in charge for once."

"Don't get too ahead of yourself,” Kyung chuckled.

"Of course,” he relented. “I'll only be second-in-command to your excellency."

"How much caffeine did you have?" he asked good-naturedly, turning around in his chair to face Minkyu.

"I've seriously never been more excited," he beamed.

"I guess it's hard for me to relate. I haven't had that much energy since the dinosaurs were around. It's out," he stated, taking the still-warm sheet of paper and holding it up for his junior to read over his head.

"Look, one's a foreigner," Minkyu pointed out over his shoulder.

"Indeed,” he nodded.

"And a sergeant! The superintendent seriously had a huge change of heart!"

"...Indeed,” he agreed a little less readily.

"The new recruits must have already been told right?"

"Should be on their way," he confirmed.

Minkyu straightened his shoulders and made his face the picture of calm professionalism. "Put it on a clipboard, I'll check them off as they come."

"Is this...?" a meek voice asked right on cue.

Minkyu turned around at its source. "Oh..." he involuntary let out.

"Sorry,” the kid said. A kid. “This must not be my new assignment."

"Oh, no, are you..." Minkyu scanned the list of names and ranks. "Yang Jeongin?” he guessed. "Police-" He looked down with a start. "Police officer?" he whispered to Kyung, disbelieving.

"Yes, that's me..." he said, looking unsure of himself.

Forcing down all his pessimistic thoughts about how young this guy was, how his rank was the lowest one possible, how this might be a precursor for things to come, Minkyu stepped forward, introduced himself, and offered his hand. "Pleasure to meet you,” he smiled.

"Lee Minkyu?" another voice asked before someone else stepped inside the office.

"Hello," he greeted the man in front of him. "Who would you be?"

"Sergeant Seo Changbin, sir."

Minkyu's heart lifted at that, remembering that they would at least have him on the team. He seemed a bit young too, but if he'd managed to rise through the ranks despite it, that was all the better.

"A pleasure to meet you,” Minkyu said. “Ah," he said as he remembered: "You can choose from any of the empty cubicles in here,” he gestured to all of the ones surrounding him. “They're...” He laughed nervously—he seriously had to get it together. “-all empty.”

Before he could dwell on his blunder too long, a third person came through the door.

"Detective Bang Chan, sir," the man said as he bowed.

He bowed back. "Lee Minkyu." So far all these men were young.

As the three of them made their introductions to each other, Minkyu tried to convince himself how well this was going. Sure they were on the less experienced side, but who wanted a bunch of Kyungs to take on a case like this? It was good they were young and had stamina.

Still, he thought, he wouldn't mind having one other experienced, mature cop on his side.

The door opened, snapping his thoughts away, and Minkyu quickly consulted his clipboard.

These were children, he thought to himself, his mind beginning to preemptively resign itself to failure. "Officers Lee Felix and Kim Seungmin?" he asked, careful to keep any disappointment out of his tone.

“Yes,” they politely confirmed with the sync of twins.

The superintendent had really handed over… children. Minkyu wanted to hit himself for having had so much hope, no wonder he'd changed his mind so quickly.

"I'm Lee Minkyu," he graciously greeted all the same. "Please, get comfortable. We'll start work soon."

When the others were fully engrossed in conversation with each other, he finally felt comfortable enough to silently express his anxiety, widening his eyes at Kyung.

"Don't be prejudiced,” Kyung chastised, reading his mind. “Let's see how things go first."

Sure. Okay. He could do that.

"I'll go get the documents for the briefing,” Kyung said as he stood. “Play nice with them."

Even that phrase wasn't helping. When Minkyu walked up to the circle, he was surprised to find two of them engaged in a conversation in English, the rest of them watching attentively.

"They just found out they're both Australian," Seungmin clued him in.

"Ah, how nice." And it did look sweet, the both of them smiling as they wrapped up whatever brief talk they'd just had. 

Changbin took the lull to ask Minkyu: "Hey, how old are you?"

"Older than us," Chan replied curtly, his abrupt change in tone startling Minkyu.

"I know that,” he replied way too tensely. “I just wanted to know the year." Minkyu had to keep from whipping his head from Chan to Changbin. What the hell was that?

"I'm twenty-seven, I don't mind you asking,” he settled on. No use in making a big deal out of… whatever had just happened. “You must be about...” Guessing would probably help lighten the mood, even if he was totally off. “Twenty-three years old."

"Oh, wow!” Changbin awed. “You're right.”

Despite his better judgment, Minkyu couldn't help himself from using the opportunity to ask: "Who's the maknae here?"

The three youngest ones looked at each other, not sure themselves.

"I'm twenty-two," Seungmin put forward.

"Hey, me too!" Felix said excitedly. "September 15th!"

"Oh, I'm the 22nd of that month!"

"So is it Seungmin?" Changbin asked.

"I'm twenty-one," Jeongin offered.

Minkyu knew the question wouldn't make him feel any better, and still he'd asked. "How have you liked being officers so far?" he changed the topic to.

When all three gave some variation of this being their first assignment, Minkyu could only "Ahh" and nod slowly.

Because of course it was.

Changbin cleared his throat. He must have had the same thought.

"I'm happy to be the one to help you out, then,” Minkyu said diplomatically. “Come to me if anything's ever confusing. I know from experience that starting out can be the most difficult part." 

"Actually, I have a question," Changbin said to Minkyu.

"Yes?"

"Why am I here?"

Minkyu blinked at him, the circle having gone quiet.

Kyung coming in with the documents was the only thing that saved him from answering. “I'm the team leader Kyung Taeko, by the way,” he said, everyone bowing to him. “Since our Minkyu was too excited to remember I existed.”

All he got back was an apologetic smile, before everyone filed into the meeting room behind Minkyu. He noted with some amusement when Chan switched seats to be next to Felix, even though it took him farther from the front.

"So this is the Anti-Vigilantism Unit. You were all chosen for showing remarkable potential for your status-"

Changbin scoffed lightly, not projecting his disdain but not trying to hide it either. Minkyu pressed on.

"To make this city a safer, more harmonious place."

He went on with the briefing, describing the cases up to that point and even some rumored sightings. He didn't dare touch those in most cases, but the nature of this Geomi seemed to necessitate allowing that sort of thing.

At some point Felix had… raised his hand… to ask something. Minkyu found the move odd but otherwise let him ask. Changbin, on the other hand, had let out a vastly over-exaggerated: "Jesus, this guy." 

Minkyu was pretty sure Felix had been embarrassed into the next week.

Little things like that: Changbin being dismissive, Chan having a chilly attitude, and even Seungmin being strangely aggressive for his innocent looks—he'd outright told Changbin to "Knock it off!" after another of his offhanded remarks in the middle of the briefing—chipped away at Minkyu's hope of a functional team. But he believed in self-fulfilling prophecies, so he did his utmost to fish his head out of the swamp of complete resignation.

Because as for the other two, Felix's most immediate flaw only seemed to be his clumsiness, and Jeongin… was a godsend.

He was engaged the entire briefing, asking perfect questions with what Minkyu strongly suspected to be a Busan accent, though Jeongin was clearly making an effort to use the more neutral accent of the city. Everything about him was endearing while not being overly sweet or cute. He was just himself, and that made Minkyu feel marginally better about the whole thing.

As he closed the briefing, he sent each of them to work: Felix to collect recent sightings off the internet; Changbin to help Kyung with making a psychological profile; and Seungmin and Jeongin to compile all the known information about Geomi, even the wildest urban legends out there.

"What about me?" Chan asked.

"You put on your jacket," Minkyu instructed. "Let's go interview some people."

Chapter Text

"I never thought someone would actually call in," Felix said from the backseat of the cop car.

"Geomi doesn't have as many supporters as you'd think," Minkyu responded, taking a left turn. "Not everybody's lost their minds. Chan," he prompted the man in the passenger seat, "Where was the sighting again?"

Chapter Text

Minkyu walked into the unit's office space last that morning, and wasted no time in starting, in his pay attention voice: "Kyung and I, we can see there's some..."

Seungmin shot unsuspecting Felix the side-eye while Chan and Changbin glared at each other from across the room; God, Minkyu didn't want to know. 

Reading the room mid-sentence, he settled on: “...tension in this team. We can't face the challenges ahead of us if we're so divided." 

"Challenges," Chan repeated solemnly. "You mean the entire station thinking we've lost our minds?"

That was the one.

Jeongin had called that thing from the other night a gongsaengche, or in English to sound fancy, a symbiote. Changbin went more literary with Lovecraftian. Minkyu didn't know anything about those things; he just called it something he would see behind his eyelids for months. Despite being the first human beings to have literally peered behind the heavy curtain of the known world, they'd only returned from it to meet complete, out-of-hand, slap in the face dismissal.

Officers waved off their claims, calling them insane, claiming that it must have been a wild cat—"In fucking Seoul!?" Changbin had colourfully chimed in—that they were at the very least hungry for promotion and recognition. So on and so forth.

Superintendent Koo had even ordered a drug test, which, obviously, came back clean. It still did nothing to slow the barrage of accusations and dismissals, especially when their one and only star witness Lieutenant Ryu was so concussed it was unclear whether he'd ever come back to the force, unable to back up their claims that yes he’d really been dropped on his head by a monster from another realm. 

The whole thing had overall entrenched the already low reputation of what was essentially the Spiderman Unit to new lows.

"Yeah," Minkyu confirmed, careful to keep the swirling mix of frustration and indignation from spilling into a single gesture, expression or word. After years of eldest child syndrome despite being raised on his own for most of his life, it was an art he'd perfected at this point. "So..." He enthusiastically clapped his hands together and leaned forward. Time for something harder than taking on a three-metre goo monster. "Complain and you're fired, get in a circle," he said to rip the bandaid off.

"What!?" three of them instantly let out. He didn't love acting like a kindergarten teacher any more than they enjoyed it, but they'd practically forced his hand. Along with Kyung. He really had to stop letting his superior talk him into taking up all the hard parts of this.

"Get in a circle," he insisted. The five of them did as they were told, some of them making an unnecessary show of dragging their feet about it. Chan physically moved an irritated Seungmin to stand next to Felix.

"Minkyu," Changbin asked with suspicion once they had all stopped jostling each other with more force than called for. "Why aren't you in here?" 

"I'm moderating," he replied simply.

"Moderating what, exactly?" Felix asked, looking around the juvenile formation they were in for any hints.

Minkyu hesitated for a moment. "Compliment circle." He cut short several groans with a hasty: "I said complain and you're fired, I'll start! Jeongin," he addressed the one he happened to be standing closest to. "You're such a-"

"Oh come," Chan protested. "It's easy to compliment the maknae."

Minkyu seamlessly switched tracks: "Yes, Seungmin, you really balance out the personalities on this team." 

All eyes went on the stabilizer in question.

"Um.” Seungmin faltered a little under the weight of all their stares. “I don't really know what that means, but if we're going to the left..." he said uncertainly, turning to Chan. "You're really..." He quickly trailed off.

"Minkyu," Chan said, raising his hand like he was tattling on a classmate. "My feelings are already hurt."

The second-in-command was already halfway through a plan for damage control in his head when Seungmin went on. "No no, Chan, you're like. Wise," he settled on with a satisfied nod.

“Cool,” Chan said, his skeptical scoff almost imperceptible if it weren’t for the puffed movement of his chest, but when he realized Felix was the one on his left he brightened up. "You try your best to bring a lot of fresh positivity to this place. Even if it's hard," he said, the last part in flat English while he looked Changbin's way. He leaned closer to Felix and continued in their native language: "I'm really happy you're here."

Felix accepted his words with a gracious smile and a nod, too apprehensive about who was on his left to be more expressive.

Changbin didn't seem to know exactly what Chan said, but by the look on his face he’d gotten the gist of it, wearing a dark expression he had decided to direct at mere bystander Lee Felix.

For the life of him he couldn't figure out the sergeant’s issue with him. Was Seungmin right? Was he just mad by default at being taken from his previous position to be put with them? Though it didn't come up a lot, he had the third highest rank on the team; he must've thought this all so far beneath him.

But then, he never snapped at Minkyu, which Felix might have chalked up to bare minimum respect for authority, if it weren't for the fact that Jeongin never faced his wrath either.

Felix had to hold back a whistling exhale. He didn't understand this guy's deal at all. Whatever it was, he had to imagine he didn't appreciate his fresh positivity nearly as much as Chan did. But there was no reason to take it back out on him, like nearly everyone else did; even without him joining in it was overkill how much they needled Changbin.

"You're very principled and really stick to your values, sarge," Felix told him after a moment of reflection, invoking his title while being truthful; he really did admire that about Changbin, thinking it was a very manly trait of his.

Changbin just looked from him to Minkyu, clearly unimpressed. "Isn't this kid just calling me stubborn?"

"Ah, no,” Felix panicked, raising his hands. “No no no, that's not what I mean, I really th-"

Changbin cut him off to address Jeongin, and Felix deflated; way to blow it again with him.

"You're really cute," he told the maknae matter-of-factly.

He didn't meet Changbin's eyes. "Is… that it?"

He crossed his arms. "Yeah."

"Thanks… Minkyu, you-"

"Not me," his superior said with a wave of his hand. "Do Seungmin."

"Uh." Jeongin blinked. Felix wondered what had him so especially out of it today. "Well, Seungmin, I don't really interact with you much to have something to say. Um." He resolutely fixed his eyes on his shoes, studying them like they were the most interesting things in the world. Everyone waited with bated breath for what he'd end up saying. "But whenever I see you, you're doing your work diligently, so I like that," he said with a nod.

The circle erupted in applause, hyping up his endearing words while Seungmin beamed with a smile Felix had never seen on him before. It kinda made him look like a puppy. "You make me like coming to work, Jeongin," he naturally complimented back, though his next remarks should’ve gone to the person on the left.

"Wrong way," Chan chastised.

Minkyu's voice stopped the irritated remarks that went his way, saying: "We can have it go anyway you like, it doesn't even have to be in order." 

"Tag team style?" Felix asked.

"Just like that," Minkyu said. "So maknae, go again." 

Felix smiled when Jeongin met his eyes across the circle. Everyone had a soft spot for him, and Felix was no exception. He’d gotten to know the kid that first traumatic day, getting a drink with him after work and finding out something Jeongin still hadn’t told anyone: his father had passed.

“I’m so sorry,” Felix told him.

“It’s okay,” Jeongin said, tracing the rim of his empty glass. “It just made me realise what I needed to do with my life.”

“Ah,” he intoned. “That’s why you became a police officer so young.” Even now, Felix admired how he handled his pain, channelling it into something that would have made his father proud. He really was so much stronger than he let on. Felix hoped he could be the same one day.

"Lix," he started, a shortening for the name that never came out quite right. Felix could have let him off the hook and let him know his Korean name… but Lix was vastly cooler than Yongbok. "I think you're the most earnest officer here,” he said sincerely.

Fighting words, if it weren’t for the fact that it was the maknae addressing the resident sunshine. Which didn't stop Changbin from silently rolling his eyes, Felix noticed in his peripheral.

"You really care about the community and how you can use this job to help it, and that's commendable." Another round of applause went up, Chan going the extra mile to be extra and whistling like he'd just watched his football team score a goal.

"Thanks Iyen," Felix said with a smile, and his own nickname to separate Jeongin from the four others he knew who shared the name. "I'm really happy you see me that way." He started addressing someone else without thinking, and that was his first mistake: "Seungmin, you…"

Floor, please swallow me. He didn't have a clue what he would say.

"Chan," he switched focus, hoping he'd been quick enough to escape notice. Someone noticed.

"What, you can't think of one thing about me?" Seungmin called out with no hesitation.

"Sorry, I just-"

To Felix's surprise, no one but himself had cut him off. Now he only faced the significantly more excruciating torture of all eyes on him. Clueless him.

"Okay, I'll tell you one." He swallowed. "It's pretty… cool, how…" The entire room was silent, waiting on the answer that wasn't coming.

Changbin slow-clapped right in his face. "You know, I feel really upbuilt right now," he mocked. "'I'm sure we all feel the same." Between him and Seungmin's stare that had sharpened into intense judgment and scrutiny, Felix's ears burned a bright red. Floor I need you.

Minkyu mouthed something at Changbin, gesturing for him to stop it. "You two, it's okay, it happens," he tried. "Take the next five minutes and we'll all get back to work." Felix nodded wordlessly, shuffling past bodies to get out of the room as fast as possible and to the restroom on the other side of the floor.

Locking the stall behind him, he sat up on top of the toilet and promptly curled into a dismal little ball of regret and anguish. "Aghhh," he groaned to himself, replaying and resenting every life choice that had led him to that moment. "Ah!" he yelled, burying his head between his knees.

It's not even like he had anything against Seungmin! It was just, sort of that sometimes (when he wasn’t directly attacking him of course)... He blended into the background for Felix.

"That's so mean," he cringed, accelerating the pace he rocked back and forth at. He lightly slapped his mouth over and over, wishing he'd been gifted the ability to think before he spoke like a normal person.

Muffled voices came through the door at that moment, coming into focus when it opened slightly.

"No, isn't he in there?"

"Oh really?" The door shut again.

Chan and Jeongin had just avoided him. Felix wondered how possible it would be to flush himself down the toilet. He figured those chances were at least better than the odds of the floor spontaneously swallowing him up. 

"Why is this happening to meeee," he squeaked in his self-pity, rubbing his forehead with an open palm. Okay this was too much. Switching gears, he sat up, closed his eyes, and took the longest breath of his life. "I have to go to work," he told himself in a comparatively deeper voice in a shoddy attempt to man up.

He opened the stall door, saw Jeongin standing in front of the mirrors, and promptly melted in embarrassment again.

"Iyen-ah" was all he said, showing way too much of his surprise to see him standing there.

"Hey hyung," he replied, which was a title he never really called him unless he felt the situation called for it. Felix would have groaned if someone wasn't in earshot; Jeongin thinks this situation calls for it.

"I'm fine," he assured without prompting as he washed his hands just to have something to do. 

Jeongin just kept leaning against the sinks, eyeing him. For as cute as this kid was, Felix sometimes found himself irrationally averse to that look in his eye. Like he was judging him. Looking down on him.

Of course, that said a lot more about Felix than it did about Jeongin .

"You didn't actually use the restroom," he finally said, pointing out Felix’s random action.

"Still touched the door," Felix made up easily enough, drying his hands. "That's gross." 

He hummed in acknowledgement. "Don't feel bad about the others," he said, pitching his voice low and comforting. "I know they think you try too hard, that you're insincere." 

Felix suddenly turned to face him. "They think that?" 

"But your effort makes me like you so much." Jeongin blinked, processing the words a moment late. "You didn't know that? It's obvious. They're cynics who can’t stand to see someone who actually cares."

It’s that simple? "And you could tell that just by observing them?" 

Jeongin nodded slowly, like it wasn't that big of a deal.

Felix sometimes forgot who was the older one between the two of them, when Jeongin 's words and tone would lapse into something beyond his age like that. It was another strange thing about him, endearing at times—a little arresting at others. Everyone chalked it up to his Busan upbringing, and to simply having been a grandmother in his past life.

"Thanks for trying to make me feel better, even though we're outside the circle," he said lightly. "But I'm really fine."

"Okay," he said plainly, not moving from his position against the counter.

"Is… something on your mind?" 

He hummed, non-committal. "No. Let's go," he said as he opened the door for Felix.

-

Bzzzt!

"Hang on," Han asked the knifed gangster taking swings at him. "Hang on, hang on, I have to- " He leaned out of the way of his next lame shot, and gave him one in return. "I have to take this," he said, webbing the gym rat to the ground with a cry.

"You broke my arm," he moaned, clutching at it with his one free hand.

"Are you kidding?" Han spared him a glance. "What's the point of all that muscle then?" he said before turning back to his phone.

Regularly going M.I.A. for days at a time was probably not helping Han's secret identity agenda, but he also couldn't risk getting found out from something as stupid as carrying his phone everywhere. Since no app could automatically forward texts from his cell to his ancient flip-phone, he'd had to jailbreak his phone himself when he should've been sleeping.

"So I'm running on barely, any, sleep," he complained to his hostage.

"I don't give a sh-" Thwip!

"Don't panic if it gets in your mouth," Han said in response to his muffled protests. "It only burns a little bit," he trailed off, his attention on the texts Minho had sent him.

Coffee?

Need to talk to you about something

In the span of a nanosecond every worst-case scenario flashed through Han's morbid mind.

Sounds good!!! he said anyway. See you in 10 at Ruha!!!!!

Was that too many exclamation marks? He debated asking the gangster what he thought, but it was too late now. And Han had to book it across town to get there in time.

Breathless by the time he showed up in a cardigan and jeans salvaged from a backpack along the way ( nice fashion choices past Han ), he slid into the seat opposite Minho with a "Hi."

"Hey. Did you run here?" Han pulled out his card to go and order for them when Minho stopped him. "I already paid," he said, trying to pull him back down by the arm.

"No, I'm sure you didn't get the right thing," Han insisted. His friend playfully narrowed his eyes at him.

"Obviously I know your order, Iced Americano," he called Han instead of his name, pulling him down again.

"Not my best excuse," Han admitted as he sat back down again, when Minho's eyes widened and he pulled his hand closer.

"What about that, what’s your excuse?" he asked, examining the back of his hand

Han glanced down at his hands, realizing with a belated start his knuckles were still bloody and bruised from that fight. 

“Are you out of breath from fighting someone?” he asked before Han pulled away, fumbling to shove his hands in his pockets. 

"I fell."

Minho levelled him with that deadly look. "Do you think I'm stupid?"

"Well I was hoping."

"Go on,” he challenged, crossing his arms. “Try to come up with something else."

"Cheeto… dust?"

"Are you asking me?”

"It's nothing, Minho, really,” he tried to dismiss.

With a roll of his eyes, he said the most dangerous words as if they were nothing: "Spiderman is driving me insane.”

Han's stomach dropped into his feet. "Uh," he tried, but words were no good when his blood had literally curdled in his veins. He’d been right to suspect the worst. 

"The paper has me mapping out his every movement like some kind of conspiracy theorist.” He huffed a dry laugh. “You should see my bedroom wall, all the sticky notes make me look like such a creep."

Han blinked rapidly, reconfiguring. "You're covering the Spiderman story?" he finally said after processing his words.

Minho looked at him, the picture of confusion. "I told you this. Like a week ago."

"...You did?"

Confusion turned to faux heartbreak and betrayal. "God, can't you at least pretend to care about me?" he sighed dramatically.

"I do, I do care, it's just..." He'd managed to miss something as important as this? "When?" he asked, his voice pitched high with confusion.

"Over the phone, Han, when you were at home." 

"Ahhh.” That explains it. “I must've been in bed." Because whenever he wasn't out as Spiderman or at work, he was at home sleeping any chance he could, his brain fully clocked out.

"Maybe you should get your sleeping problems checked out,” Minho suggested. “I told you that in the middle of the day. You know,” he insisted, leaning closer when Han tried to avoid his gaze. “By a licensed professional?"

"Order 67, two iced americanos," the cashier called.

"There's my medication," Han deflected, going to the counter to grab their drinks. 

Minho visibly cringed. "That's so corny," he yelled at him, unselfconscious about being so loud in public. "What kind of Hollywood star do you think you are?" 

Han couldn't help smiling to himself. If Minho was in his place, he probably wouldn't care about the mask and secret identity. He'd just wear his heart on his sleeve, like always.

"Please calm down, sir," he asked in his best important professional voice when he returned. "You're scaring the fair women and children."

"You're the smartest friend I have," Minho said so suddenly Han thought he might have hallucinated it.

"You're scaring me," he said after determining he wasn’t dreaming.

"I've looked at Spiderman's actions, his movements, I'm even due for an interview with an AVU police officer later today,” Minho barrelled on.

"AVU?"

"Anti-Vigilantism Unit, keep up."

Han put his hands up in surrender. "Sorry."

"It’s not enough anymore to just report on what he does. The paper wants me to dive into tabloid territory, guess who he is and all that. And I've tried looking at him from every angle but I just don't get it,” he gestured with a tense hand. “What he wants, why he does all this. I don't get him."

"And you think..." Han swallowed, that cold dread starting to build again in increments. "That I might, because...?"

"Do you want to hear it again? You're smart, more than me at certain things."

"Maybe when it comes to physics." He was reluctant to say it out loud, but just from comparing their friend counts Minho was definitely smarter at people than he was.

"Just take a shot at it," Minho asked, scrunching up his face in frustration. "I'm all out of ideas."

"Well..." Han sat up. Maybe he didn't have to see this as a danger. Maybe he could use it to steer everyone away from his real identity. "What do you have? On him. Spiderman."

"So far all his targets have been petty, low-ranking criminals. Pickpockets, purse snatchers, bike thieves. Sometimes the odd gang member, but only when they're engaging in stuff like that. He never strays far from Gangdong. Cool, right? Our very own neighbourhood superhero."

Han took a long sip to put off having to respond. "Hero complex," he said.

"Huh?"

"You know how they say he's for the average, working-class people? That's not it, he has a complex. He's not actually capable of taking on the people at the top, the ones who really matter, so he takes out the bottom of the barrel to feel like he's doing something."

"Wait, wait," Minho said, patting his pockets for his phone. "I didn't expect you to answer so fast, I want to write this down."

"Ready?" 

Minho nodded.

"He can't live in the district itself, it must be on the other side of the city from where he lives."

"You're pretty sure of that,” Minho noted.

"Oh, I mean..." He needed to throw in some qualifiers to sell this. "He probably doesn't live here, it would be too easy to get found out."

"Maybe he's dumb," Minho said, the rapid electronic clicking of his phone's keyboard filling the air.

"Maybe," Han said, jumping on the thought with way too much enthusiasm. "He could be totally tapped in the head."

"I knew you were in love, but you're more invested in him than I thought you were," Minho said with a smile.

"Of course. My very best friend is on the case, how could I not be?"

Minho huffed a laugh. "You didn't know I was until five minutes ago."

Han made up some more stuff on the spot, even bringing in the possibility of Spiderman being a foreigner, or a woman, and found he wasn't bad at this BS-ing stuff after all.

"Well," Minho started. "Even if everything you just said is total crap," he said with a sardonically lovely smile, "it gives me some ideas. It'll at least keep the editors in check for a while." He sucked in an awed breath. "The amount of play this guy gets us is seriously insane."

Rather than spend time contemplating the ethics of helping the media spread unfounded rumours about himself, Han just smiled at a job well done and gave Minho a two-fingered salute. "Anytime," he said, before immediately worrying if it seemed like he was responding to the last part of Minho's words. "Uh, mind helping me with my homework?" he asked just to say something.

"I would…” he winced. “But I failed high school chemistry."

"No you didn't," Han laughed. Minho's face didn't change. "Wait, did you?"

"Of course I didn't, I would've never seen my family again if I did," Minho said, smiling at his own low-effort trick. "But I don't know much about… you know, atoms… elements…"

"An atom is veeeery small," Han explained in such a squeaky voice he could only be heard by dogs. "Elements make up everything around us," he said, looking around with phony wonder.

"Stop that,” Minho chastised. “Sarcasm doesn't look good on you."

"Well when do I look good?" he prompted with a smile and head tilt. 

Minho hummed. "Remember COVID?"

"When I wear a mask??" Han said after a moment of thought. "Unbelievable," he huffed to Minho's little smile, trying not to crack one himself. "Isn't there an interview you're supposed to be getting to, star reporter."

"Ugh," he groaned, getting up with his barely-touched drink. "When I find out who that Spiderman guy is," he said, kicking in his chair. "I'm going to kill him for putting me through all this."

"It's… just an interview," Han said as he stood himself, no reason for suddenly feeling as nervous as he did.

"Yeah, with my brother. Half-brother,” he corrected. “Who I've barely talked to before this."

"Ah," he said, following Minho out of the cafe. Several puzzle pieces slid into place in his head. "Wait, so your brother’s on the AVU?"

He scoffed. "Minkyu's not on it, the nerd created it."

He literally never spoke about his brother, to the point that after all these years Han was barely learning his name. He'd almost been convinced his brother's name was just that, hyung. At least now he knew who to avoid meeting at all costs.

"Well, you have fun at work," Minho said like a mother sending off her child.

"Not as much as you~" he cooed back before starting down the sidewalk to his place. He really needed a nap before he went to work.

-

" I don't want you here anymore," Han overheard Jeong Seongmin hiss, hunched over his work table as he entered the lab.

"Sir...?" he prompted, trying to check for a phone he maybe wasn't seeing.

"Jisung!” he said, enthusiastically spinning around to face him. “Son, do you know a thing about- Do you mind I call you that?" 

Han was taken aback by the overt familiarity. Jeong had taken to a one-sided, first name basis with him, but not as far as son. 

It felt kind of nice though. "Not at all."

“No,” he said, looking to the side.

“You… change your mind?”

Jeong’s eyes refocused on him. “You’ve been such a great help, I wanted to let you know. If there’s anything I can ever do for you, you can let me know.”

“Oh,” Han said, really taken aback. “Thank you so much, sir,” he said with a smile. “What were you going to ask me?”

Jeong waved it off. “Nothing at all. Do you think your work on all those toxins and parasites will be done after tonight?”

The only reason Han hadn’t finished yesterday was because he’d almost starved to death, having spent the entire day out on patrol with no breaks even to eat before coming straight to work. Note to self, abuse your powers for free pizza next time. That lady from the bakery he’d stopped from getting robbed was so nice. She’d probably spare him a couple waffles if he popped in as Spiderman.

“Uh, yeah,” Han replied a little late. Leave it to his brain to run away with thoughts of food. “Should be.”

“Excellent. I’ll submit your findings to a board of executives, and from there they’ll make the call on how to use them.”

“And then…?”

“Then?” Jeong echoed. “Maybe they’ll send back some feedback. Maybe they’ll take it as it is, and your work with me will be done. You don’t have to worry about that, I’ll make sure to put in a good word for wherever you decide to go next.”

“That’s very kind of you, sir. I was just a little concerned.”

“What is it?”

“How am I going to find out what they end up doing?”

“Oh, son, that’s the nature of things. You do good, never knowing if it’s having any real impact on anything at all. Maybe the board will even reject your findings out of hand, though I honestly doubt that,” he was quick to add. “But even if the tangible results never get back to you, you keep going. The world will be better for it, even if you don’t stick around long enough to see it.”

Han stewed over his words, snapped out of it by a hand clapped on his shoulder.

“Well, get to work, Jisung.”

Chapter Text

They would have gone unnoticed by most people. Things like the putrid smell of a rotting carcass, hidden somewhere in the grass by the riverside. Like the infinitesimal streams of air kicked up by a frenzy of swarming flies and mosquitos, already descending on the still warm body for their next meal. Like the missing blades of grass that should have been poised straight up, crushed against the earth under the weight of the body.

For better or worse, Han Jisung was not most people.

He grimaced down at the sight, his pity for the stray cat overpowered by his utter disgust with every graphic part of the scene turned up to 11 by his spider powers. “Jesus,” he hissed when the stench really hit his nose. He covered the bottom half of his face with the fabric of his jacket for any sense of relief and let out a tight sigh. Sometimes he really felt like he got the short end of the stick. It's not like he got bitten by a radioactive dog after all. Since when were spiders notorious for their sense of smell?

Han nudged the body with a foot, only aiding in startling some flies before they continued on their merry feasting. Enhanced senses or not, it was disturbing; someone had literally ripped the cat's chest open, exposing all the bones and guts of its abdominal cavity to the open air for any vulturous insects to feed on.

“Or something,” Han corrected ominously to himself. At the very least he found himself funny. He turned his eyes in the direction of the blood trail, his enhanced vision making the red-brown color pop against the grass and dirt. Carcass after carcass continued along the riverside like that, sprawling farther and farther away from the small, residential houses near Jeong's makeshift lab, until the only place that indicated civilization was a local metal supplier. Then the bodies just… stopped.

Curiously, this last cat actually still had its face intact.

Han looked around. The yard of the metal supplier was enclosed by a modest chain link fence, allowing him to see that the place was relatively empty, save for a stack of metal pipes that were probably due for shipment to one of the million construction projects going on in the city. The only other thing of note in the plain surroundings was the crop of trees growing by the river, the water only a few inches deep at this section.

“Maybe I'll find something in there,” he figured, approaching the trees without much expectation. Until his senses flared up like an all-consuming fire and he was flung into the water.

In his shock he drew in a gasp of surprise, breathing in a mouthful of water that burned the back of his sinus as he frantically flailed to get the heaping mass of something off his chest keeping him pinned in place and to just breathe. The only things he could hear were his own frenzied movements splashing up river water, and the stream that roared in his ear. Or maybe it was the creature pushing him down making those unearthly noises.

The one mindless thought that occurred to him before he ran out of breath and began drowning in earnest was I'm just like those cats.

But then the towering figure drew back, just enough for Han to take the one good chance he had to strike it as hard as he could.

When he shot up to finally inhale, all he could do was cough, the urge to breathe not strong enough to overcome his body's need to get the water out out out. He gracelessly splashed to his feet, not too disoriented to miss the creature with a few webs and-

“Oh my God,” he groaned, more in irritation than anything else as it struggled to free itself, his voice raspy as realization set in. “It's you again.”

That black, inky creature that had ruined his night last week.

“I still-” He swung himself to the top of one of the trees to try to gain some distance between the two of them. “Haven't forgiven you,” he said, pulling his mask out from the hidden pocket he'd made inside his jacket and pulling it over his face.

It broke out of its constraints easily enough, with a roar that rumbled in Han's chest. Which he decided to take as meaning For what?

Han was positively indignant. “What do you mean 'for wh'-? For breaking my nose!” he snapped at the lumbering goo monster that was no doubt at least 5 times heavier than him.

“God," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You already forg- Oh shit,” he hissed when it came up and straight up punched the tree he was perched on. He backed up as fast as he could, jumping from one treetop to the one behind as it followed him on the ground.

“Come on Spiderman,” he muttered when all he could do was tiptoe away from it without gaining any distance. “Figure something out,” he told himself, before all of a sudden the creature was peeling away and jumping into the supplier's yard.

Han hopped down from the tree, watching it curiously. “Did I… scare it away?” he thought as it crossed the yard like a shot. Before it was picking up the pile of metal pipes and coming back at him very quickly.

“Wait, WAIT A M-!”

Faster than he could blink or even think he was pinned under the mass of steel all at once, but more than anything the sheer screeching and scratching of all that metal clattering together was what was going to knock him out first.

So he wasn't entirely sure he could trust the last glimpse he caught before he was buried: little shreds and ribbons of black flinging off the monster into the air around it.

Han couldn't say how long he was out, or if he'd even been out at all. All he knew was that he was in a lot less pain than he expected.

“Sometimes, my genius is...” he muttered to himself, trying to pull himself out of the mess without breaking something. Staying so close to the trees had saved him, it turned out, blocking the pipes from completely falling down on him and crushing him. But the freak chance didn't mean he was any more comfortable.

“It almost frigh- AH!” he yelped when he felt something pinch. That was alarming. When he tried to shake his ankle free from where it was pinned to the ground, all the weight of the pipes just shifted further down onto him, losing him valuable leverage.

“Not… ideal,” he breathed, trying not to panic with a metric ton of steel centimeters away from pressing down on him. If he even breathed in too deeply, the metal would be sitting right on his chest.

“But I'm Spiderman. I got this.” He frantically looked around for any chance to use one to push up the others, but the rash movement only helped to push the metal pipes closer to each other. Han's breathing started to pick up, his leg now one false move away from getting snapped by pure steel, the uncomfortable position he was in not helping his airflow either. He was left to—carefully—feel around himself for any gap where he might buy himself some more room to work with. When he finally found a space beneath him, a little to his right, he had to control his excitement or risk shifting the remaining weight entirely onto himself. With careful—careful—movements he managed to maneuver himself onto the ground with not even a broken bone. One last stroke of luck came when found he could just crawl through one of the pipes and out of the pile of snakes and ladders.

“My intelligence never ceases to amaze,” he said to himself, crawling through a claustrophobic metal pipe on the outskirts of town, probably bruised and battered beyond recognition.

Now that he was out of immediate danger, his body seemed content to let the adrenaline drain out of him so he could feel the shock of pain in his hand.

“Stop trying to punch Satan,” he scolded himself as he shook out his hand.

Coming back in the direction of the residential houses, Han could at least cut a little time by climbing onto the rooftops to jump from one to the next. It still didn't help how defeated he felt. With his work at Jeong's done for the day and night descending like a suffocating cloak, all he had the mental energy for was getting home and listening to anime soundtracks on loop.

At about the 16th rooftop he illegally trespassed on, a gasp behind him took his notice.

Expecting a scandalized old woman, or with his luck, a uniformed cop, he was surprised that when he turned, he was met with the wide eyes and open mouth of a little boy, clearly no older than 8 years old.

“Spi… Spiderman,” he gaped, his awe palpable.

Han instantly lit up in the stupidest smile he'd ever worn. “That's right!” he agreed with barely contained glee, crossing the space between them to kneel down to the kid's level. He laughed when his mouth fell open again in his star-struck daze, and Han pressed up on his chin to close it. “I'm Spiderman, and you're...?”

After a moment of thought like he'd forgotten his own name (Han could relate), he answered brightly: “Bongcha!”

“Bongcha,” he repeated with a nod. “That's a good name, strong name,” he approved to a round of laughter, before asking: “But how do you know me?”

”Me and my friends talk about you all the time, you're always on TV!”

”R-Really?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. He knew about the TV thing, the reports Minho wrote for the news anchors never let him catch a break. But kids? Talked? About him? Positively? That had never been true even in middle school.

Bongcha nodded, before his shoulders tensed a little in reservation.

“What..." Han looked him up and down. "What is it?”

The kid glanced off to the side. “Can I ask you something?” he asked as ominously as a child could sound. “Something… personal?”

Okay that's an alarming way to start anything.

“Sure, kid,” he said anyway. As long as his spidey sense wasn't trying to tell him he was a hidden sleeper agent or anything.

“I hope you don't mind...” Please don't be weird, please don't be weird. “Where do your webs come from?”

Oh thank God.

“I don't mind at all!” Han said, his relief way too evident as he held up his wrist. “Look.”

Bongcha leaned in very close to see, and Han couldn't bite back the sudden laugh. When he innocently looked up at him in confusion, Han cleared his throat before going on: “I make the fluid myself in a lab, and then I put it in these little capsules. When I press this button-”

A web shot forward and Bongcha whipped his head to the right to follow it. “Woah!”

”It propels it forward!” he continued. “Which reacts with the oxygen in the air to solidify. Isn't it-?”

“Cool!” he cheered before Han could even say it himself. “Are you a scientist?”

Han laughed a little guiltily. “Well, sort of. As much as Bill Nye is a scientist,” he said, hoping the kid didn't know who that was.

“You're not?”

Of course he knows.

“Wh-wh-what are you doing up here so late?” Han asked, wanting to kick himself for glitching so hard and totally killing his street cred.

“Doing homework,” he said right as Han's eyes caught on the pencil and sheets of paper, laying haphazardly on a low table. “Science,” he added, shuffling over to pick it up and poke a little finger at the heading. “We're on earth and space right now,” he professionally informed him, and that was all it took for Han to decide to take time out of his night helping Bongcha with his homework, the whole time making sure to subtly sprinkle in good morals like Keep your grades up and Brush your teeth and Eat healthy. He was nailing this whole good role model thing.

“Do you want to be an astronaut when you grow up?” Han asked during a lull in conversation.

“No,” he responded with a smile, penciling in one of the last answers on the last sheet of paper thirty minutes later. This kid had seriously fallen behind on his homework. Even university freshman Han Jisung would have been impressed. “I want to be a superhero!” he said, doing the thing- He's doing the hand thing I do

”O-oh,” Han said with a smile. “Well that's, great!” he managed, pretending he wasn't on the verge of tears at this point. He was really nailing this good role model thing.

“Bongcha,” a woman's voice called from within the house. “Are you up- My word,” she gasped when she reached the top of the stairs, spotting the masked man crouched on the ground next to her son.

He stood and dusted off his pants to bow politely. “Good evening, eomeoni,” the guy in a red mask greeted, as reverently as if she were the president. “I'll see you around, Bongcha,” he said, and if his face was visible he definitely would have cartoonishly winked just to regret it later.

He swung out of there with enough style to make up for it.

Fired up on renewed determination, he ducked into an alley in that in-between area between full-blown city and the suburbs, and changed into his very important Spiderman clothes. Which was just a differently colored hoodie and gym leggings. He had to do something about that soon—he thought as he almost tripped pulling on a pair of athletic shorts for a sense of modesty—branding was important.

No sooner had he entered the actual metropolitan area of the city than his spidey sense was starting to act up. It was almost comforting; if nothing else, he could always rely on the consistency of criminals. He followed the prickly feeling until he was perched up on a streetlight in an alleyway, stationed directly behind a man with long hair, who was holding a knife up to some student's throat.

Han didn't just stop short, he swore he did a triple-take. It wasn't-

It was Yang Jeongin from that other night.

Han dropped from the streetlight onto a pile of delivery crates below with a solid thump. “You've got worse luck than me, kid,” he remarked sympathetically.

Without wasting another second he webbed the long-haired man's wrists and yanked him backwards.

Stumbling on long, lanky legs he spun around to face Han, and the sight of him—under the endlessly romantic light of a dull, buzzing streetlight with the smell of old food discarded by the local businesses wafting into the air—stunned the webslinger where he stood. It was strange. He—unlike any of the seedy guys he caught doing petty crime out this late—Han had to admit, was actually . . . pretty.

His long hair, rather than the greasy mess Han would've expected from his type, was in fact neatly pulled back and away from his face, showing off a beauty mark under his left eye that literally made him look like an idol. With his black jacket, matching turtleneck and silver necklace, he looked so clean and put together he didn't seem like some junkie that would be mugging people in the street for pocket change.

Han was so stunned, he barely registered it when the man bolted out of the alley and into the street.

“Hey, HEY!” Han yelled, taking off after him.

“Wait!” Jeongin cried pitifully, stopping him in his tracks. “I'm hurt!” he called.

With a reluctant hiss, Han let the guy off to check on the poor kid.

Examining the knife wound the man left with careful fingers, Han gently scolded him: “You have got to stop walking home by yourself."

“I know,” he said quietly like he was about to apologize.

“It's not too bad,” Han added before he could. “A trip to the drug store is all you need,” he said as he let go of his arm, thinking that would be the end of it, but Jeongin quickly grabbed his shoulder.

“I'm afraid,” he said, and with his luck Han couldn't blame him. “Don't leave me, please,” he asked, his dark, innocent eyes sparkling up at him.

A low, paranoid buzzing started to rise inside him.

“Okay, okay, I won't go,” Han said, looking around for what was making his senses so edgy. “But we've gotta get out of this creepy alley.”

Jeongin nodded, following his lead.

“Seriously, why are you always out so late?” Han asked once they were on the only marginally safer main road, figuring he may as well try to crack this stranger now that he had the chance. He absently scratched at the shell of his ear; his ears were still buzzing.

“I work overtime at the precinct a lot,” Jeongin said, fidgeting with the sleeve of his sweater.

”The precinct?” Han asked, taking a step back. “You're a cop?”

”I'm not going to arrest you,” Jeongin said, not so much an assurance as a scoff, like the very notion was preposterous. He looked like the type to use the word 'preposterous.' “I don't even know what I'd arrest you for.”

”...Okay,” he said, fighting the urge to say that in that case, he must not be a very good cop. Han could personally name the fifteen (and counting) articles of the penal code of the Republic of Korea he had violated in the past month. But whatever kept him out of jail. He kept a bit more distance between them as they walked on. “Better not go telling your buddies at the station about this,” he warned lightheartedly.

“Of course,” he agreed. “I wouldn't make myself look bad.”

“Right...” Han said with some suspicion.

Maybe his senses were reacting to the mere presence of a corrupt cop. He hadn't been doing this long enough to tell if that wasn't possible.

He came to a stop. “Here's the drug store,” he said awkwardly when Jeongin made no move to go inside. “If you'd-” He raised an uncertain hand, “like to go.”

”I don't feel safe by myself,” he said at last. “I just seem to be a target lately.” Han's neck prickled; the childish fear in Jeongin's face had completely vanished from where it was minutes ago.

Han almost physically shook his head. God, I'm paranoid. Just because this guy talked weird didn't mean he was any threat at all. It was ridiculous, instead of using his enhanced senses to his advantage, Han was letting them take control and hijack his nerves.

With Jeongin looking at him expectantly, Han stuffed his irrational doubts down where they came from and gave him a reassuring nod. “Sure, I'll come with you,” he said, opening the door for him.

The entire time he was inside, the cashier subjected him to the most dumbfounded, wide-eyed stare Han had ever been on the receiving end of. At least he let them have all their items for free. Among the things to carry around, he needed to add a wallet to that list.

“Talk about star power,” Han said with a smile as they took a seat on a bench outside.

“Gosh, it's the best,” Jeongin agreed with just as giddy of a smile, his eyes tracking Han as he poured some rubbing alcohol onto a cotton ball.

“Hold still, okay?” he asked, before lightly dabbing on and around the, frankly speaking, shallow wound. This was probably more about moral support, though. Kinda like a cat. He fought a shiver, not a cat, those were the last thing he wanted to think about that day. His face pulled down into a frown; those poor things. Next time he saw Soonie he was definitely going to give him a big kiss on the forehead and sneak him a snack. In fact, maybe he should go over to Minho's later that night-

“It could be even better,” Jeongin said.

“Huh?” Han snapped his eyes up to meet his.

Jeongin leaned forward into his space, only the ghost of a smile left on his face. “It could be even better.”

Han went back to wiping at the wound with ultraviolet focus, desperately hoping he hadn't miscalculated something. “Ah,” was the only thing he responded with, the first stage of grief setting in.

If the dark look on his face was anything to go by, Jeongin wasn’t pleased by the attempt at ignoring him. He seized Han’s hand with epileptic urgency, forcing him to meet his black, dull eyes. There was no sparkle left in them anymore as he squeezed, drenching his open, weeping wound with rubbing alcohol in a grip that should have been painful for Han. But neither of them batted an eye at their respective aches.

“You could have anything,” Jeongin said in a low voice that sounded utterly unlike himself. “Everything you've ever wanted.” He let go of Han’s hand just to pull the hood of his jacket down with quick fingers. “Like a better suit,” he said with a light tone he was forcing to sound more pleasant. “For example.” His derision, masked as it was, was still clear.

He was looking down on him, Han thought bitterly.

With his guard up, Han could finally take in everything he’d been unconsciously overlooking in his delusional This is completely fine state. The cheap sweater with the knife cut in it hung too big on Jeongin's frame. Everything else he was wearing clung to him with a perfect tailor's fit. The expensive, designer watch was actually just a cheap knock-off, though it could fool someone at first glance. His slightly wild dark brown hair might have indicated a scuffle… if the strands hadn’t been purposely gelled to stand up on their own.

“What is it?” Jeongin asked with a slight smile, reading his silence just as easily as Han had read him.

The results were in and…

“You're testing me,” Han said flatly. Who did Jeongin even think he was to be running this little experiment on him? Did he read about him in the paper and think he was some neat little novelty to check out?

Jeongin let his smile break even wider, something almost like… pride shimmering in his eyes. “Right. And you get an A plus,” he said, putting his hands together in light, patronizing applause.

“You…” How to put it. “Dude, who even are you?” he let out without thinking. Subtle and tactful.

The smile on Jeongin’s face remained where it was, uncanny in its stillness. “I'll tell you if you tell me who you are,” he said, clearly bluffing in that I’ll show you mine if you show me yours way, but Han still wanted to have a response.

”Peter Park,” he responded a little too quickly, combining the English name he hadn’t used in about 10 years and the first Korean surname he could think of. The pseudonym could use a little work.

Jeongin nodded all the same, and Han hoped that meant he bought it. “Peter,” he echoed, as if he found even the syllables of his name interesting. It kind of gave Han the creeps. “In that case…”

Han unconsciously leaned forward; maybe at least the rich kid would stop talking in tongues.

“I'm a concerned citizen.”

No such luck.

“Like an interested party,” he added, holding out the roll of gauze to him.

Han made no move to help him bandage up his cut. “Why should I help you fix something you did to yourself?” he said, words carefully weighed to project a sense of control for once. Control he did not have at all right now.

”Ah,” Jeongin intoned with that same nauseating tone of pride, unwrapping the gauze himself. “So you figured that out too.”

”I- What?” he said, so offended his voice cracked. “Of course I did, he looked like an idol actor!” Han couldn't stop himself from snapping, already dropping his facade of confidence and seriously feeling like his intelligence had been insulted.

That’s what had startled him so much about that man. His gut was telling him there was something wrong from the get-go.

“What is he," Han challenged, "Like your boss? Or your henchman?”

He startled at Jeongin’s abrupt laughter.

“Hyunjinnie will be thrilled to hear that one,” he said in a calmer tone, just as jarring as his laugh as he wrapped the bandage around his own arm several times.

No honorific, Han thought, watching the repetitive motion, lower in age and status then.

“Do you like your job?” he asked all of a sudden, a phrase that so far seemed to describe everything about him.

“My- my job?” Han faltered. There was no way someone could have placed him at Jeong’s lab, he’d been so careful. “What are you talking about?”

He cocked his head to the side, features flickering with amusement. “Being Spiderman.”

Oh.

“Does it make you feel like you’re making a difference?” he asked, his face doing that creepy thing again, stilling unnaturally in the same expression. “Does it make you feel like you matter?” he said, the tone fine itself but the disconnect from his face doing a number on its recipient.

Han wondered just how long he could sit there in silence, pretending he wasn’t sweating bullets. “I…” He couldn’t even come up with a response if he tried. He forced himself to focus. Of course he liked being Spiderman, he loved it. After the sob story that had been his life—getting bullied through middle school, fighting back in high school and seldom winning, becoming a ghost his senior year before dropping out of the school of his dreams as an undergrad—this was by far the best thing that had ever happened to him. He wanted to say as much. The words came as far as his throat before dying.

Jeongin’s face morphed into something like pity, but it was too synthetic to be real compassion. “It must be hard. It feels like something’s missing, doesn’t it?”

The end of the bandage he had precariously tucked under the rest of the roll was starting to undo itself.

“Power trip,” Han muttered under his breath.

He still reached over and vertically split the bandage in half down the middle. Jeongin watched him curiously. “You don’t feel like you’re any different from that man in there,” he said with all the intrigue of a new scientific discovery, “do you?”

Han huffed a laugh—what gave him that impression? The terrible costume he’d put together for about 20 dollars? The petty crimes he gunned for instead of more high-stakes fun?

“Why would I be?” he said quietly, unable to manage much more than that. “It could’ve been me working that counter,” he said, tying the two ends he’d created to tie a more secure knot around Jeongin’s arm.

He hummed in lieu of a real response. “You could just be doing so much more.” Before Han could draw away again Jeongin grabbed his wrist—this guy was way too touchy-feely for his taste. “I want to help you do that,” he said, pressing his fingers into Han’s hand before he roughly pulled away. He’d slipped him a business card.

“Call~” he cooed playfully, making a phone gesture and putting it up to his ear.

Something was happening. Whatever that something was, the feeling was so vague and intangible Han couldn’t come up with the words to express it, let alone to have a clever response to… this 20-something year old's aegyo.

He swung out of there like a shot.

Chapter Text

Felix nearly tripped walking up the steps to the precinct. Half-worried that stranger from the evening before would be watching him, he looked around a little frantically before reality came crashing in.

He scoffed at himself. Did he seriously expect to see someone silently judging him from the shadows? With a little shake of his head he was just thankful nobody had been around to see the little act.

“Paranoid,” he accused himself under his breath as he pushed through the glass doors.

He didn’t think anyone could blame him though. With everything going on in his life lately, he was spacey as it was, and that whole encounter before he’d left work the night before hadn’t helped his presence of mind in the least. One nagging little voice in his racing train of thought rose above all the others clambering for attention. How can I work with a person so much and still know so little about them?

Nobody could say Lee Minkyu wasn’t smart and capable, if his thorough investigation and specific team delegations were anything to go by. It was to the point that Felix had—unfortunately—nearly called him Team Leader about three times in the past week.

He cringed out loud in the elevator up to his floor; his heart rate still sped up every time he thought about all those near misses.

But his thoughts quickly went to that time Jeongin had tried to coax Minkyu into revealing his coffee order one afternoon, probably so he could get it for him the next time he went to the cafe around the block.

What followed had been the most unbelievable conversation Felix had ever had the displeasure of overhearing; what should have been a straightforward operation turned into minutes of Minkyu dodging every attempt at drawing him out, like it was an Olympic sport he’d trained his whole life for. 

The most mind-blowing part of the whole interaction was, when Jeongin finally gave up and just came out with a “Could you please just tell me what you like from Vienna’s??”, Minkyu hadn’t seemed to know he was avoiding giving out any details at all.

“We… weren’t just talking about coffee?” Felix remembered him saying word-for-word.

So the stranger outside the precinct last evening calling himself Minkyu’s brother was like dynamite to Felix.

“Minkyu-ssi, ” he called as soon as he stepped into the office.

His superior leaned over the table in the center of the room; when Felix peered around him to see what he was focused on so intently, he found it was a map of their area of the city.

He hummed in response, absorbed in whatever he thought would help them find their next lead on Spiderman. But Felix had the thought that this might be more immediately important at the moment.

“There was a reporter outside last night,” he said as he crossed the room to his desk, the last one to arrive at work that day. “After you left,” he added.

“A reporter?” Seungmin asked, propping his chin on the back of his wrist and leaving his hand to hang in the air. “That’s not very special, is it?” 

“He called himself Minkyu’s dongsaeng,” Felix said as he met his eyes. Judging by the way Seungmin sat up, he’d caught his interest—and apparently the entire unit’s. “He said you two were supposed to speak?” he said to Minkyu.

“A brother?” Chan echoed as he exchanged a look with Jeongin, neither of them believing what they were hearing.

The man at the center of the dramatic scandal only hummed again.

“Hm.” Felix turned to power on his computer for the day. In that case, it couldn’t have been that important. 

But, all at once, everyone’s words seemed to hit Minkyu then as he slowly looked up from the map with some belated realization dawning on him.

“Um,” Felix intoned, this brand new expression on Minkyu’s face worrying him when his standard faces were usually a polite smile or sober concentration. “Is it… true?”

“Shit,” he said at the same time as Felix finished his question, quick to abandon whatever he’d been studying to dig in his pocket for his phone.

Changbin peeked at him over his monitor. “Everything okay?”

“Everybody,” he said as he stepped out into the hall, phone in hand. “Be normal,” he ordered in the most nervous voice Felix had ever heard come out of him.

“Being normal,” Changbin copied, turning back to his computer to mind his own business. “What did he look like?” he bluntly asked as soon as the door shut.

“Did you catch his name?” Chan asked as he leaned forward in his chair, the picture of a student excited to hear whatever gossip he could catch. “How old is he?”

“Was he taller or shorter than Minkyu?” Seungmin asked, joining in the chorus of badgering.

Before Felix could even open his mouth to answer, Minkyu thumped the door in warning.

“Sorry, ” Chan called.

“Yeah sorry,” Seungmin said just as apologetically as Chan—which is to say not at all. He stage-whispered: “He’s taller than Minkyu, right? ”

Felix had no idea why he would assume that. “No,” he whispered back. “And he didn’t tell me his name,” he said in a full voice. “He seemed about Changbin’s age.” He furrowed his brow, crossing his arms as he thought. “It was kind of strange..” he started before Minkyu burst back into the room.

“Clean up your desks,” he ordered. “A journalist’s coming to ask me a few questions about the case for the Blazoner.”

Everyone leaned forward in their seats, more subconsciously than anything else.

Minkyu sucked in a breath, as if preparing to deliver weighty news. Which, given how curious everyone had become in his personal life in the past three minutes, he kind of was. “Minho,” he emphasized the name so they wouldn’t ask twice, “is a journalist,” he ended simply.

The whole room went motionless and silent. 

His nose scrunched. “Stop staring at me,” he scolded with a wave of his hand as if he hadn’t just dropped the bomb of the century. Not only did his brother have a name, he was employed . “And clean this place up a little,” he said as he kicked a balled-up sheet of paper out of his way. “It looks like a bunch of men work here.”

Everyone’s senses seemed to return at once, and the entire room scrambled for trash to scoop up. 

All except Seungmin. 

“We are a bunch of men,” he muttered as he focused on his own tidying task of choice.

Jeongin, already holding an armful of empty snack bags he’d picked up from under Chan’s desk right next to him, watched him go about his task curiously. Seungmin was meticulously lining up the pens on his desk that he used to color-code reports. “Do you think that Minho guy will notice that?” he asked without a trace of mockery.

Seungmin just shrugged, not really caring. “He might.”

Jeongin rushed over to the rarely-used trash can in the corner to dump the bags in before hurrying back, his movements awkward like he was still in his growing pains phase. “I wonder what kind of person he is, making even Minkyu sweat like that,” he said, comfortable with stating the curiosity that everyone had outright.

“He’s not sweating,” Seungmin said, looking past him to the slightly manic superior in question. “It’s perfectly normal to start dusting the walls when you’re expecting someone,” he deadpanned, observing Minkyu like he was a test subject and wondering where he’d even pulled that feather duster out of; did he keep it in his desk for emergencies or something?

Jeongin ducked his head, laughing like he’d read his thoughts. Seungmin smiled back, a sense of pride sweeping over him that he’d been the one to make him laugh like that. “Right, super normal,” Jeongin agreed. “Come help me move the furniture while we’re at it.”

Half an hour of half-hearted work later, there was a knock at the door.

Minkyu startled like he was trying to leave his skin. “Come-” He cleared his throat. “Come in!” he called.

Four heads conspicuously craned to see who would be standing behind it—probably figuring some horribly disfigured gangster at this point, Felix assumed.

He was amused that when it opened, everyone seemed surprised to see a small man with a reporter’s bag standing in the doorway, an unexpectedly solemn look in his eyes as he met Minkyu’s. To his credit, Minkyu didn’t betray a single emotion on his face.

Until, to even Felix’s surprise, the man was getting down on both knees and bowing as if it were Chuseok.

Minkyu quickly dove to pick him up off the floor. “Get up you weirdo, it’s not even summer,” he muttered, breaking his unbothered facade as he pulled him towards the meeting room for a semblance of privacy. “What am I, your grandfather?”

It felt entirely TMI to Felix just to hear Minkyu refer to someone so informally. He was starting to get kind of scared for this Minho.

Despite currently being hauled across the room by the arm, he still managed to bow to the rest of them ever so politely. “Officers of the law,” he said with reverence, though it sounded like he was joking.

Felix still nodded back at him, and Minho’s eyes gained a twinkle of recognition when he met Felix’s before he was inelegantly shoved into the side room. Jeongin returned the bow, though he was already out of sight by the time he did.

“I always wanted a younger brother,” Kyung remarked wistfully, speaking for the first time all morning and reminding Felix he was even in the room.

“You knew about him, Team Leader?” Changbin asked in disbelief. “What kind of younger brother freaks out his family like that?”

“He doesn’t seem like anything special,” Jeongin said, a little more bluntly than Felix would have put it, but it was true. He hadn’t seen much of him between that morning and last night, but though he had an… unusual sense of humor, he seemed like a pretty normal guy. Felix wondered what kind of history those two had for Minkyu to have such a borderline frenzied reaction.

“Honestly, I don’t know much,” Kyung admitted. “Minkyu doesn’t talk about his personal life much.”

“No kidding,” Chan scoffed. It really was an understatement. “He gives the impression he just-” He opened his hands like he was searching for the word. “Spawned into this world having passed the police exam and wearing a uniform.”

“That’s rude,” Seungmin remarked with an uptight roll of his eyes. 

Oh great, Felix mentally braced himself, this again. It always felt like mom and dad were fighting whenever the two of them acted up. All that was missing was…

“And you’d know all about that,” Changbin said curtly. There it is, Felix thought, despondent. “Right, Kim Seung-?”

Kyung smacked the table, cutting him off and making Jeongin flinch. “Kids,” he chided.

“I’m not a kid,” Seungmin huffed under his breath.

“You’re right,” Kyung said flatly. “Then this might have actually been cute. 

“All I know about Lee Minho,” he said pointedly, making sure to divert their attention from that little flare-up. “-is that he only shares one parent with him, their father.”

“Wow, ” Jeongin marveled, completely scandalized. “Half-brothers? He was hiding this much from us?”

His reaction caught Felix off-guard. Did people that conservative still exist? “I mean, it’s not very special,” he said. “Back home, I knew tons of classmates who had blended families like that.”

“That’s the thing,” Kyung said. “The only other thing I know is they didn’t grow up together. Not sure why,” he added before anyone could ask.

Jeongin gave him a There you go expression.

“Okay, that’s… a little odder,” Felix had to concede.

“No wonder he’s cagey about his brother,” Jeongin said with a calculative tilt of his head, sticking his thumbnail between his teeth. “Who’s fault-” He blinked, unceremoniously cutting himself off mid-sentence as if he was coming back to himself. Or maybe he’d just left for the astral plane.

Seungmin eyed him curiously. “Who’s fault…?” he prompted when Jeongin didn’t speak for a moment.

“Let’s stop talking about this,” he said with a sudden lightness and a shake of his head, sending his straight, eye-length hair flying up.

Felix almost laughed; the innocent move made Jeongin seem about 12 years old.

“I’m starting to feel uncomfortable talking about this, aren’t you?”

“You… brought it up first,” Chan said, but, along with everybody else, could easily drop it for his sake.

Jeongin’s change of heart wouldn’t have mattered either way though, because no sooner had Kyung opened his mouth to change the topic than every walkie-talkie in the room flared to life with a female officer’s composed voice: “Every officer to Euljiro, unidentified figures creating a frenzy downtown.”

Chairs scraped with everybody’s rush to stand up, grab the essentials and get out the door, beyond which the whole station was coming alive with the sounds of officers clambering to get to the first floor.

Amongst the stir Minkyu emerged from the meeting room, his long stride sure and confident as he headed to his desk. “You can’t,” he said plainly.

Minho trailed after him with much less grace in his walk, dodging and weaving to get out of everyone’s way. “I have to,” he protested, “I didn’t get to ask you anything.”

“Is that my fault?” he asked, retrieving his gun and badge and pacing out the door.

“You drive,” he told Seungmin when he came out himself, stuffing the keys to one of the cop cars in his hands. “I don’t want Changbin to hold it over your heads again.”

Seungmin took them with some surprise. “Thank you,” he accepted graciously, heading to the elevators along with everyone else.

“Problem child?” Minho asked sardonically, picking up on his apparent distrust of one of his own subordinates.

“Not anymore than you,” he replied, walking the opposite way of the elevators.

Realizing where they were going, Minho laughed dryly. “Cool joke, that’s where the stairs are.”

Undeterred, Minkyu sped-walk down the stairs. “You don’t even think I’m funny in the first place.”

“Because your delivery is always terrible,” Minho retorted, speaking from experience. Too much experience. “Anyway, I am coming with you.”

“Give me one good reason,” he said rhetorically as he turned onto the third flight of stairs down. Of course, rhetorical prompts never made a difference to Minho.

“You’re the Spiderman cop,” Minho said by way of reasoning. “And I’m the Spiderman reporter, perfect team-”

Minkyu almost wheeled around to face him, but forced himself to keep moving. “First of all, never say that again,” he warned. “Second, if they’re calling literally every cop in the area, it’s bad news,” he said as an understatement as he swung onto the final flight of stairs.

“I don’t mind danger, and I’ll stay out of your way,” Minho promised as they pushed out through the doors into the parking lot. They’d actually manage to beat the ones taking the elevators.

Minkyu stalked up to the driver’s side of the closest car, Minho firmly and defiantly stationing himself beside the passenger’s seat door. “What do you even know about danger?” he challenged. “You’re just a kid. You had it all growing up.”

A muscle in Minho’s jaw, set firmly in determination, ticked. “Excuse me?” he said, his whole face darkening. “I had it all?” he repeated, emphasizing every syllable.

With the others approaching, no time to find his clingy brother a cab or a bus to take home, and not really feeling like restarting an old argument here and now, Minkyu grimaced. “Get in,” he relented, taking the course of least resistance as he got in the car himself.

Minho’s face softened, not quite rejoicing but not looking like he was going to jump across the car and fight him either. He tried the door, his brow pulling down. “Hey.”

“Only police officers get shotgun,” his brother explained.

He huffed a bitter laugh, muttering something about pettiness before getting in the backseat just as Felix reached the car and did the same.

“For what I’m letting you do, the Blazoner better put out a hell of a paper tomorrow,” Minkyu said, though they both knew full well this wasn’t about brotherly altruism. “Changbin!” he called when he saw the man going for the car he’d told Seungmin to take. “Over here!” he gestured, feeling like he’d just uncrossed a delicate wire and defused a live bomb.

“Hello,” Jeongin greeted Minho, taking up the seat on his right as he put out his hand. “I’m Officer Yang Jeongin,” he said as Changbin got in the passenger seat and shut the door, giving their superior the go-ahead to start pulling out.

“Hi,” he greeted back as he took his hand. “You gave up the shotgun to sit with me,” he pointed out good-naturedly.

“It’s an honor to meet our sunbae’s brother,” Jeongin explained with a smile.

“Don’t call me that,” Minkyu said as he pulled into the main road behind a dozen other cop cars, all blaring their sirens. “It makes me feel old.”

“You are old,” Minho shot back. “At this point I should be calling you samchon. ”

Changbin had to clear his throat to hide his abrupt laugh.

“You would get along,” Minkyu accused, talking to the two of them.

“Problem child number one,” Minho introduced himself, offering his hand to the person in front.

“Me?” he said, taking his hand after a moment, not understanding why Minho would call himself that to him of all people. “I’m Changbin, that’s Felix.”

From there fired off round after round of interrogations, mainly from Jeongin’s end, but that didn’t mean Felix and Changbin were any less curious about the mystery man.

“I’ll tell you where we’re from,” Minho told Jeongin at one point, “if I get to ask you something.”

Jeongin looked at him with some bemusement, shifting in his seat with anticipation. “What do you want to know about me?”

“I don’t know,” Minho said airily, cocking his head at him like he was examining him. “What should I ask him?”

Minkyu actually thought for a moment, before starting: “‘How many-’”

“Ah!” Minho clapped with enthusiasm, struck by a lightning bolt of an idea. He pointed at Jeongin. “Are you single?”

“Minho!” his brother immediately scolded, nearly swerving out of his lane.

“What?” he protested. “He asked us where we’re from, that’s pretty personal, don’t you think?”

“Jeongin, we’re from Gimpo,” he answered to take the wind out of the question.

Felix almost verbally marveled at the fact that Minkyu had answered a question straight.

“Hey…” Minho said, his fun foiled.

All it took was the opportunity to take his brother down a peg.

“It’s fine,” Jeongin assured with a smile. “I am married.”

Minkyu almost crashed the car.

“Married!?” Changbin exclaimed, positively aghast. Minho and Felix, for their part, stared him down with twin expressions, eyes practically bulging from their heads. “Married??” he repeated, at a loss for any other words.

Jeongin lit up with a pure, full-dimpled smile, looking around at everyone with satisfaction. “Did I get you?” he asked with all the mischief of a toddler pulling his first practical joke. “I am married,” he said once everyone had regained their composure, coughing and pretending they’d never believed him in the first place. “Just to my work.”

Changbin made a noise like he was impressed. “Already so dedicated,” he said, before switching gears and sounding serious: “It’s a good outlook to have, but you’ve barely started, maknae.”

“Right,” Minkyu agreed. “Don’t overwork yourself too young. You have a lot of life ahead of you to do that with,” he said so seriously no one but Minho could tell he was joking.

“Take it from the expert,” Minho muttered, too quietly for anyone to catch. 

Except for Felix. He resisted the urge to scrunch his whole face in confusion and throw out exasperated hands at the sheer emotional baggage in those words. What was going on?

“Really?” Jeongin said like the idea of taking it easy had never occurred to him. “Then… I’ll make sure to have some fun too,” he said with a nod. “Along with the hard work.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Minkyu advised, taking the last turn to the scene. “Don’t… want it to…” He trailed off, the words absentmindedly falling out of his mouth.

Changbin’s jaw slackened like a cartoon character’s. “What the f- ”

“Fuck!?” Minho finished as Felix plastered his face against the window, completely disbelieving what he was seeing.

“Is- Is that the-?”

“The symbiote,” Jeongin said in a voice so low Felix almost didn’t recognize it, and the maknae was the first to climb out of the car.

“Wh-” Felix floundered, taken aback by his dauntless reaction. “Iyen-ah!” Felix called, quick to clamber out after him.

“You know what that thing is!?” Minho said to no one in particular, getting out of the car but not quick to follow them himself. “Holy shit,” he said with a startle, “is that actually Spiderman?”

Stories above the ground, the symbiote was moving along the sheer side of an office building with terrifying, liquid fluidity. It wasn’t like that night before, when it had seemed jagged and ragged in its movements. Some switch had clicked into place, allowing it to use all its faculties and power to punch holes in the windows like they were just flimsy sheets of tracing paper. But of course it wasn’t really aiming for the glass; Spiderman was dodging and weaving around all its hits like an especially tenacious flea.

Too engrossed in the scene out of a Western blockbuster, Felix collided hard with something and fell back on the ground.

All the sound that his mind had filtered out suddenly crashed into him with the same mercilessness. Footsteps running north and south and east and south by southwest rang out throughout the huge intersection; cars honked with their drivers’ panic and frustration with the streaming crowd; Felix could even hear a child crying somewhere in the distance.

He got to his feet as quickly as he could without stumbling and helped up the terrified office worker he’d run into head-on.

“Are you okay?” Felix asked as he pulled him up by the arms. “Is there anyo-” he started, when he met the man’s eyes, saw his bloodless face and took in his shell-shocked expression. It frightened him into reality. He wasn’t living the life of an action movie protagonist.

Once the man could stand on his own Felix let him go and took off after Jeongin, who had just plowed ahead through the throng of people. He wondered why they weren’t going anywhere, when it hit him that these people weren’t the ones who had been inside the building. These were onlookers on the street who wanted to grab a cheap peek at the action.

Felix hadn’t raised his voice in about a year, but he knew it was still in him.

“ Move! ” he projected as commandingly as he could, holding up his badge in the air as he pushed through.

“Dude,” some kid not much younger than him protested.

Felix whirled around to face him and the kid immediately cowered back. Intimidating wasn’t something that suited him, but he could make it work when he needed to.

He shoved down the phone he was clearly already in the shot of. “Get going!” he intoned again before pushing through. Fortunately there were other police officers trying to secure the perimeter and evacuate civilians from the scene, though with this apparently suicidal crowd they had their work cut out for them.

Felix searched through the heads by the building entrance, hoping Jeongin hadn’t already done something rash, when he suddenly spotted him and bolted to pull him to a stop by the jacket.

“Are you ins-!?” Felix’s outrage was cut short by the shattering of punctured glass, killing his voice in his throat. He looked up out of reflex, only to catch the falling broken shards with his face. He let out a sound of pain before ducking his head and following Jeongin right up to the building’s main entrance.

In the split second their eyes met but before Jeongin spoke, Felix was lucid again. He was cognizant of the chaos streaming around them with workers pushing and shoving to get out of the building through the single entrance and cops from other units barking orders to get everybody out.

“What,” he said, breaking the haze Felix was momentarily caught in, in a tone he immediately wanted to describe as dangerous

“Wait for Minkyu’s orders,” he said without faltering. “Don’t charge up there without a plan, you know what happened last time.”

For some reason, Jeongin’s face didn’t soften. He leered at Felix through shaggy bangs, but otherwise didn’t say a word. He pushed his arm off and walked back out into the pandemonium of the streets.

Stories above their heads, Han was desperately trying not to get flung into that street.

“I have a feeling you can talk more than you let on!” he called, managing to horizontally backspring away from another collision with the creature’s fist. “What were you doing at Jeong Seongmin’s-” He swung through a broken window into the office floor that he’d already cleared of workers. “-lab?”

The monster roared before unceremoniously swatting a computer monitor at Han so fast he didn’t have time to react.

“Fuck,” he hissed, taking the screen right to the face in a way that possibly knocked out a tooth.  “Use your words please,” he said without a lisp, which was a good sign.

The door flung open, which was a worse sign.

“Hey!” He swung himself over as fast he could, operating more on instinct than active thought. “You can’t be here!” he said, grabbing the person who had just walked in around the waist and throwing the both of them out of the window. Fully aware of what a violent rescue it was to be suspended above the hard ground by nothing but a literal thread, Han started apologizing. “Sorry for the turbule-”

Something clicked.

“You!?” he said, nothing short of scandalized to see Jeongin’s face again. “Wh- How are you always-”

Before he could string a coherent line of interrogation together, the thread snapped and sent the two of them flailing towards the ground. The crowd below drew in a collective gasp of horror.”I’m gonna relive this moment,” Han thought dismally, picturing all the photos and videos that were probably being taken at this exact moment to be immortalized online for all time.

He shot one web to stabilise himself and a second to catch Jeongin by the arm.

He missed him by a thread, the monster swooping in a nanosecond early.

Han shot after them with electric urgency, the monster hurtling towards the ground with Jeongin in tow. “Out of the way,out of the way!” he called to the onlookers, but a cop’s air-bound warning shots already had them scurrying away. “Careful with that,” he hissed as a bullet whizzed by him, before Han made to…

He had no idea.

Try to throttle a newly-discovered form of life? Whatever it would have been, it didn’t matter, because the creature did something it had never done before. Some winding, vine-y appendage lept out of its back and slammed him straight against the side of the building.

What!??

Reduced to a futile spectator in his own battle, Han recognized some of the cops that were practically lining up to get their pelvises turned inside out by that thing. Not in a fun way either.

One of them, on the younger side of young, warily raised his gun at it. Grasped in a hold that looked asphyxiating, Jeongin started telling him: “Lix, I wouldn’t…”

A flurry of shots went off from practically every direction, about ten times more officers and therefore ten times the amount of weapons more than there was during that first encounter.

Han went into free fall but easily landed on his feet. “I said careful!” he scolded again, yanking that nervous cop out of the way of a stray shot that could’ve taken out his shoulder. “Hi,” Han greeted, smiling down at the cop he was basically holding in his arms.

“H-hi.” He waved for some reason.

“What’s your name?” Han asked to hopefully diffuse his tension.

“Uh, Felix,” he said without an accent, strangely endearing to Han. “What’s your n-” He froze.

“Yeah.” He already knew the name Spiderman, and he wasn’t getting anything more personal out of him.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s totally fine,” he assured. He’d told waitresses to enjoy your food too a million times before, this was no big deal.

He turned to check out how the cops were doing; and to his surprise, they’d got the monster to let go of Jeongin and were actually managing to chase it away.

“If you’ll excuse me, Felix-ssi,” he said, laying on a thick accent that somehow managed to sound like four different Western countries at once before he was off to follow after the creature. Felix watched him go with a dazed dreaminess, before he realized Jeongin was crumpled on the ground struggling to catch his breath.

Officers were already crowding him like he was some kind of spectacle, but Felix pushed to the front to help get him to his feet. “Are you-?”

“Are you okay?” Changbin asked, pitching forward to duck under Jeongin’s left arm and support him. Felix moved to do the same on his other side, asking everyone to move aside.

“Fine,” he said, though he still let them do the heavy lifting.

With the main sources of action gone and only a few civilian stragglers left, all Felix could think about was how eerily quiet everything was. His breathing suddenly felt too loud even to himself.

What snapped him out of it was Jeongin bracing himself with a foot, forcing them to stop. Felix looked up to see Jeongin smiling at something in front of them.

That Lee Minho was taking their photo.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Minkyu snapped, still wielding his firearm as he walked up to his brother and yanked the camera in his hands down and away from his face.

“Look at him!” Minho said, gesturing at Jeongin. “He’s a natural model,” he said as he raised his camera again with the maknae still smiling brightly.

Minkyu didn’t give up; he roughly grabbed the camera and pushed it away from his face. “I mind, Minho,” he said, all at once angrier than Felix had ever seen him. It occurred to him that he’d never seen him so much as irritated.

His brother slowly lowered the camera, but he made even that move seem defiant as he stared Minkyu down with just as much fire. Before, Felix had been scared for him. Now he wasn’t sure whose stare would be more intimidating to be on the receiving end of.

Changbin and Chan locked eyes with each other. Felix didn’t know what it was, but they seemed to have the same thought, before almost immediately being disgusted that they’d just had that moment of understanding together.

With cop cars peeling away in the direction the monster went, Seungmin laid on the horn of one of the cars. “Are we just letting it get away?” he yelled at the six of them still standing around, leaning out the driver’s side window. By his side, Kyung Taeko gingerly leaned over and pressed on the horn again.

“Don’t they have it covered?” Jeongin asked, looking over his shoulder at the shrinking cars in the distance.

“Wow, maknae,” Changbin said. “Where’s all that dedication from before?”

“They’ll be fine without us,” Felix said, trying to guide Jeongin into the other car. “He’s injured.”

“Are you?” Changbin said, suddenly switching on a dime as he looked him up and down for any sign of injury. Apparently he hadn’t seen him drop to the ground from a meter up.

“No,” Jeongin said, “That’s not what I mean. I mean that while the others try to catch up to a symbiote, we can stake out somewhere it’s likely to be.”

Felix blinked, feeling like he was missing something. “How would we even figure out where a place like that is?”

After admitting that he’d done a little independent investigation of his own on the symbiote, researching supposed prank calls and false reports, Jeongin directed everyone to go to a part of the city which was almost certainly outside their jurisdiction.

“But then again,” Chan reasoned like he was finally accepting his lot in life, “anything to do with Spiderman is within our jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

Minho, on the other hand, couldn’t reason his way into tagging along a second time.

Rather than explain his reasoning, rather than let him know the next time they could talk—rather than do anything Minho thought half-decent—Minkyu had just told him to catch a cab and handed him a couple crumpled ₩10000 bills. He looked at him like he was about to slap them out of his hands, but ended up reluctantly taking the spare change and stalked off to find a street that wasn’t on complete lockdown.

They can’t even be together for more than an hour, Felix noted dismally, regretting ever hounding that guy so much.

Chapter Text

The teenage girl across the street by the cafe may have thought the soft spring breeze had all the promise of summer in its scent, judging by the way she closed her eyes to it and let it wisp by her smiling face.

Minho, frazzled and trying to hail down a taxi cab with the monetary equivalent of an old leather shoe in his fist, didn’t find it quite so pleasant when the wind swept his bangs into his face.

His hands flew up as if he’d been blinded in both eyes, Minho ducking his head down as he furiously tried to brush the strands of hair out of his eyes. Just to add insult to injury, the taxi cab callously sped by.

Minho let out a tight hiss of anger when he finally recovered, even more pissed off than he was before. Not to mention the teenager was now staring at him, probably concerned that the man across the street was having a mental episode.

He returned a smile that was probably more scary than reassuring.

“Stupid wind,” he muttered as he watched the girl grab her friend and tug her into the cafe with her. He craned his head to check if there was any other cab passing by. “Stupid hair,” he said, pushing his bangs off his forehead with way too much force and basically slapping himself. “Stupid Minkyu.”

It was childish in a way that even Minho could recognize, which frustrated him even more. His older half-brother just irritated him in a way that had him sliding back into schoolboy insults, and the thought made him want to hurl himself into moving traffic.

But since traffic was slow at this time of the day, he didn’t have high hopes. As he peered down the street to see if his luck had been spent on that one and only cab though, a taxi languidly pulled up in front of him from the other direction.

He turned towards it with a start; he hadn’t even signaled to it.

Not wanting to question his turn of luck though, Minho made to open the backseat door, before his eye snagged on the driver up front.

Minho’s head nearly fell off with how fast he did a double-take between the man and the cab, double-checking he wasn’t about to get in some stranger’s personal car.

The young, long-haired driver rolled down the window, a slight smile playing at his lips. “Something wrong?” he asked, and the way he said it made Minho think he was someone who could have only ever been perfectly charming and charismatic all his life.

There was no doubt about it, this was definitely his taxi. “Ah,” Minho intoned, opening the door. “It’s nothing,” he said as he slid into the back of the car and debated being honest. “I was just surprised by how handsome you are,” he said plainly.

The driver’s mouth curled into a true smile. Even that simple motion seemed cinematic in its perfection. “Thank you,” he said as he locked eyes with him through the rear-view mirror.

Minho had the idea to look around for hidden cameras—maybe he was getting social experimented. This would definitely be a first for a new genre: K-pop idol drives taxi for a day. But he ended up sitting still. If that was the case, those social experiment YouTubers were seriously running out of ideas.

After a beat passed, the driver prompted: “So where are you going?”

“Oh, right,” Minho said before he instinctively started firing off Han’s address.

But halfway through, he faltered.

With the cab driver looking at him expectantly, Minho sat back and thought. He could either go to Han’s place, vent until his voice went out and then try to forget the most insane day of his life had ever happened…

Or he could show that condescending know-it-all named Minkyu he wasn’t some stupid kid to be bossed around. He hadn’t so much as let him take photos, and now Minho was just going to give him the satisfaction of planting himself at home because he’d told him to?

He had overheard that one cop, Jeongin, telling them where they could corner… He called it the symbiote.

If that was true and he could capture the story, there was no way Minkyu could brush him off again. He’d have to stop treating him like they were still teenagers who lived pretending the other didn’t exist. He’d have to get off his high horse and actually be willing to look him in the eye for once.

And he’d get a chance to meet Problem Child Number Two again.

“Actually,” Minho said, fired up with renewed determination, “could you drop me off somewhere a little more out of the way?”

It was a long taxi drive with minimal conversation—“What’s at that address?” An honest “I don’t know”—before Minho was stepping out of the cab with the last breath of twilight sighing over the city.

“Thanks,” Minho said as he paid the fare, which was astonishingly cheap for how far they’d driven.

“Thank you,” the cab driver insisted, taking the short stack of bills before pulling away. Minho watched the bright yellow car recede into the distance. It was almost hypnotic how the one pop of color on these dusty roads shrank into the horizon, but Minho had slightly more important things to do than getting lured into a trance in the middle of nowhere.

He turned to take in the lackluster sight before him: steel buildings, the kind he knew farmers and metal welders could buy for a dime a dozen, clumsily sprawled from the edge of the street in front of him out into the expanse of dirt and weeds. It was some sort of building complex he could tell as much, though what their shared purpose was supposed to be was anyone’s guess.

The very real possibility that that symbiote could suddenly come bounding out from around some corner while Minho gawked out in the open hit him like a freighter train. He dropped into a crouch and crept up to the closest entrance, which was elevated a couple feet off the ground and accessible by a few metallic steps. He tried the door and found it unlocked, to his surprise. He slowly pushed it open but as gentle as he was, the strain of metal against metal still squeeeeeaked.

“Swit,” Minho quieted the door so it wouldn’t give him away.

He propped the door open with a foot, trying to let in at least a little of the fading twilight. Holding up his camera, he panned over to the area that happened to catch the most light.

Some cylindrical tubes—machines or containers, he couldn’t tell from up there with the minimal light—lined the wall to his left. Incubators? he could hazard a guess, but of course he’d never been nearly as into science as Han was.

He let the door shut behind him, which blanketed the whole place in a darkness that almost had him second-guessing himself. But there was a large skylight that still let in some of the sunset’s stray light, and there was still something he felt he had to prove.

Minho held onto the railing as he descended the steps from the platform he’d been standing on, willing his eyes to adjust to the darkness faster. The only form he could make out clearly was the maybe-incubators in front of him. He had the thought that they resembled cloning machines straight out of the movies, where test subjects would float in some green liquid while being monitored by scientists in white lab coats. Everything has to be based on something after all.

But disappointingly, there were no ominous cracks or breaks in the glass. The machines were just hollow, presumably having been drained in an orderly manner.

Looking back out over the rest of the hangar-like space, Minho could start to make out a gap in the metallic floor, enclosed by a perimeter of railing with that huge skylight overhead letting in the final sparks of daylight. In a huge place like this, he could almost imagine dozens of generic scientists bustling around on a busy day, leaning over the railing to call to one of their buddies on the ground floor or pushing their oversized goggles up their faces as they paced to their next station, fumbling with their clipboard all the way.

It would be more accurate to say he could imagine Han working at a place like this. His friend would probably give his right kidney to be treated like a serious scientist and to work with irradiated mice. Or whatever science was putting rodents through these days; Minho didn’t really keep up with that kind of news.

To the right of the pit, nondescript consoles lined the wall as far as he could see. Making sure to switch on the flash, he held his camera up, aimed, and fired.

Whatever Minkyu had tried to keep him out of, Minho took pride in the fact that he was going to expose it one way or the other.

But he peered down at the image he’d captured, a little disappointed. The only way he could make this part a good story was by finding evidence of some vulgar medical or ethical abuse, and it didn’t seem like he’d find it here.

Though he couldn't have known it, he was just next door to the real action.

-

Jeongin had directed the others towards the farthest end of the research complex, knowing where he had to go to find what he was looking for himself.

Standing just beyond the entrance of the lab he’d made so many memories in, a sense of wist started to fill him.

But it’s silly. “I was here just the other month,” Jeongin said to himself, entering the central building of the whole complex.

Which, despite its importance, wasn’t very big, only the size of a small house and a single room large. But that was all that was needed.

Jeongin knew just where the lights were in this place, but he knew his way around with them off just as well. And he preferred to let the symbiote approach him on its own terms, without the violence of artificial lighting.

Hands stuffed firmly in his pockets, Jeongin approached the center of the room, where the very incubator that once held the symbiote rested.

A massive crack in the center gleamed in the darkness.

The metal flooring creaked, as if on cue, louder and louder as it approached Jeongin.

He turned, the picture of nonchalance, but it was hard to keep his cool visage in the face of such a sight. The symbiote-human fusion had been his second most successful achievement yet, and he hadn’t even intended it; the rush of pride in that moment was exhilarating. He couldn’t begin to imagine what was waiting for him in the future when he actually tried.

“Hello,” he greeted with an amiable tilt of his head, smiling up at the dozens of rows of jagged, dangerous teeth. Once he’d been afraid of it, the first time he’d seen it face to face. But now he was aware of who had the power here. “You’ve found what you’re looking for,” he said expectantly.

The symbiote reared its head back, opened its mouth wide enough to reveal gums and a tongue colored purple with disease, and…

Jerked its head back with a screech, undoubtedly hard enough to have induced whiplash in an actual person.

Jeongin faltered, taking a step back before it occurred to him what was happening. His eyes focused on the red figure behind the symbiote, suspended on the wall by seemingly nothing but its own sheer will.

“Ah,” he said to himself, overcoming his disappointment in the span of just a nanosecond. This is going to be interesting, he thought with more than a little excitement at this point.

Han shot out another web and yanked the head to the right this time. “Don’t worry!” he called, internally screaming.

What am I doing??

He’d at least succeeded at pissing it off if that was any metric to go by.

Well, third time’s the charm, he thought optimistically as he made to shoot another web at its face.

Han had never thought about it before, but when the monster reached out, grabbed his web and used it to fling him at the wall like he weighed 10 kilos—that was how he had to assume a homerun ball slugged by Lee Dae-ho felt.

“Fff-” was all he weakly managed, the wind completely knocked out of him. Han was pretty sure he’d left a permanent man-sized dent in the wall. “Ow,” he let out as he crumpled to the ground. He willed himself to stand despite feeling like a walking bruise; but by the time he’d stood the shoebox of a building was empty.

“Does everything have to be so hard?” he huffed before swing-kicking the door open and landing on the roof of the building all in one fell swoop. From there he could scope the symbiote scaling the huge, open-roofed building next door.

Without wasting another moment Han lept to find a way to peel the symbiote away from Jeongin—when it shot out and pinned him down on the roof, the angle just perfect enough to watch it holding Jeongin out over the ledge like some sick version of a science experiment.

Han’s skull rattled like a thunderstorm as he tried to pull himself up and out of its grip, when it grimly occurred to him that that vibrating sensation in his head was its voice.

See what happens when you get involved.

The sharp pangs of panic lodged themselves in his chest, Han yanking as hard as he could. “Come on,” he strained, that thing’s face contorting into a venomous smile as he struggled. “Come o-!”

An eye-wateringly bright light flashed in his eyes and made the symbiote shrink back.

Winded and laying flat on the sloped roof, Han craned his head back as far as he could to see where that light had come from.

And nearly choked on the gasp he drew in.

It was none other than Reporter Lee Minho, staring straight back at him with his flashy reporter’s camera in his hands and eyeing the situation as if he didn’t have a fear in the world. Or any sense of self-preservation!

The symbiote threw Jeongin down and made for Minho’s head faster than anyone could blink.

Han sprang after Jeongin, shooting a web at the symbiote to simultaneously use it as an anchor point to stop his fall and to slow down its rampage.

When he looked down, his blood went cold: they were suspended above a pool of what looked like neon toxic waste. He didn’t even know it actually came in that color.

With a flick of his wrist, Han pulled them up with enough momentum to plant Jeongin on his feet on the roof before flying off after Minho.

Just before the monster could bat a career (and probably life)-ending hand at him, Han tackled Minho out of its way.

As soon as his back painfully caught the corner of a building and stopped them tumbling in the dust, Han yelled: “ Are you-!?”

Nope, his voice needed to drop about two octaves.

“Are you crazy?” he strained to say, propping himself up with a hand on either side of Minho. “How can you take pictures at a time like this?”

The bad thing about forcing his voice unnaturally low was that he had to talk much slower, sterilizing the indignation he so badly wanted to express.

“I’m not some psycho,” Minho said, somehow finding the time in the middle of all this to be offended. “You needed a distraction, didn’t you?”

“Not-!”

Han cleared his throat.

“Not at the expense of your life, genius.” Minho recoiled at the name-calling, and yeah, Han would admit, maybe it was a little far to insult him under the guise of being a complete stranger. He kinda deserved it right now though, and he could have gone on if it weren’t for the monster charging at them.

Han pulled him to his feet, cutting off whatever remark he had locked and loaded as he made a show of dusting him off. “Sorry about this,” he apologized in advance, before shoving him inside the closest lab building and webbing the door shut.

And then did probably the sickest fucking thing anyone had ever done.

He flipped into the air and dodged the symbiote with perfect timing, to the point that everything seemed to go in slow-motion as he started blinding it with sticky webs.

“Pew pew-pew-pew-pew-pew,” he voiced as he let off a barrage of shots that would buy him some time to swing up onto the roof he’d stranded Jeongin on.

“Wait!” Jeongin protested, pushing his hands off when he was just trying to get him out of there.

“I’m not falling for your cute act again,” Han said, having to resist heaving a weary sigh.

“Venom, the symbiote,” Jeongin went on anyway, undeterred. “You might be able to kill it by dropping it in there,” he said, pointing down into the building he had almost been dropped in himself. Toxic waste sludged around, still being pushed around by some active system when it seemed like everything else in this place had gone offline. “It’s weak to fire.”

Han opened his mouth and just made noises for a second, completely unable to grasp what he was saying. “Is this Pokemon?” he finally got out, incredulous. “What do you mean Venom?”

“Just trust me,” he said in a way that really did make Han want to trust him, that confident way that made him seem as if he had all the answers. “And, that’s his name.” His eyes shifted behind Han to look at the approaching monster.

In the split second that Han took to turn and look at it, Jeongin had stepped back out of his reach and, with open and outstretched arms, plunged backwards into the lab.

Han almost blew it by acting on sheer instinct—like he’d been basically doing this whole time—and catching him.

But instead he threw himself out of the way of the symbiote, let it jump after Jeongin, and only then swung in to save him.

It was almost exactly the opposite of what had happened earlier in the day, when he’d failed to catch Jeongin a second too late. But this time he wouldn’t fail. He wouldn’t make a mistake.

Because it was slowly dawning on him how costly a mistake on his part would be, but for the present, he was still blissfully unaware of just how terrible it could be.

For the present, the symbiote flailed and reached for them mid-air, but physics won out in the end like it was always going to.

“So where are we getting that fire from, Yang Jeongin?” Han asked once they were on the floor and on their feet. The only thing in his line of sight was a huge vat of toxic waste and chemicals which the monster was flailing in, sending flecks of it worryingly close to their faces.

After a moment when Jeongin’s face, blazing with the sickly glow of the toxic sludge before them, set itself in hard determination, he lurched forward and hit some mysterious red button. It seemed so cliche; but either way, an encasement appeared and closed around the vat, trapping the symbiote inside.

“Cool!” Han called over the whirring and buzzing sounding out through the building’s impressive acoustics. “Now what!??” he cried, seeing as the symbiote was very much still furiously alive.

“Now get us out,” Jeongin said, his tone even but his expression deadly serious.

It was almost like programming how quickly he jumped to action, rather than any conscious thought or deliberation. Han didn’t know what was going to happen, but he still didn’t hesitate to start swinging the two of them away as fast as he possibly could. Pretty difficult, given that only a handful of the buildings around here even cleared more than one floor.

They didn’t get very far when a thunderous boom resounded. Shrapnel flew in every direction, which Han knew not just because of the debris he felt cutting up his back, but because of how all the little debris made irritating clink and shhrp noises all around him.

Han faltered for a second. A second too long. With a terrible feeling of déjà vu he lost his bearings and his hold on Jeongin, sending the both of them falling towards the ground.

Fortunately, Han managed to web out a safe landing for Jeongin, practically threading him a brand new hammock in mid-air like it was a sport he’d invented. But as for him, all that the webhead could do was hit the ground without an ounce of pity from the laws of physics.

“It’s okay,” he said to himself, more to check that his hearing hadn’t gone out than anything else. “My ego can take one more hit today,” he said mournfully.

Though it was a strain, he picked up his spinning head and cast a look over at the wreckage.

The thought that that lab, toasted beyond recognition as the rubble lay in an irradiated heap, could have held valuable scientific findings hurt his heart a little. But of course, it was nothing compared to the assurance that that creature was finally out of his hair, too overcooked to be able to cause anyone any more trouble.

Plus the fact that he’d never witnessed an explosion in real life until now was pretty cool, even though he’d had his back to it in the moment.

Something put a damper on his mood though. That little face popped into his mind’s eye like a corny flashback, and Han finally had to heave that weary sigh.

Minho was here, and locked inside an old, creepy lab.

“Unbelievable. Unbelievable!” Was Han’s life destined to get more and more complicated, or did he just have the worst luck imaginable? Grimly, he wasn’t sure which would be worse.

But Han picked himself up as he forced himself to focus on the positives. He always had to look on the bright side, or he might have gone crazy by now. Jeongin would be okay, Minho would be okay and none the wiser as to his identity, and even the cops had come out of this without a scratch.

Han’s suit-clad feet kicked up clouds of dust as he made his way over to that building. It wasn’t a strange phenomenon; what was strange was that he’d noticed it at all.

All at once, every particle seemed to take on a life of its own as it floated around the atmosphere. Han stilled in apprehension. His vision, his hearing, the way the oxygen sat in the air—it all seemed to narrow to a point in anticipation.

Han whipped his head back, wheeling around in every direction. “Where?” he breathed. “What is it?” He almost let out a delirious scream, half-insane from frustration. “What now!?” he challenged. Something still wasn’t right.

His eyes snagged on the impromptu demolition site, some pieces of debris still chipping off the little bit of infrastructure that remained. But what had caught his attention was something within it, recognizable only in that instinctual way that the eye could pick out a human-like figure from light-years away.

Han was moving before he even knew what he was doing.

“Hey,” he called shakily as he approached. There was no way he wasn’t dreaming. “Hey,” he said louder as if that could wake him up from the bad dream.

A man was laying in the debris, face tilted up towards the bruising night sky.

Han’s expression under the mask slackened when he saw that face. Nothing he’d seen in his textbooks or late-night searches compared to the nightmare in front of him. Half the features were irradiated off to the point of being unrecognizable. The other half still managed to clock as human features, but they were charred a wholly inhuman black.

“Hey,” Han repeated in spite of the dark dread beginning to pool in his extremities, his fingertips going all pins and needles.

When he came closer, he was shocked when the man managed to turn and look at him, still alive and even alert. Despite the melted and disfigured flesh around them, those eyes were too strong and intelligent to not be recognized. “Jeong?” Han prompted against his better judgment. It couldn’t be- “Jeong Seongmin-ssi?”

Against all odds, he managed to ask, in a voice corrupted by radiation, ”Do I know you?

Han didn’t think twice about yanking the mask up and off his face.

“Ah,” Jeong intoned. “Ahh.” They were strange, pained noises that came from his throat. But he didn’t seem betrayed by the revelation. “I should have known,” he said. If he were capable of anything more, it seemed like he would have let out a good-natured chuckle with the words.

But that might have been Han’s guilt talking.

“I… I- You-” Some sick realization was creeping up on him, choking him until the words wouldn’t come anymore. “I really had no idea that you were-” He cut himself off. What was he going to say, a monster?

“No one did,” Jeong said mercifully. “I made sure of it.” He closed his eyes as best he could, but only thin, uneven flaps of skin came over his eyes. He tried to breathe as deeply as he could.

Han couldn’t ignore the sinking in the pit of his stomach anymore. “I’m sorry,” he found himself frantically saying, dropping to his knees one at a time.

This was all his fault.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, his dread now fully replaced by red-hot, guilty panic.

This is all my fault.

“Believe me, I didn’t mean for, for- for any of this to happen. I didn’t- I thought you, ah-”

Something between a groan and a sob left his throat, but before he could start tearing up in earnest, Jeong’s voice cut through the night.

“Son,” he said. The word carried more weight than anything in that moment. “I haven’t felt this free in months,” he said, cutting Han right to the quick.

“The symbiote,” Jeong went on. “Venom,” he uttered. The syllables were barely a wisp past his teeth, but Han heard it all the same. He could hear everything; the crickets chirping in the grass, the dust in the wind scraping against the steel walls surrounding them—at least the walls that still stood.

He could hear every ragged breath that left Jeong Seongmin’s obliterated body, whether he wanted to or not.

“I always felt it.” His fingers twitched as if he wanted to gesture with them, but trying to move was no good. “There in the back of my mind,” he said, opting to draw out the syllables so long that it swept a chill up Han’s spine. “I wanted it out. I thought my hopes lied with the sciences. But how could I ask a professional to examine me without arousing suspicion?”

Han’s eyes widened bit by bit. Memory by memory came back to him.

“Yes,” Jeong said, perceiving Han’s dawning realization. “That’s why I wanted you. You eventually succeeded in developing a-”

“Stop, please,” Han said shakily.

“I’m sorry.”

Han shook his head, ashamed of his own reaction. He'd put him in this position, now how could he ask the man to stop talking about his last day alive? He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to meet Jeong’s. “I found the compounds that could flush out a parasite the size of my fist,” he said, collecting himself. “They were just theoreticals. We never tested them,” he said, the last few words coming out in a breath.

“I didn’t know failure would be so catastrophic. It hijacked me completely today. I just wanted the nagging, carnivorous grating in my head to-” For the first time, Jeong’s voice went short of breath.

“Why hide at all?” Han pleaded, near-demanding. “You should have told someo- You could have told me. I could have helped you, Jeong.”

“Please be sympathetic,” he said so vulnerably Han came close to tearing up. Though it was a miracle he’d lasted even this long, Jeong Seongmin’s time was starting to draw short, and the weight of it sat heavy on Han’s chest. “I know you know all about hiding.”

“Wh-what?” Han breathed, before he went straight to denial. “No, no, this is different. I can’t let anyone know. It would… It would be such a burden.” He could pretend he had family to care about like Jeong likely had. But without parents, siblings, or even a love life to speak of, there was only one person he cared enough for to protect from the grim, grisly parts of his life.

“I know this is my fault.” Before Han could even start shaking his head no, no, no, he went on: “Though I think you’ll start blaming yourself. But don’t worry, son. You did everything right, as far as you knew. And… And you made me forget the anger, and the resentment, and bitterness it fed on. You made me forget even for… a short while.”

A beat of dead silence.

“Jeong. Jeong!” It wasn’t. It wasn’t his fault. Han had made the cataclysmic fuck-up, never noticing he wasn’t alright until it came to this point. Even if he held those churning emotions, Jeong Seongmin was no monster. An innocent man had caught the brunt of his mistake. “Please,” he breathed, “Please don’t forgive me.” He gripped his own wrist so he wouldn’t completely break down, so hard he could feel the bone shifting within his arm. “It’s not okay, I-I-” He couldn’t say it. Someone was dead because of him and he couldn’t say it out loud. I killed you.

Just as the world had zeroed in on him and his tiny radius, all his senses seemed to explode back outward and warned him of the footsteps running up to him.

He needed to get out of there. Even if getting to his feet was the hardest thing he'd had to do today, he couldn't let himself get caught here, now.

When the police rushed up a few moments later, the only figure they saw in the dark was the charred remains of a man who would remain unidentified. The cold case would eventually be zipped up and filed away in the back of the box of all the year’s cases.

No one ever would connect that particular freak accident and burnt body with the esteemed Jeong Seongmin, least of all his family. For a long time, they wouldn't know what became of him.

Chapter Text

If Minho was anything, it was a troublemaker.

At least that was what his older brother had hissed under his breath as he shoved him inside a cop car no one had cleaned in at least two months.

"Ew," Minho grimaced, pulling his hand away from the sticky piece of plastic wrap sitting in the backseat with him. "Do you even vacuum this thing?"

"You're lucky I don't get you into real trouble," Minkyu went on ranting, scanning that none of his limbs would get caught before he slammed the door in his face.

Minho immediately tried the handle and found it, to his dismay, locked.

Again.

He pressed his face against the window, looking ridiculous from the other side of the glass. "You just don't want to do all that paperwork," he goaded, making sure he was loud enough to hear through the door.

"Even your face is irritating," his brother scoffed, an amused twitch in his eye. Minho basked in a bit of pride—that microexpression basically meant his brother was hysterical with laughter. "Save your breath," Minkyu added, sobering up. "Just because the window's tinted doesn't mean you need to yell." He stalked off towards the nearest cop, a stern looking guy in his 40s, and signalled towards the car.

Minho pasted on his sweetest, fakest smile at them; Minkyu only rolled his eyes before heading off towards the wreckage. The scene Minho had barely gotten a glimpse at.

The scene he needed to see.

He banged on the door as the officer approached the car.

"Sir-" He feigned choking as the man got in the front seat, grabbing for his own throat. Through the rear-view mirror Minho watched the man's eyes go huge with concern. "I really think I'm gonna be sick, could you please-" He gagged for extra effect.

He didn't even need to ask him to open the door before the cop was up and opening it in a blur of motion. "No way I'm getting vomit in this car again."

Ew, Minho mentally grimaced, suppressing a shudder. He used the excuse of dry heaving out of the car to cover up his phone with his body and snap a sly photo of the scene. "False alarm," he said as he sat back, quivering his voice for extra extra effect.

"I'll go slow," the cop said as he got back in the front and turned the key.

Minho didn't sit back too far, the foreboding word again echoing in his head. He looked down at the photo he'd managed to snap.

A day later, at the very least back in the comfort of his own home this time, Minho was looking at that same photo.

Even on the highest brightness the photo was too out of focus to make out much of anything. "This is useless," he huffed as he pushed his bangs out of his face. He glanced back at his laptop, where a partly-typed up article on the most bizarre day of his entire life sat waiting to be finished.

Somehow even stranger than when he’d gotten punched and hugged by the school basketcase on the same day.

"What a weirdo," Minho reminisced under his breath, before wondering why that memory had even popped into his brain to begin with.

He was getting side-tracked. The reason he was even bothering with a whole autobiographical account of the other day—minus the petty arguing, the public didn’t need to know about that—was that, between news anchors, headlines and overall discussions, nobody was saying anything about what happened the day before.

To be specific, everybody and their dog was of course talking about the mayhem in Euljiro and millions in property damage and Spiderman In Action!!

But Minho was pretty sure the whole "Mysterious lab complex literally explodes with police, Spiderman AND horrific monster straight out of my nightmares on the scene" story overshadowed that by miles. Minkyu must have really had that whole thing on lockdown, somehow keeping it out of the news cycle while people ramped up their Spiderman fan edits and posts, which… existed for reasons Minho didn’t understand.

So along with his story, he needed something solid to base his tell-all on. Some definitive evidence or testimony that would back up the fact he wasn’t some crazed weirdo looking for his 15 minutes of fame.

Because under the surface of all the excitement of a masked superhero who’d appeared out of thin air, Minho could feel that something was brewing.

He straightened up with realization so quickly his spine cracked. "Ow," he intoned as he put a hand on his back.

That taxi driver.

By the time his thought was over he'd already grabbed his keys, wallet, and backup floss off the kitchen counter and shoved on his shoes.

If he could track down the man who'd driven him there, maybe he'd be able to find somebody else who had seen what happened that night and give his admittedly baseless Spiderman blew up a laboratory? story some real teeth.

But fate had different plans for Minho when he pulled open his door and someone tumbled into him from the other side.

When he stopped seeing stars, his eyes could finally focus on the little concerned face hovering in front of him.

"Are you okay?" Han asked, eyebrows pinched together in concern.

"Fine," Minho said, though he couldn't help grabbing for his head.

"Here," Han said with that same gentle worry, maneuvering him on to the closest kitchen chair by the arms.

"I said I'm fine," Minho huffed, still disoriented by how hard Han had come at him. "What were you even trying to do, mug me?" It wasn't until then that he realized Han was scrolling through his article, mouth agape with concentration. Cold. He’d already forgotten about his victim.

"I wanted to see your cats..." he said absently, his eyes rapidly scanning through the manuscript.

Minho huffed a laugh of pride. If his writing could get this kind of reaction out of his friend on a first draft, there was no telling what it would do when it got online.

He opened his mouth to say as much, when Jisung whirled around at him: "What is this!?"

Maybe… not as good as he thought.

"I was gonna tell you all about it when I could," he said, voice deadly serious. "I met Spiderman!" he said in English, beaming with pride.

"'Met'?" Jisung spit out like it was a curse word. "What do you mean by met?"

Minho couldn't wipe the smile off his face as he said, "I basically bailed him out.

"But Han," he said, switching tracks. "I wanted to tell you, I think there's something really off going on here."

Han spluttered, barely managing a "No fucking kidding!" A half-crazed sounding laugh escaped him. "Does any of this seem normal to you!?" He swiveled his head back around to the laptop monitor to reread fragments: "Hulking monster, guy dressed up as a spider, crooked polic- Okay, not that one," he said, frantically waving it off. "But everything else??"

Minho stood, starting to get uneasy. Han was normally wired, but not to this extent. He tried reaching around him to grab his computer. "I was just about to send it to Editor Lim."

"Send what?" he snapped, shutting the laptop closed with an open hand.

Minho snapped his eyes up at Han's, to find that his were on fire.

An uneasy silence dropped, as his friend's face softened. "Sorry," he breathed, looking genuinely embarrassed at his outburst.

Minho didn't immediately take his laptop. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he nodded as he handed it to him, pressing his lips into a thin line. "I'm sorry." He exhaled noisily through his nose. "You should really be careful."

"I will," Minho said, taking a seat.

"No, Minho-ya," he said, his low voice heavy with severity.

His tone made Minho look up at him on instinct.

"I mean, like, really. Don't do this."

"Don't do this?" he repeated, monotone. "This is my job. I was actually about to go do it before you burst in here."

Han shifted his weight from one leg to the other. "What do you mean by that?"

Minho tapped away on his keyboard, pretending to be sending a very important email—though his laptop wasn't open to anything but the dinosaur game.

"What do you mean by that?" Han demanded more urgently.

"I met a guy last evening," he said mysteriously. "A handsome one. I was gonna go see him again."

His friend's brows scrunched so low they practically covered his eyes. "Huh?"

"A very young taxi driver drove me to the scene last night," he elaborated as his email finally loaded. "I was gonna track him down and ask if he managed to see anything."

Han pulled up his hair in a fist and held it behind his head, pointing to a spot under his left eye with his free hand. "Did he look about 23 and have long hair and have a beauty mark?" he blurted out.

Now it was Minho's turn to make a face. "...Yes?"

Han dropped his hands. "Yeah he drove me once before," he said, his voice suddenly nonchalant.

As two secret introverts, quiets with Han were almost always so comfortable.

Now, as another strange silence sagged down the atmosphere, Minho just cringed inside. He didn't even know what he was bracing for until Han said it out loud.

"You can't pull on this thread."

As quiet as Han was about it, it didn't stop the irritation from bubbling in the pit of Minho's stomach.

The same, familiar hurt.

"You really don't know what you're going up against."

Not an unfamiliar sentiment.

"You could have gotten seriously hurt, what you did was so dangerous!"

And a familiar phrase.

"Next time who knows-"

Minho slammed his laptop closed, shooting to his feet. "Do you?" he said, the words coming out all jagged and caustic.

He looked like a deer caught in the headlines. "What?"

"You're acting as if anyone knows what the hell this is! And that's the entire point, if I let this story go now, no one ever will."

Han lacking confidence, started: "There's other reporters-"

"And none of them are me!" Minho exclaimed, his voice near cracking. "I thought you were proud of me, Han! I thought you were on my side!"

"I-I am," he stuttered out.

Irritation still flaring, Minho closed his eyes in an effort to tamp it back down. When he opened them, his focus was razor sharp. "Then act like it," he said earnestly. "What's gotten in to you? Why are you telling me what to do now of all times?"

Han visibly swallowed. He made as if to grab on to the closest chair for support, before thinking better of it.

"I can handle myself. I'm not totally useless," he added, so harshly it was more of a hiss.

-

Was Han an asshole?

He didn’t think so…

"At least not entirely," he muttered under his breath, his head against the window of the limo.

Like some persistent pest, that mental image was flashing in front of his eyes again—of a horrible, twisted face, blackened by flames and radiation. Han’s heart lept into his throat.

This time mind was playing a new trick on him.

This time it wasn’t Jeong’s face.

This time it was…

Han doubled over and sucked in a breath, rubbing his forehead with his fist to chase away the image before his heart could hammer any faster. All alone he was so weak, so incapable of protecting anything but his own skin.

"Hey," he hesitantly prompted the chauffeur, sitting up properly. "Do you know Hwang Hyunjin personally?"

Good thing he wasn’t alone.

"I’m not exactly at liberty to say," he answered, way more fancily than Han would have ever answered a question like that.

"Could you tell me what he’s like?" he pushed anyway, his hand involuntarily coming up to scratch at the skin of his neck. "At least a little?"

The man, soft-faced and somewhere in his 30s, glanced at him through the rear-view mirror. "I can tell you he’s a very professional and competent man," he said simply. "Him and Yang Jeongin. You made the right choice."

The choice, Han repeated in his head. That would be choice to call the number on the business card, and agree to take Jeongin’s help.

He’d still wanted to play defensive last night—"How are you even gonna help me ‘do so much more’?" he mocked as soon as Hyunjin had picked up the phone at 2 in the morning, sleep not coming easily to Han for… well, reasons.

"Have you made up your mind?" he responded. Hyunjin, for his part, didn’t sound groggy in the least for the late hour.

"I don’t even know what I’m making my mind up about," he said firmly, but the truth was, whatever this was supposed to be, Han was dying to throw himself into it. As long as it would bring out his potential.

Hyunjin hummed. "To trust us, partly."

As long as it would mean no one else got hurt.

"And why would I do that?" Han said, folding the business card as many times as he could force its tough cardstock to bend. "Well, Spiderman," Hyunjin had replied, his voice neither sympathetic nor cold. "What are your other options?"

As long as it meant he could finally stop being such a failure.

Before he knew it, the limo was coming to a stop in front of a looming building, the neighbourhood looking… a little too familiar for comfort. Han flushed at the thought that Yang Jeongin was meeting him at the very same facility he’d interned at for months.

But as he got his bearings straight, he noted that the building was too dark, too modern, too sleek to be the modest research facility he’d given hours of free labour to. "For the experience," Han mocked out loud. He got out of the car, without realizing the driver had come around to open the door for him. It made Han feel a little weird when he did notice; he didn’t really feel important enough to warrant that level of treatment.

The inside was nothing very special, to Han’s inexplicable disappointment after he’d followed the man to the entrance. What had he even been expecting, botanical gardens? It was just a normal looking lobby, with one long secretaries’ desk splitting the space in two, along with hallways and stairs along the faraway walls that seemed to lead every which way.

The only strange thing was the lack of people inside.

Han turned a little warily; the chauffeur hadn’t followed him in.

The only person inside, a bleach-blond man reclining against the secretaries’ desk, was now pushing himself up and walking in Han’s direction. Han turned again to check there wasn’t someone behind him he was getting in the way of. No one in sight.

"Welcome," the man greeted as he outstretched his pale hand to him.

Han hesitantly took it. "Hello, Mr…"

The man smiled, the expression honey-sweet but tinged with an air of self-awareness, or of having been rehearsed. "I know my hair looks a little different, but you don’t remember me?"

Han seemed increasingly prone to flashbacks these days, since if they weren’t just movie magic he would have sworn he’d just had one.

"Hyunjinnie?" he said without thinking.

Hyunjin laughed suddenly, showing his proper, eye-crease wrinkling smile. "Sure, you can call me that."

Han’s brain buffered.

Loading.

Receiving. . .

Ding!

"Hang on, wait a minu- Hwang Hyunjin-ssi,” he frantically corrected with what looked like feverish jazz hands, hot blood rushing to his ears. “I didn’t mean- You know, I’d never try to-"

Hyunjin laughed again. If it didn’t annoy him to be laughed at so much, Han might have found it cute.

Right now he was just glad the mask was covering his huge, embarrassed eyes.

"Right," Hyunjin affirmed with a nod, "Mr. Yang would have probably said that. You can call me whatever you like," he added, though Han couldn’t imagine that was anything more than an empty invite.

How weird would that be if he actually took him up on that?

"Shall we?" Hyunjin said as he gestured towards the elevator.

When the doors of the elevator had closed in front of them, Hyunjin did something… odd.

He pulled the cover of the elevator panel straight off.

Pushing his loose blond strands out of his face, he leaned down to be eye-level with it.

Just as Han was about to ask if he’d meant to break it like that, a laser—straight out of a fucking James Bond movie!!—shot out and scanned his iris.

Hyunjin smiled coyly at Han as he straightened back up, as if reading his amazement through the mask.

There had been no basement level listed on the button panel, but the elevator started descending.

Han, slack-jawed, looked between Hyunjin and the iris scanner he’d casually used like it was the lock to his apartment. "Can you put my eye in that??"

"This is just the entryway," he said. About ten impatient seconds later, the doors were opening to Han’s literal paradise.

It was a bunker kind of space, where seemingly every experiment that could be done with any sort of equipment was being done right before his eyes. Cubicles with see-through walls were the only thing separating any outside observer from the unselfconscious procedures within. Inside one of those many cubicles, men in lab coats and chunky goggles stood around watching some bright ball of light dancing on a needle, nodding in unison and taking notes on clipboards.

"I wouldn’t stare too long at that," Hyunjin warned. "The last guy who did that…" he trailed off.

Han swiveled around to stare at him. Oh God, had he been blinded for life?

He tucked a strand of his own hair behind his ear. "Got moved to accounting," he said before walking on, clearing the way through the maze of stations and people bustling around. But he didn’t even bother to check that the web-head was following behind.

So Han took that as an invite to gawk at the mechanical arms that were seemingly reconstructing a strand of DNA from scratch in the closest station.

The image of a double helix structure was blown up on a "screen" hovering in the center of the room, the robot arms zipping and zapping at the dish in the middle with calculated precision. But Han didn’t even know whether he could call it a screen; it was more of a hologram, but the picture was still clear and life-like as anything.

Han looked to his right—in another station two scientists monitored mystery chemicals and multicolored liquids as they traveled through clear piping, like someone had brought the very word science to life in the coolest way possible.

Han looked to his left and jumped.

"Good afternoon, Peter," Jeongin said as he bowed, both hands behind his back. He was dressed in a clean, sharp suit that probably cost way more than the simple jacket and shirt would let on.

Han reflexively bowed back, suddenly self-conscious of his homemade, beat up Spiderman suit. "Hi," he said, before he realized he had no idea what to say to him. He hadn't even been fully sure Jeongin was going to be here.

“I'm glad you're here,” Jeongin said, slightly taller than him and beaming like he genuinely was happy to see him. His warm smile relaxed the tension Han hadn't even known he'd been carrying in his shoulders this whole time. “Mind if we walk?” he invited, signalling behind Han with an outstretched hand.

Han turned to follow where he led down the corridor of mini-laboratories, and caught a glimpse of Hyunjin testily walking ahead of them.

Oops.

"Don't mind him," Jeongin said with a breath of laughter, “he's just sensitive.” They turned a corner, another long series of cubicles lining either side of the walkway. “Have you been well?" he asked.

Han looked over at his profile, wondering what he knew about what had happened last night.

He stopped short suddenly, making Jeongin pause too.

Where did he even go after I saved him?

In the stress of the moment he'd completely forgotten about Jeongin, caught between worrying about Minho and… And then…

Jeongin was looking at him expectantly, making no move to step out of the way of a researcher who was clearly trying to pass him. A small smile slowly grew on his face as he waited for Han to speak, amused. "What?" he prompted as he lifted both eyebrows.

"Where… How did you get home?"

Jeongin kept up his questioning face for a moment. "Oh," he said, "last night." Han nodded. "Well, the building was set to blow, so I ran as soon as you dropped me." He turned back to face him. "How about you?"

"I..."

Han's throat caught, treacherous neurons firing before he could make his brain shut out the pictures he didn't want to see. Jeongin leaned close, his voice just above a whisper: "Did you see the host?"

"Huh?" Han looked up at him, blinking fast as he realized how watery his eyes were getting. "Host?"

Jeongin gave a little shake of his head, as if it should have been perfectly obvious. "The symbiote's host. The person it was feeding on," he said, oblivious to the way feeding sent a pang of nausea down Han's stomach so strong it rolled into his legs.

"I did," Han said, barely a whisper. "I did." And before he could think better of it, he added: "He was my friend."

Jeongin started to say something, before he leaned away, giving him some space. "I’m sorry."

"It's not your fault," Han said, gathering himself. "I should have known." They stood there for what seemed like a long moment, Jeongin just watching him and making Han start to feel a little nervous.

Then he said, "We'd all like an easy scapegoat, Peter,” and Han wasn't sure if that was supposed to be reassuring or not. Before he could ask, Jeongin was back to leading the way through the wide corridor.

"You didn't come here for nothing," Jeongin stated, allowing Han to stare through the transparent walls of the various lab stations without rushing him or leaving him behind. Something Hyunjin could learn from, Han thought, before immediately forgetting the thought and wondering what the group of researchers was doing in that lab huddled around a bunny on a table.

"You brought me here, sir," Han said a little absently, scanning the other rooms, all so varied and different from each other. What kind of budget was this place working on? It had to be at least a million times more than whatever his old employment had scrounged together in subsidies and donations.

Jeongin laughed. "It's just Jeongin-ah," he said. "The suit doesn't change anything."

Han looked back at him. "It kind of does," he replied, making Jeongin crack a bemused smile at him. "How do you support all of this?" he genuinely asked, raising his arms either side of him, but really he was asking Who are you?

For a moment, Jeongin's smile was oh-so-knowing. "You haven't seen the least of it, Peter." He looked away for a second, hmming to himself. "I've waited long enough to show you this," he said, quickening his pace suddenly.

Han kept up easily enough as they turned another corner, through a door he hadn't seen from the corridor, but as soon as he did he found it hard to see. Where the larger outside space had been all fluorescent white light, this room—which seemed like a shoe closet in comparison—was dark and lit up with blue LEDs hidden in mysterious places.

Honestly, Han's only point of comparison was a nightclub.

But it was more like a library of science, he reconsidered as he followed Jeongin past the walls and walls of glass containers without a word, all of which were holding some kind of tiny specimen like lizards and grasshoppers and mantises, some living and some less fortunate.

They were walking past them all of them, and Han wondered what in here could possibly have to with him.

He was wondering so hard, he walked into Jeongin.

He gestured for Han to step into the row in front of them. With a curious glance back at him, Han scanned the containers all lined up in organized columns. This seemed to be where all the arachnids were kept, and fortunately all alive.

As he looked between them all, the silence was growing tauter, and Han was feeling increasingly awkward at not knowing what Jeongin expected of him. "Cool," he finally said, just to say something.

"Do you see it yet?" Jeongin asked, not exactly helping

Han couldn’t figure out what part of any of this was supposed to be helpful. “...N-No?"

But even as he said the word, there it was. One of the thin, square containers in front of him had a spiderweb in it, just like all the others.

Except this one didn't have a spider in it.

Han's heart skipped as he jolted forward, reading the plaque under it: SK-0325 - Breached containment early April.

April 3rd. That was the Monday that spider had bitten him.

Han looked closer at one of the spiders behind a different glass—little red dots, standing out all along its abdomen, he remembered with a shock. As if someone had purposely injected it..

Han turned from the spider to Jeongin and back to the spider in the matter of a dizzying second. "Wh-What is… What?"

"What it means, Peter," Jeongin said, slowly approaching him, seeing in his face that he understood now. "-Is that you're special," he finished, whispering the last word as he placed a grounding hand on Han's arm. "You were made to do incredible things. All you need is a little guidance, from someone who knows best."

Han's head spun trying to grasp it all. "Are you saying me getting bit that day… wasn't an accident?"

Jeongin looked at him, moving his hand to his shoulder. His eyes were full of kindness as he said: "Of course it was an accident. Nobody meant for the specimen to get out. But it was specially engineered, so in a matter of speaking..."

"I am too," Han finished for him.

"You're spectacular, Spiderman," Jeongin said with feeling, making Han's heart flip in his chest. "By the far the best mistake I've ever made," he joked, making Han laugh a little for the first time in what felt like forever.

Han had heard variations of those words all his life, from teachers, counselors and administrators. Not the mistake thing, more along the lines of you're such a smart kid, Jisung. You have so much potential. You could do incredible things. None of them had ever said it without palpable disappointment and frustration with him—none of them had ever stopped to consider he was also frustrated with himself and the way his stupid brain seemed to sabotage everything he cared about.

Jeongin held out his hand to him. "Would you join me?" he asked, quiet and intimate, like a secret to be kept.

For the first time, Han could actually start to believe he could be something more.

He took it.

-

“You won’t tell anyone about this, right?” Changbin asked for the fourth time, his leg bouncing up and down.

“No, sergeant,” Minho said, sifting through some of the boring documents splayed on the table between them. “For the last time, I hate that guy as much as you do.”

Changbin sat up, eyes wide. “I don’t hate Minkyu, it’s only that…”

Minho peered up at him, wordlessly urging him to go on.

“He has tunnel vision sometimes,” he finished politely. “I think keeping the public informed is a good idea as much as you do, it’s not because I hate Minkyu,” he emphasized with a nervous chuckle, as if the very word gave him anxiety.

“And..." Minho began, looking back at the table. "This is all of it?”

“As much as I could get. Of course, I’m gonna need them back-”

“No,” Minho said with exaggerated feeling, clutching a random photo close to his chest. “I need…” He looked down at what the image was supposed to be: “A blurry picture of Spiderman undressing in public.”

Changbin laughed. "It’s the best I could I get without looking suspicious."

Minho understood that. It was just that between with how unexpectedly difficult that driver had been to find (okay, he might admit it had never been a very good lead in the first place) and now the general disappointment of how bare-bones the police’s Spiderman files turned out to be, he wasn’t in the best mood.

Han suddenly turning into a little know-it-all this morning wasn’t helping either.

"But are you really sure none of this is helpful?" Changbin tried, leaning forward. "I mean, in that photo…" He tilted his head to get a better look at it. "You can almost kinda see his face?"

The sergeant was being generous. The photo was Bigfoot levels of blurriness.

The written briefs were even less helpful. Minho picked up one of them to skim over its contents: Father reports Spiderman helped fend off his son's bullies; woman called to say Spiderman had helped her child with astronomy homework. It was dull cat-stuck-in-tree kind of business.

"What about last night at the laboratory?” Minho asked. “Any pictures-" Changbin shook his head. "Samples?" No again. "Testimonies?" Minho tried desperately.

No, no and no.

"Minkyu doesn't want a scene. If the public finds out we even breathed near that place, he gets the idea the superintendent will shut it all down."

Minho perked up at that, curious. "Would he?"

A cynical smile spread across Changbin's face. "Well with the state of the team, he clearly doesn't care for it very much."

"Right..." Minho said, pretending to know what he meant by that.

"Just a burnt body among all that wreckage," Changbin recalled, “and the symbiote had disappeared."

Minho blinked.

"Oh, symbiote," Changbin enunciated. “You saw the monster, right?"

"Yeah? Did Minkyu come up with that word?" It sounded stupid enough to have been coined by him.

"No, another police officer told it to me."

Minho tilted his head at him, waiting. When Changbin didn't fill in, he prodded: "And… where did he get it from?"

Changbin's face went blank, as if he was realizing for the first time he had no idea.

"Science textbook?" Minho hazarded a guess, more for the sergeant’s sake than anything else.

"Maybe?" Changbin said, still looking spacey. "Well," he started, blinking away his confusion. "The monster was gone, there was a body, a building had been blown up, and all we know is that Spiderman was somehow involved and we failed to stop him,” he summed up.

"So it's not looking great for your team's survival," Minho grimaced in sympathy.

"Did it ever?" Changbin said with another cynical smile.

"Did you at least get anything from the body?" Minho said, scribbling a note in his steno pad.

"It barely looked human, Minho," Changbin said seriously. "There was basically nothing left when we went to see it in the radiation containment facility."

Minho looked up sharply at the word radiation.

"It was that bad," he affirmed. "They wouldn't let us get close to it without special hazmat suits."

To think I'd been that close to it, Minho wondered to himself, before thoughts of Han's sudden mom-behavior came back to him in an annoying flash. He didn't even know the first thing about what Minho was doing, and still had the nerve to try bossing him around.

"Hey?"

"Huh?" Minho said dumbly, looking up.

"I asked if there was anything else you needed."

Minho took a final look over the meager amount of information splayed between them. Weird tabloid headlines declaring Spiderman Revealed? only to repeat information the public already knew to drive up sales, blurry photos that might as well have been pictures of seaweed with how clear they were, and...

Minho snatched up one of the pictures so quickly it startled Changbin. "What?"

"Do you..." Minho was already standing. "-mind if I take this?" he finished, walking out of the cafe.

"Hey," he heard behind him. "Hey!"

-

Han soared through the city, whooping and hollering as obnoxiously as ever wearing his brand new suit.

Same experience, but so different in a sleek spandex suit that didn't catch the air and slow him down, and he glided through the atmosphere like it had always been this easy. Not to mention he looked amazing in it, courtesy of Hyunjin's tailoring—but with how cranky he’d been Han was 99% sure that guy had never tailored anything else in his life.

Han swung to and ran up the side of a sheer office building, peering in through the glass windows at all the workers gaping at him in surprise. An exhilarated laugh left his chest as he got to the top of the building and barely tapped his foot against the edge, sending him coasting back towards the ground with relaxed arms behind his head.

Nothing could kill his mood, he thought, positively buzzing with euphoria.

His phone went off.

He was wrong.

Hey, Minho had texted.
Sorry I was a bitch
Buy you coffee to make up for it, he said without a question mark. Apparently he had no choice.

Han barrelled towards one of the alleyways he kept a spare change of clothes in, tossing them on over his Spiderman suit which hung so close to his skin he could just do that now. He could always keep the suit on under his clothes, he thought to himself with excitement. Though that was probably not the most hygienic option he would also concede so he'd try not to go overboard with this newfound convenient power. He sprinted in the direction of the cafe they'd been to last, hardly a long run at all.

"Hey," he said to get Minho's attention as he sat down in front of him, who was staring off into space in the opposite direction.

"Hey," he said back, before ducking his head down. "Don't know what got into me this morning," he immediately got into. "I guess I've just been on edge, between..." He gestured into vague empty space. "Work and all."

Han sunk his head down too. "I know. It's okay," he said as he fidgeted, wondering if he should apologize now too.

Just as he opened his mouth to, Minho spoke. "We've been best friends for four years, right?"

Han nodded. "Ever since senior year."

"You were a weirdo, but you never lied to me."

Han nodded again, thinking back on those great, terrible times. High school was bad enough without a stupid tough-guy persona to maintain, and Han had picked some strange coping mechanisms. "No,” he said with a shake of his head. “I ended up telling you the story of my life a week after knowing you,” he said, cracking a smile Minho didn’t return.

Minho looked at him, and (after a moment long enough to make Han break into a sweat) said: "You would never lie to me right?"

"...Minho?" Han said nervously, his hands impulsively flexing.

"Even if the truth hurt more than the lie?"

"Minho," he repeated. "I-If this is about this morning I was just being sensitive," he stumbled. "I had a nightmare and I overstepped and I-I-I'm sorry. I never meant to make you feel-"

What was that word Minho had used?

"Useless or anything like that, it's my fault."

My fault, my fault, my fault.

"All my fault, I'm sorry,” he repeated.

Minho's face didn't soften an inch. “Do you know Spiderman?" A trail of sweat ran down Han's back.

"No," he said firmly. "No, of course not. Why would you ever think I'd hide something like that from you, you're- you're my best friend, I trust you more than anyone in the world!" he said, before realizing he was getting way too fired up and clearing his throat.

Minho took out a photo, printed out on a sheet of paper. "That's Spiderman," he said, jabbing a finger at a red blob on top of some fixture.

Han blinked at it, unsure what to make of such a blurry photo.

"This building,” Minho said, pointing under the Spider-blob, “is the building next to your building complex. I went and compared it to make sure."

If Han's face could get any blanker, he would have turned transparent.

"Just making sure," he said, putting the photo back away.

Han snapped back into himself. "Where did you get that?" he asked, brashly leaning over the table for the picture.

"Secret source," Minho said as he handed it to him. Over the top of the photo Han could feel his gaze on him, clearly scanning his features for any sign of deception. He tried not to squirm under it, and promptly felt like complete shit for it.

"I basically infiltrated the AVU," Minho said with a shrug. Han gave him a look. "I asked a sergeant if he would go behind his superior's back nicely," he rephrased.

"Real muckraking stuff," Han said flatly as he handed it back, probably to be given back to the police. His building was obviously in the photo, but only to anyone who knew it in the first place. He tried to let that uncertainty be good enough.

Minho looked around. "This place is way too busy. Let's go somewhere else," he invited.

They weren't walking anywhere in particular, just down the street and turning when it seemed right. They fell into their usual easy chatter about nothing at all, which relieved Han to some measure that Minho seemed to have let all that weirdness go. His brain, on one hand, was flaming him alive for lying to Minho so brazenly and using his trust against him like that. He hoped his guilt didn't appear in a too wide smile or a laugh slightly louder than appropriate. On the other hand, every time he looked over at Minho smiling at him or at some vicious pigeons or a passing stranger on the street, his brain wouldn't let up with that one pointed picture.

It was too sickening to put into proper words.

Han tried his best to act normal, say the right words, react the right way, but his thoughts were getting so intrusive they were starting to hurt.

They were crossing a familiar street between Han and Minho's places, Han trying to stop his heart from thudding in his chest and keep his expression as normal as possible. Everything was going to be fine. He had Jeongin's help after all. He didn't need to rely on just himself any longer. So there was no excuse for bringing Minho any deeper into this just because he felt a little sad sometimes.

Han was finally starting to get his racing heart and thoughts under control, until-

"Han!"

Minho's grabbed him around the wrist hard enough to leave bruises and yanked him forward.

With no warning to brace himself, Han hit the asphalt on his knees.

Behind him, he felt more than heard the roar of the speeding car whipping through the crosswalk like it was nothing.

Han whirled around, looking at the spot he'd been standing a second ago.

He'd nearly been hit.

Han didn't even realize he was trembling until Minho's hands were on his face. "Are you okay?" he said, his warm hands cupping his cheeks as he frantically looked him up and down.

"I'm-I'm okay," he said as he tried to stand. He really was okay. And if he stumbled on his way up and Minho had to catch him around the waist, that didn't mean he wasn't okay.

Han was just in total shock his spider-senses hadn't warned him of the car themselves.

Chapter Text

Minkyu ogled the scene before him.

"I know you're worried, but..." Chan started beside him. He tilted his head at the board of executives, all webbed together in their own meeting room with documented evidence of their crimes strewn in front of them—from embezzlement and fraud to knowingly putting faulty drugs on the market. Chan put a pensive hand to his chin. "It might… not have been Spiderman."

Minkyu walked away, his face silently crumpling in on itself.

"Okay, okay," Chan conceded, following after him, "I know this is the fourth scene like it this week. But-" His voice pitched up as he tried placating his superior. "What's so bad about a couple of businessmen getting what they deserve? They knew their products were going to hurt people and put them out anyway!"

Minkyu came to a stop in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, 34 stories above the ground. "Nothing," he said wearily. "Absolutely nothing." He turned to face Chan. "That's the problem. Geomi's getting bolder, targeting the heads of these conglomerates, and people are going nuts for it." Chan only looked at him, bemused.

"This loose cannon, who came out of nowhere, and whose motives we know nothing about, is gaining even more loyal supporters," Minkyu explained, his face now deceptively neutral. "To do who knows what with that power. Chan," he said, shifting his weight to somehow look even more serious than before. "I know how appealing this looks," he said as he gestured at the pack of glowering executives. "But don't fall for it. You don't know what his intentions are to be acting like a hero today when he could be a danger tomorrow."

Chan averted his eyes, no response for Minkyu's intensity.

"Just keep your guard up, is all," he added more gently.

"One, two, three," Jeongin, in charge of photographing evidence, playfully counted.

Felix looked over to see him sticking the camera right in one of the men's face, the executive screwing his eyes shut in anticipation of the flash.

"Cheese!" he called as the flash mercilessly blinded the man, before he wiped the smile off his face so suddenly it made Seungmin burst into laughter.

"Please don’t accost Mr. Paeng," Minkyu said, a twitch in his eye that kind of unnerved Felix.

"Yes, sir," Jeongin responded, already having moved on to other evidence.

"Please don't call me sir," he added, turning away to discuss something with Kyung, who was at the moment content to lean comfortably by the doorframe while the rest of the unit carried on its business.

"Yes, Minkyu," Jeongin called, before glancing over his shoulder and showing Seungmin the terrible photo he'd taken, making him burst out laughing again.

Chan turned to Felix. "Do you get him?"

"Kinda?" Felix responded, looking over to the man in question, still talking by the entrance.

Chan gave him a flat Really? sort of look.

"Well, in a way."

Changbin tapped him on the arm as he walked by. "You're not gonna get in trouble for having a mind of your own, Felix," he said, a little gruffer than strictly necessary.

Felix pressed his lips together, thinking of how to phrase his thoughts. If he was going to be completely honest, the step up from putting away pickpockets to actual abusers of power gave him the complete opposite impression it did Minkyu. If Spiderman was willing to be the one to stand out and use his power for good, Felix thought that by his actions alone, that made him the real deal. He wouldn't say any of this in front of Minkyu for fear of giving him a stress-induced ulcer, but it was his honest opinion all the same.

He opened his mouth to say a much less direct, coherent version of this, before Minkyu was addressing the team: "If everybody's wrapped up what they're doing, let's get going. I have something to say back at the station.

"Stake-outs," Minkyu announced once they were all settled in the police meeting room.

"Of what?" Jeongin piped up after one very long, drawn-out moment of silent glances around the room.

Minkyu seemed confused that not everyone was on the same wavelength as him. "Stake-outs of the most prominent individuals within Seoul's corporate circles." Everybody ahhhh'd at that in unison.

"So far Geomi's been targeting these people at their places of work," he said, crossing out five locations on the map of Seoul plastered on the board behind him.

"Nice presentation," Seungmin remarked.

He circled three more locations. "We can place units here, here and here, thank you," he responded belatedly. "But I have a feeling he's not going to end at just their business locations."

Changbin sat up. "You're placing us at their homes?" he asked.

Minkyu gave a rare smile, tapping his forehead with the marker. "Exactly," he said, and Changbin practically glowed with the validation.

"But… do they know that?" Felix asked with concern at how sudden this seemed.

Minkyu looked between him and the board. "Does who know what?"

"That we're gonna be staking out their houses?"

Minkyu sagely tapped his own forehead again. "No. The houses of Mu Changnam, head of Terra Group, Kwon Walbo, head of BioTex Enterprises, and Hwang Hyunjin, head of OmniLife Group, are all relatively nearby. Make sure you get enough rest because we're going on watch tomorrow night."

"Is that..." Chan hesitated. "Legal?"

Everybody reached up to tap their own foreheads in sync with Minkyu. "Sure," he said in response. "Any more questions?"

"Are we going solo," Changbin started, glancing around. Seungmin met his eye and bounced his eyebrows up and down. "Or in groups?" he asked with a shudder.

"You'll be in pairs," Minkyu confirmed. "You'll find out your assignments tomorrow. Sound good?"

Five voices went up at once, but Minkyu spoke over all of them as he left the room: "Great, back to your desks."

"What's eating you?" Changbin asked Jeongin, drawing all eyes to him after he'd been staring off into space.

He looked up at him with an easy smile. "Hoping I get you as my stake-out partner, hyung."

Changbin let out a small laugh. "We could go appeal the boss right now," he said, only seeming to be half-joking.

"Felix," Chan smiled widely, laying the Australian accent on thick. "Aren't you excited?"

"For what?" Felix laughed. "He might not even place us together," he said, finding himself laying the accent on just as thick to prove to himself it hadn't been lost.

Chan kissed his teeth doubtfully. "Of course he will," he said with that same smile. "He doesn't want to start something after all," he switched, nodding his head at the other three.

Felix turned, and suddenly felt bad to see Seungmin left out of conversation, wordlessly picking up his papers and making to leave the room first.

"How do you feel?" Felix asked clumsily, reaching across the table for his arm. Seungmin eyed Felix's hand on his arm, just as he was barely realizing he hadn't switched languages.

"I'm fine, how are you?" Seungmin answered dryly in American-accented English, before he shook off his hand and left the room.

Felix pressed his lips into a straight line, Chan just sighing beside him.

-

Felix spun himself in the office chair at his desk, waiting for Minkyu to arrive and tell them their assignments for that night. He'd tried taking the advice to rest up during the day, but all that waking up at 6pm had done for him was make him feel groggy and psyched out.

Chan slid a cup of coffee in front of him, offering some of his own; Felix took one sniff of it and crinkled his nose in distaste. "No thanks," he said, pushing it back.

"Suit yourself," Chan replied.

"I'd like some," Jeongin said, leaning up and over his cubicle wall instead of standing up, like a kid too short to reach a kitchen counter.

"Want your own?" Changbin asked, already up and fixing one up at the coffee machine.

Jeongin thanked him, before turning towards Felix. "Are you alright?" he asked. Felix, mid-yawn, could only nod yes. "Are you sure you'll be able to handle tonight?"

"Yeah," Felix nodded, blinking away water. "It's just sitting in a parked car for a couple hours after all," he said, meeting Jeongin's eyes.

Jeongin smiled at him. "That makes it easier to think about. I hope get assigned with you," he said in a stage whisper.

Felix laughed. "You said that to somebody-" He nodded at Changbin, stood at the coffee maker. "Else the other day," he said in a similarly hushed voice.

"It’s just I hope I get someone I really like," Jeongin said, a cup of coffee materializing in front of him.

"Me too," Changbin said with a dazzling smile.

"Thanks," he repeated, taking a sip of his coffee as he sat back down at his own desk again. He made a face.

"I don't like black coffee," he said under his breath, before Minkyu was walking in with a bundle of papers in his hand.

Everybody went silent as he went around the room, placing manila folders on each of their desks.

Felix opened his as soon as he got it and scanned the pages inside: a brief on Kwon Walbo and his conglomerate BioTex, a map to his house just outside the bustle of the city, and ideal stakeout spots nearby.

Once he'd placed the last of the files on Seungmin's desk, Minkyu stood in the center of the room and said, "Stock up at the convenience store, take the cars we've rented waiting in the parking lot, and most importantly..." He raised his arms, everyone watching with bated breath. "Have fun," he said monotonously, before urgently gesturing at Jeongin and turning to leave. Jeongin glanced hesitantly over at the others, following their superior out the door.

Seungmin, Felix, Chan and Changbin sat staring at each other.

Nobody said anything for a long moment. Felix nervously poked his tongue in his cheek and decided to just ask: "Who has Kwon Walbo?"

Chan's face fell. "Not me. I have Mu Changnam." Seungmin rolled his eyes, slapping the folder back on the desk. "Great," he said, cutting his eyes over to Chan. So that left Felix with...

"We can't bring those," Changbin said over his shoulder.

Felix startled back into himself; he'd been spacing out looking at packs of ramen.

"Get a sandwich or something," he said as he walked away, his words trailing off like he didn't really care either way.

Felix peeked around the shelf and spotted Chan in front of the refrigerators. As soon as he saw him, Chan conspiratorially shuffled over. "Think we can get away with swapping out the files?" he asked.

Felix let out a little laugh in response, turning his head to see Seungmin checking out his own items.

He turned back to Chan, who was still watching him without a smile. "What?" he said, scandalized by the proposition. "We can't do that. Minkyu-"

"It doesn't matter," Chan said flippantly. Felix's eyes went huge with scandal. Chan sighed, putting both hands on his hips. "He's a good police officer, but when it comes to people… He's not the best authority. As if forcing two people in a car together is gonna make them like each other more," he scoffed. "Let's just go together, the two of us, yeah?" he offered, gesturing from himself to Felix.

Felix looked back over at Seungmin, who was taking great pains to count out each individual coin so he wouldn't have any change left over—Changbin waiting behind with sparks practically flying off of him.

"I think it's a good chance..." Felix started, making Chan sigh again. "To get to know them better!" he insisted, seeing that Chan was already disengaging. "Plus we might have blood on our hands if we leave them," he added under his breath.

Chan fixed him with a look, tilting his head. "Are you sure?" he asked.

Felix nodded. "Positive."

"If you insist," he said, walking towards the register with his own things.

-

When Seungmin had picked a place to watch Mu Changnam's house from, Chan took out the few documents Minkyu had given them on him. "Head of Terra Group, conglomerate focused on clean energy solutions and products. 54, often out and about-"

"I read it," Seungmin interrupted, crossing his arms and sitting back.

Chan looked over at him and the hard set of his jaw clenching. He sucked in an exaggerated breath before continuing: "Often out and about with his associates or in his home garden," he said in a chipper voice.

Seungmin just rolled his eyes—apparently his favorite expression—and breathed hard through his nose.

"Likes to speak with the media and overinflate his achievements. Ouch," Chan pretended to grimace. "How hars-"

"Would you cut it out?" Seungmin snapped.

Chan raised his hands in surrender. "I barely said anything," he muttered under his breath.

"Pardon?" Seungmin asked in prim-sounding English.

"I barely said anything," Chan said in his full voice. "Your English is great, where'd you learn it?"

"None of your business," Seungmin said, looking out the window.

"Okay." Chan hummed, turning back to the paperwork. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Seungmin glancing at him.

"LA," he said with irritation. "I lived there for a couple months."

"A couple months? Pretty good for a couple months."

"Your Korean is great, where'd you learn it?" Seungmin retorted, a question not meant to be answered.

Chan just let out a little laugh in response, amazed at how easy he was rile up. He changed the subject: "Think we're really gonna see Spiderman today?"

Seungmin snorted. "No. Minkyu's just getting paranoid."

"You think?"

"I know. The man in there doesn't even know we're here." He gestured forcefully at the house. "Who knows how he even got the information in those files?" He crossed his arms again and turned to face the window. "You can sleep if you want. I'm gonna be up for a while."

-

The hill Hwang Hyunjin's house was built on made for a twisting, winding road that didn't lend itself to great stake-out spots, Minkyu lamented internally—though a second spot check was out of the question if they wanted to arouse as little suspicion as possible.

The worry on his face must have been evident. Jeongin pointed up the hill at a road that was barely visible this time of night: "There."

"Good eye," Minkyu said, driving up to the high vantage point, which gave them good visibility without being obvious. "You bring something for the boredom?" he asked, unbuckling his seatbelt and pushing up the sleeves of his windbreaker as he settled in.

Jeongin hummed, glancing over to the side-view mirror on his side. "Myself?"

Minkyu nodded. So that was a no. He leaned the seat back to have a little more leg room, though he kept his eye solidly fixed on the house out through the driver's side window. The back of Hwang Hyunjin's house seemed to be a lounge or recreation room, all showy windows and sunroof with the lights turned on as if there weren't a care in the world for someone of his status.

There probably wasn't. Even with the slew of bosses and businessmen getting exposed for their wrongdoing, he probably wasn't even worried Geomi might target him too one day.

A light flashed in Minkyu's peripheral. "Best not to use your phone too much," he warned, watching Jeongin close his messaging app and put his phone on silent.

"Sorry, sir," Jeongin said, putting it back in his pocket.

"And please don't call me that," he said more out of habit than anything else, before pulling his notebook out of the drawstring bag he had tucked in front of him.

He flipped through it, skimming its numerous handwritten entries to refresh his memory.

Jeongin peered over, watching him go through its pages with a curious look on his face. "What's that?"

"Journal," Minkyu said succinctly, "I can't risk something important slipping my mind." It was one of the last things he could afford to do, after all, when there was so much riding on his success or failure, on whether he kept his guard up or not, on whether he could manage to keep it together or fell apart completely. The pressure didn’t usually bother him; living on a tightrope was the only thing he’d ever known.

"What's important about right now?" Jeongin asked, before taking a sip of one of the two waters placed between them.

Minkyu scanned the page he was on. "Hwang Hyunjin is an enigma," he summarized. "For one, him and his conglomerate OmniLife only recently made a sudden appearance on the scene, but he’s been dominating the market up to now."

"Really?" Jeongin asked, quirking an eyebrow, an expression Minkyu secretly envied when he'd never been able to make it himself. "I've never heard of either of them."

"It's not exciting news, so you wouldn't see it on TV," Minkyu said, putting the notebook in his lap. "At least until he launches that rebrand he's been promising investors."

Jeongin sat forward to rest his elbow on his knee, leaning his head against a cupped hand. Minkyu had expected to bore him, but he was looking at him like an interested student would a teacher. He went on: "Hwang Hyunjin inherited the company after his father passed away, back when it was mostly only natural medicines and such. He discovered all the tech his father had let go to rust when he was in charge, and used it to turn the company around into what it is today."

Jeongin gestured with an upturned hand. "What is it today?"

"You sure OmniLife doesn't sound a little familiar? Pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, clean consumer products?"

"I'm not really from around here," Jeongin said, playing up the up-and-down of his natural Busan accent.

"Ah," Minkyu said, thinking that surely their products weren't only limited to the Seoul area. But if Jeongin didn't know, he didn't know, so he continued: "Hwang Hyunjin has been doing well on multiple fronts, but since his profits are only doubling lately, his investors are pushing for a change to stay ahead of things."

"Only doubling," Jeongin repeated with a laugh. "They sure live in a different world from us," he said, as if he wasn't really speaking to Minkyu in particular. Without looking, he reached for a water bottle to take another sip out of, looking out the passenger side window at the dark, winding road that might take a wandering traveler anywhere.

Minkyu turned back to look at the house, seeing all the lights still on and Hwang Hyunjin relaxing inside in his bathrobe.

Jeongin shifted beside him, before shifting again.

Minkyu looked over to see that Jeongin had accidentally taken his water bottle and drunk out of it.

"Sorry, sir," he said with an embarrassed, sheepish smile as he handed it back, pulling on the
cuff of his own sleeve as he did.

"I've told you a dozen times," Minkyu said without any real hard feelings, opting to drink his water from a stream rather than putting it directly to his mouth.

"Sorry, Minkyu," he said, and it was the last clear thing Minkyu would remember.

-

Felix jerked his head up at the sudden noise.

"What, falling asleep already?" Changbin said, holding his fingers up as if he'd just snapped in Felix's face.

"No," he grunted, sitting up in his seat. "Just getting comfortable," he said as he moved around.

"Too comfortable," Changbin remarked.

Felix looked out the windshield, Kwon Walbo's house sitting as dark and peaceful as it had been an hour ago. And the hour before that. "Some music?" Felix offered, making for the radio dial.

Changbin didn't even look over. "No." Felix scrunched his brows together, but just sat back without saying how it would make it easier for him to stay awake.

"I should've brought something to do," he huffed to himself.

"Well, you'd make rookie stake-out mistakes after all," he responded plainly, as if it were neither an insult nor reassurance. It was just a fact.

"What else should I have planned for?" Felix asked, just to have something to say.

"Don't drink too much, don't get distracted, and don't overestimate yourself."

“Mhm," Felix responded. "Which did you make?"

Changbin scratched at his neck. "I invoke the right to remain silent."

A long silence did stretch between them where Felix started dozing off again, which was apparently a serious enough offense for Changbin to forget about his rights.

"Isn't it ridiculous coming to the point of protecting multi-millionaires from what they deserve? If it were me I would've already given up the investigation, Spiderman's clearly proven himself."

"Well, it's not you," Felix said, leaning further into his forearm resting against the window. "So imagining doesn't really change anything."

Changbin didn’t speak until he met his eyes. "So you're saying you agree with Minkyu about this?"

Felix ducked his head down. "Not… exactly. But since I'm not in charge," he said, shrugging. "It doesn't really matter."

"Not being able to change it doesn’t mean you're not allowed to have an opinion."

"I know I'm allowed to have an opinion," Felix said, then got embarrassed at how juvenile he sounded. "We just shouldn’t… contradict the person we’re working for."

Changbin let out a huff of disdain. "But is he here right now? Come on, we're just talking. It's not like I'm gonna tell on you."

"W- I just- You know..." Felix said, shrugging hard.

"I don't."

"I'm not comfortable talking behind Minkyu's back," he said, getting quieter as he went on.

"Why'd you become a cop, Felix?" It was such an unexpected question Felix looked over at him, before getting intimidated and looking away again. "It's not fun, it's thankless, and everybody expects you to be everything at once."

"So why did you?" Felix asked, dumbfounded by the turn the conversation was taking. What did Changbin even want from him?

"Because I knew it wasn't a job for just anyone. It's for people who can handle it and who care. Do you even give a shit?"

Felix whipped his head at him, shocked. What did Changbin want from him?? "I-I give a shit," he stuttered, flushing at how sheepish he'd said it.

"Do you? Or is it enough for you to get shuttled around from team to team, following the whims of Mr. Whoever today and Mr. Who-Cares tomorrow? If you were ordered to do something terrible, would you just do it? Because you want to be nice?"

"Wh- You don't know anything about me!" Felix shot back, offended that that was apparently all Changbin thought of him—as nice and nothing else.

"But I can guess," Changbin said, an easy, know-it-all lightness in his voice.

Felix grabbed the dashboard then, looking Changbin full on in the face for possibly the first time in all these weeks. "If you don't think I give a shit you don't know the first thing about me," he said, as level as he could force his words to be despite the sudden, unexpected anger.

"I became a police officer to help people, and if that includes filthy rich assholes like this that's what I have to do," Felix said, stabbing a finger in the direction of Kwon Walbo's sprawling, opulent house. "It doesn't matter how right I think Spiderman is, or how much I think Minkyu's completely overreacting, or how glad I’d be to see all these greedy suits put away for good, or how much I dread coming to work in the morning to deal with stuck-ups like you!" he snapped, losing control for one short-lived thoughtless moment. He took a deep breath, his head thumping like a drum.

"Life's not fair," he said quietly, under a layer of suppression. "So I am trying my hardest to make it fairer every chance I can," Felix said, his voice wet with emotion as he jammed his finger into the dashboard for emphasis.

He looked at the floor, breathing hard and feeling like a monster of an idiot. Changbin was going to kill him. He didn't even know where most of that had come from.

When he dared to look up again, apologies on the tip of his tongue, the sight of Changbin grinning ear-to-ear made him forget how to breathe. "Do you realize you started speaking English halfway through?"

Felix put a hand to his mouth as if checking for blood there.

"That was so cool, I knew you had it in you!"

"Wh… What?"

-

Seungmin laid in the backseat, after having told Chan actually, I’m gonna nap for a while. It had been 45 minutes since, and Seungmin was still talking.

"Pass me a sandwich."

"You already ate yours," Chan responded, laying his head in his arms as he looked out the windshield.

"I know. Give me yours."

"No."

"Givvit."

"No."

"I'm hungry."

Chan scrunched up his eyes, shaking his head so fast he felt like a bobblehead. "How!? It's been two hours."

"I skipped lunch today."

Instead of replying as incredulously as he wanted to—Why the fuck would you skip lunch on stake-out day?—Chan had an epiphany.

He handed Seungmin the sandwich, who looked so genuinely taken aback to be receiving the exact thing he'd been asking for.

"It's what you wanted, isn't it?" Chan said, going back to his resting position.

He heard the plastic wrapping crinkle behind him, before Seungmin was jabbing the sandwich into his peripheral vision.

"I don't like tuna."

Chan wasn't going to say, It's the exact same one you had, idiot. Instead, he took the sandwich back and started eating it himself.

Seungmin couldn't have been that hungry to begin with, their supply of chocolate and protein bars in the backseat visibly still intact. "Where's the binoculars?" he asked.

Chan could teach a class on this. Instead of saying, The house has been lights-out for an hour, what would you even be looking at? he answered, "Under the driver's seat."

Unsurprisingly, Seungmin didn't move to grab them. Chan just heard the sounds of him shifting like he really was going to sleep now.

"Turn on the radio," Seungmin said, knowing full well it was considered a distraction from the assignment.

Chan flipped it on, the ballad that was playing gently washing over the car.

"Stop being such a robot," Seungmin finally chided. "It's disappointing."

That was… an odd choice of words.

"You ask me to turn on the radio, what else do you want me to do?" Chan asked before taking another bite of the cold convenience store sandwich, as if he'd ever given Seungmin an inch before that night.

"You know it's not allowed," he grumbled, apparently still not all that happy for having his demands answered.

"So do you," Chan said.

-

Sunrise would pass without Minkyu stirring.

-

Felix launched into the astral realm wondering if his efforts to make peace in life had always looked more like detachment than actual goodwill. He contemplated, through recontextualized moments and memories of his life, if he'd always made the people around him uncomfortable, and nobody had ever pointed it out until that very day.

Changbin turned around to glance at him, sitting in the backseat. "I can hear your existential crisis from here."

"Sorry," he responded, trying to think of something new to focus on.

"Not sorry, Felix."

"Sor-" He cleared his throat. "Okay."

"Who taught you it wasn't okay to take up space?" Changbin said, in a wholly new tone Felix had never heard before.

It almost sounded protective.

"Huh?" Changbin prompted. "I almost went crazy with how static you were. You never seemed to have a single opinion! Who made you like this?"

"I..." Felix threw his hands up. "I don't know, no one? I'm just like this."

"People are rarely 'just like this.' But whatever you say~" he trailed off. "And what do you mean by help people? What does that look like to you?" Each and every interrogation was making this feel more like a job interview than some casual chat.

"Well..." He avoided saying you know. "Defending people, inspiring them, doing whatever I can." Don't say you know, don't say you know.

"Hm," he responded, as if halfway accepting of that answer. "We should-" A knock on the window made them both scream. When they turned to see who was on their left, they were greeted by a middle-aged man in his pajamas.

"Hello, gentlemen," he said, gesturing for Changbin to roll down the window. Felix locked eyes with him through the rear-view mirror, before Changbin complied.

"Hi," Changbin said, then nothing else.

"I couldn't help but notice an unmarked vehicle parked at the end of my street, and wondered what two kids might be doing here in the middle of the night."

Felix didn't question out loud the gall of the man to walk up to the vehicle and knock. He'd do that later.

"Would you enlighten me?" the man—who must have been the Kwon Walbo they were supposed to be keeping an eye on in the first place, Felix realized belatedly—prodded when Changbin didn't say anything.

"We're living out of our car," Changbin said with a start, and Felix nearly laughed. "We knew the area up here would be safer, right, Yongbok?"

How on God's green earth does he know that name, was Felix's first thought. Why would he use my real name, was his second. And they're both staring at me was his third.

"Right, Lewis," he said with extra emphasis, Changbin's face stricken. "We're just strays, didn't mean to bother you sir," Felix said as fast as possible to get their attention off him.

"You'd better move along; this isn't the place for a couple of delinquents to be hanging around," Kwon Walbo said, in a way that managed to make the harsh words sound like the pinnacle of propriety.

"Yes, sir," Changbin said, already turning on the car. "Have a good night," he said before rolling up the window and driving down the road.

"Should we find another spot?" Felix asked, turning around to watch Kwon Walbo walk back to his house in slippers.

"Be honest with yourself, do you think Spiderman's really going to smite his household in the middle of the night?"

It was unlikely… and Minkyu didn't need to know… "No, I guess not," Felix agreed, before asking where Changbin was headed.

-

"Wake up," Seungmin said, now in the driver's seat and shaking Chan. "You fell asleep on your shift. We could have been murdered," he said.

Chan had never heard the word 'murdered' uttered so flatly in his life. "You should worry about our charge," he said, though he wasn't much worried about Mu Changnam either. At some point the radio had turned off, he realized, as he stretched to get the blood back into circulation.

"He'll be fine," he replied, peeking over at the house with plain old binoculars that really wouldn't work at all in the dark.

Would it have killed Minkyu to splurge a little on night-vision?

Seungmin handed the battery-powered binoculars to Chan. "Charge those, they're running dry."

Chan literally watched Seungmin watch him for a reaction, and marveled at how obviously he prodded for attention. "Is being annoying a hobby for you?"

Seungmin glanced at him. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Or is it full-time?"

"Really confused."

"You know that by the end of this Minkyu wants us to be friends?"

Seungmin blinked with bemusement. "He told you that?"

"No. But he has Felix and Changbin together, and nobody would mistake the two of them for friendly acquaintances."

"Okay… So do you want to be my friend?"

"No!" Chan exclaimed. "Not when all you do is look for something that will get under my skin so I'll talk to you."

Seungmin's face flashed in disgusted anger. "I don't want you to talk to me," he said, crossing his arms across his chest. "I never want you to talk to me, or Changbin for that matter. Or Felix," he felt the need to tack on one at a time.

Chan pulled the bag full of snacks up out of the back and started searching for nothing at all.

Seungmin leaned towards him. "What are you doing?"

"See!"

Seungmin dropped his arms, rolling his eyes. "No, I don't. I don't see anything," he said, taking off his wire-framed glasses and putting them in the cupholder between them. "Minkyu's nuts if he thinks I want to be friends with you."

"Why," Chan said, drawing out the word long and whining. "Are you such a jerk?"

"You're not so sweet either, Channie," Seungmin said sarcastically. "You're probably only nice to Felix because he likes you. That's not unconditional."

"I'm friends with Felix because he's not miserable like you always are."

"I am not miserable, just because you're all always ignoring me unless you absolutely have to acknowledge me."

Bingo.

"What?" Chan said. Seungmin's face didn't betray anything but irritation, but Chan could imagine how mortified he was for letting that one slip.

"What?"

"You feel ignored?"

"I didn't say that."

"You did."

"I didn't."

"But you did."

"We’re really getting somewhere," Seungmin bristled, putting his glasses back on.

"So Changbin thinks he's too good for us, and you just want to be noticed," Chan said with a scholarly nod, putting his detective skills to work.

"Shut up," Seungmin snapped, his eyes hard but glassy. "What's your excuse? You can only be nice in perfect circumstances? If everyone's already your best friend to begin with? Stay up the rest of the night," he said, getting out of the car to get in the backseat again. "Or fall back asleep, see if I care."

Chan's phone lit up just as Seungmin was climbing in the back, an unexpected call from Jeongin.

"Hyung," he said, voice trembling and breaking. "I need help."

-

Minkyu gathered three things: that was the morning sun shining in his eyes, he was still in the rental car, and he'd fallen asleep.

Shit.

Hwang Hyunjin's house was finally lights out after who knew how long.

Not Minkyu, for certain.

"Sir?" Jeongin prompted, reminding Minkyu of his existence.

"What time is it?" he asked in an unexpectedly croaky voice. He cleared his throat, dry and uncomfortable. His thoughts were so unfocused, an experience so wholly unfamiliar it scared him.

Jeongin checked the phone already in his hand. "Six o'clock. Are you okay?"

"Did anything happen while I was..." Asleep. He'd really fallen asleep on the job. Any number of things could have happened while he was out, and he would have been completely helpless to stop them. "Shit," he breathed aloud, turning on the car.

Jeongin shook his head. "Do you need me to drive?"

"No," Minkyu replied quickly, driving in the direction of the main road. "I'm fine." He still couldn't believe how low he'd left his guard. "Why didn't you wake me?"

"I… I tried," Jeongin started, sounding confused. "But you just weren't responding. Are you sure you're okay?"

No. Minkyu had never been any less okay than at this moment, but he couldn't let his lack of competence show any more than it already had.

"Minkyu..." Jeongin intoned, worried when Minkyu forgot to verbally respond. "Nothing happened. You don't have to worry. I was here watching Hyunjin the whole time."

Minkyu ran a hand through his hair, though it might have looked more like he was pulling it out in stress. "Okay," he said, his thoughts a scrambled mess in his head. Hwang Hyunjin could have been targeted. They could have been caught. The whole case might have gone out the window with his carelessness. God, and he'd come so prepared.

"It seems like you needed the rest anyway."

Minkyu hit the brakes for the red light, pitching the two of them forward too hard for comfort. "I never need rest, Jeongin. I need to be on top of things. Where are the others?" he asked.

Jeongin glanced from him to his phone. "I'll check." After a moment, he said, "All back at the station. We could get you a coffee first..."

Minkyu inhaled sharply through his nose.

"Or something..." Jeongin trailed off.

Minkyu glanced down at the cup holders, only one bottle left now. "Where's my water?"

"That one's yours. I finished mine. Everyone needs rest, you know," he added after a long moment of silence. "Even talented people like you. Maybe that's why you fell asleep, you've been pushing yourself really hard lately."

Not hard enough it seemed. If Minkyu ever felt too comfortable at any given time, relied on anyone else for any measure of time, trial and error had proven to him he was bound to fail. Trusting himself was the only thing he could ever count on.

Minkyu clenched his jaw over and over again, tapping the steering wheel without a word. Now he couldn't even trust that. He was going to have to change somehow if he wanted to avoid that happening again. For now he was changing into the left lane, not thinking much of the action.

"Hey!" Jeongin yelled, reaching over and yanking the steering wheel back to the right. Drivers behind him laid on their horns after he'd nearly collided with another car changing lanes from the opposite direction. "Minkyu, it's alright," poor Jeongin said with wide eyes, trapped in a moving vehicle with a complete maniac. He slowly let go of the steering wheel, making sure Minkyu was in the headspace to be operating heavy machinery. "It's alright," he softly reassured again, before they spent the rest of the trip in silence.

Minkyu pinched the spot between his thumb and forefinger, long and hard enough to potentially leave a bruise, and walked in to see the other members of the unit.

"Good morning," he greeted everyone, striding towards his own desk. "How was everybody's night?" he asked, as he realized Seungmin was nowhere to be seen.

"Fine," Felix replied, looking his bright, usual self. "We went and got pancakes," he said, his accent thickening on pancakes.

"Where's Seungmin?" Minkyu asked, checking he hadn't somehow overlooked him.

Chan jabbed a finger at the meeting room. "Sleeping."

"Rough night?" Minkyu asked as he got up to see for himself. In return, Chan only gave him a wry smile that could have meant anything.

When he opened the door he was surprised to see Seungmin draped on top of the long meeting table. Just as he was about to ask if he was actually asleep, he mumbled: "Is Minkyu here yet?" He cracked open his eyes, before shooting up when he saw who it was, a stray piece of paper stuck to his cheek.

Minkyu slowly closed the door again. "Take your time. Anybody gather any useful information?"

"Felix likes strawberry flavored things," Changbin answered.

Minkyu closed his eyes. "Pertaining to the investigation."

"Ah," Changbin responded. "No."

"You?" Minkyu asked Chan.

"Not us. Everything was normal at Mu Changnam's place. So..." Chan sat up, glancing at Jeongin. "Everything turned out alright last night?"

"What?" Minkyu said, returning to that pressure point in his hand.

"Oh," Jeongin said. "You weren't waking up, so I got a little freaked and called Chan. I told them not to come after a minute, though, I realized it was silly." He shrugged. "Our sunbae's fine now," he said to Chan, as Minkyu took a seat at his desk and pinched the feeling right out of his hand.

Chapter Text

Han put his hand right through a patch of black dust that had accumulated in the air vent he was crawling in and died a little inside.

He grimaced at the cloud it had created, trying not to cough and potentially give away his position. “All for the greater good,” he convinced himself as he lowered his face to the grate, checking there was no one immediately under him. “Coast is clear.”

He pushed the grate open and smoothly flipped through into the dim office below, plopping in front of Gam Gwangnim’s cluttered desk and immediately starting to rifle through everything on it. 

“Probably wouldn’t have his dirty laundry sitting front and center,” Han said, though he still made sure to go through the succulents lying around the executive’s desk when…

Something hit the floor in front of him.

Han snapped his head up and froze exactly where he was, his hand halfway inside an innocent cactus’s pot.

The janitor had dropped his broom in shock.

They stood gaping at each other for a torturous moment with Han unsure what to do—Obviously I can’t knock him out, but he could call someone. Should I web him up? But then—before the man was slowly placing a hand over his own eyes and walking out of the room.

Han blinked. The man had even fumbled for the keys on his belt loop on his way out and locked the door behind him, gone as quickly as he had appeared.

Han went back to throwing things off the desk again in search of incriminating evidence.

“Have you found anything yet?” said the familiar little voice over the comm line in his mask.

“Patience, my dear,” Han said as he ran his hand under the desk for anything that might have been taped out of sight.

“Be quick today,” Jeongin said. “There’s something I want to tell you in person.”

Han went for a drawer on the desk, but it was locked. He put a little more strength into his arm and yanked, easily popping the locking mechanism off and getting the drawer open. “My place or yours?” he joked, getting no response. “Yeah, your place, I don’t have an aircon right now,” he said as he pulled out a ream of papers and skimmed their contents.

“Focus on the job,” he responded. Han wanted to, but his eyes were crossing as he tried to read the financial records in his hands. “Look for evidence Mesdair was conspiring with other companies before the price of all IS treatment went up.”

Han affected a full body shudder; that brought him back to the moment. “How evil do you have to be to jack up the price of baby seizure medicine?” he said as he went for the next locked drawer, easily popping that open too.

“There are some unbelievable people in this world,” Jeongin replied as he took out a binder full of laminated documents.

“No kidding,” Han said, right as someone banged on the door.

“Come in~” Han called as keys jingled outside, not looking up from the binder. “Make yourself at home,” he said when the door slammed open, the very man of the hour strutting in, ranting and raving about how dare this intruder-

Han shot at the door and closed it right on the security detail behind Mr. Gam Gwangnim, webbing it shut.

“Are you telling my new friend snitched on me?” Han pouted. Hopefully he’d only tripped regular old security measures.

“You,” Mr. Gam uttered, taking an unsteady step backwards and his unfortunate situation in.

“Me,” Han said with a bright smile. “Take a seat,” he invited politely before webbing the CEO of Mesdair to the chair behind him. “Maybe don’t walk ahead of your security next time, kinda defeats the purpose of those guys.”

“H-Hang on, hang on, we can talk about this,” he stammered as Han got closer. 

He tilted his head at him, encouraging him to go on. 

“What-What are you doing this all for? Money?” he tried desperately. “Is it money?” A huge nervous smile broke out across his face as he tried to push himself back but failed to get the armchair to go anywhere. “I can give you money. Name your price, I can get it to you if you let me go.”

Han tilted his head further, creeping closer to Gam Gwangnim as his features twisted in abject terror. “My price,” he said, his voice as low and gravelly as it would go. He jumped onto the ceiling without warning, startling a yelp out of the middle-aged man whose heart could probably do without the scares. He leaned in close, Mr. Gam’s huge eyes bugging out at him. “Is justice,” he whispered, holding up a phone. 

“Call your price-gouging buddies for me, please,” Han said in his normal voice. “Tell them you need to talk in your office.”

“Come on,” he urged, wiggling the phone around when all he got was a stunned silence. “Or I’ll expose your affair too.”

That made Mr. Gam cough up the numbers of the other executives he’d been in talks with to collectively raise the medication’s price.

“Is it the secretary?” Han asked, getting down the numbers to call them all one by one.

“H-Huh?” Mr. Gam stuttered, still shaking like a leaf. “Yes.”

Han laughed at how easy that had been. “Sleazeball. I don’t know anything about an affair. Why would I ask you that if I did?”

Ten easy minutes later, the other twelve executives involved were all webbed together in Gam Gwangnim’s office with the records and correspondence to prove their crimes stuck to their chests. 

Not to mention a note to Gam’s wife to go through his phone.

After a call to the police, and when the initial rage of Let me out! and You’ll be hearing from my attorney! had died down, the room fell deadly silent.

Han looked from one catatonic man to the other. “Come on guys, you’ll probably be rooming together in prison. Might as well get to know each other now, ask each other a few questions.”

Spiteful silence. Was this how teachers on the first day of class felt?

“I’ll go first, my favorite color is red,” Han said as he slipped out the window.

“Good work,” Jeongin said, back in his ear again as he climbed to the top of the brick-and-mortar building.

Han swung his feet over the ledge of the building. With no wisdom left to crack, a familiar emptiness gaped in his chest as he watched the people walking down below. He nodded, fully aware Jeongin couldn’t see the gesture.

“Is…something the matter?”

“No matter,” Han sighed, copying the overly formal turn of phrase. “Just…” he started, tapping his hand against his leg over and over. “That wasn’t all of them. And even if it was, this’ll just happen again with another company, another drug. It has happened before.”

“Peter?” Jeongin prompted, more concerned now.

“Does any of this actually…” Han’s voice was low, colored with dejection he wasn’t sure Spiderman was allowed to have. “Matter?”

Jeongin inhaled. “Come to OmniLife,” he said. “We’ll talk here.”

“So are we kissing or…?” Han prompted a few minutes later when Jeongin just kinda stood there looking up at him. With Han hanging upside down from the balcony above, he had to be honest, it would make for a movie-worthy kiss.

“Are you free Wednesday night?” Jeongin asked without a trace of humor. Before Han could stumble to backtrack on everything that had ever come out of his mouth, he went on. “Company’s throwing a party tomorrow, it’ll be a real blowout. You’re on the top of the list of invitees,” he said, smiling now.

“A… party?” Han repeated, worried what he was expected to do there. He didn’t exactly have the best track record with those to begin with.

“Yes. Hyunjin’s got something exciting to announce,” he said, a lilt to his words. 

Han just hung there, not sure how to respond. 

“It’s nothing serious,” he said with a dismissive little shake of his head. “Only a chance to get all the businessmen with their reputations still intact in one room.

“Not very excited for it?” Jeongin lowered his voice to a playful hush: “Would it help if I said you were getting a promotion?”

Both the eyes on Han’s face and his spider mask widened. “Seriously?”

“That’s what you’ll have to come see,” Jeongin said as he signaled towards the glass doors beside them. “Mr. Hwang has something for you inside,” he said, popping an eyebrow up.

Han glanced between him and the doors as he lowered himself to the floor. When he pushed through them, he was surprised to walk into the fanciest bedroom suite he’d ever seen rather than an office. It was decked out floor to ceiling with silk and velvet and plush and whatever texture rich people made a room with just because they could. But the empty room didn’t show any sign of being lived in at all.

Han peeked through a set of curtains on the far end of the room, finding that was the way to the living room, where Hyunjin sat on the couch facing away from him.

“Heard you got me an early birthday present,” Han said, hugging the curtains underneath his chin. “Very early.”

Hyunjin was all long edges and sharp corners, his ankle crossed up on the opposite knee and his head reclined on one of his closed hands. When he closed his eyes and nodded, it was like watching a sculpture in motion. 

He reached over to the coffee table in front of him to grab what looked like a USB.

And proceeded to knock over a very expensive-looking bottle of liquor, spilling its contents all over the table.

“Oh,” Han started, swiveling his head around for any kind of toiletries in this place and wondered if rich people were above even towels, when Hyunjin met his eyes with a sobriety way too dire for the situation. 

“Don’t bother. It’s my mess. I’ll clean it up.” 

…Must’ve been good liquor. 

He held out the thingamabob between two thin fingers. “Bring this to the event,” he said when Han took it, before he picked up the knocked-over bottle and filled a glass with the liquor that had survived such a brutal attack.

Han, meanwhile, flipped the device around in his fingers, trying to figure out what the solid rectangular prism in his hand was. There was no label or engraving anywhere, just a smooth black exterior.

“Don’t mess with it too much before tomorrow,” Hyunjin said, swirling the clear liquid in his cup. “You’ll know what it’s for when it’s time,” he said before taking a sip.

Han warily watched the sip turn into a swig at 11 in the morning. “Slow down. It’s not even happy hour yet.”

“Yeah,” Hyunjin sighed, sitting back. “I should’ve slowed down,” he uttered, a far-off look in his eye. 

He smiled up at Han all of a sudden, giving him a nod. “Enjoy the party,” he said in a decidedly lighter tone.

“You too…” Han trailed off, making his way out of the room and back onto the balcony. How was that guy CEO of anything?

“8 o’clock tomorrow,” Jeongin said as Han perched up on the guard rail, ready to leap off. “No work from me until then.”

Han threw up a finger gun with a cocky click of his tongue. “You got it, boss,” he replied in English, about to leave when Jeongin was grabbing him by the arm. “Hey, Peter,” he prompted, and when Han looked over, he didn’t know what he’d expected to see.

It was definitely not to see Jeongin’s dark eyes more earnest than he had ever seen them. It kinda made Han want to tell him everything that had ever gone wrong in his life. But he held back.

“What?” Han asked, the warmth of Jeongin’s hand seeping through his suit.

He let go of his arm. “You’re… You’re doing well.”

Han winked—if only to make sure his eyes didn't start watering—and took off.

“Hey, Minho!” Han greeted as soon as his friend picked up the phone, swinging along the streets of Seoul as light as air. He had no idea what he’d be telling Minho, but it was only natural to call him when something exciting was happening. “What are you doing?” he asked good-naturedly. He looked at the phone when the noise of a crowd streamed through, making sure it was coming from Minho’s end. “Wait, what are you doing?”

Minho had to squish his phone between his shoulder and his cheek to keep the receiver end close enough to his mouth. “Work,” he said, snapping photo after photo of Lim Bogyeong exiting the biggest police station in the city bound in rope, police escorts on either side of him. “BienVivre’s CEO turned himself into the police.”

“Really?” Han grounded himself on the nearest ledge. “Where?”

“Metropolitan Police Agency,” Minho replied. “Hang on a minute,” he said quietly. “He’s monologuing.”

Han made his way over in a minute, scoping out the crowd of journalists. From his vantage point up on the top of a flagpole, he could just catch the CEO’s sunny soliloquy about families, and solidarity, and stuff that sounded like a whole bunch of excuses.

Crashing the whole thing as Spiderman sounded kinda fun.

Before the two halves of his brain could even start debating on how good of an idea that was, Minho—apparently operating on the same chaos-stirring wavelength—cut the man off mid-speech. “So how will your victims see compensation!?” he shouted from the back of the crowd, getting a reaction out of everyone.

The distraught look on the CEO’s face, blanching as the whole crowd of journalists started badgering him with microphones and follow-up questions, made Han pull the phone away from his face and burst into laughter. Lee Minho’s a force to be reckoned with.

“Sorry if I yelled in your ear,” Minho apologized in a much softer voice. He pushed his way through the riled-up crowd with his newfound chance and…

Tripped in front of everyone.

Han’s eyes popped open in shock. He turned his head away at the second-hand embarrassment, pretending he hadn’t seen that.

But Minho, ever the resilient one out of the two of them, jumped back onto his feet. With his phone still on the ground, his voice came tinny over the line: “And would Spiderman’s recent crusade have anything to do with your decision to turn yourself in for fraud?”

Han cocked his head in curiosity. He’d thought his power started and ended with ruining a particular executive’s day; he’d never imagined it went all the way to scaring crooked businessmen into having morals.

“You’re so cool, Minho!” he whisper-yelled into the phone, shaking an excited fist, though it didn’t seem like things were going too well down there. The executive seemed to be sharing some… choice words, before the police were escorting him away to a transport vehicle.

Minho picked up his phone, blowing the dust off and using his shirt to wipe it down. “What was that?” he asked as he raised it to his face.

“You’re so cool,” Han said in chipper English. “Even if you accidentally scared him away.”

“His reaction proves my point,” Minho replied. “Anyway, thanks Mr. Han. Are you near the agency?” he asked, looking around.

“Just a street over,” Han said, hanging up the phone and flipping off the flagpole he’d been perched on.

A minute later Minho was coming around the corner, right as Han emerged from a shady alleyway. “Hi!”

“Do you usually sneak around in the shadows like that?” Minho said as he crossed the road over to Han.

“Only for you, baby,” he said with a coy smile. He dropped his voice much lower and asked, “So what’s gonna happen to the CEO?”

Minho shrugged hard, leading the way down the sidewalk. “Nothing money won’t wiggle him out of. He wants to save face, so he’ll probably spend a comfortable week in jail and then reappear once everything’s blown over.”

Han hummed. He would have thought about that a little longer, but the gaping hole that was his stomach was really starting to complain. “So are you hungry?”

“Yeah,” Minho replied with a belated nod, pointing at the restaurant just down the road from them. “I was actually alread-”

“Perfect,” Han said, picking up the pace.

“Hey!” Minho called when Han had already beaten him to the restaurant's front door. “Before you-”

Han waltzed inside, scooping up a menu and beelining it for the closest table. Once he was sitting, he craned his head around the place for the nearest waiter, only to spot another kind of public servant.

“Oh shit,” he hissed. He ducked his head behind the menu, shielding his face from the police officer sitting at the table right in front of him.

Han slowly put the menu back down, hoping nobody had seen him do that. It’s not like he was actively breaking the law in that moment, he didn’t have anything to worry about. Plus the cop wasn’t even facing his direction. So as long as he didn’t catch his attention in any way, he should be good.

Minho grabbed Han by the shoulders and made him get on his feet. “Do you ever listen?” he chastised.

“My menu,” Han mourned, not quick enough to pick it up before he was getting pushed forward, towards the…

“Minho, this table’s taken,” he said with wide eyes, getting thrust into a seat at the cop’s table, all of a sudden sitting right in front of a person who had the power to put him away for a thousand years. 

Okay, be normal.

“Sergeant, meet Jisungie,” Minho said, gesturing from one to the other. “Han, this is Sergeant Seo Changbin.”

Han cracked his best polite smile—the cop only kept his impressive arms crossed over his chest. What was less suspicious, maintaining or avoiding eye contact? Definitely maintaining it. 

Han’s eyes treacherously darted away from the new face anyway. He wasn’t great at eye contact at the best of times, and now was a terrible time.

“Who’s this?” the cop asked, nodding at Han.

“...Sergeant, meet Jisungie,” Minho hesitantly started.

“I heard his name,” Changbin said. “But who is he? What does he do?”

“Don’t worry about him, just fill me in on what you wanted to tell me,” Minho said, waving a hand in the air.

“Who is he?” Changbin insisted.

There was no good answer to that. As far as anyone knew, Han Jisung was an unemployed and directionless civilian with zero skills and zero reason to be here besides accidentally intruding on Minho’s work-life balance. He impulsively opened his mouth to at least try to defend himself. 

But Minho was quicker. “My friend,” he said seriously.

Changbin looked between the two of them and leaned forward in his seat. Han had to suppress a reaction; apparently that’d been good enough reasoning? 

“There’s an event going on tomorrow night downtown,” he said, lowering his voice. “The organizers are contracting the police for security measures.”

Minho tilted his head to the side, considering something.

“...Sounds like normal security protocol?” Han chimed in during the dramatic pause.

“Are you talking about OmniLife’s company party?” Minho said. “The editors assigned me to cover the story.”

Han fought the urge to whip his head around at Minho. “OmniLife?” he exclaimed instead, exactly like a calm collected person would. The other two looked over at him. “Like, CEO Hwang Hyunjin OmniLife??”

Changbin flipped his hand up, half-shrugging. “I don’t know another OmniLife. So you already knew?” he said, looking at Minho now.

“Yeah. They’ve been hyping up a new direction for a while now and the papers are all over it.”

Changbin nodded, sending a loaded glance Han’s way. “Their execs are worried,” he said vaguely.

“He’s fine,” Minho asserted, picking up on Changbin’s hesitation.

“Big event. Lots of important business people. Probably a lot of reporters on the scene. Plenty of opportunities for something to go wrong and everybody to know about it.”

Han’s heart sank, though he wasn’t even sure why. “Nothing will go wrong.”

“When you say ‘something’...” Minho said, hedging a glance at Han.

“What?” Han said. “Why are you both looking at me like that?”

“They’re asking for police presence in case Spiderman shows up,” Changbin finally said.

“In case someone tries to follow his lead,” Minho corrected, Han’s eyes already widening again.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, how is Spiderman involved in this?” Han said, trying to pump the brakes on his speeding thoughts. He looked up at Changbin, a belated understanding dawning on him. “How are you involved in all this?” he asked, though he dreaded he already knew.

Minho gave him a flat look. “My AVU contact,” he said begrudgingly.

“Minho!” Han said with indignant eyes. “I told you-”

“And I heard you. Thanks for your concern,” he said, not sounding very thankful at all, while Han’s mind went into overdrive. For one, he could forget a millennium; this particular cop literally had the power to put him away for a million years.

Changbin gave them each a heavy glance, hesitantly going on. “Hwang Hyunjin’s company is huge in the biotechnology field, but he hasn’t been hit by Spiderman yet. Neither have any of the executives in attendance. So along with uniformed officers, a few of us are going undercover. I wanted to ask if you’d join us-”

Han stood before he even knew what he was doing. “He’s not going to,” he said, his rational brain fully offline.

Minho let out a tight sigh, as if this was about an inconvenience and not his literal safety. “That sounds great, sergeant. Please sit down,” he told Han like he was some afterthought.

“Minho!” he despaired. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“So you could blow up on me again like this?” he asked, crossing his arms. “Do you think I’m made of glass or something?”

“Did… Did I do something?” Changbin asked. At least it was his turn to be uncomfortable now.

“No, it’s fine,” Minho sighed again, louder and more exasperated. “Text me the details.”

Han was losing him. “You don’t understand,” he said, his heart turning into a jackhammer in his ears. “Please listen to me this once-”

“God, fine!” Minho barked, getting to his feet to be at eye level with Han. “You’re telling me to listen to you, so what is it? What is it you have to tell me so badly? I’m not stupid, Han. You asked me why I didn’t tell you, it’s because I can tell you’re lying to me-”

“I’m not!” he interrupted, hot magma flowing where there was supposed to be blood.

“You almost got hit by a car!” he snapped so fiercely that Han recoiled before he could stop himself. “You’re lying to me, and I don’t know about what. So please, all-knowing Han Jisung, enlighten me because I don’t understand.”

Han could barely breathe. Between Minho’s, Changbin’s, and probably the whole restaurant’s gaze, what could he even begin to say?

Yes, I’m Spiderman. Yes, I’m a bald-faced liar and this cop has every reason to arrest me on a suspicion. Yes, I’m only doing it to prevent you from getting added to a steadily growing list of people I’ve gotten killed. Yes, it’s because even though the only time I’ve ever said it out loud was as a joke when you bought me a new pair of shoes last year you’re actually the only person I’ve ever loved more than myself.

Did that about cover it?

“It’s-” Han’s voice cracked in the pin-drop silence. “Dangerous.”

Minho’s expression shuttered without a word.

Han shoved the chair out of the way, storming out of the restaurant without looking at Changbin. So much for first impressions, he broiled internally, throwing the door open and being met with the abnormally cold spring afternoon outside.

-

Minho sat back down, thumping the table as he did and making all the cutlery on top of it rattle. “Has Minkyu approved this?” he managed to say without yelling, pushing his bangs out of his face.

“Are… Do…” Changbin flung a look over his shoulder out the window. “Are you okay?”

“You didn’t do anything. It’s fine.”

“I said are you okay?”

“No. I’m mad. Did Minkyu approve?”

Changbin blinked rapidly. “That’s the thing… I still need to get it by him, and I wanted you to be there when I ask.”

“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath that only fuelled the hot anger simmering in his stomach.

“You said he was fine.”

Minho threw up his hands. “I was fucking wrong then, okay?”

“Are you sure it was fine to let him in on all that?”

“Maybe not. Too late now.”

“Does he usually act like that?”

“He’s been doing it a lot lately. Acting like he knows so much better than me without explaining why. God, it gets on my nerves.”

“Then… you guys should probably break up.”

Minho’s hand froze halfway through brushing back his hair, all the anger sucked out of him in a second. “It’s not like that. We’re friends.”

“Seriously? Then you really shouldn’t be friends anymore.”

“What?”

“I mean, look around. The world is crazy to begin with, and this city is getting so messed up lately. You can’t afford to have friends who treat you like crap.”

Minho finally took his hand out of his hair. “...Han doesn’t treat me like crap.”

“Then what was that just now, a picnic? Friends are for stability, not more of the same from the world. The best thing for both of you would be to cut off such a controlling ‘friend.’”

Minho hardly even registered his mouth had fallen open. “I… I don’t want to do that. He’s my best friend. Really, he’s been my best friend for years,” he insisted when Changbin only cocked a suspicious eyebrow at him.

“Is that the only reason to stay friends with someone? Ever heard of a sunk-cost fallacy?”

“That’s not the only reason. Han is a good guy. He’s always been there for me.”

“Didn’t really seem that way.”

“I’m serious. I don’t know what’s up with him but he must have his reasons, he always does. I mean it’s hard to keep your composure in the face of all…” Minho had been gesturing in the air without even thinking about it, but now his hand slowly dropped on to the table. If only this could have occurred to him, say, sixty seconds ago.

“People don't usually like my friend advice.” Changbin shrugged. “No idea why. But I think you can also tell that the fact you're opening up to me instead of him is probably not a good sign.”

Minho curled up his hand and gingerly placed it in his jacket pocket. There was a nagging sense he should go after Han…

But it could wait until after he was done with the assignment. Knowing Han, he needed the 48 hours to cool off anyway.

“I might have an idea why," Minho said as he abruptly stood, ignoring the last part of what Changbin said. “Come on, let's just go."

-

When Minkyu had seen the pair of problem children standing in the door like they were about to tell Mom they threw up, he’d braced himself.

“Fine,” he was interrupting Minho now, uncrossing his arms.

“So don’t you think it’s a little-” Minho blinked blankly. “Fine?”

“Yes, you can come with us,” he said, returning to the neglected pile of paperwork behind him. “And I won’t even mention your little double-crossing to the team leader,” he said, vaguely turning to Changbin. “I’m sure it wasn’t entirely your fault,” he said pointedly.

“...Is this a test?” Minho asked behind him.

“And you passed with flying colors, congrats. Be here at 7:30 tomorrow sharp or we’ll leave without you.” He sighed at Minho’s deafeningly bewildered silence. “With Jeongin out for the week we could use another pair of eyes,” he explained, though that wasn’t the whole reason. If he turned down his brother one more time, he couldn’t begin to guess how far Minho might take things in the future. 

It occurred to him it was the equivalent of parents letting their child drink in the house so they didn’t go get drunk at a stranger’s place, and he had to bite back a heavy sigh.

“Iyen called out?” Felix asked from his desk, looking up for the first time.

“His parents are in town for the week. He sounded pretty excited on the phone so I didn’t want to pressure him into coming into work.” When Minkyu looked up at the lack of response, he found everyone gawking at his brother. He lowered his head again and huffed a breath. “I have to make some photocopies,” he said as he haphazardly grabbed some of the papers in front of him. “Be gentle,” he warned as he made toward the door.

“We will,” Felix intoned.

Minkyu glanced over his shoulder, as if to say that wasn’t what he meant, and practically flung himself into the hallway.

At the hand stuck right in his face, Seungmin looked up.

“Lee Minho, reporter for the Blazoner,” he introduced as Seungmin shook his hand.

“Kim Seungmin, hunter of Spiderman,” he responded, his dry delivery getting a laugh out of Minho.

“What, you’re not excited to be the guy who arrests Seoul’s first and only superhero?” Minho said with a smile. 

“Hi,” he said, reaching over to shake Chan’s hand next. “Woah,” he let out, his eyes flicking to Chan’s arms. “Are you a bodybuilder or something?” 

“I’m Bang Chan,” he said, all at once more bashful than Felix had ever seen him as he pulled down the sleeve of his t-shirt.

“Hi, I know you,” he said enthusiastically, grabbing Felix’s hand before he could even offer it. “We saw that creepy pile of sludge together, you’re…”

“Felix,” he filled in.

“Plix,” Minho tried.

Felix bit his lip to keep from smiling. “Felix,” he enunciated more clearly.

“...Flexy,” he tried again.

“No,” he said, starting to draw out the letters of his name in midair. “F as in…” he trailed off, catching the other three’s urgent stares over Minho’s shoulder. “You know, you can just call me Lix,” he said instead to put everybody out of their misery.

“Got it, Lix,” he said. He passed over Jeongin’s empty desk, either blissfully unaware of or coyly unselfconscious of everyone staring at him like he’d hung the stars in the sky… Felix included. “Sorry to replace him, he seemed like a nice guy. He called out for the whole week? Probably what prolonged exposure to Minkyu does to people.”

“Wait, working with your brother is great,” Felix hastily interjected when he'd registered what he'd said. “He’s super hardworking and determined, it’s… he’s just a little…”

“Obsessed,” Seungmin cut in. “What?” he said to the harsh look Chan shot him. “Minho agrees something’s up with him.”

Minho took a moment to respond, his eyes knowingly flicking from Seungmin to Chan. “Is he obsessed? When he gets into something, it’s a little scary how absorbed he gets.”

“It's more like he’s unfocused lately.” Everybody turned to Changbin, now taking his seat at his desk. “It was random to decide we'd watch a bunch of rich guys’ houses in the middle of the night.”

Chan hesitated to agree. “I guess he’s been a bit weird since then.”

“With Minkyu you’re really going to have to specify ‘weird’,” Minho said.

“If I have to stare at one more hour of Namdaemun-ro street footage,” Seungmin said, dragging his fingers over the bags under his eyes. “I’m changing careers.”

Felix begrudgingly agreed on how tedious the manual street surveillance could get.

Chan laughed. “I’d take that over going shop-by-shop to interview every storeowner on the street Spiderman fought some drug dealer.”

Having been his partner for multiple of these post-Spiderman interview runs, Felix could agree again on how inefficient that was. “But how else would you try catching Spiderman?” he said. “I mean he can basically fly, obviously he’s hard to pin down.”

“Probably by following the spider bait,” Minho said. “Like you said,” he said, gesturing at Changbin. “Bunch of people too rich for their own good in one place. It’s not a bad idea to try there for leads.”

“It almost seems like you want him to get caught,” Chan said lightheartedly.

“I want to follow the story,” Minho said. “Which is something I’m pretty good at,” he said with his own self-assured smile. “Don’t you want to follow it?”

Chan looked over at the rest of the officers in the room, hesitating.

“Nope,” Seungmin said, face down on his desk and his voice muffled. “If Spiderman never got caught, I’d live my life perfectly fine-” Seungmin was quick to course-correct when the door opened: “Chasing the bastard down until my dying breath,” he said as Minkyu walked into the room.

“That’s the spirit,” he responded, letting a pile of papers drop onto the center table. “Who wants maps?” He picked up another sheet. “And alleged RSVPs? And uniformed officers’ positions?” Before anyone could even say anything he was picking up the bunch of papers he’d brought in and dumping them in the trash. “I should’ve just emailed this to begin with,” he said, picking up his laptop and shutting himself in the meeting room.

Everyone stared at the door, no one except Minho daring to break the silence that had fallen.

“That screamed well-adjusted.”

-

“And he’s just such a great friend and I don’t want to lose him by holding on too tight, but I also don’t want to lose him because I put him in harm’s way, you know? Like you and your gang here,” Han said with a gesture, waving at all the gangsters he’d stopped from breaking into a jewelry store’s storage unit. Strung up side-by-side like that, they were the picture of peas in a pod. “How do you guys keep it so tight?”

“Communication,” his impromptu therapist said, as gruffly as if he were ordering someone to put their hands in the air. “We’d be dead without communication.”

“Yeah, I’ve tried that,” Han said, reclining his cheek against his fist. “Didn’t end too well.”

“Were you trying to communicate, or were you trying to be right?” a second gravelly voice interjected.

“I was-!” Han stopped himself from going on the defensive. “Well, I was… Hmph.” He slumped back into his reclining position. “Interesting point, doc.”

“For me, in my personal opinion, you seem unselfaware that you condemn your friend for behavior you yourself display,” a third guy cut in, wiggling in place like he was the type to be making sweeping hand gestures. “It’s good when you risk your life, but not your friend? I mean that’s a kind of hypocrisy I wouldn’t stand for, me personally.”

Just as Han was starting to wonder if he’d stumbled on the ancient Greek Muses reincarnated as Korean gang members in their thirties, he was saved from having to make any kind of response to that by the whining red and blue lights coming their way. “If you guys put your brains to something other than B&E,” he said, getting to his feet. “You might actually get somewhere besides jail.”

He got into the swing of things with a flip, spinning around the streetlight the men were suspended on as he called, “Your degrees will be in the mail!”

Going to punch his feelings out as Spiderman had seemed like a good idea at first… but a little common sense told Han that probably wasn’t the healthiest way to go about it.

After a minute’s swinging he slipped through his bedroom window and started changing out of his suit, pulling the gloves off with his teeth as something tumbled out of one of them.

“Whoops.” He caught the black device Hyunjin had given him earlier before it hit the floor, the device he’d completely forgotten about with such a busy day behind him. Then he looked over at the clock on his nightstand with a despairing whine: “It’s barely 2 o’clock?” A promotion had sounded exciting at first, but Han was starting to dread if that was just code for a heavier workload. He walked into the bathroom and webbed the door closed, a habit that was beginning to get worryingly familiar. Han wouldn’t put it past himself to pull that stunt on a door when he was out of the suit. For now he started the shower, slapping the button on his chest with a little too much force and letting it fall to the floor in a heap.

“I’ll take care of that later,” he promised the air as he stepped in and let the not-very-warm water wash over him.

He just wanted to get this party and the mystical item sitting in his room and the rocky friendship phase all over with it. Was that too much to ask for? Not to mention a new aircon for the Seoul summers that just got hotter and hotter each year and web-shooters that didn’t require so much upkeep between Spidermanning and a refrigerator that had more than an old box of Chinese takeout sitting around.

Jeongin paid him fine for his missions, but with everything that life hurled at Han, it never seemed like enough. But he’d never had the courage to ask for a raise; hopefully this vague promotion would answer those swallowed complaints.

Han put some shampoo in his hand, a new brand when he’d accidentally squeezed the life out of his old one after getting his powers and couldn’t find it in stores no matter how hard he looked, and scrubbed his head with it. It’s fine, he told himself as he tilted his face up to the stream of water, it’s not like being broke is the worst thing that could happen to me. Though it was pretty high up on the list, another part of him said.

With the dialogue in his head, it took him a moment to realize no water was hitting his face.

He slapped the shower handle to the right.

Nothing.

He slapped it back to the left, flinging suds and soap everywhere as he did.

Still nothing.

What a lot of people don’t know is that the definition of insanity is actually not trying the same thing over and over to get what you want. So Han kept smacking the handle, until it got tired of the abuse and flung itself off the wall.

He let out a sharp curse under his breath, the shampoo trickling down his face now. He threw a towel around his waist and stumbled into the kitchen to try the sink.

Nothing again.

After an inconvenient time maneuvering a pitcher of water over his head and making a mess of the kitchen floor, Han waited with his brow furrowed to his eyes for his landlord to pick up.

“Finally,” he hissed. “There’s no water in my unit!”

He could imagine the 70-year-old man on the other end taking his sweet time to fix the glasses that were constantly on the verge of slipping off the tip of his nose. “Mr. Keum?”

“Han Jisung, unit 325, there’s no water.”

Another pregnant pause. “Have you paid your water bill?”

He could have thrown his phone across the room. “Did I pay my- Yes, I paid my water bill,” he snapped before he could even really think about it. “Obviously,” he added uneasily.

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“We must have given you fair notice before turning off your water. Multiple letters, voicemails and such.”

“Clearly you didn’t!” he said, darting his eyes around the hybrid kitchen/living room space. “A-Anyway the handle on my shower broke,” he said, checking through drawers and kitchen counters just in case. “So send someone to come fix it.”

“You broke it?”

“It broke,” he asserted, fully throwing the pillows off the couch that sat next to the front door now. “And don’t forget like last time, I didn’t have a knob on my bedroom door for a month.”

“Alright, Seokjin-ssi.”

Han was so offended he couldn’t correct the landlord before he was hanging up on him. “That sounds nothing like-!” He let out a frustrated groan and dropped his phone on the couch, right as he turned over the last pillow closest to the front door—a pile of junk mail hiding underneath.

At least what he’d thought was junk mail.

He threw the pillow back down, resolved to get dressed and nap away the tension that was starting to build behind his eyes. “Spiderman can’t even take a shower,” he muttered as he stalked back into his room. Being broke couldn’t compare to a lot of aspects of his life right now, but it sucked.

Chapter Text

At 7 o’clock on the first and longest day of summer, there was a knock on the AVU’s door.

Changbin being the only one on the other side to greet Minho took him aback; he hadn’t expected to be dead last or anything, but he figured police were supposed to be a little more punctual than this.

At least it meant free pick of all the empty seats.

Minho plopped into the chair he was pretty sure was reserved for Minkyu and took a look at the sergeant, pacing the room like a zoo tiger without enough enrichment in its enclosure. Changbin had neatly parted his hair, one side combed down and the other side swooshing towards the eyes of a very intense-looking movie star.

Minho shot him a thumbs up. “Nice job.”

“Huh?” Changbin said, already having managed to forget he was in the room.

Minho traced a quick swirl on his own forehead. “You styled your hair today. Looks good on you.” He smiled when Changbin didn’t respond to the compliment, only smoothed down the already flat hair on the back of his head.

Soon enough an older officer Minho had never seen before was joining them. Before he could introduce himself, Minho had nearly told him he was in the wrong place; crisis averted because, as it turned out, he was Kyung Taeko. The actual team leader, apparently.

After the introductions, Changbin went to sit down next to Minho, having either paced all the nerves out of himself or finding it unprofessional to keep at it in front of the team leader. When he did, Minho discreetly leaned close: “He doesn’t really act like it, does he?”

Changbin cupped a hand next to his ear. “We try not to mention it.”

By the time 15 minutes had rolled past, Chan, Seungmin and Felix had funneled in too.

And now Minho was standing in the restroom, Felix hovering over his shoulder in curiosity as he tried to get the white ribbon Seungmin was using as a tie to cooperate. Minho huffed. “How’d you even get this to work the first time?” He’d just been trying to tighten and adjust it a bit, he hadn’t thought the whole thing would fall apart like this.

Seungmin squinted down at the confused flurry of motion going on down there. “I have no idea. I found this in the back of my closet. I think it was my grandf- Agh,” he choked, grabbing his assailant’s hurried hands.

“Sorry, sorry.” Minho stepped close to loosen the silk he’d accidentally tied too tight. “Oh, you smell really good, what perfume is that?”

Seungmin ducked his head to scan his glossy black shoes, shrugging. “Something called lemon oak.”

“Ohh. I don’t actually know either,” he admitted as the ribbon decided to behave. He stepped back to check his handiwork, and found the layer of ice over his cold, frozen heart melting. In his clean black shirt, thin belt and one-size-too-big jacket, Seungmin’s eyes on his held all the innocent expectation of a Labrador puppy’s.

Clearly the look on Minho’s face did not communicate any of this. It made Seungmin bring his hands up to his collar, self-conscious.

“No, don’t touch it, I was just wondering how everyone here is so good-looking,” he assured with a wave of his hand.

“Do you mind helping me?” Felix asked, fidgeting in front of the mirror as Seungmin ducked his head again and turned around, hopefully not to mess with Minho’s hard work.

Minho turned to face the man in a grey suit and white shirt. “I would, Netflix, but…” He gestured at the string of black and silver beads hanging where a necktie would have.

Felix positioned his head as if he were checking his jawline in the mirror, pressing his lips into a straight line. “I mean my earring. I can’t get the top part to stay.”

When he saw what he was talking about, Minho’s eyes went huge and got a much deeper-than-expected laugh out of Felix. “Is that a torture device??”

“No,” he responded, still laughing. “Just a helix chain. The piercing’s new so I’m having some trouble…” His smile fell off his face, and he winced as he stabbed the top part of his ear.

“Stop, stop, stop, stop.” Minho could admit the silver chain meant to stretch from the top to the lobe of the ear was pretty cool but Felix was freaking him out.

He lowered his hand from his ear, not bothering to hide his amusement at Minho’s reaction. “Sorry.”

“But I mean, I can try.” He took the top part of the accessory and proceeded to poke him a few times, his apologies getting more and more profuse with every attempt.

“It’s fine,” Felix said, his scrunched-up eyes betraying his discomfort.

“You’re in pain, I’m stabbing you, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s- Fuck,” he inadvertently hissed at the sixth attempt. They settled on Minho being a spotter instead, which went much less traumatically.

“Can I see your phone?” Minho asked when it was finally over with, surprised when Felix pulled it out and handed it over without protest.

“For what?”

Minho couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him as he navigated to his contacts. “Normally people ask that before they give someone their phone. There,” he said after a moment, showing Felix where he’d entered his number and Minho-hyung above it. “So you can bill me for your hospital stay, Risky.”

A shadow of confusion crossed Felix’s face as he took his phone back. “Why would I go to the hospital?”

Minho signaled to his ear. “For the infection I definitely just gave you,” he said, eliciting another jarring giggle from Felix. They checked out the result of all that drama in the mirror, Seungmin (who’d stuck around to cringe at the car crash he couldn’t look away from) included.

“Looks pretty.” When they both turned toward the voice’s source, Seungmin cut his gaze away to the floor. Despite the fact that he’d proceeded to mutter I mean the earring on his embarrassed way out of the restroom, Felix’s eyes still lit up with stars, glowing as if that was the nicest Seungmin had ever been to him.

For all Minho knew, it might have been.

“I also think you look pretty, Plexiglass,” he said, thoroughly out of nicknames now. Felix’s already crescent moon-shaped eyes gained another crinkle at his compliment. He’d said it as a joke earlier, but now he was seriously starting to ask himself the odds of everyone here being so good-looking.

Back in the unit’s office, with Minkyu still a no-show ten minutes before their planned takeoff, Minho sat heavily beside Bang Chan to chance a look at him. 

He was dressed exclusively in black clothes, silver-colored accessories, and an impatient notch between his brows. Minho absently scratched his neck, wondering at the last time he’d seen the detective in the sun—or who he was supposed to let in on his suspicion that a vampire might have infiltrated the team.

“Hey,” he prompted.

Chan’s moody face fell off in an instant. “Hm?”

“Are you pissed?”

“Me?” Chan’s features showed no idea where the question was coming from. “No?”

“Your face was all- Eugh,” Minho eloquently demonstrated.

Chan raised his eyebrows, taking in the brand-new information. “That’s… just my face.”

“Oh. It’s a nice face, by the way.”

Chan responded with a nod, as mechanical as if Minho were a chef complimenting a cooking show contestant on his searing technique. He stopped himself before he could throw in a hasty And I’m not just saying that, or else it would probably look like he was just saying that.

Instead, he pulled out his phone to kill time.

-

It was 7:50. Logically Han knew that he couldn’t really waste any more of the evening if he wanted to be on time for the big show.

Whatever it was supposed to be.

But he really felt like he could squeeze in a little more crime-fighting, so that was good enough for him.

“It’s called fashionably late anyway,” he assured himself with a flick of his long imaginary hair, perched up on a ledge overlooking the street he affectionately called Crime Central. It wasn’t even a seedy place, but Han always managed to spot petty pickpockets taking advantage of the busy street’s bustle.

Case in point: the Not-At-All-Suspicious-Looking guy in a cap and hood picking up the pace behind a girl strolling down the sidewalk.

“Too easy.”

Han sprang in their direction right as the shady creep was slamming his shoulder into hers and grabbing the bag off her back.

“Oh, I love that movie,” Han said as he plopped in front of the thief, who looked down at the Totoro backpack in his hands before making to dash to Han’s right.

Then he made for Han’s left like the world’s most audacious basketball traveler.

“Oop. Ooh. Ah,” Han voiced every time he mirrored the guy, leaning to the left and then the right to block him. “That was way too many steps without dribbling,” he critiqued as he strung the guy onto the storefront sign above them, making the bag drop from his hands with a rattle.

“A little situational awareness wouldn’t kill you, you know, I was like-” Han pointed up to his stalking spot on the rooftop across the street. “Right there.”

Then, with a single word, Han’s entire career flashed before his eyes.

“Bitch.”

Han’s mouth dropped open in outrage, giving his spider mask a very long face. “Did you- Did you get that?” He whirled his head around to the dozens of phones that inevitably came out when he caught someone so publicly and settled on the face he happened to be closest to. “You got that, right?” he personally asked the middle-aged woman.

She nodded enthusiastically, her shaky grip on the phone probably not making for the best shot. “He should get defamation charges.”

“Right?” Han shot a pointed glare at the hapless criminal dangling from the Foam Party sign. “I’m glad there’s someone on my side.” He scooped up the backpack and walked over to the girl who was sitting on the ground, probably still dazed.

“I think you dropped something, miss,” he said, as warmly and suavely as ever, and held out the bag to her.

Han completely blanked when she sniffled.

She did take the bag with one hand, but she was covering her face with the other and thanking Han with a voice so weak it made his heart drop through his feet.

“Hey, hey, hey.” He kneeled to her level, his hands moving to awkwardly hover around her trembling shoulders. “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” he said, hushed and hyperaware of all the cameras that must have still been rolling, maybe even some of them live. “You’re alright, alright?”

He turned and found, sure enough, about a hundred and one phones pointed right at the two of them. He frantically waved his hands to shoo them off, but, other than a few people taking a meek step back, the spectators weren’t going anywhere.

Han cringed as he turned back to the girl, who couldn’t have been older than 16, when she let out a sob so poorly concealed it put his heart through a grater. “It’s okay, okay? I got all your stuff back, the jerk didn’t get away with anything.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” With wet eyes and a flushing face, she tried the saddest smile Han had ever seen before breaking off with another sob. “This is so stupid of me.”

“No, you’re okay, that’s not what I meant,” Han floundered, finding the need to force himself to slow down and pick his words a little more thoughtfully. “You’re not stupid for getting overwhelmed, I know that kind of thing is scary.”

Her breathing only picked up as she planted both hands on her face, the motion sliding her shirtsleeves down and revealing white bandages wrapped around her elbows. Han didn’t realize he was staring until she spoke again through her unsteady hands: “It’s nothing, I’m not usually like this, I just- I just-”

Han gave the crowd of voyeurs another glare; this was not the setting for someone to calm down in. He helped the girl to her feet and ducked into the nearest store with her, which happened to be a tiny mobile repair shop.

Despite the fact that she was full-blown crying now, the gruff salesman still had the audacity to say, “You buying or you moving al-?”

Han shot him a scowl that instantly had the man raising his hands in surrender, retreating to the back to leave the two of them alone.

“People these days,” he chided, careful not to say it too harshly. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

She shook her head, pulling in a shaky breath with all her might. “This is so embarrassing, I’m sorry,” she apologized, as if any of this could have possibly been her fault. “You can go.”

“Are you addicted to nicotine?” Han asked, startling her and maybe even himself with where his train of thought was going.

“N…No?” she said, too bewildered to keep crying.

“Do you have a friend?”

“Fr-” She swallowed to smooth out her croaky voice. “Friends?”

“One,” he emphasized, holding up a single finger. “At least one friend.”

“Yes…?”

“And you have great taste in cinema. Wow, you’re doing a lot better than I was at your age. Don’t feel embarrassed, okay? I get days where the wind upsets me sometimes, and you got your things taken in the middle of the street, if I were you right now, I’d be so much worse off,” he was only beginning.

The girl’s breathing had slowed as she listened to Han ramble on, probably not the quintessence of comfort he was trying to be (the topic of burnt waffles somehow coming up in the middle of it there), but apparently working all the same.

He was tapering off now, focusing more on trying to model a calmer breathing pattern, when she broke off eye contact with a sudden laugh. “Oh my God, that was kind of scary.”

“What?” he panicked. “What did I say?” he asked, already forgetting everything that had just come out of his mouth.

“It’s- You sounded exactly like my brother Boyoung. In a good way,” she added when Han forgot to clamp down on his wide-eyed facial expression.

Han laughed sheepishly, the word vomit he’d just spewed coming to him in pieces. “Does… Boyoung struggle with listening skills?”

The girl gave a little smile of her own, wiping her face with the palm of her hand. “Yeah, he could work on it. But I always appreciated him trying.”

“Well, we should get you home so you can tell him all about it.” He started towards the front and then considered it lucky this place had blackout-tint windows because when he stepped into the exit, he froze to see a dozen faces staring right back at them.

He turned to the girl—her face pulled in shock—and slowly closed the door again so only his masked face would peek through.

“What are you doing?” she whispered as he stared down each pair of eyes too curious for their own good.

“Committing their faces to memory,” he said loud enough for all of them to hear. “So that if I see a single video of this online I know who to come for.” The onlookers stashed their phones away in a hurry. Han gave them all an I see you hand gesture to cap off the threat and closed the door on them.

“You can remember all those faces?” she asked as he walked over to the display the salesman had been standing behind.

“I forgot before I even closed the door. Sir!” he called, leaning over the display to make his voice heard towards the back. “Sir, does this place have some kind of back door?

“I probably should’ve led with this,” Han said as they walked into the alley behind the store. “But what’s your name?”

She gave him a sincere smile this time, one that actually reached her red-rimmed eyes. “Namgoung Ayoung.”

“Oh, fancy name, I think I knew an Ayoung once.”

“Yeah?” she asked, idly swinging her backpack in front of her. “What was she like?”

Han shrugged, before nearly toppling over with the weight of what he’d forgotten. He stumbled on a stray beer can that’d been carelessly tossed in the alley. “Holy shit. I mean, uh-”

He guiltily swiveled around, Ayoung’s eyes filled with questions. “Sorry, I don’t swear. I never swear. Don’t swear. And don’t litter,” he said, kicking the offending can into the wall. “Don’t drink either. Do not smoke. Anything, ever. What time is it?”

She lifted her bag to pull out her phone and its adorable Laputa phone case that he did not have the time to ask about. “8:05,” she said as they reached the end of the alley, Han exploding from stress despite the fact he’d known he was going to be late. Unfortunately for him, his brain drew a distinction between knowing and understanding something.

“Are you good from here?” he asked, trying not to sound too impatient about it. After all, it was probably fine, they probably didn’t need him to shadow the place at 8 o’clock precisely.

Relief still swept over him when she nodded. “My apartment’s down this street.”

“Great,” Han said as he pulled himself onto a streetlight. “Scream if you need me, I have like-” He tapped his ear awkwardly.

“Super hearing, yeah.”

“Walk with your phone up to your ear like you’re on a call, bye, I’ll see you around, Ayoung!”

“Bye!” she said, waving after him.

-

The setting sun had already begun casting a seamless gradient of orange, pink, and smoggy purple across the sky above the precinct parking lot—and Minkyu was still M.I.A.

“Try texting him,” Minho said with the impatience that had infected the whole group at this point. As cool as seeing the actual limousine that would take them to Hwang Hyunjin’s event had been at first, Felix still hadn’t been able to help the restlessness from sinking in either.

Chan glanced around at everyone else, all equally as clueless as him, and splayed his empty hands in response.

“None of you have his number?” Minho said incredulously. “Do you even have each other’s numbers?” he asked, clearly wondering how this team was still standing in this state. Felix sometimes wondered the sa

“I do,” Kyung spoke up. “I’ve already sent him messages, but he hasn’t answered them.”

“Shouldn’t… you have his number before any of us?” Seungmin asked Minho.

“Should I?” was his only vague reply before the slam of a car door startled them all towards its source.

A couple of rows down, Minkyu had finally appeared… patting himself down like he’d forgotten something, his tie hanging undone.

He yanked the door of his car open again, dug around for a moment, then slammed it shut again, whirling around on his heel to see everybody staring at him.

He froze mid-step, expressionless.

Then he strolled over, the alarmingly out-of-character frantic energy already forgotten, as if all was fine and his shirt collar wasn’t sticking straight up. “Hello. Glad you’re all here.”

Minho let out an unfiltered groan of irritation and clambered into the vehicle first.

Felix, for his part, gestured vaguely around his chest. “Minkyu, your…”

His eyes widened a fraction as he felt around his mess of a collar and tie, Kyung already pushing forward to make him look presentable. “How come you didn’t respond when I messaged you?”

Besides the neglected tie, their superior actually didn’t look bad. His slicked-back hair and pristine black suit at least made him look much more authoritative than his usual baggy jackets did. Though the sunglasses perched on his head might not have been the most practical accessory.

“My mistake. I didn’t notice. Thank you,” Minkyu added when their team leader smoothed down his collar over the tie.

“All’s fine then?” Kyung asked as he approached the driver’s side door.

Minkyu took in a breath, rolling his shoulders back as he did. “Perfectly. Thanks for your patience everyone. Let’s go?”

Felix sidled in next to Minho, and the two of them immediately got sucked into the sight of all the controls and containers and consoles of the limo. “Woah,” Minho awed, taking Felix’s attention from the light in the curved ceiling that was casting every face in a wash of neon blue.

“What?” He peered over to see the incognito ice tray underneath Minho’s seat he’d managed to pop open.

“What do you think they usually keep in here?” he asked with a glint that so obviously screamed mischievous it made Felix laugh.

“Don’t even think about drinking. We’re here to work, not party,” Minkyu warned from the opposite corner of the vehicle, his sunglasses over his eyes now and his tone so stern Felix’s heart skipped a beat.

But it was the broiling stare Minho leveled back at him that made Felix really start to sweat. “Yes, sir,” he said with a sarcastic two-fingered salute.

“Hey have you ever been undercover before?” Felix fumbled to ask before things could get worse. Kyung must have had the same idea from the driver’s seat, because the electronica that had only been a faint background hum cranked up a few notches.

“Yeah, haven’t you?”

Felix pressed his lips together, as embarrassed as he always was when his lack of experience became glaringly obvious.

“Ah,” he intoned at Felix’s non-answer. “That’s okay. Yeah, I’ve been to a lot of places, not always as fun as this though,” Minho said, gesturing around at their still unfamiliar surroundings. His eye caught on something beside him, and when he pressed the button on the armrest, he beamed to see how a little cupholder flipped up at his request.

With that mesmerized smile still on his face, he said, “Once, I had to play a waiter at a mob hangout to get close to this kingpin.”

“What?” Felix gaped, the words so distinct there was no way he misheard but he couldn’t believe that’s what he’d said.

Minho shrugged. “I wasn’t in danger or anything.”

“How was serving the mob not dangerous?” Felix said, barely loud enough to speak over the music in his disbelief. “What did you have to do anyway?”

Minho idly scratched at his neck. “Just the usual, you know. Make them drinks, plant recording devices, tail them. Get so fast at taking down orders,” he said, shaking his head as if that had been the worst part of it all. “Journalist stuff. I was never in danger because-” He turned with that same glint as before, endearingly aware of his own theatrics. “I was never going to get caught.”

Felix let a laugh slip despite himself, bringing a hand up to run a nail down his new earring’s chain. “But did your boss really have to put you there just for a story?”

A crooked smile crept its way up Minho’s face.

Felix lapsed into English in his renewed surprise: “No.”

“Yes. My editors didn’t know how I got the information until they couldn’t get me in trouble for it anymore.”

Felix wasn’t sure if it was his respect for or his terror of Lee Minho that just shot into the stratosphere. “Woah,” was the only thing that came to mind.

Minho nodded, probably thoroughly satisfied with the reaction he’d gotten out of him, before he fell into a pensive silence. “But that place reeked,” he cringed after a moment. “I’m serious! Do you think those kinds of guys have ever heard of showers?” he protested when Felix burst out laughing at his priorities.

“I believe you, I believe you.” After baiting Minho for as many stories of his undercover work as possible, he found that the moral of most of them was Act like you belong and people will assume you do. 

Then their destination pulled into view, and it wasn’t shy about announcing itself. 

The skyscraper stretched up into the cloudless, steel-blue sky, the bold letters OMNILIFE making sure no one doubted who it belonged to.

“I can’t even see a balcony from down here,” Minho said, Changbin’s phone with the blueprints of the place in his hand all of a sudden. Felix had been too focused on trying to count how many floors he could make out to notice when he’d even handed it over.

Felix’s gaze flicked over the plan of the top floors, making out a mainstage room, a kitchen, a foyer, a second level and sure enough, two yawning balconies on either side. “How’d they get the money for this?”

He’d muttered it as a rhetorical question to himself, trying to remember if there was a logical explanation that had slipped his mind when the company had only been under new management for six years. They’d been profitable lately, sure, but enough to already afford this?

Changbin, sitting across from him and Minho, fixed him with a look like he was wondering the same. “How much did they buy it for?” he asked Minho.

He hummed in acknowledgement as he typed the question into the search engine, and Felix watched him slowly blink before popping his blue-lit eyes open in surprise.

“Was it a lot?” Felix asked as he returned the phone to Changbin.

“It’s as much as I pay for groceries in a month,” he said, just as dumbfounded.

Minho crinkled his brow, casting a shadow over his eye. “Where do you get your grocer-?”

“I don’t know how they managed to get the price this low,” Changbin mused. “I think this is the first time they’ve ever actually hosted something up there.” He shook his head as he put the phone back in his pocket.

With a knock on the partition to lower the volume, Minkyu got everybody’s attention. “I know this is a lot, I’m sorry it had to be this way. Or not,” he said at the looks they all gave each other. “Glad… you’re having fun.

“Nobody except the organizers knows who we are or what we’re doing here. As far as anybody knows, we’re regular invited guests of Hwang Hyunjin’s, not police keeping an eye out for trouble. If you see something strange, tell me immediately. Figuring out if the attendees have anything in common that can lead us to Geomi is a secondary task. Any questions?”

“Nope,” Minho replied, popping the p of the word obnoxiously.

Minkyu rolled his shoulders back and surveyed the others. “Good,” he said as the limo came to a stop.

-

After sticking a piece of bread in his mouth that turned out to be some strange… beige meat… Minho’s night was off to a great start.

Until he recovered from the stress of the betrayal, he decided he’d hold off on eating and give the place a look around in the meantime. It wasn’t the kind of wine-glass-clinking salad-fork-manners occasion he’d been expecting; between the flashing LEDs lighting the place, the bass of the K-pop thumping under his feet, and the deserted dance floor in the middle of the room, it felt more like a rave than a company’s formal celebration—an experience none of the graying attendees were dressed or even slightly prepared for.

Minho backtracked the way he’d come. On either side of the entrance to the wide room, stairs opened up and led to a second level that was on the same height as the chandelier (one hundred percent just for show, he mentally noted).

And still standing around at the entrance by himself and wearing those stupid dark shades was none other than Lee Minkyu.

Minho almost walked past him and his brooding, but he figured he should at least say something even if he wasn’t really one for brotherly concern. “Are you okay?” he said as he grabbed the crook of his elbow.

Wrong move, because he’d barely gotten the words out when Minkyu was swatting his hand away like he was some flying pest. “Wow, great reflexes,” he said flatly. “Last time I ask.”

“Are you heading up?” Minkyu said, taking off his glasses. He glanced up to the second level, squinting with the readjustment to the light. Served him right. “There’s nothing there.”

“There’s a better view. You know, things must be quieter out on the balcony,” he offered despite the fact Minkyu hadn’t humored his question. “That’s where I saw all the old people anyway.”

He went on to the upper level. There really wasn’t anything up there, just a few locked doors that must have led to the conference rooms they saw on the blueprints. The other side of the room mirrored the same staircase and hall of doors with nothing connecting the two landings. But from there was a clear, unobstructed view of the room, from the dance floor beneath the chandelier to all the dinner tables peppered around to the speaker’s stage at the back, and presumably a backstage behind those two sets of curtains on stage.

Movement instinctively snapped Minho’s attention to the extravagant light fixture in front of him. He squinted, stepping closer at the flash of color he’d thought he’d seen out of the corner of his eye. He went to the point of leaning over the railing to check if he’d actually seen something or if the artificial lighting of the place was already getting to his head.

Minho craned his neck as far as he dared without spotting anything between the tightly packed (and powered off) lightbulbs. He hummed, hopping back on his heels as the 2PM song that had been playing ended and a vaguely familiar beat came on in its place.

He was halfway down the stairs by the time he recognized the song and decided that the first person he laid eyes on would be his dance partner.

That turned out to be one Lee Felix. “Hi,” he greeted as he marched up to him.

“Hi! Wh-What are you doing?”

“Hope that wasn’t water,” Minho said after putting down Felix’s drink for him and strong-arming him onto the dance floor, right as the first verse of Bang Bang Bang started.

“Of course it was. Woah,” he awed. “Is that the actual choreo?”

Minho cracked a smile that his flailing attempts at dance were that impressive. “I only know the chorus,” he yelled, the music blaring full volume there in the center of the room, before he got the sudden idea he could keep up with T.O.P’s rap.

Fifteen seconds and one terrible tongue-tied attempt later, his face burned red.

“Woah, are those the actual lyrics?” Felix managed to get out before dissolving into laughter again.

“Shut up,” Minho murmured, putting his hands up as if he were going to strangle the jerk. “How about you do any better?”

“Sorry, I couldn’t,” Felix admitted, wiping a tear from his eye as Minho mimed shooting him in time with the music. “Bangya, bangya, bangya.”

After four and a half Big Bang songs, Felix was collapsing into the nearest chair. “I can’t feel my legs. How did you survive in that?” he said when Minho was only now peeling off his leather jacket.

“Who says I did,” he huffed, regretting having listened to the demon on his shoulder telling him to wear chunky combat boots to the party. “I’m going to the restroom,” he said, despite the fact he didn’t need to use it. Felix nodded all the same, fanning himself as Minho dimly wondered if the two of them should consider a career switch to the performing arts.

Before he could dwell on it long, he was weaving between the empty dinner tables and snobbish glares the attendees threw his way back into the foyer. On the other side of the small room was the elevator that had taken him and the others up past all forty floors to the very top. On his left was the entrance to the kitchen, and beyond that the door to the restroom. There was nothing out of the ordinary about any of the three unlabeled doors to his right… which was what had intrigued him the most when he’d first seen them.

Minho threw a look behind his shoulder before rushing up to the closest door on his right. Locked, of course. He took out the basic skeleton key he carried around, as one did, and checked if it would work.

Click.

“Huh.” He stuffed the lockpicking tool back in his jacket pocket and entered, quickly closing the door behind him and instantly plunging himself into darkness.

Minho blinked for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the change and registered that he wasn’t in total pitch black. Down the corridor, the door to a small room was open, letting moonlight stream in from the window.

He crept towards the room, passing a few closed doors, and peered down the turn in the hallway to his left. More doors on the far side of the wall, all of them open, with the same pale moonlight filtering through and a single shut door at the farthest end of the hall. He hadn’t seen any of this on the map.

He silently stepped into one of the rooms, tiny enough that he would have been able to touch both walls if he stretched out his arms, and went for the filling cabinet he spotted first. In truth, Minho wasn’t expecting all that much. At this point his job had just conditioned him to be as nosy and inconvenient as possible wherever he went, and sneaking away to snoop through what looked like their host’s personal records definitely fit the bill. So he’d almost glazed past it when he held the proof of purchase of the building in his hands.

He did not glaze over the following photos of a child at sports practice, each of them featuring the same number 27 on the back of the uniform front and center.

-

An unoiled door creaks closed. Calm, even footsteps pad across the carpeted floor. A gloved hand flexes; the other is wrapped around a pistol. If Jeongin fires it, the sound will hardly travel through the auditory chaos he’s created out there. He would, however, prefer to avoid the mess.

He stops short of entering the last door and presses himself against the wall, listening to the unaware rustling of the trespasser just beyond it. In a moment, it won’t matter how they managed to find their way here.

Jeongin takes the firearm in both hands and spins into the room, his aim solidly on the back of a ducked head. But the man doesn’t hear him come in, muttering to himself over whatever papers he’s uncovered. Jeongin presses the pistol into the back of his head and clicks off the safety, announcing his presence.

The man stiffens at once, raising his hands as he turns to face him. “Wait, wait, wait a minute, what- What is that!?” he stammers with a voice Jeongin shouldn’t recognize, because they were not supposed to be here. And yet he did, because Hyunjin had managed to let the AVU officers slip through their carefully laid plans anyway.

Jeongin shoots his hand out to grip Lix’s shoulder, forcing him to keep his eyes ahead. “Okay,” he yelps, “okay, I won’t look.”

Jeongin curls his fingers into muscle. With everything that was on the line tonight, Hyunjin had made this glaring mistake. Lix jolts from the pressure and trembles more than before. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t see anything. I haven’t seen your face, please let me-“

Jeongin shoves his head down so he can tell him what he was snooping through himself. Lix, the clever thing, catches on, even if his palms had to slam against the desk to catch him.

“Th-This is old, plans from 2017. In May, Hwang took intrigue-“ He swallows, speaking shakily. “I mean inventory of the defunct technology. It says power generators and laboratory space and energy capacity. In June, his father, he- he- he-“ He breaks off with a crack of his taut voice and begs: “Please let me stand up.”

Jeongin eases the pressure without stowing the firearm. He doesn’t have to be reminded that when they were 16 and 17, Hwang Hyunjin’s father died young and unexpectedly. From an outsider’s point of view, he was leaving behind an inheritance of squandered potential and massive debts, all for an inexperienced heir to collapse under the weight of. An outsider wouldn’t have been wrong. But they also would have been overlooking the most crucial variable.

“See, it was nothing bad, you can let me go.”

Despite himself, Jeongin smiles. He’s thankful Lix isn’t too clever, or else he might have suspected the timing of the premature planning and Mr. Hwang’s untimely, convenient death. It might have struck him that, as natural as a death following decades of chronic illness was, it was also an expedited one.

Jeongin backs off some more, letting Lix catch his breath, and strikes him across the back of the head with the pistol.

-

The clothes itched and restricted and the hairstyle exposed entirely too much face and the growing urge to clamp his hands over his ears for the comforting pressure and the solace of the world going quiet—Minkyu expertly ignored all of it. He paid sole attention to the nuclear energy research investor he was chatting with.

“…Or am I mistaken?” Mr. Cheop asked.

Minkyu cleared his throat, having been too focused on focusing to actually focus. “Excuse me,” he said apologetically, putting his elbows on the round high table between them. “Of course, yes. I was just thinking that we all do.”

The man chuckled, taking a prim sip of the red in his glass. “I’m not sure all of us. Hwang Hyunjin certainly can’t.”

Minkyu did not want to admit he hadn’t been listening. “I’d say he’s improved over the years though.”

Cheop sighed. “No, he’s still just a boy playing dress up. It’s his team doing all the heavy lifting, more-“ he emphasized, his unnervingly glassy eyes looking past Minkyu rather than at him. There was possibly nothing more uncomfortable than being around drinkers and their lack of total presence—even if their chattiness worked out in Minkyu’s favor sometimes. “More than the usual amount that bosses rely on their hired help.”

Minkyu picked a building in the distant skyline to stare at rather than the man’s face, feigning eye contact. “I doubt that. He comes across so articulate and knowledgeable.” He knew full well he’d never been able to find a proper recorded presentation or interview of Hwang Hyunjin. All that anyone knew about him and the company he owned came from investors and his press team, never directly from the man himself.

Cheop laughed in his face. “I almost thought you said articulate! Knowledgeable!” he said with another laugh, eager to correct Minkyu’s woefully misguided judge of character, and although it’s what he’d baited him for, it didn’t make his patronizing tone any less irritating. “Goodness, no, try having one conversation about his work and it’s all yes sir and no sir and what do you mean by that, sir,” he mocked, pitching his voice high as if they were talking about a middle schooler and not a 23-year-old man. “Everybody knows he doesn’t know the first thing about all the fancy processors and capacitors daddy left him. He clearly leaves it all to his advisors to deal with. God knows how he managed to recruit such a good team to begin with.”

“Or how he managed to get a hold of such a nice building,” Minkyu said, using the bit of conversation he’d overheard on the drive there.

“Phobos Group must have pitied him,” he said with a cluck of his tongue, before he walked off and abruptly ended the conversation on his own terms.

Considering who was attending whose event, Minkyu wasn’t sure Hwang Hyunjin was in any position to be pitied. He pushed his shoulders back as he surveyed his surroundings on the west balcony, noticing some of the others had come outside too. He didn’t think much of it when he saw Minho with his arm slung around Chan’s shoulder, talking with a woman over a similar high table as the one he was standing by.

Minkyu did think something of it when he had to do a double take to see the little shit’s hand inching closer to hers, a cocky smile on his face that reeked of sleaze. Jesus, did he ever take anything seriously? Did he really think he could trick everyone into believing he was hard at work while using such an important night to have fun?

Minkyu strolled over and startled Minho and Chan. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Reporter Lee. I thought the media were all downstairs,” he said, giving his thoroughly shocked brother a chummy pat on the shoulder as he spotted the bubbling drink on the table. “Ah, what a shame, your drink’s running low.”

The woman’s face lost its dazed dreaminess as she straightened her posture and snapped her hand away. “You’re a reporter?”

“No. I’m not, no.” Minkyu grabbed the drink as his brother started throwing out futile denials. One thing, he’d asked him not to do one thing.

He smoothed over the irritated expression that threatened to rise and pretended to be shocked and apologetic instead. “Ah, you didn’t know? Sorry about that, Reporter Lee. I’ll get you a refill,” he said, walking towards the main hall despite the fact he wanted to throw the glass over the edge of the balcony.

Three steps away from the windowed doors leading to the audiovisual nightmare that was the event room, Minkyu almost thought he would make it back inside.

Then Minho was storming into his path, his tone more thunderous than his steps: “What is your problem?”

“You’re asking me what my problem is?” Minkyu said, swirling the unnaturally pink glass of something.

His jaw clenched with his poor effort at hiding his temper, something the hothead never bothered to keep in check. “Are you kidding me? Take a sip.”

He leveled him with an unamused stare. “I have a job to do. I would rather be in control of my thought processes while I do it.”

“Woah, oh my God, your job?” he taunted, shoving the glass close enough to Minkyu’s face for him to smell the syrup mixed into it. “It’s soda water, you dick. Believe it or not I was actually doing my job too, before you ruined the moment.”

“The moment?” Minkyu echoed incredulously. Since when was serious investigative work ever called the moment. “Is this a game to you?”

His brother narrowed his eyes at him, dropping his voice to a harsh whisper: “There is something really bad happening here, Minkyu. This is serious to me.”

“Is it? You want to ‘follow the story’?” he whispered back, using Minho’s words, who nodded in response. “Don’t insult my intelligence,” he said in his full voice, so suddenly Minho looked as if he’d been slapped. “The story, the truth, you don’t care about any of that. You track down mob bosses just to get an adrenaline high, and you want me to believe anything is serious to you?”

Minho’s dark expression sharpened into anger. There it was.

“What the fuck makes you think you know anything about me?”

“I know you came to do what you always do. Slack off work, treat everything like a joke, act like you’re being helpful.” Minkyu smiled with a humor he didn’t feel. “Almost reminds me of an insect we both kn-“

Minkyu didn’t know when Minho had taken the soda out of his hand; the only thing he knew was when it splashed in his face and the glass shattered on the floor in a red heap.

When he blinked his sugar-sticky eyes open, Minho was already gone.

-

When Felix opened his eyes to hands hoisting him up by the arms, he tripped backwards with a yell.

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay! Sorry I scared you, I’m not known for my tact,” the man said, his voice drowned out by Felix’s groans of pain at the stabbing headache he’d woken up with and the new throbbing pain in his tailbone. “Don’t freak out. You’re drunk, you passed out in here, we’ll go get you some fresh air.”

Felix’s breath caught up with him when his memories of getting hit on the head did. He wrenched his head up to look at the man, the minimal moonlight in the room giving away nothing, and backed himself into the wall to put as much distance between them as possible. “F-Fuck off.”

“Hey, it’s alright, I’m not judging, you would not believe the places I’ve woken up hungover. I just think your friends are a little worried about you.”

“Who are you?” Felix breathed at the veiled threat, his heart hammering at the thought of Minho and the others getting hurt because of him.

The man kneeled down to his level, startling Felix. “No one special,” he said, close enough for Felix to see that he was his age, half his face illuminated by the pale light, and that his suit jacket was buttoned all the way with the collar up. “Come on, I know your head must be killing you but you can’t stay here.” The man offered his hand, who’d been talking as if Felix was drunk. But there was no way he’d stumbled in here by accident. He’d noticed the door to a corridor was open and followed it into this room, where…

Felix gasped and shot to his feet, ignoring the man’s outstretched hand despite the fact his head was so full of lead it could have tipped him over at any moment. He stumbled over to the desk he’d laid out all the records on top of.

No. No. No, there was no way, he hadn’t been out for that long, he couldn’t have been out for that long.

They were all gone. He flung open the drawers of the filing cabinet he’d just been looking through and everything was gone, as if it had never been there.

“Dude, I don’t know if you’re allowed to do th-“

“Where did they go?” He whirled around, so scared and confused and disoriented he could taste his heartbeat in his mouth. “What’s going on?”

The man raised his hands in a show of innocence, his round brown eyes wide in the moonlight. “I don’t know what you mean. But you’re at OmniLife’s corporate party, it’s 9 o’clock, and you’re-“

“I’m not drunk!” Felix snapped, aggravating his own pulsing headache and staggering.

“Alright,” he said suspiciously, as if the staggering meant anything besides he’d been hit on the head with a gun?? Why?? If not by this guy, who?? “I wasn’t going to say that.”

Felix’s heart was working so fast it was probably about to burst from system overload. “I’m not.” Because he wasn’t. He’d had two glasses of champagne, maximum.

…Right?

Maybe he’d had more than that? He’d just wanted to make sure he wouldn’t clam up when he had to make conversation, but maybe he was more of a lightweight than he’d thought?

He had to be, there’s no way he’d had a gun pointed at him.

“Shit, I-I might be,” Felix muttered as he realized he’d mistaken a surreal dream for reality, swaying again.

“It’s okay,” the man said, putting his arms out to catch him just in case. “Just take a breath and head back outside.”

Felix traversed the short corridor with a terrible woozy feeling in his stomach, a pit of dread gnawing on him for the very few seconds between the moonlit room and the foyer. Beyond his suddenly blinded, squinting eyes, he barely caught Minho flinging open the door to the restrooms, looking angrier than Felix had ever seen him.

He followed past the second door that led to the men’s room and stopped, watching Minho scrub his face in the sink.

“Hyung?” Felix called gingerly.

Minho swiveled his head around so quickly Felix thought he’d done something wrong for a moment. “Where have you been?”

Passed out drunk in a shoe closet, he didn’t really feel like admitting. “What’s wrong?” he asked instead, crossing the vast space between the door and the sinks. Even the bathrooms here were so much larger than necessary.

Minho let out something like a scoff, though it sounded much less amused than that. “What’s not wrong?” he said, water dripping from his chin onto the sink. He’d actually made a mess of most of his clothes. Felix grabbed one of the white towels placed on top of the mirrors and started lightly dabbing around Minho’s face.

“I mean, what happened?” Felix clarified.

“Minkyu did,” he muttered, leaning into the cloth. “Called me an alcoholic womanizer.”

“What!?”

“Not in the Korean language,” Minho said, taking the towel after Felix had frozen in shock. “It’s the same thing as always though. Treating me like I’m too young or too stupid or too incapable of making my own choices.”

“Minho-hyung-“

“It’s not true,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “But… Felix. What is it about me that just seems so-“ He wiped his face down, dropping water onto the floor. “Defenseless?” the man who was soaked from the torso up asked.

“Right now? You look like a wet kitten,” he said, making Minho crack a smile.

“Anything besides that?”

“There’s nothing. If anyone underestimates you, that’s his problem.”

“Yeah,” Minho exhaled. “It always finds a way to be my problem though.” He picked at a stray cuticle. “You know he’s not really my brother,” he said hesitantly, as if asking Felix permission to go on. He nodded in response.

“Same father or whatever. But if sharing the same last name is what mattered, then you’d be my real brother too,” Minho said with a small smile, before tilting his head like he was calculating something. “Along with a fifth of the country.

“But it was me and my mom as a kid. She would come home with barely enough time to sleep before she had to go to one of her jobs again. So when I find out I have a dad?” he said with a childishly shocked face.

“And a smart, tall big brother?” His surprise got even more exaggerated, drawing a smile out of Felix.

“I was so, so happy to think we were all going to be a family, together, and my mom wouldn’t have to worry about second and third jobs and I would have someone to play with. I thought it would be like it is on TV. So I met Minkyu once when I was ten or eleven.”

Felix gestured for him to go on. Minho only tilted his head at him, ironic humor in his face. “And that was the last time we talked for about ten years. They bailed on us, scared of how poor we were or something, I don’t know. Sure, fine, whatever, leave and never come back. Then when he’s finished… cop school…”

“Police academy,” Felix fills in.

Minho gives him a little smile. “I think I like my term better. He calls out of nowhere, oh hey, hi, how are you, let’s meet up, forget we’re completely different people now and that I left you with no way to contact me for a decade because your problems were so much to deal with.

“And it was okay, I guess, until I became a journalist like he always knew I was studying to be. Getting hired at the Blazoner straight out of university made it too real for him. It’s just annoying. He thinks he has the right to tell me what to do because we share half our genes or something like that.” Minho stared off, his hair sticking to his neck where he left it to dry, before shrugging as nonchalantly as if he’d been describing a movie he’d seen last night. “But he’s not the one who knows which buttons on my microwave stopped working.”

Felix blinked, taken aback by how casually Minho was still reclining against the sink after telling him his life’s story like that. More startling than that… was just how easy it was to believe that his superior had been so overbearing and insensitive toward his own brother, that he still was.

“I’m so sorry. You and your mom didn’t deserve to be treated like that. He doesn’t get to boss you around if he wasn’t even there for you when you needed it.”

“I know,” Minho said, rubbing his neck like the sheepishness had caught up to him. “I’ve never told anyone that, actually. I didn’t think I was going to say the whole thing. We should go, Chan’s been using me as a replacement since you disappeared.”

-

Han threw the jacket he’d borrowed out of the vent, catching a man’s curious huh, my coat before making his way above the hiding spot he’d been using all night.

He lowered himself into position, where he’d nearly shit himself when Minho saw his foot slip and almost caught him hanging out in the massive chandelier high above everything. And for the first time all night, the volume of the music was finally lowering, Hyunjin clearing his throat into the onstage microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my greatest pleasure…”

The talk of fiscal quarters and past year summaries of corporate success had almost lulled Han to sleep. He took out Hyunjin’s mystery device and balanced it on one of the bulbs in front of him, willing it to do something, anything, tell him when he could go home at least when Jeongin hadn’t picked up his calls all night to answer that question.

Han switched to scoping out the place for the undercover unit who were terrible at pretending they weren’t police. They’d walked into the room in one suspiciously nervous clump, only Minho having the sense to tell them to break off before beelining it straight for the dinner platters.

Han took inventory. Farther towards the back of the room was the cop dressed in all black, the only one who hadn’t been massively relieved when the blaring GOT7 song faded into quiet. Near him was Changbin and a gentle looking guy who looked more like a baseball player than an officer of the law.

Closer to the stage was Lee Minkyu. Han only knew him because he’d recognized all of Minho’s sharp features on him, despite how slack and relaxed they were on the new face.

“Speaking of Minho…”

That left only the worst dancer Han had ever seen, and Felix, the second worst dancer. Right on cue, the two of them were walking into the hall, past the group near the back and closer to Minkyu in the front.

“Now, there’s been a lot of speculation on the direction OmniLife plans to take in the near future and beyond. Rest a shore- Rest assured, we will not disappoint.”

Minho and Felix chose to stand by a table closer to the middle. A strange weight lodged itself in his chest as he watched the brothers give each other a wide berth. That was… an odd reaction for his body to have.

“As a brand, we are committed to health and safety above all. We hope to achieve so much in the areas of sustainability, healthcare and quality of life,” Hyunjin said, pausing for weighty emphasis. So weighty it was making it hard to breathe.

Han looked around to see if anyone was feeling as weird as he was, but all their eyes were fixed on the speaker in front of them… who was looking up to chandelier, locking eyes with Han as a tightness squeezed his heart.

“That one day, we won’t have to anymore.”

Lightning whipped up his spine in a sensation Han hadn’t felt in weeks as the device in front of him started beeping and beeping and beeping and

FUCK!

Han pitched towards the floor as he threw the bomb toward the back of the room and narrowly managed to web the ceiling to catch himself but it was too little too late, it exploded over the attendees’ heads as screams rang out and they all looked up to see him hanging there, all eyes on Spiderman who had just thrown a live explosive into a crowd of people and in all the chaos Han’s eyes went straight to  Minho.

He was pushing Felix towards the front of the room, protecting him as if Han was a danger to protect someone from.

An all-consuming fire exploded in Han’s chest in red-hot warning because fuck, fuck, fuck it’s not over.

-

Minho couldn’t remember everything in the days that followed. Not the sound or sight of the real explosions, after the measly first bomb went off, though they hadn’t knocked him unconscious. But every time he tried to think of that night, the smell of burning hair and skin was what came first.

Then it was the image of the world smeared with volcanically hot red again utter, utter darkness.

He had fallen the first time he tried to stand up. He only knew that because after he’d pushed to his feet, he was on his side again, with no connective memory to bridge the two scenes.

Front and center in his mind’s eye was Spiderman, laying on his back after diving right at Minho and failing to reach him before the actual bombs went off. Minho avoided the brunt of the spray of shrapnel but Spiderman, that idiot, was blasted towards the front.

Then things came into sharper focus—Minho collapsing to his knees beside him, the relief that his chest was still rising and falling with breath, and Minho digging his fingers under his mask.

His hands flew up and fumbled to stop Minho. But he managed to pin them down with one hand and yank up the mask with the other.

Fucking liar had been on the tip of his tongue.

But any anger or accusation melted away when he met such miserable eyes.

Han gasped. Not for himself, but for Minho. “You’re bleeding,” he said, cupping his face with gloves covered in soot and filth. His wide, wet eyes looked him over in concern as he started to sit up. “I have to get you out of here.”

Gently pulling his hands from his face, Minho had looked back at the devastation—a formless blackhole in his memory now. “Not yet.”

“H-Hey, I didn’t-“

“I know, Han. Don’t worry about me, I can walk fine.” He had flicked his eyes around, praying he wouldn’t recognize a form crushed underneath one of those pieces of rubble he couldn’t picture now.

“No. I’m getting you out of here.” He stood up, forcing Minho to his feet.

“Stop.” He looked around for Felix, for Changbin, for any of the others in the debris as Han dragged him towards the balcony by the arms. “Stop, let go of me.”

“Minho,” he said, batting away the attempts of loosening the grip on his arms. “Minho.” He grabbed him by the shoulders suddenly, staring him down with eyes that were usually so bright and energetic. Now there was no other word for them but… lifeless. “I will come back for them,” he said, before he grabbed his arms again, overpowering all his effort to pull away.

“Wait, wait,” he urged, his desperation growing to see how determined Han was to actually drag him away when his friends might have needed his help. “Wait, it could be too late by then. There’s rubble all over the- They might be tr-“ They reached the glass doors. He wasn’t even pretending to listen anymore.

Minho jerked away with everything he had left in him and ended up on the floor. “I’m not going anywhere!” he yelled, blinking rapidly to suppress the frustrated tears that threatened to well. Then he slowed his breathing and tried to gather himself.

“Please, Jisung.” Another blackhole in Minho’s recollection as he looked back out at the rest of the room. He did remember what he gasped at the sight of it all: “They need help so much more than I do.”

Minho found his way to where Felix lied first.

He brushed his hair back from where it was matted on his face, gently feeling around for any blood or breaks. “Lix,” he whispered, too scared to shake him. He drew his hand back and found it gratefully dry.

“Lix,” he said louder, closer to his face so he could hear him better. “You have to-“ His heart stopped when he stirred under him and said something so quietly Minho almost didn’t catch it. “Iyen? It’s Minho-hyung, you have to get up.” He ran his hand over Felix’s arm in what he wanted to be a show of comfort. But he caught on something solid and drew his hand away when Felix gasped.

His heart stopped again, this time in fright to think that Felix’s bone had broken through the skin. But when the two of them looked over, they found black pieces of debris lodged along his front. Felix’s fingers gingerly reached up to pull them out.

“No, stop!” Minho warned, more suddenly and forcefully than he’d meant to. “It’s stemming the flow of blood right now, I know it hurts but you have to wait until the paramedics get here, I’ve already called them,” he’d told Felix, though he had no memory of calling now.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He placed his hand on Felix’s pale face to keep him looking up at him. “Please stay awake, please.” When Felix murmured something, he lowered his head to hear him repeat it.

“Where’s Chris?”

“I-I- I don’t know.” When he looked back at Felix’s eyes, they’d already fallen closed. By some miracle, Bang Chan spotted them in the dark and yelled their names. He reassured Minho that he, Changbin and Seungmin were fine, that he would stay with Felix, that he has to go help everyone else.

He saw a figure, halfway hidden under an overturned dinner table. Minho tried to lift it so he wouldn’t have to push its weight over the person’s body all over again, but his sweat-slick grip kept slipping on the table legs. On his seventh desperate attempt, it suddenly flipped up and landed against the wall. Minho startled towards Han, standing beside him.

It had been one thing to suspect he knew something about Spiderman he wasn’t telling him. Maybe that he knew his identity and was covering for him, as if he thought Minho was some merciless paparazzo that would air out all Spiderman’s dirty laundry for the sake of a paycheck.

It was a whole other thing to look at Spiderman, fully suited up and using his strength to fling debris off innocent bystanders, and instead see Han Jisung in a mask. “He doesn’t look good.”

Minho took a moment to realize he was talking about the person on the floor, and he turned to see Minkyu, his arm bent at a terrible angle and his head lolling unnaturally.

“Oh God.” Minho kneeled beside him, startling when Han put his hand on his broken arm. Even through the mask, he seemed dejected at Minho’s instinctive response.

“Your brother’s arm is broken. I want to set the break. Will you let me?”

He was so clipped and concise. Like talking to a hostage taker who might be set off by any sudden movement.

Minho nodded rapidly, cringing when Han moved the bone back into place with an audible crunch.

“How did you know it was me?” Han asked quietly, moving Minkyu’s head to a straighter position.

“How did you know he’s my brother?”

“I have eyes.”

“We don’t look that similar.” Minho almost couldn’t stand looking at that mask and hearing Han’s voice come out of it. But he hated it more when he went silent in response and the spandex mask was all he had to go on. “You didn’t look at anyone,” he said, Han’s eyes steadily widening. “Everyone was screaming, and you didn’t look at them. You only looked at me, and then you dove straight for me. Of course I was going to know.”

Then Minho saw what had really shocked him: the slick black blood on his gloves.

His attempts to help anyone else that night turned into a blur of burning, blood, and broken bones. Even OmniLife’s director hadn’t made it. Han had climbed up onto the stage to check on him. Whatever state the body had been in, it was so bad Han didn’t have to hesitate to answer how Hwang Hyunjin looked. He threw a table spread over it and wouldn’t let Minho see.

By the time the paramedics and more police had arrived, Minho doubted more than ten people had survived. And when he looked around for Han to tell him to get out of there, he’d already left without a word.

A sinking stone of stark dread had started to drop his blood to subzero. It didn’t stop as the medical team treated everyone who could walk on the street below. It didn’t stop as the police questioned him, his conscious friends, and the few other attendees who had made it on their side of the story. It didn’t stop when the police took him to the agency for more thorough testimony and eventually let him go with his friends either hospitalized, doing their jobs as police officers, or not answering his front door.

It didn’t stop all night.

Chapter Text

Felix’s bed was firmer than it should have been. He cracked an eye open, squinting when he opened it straight into the sunlight. Odd. His bedroom didn’t get direct sunlight.

“Hey,” a voice said, impossibly soft. But that might have been the cotton stuffed inside Felix’s head making everything sound so fuzzy. “Careful. I’ll help you sit up.”

Felix’s back stiffened at the unexpected touch, but he let it guide him to a sitting position anyway, despite the fact he didn’t need the help.

“Do you need water? Painkillers?” the voice asked, and that was when Felix finally recognized Seungmin’s worried eyes, set behind fragile wire frame glasses he’d never seen him wear before. Felix’s eyes dropped to his outfit, not a police uniform or even his usual street clothes, but a plain white t-shirt that hung off his frame. It looked like the kind of thing someone would wear to sleep.

“Felix.” Seungmin grabbed his shoulder, his face suddenly dire with concern. “Can you hear me?”

“Y-Yeah,” he said, looking around at the medical devices, the flowers on the bedside table, and the bandages around his arms. “I’m okay.”

Wait… If he was in the hospital…

“Our team members are fine,” Seungmin said, reading his worry in an instant. “Minkyu is the only other one in the hospital right now.”

Felix’s stomach swooped with guilt. The last time he’d seen Minkyu, he and Minho had been giving him the cold shoulder.

“Where’s his room?” he said as he tried to pull the blanket off his legs. But the move sent fiery sparks up his arms that startled him and had Seungmin shooting forward to stop him from moving any more.

“He’s in a different wing. But he’s conscious and stable.” He sat down on the comfy-looking chair pulled up next to the bed, where, on the floor around it, there were a couple empty cups of coffee. “Don’t worry about anyone but yourself right now.” Felix looked back up, wondering if his colleague had managed to mistake him for someone else. Someone he didn’t find unbearably annoying and let know at every opportunity.

“Seu-“

“It’s three,” he said, glancing down at his watch. “The nurse should have come back to change your bandages by now.” He hit the call button next to the bed and looked at the door, as if he expected a nurse to have already spontaneously manifested there.

“How long have you been here?”

“Oh, it’s only the 22nd, you’ve only been unconscious for 18 hours,” he hurried to assure. “Don’t worry about work, we’re all getting time off.”

“That’s-“ 18 hours was extremely specific. “That’s not what I-“

Seungmin stood up when the door opened to make space for the nurse to change his bandages, quickly turning around when she lowered Felix’s patient gown to reach the bandages on his side and his chest.

Felix wasn’t sure what he’d expected when the nurse told him he didn’t have to look—maybe for blood to start gushing out when the wraps came off. But as deep as he knew some of the wounds were, and as fiery red as the skin looked—they weren’t as bad as they could have been. At least the bleeding had stopped.

When the nurse was finished, Felix shrugged the gown back over his shoulders and thanked her. “By the way,” he said as she turned to leave. “How long has he been here?” he asked, seeing as Seungmin wasn’t giving him a direct answer.

Seungmin blanched before she could even say anything.

“Longer than me. I started my shift this morning.” She glanced between the two of them, her eyes shifting onto Felix last. “You are his brother, right?”

“Yes,” Seungmin jumped to answer. “Different fathers.”

“Different… fathers. Hit the button if you need anything, sweetheart,” she said to Felix now. “Absolutely anything.”

“Shit,” Seungmin said as soon as she closed the door, collapsing onto the chair. “I told them we were twins,” he despaired before burying his face in his hands.

“So, the whole time?” Felix cleared his throat when he realized the question came out of nowhere, now feeling as shy as Seungmin looked. “I mean, have you stayed here with me… The whole time?”

He looked at him through a gap in his fingers. “I went home to shower.” He wilted, covering his face again. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh. No, it’s okay, I didn’t mean it like th-!“

“It’s not okay. I thought that I should wait to tell you, but…” He hazarded a glance up. “Last night was really, really fucked up. How much do you remember?”

So that was how Felix found out that Hwang Hyunjin had been pronounced dead on the scene—along with 40 other businessmen and women in the industry. His features had been so disfigured in the explosion that the only identifier the police had was the clothes on the body.

“Did-“ Looking at the news articles on Seungmin’s phone, Felix was lightheaded all over again. That could have been him. That could have been his friends. “Did they find out about the gunman?” Because if this had happened, the idea of being held at gunpoint didn’t feel like such a leap to make anymore.

Seungmin shot him an incredulous look. “A gunman? No, this was Spiderman who did this. You said you saw him. I saw him throw the first explosive, it almost hit me.”

“But…” But it missed us. I watched him fall out of the chandelier like it was an accident. I don’t understand why he would reveal himself if he could have stayed hidden and avoided the blame. He also got blasted by the explosion. Why would he purposely put himself in harm’s way like that? And who put a gun to my head?

“But something’s missing.”

And who was the guy that helped me out?

“What is it?”

Between all the thoughts and questions swimming around in his head plus the strange static running along his right arm, Felix couldn’t find the words to explain himself. “I… I don’t know. But it just feels like something’s wrong.”

“The case isn’t closed,” Seungmin said as he sat back down. “The police are still working on this. And once we go back to work, I’m sure Minkyu won’t let this slide. We can worry about it then.” He let out an exhale in the weighty silence that followed, like he wasn’t taking his own advice not to worry.

“Thank you, Seungmin,” Felix said eventually, dropping the guarded ssi in his address for the first time. It was just Seungmin-ah.

He hung his head, making his bangs fall forward to cover his wire framed eyes. “You shouldn’t be thanking me. I haven’t even done anything.”

“But you were-“

He was quieter than the faint breeze through the tree outside when he spoke. “I should be the one apologizing to you, Felix,” he said, addressing him just as informally. “You came really close to never hearing this from me. But I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did. Even if I wanted to give you an excuse, I don’t know why I acted like that. I’m really, really sorry I’ve been such a jerk.”

Between the stress of taking on an assignment no one wanted in the first place and how much everyone on this team cobbled together from mismatching parts focused on themselves… Felix had a clue as to why Seungmin might have been harsh sometimes. Much more carefully this time, he pulled up the blanket to get out of bed.

“You don’t have to say it’s okay,” Seungmin rushed to add as he watched Felix pad around the hospital bed toward him. With how shaky his legs were, it was a real effort. “I’m not doing any of this to pressure you to do anything.” Now that Felix was in front of him, he stood up. “If you even want me to leave-“

Felix had to look up to perch his chin on Seungmin’s shoulder and give him a hug. “I’m not going to say it’s okay, but I forgive you. And thank you for worrying about me. I’m sure staying and waiting for me this long wasn’t easy.”

His friend hugged him back. With his face buried in the crook of Felix’s neck and his hand balled in the fabric of the scratchy patient’s gown, Seungmin felt so much warmer than expected.

-

The cold body that wore Hyunjin’s clothes lays static, the place where its face should have been reduced to a blackened, bloody mess even after the coroner would have tried to clean it up.

“No open casket for you, Hyunjin-ah. What a shame,” Jeongin says, the happiest person in this morgue. “You would have made a good-looking dead person. How does it feel anyway? Being dead?”

At any other moment, Hyunjin would have forced a smile at the cruelty Jeongin calls humor. But right now, he can’t look away from the birthmark on the sheet-white arm in front of them.

With its star shape and five points, it’s exactly as it is on his.

Half of Hyunjin’s mind is telling him that he’s dead already, a ghost gazing at his own body too helpless to get it to do anything but lie there. The other half tells him he’s staring at his future, sealed all those years ago.

Knowing it’s a stranger laying there, knowing the perfect marks and moles are just tattoos, knowing that physically he’s alive and standing—none of it helps the feeling that he’s a dead man walking.

At least he has one thing, one secret all to himself for now. He’s never wanted anyone to get hurt, though he’s never acted to prevent it either. But if push comes to shove, at least he has one card up his sleeve.

“It’s strange, hyungnim. I can’t tell the difference.”

-

Felix had gratefully taken the three-week paid time off after the incident.

But with news and rumors of varying credibility floating around that OmniLife was scrambling to find a new director after Hwang Hyunjin’s sudden passing, that Spiderman hadn’t been sighted once in the days following, that the police department was pumping mass amounts of money into their Anti-Vigilantism Unit to double down the efforts to find the masked man, that a reporter with unclear intentions had been allowed to infiltrate the site of the attack, that Spiderman was the one behind the explosion that killed dozens of people…

Felix couldn’t take the restlessness anymore.

He walked into the precinct without having told anyone he was coming.

The officer at the front desk did a double take when he spotted him. “Felix,” he said to his surprise. Nobody at the front ever knew his name. “You don’t have to be here for another two weeks.”

“I can use the days off another time, right?”

“I- Well, yes, but-“

Felix smiled at him before walking off for the elevators. “Thank you.”

“Oh, by the way,” he called. “Are you still with the AVU?”

“Yeah?” he replied as he waited for an elevator to come down.

“Your new office is on the third floor. It’s got a nice view up there.”

He wasn’t kidding. The floor to ceiling windows on the far side of the new room overlooked a view of Gangdong that stretched until the farthest buildings were disappearing into the bright blue sky.

But that was nothing compared to the sheer number of people in this room.

He looked over to where Chan and Seungmin stood, working together to explain something to a few uniformed officers gathered around them. That was a sight.

“Felix?” a voice piped up to his left. Before he could say anything Changbin was already up and scooping him up in a bone-crushing hug.

“Ow, the shrapnel wounds,” he winced, before laughing when Changbin dropped him with breakneck speed.

“It still hurts?” Changbin said with sudden concern. “You know you don’t have to be here, we can manage until you’re all healed.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Felix denied as he spotted Minkyu at his single desk. “He’s here after all. …I actually thought he was supposed to-”

“Be concussed? Have his arm broken in three places? Yeah, he’s not acting like it. He’s been working so hard since he got out of the hospital, he’s making us look like the injured ones.”

Felix huffed a little laugh at that, scanning the place for a face he hadn’t spotted yet. “Where’s Iyen?”

“…We haven’t heard from Jeongin.”

Felix swiveled around in surprise. “It’s been weeks since he’s been here. He hasn’t come back?”

“I know, I find it weird too. Not even an update or a check-in, just, nothing.”

“And Minho? What’s he doing now?”

Changbin looked at him for a long while without answering, something in his face making Felix uneasy. “Chan, Seungmin!” he called, dropping the formalities for both of them—calling Chan hyung.

What in the world had Felix missed?

“Look who’s here,” he said as the two of them bounded over, the sight of Chan and Seungmin standing beside each other and actually smiling so unfamiliar.

“You didn’t have to come in yet,” Chan said as he patted his shoulder awkwardly. Felix pulled him into the hug he suspected he wanted.

“I’m not made of glass,” he said, his arms comfortably wrapped around Chan’s waist. “I wanted to come in, so I did.” He pulled away to look at Seungmin. “I-I mean, I know what you said at the hospital, and what all the news is saying.” Seungmin tilted his head in bemusement. Felix darted his eyes around at the other two, who were also now watching him with interest. “But, you can’t really think that… Spiderman caused all of that on purpose, right?”

It landed about as well as he’d expected.

Changbin sucked in a breath and looked away, as if Felix had asked his parents where babies come from.

“Wait, y-you- Didn’t you-?” Chan spluttered for so long Felix was scared he’d broken him. “Huh?” he finally burst out. “What are you talking about? Who else?”

Seungmin was more collected, but just as skeptical. “You can’t tell me he wired the place to explode on accident.”

“I’m not saying that, I’m saying we’re- We might be overlooking something.”

Seungmin fixed him with another look of interest. “You said that at the hospital too. Do you know something, Felix?”

“I don’t know anything for certain. But, the thing is, I mean, didn’t Hwang Hyunjin seem off to you? Before the bombs went off?”

“…No?”

Felix shook his head. “I mean, yeah, you were all the way in the back, but I’m sure if you ask Minkyu, he’d say-“

At the mere mention of his name, Minkyu materialized. Felix had fallen quiet trying to figure out if he’d been standing there the whole time, but he gestured with the arm still in a sling. “Go ahead. I’d like to know what you think I’d say.”

“I…” Felix tried to swallow his reservations. “I don’t know if you were paying much attention during his speech.”

Minkyu narrowed his eyes.

“I mean, of course you were paying attention, you take your job very seriously. Wasn’t it strange how much he relied on those cue cards? The head of a company like that would have gotten public speaking down at this point, wouldn’t he? And how often he paused? I-I just feel like…”

“Like what, Felix?”

“Maybe… he knew something was coming.”

Minkyu blinked, not even in bewilderment. More like disappointment at his faulty deduction skills. “You’ll show Felix to the list of suspects, Chan. Show him how we’re working through each name,” he said before turning around and catching a random officer in conversation. As they walked over to Chan’s terminal in silence, Felix couldn’t help feeling he’d just killed the mood. And potentially his coworkers’ trust in him. That part felt a little less dire somehow.

-

Minho was not one for wallowing.

But he wallowed.

“Pick up your phone,” he grumbled as he walked into his apartment, back from another fruitless trip of banging on Han’s front door. No matter how many times he texted or knocked, he never seemed to be home. “Did you flee the country?” he muttered sarcastically, before pausing in his bathroom doorway.

Shit, had he? Things were looking really bad for him, but where would he go? Back to Malaysia? Minho didn’t even know if his family was still living there after all this time. And with what money?

“No, no, no, of course not.” Not without so much as a word to Minho. Han could be distant, but he’d never betray his trust to that extent.

He did lie to your face for two months straight.

“Shut up,” he snapped at the intrusive voice. “No one asked for your opinion,” he said before looking in the mirror at his haggard, uncombed reflection. He did not want to know how that had looked from an outside point of view. He leaned in to look at his temple.

For how fast his surface wound had healed up, even the laughably tiny bandage patching up the raised, slightly pink skin was overkill. He plucked it off and flicked it into the garbage, just as the phone on his bathroom counter started ringing.

He startled towards it so fast that it dropped onto the floor just to get away from him. Praying the screen hadn’t cracked, he bit back a curse as he picked it up.

His excitement and relief turned to confusion as he read the caller ID. Who the fuck was Lexapro? “Hello?”

“Minho-hyung,” the guy on the other end said, making his breath catch before his mind caught up to him. Nobody called him hyung, not even Han—though with their age gap he really shouldn’t have let him get away with calling him by his name. But the habit had formed when they met in their last year of high school, Han being so fiercely intelligent he’d managed to skip two whole years, and Minho hadn’t realized how much younger he was until about a month into the friendship. By then, it felt awkward to impose some new rule for his name. And Han had definitely enjoyed stringing him along until the ruse was up.

It seemed like such an innocent story. But Minho got a sinking feeling from looking back on how easily Han was able to hide the truth about something so trivial. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so shocked that he pulled it off again about something so much more important, six years down the line.

“Minho-hyung?”

“Ah, uh, what? Who is this? Sorry, I have you in my phone as- I broke my phone. I have a Samsung now.”

“Oh. It’s Lee Felix-“

“Lix!” Minho exclaimed, walking out into his living room to share his excitement with his cats. “Okay, that makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

“I don’t have a Samsung. I just didn’t want to tell you your contact name was Lexapro,” he decided to just admit. He slowly started to regret it when the silence on the other side grew longer and longer. “It doesn-“

Felix burst into the loudest laughter Minho had ever heard across a phone line.

“Ow, ow, that was right in my ear,” he cringed as Felix’s laugh traveled a whole octave.

“My name-“ He cut himself off with another bout of laughter, thoughtfully pulling his phone away from his face this time. “My name cannot be that hard to pronounce,” he said as he regained shaky control of his breathing. He let out one final puff of breath for good measure.

Minho hauled up Dori, punishing him for walking across his feet so carelessly by smothering him in cuddles and silent smooches. “So what did you call me for, Paracetamol?”

“How can you not say Felix, but you can say-? A-Anyway, I know I’m calling out of nowhere.”

“Most calls are out of nowhere.” Minho could practically hear the bemused blink on the other side.

“Well, it’s just that since the party, you haven’t been around us at all…“

“I have. I came to see you and Minkyu when you were in the hospital. Didn’t Seungmin tell you?”

Unless a nurse told him, Minkyu wouldn’t have known, seeing as he’d been placed under sedatives to give his body a chance to recover. But since Seungmin had been in Felix’s room, he assumed he found out the day he woke up.

“No,” he answered with a suspicious tone.

“What is it?”

“The others haven’t said anything about you since I came back to work. They… actually get kind of weird when I try to bring you up.”

Minho’s hand stopped where it had been absently petting Dori. “Weird how?”

“Like, they get quiet and they try to change the topic. Not just when Minkyu is around either. Do you know if you did anything to them?”

“No,” Minho said with the exact same tone Felix used a second ago. “But I mean, I do remember Seungmin treating me kinda weirdly when I dropped into your hospital room. He looked like one of those puppies that think they’re a guard dog.”

Felix breathed a laugh at the comparison. “Why do you say that?”

“He stood up as soon as he saw me. I know he’s straightforward to begin with, but he was really blunt with me that day. Like he didn’t trust me. I didn’t think he’d let me get close to you if I wanted to, so I left without really knowing how you were doing.”

“Oh. Well, my cuts are pretty much healed now.”

“Good, that’s good,” Minho said before they fell into a tense silence.

“So… Are you doing anything right now?”

“You know, this is sort of giving me déjà vu,” Minho said as they got in line at the nearest coffee shop.

“Yeah?” Felix said absently, scanning the menu with a worried look on his face.

Minho gestured at one of the items, his hand still in his jacket pocket. “The mocha latte here is pretty good,” he said to Felix’s chagrin. “What? You don’t like chocolate?”

Felix shook his head, his nose scrunched in distaste. “I don’t like coffee.”

Minho looked around the place wildly. “Why did you let me suggest Baram Café?”

“You sounded really excited about it,” he said defensively, just as it was their turn to order.

“Two iced americanos” spilled out of his mouth on pure habit. He stammered at the look Felix shot him. “I mean, one iced americano, and, do you have milkshakes?”

“Just don’t get me anything.”

“Lemonades?” he tried at the cashier’s denial.

“Hyung.”

“Juice?”

“Hyung.”

“Anything without coffee?”

“Minho-hyung.”

They didn’t have noncaffeinated drinks. But they did have overpriced yogurts.

“You really didn’t have to,” Felix insisted for the third time as they walked over to a free table.

“Of course I didn’t. I wanted to. It’s probably good for your intestines or something, with all those… cultures… bacteria.” He laughed at the solemn look Felix promptly gave his yogurt. “What would I know, I did fail high…” A pang of sadness cut him right to the quick. I failed high school chemistry. A stupid joke he used on stupid Han Jisung in a stupid cafe that didn’t look so different from this one.

He sat up in his seat. “Listen. I know what we both saw that night. But I need you to trust me on this, Lix, Spiderman-“

“Didn’t set off the explosives,” Felix said quietly, catching Minho off-guard. “I know. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you seen on the news? The police department pouring all these resources into our unit when we were the joke of the precinct a month ago.”

“Sure,” Minho said before taking a sip of his watery coffee. “Minkyu bragged enough about all the new officers they added for me to never forget it. Ever. He said it so annoyingly,” he huffed, getting irritated all over again. “We must be doing something right, blah blah blah. Can you check if he blocked me, by the way? I’m 99% sure he did. Sorry,” he suddenly said, to find an amused smile on Felix’s face. “You were saying something a lot more important.”

Felix let out a little laugh. “Yeah, that’s what Minkyu and the news would’ve let you in on.” The smile disappeared off his face. “It’s a lot more intense than that. None of us will have to be manually checking street footage anymore with the software they’re using.”

“Like… facial recognition?”

Felix nodded soberly. “All this high-tech surveillance feels really, really wrong. But I can’t do anything about it myself, or else I’ll just get written up or fired.”

“That is wrong. Lix, I would have quit by now if I were in your place.”

“I know. I thought about it.”

Minho waited a beat for him to go on. “…Then? What’s your excuse?”

Felix met his eyes, a quiet determination set in his. “I’ll tell you in a second. But we can agree, there is something weird going on with that company, right?”

Minho agreed with a cynical laugh. Felix didn’t know the half of it.

Going off his recollection of that night, it turned out he actually knew way more than the half of it. He probably knew, like, the four-fifths of it.

“A gun?” Minho exclaimed as soon as the word left Felix’s mouth, catching the wary attention of the family next to them. “Wow, that would make a really cool addition to your action movie script,” he emphasized, though they’d returned to their conversation so quickly, he had no indication that anyone in the café actually cared.

Felix dropped his voice to a whisper. “I didn’t see it, so I can’t know for sure. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a stapler.”

They went and filled each other in on nearly every other part of the night. Except for the part where Minho found out his best friend was Spiderman and proceeded to get ghosted for the better part of a month. That was information that wasn’t really his to reveal in the first place.

There was a long beat of silence when they finished talking.

“Lix…” Minho finally started, his fingers twitching to do something.

“I know.”

“This is insane.”

“I know!”

“You have to go to the police.”

Felix blinked, taken aback.

“You’re the police, obviously,” Minho said with a shake of his head. “But like, the police.”

“What are you talking about?”

“As much as your unit is full of such wonderful personalities, at least they have the resources to actually investigate this stuff, I’m just one person.”

“…We can’t.”

“I saw a notice of owner transfer from Phobos to OmniLife along with the schedule of a family’s daily routine. What does that sound like to you?”

Felix’s expression flashed with irritation before he smoothed it back over. “With the photos of the little girl you mentioned-“ His face scrunched back up, this time in a disgusted grimace. “That sounds a lot like blackmailing someone with their daughter’s safety.”

“That’s at least five laws they broke just to get a cheap skyscraper. Only to blow up the top floor anyway! Those plans for reorganization you said you saw,” Minho said, sitting up and pointing. “They were from right before Hwang Hyunjin inherited the company?”

“The timing was really… convenient. Only a couple weeks apart.”

“So we’re saying that before he was even old enough to drink, Hwang Hyunjin might have killed his own father to speed up his by what, a couple months?”

“Keep your voice down,” Felix winced.

“We have been whispering for the past five minutes! I am at the perfect volume!”

Felix nodded, still cringing. “I think we should go to your place. Yelling about that gun earlier didn’t help our case.”

So they did. The bus ride there was surprisingly peaceful. Then Minho let Felix into his apartment, locked the door behind them, and then burst out: “And planned out a mass murder that turned Spiderman into their fall guy!?! Minkyu would never listen to me if I tried to bring this to him, but your team would hear you out, there’s no reason we can’t get them involved.”

Felix slid off his shoes and gracelessly tossed them to the floor. “I can think of one,” he said flatly.

“What?” Minho wasn’t stupid, he knew that if they got the police involved again, he and Felix wouldn’t be able to do their own independent research. He wouldn’t get nearly as good a chance to report on the story of the decade. But if it meant catching whoever framed his best friend and almost got his other friends killed as quickly as possible, he’d gladly flush all his drafts down the toilet.

“…I really can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”

“What?”

“Minho, we have no evidence. How can I just accuse a dead person without proof? If you tell them, they won’t believe you, but if I say any of this to Minkyu I’ll get fired! …You didn’t think of that?” he asked at the blank look on Minho’s face.

Now he was just embarrassed about being so self-righteous.

“I thought you were supposed to be the logical one between us, hyung,” he said without any bite.

Minho awkwardly gestured to his couches for the two of them to sit.

In the quiet that followed, he could sense a question incoming. He made sure to ask one first: “If you said you thought about quitting, why haven’t you?”

Felix drew in a pensive sigh. “If I could go back in time and get hired at another precinct, I would. I don’t like that any of this has happened.”

“To put it mildly.”

Felix smiled wryly. “But I can’t. The reality is I am here, so this is my responsibility now. At first I got a little… defensive.”

Minho cracked a smile at the image of sweet Felix losing his temper for once. “Did you punch a wall defending my honor?”

“No, no, no!” he denied immediately, horrified at the idea. “But whenever you or Spiderman came up, I would get into disagreements that weren’t exactly productive.”

“You sound like you’re apologizing after a school violence scandal,” Minho said off-handedly, unexpectedly making Felix burst into laughter.

“I’ve been picking my words more carefully around them,” Felix said with a huff. “After all, I have a lot more power as a trusted police officer than as an insubordinate one.”

“Woah, maybe you’re the mastermind I should be keeping an eye on,” Minho teased, getting another laugh out of him.

“There’s something that’s been bothering me,” he said after a moment.

Minho looked him up and down. “Are you a supervillain?”

Felix gave him a dry smile. As if. “I didn’t think to bring it up because it seemed so random. But I can’t shake this weird feeling. After I got knocked out that night, I didn’t wake up by myself. Someone else was there. He thought that I passed out from drinking, so he was trying to help me out.”

“What’s so weird about that?” Minho asked, even as he got a sinking sense of premonition.

“That’s the thing, there was nothing weird about him. He seemed confused when I tried talking about the files that disappeared. He was generally just… nice. But some things don’t add up. I didn’t see him before, or for the rest of the night.”

Minho’s heart twisted with an emotion he couldn’t pinpoint. It might have been dread.

“And he managed to find me in a weird place no one was supposed to be. I barely even noticed the door that led to that hallway to begin with.”

“Maybe he’s a little more observant than you after you’ve had a couple glasses of champagne.”

Felix looked at him with a start. “You knew that wasn’t water?”

Minho had not known that. He did now.

“I really think it was strange. I couldn’t get a good look at him, but he seemed about my age, and his jacket wasn’t the right size at all. It was buttoned all the way up for some reason. Why do you keep looking at me like th-?” He choked on nothing so suddenly Minho’s heart stopped. “Holy shit,” he managed between coughs. “Holy shit, did I meet-!?”

Minho reached over to thump him on the back for being too smart for his own good. And to clear his airway of course.

“Yeah, you did,” he said tersely.

“Oh my God,” Felix said as he recovered. “Oh my God, does that mean Spiderman risked his identity to help me out?”

“He’s not known for thinking ahead, after all.”

“Minho, this is so cool! Stop hitting me, I’m not choking anymore.”

Minho really really wanted to one up Felix right now. You think it’s cool meeting Spiderman? How about being his best friend?

Given the fact they hadn’t spoken in weeks (and also, minorly, that that would be the shittiest thing Minho had ever done), he decided against that.

“I spoke to him a little bit too.”

Felix’s mouth dropped open as Minho sat back down. “When?”

“After the actual explosion. I didn’t see his face,” he lied, “but maybe seeing the two of us together is what made your friends so suspicious of me. Even though there wasn’t a lot of light in there at that point.”

“What did you say to each other?” he said, looking halfway thrilled and halfway pained. “Agh, I wish I realized who I was talking to!”

“About how the victims needed help. He-“ Minho hadn’t expected to choke on the words He helped me get a dinner table off Minkyu. He definitely hadn’t expected the flash of memory that came with the thought. “He helped me get debris off someone. Set their arm too. So I know he’s not the one who committed the attack. As much as he gets on my nerves, he’d never stoop that low to get what he wants.

“So,” Minho added.

“So.”

“What’s our first order of business, officer?”

“What do you think it is, Mr. Lee?”

“I think our friendly neighborhood Spiderman can’t really operate if the neighborhood, you know, hates him. So whether or not he comes out of hiding to give us some help, we should clear his name for him.” Minho huffed a breath of air, sitting back. “I hope he’d at least be grateful we’re putting in all this work.”

Felix gave him a sympathetic smile, typing something on his phone. “I don’t think you got into journalism thinking it would get you a lot of thanks.”

“I think you got into policing expecting a thank you every other minute.”

“If I did,” Felix said with a shake of his head. “I was wrong. It’s only, like, thirteen every day. So we should try to dig up as much as we can about OmniLife for now, right?”

“Right.” Minho frowned as he stood up. “I didn’t even offer you a drink.”

-

Felix smiled all the way to the ground floor of Minho’s apartment. Even if he had to hide their partnership from the others, working with him was going to bring him closer to the truth. Felix shook his head as he turned the corner to the pharmacy; it might bring him to Spiderman. He tried to put the thought out of his head, this was about truth and justice and fairness.

But it would be so cool to talk to a superhero again.

He pushed into the pharmacy with a jingle of bells and gratefully found there was no line in front of the cashier.

“Oh,” he muttered to himself. Forgetting what the medication the doctors had put him on was actually called, he started digging around in his pockets for the strip of paper he had the name on. “Crap.” It should have been in his…

“Can I help you?” the pharmacist said warily.

“Yeah, yeah.” Felix barely glanced up to shoot the man a nervous smile. “Just give me a…”

Piano music started up from his back pocket—oh God, who’s calling now?

“Uh, a prescription for Lee Felix,” he said, trying to ignore the ringtone. Where could it have gone???? “September 15, 2000.”

“Huh. Alright, Lee Felix, and what’s the prescription?” the man asked as he punched in the date.

The piano music was getting grating. “Could you hang on a second?” He was so mixed up, he ended up answering the phone with, “Sorry.”

“…It’s okay,” Minho said hesitantly.

“I mean-“ Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hello.”

“Thanks for the attempt at paying me back,” he said dubiously.

“You’re welcome,” Felix said, moving to hang up.

“But you’re off by about 1000 won.”

“Minho, can we talk about this in a-“

“And you also left your entire wallet. Your ID picture is unfairly good by the way.”

Felix’s heart leaped, and not just because of the idea of someone else seeing that photo. “What does the paper inside of it say?”

“Calacine. Lix, you’re doing dru-?”

“Calacine,” Felix parroted to the man. He turned away to focus on the conversation and avoid his probably very judgmental look at this point. “Did you say ‘without me?’ Why would I ever do drugs with you?”

Minho’s dramatic gasp startled him. “I can’t believe you don’t find me worthy of sharing drugs with.”

“I didn’t mean it like that! I’m not going to do drugs with anyone! Or by myself!” he felt the need to tack on before Minho could twist his words anymore. If he was overreacting to a silly joke, sue him, the past forty seconds had induced a week’s worth of anxiety on their own.

The man came back and handed him a plastic bag.

It clattered out of Felix’s hand when he locked eyes with the young man’s round, brown, wide eyes.

The man laughed nervously as he picked the bag off the counter. “Uh.” He wiped his cheek with two fingers. “I don’t have something on my face, right?”

“No…  Sorry, no,” Felix stammered as he grabbed the bag. “Be there in a minute, Minho-hyung.” He gave the man another glance, only to startle when he found those eyes suddenly flat and dark.

“Have a nice day, guys,” he said with a dry wave.

No, with that look on his face, there was no way he was…

“Yeah, I’m alright,” Felix replied as he walked out of the pharmacy. “I just…”

His steps on the sidewalk gradually slowed.

What if?

Felix bounced on the balls of his feet, wondering if it was worth it. His curious legs got the better of him and turned him back around.

But when he walked back into the pharmacy, he deflated to find a different, older face greeting him at the counter. “…Thought I saw something.”

After getting his wallet back (not without some embarrassing cooing on Minho’s end about how his ID turned out), Felix figured he had nothing else lined up for the day. He’d hang out in the pastry shop he didn’t get to visit enough.

And if that pastry shop happened to be directly across the street from the pharmacy, who was going to judge him for stalking?

After all, since Felix was an officer of the law with a hunch, this was more like… unpaid overtime.

An officer of the law who ended up watching the pharmacy for so long, he thought the maybe-Spiderman had given him the slip.

He sat up with a start when, finally, just as the sun was setting, he watched that man come out and lock behind him. In his surprise Felix stumbled to stand up and push in his chair before he could lose him, bursting out of the shop.

“Excuse me, sorry,” he apologized to the oncoming traffic, flashing his badge like it would make the drivers he was jumping in the way of any less irritated with him. Miraculously, he made it across the street in one piece. He tried (and failed) to slow his steps as he turned the same corner his target had taken. Felix was practically jogging toward him when the man came to a stop in front of an alley.

Felix really forced himself to slow down this time. He scrambled to take his phone out in case the man happened to look his way—he did, and he hopefully saw nothing but an idle pedestrian more concerned with his phone than his surroundings.

Once he ducked into the alley, Felix felt it was safe enough to run down the sidewalk again to make sure he wouldn’t lose sight of him.

He went into the alley and found it empty.

“Even for Seoul’s finest, that was sloppy.” Felix whirled around to find that man somehow standing behind him at the mouth of the alley. “But hey, I’ve never had a stalker before, I can check that one off the list.”

“I-I-I’m not a stalker, I’m-“

He strolled over to Felix and spoke as casually as if they were old friends catching up after a while. “I am. I know who you are, officer. I’m pretty sure you know who I am.”

If this guy really was Spiderman, Felix had no idea what he was going to do to him for finding out what he looked like. He didn’t think it would be anything horrible… but he was also nervous to find out. “I know you didn’t set off the explosion,” he let out before he could get the wrong idea.

He blinked at him so blankly, Felix almost thought he’d gotten this whole thing all wrong. Was this guy who he’d met in the records room not Spiderman?

Then he groaned and looked back at him wearily. “Can we please not?”

“Not… Not what?”

“Not talk like the main leads in some action flick. I know you didn’t set off the explosion, why would you lead with that? We’re people, how about-“ He stuck out his hand for a handshake. “Hi, I’m Lee Felix, what’s your name?”

He took it hesitantly. “Hi, I’m Lee Felix.”

Spiderman gestured expectantly.

“But you’re not going to tell me your name.”

He rolled his eyes. “What’s your name fellow human being? Oh thank you so much for asking me and not talking behind my back, it’s Han Jisung.” He opened his hands wide on either side of him, like was that so hard? “Come on, don’t look at me like that. I know your Minho-hyung told you everything.”

Felix was sure he looked as horrified as he felt. Finding out his name so offhandedly felt so wrong.

His eyes widened to saucers. “He didn’t tell you my name?”

“Why would he have told me!?” Felix exclaimed. He was so, so lost.

Then some things Minho had said earlier slid into place. “Wait a minute, do you two know each other? Are you friends??”

There were no other words for the expression on Spiderman’s—or rather—Han Jisung’s face, except for pure devastation. “You didn’t-? He wasn’t-?” His mouth kept moving, but no sound came out.

Felix, for his part, was struggling to process even half of this. Just as his mind got spinning on what on earth Minho got out of pretending to investigate his own friend like he had and leading the police on, Jisung let out a startling scream of frustration.

He doubled over in place, his eyes huge and distraught. “Are… Are you okay?” Felix asked as he crept closer.

He ducked his head and screamed again before sinking to a squat. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he murmured, his hands buried in his hair like he was going to start pulling it out any moment now. “Minho didn’t tell you who I am. You-“ He looked up at Felix and gave him the most insulting once-over he’d ever been subjected to in his life.

“What?” he demanded.

“You followed a stranger into a dark alley! You fell for the oldest trick in the book and you figured it out by yourself!?” He let out a laugh of disbelief and dragged his hands over his face. “It’s over,” he mumbled. “It’s over for me. They’re going to haul me in tomorrow.”

Felix had never been called stupid in so many languages. “It’s not like you made it hard for me!” he snapped, before he sighed to collect himself. There were things that mattered more than how bad he was at keeping a secret identity. “Listen. Nobody is going to arrest you. Nobody even knows I’m here! But things look really, really bad right now, especially for you, so I want to ask you a few questions. How did you first-?”

“No,” Jisung said with a petulant shake of his head.

“…No?”

“No. Whatever you have going on, it has nothing to do with me.

Had Felix gone deaf? “Nothing to do with you?” he repeated incredulously. “Don’t you realize you’ve been framed for mass murder!?”

“Kinda hard to miss that one.”

Felix spluttered in shock at his nonchalance. “So we have to do something about it! People can’t just keep having the wrong idea of you!”

“I get that it’s your job to care about this stuff, officer, so don’t let me stop you. But yeah, they really can.”

Felix shut his eyes for a moment before opening them again. “Okay, okay, okay. I get that you can’t be Spiderman right now, not when the entire city and police force is convinced you’re a criminal.”

Jisung nodded so casually Felix had to wonder if he was even hearing him.

“And I even understand why they would think that. Whoever set you up clearly had this all planned in advance. So if you just tell me what you know, I can take this investigation from here, I won’t bother you again.”

“Why did you follow me, Felix?” he asked out of nowhere. “If Minho didn’t rat me out to you, why are you doing this?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want to do what you do.”

“And what do I do?” he asked flatly.

“You help people.”

He blinked, long and slow, to the point that Felix was alarmed to think he was getting angry. But to his surprise, when he opened his eyes, he huffed out a laugh. “I see why Minho likes you. You’re so sweet.”

“…Thank you?”

“Because that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said like a slap in the face. But he didn’t stop there. “Do you seriously think that’s why I did any of that? To help people?” He let out a stab of laughter, as if the idea had come from some naïve child. It made Felix’s stomach drop out from under him. “If it was, I definitely would have screwed that up at this point. No, it’s because I wanted the attention. I wanted everyone to look at me and praise my accomplishments. What does it matter to me if I can’t help people out because they have the wrong idea of me?”

Jisung gave a wan smile at his complete and utter astonishment. “Sorry. They say never meet your heroes for a reason.”

Felix tried to collect himself for the third time already in the face of such shameless, selfish apathy. He failed. “You have the power to do so much,” he seethed. “OmniLife might have this city in a chokehold, and you’re throwing away your responsibility because it got tough?”

He shrugged, truly, maddeningly unaffected by the situation. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“You’re right,” Felix spat. “We never should have met. I’m going to go help Minho do actual-“

Jisung sprang to his feet so suddenly that Felix flinched back from trying to walk past him. “Yeah, maybe I am a total disappointment, sorry about that. Maybe with your starry-eyed optimism and dashing bravery, you’re the hero people need, not me. But you are not going to drag Minho into this investigation. No matter what he says.”

Felix barely knew how to respond to the sudden switch-up. “…But Minho is-“

“A journalist. Don’t you have laws against that or something? Tell him it’s against police rules, tell his boss, I don’t care, you can’t put him in danger again.”

Felix really didn’t know how to respond now that the tables had turned and Jisung was looking at him like he was about to strangle him. How in the world does Minho know this guy? Jisung let out a loud breath of frustration when Felix didn’t jump to agree. “God, how do you not get it? How do you need me to spell it out for you like this?”

“Spell… what out?”

Jisung looked at him so long that Felix, to his surprise, was able to pinpoint the exact moment tears sprang to his wide eyes. He snapped his gaze away before he walked out of the alley, audibly putting his defenses back up with a deep voice: “I don’t care what happens to me or anyone else, Felix. Just leave me alone.”

Felix sprinted to follow him out, but when he turned the corner, he was already gone.

Chapter Text

Just a few hours until Jisung could leave his job at the convenience store. Then he’d get on the subway and be home sometime after 3am, leaving him an okay amount of time to sleep before his closing shift at the pharmacy. It would have been way more convenient (and probably wreaked less havoc on his sleeping schedule) if the corner store by his apartment hadn’t been so insistent they didn’t need any more part-timers.

A cold sandwich and a chocolate milk snapped Jisung out of his mini-pity party. He rang up the customer’s items. “11000 won.” He looked over at the boy, who’d clearly come fresh from a late-night academy with that uniform and backpack, and watched him pick the change out of a little coin pouch.

“Thousand,” he said as he placed it on the counter. He zipped the bag shut and put it in his backpack. All of ten seconds had passed when the man behind him let out a loud huff, already getting impatient with the kid—even more so when he struggled to find the rest of the cash in his backpack.

Jisung had planned on a late-night snack, but…

He plucked out the bill he had in his pocket and put it on the counter between them. “Sweet, you found it,” he said as he scooped all the change together.

The kid blinked up at him adorably. “But I didn’t-“

“Have a good night,” Jisung said with a pleasant smile, pushing the items forward. He laughed when the kid only stood there for another confused moment. Then he seemed to get it, returning a bright smile and leaving with his things.

Mister Sunshine stepped up next, dropped a pack of beers onto the counter, and ‘accidentally’ shoved the rack of chips to the floor.

You’ve gotta be kidding me, Jisung internally groaned before glaring at the man. Even if Jisung didn’t have his Spidey senses to prickle the back of his neck in warning, the man’s cap and blackout sunglasses at 9 o’clock at night couldn’t have screamed armed robbery any louder.

Jisung planted his hands on the counter with a humorless smile on his face. “Can I tell you a secret?” He leaned forward, making the robber draw back in surprise. “And promise you won’t laugh,” he said, holding up his pinky for the man to swear on. Shockingly, he left him hanging. “I’m actually psychic.”

Jisung’s blood stuttered in anticipation, right where the criminal was about to swing his knife up to stab him in the stomach. He caught his hand without hesitation and yanked it up until there was a crunch and a high-pitched yelp.

“Seriously, man, a convenience store?” He popped the register open a bit too roughly. “Look at that, you’re going to jail for all of 50000 won?” He pulled up and twisted to punctuate the sentence, getting another cry of pain out of the man. “That’s what you planned on killing me for?” he huffed, shoving him so quickly he didn’t have time to catch himself before he was sprawling backward onto the floor. “Stay,” he commanded as he discreetly webbed the exit shut. The man, predictably, didn’t stay put.

“Convenience store on Sangam-ro and Yangjae-daero,” Jisung reported after he’d dialed 119, the man frantically trying and failing to get the door open. Jisung put the phone to his chest. “It’s push, not pull,” he called.

The robber threw his weight against the door.

“Did I say push? I always get that mixed up, I meant pull. Just kidding,” he said cheerily. “It’s my telekinesis. Paramedics?” he repeated to the operator on the phone. “Definitely. No, the good guys are all fine, it’s just the robber…” he said as he locked eyes with him. “I’m thinking broken wrist. Severe concussion. Multiple fractured ribs. No, I have no idea, ma’am.” He smiled at the thoroughly terrified criminal. “I guess the cashier was just a complete freak of nature. Get here quick, please.”

Jisung did not, in fact, go beat the shit out of him. Content that the man would stay put in the corner without trying to gut him again, he dropped to pick up the rack and put the chips back one by one.

That got boring quick. He opted to scoop them all up in a messy pile, but when he went to dump it on the counter, that little boy startled him into dropping the whole thing again.

“Are you Spiderman?”

Jisung was pretty sure that if he hadn’t already been going into cardiac arrest, that question was going to finish the job. “What are you doing here!?”

“Are you really psychic?”

“One question at a time, kid!”

“Okay. Are you Spi-?”

“And I’m doing the asking, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be on your way home or something?”

“I was. But then that person got in the way,” he said, shamelessly pointing out the man huddling in front of the exit.

Jisung groaned. “You had so much time to leave before that happened.”

“I know. But then you said something about a secret, so I stopped. So are you really-?”

“For the last time, no!” Jisung exclaimed, maybe a little defensively.

“You didn’t say no before.”

“That’s still the last time I’m saying it. Hopefully this taught you not to listen in on people’s conversations from now on. Now you have to wait until the police get here.”

“I won’t do it again. Are you Spiderman?”

Jisung gave him a reluctantly impressed look. “Persistent. You know what, I do get that a lot, I mean-“ He waved a vague hand at himself. “I guess I could see the resemblance. He’s red, I sometimes get sunburnt. But no, I’m nothing like him.” He sighed when the boy didn’t look convinced. “Because I don’t kill people.”

That made the boy frown. “Spiderman doesn’t kill. He’s a good guy.”

Jisung shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Even if that’s what you think, I wouldn’t go around saying that. These days it won’t get you a lot of friends.”

“I don’t care, me and my friends know Spiderman is a good guy. He helped me with my homework. He was nice to my mom. Bad guys don’t do those things.”

Flashing red and blue lights filled Jisung’s vision. They lit the inside of the store and everything inside of it. He silently sucked in a breath, the robber scooting away as he walked over to the door. Now that he mentioned homework, the boy did look familiar, Jisung thought as he sneakily sprayed the webbing with a dissolvent.

The boy stayed by the counter. “I guess you’re not him,” he said sadly. “I just miss him a lot.”

Jisung swallowed thickly as he opened the door for the police. “Yeah, me too.”

It was a quiet few minutes from the subway station to his apartment. The clear, cloudless sky seemed impossibly high above him that night. Too high to ever reach.

He walked into the corridor that led to his unit and took deep breaths. He’d be fine. As long as he could empty his head by the time he reached the door, he could probably fall asleep quickly enough to squeeze in seven whole hours of sleep that day.

Then he locked eyes with the person in front of his door and his hopes of a good night’s sleep were immediately dashed.

“You’re in trouble, bug boy,” Minho said, his arms crossed. Though his face looked serious, his tone and choice of words were as offhanded as if it hadn’t been three weeks since they’d seen each other. Between them, that was basically forever. “Pack your bags,” he added as he pushed a sheet of paper at Jisung.

In the split second before he could read the heading, he jumped to think of his worst nightmares coming true. Jeongin and his cronies realized they hadn’t wiped him off the board for good. They’d seen through his stupid Peter Park name and found his real identity. They’d left this threat posted to his door to let him know that his life as he knew it was over. They were coming for him, to hurt him and the only person he had left, probably worse, probably to kill-

Jisung’s eyes skipped over the bolded words. It was so much worse.

“Eviction notice!?” he blurted out.

Minho gestured harshly for him to swit!

“Eviction notice?” he whisper-screamed. “I told them I’d have rent by the end of the week!”

“It’s… Sunday. Get the door?”

Jisung’s head was too full of Where am I supposed to go??? to think much about it when he unlocked his front door.

“Thanks.” Minho let himself in.

“Wait, wait a minute, what are you doi-?” Jisung scrambled to sweep the Chinese takeout boxes and empty cans of energy drinks littered around into the trash. He flushed—on top of being messy his place was also the world’s biggest cliché. “Couldn’t you have called first?”

“Would you have picked up?”

Jisung couldn’t help his wince. As much as he didn’t like it, he really had been avoiding Minho. He would have still been at it if it weren’t for all that talking Minho and the cop clearly did behind his back. Felix, that snitch.

Minho glanced around his kitchen. “Do you have plastic baggies anywhere?” he tacked on.

“Top shelf. Hang on, for what?”

He tiptoed to pull one out. “To pack your stuff.”

Jisung blinked. “There’s no way you think I’m… I’m not going to…”

Minho whipped the plastic bag through the air to get it open all the way. “Of course you’re moving in with me. Where else would you go, an orphanage?”

“You’re unbelievable.” Despite himself, Jisung laughed incredulously. “You seriously think I can’t handle myself? Like I’m totally useless without you or something?”

He hummed, as if he’d just informed him of his favorite drink. “That sounds awfully familiar.”

Jisung furrowed his brow, wondering what he meant by that, when Minho was suddenly walking into the bathroom where he knew for a fact all his dirty clothes were scattered on the floor. “Hey, hey, hey, hey!” He darted over to push his clothes out of sight with his foot, embarrassed to the tenth degree, though Minho was hardly fazed. He didn’t even look over, not until Jisung grabbed his hand. “Hang on a minute, let’s just-“

Talk he almost said. But talking was the bottom of the barrel last thing he wanted to do right now. He wanted to crawl into bed and never come out. He wanted everyone to leave him alone. He wanted to live out his mediocre life, safe in the knowledge that nobody would ever be getting hurt because of him again.

He didn’t know how to say any of that in a way that wasn’t deeply pathetic. He didn’t think he even wanted to say it all.

“What?” Minho asked after a prolonged moment. Their hands were hovering over Jisung’s toothbrush and dental paste. “Should we grab new ones on the way instead? That’s a good idea,” he said as he walked out of the room.

Jisung let out an exasperated sigh. “Can you slow down?” he said for the first time in his life. Usually he was the one being asked that. “I don’t even have to be out of here for another week.”

Minho did not slow down. He padded over to where his laptop sat on the couch. “Great. Then we only have to take the essentials for now,” he said as he walked over to the dinner table with what looked like the laptop charger Jisung swore he’d lost.

“Where did you-?” He shook his head—not the point. “Minho, I am not moving in with you,” he asserted, stepping into his path to force him to stop and look at him. “I swear, I can figure this out on my own.”

“Look at this place,” he said, exactly like a mom who had just walked into her teenager’s bedroom. “Clearly someone has to worry about you. Anyway, why not?” he said, breaking out that stupid smile he used every time he was about to get what he wanted. “It’ll be like the old days,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows up and down for good measure. “It’ll be fun.”

Jisung sucked in a breath. With his recent track record of getting his friends killed or injured, he wasn’t supposed to be letting Minho back in. No matter what he had to do, he was never letting anyone get hurt on his watch again, as determined as Minho seemed to walk headfirst into danger.

“For a week,” Jisung caved. Because as much as he knew all of that, he also knew becoming homeless overnight was a quick way to put a crinkle in those plans. “Then I’ll be out of your way again.”

On their short walk over (with a stop for hygiene products like they’d agreed on), Minho didn’t even bring up… any of it. Astonishingly, he talked like no time had passed at all as he complained about his annoying coworkers who were the reason he never went to the office to write and waxed poetic about the perfect omelet he’d made that morning. Jisung cautiously brought up his own stories about work (he did not bring up the attempted robbery) and the new restaurant he’d discovered the other day (he especially did not say he would take Minho there one day).

Then he was on Minho’s couch, a spare blanket thrown over his legs.

“What are you doing?” he mumbled with a mouthful of toothpaste in his mouth when he saw Jisung.

He was literally doing nothing. “Sitting here.”

Minho ducked back into the bathroom for a moment. “I’m not making you sleep on the couch,” he said as he wiped a hand across his mouth. “And I’m definitely not giving up my bed.”

“…Huh? You want me to sleep on the floor then?”

“Yes, Han, I dragged you from the comfort of your home in the middle of the night so you could sleep on my carpet. How did you skip two school years with that brain?” He offered an innocently lovely smile. “I said it’d be like the old days.”

Jisung narrowed his eyes in offense. “We’re not going to fit in one bed,” he said to lodge his own attack.

Minho tilted his head to the side, still keeping up the sweet façade. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I remember you in university, and you are not the same size as you were back-“ A dry loofa came coasting toward his face so fast he screamed. In his rush to duck out of the way he toppled onto the floor with a thump that was definitely getting Minho on the downstair neighbors’ shit lists. Before he could clamber to his feet again, Minho was darting over to grab a pillow off the couch.

“Apologize, bug boy, or I’m making you sleep on the ceiling,” he threatened with his weapon held high above his head. The light from the only lamp in the room cast his features in menacing shadow as he loomed over Jisung.

He trembled with exaggerated affect and held his hands up in surrender. “Please, please spare my life, sir. I just mean that your height grew! And the size of your brain! And the circumference of your waist-“

Minho swung the pillow down in a collision course with his face. Jisung kicked at his shin to knock him off-balance, which was fine. He instinctively webbed his arms to toss him to the side, which was less fine. Minho landed on the couch gracelessly, his stunned face ending up inches apart from Jisung’s deer-in-headlights expression.

Instead of any of the millions of things he felt Minho would have been justified in saying (such as, oh, maybe, What the fuck is wrong with you?), the maniac only said, “Cheater.” Then he got up, casually padded to his bedroom, and emerged a moment later with a sweatshirt and a folded pair of pants in his arms.

Jisung took his clothes with more than a little embarrassment. At least they were comfortable, if a little oversized on Jisung.

“You’re not secretly wearing the suit under that, right?” Minho asked when he walked into his room a moment later.

Jisung put his hands out in front of him. “Obviously not?”

“Don’t say it like that when you still had those webshooters on a minute ago.”

Jisung didn’t say anything. He only nodded; it was beyond weird to hear that word come out of Minho’s mouth so easily.

“Where is it anyway, the suit? Did you get rid of it?”

“No,” Jisung said awkwardly. Of all the things he felt like talking about, this was not one of them. “But I haven’t worn it since…” He waved his hand in the air. “You know.”

Minho nodded. “So can you get over here already?” he said, holding up the blanket beside him. “I’m exhausted.”

Jisung didn’t know if it was his brain or his heart in control, but something was keeping him from walking over when he felt so selfish just being here.

“Come on,” Minho insisted, a whine creeping into his voice. “I don’t bite. All bark.”

“You’d make the worst guard dog,” he said. He reluctantly crossed the room and settled as close to the edge of the bed as he could, facing the door.

Only this far, he insisted to himself. He would not let himself compare this to the days spent sharing a place even after he’d withdrawn from all his classes, working overtime while living out of what had technically been Minho’s home. He wouldn’t think about how things seemed impossibly different compared to then, but also felt like they hadn’t changed at all.

He especially couldn’t let himself think of his final year of school and his nice, empty house with rooms that echoed.

He couldn’t think of spending nights in a row at Minho’s house, his mom taking care of and feeding him like he was her own son too, even though she didn’t have a lot of waking hours to spare. He had to put out of his mind all those nights spent talking in Minho’s bed, talking about the meaning of life and their favorite childhood cartoons. About their earliest memory and the annoying substitute teacher they’d had that day. About their dreams and ambitions and the grossest foods they’d ever tried.

For Minho’s sake, he couldn’t start thinking about how there was nowhere and no one he felt safer with.

Then Minho wrapped his arms around his waist and pressed his warm face into the back of his neck, and Jisung knew he couldn’t keep deluding himself into believing everything would be alright like this.

“Why are you so tense?” Minho murmured. “It’s just me.”

“Please don’t go after them.”

Now it was Minho’s turn to tense beside him. “Hm?”

“Your new friend. He said you’re suspicious of OmniLife.”

“Suspicious?” he echoed like he barely understood the word in his exhausted state. He pushed himself up and said it more forcefully, “Suspicious? That’s a weird way to say fucking pissed off because they framed you for murder.”

Jisung kneaded the blanket between nervous fingers. “You don’t have to be. I don’t eve care about being Spiderman.”

Minho shifted, apparently sitting up properly. “Do you seriously think I care about Spiderman?”

Jisung bolted up to face Minho, shocked when Felix had made it sound like that’s all they cared about.

“I know that even if we could fix everything tomorrow, you wouldn’t want to go back to that life.”

There was only one way he knew that. “Felix.”

“All we talked about was going after the people that convinced the world you’re some cold-blooded murderer. Then Felix told me about what happened between the two of you earlier, so I went to wait for you by your door. I’ve never told him anything about you he didn’t already know.”

If that was the case, Jisung wondered why Minho wasn’t addressing how shitty he’d been to Felix. He hadn’t meant it, any of it. He’d only needed Felix to stop looking at him so hopefully, as if he was in any position to fix when all he did was break, and that was the only way he could think to do it. He still felt horrible for being the reason Felix, as nosy as he was, had looked so hurt and betrayed.

“Felix is smart,” Minho added, “and a good person. But nothing he said to you matters because he was talking to Spiderman, not Han Jisung, and you’re the one who matters. So when Minkyu is out there lying to the news that my best friend is a terrorist, I have to do something! I can’t sit back knowing everything I know about OmniLife when they might pick up right where Hwang Hyunjin left off.”

Jisung’s thoughts were being pulled in a million different directions. The strongest pull was wishing Minho were some reckless smartass who looked for danger for the thrill of it, who thought he was invincible. Then the incident at the party might have scared him off this course.

But for the second time, that defiant look in his eye reminded Jisung just how alike the two of them were. Minho understood the danger, like Jisung had every time he suited up to fight armed criminals in the street. He was eating it anyway for the sake of others, like Jisung had.

And he was horrified at what being so similar meant for Minho.

“I know you can’t. But I-I can’t…” When the skin across his chest gotten so tight?

“Can’t what? Whatever happened or whatever you did, you can tell me.”

“What happened… What happened is it’s true,” Jisung said with a stuttering heartbeat. “It is my fault those people are dead.”

“Han, it is not at all-“

“No, no, you don’t get it. I was so, so scared of screwing it all up that I trusted the wrong people with everything but my identity. I let them use my powers so they could win their stupid chaebol game. Minho, I let them use me.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

Jisung let out a wet laugh, hot tears rising to the surface. “Funny you should say that. I stopped trusting myself, I stopped trusting my senses to the point they gave up on trying to warn me. I let both of them string me along for weeks all because- because-“

Careful fingers tried to brush his hair away from his face, but he ducked away from them.

“Your source,” he tried as firmly as he could. “Jeong Seongmin.”

“I remember. You stopped working for him out of nowhere.”

“It wasn-“ Jisung’s heart was hammering in his chest. He couldn’t. He shouldn’t. But if Minho was so determined to launch himself into all this, he deserved to at least know what it was he was getting himself into. He deserved to know that death followed Spiderman like some loyal pet. “It wasn’t out of nowhere. That day at the abandoned lab.”

Last chance to stop.

“It was him, Minho.”

“It was… him?” he said, though Jisung was afraid he already understood.

“I-I-I had to-“ There was no way out of this pit now. “Jeongin told me t- I killed him.”

Jisung could feel Minho’s eyes on the side of his face, though he was as silent as the grave. He couldn’t bring himself to look at him as he rambled on.

“And I still see his face. I saw it every time I closed my eyes, and I still see him when I try to sleep, and the thing is I didn’t know. I can’t be any kind of hero when he was right there next to me every day and I couldn’t even save him. He was suffering for so, so long and I can’t understand how right up to the end he could still say it wasn’t my fault. I can’t understand how you and Felix don’t get it, I hurt people, that’s all I-“

Minho grabbed him by the shoulder, making him look him in the eye. “You do not hurt people, Han.”

“Jeong is dead because of me!” he said desperately, trying to pull away from the hold Minho had on his arm. “Dozens of people are dead. Your brother, your friends, they almost died because of me. I-I almost got-“

“Jisung.”

“I nearly got you killed,” he finally admitted out loud, tears cutting down his face. “Nothing scares me as much as that, because I really, really-“ He broke with a sob he didn’t deserve. He talked a big game. He acted nothing scared him, not even death itself. He went through the world like he didn’t need anything from anyone. All a big fat lie because…

“I can’t lose you, Minho. And I’m sorry that I did it, but that’s why I lied to you. That’s why I don’t want you to do this for me, any of this.”

For a long moment, there was only the sound of Jisung’s sniffles. Then Minho said something, so softly he might have imagined it. “You won’t.”

Jisung finally looked up to see that the softness on Minho’s face wasn’t his imagination.

“You will never, ever lose me. I swear,” he said, brushing the tears away with steady hands.

“Everyone I get close to ends up-“

“Since when was I like everyone else?” he said gently, before Jisung could say gone, one way or another. His own parents had barely cared enough about him to send the funds to keep him alive in a different country. After he graduated, he’d been completely on his own.

Jisung had never had family, he’d never had friends.

But Minho wasn’t wrong.

Through it all, the good and the bad, he’d been the one common denominator in his life.

“Listen,” Minho said more firmly. “You got taken advantage of by people who were going to hurt others one way or another. It is not-“

Jisung tried pulling away. “Come on.”

“It’s not your fault. None of it.” He smoothed down Jisung’s hair. “I wanted to help you, whether or not you were going to help me do it,” he said, moving his hands to cup Jisung’s face. “But we’ve always worked best as a team. Remember whose senior project got the best score that year?”

Jisung averted his eyes. “Haneul and Yeongun’s.”

Instant outrage crossed Minho’s face. “We established they cheated off of us!” he said, still so fired up about his old friends’ trivial betrayal that it startled a laugh out of Jisung. “It was us. My point is, with you by my side, we’re unstoppable. We could overthrow OmniLife tomorrow if we really tried.”

Han grabbed the hands on either side of his face. He didn’t really need to ask, but he did anyway: “Are you sure about this?”

“Positive.”

“Then you must be a masochist,” he said somberly, before he met Minho’s eyes and let out a laugh. He could do this. “Okay. But I think you could single-handedly take them down tonight.”

Minho smile back. “No, no, feelings make me sleepy, I have to rest first,” he said as he threw the cover over himself again. “But we can start on this tomorrow.”

“Aw, tomorrow was my day off,” he said lightheartedly, flopping back himself.

“You don’t have to worry so much about work.” From where Han had slotted his head under Minho’s chin, he could feel all the vibrations as he spoke. “Now that you’re here, I’ll make sure neither of us starve to death, whether you have three jobs or not.”

“It’s just two,” Han huffed, though he was sure Minho knew that.

“Four? That’s insane, when do you get the time to sleep?”

”I said two.”

“Five?” Minho said with a laugh neither of them could hold back anymore. After living with the weight of the world on his shoulders for so long, Han hadn’t been able to tell how heavy it really was, or that he’d almost gotten used to it, until someone came and lifted it off of him. One day he figured he’d muster up the courage to be sappy and gooey and seriously say I love you.

For now he accused Minho of hearing loss.

The feeling of waking up to arms around his waist was double-edged. It was so reminiscent of days spent stressing about deadlines, Han bolted upright for an exam he was positive he was late for.

Minho groaned, groggy with sleep. “Why?”

Han had never been so grateful he was a dropout. “Nothing, sorry, I forgot I was a grown man.”

He blinked blearily, not caring enough to ask what he meant by that. “Glad you remembered,” he yawned, a minute or two before they were fast asleep again.

-

In the morning, Minho woke first, though the light blared into his bedroom so fiercely he had to lift his head to check what time it was.

11:59am.

Technically still morning.

He untangled his limbs from Han’s and crept out of his room to the kitchen, making sure to grab his phone on the way out.

“Hey, Elixir,” Minho greeted as he squatted down to feed his cats.

“How do you have a new one every time we talk?” Felix said.

“I’m surprised I didn’t think of that one sooner. So, um, listen, wait your turn,” he scolded when Doongie callously pushed his way between his brothers for food. He gave him a light bop on the head before getting to his dish next.

“For… what?”

“Sorry, not you, I’m talking to a cat,” Minho said as he finished up his task.

“Oh, wait a minute. Did you find him last night? Can you tell me how you even know each other now?”

“There’s something more important than that. Is Jeongin at work with you right now?”

“What? No?”

“When’s the last time anyone saw him?”

“The week before the party…”

Between Han’s briefest mention of him the night before and that timing, that sounded more than a little suspicious.

“Hyung, why are you asking? Did something happen? Is he in trouble?”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Minho said, though he had no way of no knowing if that was actually true. “But listen. I know you told me what Han said to you yesterday, I know he was acting like a total asshole, and you really don’t have any reason to take my word for it, but that’s not who he is. I don’t even think he wanted to give up the Spiderman thing, but- Anyway, that’s what you should come over to my place for, so the three of us can talk properly and you can hear it from him.”

There was a pause so long that Minho had to check the line was still on. “Well,” Felix said curtly. “I can’t right now, I’m working. I’ll see.”

He’d said it like he was mid-sentence, but when Minho looked again, he saw that Felix really had abruptly hung on him this time.

God, he hoped he wasn’t going to start understanding those jokes about having friends that hated each other.

He put his phone down on the kitchen counter with a sigh. He hadn’t wanted to bring it up in the moment and turn the conversation into an interrogation, but Han mentioning Jeongin’s name like he had something to do with the symbiote had instantly set off alarm bells. Wasn’t Jeongin supposed to be a sweet, normal police officer? Then where was he now? How did he fit into anything that had happened these past few months?

Minho put a pan on the burner before taking out his laptop.

As he planted himself at the table, he wondered where to start. He figured that plain and simple typing the name of the evil corporation into the search engine worked.

After a few minutes of mindlessly clicking around, he wound up on the page for the National SciExpo, a science convention set to conclude its three-day program that afternoon.

Beyond what had initially brought him to the page, there wasn’t a lot he understood. While the descriptions of military-grade invisibility cloaks and AI-powered prosthetics did look interesting, they also looked a little too comic-booky to believe.

He clicked over to the information on the tickets before he was being put in a headlock, attacked and subdued in his own home.

Han yawned. “What are you doing?”

“Some research on the National-“

“The National SciExpo?” he read from the screen. “Wait, that was this weekend?”

“Yup.”

Han put more weight on Minho’s back as he leaned forward to get a closer look. Despite the fact his spine was slowly being folded, Minho stoically suppressed his discomfort. He was too sleepy to resist anyway.

“I’d actually wanted to go…” Han said, sounding so dismayed it almost hurt half as much as Minho’s back did.

He hadn’t planned on going. Going off the online program, the event was only for four more hours. He clicked on the cheapest, one-day general admission tickets and added two to the cart anyway. “Can you put some eggs on?”

Han grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him around like a ragdoll in his excitement. “Yes, chef,” he said, bounding over to the stove to oil the pan

“Make sure you season it too.” He leaned his chin forward onto his hand, if only to cover his growing smile at Han’s antics, rushing around to the refrigerator to the cabinet of utensils. Minho has a reputation to maintain after all.

“I didn’t think you’d be into that kind of thing, what are you curious about?” The eggs audibly smacked onto the pan and made the oil sizzle in response. “I would have told you about the high-temperature superconductor they use in the power lines between Shingal and Heungdeok. Minho, we don’t even know how superconductors work above subzero temperatures, but we’re still using on to transfer power with near-zero energy losses between electrical substations, maybe they’ll have some news about it at the convention.”

Minho laughed at the infodump he didn’t fully grasp. “I think I just grew a new brain cell. But it’s not the science I’m interested in.”

“It’s not the science at the science exhibition?” Han repeated, pushing the eggs around a little forcefully. “Is it the interior design?”

Minho winced. “You’re going to break the yolks.”

Han looked up like he’d committed manslaughter. “Oh, you wanted-? Well, I thought-“ He dropped the utensil he’d been stirring with and bowed. “Apologies, chef. They’re broken.”

“My protein,” Minho mourned.

Han gave him an amused look. “You’re going to get the same amount whether it’s fried or not.”

It was an admittedly sparse meal they ended up with. Still, cooking with Han without setting off the smoke detectors was its own accomplishment.

Han’s mouth dropped open when he said as much. “You’re the one who set a grease fire in our old apartment!”

“A little one,” Minho waved off.

“Cooking eggs!”

“I had it under control, there was no reason for you to scream like you did.”

“You screamed too!”

“I laughed at you, there’s a difference. Anyway, you’re the one who was in school for biochemistry and couldn’t make ramen on your own.”

Han let out a little laugh before sticking a forkful of food in his mouth.

“That’s what I thought,” Minho said triumphantly. But Han’s smile was getting a little too wide. He bolted forward in his seat. “You could!? Why did you make me do it every time??”

“I missed you,” he said mischievously around a mouthful of food.

“We literally lived together,” Minho tried to say as flatly as he could, failing when a laugh crept its way out.

“And I missed you when you would lock yourself in your room to study.”

He rubbed his hands over his face in affected irritation. “God, your brain is so unique.”

“Thank you!” Han said cheerily.

He looked up at him over his hands. Not a compliment.

“Thank you,” he said more forcefully. He jabbed a fork at his plate. “Also, this might be my best work yet.”

He shifted his focus out the window, humming to try to jog his memory. “I don’t remember the last time we had breakfast together.”

“I don’t remember the last time I had breakfast,” Han responded immediately. He chewed for a moment longer before stilling, slowly putting a hand to his mouth like he hadn’t meant to let that slip.

Minho blinked at him blankly. “No wonder your height is stunted.”

It wasn’t even that clever, but it made Han choke with such an abrupt laugh that Minho was the one reduced to tears before he could get him a helpful thump on the back. Why did people keep choking in front of him?

“Please forget the past minute,” Han begged when he recovered, still a little hoarse. He hung his head suddenly before looking straight ahead, and then proceeded to make the worst impression of a robot getting rebooted that anyone had ever done.

Minho burst out laughing so hard it hurt—the terrible little wheezing sounds Han made as he laughed along did not help. “How fucking old are you?” Minho demanded between gasps of air, only making Han laugh more and the entire situation even worse.

“It’s the asthma,” he said as he scrubbed at his teary eyes.

“You do not have asthma,” Minho gasped as he buried his face in his hands to stop laughing. “War, death, murder, plague.”

“Disease, infection, uhh…” Han breathed unsteadily. “When the manager takes the customer’s side.”

They both let out a shudder at that. Minho stared down his piece of toast as he spoke, knowing that if he looked at Han he’d dissolve all over again. “I found the expo’s website because of one of their sponsors. It’s not even a lead, but it’s somewhere to start.”

Han came around to his side to look at the screen again. “I.Energies?” he questioned, hovering over his shoulder. “Sounds like a badly thought-out boy group name. What’s special about-

“OmniLife,” they said at the same time. “Their energy division,” Han recalled before frowning. “You’d think they have more important things to be focusing on right now.”

“I’m guessing they committed before that whole thing went down. Still, it can’t hurt, right?”

Han’s eyes flicked up and down the page. “Right.”

About thirty minutes later in the middle of the huge convention hall with people streaming around either side of them, Han looked on the verge of killing him. “I can’t believe you lost it!”

Minho went through his jacket pockets, knowing it was futile. The program was gone, dropped somewhere between the entrance and the, hm, roughly fifty steps they’d taken. They hadn’t even reached any of the booths or displays yet. He let out a puff of air. “We’ll get another one, alright?”

Han grabbed him before he could even take a step back. “The sign said only one per group.”

Minho shot him a look he couldn’t help. “You’re listening to signs now? Last month you were literally jumping off of build-“

Han clapped a hand over Minho’s mouth so hard he reeled back. “Sorry!” he said, though he was clearly trying to stifle a laugh. “Anyway, that was last month, I’m a law-abiding citizen now. There’s still the online program.”

“Sure, honey,” Minho said, rubbing at his stinging skin. “Let’s go before someone calls the cops on you for domestic violence.” He shoved Han along, who he swears stumbled much harder than he’d pushed him.

They made their way over to Section E, where a talk was apparently starting in a few minutes. Meaning the only available seats were at the front. The very front. Minho almost complained, but Han looked so excited just to be there he decided to keep it to himself. He could do this. Listen to an entire talk in a field he knew nothing about while sitting in the splash zone for eye contact from the speaker? Sure. It’s not like he had Han’s attention span after all.

The doctor who would deliver the talk came out from behind the huge curtains that spanned the width of the entire room and started her speech.

………

Okay, maybe he couldn’t do this.

“I’m going to the restroom,” he whispered to Han, though he looked so riveted Minho wasn’t sure he’d heard him or would even notice he was gone.

Out in the hallway, he could see a couple of displays from where he stood. But the self-teaching system some research team wanted to use to save the bees didn’t interest him very much. He peeked into one of the other sections and found it set up exactly the same as the one he’d just left. A couple of personnel went in front of and behind the wide curtains, some more urgently than others.

The VIP tickets on the expo’s website had all been sold out, but Minho still wondered if a backstage view of the place could get him the lead he wanted.

Plus his How can I get somewhere I’m not supposed to be? instinct kicked in as soon as the speaker had stepped out from those curtains.

Minho plucked off the wristband he’d been given at the entrance and crossed the room, careful to keep any doubt that he belonged here out of his posture. Fortunately for him, some staff member had left their lanyard on one of the seats. He swiped it up and placed it around his neck. It didn’t matter that it belonged to a woman since he’d only be in and out.

He stepped between what was actually a set of two heavy curtains that formed a dark corridor next to the stage. Extra fortunately, there was a clipboard and earpiece on the rolling cart in front of him. After he fixed the one-sided headset and mic to his face, he turned around, only to check his surroundings, and ended up crashing into someone.

“What are you doing here?” Minho demanded of the younger man before he could be on the other side of that question. “They said they needed you fifteen minutes ago.”

“Wh- Who?”

“They,” Minho said ominously, cutting his eyes to the backstage area behind him. The man kept standing there, looking frazzled and bewildered. “So go!”

He took off with a start, saying something about paychecks under his breath.

“That made me feel bad,” Minho muttered as he scooped up the clipboard and pen. In front of him, the curtains opened up to the vast backstage half of the room. To his right, another corridor of curtains formed. He ducked that way, not wanting to head the same way the actual employee had.

-

The doctor on stage folded her hands on top of the podium and gave the audience a pensive look. “I want to thank you all,” she said after a moment. “You didn’t have to be here any of these past three days we’ve had together, let alone today. Yet each one of you made the effort to come and learn something about the incredible breakthroughs we are achieving every day, in countless fields of science and technology all over the world.” She cast her eyes around the audience, scanning each section.

“Do you know want to know why I think you did that?” she said, her gaze eventually landing on Han. “I think you made such an effort to be here with us today because you all want to change the world.” She smiled when Han’s eyes widened in surprise and skipped hers away. That sounded… pointed. But his spidey senses weren’t abuzz with warning, so he trusted he wasn’t getting another unpleasant surprise at a public event, or else he might not have left his home ever again.

“Of course, we all want to make our indelible mark on this world. Leave behind a legacy that speaks for itself. Everyone does. Your neighbor, your teacher, that old woman you passed in the grocery store, they all have their own ideal version of how the world should change. Is it shocking to think that, on any given day, there are millions on millions of revolutions that occur inside people’s heads?

“But how many take place in fact?

“It’s only those who push themselves past what anyone thought them capable of, not just today, not just tomorrow, not just the day after—it is only those revolutionaries who can bring the change that’s been broiling inside their head into the light.”

She smiled, a hopeful smile. “We all know that. We are all striving towards our own goals, hopes and aspirations. So I’ll leave you with this thought. It’s one that has gotten me through countless sleepless nights and stressful days wondering if anything I do as a limited, flawed human matters, or if I’m powerless in the face of such overwhelming odds.

“To help everyone, help one person.” The doctor let a long pause stretch out, to the point that Han wondered if that was the end of the speech. That was… a little underwhelming.

“How sweet. How simplistic. How naïve,” she said, smiling wryly. “If that’s what crossed your mind, then I’m speaking to you.”

Han glanced away at the callout, but it only made her attention fall on him. “When the weight of the world is crushing down on your shoulders, remember that you don’t need to move heaven and earth to leave a mark. Change the life of one person for the better—a friend’s, a brother’s, even your own—and you single-handedly put the world on a course it would have never been on if it weren’t for you. Keep this in mind when your load is heaviest, dear Atlas, and the earth may seem lighter than usual.

“Thank you for having me.”

Han tried to elbow Minho to applaud. The momentum almost sent him to the floor.

Standing outside Section E, Han swiveled his head left and right to try and find that deserter, before he sensed a hand swinging towards his head.

“You have to stop doing that!” Han couldn’t help whining when he saw who it was. “I could kill you!”

“With your bare hands?” Minho asked, the corner of his mouth quirking up. He pulled his wrist away from Han’s death grip. “Only testing you. Here,” he said as he pushed another program at him. “I stole it just for you,” he said with a sardonically sweet tone.

“What? No, no, no, are-?” Han widened his eyes in mock horror. “I can’t take this! How are the donors ever going to recover after-?”

“Fine, don’t thank me for risking my life,” Minho said, hiding his amusement so poorly it made Han laugh.

“How is getting one extra life-or-death?” he said as he tugged the two of them along the hallway. “I know the security guard was huge, but I could take him. As in a fight,” he said before Minho could add something stupid.

He leveled him with a skeptical look. “I was scared to make eye contact with him when we walked in, and you think you could take him? As in a fight?” he mocked as they stepped into the open part of the convention hall, where they were free to roam around from display to display.

“Seriously! I could take the whole security team if I wanted to, no problem!” Han exclaimed, right as they walked past a now very displeased-looking guard.

Minho snorted and sped away without another glance.

“Which… I don’t. Because you’re just doing your job and I’m a normal civilian man. Sorry,” he winced. He rushed to catch up with Minho and jab him in the ribs. “Traitor,” he hissed.

“Do you want to yell that any louder next time?” Minho laughed out loud, undeterred by Han’s relentless poking. “Maybe add that you have a sniper gun on you?”

“Shut up, shut up, shu-“

“Look, glowing cats!” Minho said, escaping to the stand advertising those exact words below the flashy title of Cure the World.

The woman standing in front of the small, closed off booth greeted them with a smile. “Would the two of you like to-?”

Minho nodded so quickly Han heard his teeth clack together. She laughed politely and let them into the dark booth.

If Han thought he was pleasantly surprised to actually see glow-in-the-dark cats for himself, Minho was literally buzzing with euphoria.

“They’re cute,” Han agreed before laughing at Minho’s incoherent stream of baby-talk of you’re so bright, you’re so special, you’re so green. “But I don’t know if transgenesis can single-handedly cure the world.”

“Ah, so you know about this already. You’re right, it’s not new news. We’ve been inserting the avGFP gene into organisms besides its original jellyfish for over ten years now.”

“Dori could use a little sister,” Minho said in the loudest whisper Han had ever heard. He cleared his throat.

“To make sure a more important gene is active, like one that’s resistant to infection.” Han slowly turned to Minho and his antics, suddenly alarmed to think he was manhandling valuable lab resources. “Isn’t transgenesis…?”

“Laborious and expensive?” the woman filled in. Han nodded nervously. “Terribly so, sir. Fortunately, these specimens are retired.”

Before she could even get her next sentence out, Minho was already lighting up with excitement.

“And yes, adoptable.”

Minho suddenly screwed his eyes shut, heaving a weary sigh. “I shouldn’t.”

“Don’t do it, don’t do it,” Han chanted like the angel on his shoulder.

“But look at her! But I shouldn’t.”

“Your dongsaengs will get jealous.”

“But she’s a special disease-fighting kitty!”

“Think about the price of cat food lately,” Han whispered.

Minho groaned as he got to his feet. “Sorry, guys. I can’t afford to feed a fifth mouth,” he apologized to the litter of cats that couldn’t have looked less interested in his internal dilemma.

Han laughed at his dramatics. “People don’t normally include themselves when they say ‘mouths to feed.’”

“No, they don’t.” Minho made as if to leave the tent, but the woman opened up an entrance on the opposite side neither of them had seen before.

Whatever was on the other side, it glowed such a bright green Han doubted it was just more cats. As if to confirm his thought, the woman said, “This is the real breakthrough,” and ushered them both through.

A holographic screen full to the brim with successful rodent trials and experiment procedures hovered on the far side of the tent. But it was the single vial of liquid below it casting all three faces in that green glow.

“With the help of select backers, a team at Viscorp took the door that their peers opened and blew it wide open. Regenerative properties, superior strength, natural resistance to disease—they synthesized the best qualities of the animal kingdom for humankind to harness. That would mean-“

“Wiping out half of all diseases with one solution,” Han awed, skipping his eyes over all the species they pulled one or another gene from to make this Panacea solution, as the report called it. Cure-all.

“Far more than half, sir,” she said with an enthusiastic nod. “I’d suggest you keep an eye out for our names in the news.”

“What’s your name?” Minho asked.

“Doctor Ok Talbit. Would you like a minute to read the brief?”

Han emerged into the natural daylight streaming into the hall from the sunroof feeling… surreal.

“Everything?” Minho voiced for him.

That’s what the 97.87% success rate on mice would seem to suggest.

“I didn’t think anything like that was possible. Not in this century.”

It shouldn’t be.

“Was anything wrong with the data?”

Nothing at all. No results were creatively interpreted by the team and the detailed procedures seemed airtight.

“Can you say something?”

“You were reading my mind pretty well there.”

“Han,” he said with a serious look in his eye. “Before we start talking about this could mean the beginning of a utopia humanity has never seen the likes of…”

“Yes?” Han said, intimidated by the sudden shift.

“Do you think we could get a snack?”

-

The last Minho would have expected was that he’d be staying at the National SciExpo until the last minute.

But after he and Han had thoroughly talked out the potential of the Viscorp breakthrough to cure the world and eaten their vending-machine honey buns, they’d spent the rest of their time wandering around.

They’d gone up to one particular display with a humanoid robot standing in front of it.

Han peered at the thing curiously, all kinds of wire and circuits crossing its metallic body as it moved its arms up and down. “The joints flex so smoothly,” he remarked to the man beside it. “Is it servomotors in here?” he said, giving it another look.

“Electrically conducted nanofibers,” the man said, which Minho assumed was impressive based on the look on Han’s face. “In case of injury in a military setting, the suit can heal even as it continues walking.”

“Injury? But it’s not like this is a person, it’s-“

The suit they’d thought was a robot marched right at them and reached its hands up as if to rip their faces off.

Minho is big enough to admit it. He may have let out a small sound of fright.

The thing reached its hand out for a friendly handshake, which Minho extremely hesitantly took. The helmet flipped down to reveal a decidedly normal, nonrobotic man inside the suit.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted with humor that was probably at his expense. Han’s cackling beside him was obviously at his expense.

“Afternoon,” Minho said, his voice unsteady. “I, uh, just remembered. I left my dishes unlocked… in the oven…” he muttered as he pulled away.

“You look great,” Han assured the man. “Did you scream??” he laughed as he followed Minho away from the display, swinging an aggressive arm around his neck. “That was adorable.”

Minho muttered something about death wishes that Han pointedly ignored.

“AGH!!” he cruelly imitated, making himself laugh again. “It’s okay, Minho, you’re safe with me! I’d never let some military exoskeleton rip you to shreds,” he cooed while obnoxiously poking his cheek.

“Can’t say the same.”

Han whirled around with such an urgent gasp it startled Minho all over again. But the only thing that had occurred to him was, “Do you think they got that on video?”

“No,” Minho said immediately.

His face lit up. “I bet they’ve been filming all day. I could ask them for the playback.”

“No,” Minho insisted as he grabbed Han’s arm. He let himself get yanked back, that annoying smirk still not wiped off his face. “I just need you to explain entropy one more time.”

That got Han’s smile to fall. “I literally don’t understand how you don’t get this.”

“I’ll get it this time.”

“That’s what you said the last three times! How did you graduate without knowing this??”

“Come on, high school science class was a long time ago.”

“It’s been five years!”

“Exactly my point. One more time.

Han sucked in a long-suffering breath. “Entropy is not chaos.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not really. We say it’s chaos because things with higher entropy levels look all messed up from our perspective.”

“Sure.”

“But that’s because in the process of everything getting more mixed up and less ordered, all the energy in the universe is actually getting more equal, since everything wants to be in its least energy intensive and most efficient state.”

“Hm.”

“So when you think about it, entropy is the universe’s tendency toward uniformity.”

“…That is the most complicated way you’ve put it so far.”

Han stamped his foot in frustration. He actually stamped his foot. “Don’t laugh!” he whined, somehow sounding even louder than usual.

It was only when they stopped talking for longer than two seconds that Minho looked around and realized… the place was pretty empty.

Han followed his train of thought and checked the time. His eyes widened at his phone. “How have they not kicked us out yet?” he said before the two of them beelined it for the nearest exit.

As… exciting as the past few hours had been, Minho much preferred the summer air to the freezing air conditioning inside. “I need to ask you a favor,” he said once they were strolling down the sidewalk.

“I’m already nervous,” Han deadpanned.

Minho kicked a pebble into the road only for it to instantly get run over. “So…”

“Is this about money? Because if it is, I don’t mind, but you’re going to have lower your expect-“

Minho shook his head. “No, it's not.”

“Then why do you look like you want to follow that rock into traffic?”

He closed his eyes, steeling himself. “Lix is coming over,” he decided to say outright. “Lee Felix.”

Han’s steps slowed to a stop. “…Okay. Why?”

“Because I haven’t pried, but you clearly know things we don’t, and if this is going to work we need to be on the same page for once. All three of us.”

Han worried his teeth over his bottom lip. “Understandable.”

“You can relax, you know. I know what you said to him last night.”

He visibly paled. “Even the-?”

“Yes, even when you said he was the stupidest person you’d ever met.”

“I-I didn’t say he-“

“But it doesn’t matter right now because we all need to be adults and talk like it, so I’m going to call him right now and-“

Minho’s phone buzzed right on cue, making Han give him a suspicious look. “We didn’t plan this.” He picked up. “You change your mind?”

“Yeah.”

“Great! We’re not doing anything the rest of the day so-“

“Tomorrow.”

Minho blinked at Felix’s dull tone. “I get that you might have had a long day, Lix, but we really shouldn’t be wasting any time.”

“It’s not like the world is going to end between now and tomorrow afternoon. I’ll come over then, alright? Bye, hyung.”

Beep.

Han stared at his blank phone incredulously. “It’s like he’s trying to jinx it.”

Minho scoffed. “It’s not like we’re in a movie,” he said, even as a feeling of unease started to settle in his stomach.

Chapter Text

Mo Iseul. 43-year-old charged with fraud against several minor-league businesses in the electronics industry. Released from prison last February. Probably not their man.

Dae Bonhwa. Hasn’t been in the country since 2017, so that was an automatic no.

Shin Hamin. 37-year-old who has been in and out of jail for petty crimes for the past few years. The kind of directionless sort who might take up a stint of street vigilantism.

Chu Inho. 29-year-old with a record of publicly protesting major consumers of non-renewable forms of energy. Minkyu added the past two names to the figurative ‘maybe’ pile.

“Are you going to eat today?” Kyung asked as he walked up to his desk.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I eat?” Minkyu’s eyes skipped over a few more names before he looked up. “Oh. Now with you?”

Kyung grimaced, though Minkyu knew he was only pretending to be hurt. If he’d been the type to be easily offended, their partnership wouldn’t have lasted for nearly as many years as it had. “Hint taken, Mr. Lee.”

Minkyu looked back at the task at hand: training this machine learning system by hand. It shouldn’t have been necessary after feeding it the right criteria, but the other day Felix had called them all over to his monitor.

“That…” Chan leaned in to get a better look at the list of potential suspects that had been generated, tilting his head. “Doesn’t look right.”

“Doesn’t look right?” Changbin pointed at one of the names. “This one is 89 years old, how can it think he could be Spiderman?”

Seungmin huffed a breathy, disbelieving laugh. “In its defense, he doesn’t look a day over 70.”

“I thought this was supposed to be state-of-the-art,” Felix mumbled.

“It is,” Minkyu said. “The problem is the art isn’t state-of-the-art.”

With their leads running as dry as they were, Minkyu had resigned himself to the job of at least trying to make the most of the software they’d been given.

“There has to be an easier way,” Kyung said in the present. “You should be able to finetune and readjust the criteria, shouldn’t you?”

“If I knew how to do that, Kyung, I’d be doing it.”

“Ah, and here I thought you liked doing things the hard way.”

Minkyu humored him with a crooked smile. “I’ll finish this. Don’t wait for me.”

“Whatever you say.”

Minkyu glanced back up as Kyung left the room. In the center, Chan, Changbin, Seungmin and Felix were bunched together, their faces as intense as if they were discussing legal matters of life and death.

“We can’t get Chinese, we got that yesterday,” Seungmin said, hovering over Chan’s shoulder to look at his phone.

They were deciding on what to get delivered to the precinct.

“So?” Chan laughed. “You can just choose a different dish this time.”

“I only like the cold noodles. Me and Felix want sushi.”

“I do?” Felix asked, surprised. Seungmin looked at him with an expectant, pleading smile. “Yeah, Chan, sushi, I want sushi.”

Changbin playfully narrowed his eyes at the both of them. “For the fifth time in a week?”

“It hasn’t been four times already,” Felix said with a laugh, though it quickly petered off as something occurred to him. “Oh wow.”

On second thought, it might have been a good time to check something.

Minkyu logged off and walked over. “Need you for a minute, Felix,” he said, hardly breaking stride as he went to get the door with his good hand.

“Oooh,” Seungmin teased like his friend had been summoned by the principal.

Felix cautiously followed behind. “Is… everything alright?”

“Is everything alright with you?” Minkyu returned as he led the way to the elevator. “You’ve been quiet lately. Yesterday I thought you were going to pass out on your feet.”

Felix let out a low and embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it obvious, but I didn’t sleep well the other night.”

“Got something on your mind?”

Felix sucked a breath in through his teeth, hesitating. “Sort of. It’s petty though, I shouldn’t even be worrying about it.”

Minkyu was about to ask what he meant by that. But when the two of them stepped into the elevator, confusion crossed Felix’s face, only now wondering why they were leaving the third floor.

“Thought I’d treat you to lunch today,” Minkyu supplied before he could ask. He gestured with the arm still in a sling. “As the two people with the worst reflexes.”

Felix jumped to deny the invitation, stuttering all the way without even acknowledging Minkyu’s joke. He cut him off mid-sentence: “Do you want to be transferred, Felix?”

Maybe he’d asked a little forcefully, if the look on Felix’s face was anything to go off.

“That’s not a threat,” he clarified. “I wouldn’t be offended if you did. With the way this case has been going, I’d be surprised if you hadn’t thought about transferring to Narcotics or Violent Crimes or something a little more legitimate.”

The elevator came to a stop. “…Did I do something wrong?” Felix asked. The doors opened again and let in a sliver of sunlight that shined right in Felix’s face. It didn’t make him flinch.

Minkyu crossed the lobby. “I’m saying that if the pressure is getting too much for you, I understand. This city is breathing down our necks and clamoring for results we don’t have. It’s more than you signed up for. So I talked with Captain Ryeo recently, and he has an open spot in his team right now. I can put in a good word for-“

“No, no, no,” he interrupted as they started down the steps outside. “If you think I’ve been quiet because I don’t like this job, it’s not that at all, I actually really love it lately, the others are-“

Felix’s voice hitched. It was all the warning Minkyu needed to turn around to grab his arm and keep him from tripping down the concrete steps. With Felix staring down at him with wide, stunned eyes, now was as good a time as any. “I know Minho told you something,” Minkyu said evenly.

But it was hard to maintain the calm and collected façade for long. “That was impressive and all,” he said with some strain, “but keeping this up is harder than you think, Felix.”

Felix leaned back with a hurried apology, but his face didn’t lose its incredulous look. “What do you mean he told me something?”

“The day of the party,” he said, though it wasn’t what he really meant. He was curious after catching Felix in the stairwell, talking to his ‘hyung’ about something that had happened ‘the week before the party.’ After all, he couldn’t have cared less about what happened between him and Minho that day.

Felix’s face noticeably softened in relief. “Oh, no, he didn’t tell me anything about you. We talked a little because he was upset, but nothing that had to do with you.”

Even though that was as far as Minkyu needed to take that thread, he pulled on it a little more. “So, when the two of you saw me in the main hall, it was your own idea to turn and walk the other way?” he asked, again, not caring one bit.

Felix’s face fell with guilt. “He… might have told me a bit about your pasts. Minkyu, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-“

Minkyu turned and kept walking, quicker than his arm was comfortable with. “You should know I don’t need apologies or forgiveness. If Minho hates me,” he said as flatly as he could. His breath still came shallow with the sudden throb of pain in his left arm. “Fine. I can live with that. What I can’t accept is someone who falls in line for the sake of a paycheck. So I’m asking if you’re serious about this. Would you rather take a different assignment, or are you really willing to stick with this?”

Minkyu had his suspicions. It wasn’t healthy to go through life without them. If he confronted Felix with them directly, he might have had a case for kicking him off the team.

But he didn’t want that.

He wanted to give him the impression he didn’t suspect a thing. He wanted to see where Felix’s double crossing would go.

It didn’t even matter that Minkyu wouldn’t get to hear Felix’s answer—the self-assured look on his face was all the answer Minkyu needed to know how much leverage his officer thought he had. Right as he opened his mouth to reply, their radios let out a screech of feedback and rattled off an address in Gangnam.

-

“Where’s the body?” Changbin asked when they entered the penthouse. Felix had never been in a penthouse. The perfectly-aligned picture frames in the lounge, the blindingly-shiny porcelain dishes in the dining room, the neatly arranged bookshelf in the corner—it didn’t seem possible for a dead body to be anywhere in the suite, let alone in the state dispatch had described it.

“Bedroom,” Minkyu answered, poking his head around a corner and finding a hallway to lead them down. “They’re questioning the cook downstairs, he said he’d already…” He turned another corner and clearly came face to face with the scene in the room. “Set lunch.”

Felix tried to follow him in, but the sight of blood covering all four walls, even the ceiling, rooted him in place and made Seungmin walk right into him. He grabbed Felix’s arms to steady himself—and ended up tightening his hands around them when they spotted the body at the same time.

On the floor in front of them was Son Cheolmu’s lower half; his severed arms laid beside it in a pool of matting blood and organs. It had taken them a moment because it didn’t even look like it could have once been a walking, breathing, living human.

Fingernails dug deeper into Felix’s arms in silent horror as the more experienced ones stepped around them. Chan still seemed to swallow down a retch of disgust as he made an effort to avoid getting too close.

“Time of death?” Minkyu asked the forensics team, his voice as steady as it ever was.

“He was seen by the cleaning staff last night,” one of them answered, not looking away from the blood sample she was taking. “This happened between then and this morning when he was found.”

This happened. What did that even mean? What could have possibly torn a man in half with such a vengeance?

Behind Felix, Seungmin’s breath by his ear was getting more and more shallow.

“It’s alright,” Felix tried to assure him, though he was getting nauseous himself. Just standing in the doorway filled his mouth with the tang of copper, let alone looking at the mangled body itself. “Go sit with the others,” he said as comfortingly as he could anyway. Seungmin took the out and retreated to the living room, where a few others were milling around in case there was anything else to be found.

But there was nothing. They hadn’t found so much as a drop of blood or footprint outside the bedroom. Felix would have chalked that up to taking care not to leave behind incriminating evidence, if it weren’t for the room looking like the site of a massacre. And the curtains were billowing inward, with shards of glass spread out in the floor in front of them. Like something had come in and out through the window. Something with a purpose.

Felix didn’t even realize he’d said his observations out loud until he saw Minkyu—and everyone else—staring at him.

“Willing to stick with this it is,” Minkyu said. Felix swallowed and averted his eyes. It was hard to relish in the fact that Minkyu had gone from briefly suspicious to completely trusting when all the gore in front of him was making him lightheaded. “Got any hunches?” he added.

After Saturday night and his infuriating run-in with Han Jisung, Felix still couldn’t get his mind to stop racing with frustration and unanswered questions.

“One in particular,” he said reluctantly, knowing what the others were thinking. Spiderman could swing in through a closed window and swing right back out without flinching.

Still. Of all the things he felt pretty justified in calling Jisung (a callous show-off, selfish, immature, maybe) gruesome murderer wasn’t one of them.

When they got back to the precinct, the police units were caught up in debate about who could have possibly hunted and killed Son Cheolmu so brutally. Felix had only been half-listening to begin with, but when someone proposed the Yakuza were the ones behind this, he muttered something about the restroom and escaped to the maintenance closet.

Felix had to dial Minho twice before he picked up. “So I’m sorry hyung,” he said after word-vomiting everything he’d just seen. “Because I really did plan on coming over later but there’s no way we’re not doing overtime today, I mean we couldn’t even find the other half of him in his home and the window was shattered from the outside when Son Cheolmu lived on the fortieth floor and I’m getting kind of worried about what smells like mold in here so I’m gonna go, but I promise I’ll find the time to come to your place, okay?”

Felix flinched at the response he got. “That is so fucked up!?” a voice that was decidedly not Minho’s exclaimed.

Who did I just leak confidential police information to.

“How do you have this phone?” he asked as quietly and evenly as he could while his mind screamed at him for being so careless. Then it went quiet when his previous run-ins with that voice slid to the front of his memory.

“Your team can’t think I had anything to do with that, right?” Jisung asked, completely ignoring the question.

Felix suppressed a groan and peeked out the slits in the door. “Maybe a little.” He cut off Jisung’s horrified protests. “I know you didn’t, but listen, can we do this later? My boss already caught me on the phone yesterday morning and he’s not suspicious, but he could have overheard me talking to Minho and I really don’t need to push my luck.”

“What did Minkyu hear you say?” Jisung asked, his voice still colored with shock.

Felix pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Nothing,” he said patiently. “He noticed the door to the stairwell was open and saw me inside, that’s all. I’m hanging up now.”

“Oh. Hang on, the only reason I answered Minho’s phone was because of the caller ID. Why does he have you as-?”

Beep.

Felix unlocked the door and checked he was in the clear one more time. He could go back to that very productive conversation down the hall, or he could see if the AVU office had anything he could work with.

Seeing as the AVU’s case wasn’t running very smoothly lately, Felix didn’t get his hopes up for finding any kind of lead Minho could use against them. He halfheartedly zigzagged between all the monitors to find them dark. Figures. He thought his best bet would probably be in the file room. He’d have to find an excuse to get in there, but once he did…

Felix’s heart stopped when he got to the last computer, Minkyu’s computer. It wasn’t just powered on or logged in. The suspect database was open.

Minkyu had just been here. The shock of realizing he might come back any second to find Felix sneaking away for the second time in two days—it was nothing compared to reading exactly which name was on the screen.

Han Jisung. 22 years old. Lives close to the most frequent sightings of Geomi.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Felix gasped as he shook the mouse awake. It’s not like it was the only name in front of him; compared to the other names on the list sporting criminal charges, it wasn’t even the most notable. But that didn’t stop Felix from dropping the file into the trash folder just to be safe. But he didn’t get the chance to fully clear it from the database before the door on the far side of the room was squeaking open.

He darted over to his desk as silently as he could, though he wasn’t quick enough to be there before he was in Minkyu’s line of vision. He stilled in the doorway. “I thought you were in the restroom.”

“Forgot to take my-“ In his rush to get to his desk and pull open the drawer, Felix banged his knee into the side of his chair. Hard.

“My fff- My medicine,” he winced as he drew out the bottle and shook it around in the air. Neither of them moved for an awkward beat.

Felix popped the lid open. “I thought you were downstairs,” he said after swallowing one dry.

“I was getting sick of the noise,” Minkyu said as he crossed the room to his desk. “I came up to reread some testimonies in case there’s anything I missed.”

“Really?” Felix blurted out before he could think about it because no you did not. But the last thing he needed to let slip was that he’d been snooping around a second ago.

If Minkyu thought his reaction was weird, though, he didn’t show it. He settled into his seat with his usual expression on his face—completely neutral. “Really.” He glanced back up at Felix. “If you want to make yourself useful, you should-“

The door flew open and slammed against the wall. “Oh my God,” Felix huffed after registering that only a frazzled-looking Changbin was standing there and not the Yakuza they’d brought up earlier. “What?”

“Turn on the news,” Changbin demanded.

“The news?” Minkyu repeated. He picked up the remote at his desk. “Here?” he asked when he got to a broadcast about the next director of OmniLife. Changbin nodded, wringing his hands like he was trying to pull his fingers off. “What am I looking-?”

He stood so abruptly his chair careened to the floor, his shocked eyes wider than Felix had ever seen them.

There on the TV, wearing an expensive suit and speaking as clipped and coldly as if he’d lived in Seoul his entire life, was Yang Jeongin.

-

“I didn’t know you could read,” Minho said with amazement.

Han snatched his manhwa collection away from those judgmental eyes and shoved the crate onto a random shelf in Minho’s room. He’d packed up everything of his that could fit in a crate or cardboard box and set down his first stack at Minho’s feet. “You’re hilarious,” he muttered absently, his mind already on the fact that, even though packing had taken the entire morning, it’d been the easy part.

Enhanced strength aside, bringing it all over in multiple trips was going to suck.

Minho started organizing the volumes properly while Han squinted at the other titles on the shelf. “There’s no way you’ve read Frankenstein. Or Pride and Prejudice. Or-“ He wrinkled his nose at the last title. “Wuthering Heights,” he said like it was the name of an old nemesis.

“Caught me,” Minho said with a guilty little smile. “I keep them here to look smarter,” he said as he pointedly filed Han’s manhwas behind the classics. “The only one I could finish was Wuthering Heights.”

Han shuddered. He’d forced himself to read the book he’d randomly picked out to impress his crush and had hated every second of it. To be fair, it was partially on 12-year-old Han for assuming classic literature was the way to a middle schooler’s heart. “Everyone is such a piece of shit in that,” he said at the same time as Minho’s face lit up.

“Right?? They’re awful, I loved it.”

“Remind me not to get book recommendations from you,” Han said before he was getting grabbed by the wrists.

“He’s more myself than I am,” Minho quoted with sudden drama in his voice. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

Han cringed and grabbed at his head. “Stop, stop, I’m getting flashbacks.”

“My love for Heathcliff resembles the rocks beneath! A source of little visible pleasure, but,” he said as he grabbed Han by the shoulders. “Necessary,” he whispered as if he was auditioning for the part.

Han’s irritation was very real. But so was the laugh that bubbled up at the dramatics of it all. “Did you memorize the who-?”

Minho broke away. He put a weary hand to his forehead as he rattled off the monologue that had made Han want to throw the book at the wall. He hadn’t, because it was a library copy, but the sentiment had been there. “Hannie, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind, not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

He stopped so anticlimactically, Han gestured for him to at least finish.

“So, it’s… something, something,” he muttered. He went back to organizing his shelves. “Go get your stuff.”

Han laughed at how quickly Minho had run out of steam. “Yes, chef,” he said in his deepest voice, and he took off.

On his return trip to the (technically-still-his-but-not-really) apartment, the lightness on Han’s chest was quickly replaced with a weight of worry.

He’d told Minho about the call with Felix earlier. Or, more like he’d mentioned Felix is going to be stuck at work, by the way, and then asked Minho if he wanted to see a very specific double-feature with him that weekend to avoid having to elaborate. In reality, Han hadn’t told him… most of what they’d talked about. He definitely didn’t bring up that the head Viscorp scientist had been found mutilated in his own home with weird ridges where his two halves used to connect, or that Minkyu and the police wanted to pin that crime on him.

Han was so busy stewing in his own thoughts, wondering just what it was he was missing here, that he almost walked headfirst into the man who’d appeared on the sidewalk out of nowhere.

Instead, he listened to his senses and quickly swiveled his shoulders to keep from crashing into him.

So it was odd that the man walked into him anyway.

“Are you okay?” Han cautiously asked the man, his whole body filling with alarm. He hadn’t hit him with nearly enough force to knock him to the ground. The man, well-dressed in slacks and a suit jacket, didn’t respond. He didn’t even raise his head.

Screw this.

Han dropped to a knee and yanked the man’s collar, forcing his head up to look at him.

Han isn’t sure what he expected. But out of all things, it definitely wasn’t Jeongin’s face-splitting smile greeting him, or the flat way he said, “Peachy, Spiderman.”

Jeongin yanked him onto his feet and pushed him into the alley he’d come out of so hard, the back of Han’s head thudded against the wall. It didn’t matter Han was so stunned he couldn’t form a coherent thought. He didn’t need to think to pull his fist free from Jeongin’s grip and swing it into his face.

His head wrenched to the side in the blink of an eye. But to Han’s chagrin, he was still smiling, somehow even wider than before.

Jeongin felt his lip for the blood beading there. “Still spectacular,” he said breathily, immediately flipping every switch in Han’s system from fear to red.

He shoved Jeongin at the wall, making his skull bounce off the wall the same way his did. “Spectacular?” he hissed, his anger so sharp it had to scratch its way up his vocal cords. “You have the gall to act like we’re friends after you killed all those people?” He grabbed his collar again, his white-knuckled grip making the fabric wrinkle and tear under it. “After you made me your scapegoat?”

Jeongin had the fucking nerve to laugh. Revoltingly, he flicked his tongue over the weeping wound on his lip to clean it. “Those aren’t the questions I’d be asking if I were you, Peter.” He tipped his head close. “Or should I say… Han Jisung?”

Han’s nails tore through more fabric with his effort to not give the little creep the black eye he deserved. “How did you find me? How do you know me?”

He followed Jeongin’s predatory eyes down to the hands gripping his collar. “Take an educated guess.”

Han pulled away so quickly he stumbled. Oh God. He flipped his palms up to show his red and blue webshooters, and stared at them in horror. What were the two things he took with him everywhere he went?

“Ding ding ding! Trackers. When we fixed up your suit and your gear, ‘for free.’ You should know this by now, but nothing ever comes for-“

Han ripped the webshooters off his wrists and stomped them until they were reduced to useless pieces, watching as fluid exploded and immediately solidified on contact with the air. When there was nothing but a mess of plastic polymer and congealed webs on the ground, Han huffed a deep breath so it wouldn’t be Jeongin’s head next.

There was a moment of blessed silence, save for Han’s breathing. Then Jeongin had to open his mouth again: “That was a waste. A pair of tweezers could have done the job.”

Han whirled around. “What the fuck do you want with me?” he snapped. “You made me an outcast, congrats. I didn’t need your help for that. But you had your fun. Sucks that you had to botch it and get your friend killed along the way.”

Jeongin’s cheek was already starting to bruise an ugly purple. It made it even more infuriating when he casually bounced his eyebrows up and down and said calmly, “Seems we’re more alike than you’d think.”

Han didn’t care anymore. He was going to let out all the anger that had been bubbling up over the past minute, over the past month, over his entire life and angled a punch straight at Jeongin’s nose.

He stumbled forward when Jeongin caught his arm and pulled it across Han’s chest. “Of all the parts you play,” Jeongin said, looking him in the face with an uncannily dull expression. “I like righteous anger the least.”

“I don’t play parts,” Han seethed. “I’m not a psychopath like you.”

“Oh, don’t say that. I know what you are after all. Sure, Spiderman. But a performer. An actor. An entertainer. I’m sure you could’ve made it big in the music industry,” he said with a patronizing little laugh. “I wouldn’t have found out my spider bit you if you hadn’t publicly broadcast it, after all. So I don’t even have to ask you to do what I want you to do.” He finally let go of Han with a push. “You’re going to do it either way. Here,” he said as he pushed his fingers into Han’s palm. “I don’t think you’ve heard the news.”

Han glanced down at the card he’d slipped him, getting a weird feeling he’d lived this moment before. He half-expected the business card to read Hyunjin’s name and number.

But when he flipped it over, it was Jeongin’s name, number, and shiny new title.

Shit.

By the time he looked back up, Jeongin wasn’t in the alley anymore. Han darted back onto the sidewalk, looking left and right, running back the way he’d come and around the corner.

But there was no sign of OmniLife’s director anywhere.

Han had never run faster in his life.

“Why!?” Minho screamed when he burst into his apartment without warning.

“So you know how I packed all my stuff to bring it here?” Han gasped, half-winded.

“Yes!?” he yelled, eyes still wide with surprise.

“You know how it took so long I’ve lost years off my lifespan?”

“Yeah!?”

Han slumped against the wall. “The good news is its worth hiring a moving company now.”

“What the hell is the bad news? Is it any worse than what I found out?”

Han screwed his eyes shut. “God I hope not. The bad news is we have to do it all over again because we’re in danger if we stay here.”

“Wh-!? Okay, explain in a minute,” he said as he pulled out his phone. “I actually don’t know which is worse. I don’t even know what this means, but it can’t be good.” He flipped it around to show a headline, announcing exactly what Han had just found out about the state of OmniLife’s leadership.

Han let out an exhausted groan and let his head thud on the wall. “I’m going to kill Felix.”

“…For jinx-?”

“For jinxing it!”

Chapter Text

With one name running circles in Minkyu’s mind, it became impossible for him to fall asleep.

Hours ago, his core four officers had crowded around his desk in a way that would have bothered him in any other situation. But Jeongin showing up on TV after weeks of going M.I.A., speaking and acting as flatly as if he’d been groomed to take over a company his whole life, was not any other situation. That was to say nothing of the fact that of all the companies out there, it had to be OmniLife, the one that, for whatever reason, just kept coming up in the center of this whole mess.

“I don’t understand,” Seungmin said over Minkyu’s shoulder. “There’s nothing?”

“Not nothing,” he replied flatly, indicating the information they had on file for Yang Jeongin.

Changbin scoffed, though it was closer to a noise of disbelief than anything else. “It says he lived with his grandparents in Busan until he was 19 and then moved to Seoul. That is nothing. It doesn’t tell us why he’s-“ He put a frustrated hand out and shook it around, like he was trying to conjure the words from thin air.

Chan’s voice sounded the furthest away. “Clearly not who he said he was?”

“But what does that even mean?” Seungmin said desperately. “Is this bad for us? Or for the case?”

As the four of them drifted away from his desk, Minkyu tuned out the conversation trying to make sense of the news, all the guesses and the assumptions. It was pointless. He knew exactly what to make of the turn of events. Whatever the nitty-gritty details behind this were, it had to be another betrayal.

A quiet, annoyingly familiar voice told him that was the pessimist in him, always assuming the worst for no good reason. But he did have a reason. A few at that moment, actually. In general, preparing for the worst meant he would never be caught off guard.

In this case, Minkyu figured heirs to corporate thrones never hid their identities for innocent reasons.

He looked up at the others. Chan had opted out of Changbin and Seungmin’s back and forth by then to stand quietly and blank-faced in the corner. The pair were currently wondering if it was possible Jeongin inherited the company after the sudden death of a relative he might have had no idea he had in common with Hyunjin. That sounded… as strangely convoluted as a plotline out of a drama.

There was one face Minkyu was most curious about. He glanced over at Felix, who looked to be as stunned as any of them. But along with eyes darting around the room like he was trying to make sense of things, Minkyu could have sworn there was also the ghost of a grimace wrinkling his face.

Almost like he knew something he wasn’t letting on.

Before the sun could assert its opinion, Minkyu sat up in bed and reached for a jacket that didn’t say police across the back.

Despite the fact the whole situation with Jeongin just showed another glaring blind spot he’d left wide open, and despite the fact Violent Crimes still hadn’t been able to come up with a single lead on the Son Cheolmu case, it wasn’t any of those names haunting his attempts at sleep.

Minkyu marched through the halls of the precinct without slowing down to greet any of the caffeine-addled officers. He doesn’t know what made him check all his database folders right before heading home the previous night. All he knew was that, sitting at the very top of the list of ruled-out suspects, there was a suspect name he hadn’t discarded himself.

Minkyu was the only one on the third floor, let alone the AVU office. He still made an effort to not grit his teeth as he memorized the address that went with the name and pulled the plug on the computer.

At a more reasonable time in the morning, Han Jisung was trying to order breakfast before he had to go to work. Except the place was so crowded with noise and people—a group of high schoolers skipping class in the corner, a pair of chatty firefighters hanging up their gear on the chairs behind him—he was struggling to remember what Minho wanted. “And did you say wheat or-?”

“Rye,” he enunciated into the phone.

“White?”

Minho stifled a sigh. In this part of town, even a Tuesday morning at the bank was so busy, he marveled that the city didn’t just explode into the river with its nervous energy. At least he wasn’t Han trying to speak over the bustle of the coffee shop down the street. “I’ll just text you,” he said, going to hang up the call.

“Too late,” Han said bluntly before breaking into his sweetest, politest customer voice.

Minho moved up the line when the person at the front had finally been taken care of. Only… seven more to go before he could take out the check that would let them move into the new apartment.

When Han finished ordering, Minho’s voice was flatter than ever. “That could not have been further from what I wanted.”

“I crack under pressure,” he muttered before hanging up.

Minho looked at his phone in disbelief. “Wow,” he huffed, stuffing it in his pocket. His mind probably would have gone to when Han would blatantly lie to his face, or the time he took on an actual monster, or basically anytime he definitely did not crack under pressure as Spiderman.

But the CLANG at the front entrance brought his train of thought to a screeching halt.

Minho whipped his head up at the figure, backlit by the light through the rotating glass doors, and squinted incredulously. It was someone in some sort of full-body suit and two heavy-looking gauntlets around the forearms—a silhouette that could not have screamed bad guy any louder.

But even as he stared at the security guard lying unconscious at the figure’s feet, Minho couldn’t get his feet to follow anyone making a break for it to the far end of the bank, or to the restrooms, or to try to get behind the figure to the entrance. He stayed rooted in place as people swarmed around him and left him standing out in the open by himself. As the figure slowly walked up to a petrified teller, the man’s eyes came into view from behind the dark yellow visor.

Minho was surprised they weren’t the hard, cruel things he expected. But before he could parse the man’s strange expression, they ended up locking eyes. The man lifted one of his buzzing gauntlets and aimed right at him.

Just down the street, Minkyu was closing in on his target. He’d gone to Han Jisung’s home, but the only person he’d caught was his landlord, who told him the tenant at unit 325 had taken off after getting his eviction notice without telling anyone where he was going. Minkyu almost found it strange how the man kept giving a different name every time he mentioned the tenant. But then the man asked if ‘Officer Ki Myungdae’ would like to see the security footage from inside and outside the building, and ‘Myungdae’ realized the man was just old.

So Minkyu followed as much of the CCTV trail as he could, and even though he wasn’t able to figure out where Han Jisung had been spending the last few nights, it didn’t matter.

Because, through the window of the coffee shop where the line went through the front door, Minkyu could see him hovering by the counter.

Felix had just caught the bus to make it to work when his phone started ringing. “Minho-hyung?” he answered, confused. He never called this early. “Is something wr-?”

“There’s a fucking power ranger trying to rob the Kookmin downtown!” Minho blurted out.

Felix shot upright in his seat. “What? Are you alright!?” he exclaimed, not caring about the stares from the other passengers when he’d never heard Minho so panicked.

“No! I almost got electrocuted! We need help over here!”

Felix looked wildly out the windows of the moving vehicle. “I’m half an hour away from there! And I mean I could force the driver to stop but the other passengers are already annoyed with me as it is right now so-“

“Honestly, I’m not sure what I expected you to do, sor- Sorry,” he said in a sudden hush.

“Hyung?”

“I’m calling someone who can help,” he whispered for reasons Felix did not have time to overthink.

“Please call the police,” Felix agreed, frantically nodding as Minho hung up. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath, scrolling as fast as he could to one of his top contacts and missing the call button a few times in his haste.

“Moshi moshi,” Han greeted when he picked up Minho’s call, still waiting on their food.

“Big scary guy in an energy suit robbing the bank,” he said right out the gate, getting a laugh out of Han. “If I die because you thought I was joking, I’m taking you with me.”

“Wait.” Han’s grip tightened around his phone. “Wait, what?”

“Listen to me. I’m hiding in the bathroom, things are eerily quiet now that he’s stopped blasting things, and, Han, if I thought there was literally any other way I wouldn’t be asking this, but I think this might be a job for our friend.”

In an instant, Minho’s words threw some switch Han didn’t even know he had inside him. “Do not move,” he said seriously, going over his limited options when he had no suit and no webshooters and he was beginning to worry that the guy he’d been keeping in the corner of his eye who wasn’t following the line outside was giving him the side-eye for something besides his devastatingly good looks. If he’d been blurting out his thoughts aloud, now would have been the time to take in a huge gulp of air.

Han darted his eyes over the people in the shop, over the high schoolers, the firefighters, the new couple who were talking way too-

The firefighters. Han checked he wasn’t being watched and ducked as unsuspiciously as was possible in a public setting.

“Fill it,” the man in the mechanical suit said. His unnaturally amplified voice reverberated in heads and chests; the sound of his slow, clanking steps traveled the entire building before coming back to him. He shoved the sackcloth bag at the teller. Even with his gauntlet pointed at her face, she stood there frozen in fear. He blasted the wall beside her head to get her to move, shattering the window between them so thoroughly the glass turned to dust. “Fill it,” he said again, not any more forcefully. She grabbed the bag and darted to the back. Now that the initial panic was over, no one dared to move. No one so much as dared to breathe while Shin Hamin waited for the woman to come back.

Except for one person.

He clenched his fist and set off a beam of energy at the man making a break for the exit, sending him skidding along the floor before he could even cry out.

From behind his yellow-tinted visor, Shin Hamin shifted his gaze around at all the people between him and the exit. “Anyone else feeling lucky?”

Something struck the back of his legs hard and dropped him to his knees. When he swiveled his head to see who had the nerve, he barely got a glimpse of a man in a medical mask, firefighter’s jacket and helmet before his vision flashed white.

“Nope, but that’s never stopped me,” Han said in that confident, low tone he hadn’t used in over a month. It was a little surprising how easy that voice was to slip back into.

The man swung out in a blind rage and flung him into the opposite wall. So Han figured the voice was going to be the only easy part about this.

The only thing that could make this worse was if he was immediately recognized as Spiderman, your friendly neighborhood domestic terrorist and managed to send the crowd into a panic all over again.

Of course, someone had to yell out, “It’s that murderer!”

At least he knew the Spidey voice was still on point.

“That was a misunderstanding.” He crawled his way up the wall, straining to speak around the sizzling sensation in his chest where he’d been hit. “A really bad misunderstanding.” His assurance had no effect on the doubly terrified clamor down below. People tripped over themselves as they ran for the exit, half-scaring Han into thinking they might start trampling each other down there. Before he could think of a solution, or even so much as blink, the man blasted the two pillars beside the doors and blocked off the exit.

Han frantically waved for the man’s attention. “Hey, hey, hey, this is our waltz, okay!?” he called. But then his movements managed to reignite sparks in his chest that made him double over in alarm. “Ow. I know there’s a lot of electricity going on between us right now, but I really don’t think that’s what’s happening to my heart right now.”

The man held up his arms, walking so slowly and menacingly Han’s closest point of comparison was Darth Vader. God, if there was one thing that could tempt him to the dark side, it was the prospect of never having to run again.

“I’m talking to you, big guy,” Han said, starting to get a little irritated. “What the hell did you hit me with?”

“Concentrated, electric energy,” he said vaguely, before firing off three beams one after the other like he’d asked for a demonstration.

Han dodged, getting higher and higher up the wall. “Yeah, I gathered, Mr. Electric.”

“Mr…” He actually lowered his arms for a moment. “What?”

“Don’t like the name? It’s from my favorite movie,” Han said as he looked for his angle here. “How about Sparkles?”

PEW. Han flipped out of the way of the blast and landed next to a fancy ceiling fixture in the shape of the earth. Now that gave him an idea.

“Okay, okay, I get it, that’s humiliating,” Han conceded. “Lightning Hands it is.”

BLAM BLAM BLAM. When he leapt onto the hanging globe it swung under the sudden weight.

Han clapped his hands together. “I got it!” He put them out in front of him and pulled them apart, like an interior designer envisioning a new way for his clients to blow their budget. “The Shocker,” he said wistfully. “Shocker if you’re in a hurry.”

Pin-drop silence.

“Wait.” Han looked down, genuinely surprised he wasn’t getting any vengeful blasts to the face. “Wait, you actually like that one?”

That wasn’t part of the plan.

“Well,” Han chuckled. “I guess you could say that’s a real shocke-“

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG.

Han climbed up the chain suspending the globe and dodged the onslaught of shots—which gave him just enough power to dislodge the globe from the chain and kick it at Sparkles.

He raised his arm but he wasn’t fast enough to blast the globe before it ended up making a dent in the previously pristine tile floor where it landed, taking him down with it.

Han did not wait around to see if he got lucky. As soon as he jumped to the floor and started smashing windows for alternate exits, the bystanders joined in. Still yelling profanities and demanding he show them his face, of course. But he didn’t have time for any of that. When most of the glass was out of the way, Han ran back, checking every nook and cranny in the building for Minho. But for as many people he found hiding behind pillars and counters and gave the go-ahead to, he couldn’t find Minho anywhere.

He was about to duck into the restroom, which he vaguely remembered Minho mentioning earlier now that he thought about it, when the unmistakable buzz of electricity snaked its way through the air towards him and coiled around his fingers, tensing them to act.

In the second it took him to turn around, Shocker had already punched the globe off of him with seismic force and cratered it into the ceiling. In the fraction of a second it took Han’s jaw to drop, Shocker put his fists together and aimed a huge blast right at him.

Han sprung back and narrowly avoided catching the beam with his face. “God,” he breathed as he blinked away the stars in his vision. “That is so impressive.” He climbed his way back up the wall and made sure to pester Shocker with questions all the way: “How did you put that gear together? Do you have a lab? Are you a scorned inventor? Or maybe a mad scientist with too much funding? A bit of both?” He landed on another metal decoration and swung himself to hang upside down from it. He let his arms, shirt and jacket flop over his head as he waited for the weapons to reload, and that’s when he gasped. “Are you one of my professors?”

“You talk too much,” he snarled.

“Ooh, definitely one of my professors.” Han anticipated the moment his nerves would light up again and he could try the same trick as before.

When the jolt didn’t come, he sat up abruptly and shoved his shirt out of the way. Oops. Too cocky. Han landed behind the tellers’ counter and meant to find his way to the vault.

Except Shocker came barreling out from that exact place with barely any reward for all his trouble in the limp bag. So he decided to take that out on Han.

He shoved Han into the wall with the part of his arm that wasn’t electrically charged so hard he knocked the wind out of him. By the time he could see straight again, the only thing to look at was the crackling gauntlet in front of him, a hairsbreadth away from directly shocking his heart.

“Do you want to find out if you’re as invincible as he says you are?” Shocker said, his gratingly loud voice threatening to knock coherent thought from Han’s head. This close together, he had to tip his head up all the way up to meet the eyes of the man who towered over him. “No more quick quips, huh?”

Han’s heart rabbited around his ribcage. He couldn’t move. He could hardly breathe. He was pinned down.

“There’s no need for this, then.” Han swiveled his face away, but there was no way to stop him from tearing the flimsy mask from the loops around his ears.

Han wanted to screw his eyes shut and hope the nightmare would be over when he opened them again. But a louder, more stubborn part of him screamed that he was better than this, just think!

“Oh,” he breathed. He interrupted whatever Shocker had started saying (probably the good old classic any last words?) and asked, “What did you just say?”

“…There’s no need for-“

When Han looked up, he found a completely different look in the man’s eyes, like he’d been caught off-guard. Good. He pressed a finger into the mechanical suit’s chest. “You don’t know how this thing even works, do you?”

Shocker looked down at the spot where he’d pushed and then back up at Han as if he’d completely lost his mind. Which he might have. But that was when Han did his best work.

“Can you even turn the amplification off yourself? No, no, don’t take off the helmet, turn off the voice modifier. I’ll even give you points for just finding the microphone.” Han let out a laugh that belonged to a person with much more power than he had in that moment. “Someone put you up to this, didn’t he?”

“I-I-“ The stammering sounded ridiculous at this volume. “Of course not.”

“What are you still doing here?” he said, pushing at his chest again and making the man stumble back. “That little shit is the last person you would ever want to go to prison for!”

The man’s eyes took on that worried, doubting look again. Han was so full-blown irritated he shoved the man even harder. “Go before he ends up ruining someone else’s life!” he exclaimed.

He stood there hesitating for too long. The suit started popping and crackling in a way it hadn’t before and Shocker swiveled around at something behind him and didn’t hesitate to aim at whatever had just hit him.

Which just so happened to be Minho with a fucking taser gun. Because of course.

Han tackled Shocker to the floor before he could hit Minho with the energy blast, directing it up into the ceiling instead. “If you hurt him, it’s not Jeongin you’ll have to be worried about,” Han threatened through gritted teeth, wrestling to pin Shocker down and get the gauntlets off him as quickly as possible. But the phantom sensation of falling made him look up at Minho. More specifically, at the spot above where Minho stood.

That globe was about to fall out of its place in the ceiling.

Shocker caught Han in the abdomen with one of those dense hunks of metal and knocked him off of him. Minho immediately started reloading and Han wanted to scream to forget about him and just move, but he couldn’t catch his breath quickly enough.

It didn’t matter. From behind the tellers’ counter, he could see the only other person he knew who was as stubbornly persistent as Minho clambering in through a window, broken arm and all. Minkyu saw the globe and ran for it.

He yelled for Minho to go! move it! but the idiot didn’t budge, and with only one way to get him to move Minkyu ignored his threats to turn the stun gun on him if he didn’t stop. He slammed into his brother and sent him sprawling onto the floor, far enough away to avoid getting crushed—at the expense of his own life.

Shocker had become so distracted by the breakneck drama playing out in front of him, Han got close enough to yank up one of his gauntlets and put a knee to his ribs, hoping that was enough to make the beam fire.

His question was answered when the metal globe exploded in the air above Minkyu and made him hit the floor to avoid the pieces of debris—probably shaken but at least alive.

Great. Next order of business. Han pulled the gauntlet the rest of the way off and flung it as far as he could. He didn’t find as much resistance as he’d expected.

“Believe me,” he said, fighting a much easier battle than a minute ago to get the other gauntlet off. “I wanted to give you a second chance.” He yanked it off and threw it across the building, just as police were finally getting through the fallen pillars in front of the entrance.

“Minkyu, Jesus Christ, are you okay!?” Detective Sun exclaimed, helping Minkyu to his feet. “What are you doing here alone?”

“Don’t let him get away,” he tried his best to say even with the world spinning and then snapping back in place every other second.

“Of course, son,” Captain Noe said as he signaled to the officers arresting the man in the metallic suit.

“Not- Not-“ Minkyu stumbled back. “Geomi’s here.”

An officer Minkyu had never met before was very comfortable voicing his disbelief. “Wh- What? Who cares about that, you almost died just now!”

“Check behind the counter,” he breathed, too dazed to be as forceful as he wanted about it. He’d seen him, even if it was more of a blur than a glimpse of an actual face.

Captain Noe hardly glanced up before replying. “If he was there, he’s gone now. Come on, Minkyu, you need to see a-“

Minho, without any warning, stormed up to Minkyu and forced him to swivel around. “Why did you do that, you dumbass!?”

Minkyu was still not all there yet. He looked up at the others for help, but they’d managed to disappear as quickly as Minho had appeared. “Where did…” He refocused. “You mean why did I save your life?”

“Why the fuck didn’t you throw us out of the way? You held back!”

“I-I don’t-“ Had Minkyu hit his head without realizing it? Again? “What?”

“You could have thrown us both out of the way if you wanted to. But at the last second, you held back!” he exclaimed, punctuating the words with harsh jabs to the chest.

“Oh. Yeah. I made sure I wouldn’t land on you. If I’d done that, you might not have gotten away.”

“So you did do it on purpose,” he said, so accusatorily Minkyu was almost starting to wonder if he did do something wrong in his foggy state of awareness.

An icy voice neither of them expected cut in. “Minho-ssi.”

They both turned to Changbin, who, like Minho, had come out of absolutely nowhere.

“Minkyu just saved your life,” he said with a glare to match his tone. “I know you get confused between who the good guys and the bad guys are here, but he’s not the one you should be mad at.”

Minho’s face fell at Changbin’s harsh words. But he wasn’t upset at what Minkyu thought he was. “Wait. No, you can’t really think Spiderman-?”

The sergeant turned away, scoffing exactly the same way as the other day. “Seriously? Is what Seungmin told us true? Are you actually friends with Spiderman? The one who almost got us all killed?” he asked, every question getting more and more heated. “And I’m not even talking about what just happened to the two of you, you nearly got crushed!”

Against his better judgment, Minkyu stepped in between the two of them. “And today that Spider might’ve saved my life, so what do you make of that?” he said, even as he thought he really must have hit his head to admit that out loud. It was just that if there was one thing he hated more than Minho’s unnecessary attitude at everything and everyone, everywhere… it was watching his face crumple into uncertainty for the first time.

Minho, after staring at him like he was concerned for his health, opened his mouth to say something.

“I was scared,” Minkyu said before he could, fixating on the sign to the restroom instead of Minho’s now catatonic face. “So I didn’t think things through as much I should have. I’m sorry I scared you too.”

If it was a mistake to be open with anyone, let alone the person who was staunchly on the opposite side of all this, Minkyu didn’t want to think about it. For once, maybe he could make the wrong move and not feel like the sky would come crashing down on him for it.

But his brain kicked back into high gear when he spotted someone coming out of the restroom, shaking with nervous jitters all over. His confusion when he realized, no, his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, that was Han Jisung who might have been the vigilante they’d been hunting for months except it couldn’t be because he looked one stiff breeze away from collapsing on the spot with fear—it was nothing compared to when Minho gasped Yeongun-hyung and ran over to him as anxiously as if they’d known each other for years.

Changbin cleared his throat and pivoted on his heel. “You should probably stop gawking.”

Han threw his arms around Minho and buried his face in his neck. “Are you serious?” he whispered.

“I know,” Minho said aloud.

“The little shit that stole our hard work?”

“Shh, sh, sh, I know, hyung,” he said like he was comforting a complete nervous wreck.

“Well, I could get used to a little respect, my dongsaengie.”

Minho shifted to a whisper too. “Over my dead body. Are they still there?”

Han peeked up and over Minho’s shoulder as much as he dared. “Your brother’s brain is leaking out of his ears, yes. Oh, no, he’s following Changbin now. Oh, now they’re looking over here again. Okay, they’re walking. Hey, what are the chances Changbin remembers my name?”

“If he doesn’t see your face, none. Do you think you can cry on command?”

Minkyu trailed after. “Where are the others?”

“I don’t know,” Changbin said. “I’m only here because Felix called me. Said he wanted me to make sure ‘a friend’ was okay, I didn’t know that meant him.”

When Minkyu froze, Changbin also stopped. “Felix wanted you to make sure Minho was okay?”

“I know,” he said, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “Besides this and the other day, I don’t think I’ve ever been on a team with so many… surprises.”

On one hand, Minkyu felt a little satisfied to be proven right. On the other, he didn’t know what he was going to do once Felix and Minho’s relationship got out in the open.

“I know how we both feel about surprises, sergeant. I also know we’re both hypocrites.”

Changbin rubbed his ear to bring back the hearing he thought he’d lost. “…Excuse me?”

Han could not cry on command. So it was the thin, high window in the restroom instead.

“Come on!” he called to an extremely reluctant Minho. “I’ll catch you, it’s not even that far down!”

“Easy for you to say,” he said breathily, micro-adjusting his position like it would make a difference. “Give me a minute, okay?

Han had given him five of those and he was still standing in the back alley behind the bank. “You seriously think I’m gonna drop you,” he huffed. “Fine.”

Minho warily watched him approach the wall. “…Why are you climbing back up here? Han. Han, I’m fine. I’m serious, I just need a minute. Wait, wait, hang on, WAI-“

He was never letting Minho live down the scream he let out when he pulled him out of the windowsill. Mocking him could come later, though, after the threat of having his identity exposed and getting arrested had passed.

Who was he kidding, Han was laughing before they could even hit the ground.

As Minho tried to catch his breath, he balled his hand into a fist and made as if to punch him in the arm. Repeatedly. “I still do boxing.”

“And I have superpowers. Try me," Han invited with a huge grin. "I won’t feel a…”

Han was no longer grinning.

“How… How did you do that.”

-

There’s not a single wood panel in the abandoned hotel that doesn’t creak.

At least that’s what it seems like to Hyunjin. So he’s stopped pacing around and taken a seat in a dusty armchair beside the elaborate staircase, where he has a view of every entrance into the lobby while he waits.

Even so, footsteps behind him manage to catch him off-guard.

“So?” Jeongin asks, his shoes torturing the screeching floorboards as he rounds Hyunjin.

He leans back into the old cushioning. The sudden pressure makes it cough up flecks of dust into the air, and they spiral and dance in the ray of light that shines in between the two of them. He watches them as he sighs. “Shin Hamin got caught.”

Jeongin looks so pleased Hyunjin almost thinks he’ll start hopping in place. But he just broadens already optimistic smile and laughs. “Good. I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with him if he brought the money back.

As much as Hyunjin watches for it, dismay doesn’t cross that face for a moment. “Meaning all the gear is in the police’s possession.” The gear I worked so hard on, he wants to add.

“Aw, don’t look so sad,” Jeongin says, pulling a frown that could not have been anywhere close to the look on Hyunjin’s face. “You’ll make me cry. It was always meant to be an investment.”

Hyunjin rolls his eyes. He’s about to tell him he never mentioned that part of the plan, but then Jeongin switches subjects suddenly. “By the way… How are your migraines?”

Hyunjin sits up. He’s never had migraines. Was this some lie he spun weeks ago and forgot all about?

Jeongin sends the dust into another frenzy when he tilts his head. “Is it not that? Well, I never asked because you get all moody whenever it happens.”

“Define ‘moody.’”

“Hyunjinnie,” he says without missing a beat. Of course. “But, really, ever since me and that cop staked out your house that one night, you’ve been passing out on me. Are you alright?”

Oh. Hyunjin thinks he knows what he’s talking about. “I… I don’t think I do that,” he says, and then cringes at how high-pitched and suspicious that sounded.

Jeongin stands there and stares so long Hyunjin almost thinks he’s been made. But then he blinks, and says, “It was really creepy the first time it happened, you know.”

“The first time…” Hyunjin could never follow Jeongin’s sudden shifts. “What?”

“When I found you unconscious that night. I didn’t know if you could even hear me. I almost ruined everything by calling the others, but I was just too…” Jeongin cuts himself off and pastes on a smile. Jeongin never cuts himself off. “It’s a good thing you woke up before they arrived.” He shrugs. “The CPR training they made me take ended up working out.”

Before he can help it, Hyunjin snorts.

“What?” Jeongin says defensively.

“Your version of CPR brought me closer to death than the migraine did.”

“It saved your life!” Jeongin shoots back.

“I couldn’t breathe properly for a week,” Hyunjin grimaced.

Jeongin scoffs. “Next time I’ll just leave you to die.”

“My odds might be better if you do,” Hyunjin sighs. After a beat, he looks up and laughs at what he sees. With his mouth agape, his hands balled in his pockets and his shoulders up to his ears in outrage, Jeongin actually looks his age for once.

“I can replace you whenever I want,” he finally responds.

“Oh?” Hyunjin says with the same note of humor from before, even though Jeongin’s words just made his stomach drop out from under him.

“Sure, there’s Jinhyun from Accounting, Hwangjin from Marketing…”

Hyunjin narrows his eyes suspiciously.

“Just kidding!” Jeongin chimes. “You’ve been stuck with me this long, I’m not letting you go that easily.”

Jeongin doesn’t point out when Hyunjin’s hollow laugh comes out a little too late to be natural. He’s suddenly launching into the next stage of their plan, but Hyunjin can only get himself to half-listen. His mind is on his own plans, how sloppy he was to begin with, and how he’d be cleaner from here on out. Because being disposable would be one thing, but Hyunjin really, really does not want to be indispensable to Yang Jeongin.

Chapter Text

Patches of hair covered the tiles and black nail polish stained every surface Han’s fingertips brushed against—and they still weren’t done destroying Minho’s bathroom.

Minho methodically mixed the contents of the bowl in his hand with a brush, and sensed the wary look sent his way. “I told you, Han, you need to look as different as possible from the guy who just took down Shocker. Didn’t they teach you this at crime school?”

“Sure, but…” Han copied Minho, holding up an invisible bowl and stirring with his hand in a fist. “You look like an evil wizard at his cauldron.” Minho shot a deadpan look that made Han pretend to shudder. “That doesn’t help your case at all.”

He tapped the excess paint off the brush and went over to where Han sat perched on the edge of the bathtub… who flinched back when he went to actually apply the dye to his hair. “This isn’t your first time doing this, right?”

When the dye was inches from Han’s hair and the towel was already around his neck, it was a little late to be asking that question.

“Of course not, just hold still,” Minho chastised. “Trust me, I’ve done this a million times.”

He had done this exactly once at a house party for a friend who’d been even drunker than him. But he didn’t remember it turning out horribly.

He also couldn’t remember how it turned out, but that was beside the point.

Han grimaced as Minho applied the dye to his hair, but at least he wasn’t recoiling away again. “It’s cold.”

“It’ll warm up.”

“It’s slimy.”

“Sorry about that.”

After a minute, Han took in a breath so deep, Minho almost stopped to ask if the texture was bothering him that much. “Thanks, by the way.”

He really did stop this time to glance at the paints and products lying around his bathroom. “It’s… fine, all this stuff only cost me-“

“Not for the flash makeover,” Han said with a small laugh. “For how you covered for me back there.”

“Oh.” Minho went back to brushing. “You don’t have to thank me for that.” He was about to mention it wasn’t hard to grab the taser gun, with the (thankfully still alive but unconscious) security guard just lying there. And when he knew Han would have done the same and more for him, what else did he expect Minho to do, sit back and watch Shocker turn him into bug splatter on the wall?

“Aww, of course I do,” Han cooed while simultaneously cringing at the texture in a weird combination of facial expressions. “All that yelling at Minkyu for holding back was so convincing, it bought me some time to slip away and slip back.”

When Minho’s brain cells abruptly turned into spinning buffering logos, Han took his silence for modest embarrassment. “Quick thinking, plus you sounded so cool!” he beamed and clapped his hands together to really layer on the starry-eyed admiration.

…That was not why Minho had said any of that to his brother (in fact if he didn’t force that image of Minkyu coming this close to dying just to save him out of his mind, he’s sure it would have kept him up for weeks).

He tried to come up with a response that wasn’t an uncomfortably soul-baring To be honest, the anger was a front, but not for your sake. For how much he actually scared me, because I didn’t want to admit to anyone that a part of me still cares despite everything that’s happened but also wasn’t a braindead Well uhhhh…

“Thank you,” he settled on, hoping he hadn’t missed a beat.

A moment of comfortable silence fell where he got close to covering everything—when Han just had to break it.

“Oh… By the way,” he said with a tone that told Minho he wouldn’t like whatever it was he had to say. “I forgot to bring this up, but-”

“Then it must not have been important,” he said as he hastily wrapped up the job, knowing full well that wasn’t how Han’s memory worked. For being the smartest person Minho had ever known, he could forget things as crucial as what month it was. “I’m done. We’ll rinse it in an hour.”

Han’s eyes popped out of their sockets. “An hour? You told me this wouldn’t take long, I have work at 11!”

Minho stuck the gloves that protected his hands from getting a lot of questionable looks later into the trash and walked out. “Then we’ll rinse it in fifteen minutes,” he said, the actual time the box instructed, and shut the bedroom door behind him.

In fifteen minutes, Minho wouldn’t have blamed his neighbors if they worried someone in the next-door unit was getting waterboarded. “You’re not even getting the back of my head!”

“You didn’t scream nearly as much when you fought a guy twice your size with nothing but firefighters’ gear. I thought you trusted me,” Minho said pleasantly before scrubbing harder.

“I don’t!” Han screamed with a white-knuckled grip on the towel around his neck. “You clearly have no idea what you’re doing!”

Minho let out a short laugh, resisting the urge to take the shower head in his hands and actually start waterboarding him. “Forgive me, Professor Han, I didn’t realize you would have done so much better at this without me.”

“At least I have the tools to make it work! You’re the one who can only throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks!”

“Oh, ah, mhm, I see now, so because I don’t have superpowers like the amazing Spiderman, I can’t even do a simple hair coloring?”

“I didn’t even say I needed your help, I would have had it under control without you!”

“Under control? Like how you had it under control when you bleached your head and messed it up so badly you had to buzz it all off? God, Han, I don’t always get it right, but the least you can do is let me try. Why can’t you just admit you need help sometimes?”

“Are you kidding me!? I never need help, Minho, I need to be good enough to at least dye my own hair if I’m going to be the one who helps others!” Before Minho could interject he never remembered Han Jisung being so heroic, he let out another incriminating scream. “Stop scrubbing my head like its the dishes!”

Minho shut the water off and put him out of his misery, though the handle was strangely loose. “I rebalanced your hair’s pH levels, you’re welcome.”

“Don’t pretend you know what that means,” he said in what was definitely supposed to be a more scathing tone but barely came out as a breath, and Minho had to wonder how he got anything done with that kind of stamina. Han sat up to shake the excess water out of his hair and turned to him expectantly.

“How does it look?” he asked as he patted his face down… right when Minho finally noticed the scene he’d accidentally made of the shower during the conversation that had been about hair dye (and nothing else).

“…Like we murdered a Smurf.”

When Han twisted around, his jaw dropped at the wash of blue that was going to stain the bathtub if they didn’t move quickly enough. He jumped up like he was spring-loaded. “Where’s the bleach?”

Minho ducked for the cleaning supplies under the sink. “On the bright side, the nail polish stains aren’t so obvious now.”

Evidently the wrong thing to say when Minho wasn’t even looking at him and he could still feel the nervous energy radiating off Han. “I’ll clean it up, it’s no big-“

“On the way out of that huge, life-altering, potentially traumatic experience,” Han said with a pitchy laugh. “Did you happen to write yourself a check?”

Oh. That.

“Nope.” So that put the miracle apartment they’d managed to line up on such short notice out of the picture. Minho dug around in his pocket before pulling out the first thing that felt like money and squinting at it. “How much housing would this buy us?”

If Han hadn’t been on the verge of losing it before, he definitely was now. “There’s… 7000 won here. Okay, well, I haven’t used that many sick days, I could call out and help you look for-“

“I’m going to go to work and harass my coworkers until someone offers me a home,” Minho interrupted before waving a rag at Han. “Get out of here.”

He hesitated for a moment, looking ready to protest. Then he spun on his heel and walked out of the bathroom while wringing his hair as brutally as if it had offended his family name. “This towel is ruined,” he mumbled from the next room.

-

Small enough to pass for the head of a screw, the recording device on the tip of Minkyu’s finger didn’t have a glint or glare under the light of the residential complex hall.

He reached up and stuck it on Han Jisung’s front door on the off-chance he came back and let something useful slip.

It wasn’t especially likely, but Minkyu never felt comfortable until he had all his bases covered.

So maybe that’s why, even though he hadn’t planned on doing anything else at this residence, he glanced up and down the hallway a second time and tried the front door.

“I also know we’re both hypocrites.”

Changbin’s face went slack with surprise. “…Excuse me?”

“After you admitted you leaked information to Minho, I let it slide, because I needed this team. Now Felix is doing the exact same thing, but the difference is, he doesn’t know we know.” Minkyu rolled his shoulder back to try to quiet its protesting after all that exertion. It made no difference. “What I’m saying is, whatever we lose from the two of them trying to hinder the investigation, we’re going to make up for by keeping an eye on what they do when they think we’re not watching. So I need you to keep their relationship confidential for now.”

Changbin crossed his arms and turned away. “Is that the only reason you’re keeping this a secret?”

Minkyu felt his words acidify before he even said them out loud. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t dock my pay for saying this, but you know you can’t save everyone. Especially not the ones who don’t want you to,” he said cryptically before leaving for what remained of the front entrance.

Minkyu grabbed Changbin’s arm. “Sergeant, I’m serious, you can’t-“

Changbin pushed his good arm off without even bothering to hide the irritation. “I’m not going to tell anyone. I just hope you have your priorities straight, Minkyu.”

Scanning over the various rooms deserted of anything except the furniture, Minkyu caught himself grimacing at the memory.

What was Changbin implying? Probably not that Minkyu was protecting Felix, not when he’d hardly known him long enough to risk an entire career for him. He stepped into the room that must have been the bedroom, covered his fingertips with the sleeve of his jacket, and started pulling drawers at random.

So was Changbin accusing him of risking the entire case for Minho’s sake? If it weren’t for the fact he wasn’t technically supposed to be in the unit, Minkyu could have laughed out loud. Minho had used up the last of his goodwill when he watched everything that went down that summer night with the luck to barely come out with a scratch on him and still kept up the delusional idea that Geomi was anything less than what he was—a violent menace.

When nothing useful turned up, Minkyu slammed the last empty drawer shut and pushed himself to his feet, figuring he’d taken enough time away from work.

Though there was one more spot he hadn’t checked.

He kneeled next to the bed and stuck his arm under it, giving the dark space a cursory swipe without expecting to find much beyond maybe a lost sock.

But then his hand closed over something small and cylindrical, and he pulled the item out into the light.

It was a clear, nondescript container with no obvious lid or opening; a viscous liquid splashed around inside which, for all he could tell, could have just been water.

Minkyu decided to pocket it and got to his feet again.

When he did get to work, the place was already the frenzy of activity you would expect after a pair of reckless criminals had turned the biggest bank in the city into a battle arena.

The first pair of eyes he managed to lock eyes with was Seungmin across the lobby. Oh, he clearly said and then waved him over, meaning Minkyu had to sidestep the groups of people that had inconveniently gathered in the middle of the room to get to him.

“Hey, Minkyu, the tech guy was looking for you. And I mean.” He shrugged a shoulder, a risky move with the mountain of paperwork already precariously balanced in his arms. “So was half the station.”

“Something came up,” he said before quickly moving on. “What did he need me for?”

“Choe’s taking all the witnesses’ descriptions of Spiderman for composite sketches, he should still be in his office. You… You know where that is right?” Seungmin added after a moment.

“What? Of course I do.”

“Then why do you keep staring at me like that,” he asked as he awkwardly pretended to look through the stack of papers, more of a statement than an actual question.

Minkyu blinked. “Sorry, it’s just… Composite sketches? Is there no video? Pictures, CCTV footage, anything else?”

“Sure there is, but Choe thought we’d like to relive the 80s.” Before Minkyu could respond that neither of them were old enough to have lived through them the first time around, Seungmin went on. “Shin’s gear let off an EMP, short-range but strong enough that it knocked out most people’s phones. In the video people did manage to get…” Seungmin looked away like he was trying to figure out how to put it. “Spiderman doesn’t look different from an actual spider,” he said, settling on bluntly.

Minkyu closed his eyes and let out a short sigh. “Of course,” he said as he started down the hallway to the technician’s office. “Don’t question the robber without me,” he added over his shoulder.

“He’s waiting for an attorney anyway.”

Naturally. Minkyu was about to turn the corner, but voices on the other side halted him in his tracks.

“Uh… I’ll ask.”

“Ask who what?” Changbin responded in an unreadably flat tone.

“Oh, Changbin, well, you, uh, you said you saw Minkyu earlier, right?” a voice he belatedly recognized as Felix’s stuttered. “Did he say he was going somewhere?”

“Why?” he replied in the same flat tone, making Minkyu’s fingers shoot up to the pressure point in his hand. If Changbin was about to blow their opening…

“Because the tech guy wants to know…?” Felix answered, so nervously it turned into a question.

The handle to the door that must have been the technician’s twisted and Changbin said something, too far away for Minkyu to catch what he was telling Mr. Choe and it was the second to last straw before he flung himself around the corner to put a stop to this.

“It’s not what you think, okay? I-” Felix’s hushed voice came so unexpectedly close to where Minkyu was standing it made him stumble back to avoid being seen. “I’m not talking to anyone I shouldn’t. Minho-hy- Minho-ssi just needed some help and he still had my number, that’s all.” Minkyu tensed for the inevitable questions Changbin would throw out, questions they both knew Felix wouldn’t have any good answers to and then he really would have to step in.

But they never came.

Instead, Changbin sucked in the world-weary breath of someone twice his age and said, “Call these tips back.” Then his footsteps were rounding the corner.

Careful! Minkyu mouthed as emphatically as he could, but Changbin passed him without even reacting. He waited a beat before striding down the hall to the technician, where Felix still stood with his back to him.

“Good morning,” Minkyu greeted, pretending he didn’t notice the electric current that jolted Felix’s shoulders. He almost wished someone a little better at lying was in Felix’s place instead—all this sneaking around could not be good for his heart’s health. “I heard someone was looking for me,” he said as he let himself into the dark room.

Felix muttered a greeting back and quickly left while Choe, only illuminated by the light of the screen in front of him, ushered Minkyu in. “About time. Did you get a look at the guy’s face?”

“Not clearly,” Minkyu said truthfully, leaning close to get a better look at the different digitally-generated versions of Geomi’s face and quickly saw…

None of them looked a thing like Han Jisung.

“So I’m not going to be much help,” he added as he straightened back up. “How many witnesses were questioned?”

“A dozen or so. Most witnesses at the scene were late to work as it was, not a very talkative bunch. That’s why I was hoping you might be able to add something.” Choe shook his head and reached to save his work.

Another potential angle dead in the water. Minkyu ran a thumb over the smooth cylinder in his pocket and wondered if the forensics team would take just one more addition to their likely swamped workload.

-

Han could not have had a worse day at work if he’d tried to.

Even without a suit or any gadgets, flying and flinging and flipping through the air had come to him as easily as breathing, being Spiderman and all the thrills and confidence he came with had felt so natural that if Han got the chance to tinker away in a lab for hours? The new and improved look alone would put him on top of the world, not to mention when he implemented all the ideas for features and tools and gear bouncing around his skull.

So being forced to stock nutrition-replacement drinks and sanitary products and to explain that no he wasn’t purposely holding out on confused customers when he said their prescriptions weren’t ready yet was a particular kind of painful that day.

“Someone special on your mind?” the supervising pharmacist asked ten minutes before closing, an eyebrow raised above the top border of her thick black frames.

Han narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“Because that’s the second pint of ice cream you’ve put next to the press-on nails.”

Han blinked before snatching up the pints and marching over to the refrigerators. “No,” he said curtly. In his rush to put them in the right spot, he knocked a third to the floor with so much momentum, it ended up rolling to a stop at the pharmacist’s feet.

Dr. Koo picked it up and let out a sigh. “Just go, you’ve been stressing me out all day.”

She’d hardly gotten her sentence out and Han was already lighting up. “Thanks, doc!”

“And I mean early, Han Jisung,” she said as he darted to the back to grab his things, “not like the last time we agreed on this and you came four minutes before your shift.”

“For once, that was not my fault,” he shot back while he dug in his pocket for the keys so she could lock up. “The bus driver-“

“I care as much as the first time you told me,” she said as she took them from him. “Go have the party or the date or the appendectomy you’ve been dreaming of all day and give me some peace and quiet.”

“…Why would I be dreaming of a-?”

“Bye, Jisung.”

With his cue to leave, Han practically sprinted out to head to the one place he hadn’t been in years, fumbling to shoot Minho a quick text that he would be at their new new place late so don’t wait up for him.

Almost as soon as he hit send, Minho’s name was popping up at the top of the screen. Of course. “Where are you going?”

Han darted around the street corner and narrowly managed to jump out of the way of a telephone pole that definitely hadn’t been there that morning. “Going to drink and drive with some bad influences, is that alright with you, Mom?”

“As long as you tell me where,” Minho said as sweetly as if Han had told him he was going to the movies.

Han huffed a sigh as the nearest subway station came into view. “At our old school.”

“Oh. Well, listen, I am really proud of you for getting over your fear of failure and deciding to get back on track after all this time, but there’s no way the admissions office is op-“

“Minho!” he cut him off, embarrassment rising even though there was no one around on the empty sidewalk to overhear. “I’m going to go use the student labs to make new Spidey gear, okay?” he said, punctuating every other word with a wave of his fist. “Electrically-resistant suit with webshooters to match, in-mask speakers with a direct link to my One OK Rock playlists, different kinds of webbing, important things!”

Minho was silent for a weirdly long beat. “You’re not planning a rematch with the bank robber.”

“Wh-?” Han’s mouth stopped moving mid-word in disbelief. “God,” he whined, “first the appendectomy, now this, what is it about me that makes people think I’m insane!?”

“What? Who said anything about-”

“Today we barely got out without getting squished or arrested,” Han interrupted as he ran down the steps to the subway station. “I’m not letting anyone surprise me again. So text me the new apartment’s address so you don’t have to stay up and I’ll see you tomorrow, Minho.”

“Sure thing, Han,” Minho said in a tone that told him it was not a sure thing at all.

-

Felix squinted at the call that came in from the unknown number.

“Hello?” he answered hesitantly, throwing looks over his shoulders as he pulled out the keys to his rooftop apartment.

“Hey, Bogi!” a very enthusiastic voice greeted. “You actually picked up,” the guy laughed. “I had to give the others three or four calls before I got anyone, it’s so nice to hear your voice!”

Felix’s brain stalled at the nickname he hadn’t heard in ages. Someone had either dug so far into his past he was going to have to add extra locks to his door, or… “Hajun?”

“One more try,” he said encouragingly.

“Uhh…” Felix grabbed his forehead as he let himself into his house and toed off his shoes. “Isak?”

“…One more try.”

“Is it Ssss…?” Felix trailed off, hoping he’d guess the first letter right and the guy would fill in the rest.

“Taeseok, very close! No, no, no, don’t worry,” he cut off Felix’s apologies, “I did pack up and leave right after graduation, I don’t blame you.”

“Wow,” Felix said under his breath. In the grand scheme of things, four years was hardly a blip—but the time since he was putting stock in petty high school drama like it was life or death felt like ancient history. “Wow, I kinda thought we weren’t going to hear from you again, how have you been?” he asked while running a hand through his hair. “Where have you been?”

His old friend laughed, sounding as if a day hadn’t passed since the two of them were last sitting together at lunch trading dumb jokes. “The answer is so boring. I was studying abroad in the States.”

“That’s not boring!” Felix shot back, his voice picking up a giddiness that belonged to a much younger version of himself as he started pacing the room. “That’s so cool!”

“Yeah,” he scoffed, “if I’d been in Hawaii or New York. Unfortunately, my mom’s side of the family just had to live in-“ He cut himself off with a mischievous laugh. “Well, there’s this great restaurant a bunch of us who are in town are meeting up at, we can catch up there.”

Felix stopped, and glanced down at the police jacket he still had on.

“I mean, if you’re free of course, no pressure,” he added when Felix didn’t respond. “We’d all just be really happy to see you again.”

After all the chaos the day had volleyed at him, Felix hadn’t planned on doing anything after work other than collapsing into bed and being grateful for another day spent out of jail.

But that sounded a lot less fun than going out with friends so old they called him Bogi.

“And I mean we’d be really, really, really, really-“

“Send me the address,” Felix cut him off with an excited smile. He put down the phone—only for a second so he could strip off the jacket and hurl it onto his bed—and held it up to his face again. “After all, you guys can’t walk in a straight line on a good day, someone has to make sure you get home safe.”

The second Felix walked into the casual restaurant, the table in the center was a cacophony of a dozen familiar faces calling out his high school nickname, and then proceeding to laugh at the look on his face.

He took an empty seat next to Hajun (the actual one this time) and played up his embarrassment. “I thought I would have outgrown that name by now,” he winced.

The girl next to him put down her drink so noisily, there’s no way she didn’t clatter all those dishes on purpose. “You could become the president of South Korea and you’d still always be our little goody two-shoes Bogi.”

Felix let his jaw drop in mock offense. “I was not a-“

Hajun cut in with a laugh, “I thought you were going to have an aneurysm that time you lied to the teacher we didn’t break the classroom window.” Which everyone apparently took as the go-ahead to start sharing their own good-natured stories about what a stickler Felix used to be.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Taeseok eventually interrupted after long enough of Felix hiding his face (in embarrassment he did not need to fake anymore). “Lay off him, okay?”

Felix huffed a laugh. “Thank y-“

“He did volunteer as designated driver, so what do we say!?”

The whole table held up their drinks and thanked him in terrifying unison.

Felix got so caught up with laughing at inside jokes old enough to qualify for senior discounts and memories of people he hadn’t thought of in forever, that the entire day leading up to that evening fell away like scenes out of a fever dream. A supervillain blowing up a bank with Minho inside, the suicidal amount of partial prints Jisung left at the scene, Changbin treating him so tensely only to brush him off when he actually tried to explain himself—Felix didn’t even get a chance to think about that nightmare fodder.

Until Minho’s name was lighting up his phone screen on the table in front of him and it all came crashing back to him.

Felix wasn’t even drinking out of the glass anymore, but he still held it up to his mouth like keeping it there could buy him a few extra minutes away from… whatever it was Minho was about to thrust on him again.

Hajun eyed the way Felix peered at the phone around the rim of his glass. “You gonna get that or…?”

“Yeah,” Felix mumbled, before his conscience caught up to him and reminded him he wasn’t the only one who’d had a cataclysmically bad day. “Yeah, yeah, I am,” he said more firmly, setting down his glass and grabbing his phone.

“You’re alright after what happened earlier, right?” Felix asked when he walked outside and picked up.

“Should’ve seen the other guy,” Minho said, a thousand times more self-assured than he’d been on the phone earlier, which was a pretty good sign that he was back to normal.

Felix let out a small laugh. “I did, he wasn’t very talkative.”

“No? I thought he was pretty conversational for a bank robber back there.”

“Well, when Shin Hamin got to the station, he wouldn’t say a word about Spiderman. Something about...” Felix started walking down the line in the sidewalk, trying his best to keep his balance. “A second chance. Paying back a favor. It-“ He stumbled to the side. “It honestly wasn’t what I was expecting him to say after tearing apart the city’s biggest bank.”

“Yeah… Hey, are you free?”

Felix looked in through the big restaurant window where Hwayeong pulled a face when they locked eyes. He pressed his lips together and turned away. “Of course. Always.”

“Always? That’s convenient right now, Lix, but you should get out every once in a while. Believe me, you don’t want to turn out like-“

“Can you tell me why you called?” Felix interrupted. “I mean, I can guess it has something to do with the fact that Spiderman’s back-“ Which raised its own set of questions for why someone so selfish was back at the world’s most selfless job, but Felix held onto it for now. “But what do you want us to do about it?”

Minho huffed a sigh. “Han’s back, yeah, and he wants us to talk. Come up with an actual plan to, you know, hit back instead of getting hit.”

Ding!

“That’s the address and building number we’ll be at, so be there in thirty or less?”

Felix could (politely) tell Minho he already told him everything he knows, tell him to just pass it on to Jisung so he could enjoy a night out with friends for once.

But there was also so much Felix didn’t know—about how he could help take down OmniLife (beyond ‘misplacing’ the occasional hair sample in archived evidence), about how Jeongin fit into this mess, even about where Jisung and Minho themselves stood on all of this.

And Felix would hate to choose himself over what was potentially the fate of the city at stake here.

“Thirty or less,” he agreed before hanging up with a sigh; he just hoped he’d get invited to the next impromptu school reunion after bailing on his friends like this.

And that he’d get to hang on to what was left of his work-life balance.

After looking up the nearest bus station, Felix went to check the message, and then had to wonder if he was reading the address right.

“Why are we… at a university?” he asked as he stepped past Minho into the hallway of the campus’s main science building.

“Alumni privilege. It’s the sixth lab down,” he added, though the loud WHRRR of a power tool sort of tipped Felix off first. “By the way…”

He walked up and reached for the handle himself. “You should probably let me do the talking first,” he said with a small, suspicious smile Felix didn’t have time to question before he was letting the both of them in.

The whirring stopped at the same time as Jisung’s head shot up from where it had been hunched over a workstation covered in metallic casings, vials, and some red but mostly black- Is that a new suit?

“Hi,” Minho greeted cheerily. “Han, you remember Lix, Lix, you remember Han.”

Jisung warily lifted the heavy-duty goggles from his face with two gloved hands and… waved.

“Let’s talk!”

“…About?” Jisung said with a hesitance that made Felix start to suspect maybe he hadn’t proposed this meetup himself.

“About the Lotte Giants’ big win, what else? About what we know,” Minho said emphatically, “so we can avoid getting surprised, squished, or arrested.”

Jisung’s head swiveled between the two of them to the workstation and back again. “I have live wires on the counter,” he said haltingly.

“Better not get too close to the counter,” Minho said as he pushed Felix to the far side of the room. “No, this can’t wait,” he interrupted Jisung mid-protest. “You almost lost a fight to a bank robber when you have superstrength, a literal sixth sense, and me on your side, if we’d answered some questions sooner maybe we wouldn’t have been caught so off-guard and I wouldn’t have had to jump out a window.”

You jumped out a window? Felix almost burst out asking, but then Jisung puffed up like he was ready to launch into an argument and Felix instinctively cringed away. If these two got into a fight in front of him he would not have known what to do.

But one glance at Felix and the concern that must have been written all over his face had Jisung deflating. He turned back to his work and slapped the goggles back down over his eyes. “Fire away, Officer.”

Felix nodded, and then, with the attention on him and the power tool back on, everything he meant to get an answer to that night… blinked right out of his head.

Minho watched Felix’s eyes slowly widen in panic and covered for him quickly. “Where’d you get your powers?”

“A spider bit me,” Jisung said, mercifully changing from a power tool to one he had to put his weight into to work.

“…Is that it?” Felix asked after a moment when nothing but mechanical cranking filled the room.

“A super fucked up spider bit me.”

Jisung sighed when neither of them said anything to that and lifted his goggles again. “A really hungry spider involved in bioweapons and poison research escaped from a nearby facility, bit me, framed me for corporate sabotage, died and then got me fired,” he said, counting each of the spider’s nefarious deeds on his hand and ending up holding all five fingers out. “In that order.” He huffed a short laugh, his voice strangely light for what he said next: “I can’t really blame the guy for trying to start a new life though. The place is owned by OmniLife.”

Felix blinked. And then he blinked again. “Everything goes back to them?” he burst out.

“Goes back to him,” Jisung specified, speaking as nonchalantly as if he were delivering weather updates. “The big boss Jeongin.”

Speaking of. Felix turned to Minho. “You called me the day before Jeongin became director out of nowhere, did you know-?”

“Neither of us knew that was going to happen,” Jisung cut in. “Minho didn’t actually know anything up until two weeks ago, so yes, that also means he was never stringing you guys along. He only called because it was just a little strange how Jeongin went from meeting with me to show me which exec to prune every day, to disappearing off the face of the planet after framing me. How was work?”

Felix scrunched his brows at the sudden question that came right after an overload of information.

“I’m not making small talk, Officer, how close are we all to getting thrown behind bars for several lifetimes?”

“Oh. It’s… Well, it’s not like they have a picture or a full fingerprint to work with, but…”

Jisung widened his eyes at Felix when he stopped there. “Okay. Glad I asked.”

“But no, no, we’re fine,” he hastily tacked on, “there’s nothing directly pointing to any of us, we just need to be careful from here on out.”

“Normal look both ways before crossing the street careful or…?”

“I turned off my phone before I came here,” Felix clarified.

The two of them politely ignored it when Minho immediately took out his phone and held down the power button.

“Why are we… here, by the way?” Felix asked. “Earlier, Minho, you said alumni privilege, does that mean this is where you met?”

“Oh,” Jisung laughed as he glanced over at Minho, who looked thrilled to be asked. “We don’t really need to talk about…”

“No, no, I’ll be quick,” Minho insisted and then barreled on before Jisung could stop him. “In school some little punk stole my language homework.”

Felix couldn’t help his laugh at the mental image. “And he fought the thief to get it back?”

Jisung brought the crook of his elbow up to his mouth, which did not muffle his sudden, startling scream at all.

Minho didn’t even blink. “He was the thief. But it turned out he was a math-science genius and willing to help me out, and under that tough guy face he was also just really weird, and witty and creative and loyal and way more empathetic than he wants you to-“

“Okay, great!” Jisung frantically waved his hands and stepped in between them. “I’m amazing, I’m spectacular, I’m the best, I get it, I also yelled at your mom to bring me food, so I couldn’t have been that great, can we move on?”

Minho furrowed his brow at the two of them, meaning Felix was probably not hiding his judgment very well. “You say that like you don’t know you did it once thinking it was me in the hall and our vocal cords were incapable of producing inside voices.”

Jisung only shrugged and tried to change the subject.

“Han,” Minho interrupted. “If you were the asshole you’re trying so hard to make Lix think you are, I don’t think you would have cried reuniting that puppy with its owner last month.”

Jisung whirled on him, his mouth agape like Minho had just hurled the most unspeakable insult at him. “I did not.”

He scoffed. “Sorry, you’re right, you cried telling me the story. Doesn’t change the fact that you saved Spidey’s biggest hater at the party, he proved he still has it out for you, and then you saved him again this morning.”

Jisung stammered and looked between the two of them a few times before letting out a disbelieving laugh. “Even if he acts suicidal, what else would you expect me to do, just leave your brother for dead?”

Felix leaned back against the counter behind him, finding the lines in the tiled floor suddenly fascinating. “If the only thing you wanted was praise and admiration,” he said gently. “Why is Spiderman back?”

Jisung marched over to the red mask on the workstation and waved it at them like they weren’t standing right there. “The webhead’s back because I’m trying to not die, okay? Or get surprised, squished, arrested, et cetera and et al. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, Felix, but when I said I’m only in it for myself, I meant it.”

Felix could really stand to work on his bullshit detector, but with Jisung’s mask of apathy side-by-side with his literal Spiderman mask… even for him, it was hard not to see the direct analogy there.

Minho gave Jisung a skeptical look. “When skipping town is a pretty easy option, there are way less complicated, much more selfish ways to not die.”

Jisung’s eyes stayed locked on Minho’s for one long, drawn-out moment before flickering over to Felix.

Then he turned and threw the mask back on the counter and massaged his forehead. “Can you cut that out?” he groaned.

“Cut… what out?”

Jisung’s hand went to cover his eyes. “Looking at me like that. Like…” He sucked in a breath. “Like it’s okay that I cared.”

Minho took a hesitant step toward him, glancing nervously at Felix. “Of course it’s okay, Han.”

“It’s not okay that I cared so much about doing this job and- and I still fucked it all up. You guys are in this mess because of me. I’m sorr-“ He broke off so breathlessly Felix didn’t have to think before he was shooting forward and wrapping his surprisingly small frame in a hug. “I’m sorry, Felix, I’m so sorry,” he mumbled into his shoulder, balling his fists in his shirt. “I wish I hadn’t dragged you into this.”

“We’re in it now,” Felix said as he smoothed his hand over the back of Han’s head. “All we can do is figure out how we’re going to deal with it.”

Han didn’t say anything. He only hummed and held Felix tighter.

Chapter Text

With his most cheerful smile, Jeongin strolls up to the entrance to the lab and wishes the heavily-armed guards a good morning.

Due to the fact this is not his lab and, therefore, not his guards, they pull their giant guns on him.

He puts up placating hands. “I have clearance to be here,” he says, slowly pointing to the ID badge in his right hand. “If I swipe and it doesn’t go through, then you can shoot me.”

The guards look at one another. The one on the right points his gun at the scanner before pointing it back at Jeongin’s head, as if he would have gotten past the metal detectors with anything even slightly lethal on him. He swipes the ID face-down so the guards don’t see that the picture doesn’t match his face, or his gender for that matter, and the blast doors in front of him part to reveal the messiest lab he’s ever seen.

The only person inside is ducked at the base of a strange multi-armed prosthesis, tinkering away on something Jeongin can’t quite see from this angle. “Give me another minute, Jaeseon, I said I’d-“

“Where did you learn to count?” Jeongin asks, skeptically sizing up the four-armed prosthesis.

The older woman, who has to be Doctor Ok Talbit, stands and whirls around, whipping stray strands of her frazzled hair into her mouth she has to pull out with a finger. “Who...” They’ve never met, but her tired eyes lighten with recognition. So she changes the question. “How did you get in here?”

Jeongin glances back at the doors that apparently don’t automatically close, seeing as his two friends are still standing there and haven’t lowered their weapons. He sticks his hands in the pockets of his slacks and shrugs. “You weren’t answering my calls. How else is a prospective partner supposed to get in touch, doctor?”

She looks him up and down like the answers to her bafflement will be written on his clothes. “Partner?” she parrots, glancing back at the prosthesis.

Jeongin can’t help the laugh that escapes him. “I’m sure the squid amputees will be grateful for your work, but that isn’t what I-“

Doctor Ok shakes her head and the sleepiness in her eyes finally clears up, replaced by a deep suspicion. “But how did you get in here, Yang Jeongin? I didn’t approve any kind of clearance for you.”

Jeongin looks back at the guns pointed at him and smiles to think of how much power they think they have right now. “Funny what a disgruntled employee is willing to do for a stranger. I mean, no raise in 15 years of working here?” he says as he turns back to the doctor’s stunned face. “That’s cold, Talbit.”

“One of my colleagues with the highest level of clearance just gave you their ID?” she says when she finally recovers from her shock.

“No, no, of course not. A subordinate gave me the address of one of your colleagues. That’s where I got her work badge.”

In the silence that follows, the doctor glances at the armed men over Jeongin’s shoulder. It’s obvious her curiosity’s run dry before she even speaks. “You stole it,” she says, not asking questions anymore.

“I borrowed it. Now that I don’t need it anymore-“

When he reaches for his pocket, the guns clatter with how fast the guards step forward in warning. Jeongin moves slowly, his other hand up in surrender while he pulls out the badge, and he slides it across the table. With a hard, scrutinizing look in her face, the doctor steps forward and reaches for it.

Jeongin rushes forward and grabs her wrist—and immediately gets the barrel of a gun to the back of his head.

“Final warning!” the guard barks.

The pair of unblinking eyes Jeongin looks up into have practically bruised purple with sleep deprivation. “I wouldn’t worry about figuring out which employee betrayed you, doctor,” he says under his breath, though it doesn’t matter whether or not the guards hear him. “She won’t be coming back to work anyway.”

The doctor shifts her hand so that she’s the one grabbing him and pulls him forward, so unexpectedly Jeongin’s palm has to slam against the table to catch him. “Give me one good reason he shouldn’t blow your head off right now,” she demands.

While she seethes at him, a smile starts cracking across Jeongin’s face. Finding that someone is tougher than they look is always a pleasant surprise, and right now, it means he’s going to have a lot more fun than he first thought.

“Because,” he says in a singsong. “Some address isn’t the only thing Miss Loyalty let slip. Skipping out on personal protective equipment? Stealing ideas from subordinates and presenting them as your own? Covering up incidents so you don’t have to pay? If I don’t come out of our little business meeting here in one piece, people are going to be hearing all about it within the hour.” He tilts his head as he widens his eyes. “Is that a good enough reason for you to hear me out, partner?”

“You have no proof,” she hisses.

Jeongin shrugs as best he can with a gun pushing on his head and his wrist in a vise-like grip. “Shoot me, if you think you can afford to take that chance.”

Doctor Ok glowers down at him, and the pressure on his head is getting harder to push back against. But all she can do is snatch her hand away and gesture for the guard to stand down. “What is it you want?”

When he can finally straighten up again, Jeongin leans his head from side to side to crack his neck. “If I were the one working on the cure for cancer, I wouldn’t be asking that.”

-

Taking a taxi over to Phobos Group, the place they planned on having an illicit look-around at too-early-o’clock in the morning, was not Minho’s first choice.

But after the price of renting a heist movie-style van to keep tabs from the outside had made their collective eyes pop out of their heads… they decided that giving up on their jewel thief fantasies was a sacrifice that had to be made.

It’s barely even breaking and entering, Minho texted their newly formed group chat, because another sacrifice was talking about their plans out loud when their driver was a complete stranger.

We’re just having a look around

:)

Next to him, Felix worried on his bottom lip like he didn’t appreciate the reminder that they were actually doing this. From Felix’s right side, Han sent Minho a skeptical look and turned to his phone like he was going to send him something.

So Minho waited.

And waited…

Felix looked up at Han, his face crinkled with concern. “You know you’re talking to me, right?”

Han stared at Felix for a second before jumping to grab his phone when he realized his mistake, but Minho was quicker and read through the messages.

What are you talking about

I’m going to break in and then enter

That’s the definition of breaking and entering

Plus the fact that Lixie is lending me his jacket and stole police comms for this?

Pretty sure that’s a felony or two right there

Minho could only sigh, delete the messages and hand back his phone.

Han sheepishly patted Felix’s back. “We’re just having a look around,” he said with an overconfident nod.

The taxi sped down the final stretch of road to their destination, the building next to their actual target. Minho stepped out before thanking and paying the driver, who kept glancing over at Felix with concern. Honestly, with how sick Felix had looked the whole ride, Minho can’t blame the driver for worrying if his seats were going to stay the same color.

When the taxi took off again and left them standing on the sidewalk under the dim halo of the streetlights, they took some time pretending to be three normal guys coming home after a normal night at a normal party making sure they had all their normal belongings on them. Then the cab turned out of sight.

They stepped into the shady cover of the buildings behind them to put their in-ears in, which, conveniently for them, just looked like pairs of earphones.

If you ignored the bulky control unit tethered to each of them.

“It’ll be fine,” Minho reassured Felix. “Han will get in, get out, you’ll put everything back where you found it and no one will even notice anything was missing.”

Han fixed the police jacket he’d been wearing inside out so that the lettering was actually visible. On the off-chance anyone was home, he was just a police officer who got the wrong address while responding to a call.

It was a cover story they’d clearly put a lot of effort into.

Han stretched an arm across his chest and hopped in place a little, as if he ever needed to warm himself up when he was in constant go mode, and pressed the push-to-talk button on his comm. “Testing, testing, testing.” Minho and Felix each offered him a thumbs-up when his voice echoed in their ears. “One, two, three, Night Monkey is a go.” Han dashed and disappeared behind the building without even waiting for their mic checks.

Felix held up his comm, blinking. “Were we supposed to come up with code names?”

-

Han still has no idea where that name came from or why he said it.

After climbing up the side of the neighboring building that might have been a hotel or a multi-floor spa for all he knew, he quickly spotted a window on the opposite side that had been left cracked open.

They’re inviting me in, how nice of them.

Han jumped for it, pulled the window up with gloved hands, and dropped through with a silent landing. He took stock of the dark lounge he’d landed in and reached for his comm. “Night Monkey in the building,” he reported in an action hero’s voice, before straightening up to scope the place out a little more thoroughly. There was nothing incriminating about the employee’s lounge though, save for maybe the cold coffees left out so long the creamer was curdling. Han wrinkled his nose and turned away; even if that should have been a crime, it wasn’t Phobos he was looking for dirt on anyway. He turned on his comm. “What do you think I should be on the lookout for?”

“Well,” Minho started. “Phobos is the conglomerate that sold OmniLife their skyscraper before they had the top floor, you know, remodeled. If you can’t find anything on their end that proves the dirt-cheap purchase, maybe you can find something a little more personal.”

Han gestured for him to explain, and then remembered he couldn’t see him. “Such as?” He left the lounge to pace down the corridor. None of the identical doors that lined it leaped out at him as especially important.

“Something that points to the fact that the head was being extorted. Personally, I’d check his office for a drawer labeled ‘blackmail.’”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Han said sarcastically, reaching the elevator at the end of the hall. “Still with us, Lix?” When the elevator took too long (more than five seconds), Han decided to pry the doors open.

“Yeah-” A sudden, contagious yawn sprang up on him. “Yeah, still with you.”

Han looked up and down to make sure his path was clear. And then he dropped into the shaft.

The momentum of gravity transferred when he thwipped his way back up the shaft and launched himself right at the elevator doors of the highest floor. He huffed an exhilarated breath and pulled the doors open. “After this, I’ll buy you guy guys street toast, there’s this really-“ He peered back down the shaft to find that the elevator was only now arriving at the floor he’d called it to, and he let himself take a little pride in his shortcut. “Really great stand I remembered on the way here.”

When he looked back up, the sudden shift in interior designing choices surprised him. At least all the glass walls and windows made it easy to spot the CEO’s desk a few doors down. And the unreasonably huge bookshelves that lined the entirety of each wall to his left and his right.

Han gazed up at one of the top shelves. “There’s no way he’s read all of these.”

He jumped up to stick his hand to the ceiling, letting him get a closer look at the boring titles on business and finance. “Blackmail, blackmail, blackmail,” he muttered as he raised another hand and started pulling himself along the ceiling to skim through all the books. Shockingly enough, he wasn’t seeing anything that screamed Jeongin and/or Hyunjin of OmniLife had my daughter stalked to pressure me. The only thing he found was that this whole looking-for-something-while-not-even-knowing-what-he’s-looking-for thing was feeling weirdly familiar.

He switched his hands so he could size up the impractically big office and the abstract art pieces lying around the place. “If my family’s life was getting threatened, I would definitely put proof of that in…”

From a shelf across the room, he spotted a lock-and-key safe doing its very best impression of an encyclopedia. That is, the safe was modeled to look like a book, except it wasn’t exactly blending in when the huge title FRANKFURT was practically yelling at him without a volume number or even an author’s name to go with it.

Han dropped to the floor and hauled it over with a web, finding it lighter than he would have guessed.

“So the guy is either a fan of the fifth biggest city in Germany and specialty sausages…” Minho said after Han described it over the line, barely suppressing a laugh.

“Or he’s keeping something too sensitive to leave his private office in there,” Felix added more somberly.

Han put a bit of strength behind his arm, snapped the cover off the ‘book,’ peered in and…

“The first one, it was the first one,” Han said, eyeing the supremely unhelpful return flight tickets to Frankfurt and city-themed postcards and magnets. He stuck the loose cover back in place and crossed the office to put it back where he’d found it. “I’ve honestly never heard of that place. I kinda thought it was a dog.”

“Is that it?” Felix asked, sounding a little desperate. “No false bottom or anything?”

Han traced the edges of the safe, but the cheap thing wouldn’t have had any room for that anyway. “Nice thinking, but no,” he sighed before he pushed it back into place. “I mean, with barely any leads, this was a long shot anyway.”

He turned to take in the admittedly nice view of the city just a few hours from fully waking up. He straightened the jacket Felix lent him, which was honestly more about the sense of security than actually being a good cover if some horribly overworked employee was here to spot him. “Night Monkey, heading back your w-“

The radio he’d completely forgotten about started barking codes at him, combinations of letters and numbers he didn’t understand but that gave him a very bad feeling. He dashed to get back the way he came. “Lix, are you hearing this?”

“Y-Yeah. It means… It’s saying something about a robbery spree?”

Han dropped down the elevator shaft in an awesome superhero pose, sprinted down the hall and leapt out the lounge window to the ground.

At least he would have, except the elevator was now in his way and he had to take the stairs to get around it. “Can you please sound a little more confident than that?” He held down the push-to-talk button for Felix to get a closer listen as he vaulted over a series of handrails very heroically.

“Uh, robbery spree, suspect is armed, priority on the-“ When Han finally swung into the hall he’d come from earlier, Felix stopped in a way he did not like one bit. But his confusion when he spoke again was even less reassuring. “…Priority on the air?”

“Meaning!?” Han burst out impatiently.

“They’re taking helicopters to stop robberies…” Minho said with equal amounts of confusion, just as Han landed next to him on the ground. All at once, the three of them came to the conclusion that whatever this was, it was something big.

Minho and Felix turned and said in unison: “You need to go!”

“Lix, thank you for the jacket and comms, they made me feel really cool.” Han stripped off the items in question and threw them at Felix.

“Minho, you made sure He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named wouldn’t be able to break into our house in our sleep, I appreciate it.” Han took off his shirt, shoes and jeans—to Felix’s clear horror before he realized he was wearing his new suit under there—and threw the clothes at Minho.

Felix’s second-hand embarrassment quickly turned into awe. “Woah.”

Han bounced his eyebrows, pulled on the red mask of his mostly black suit, and may have done a self-indulgent little spin while he was at it. “Nice, right?”

He held out his arms to make sure the black spider on his chest he’d spent way too long perfecting was visible. “All of the style, none of the creepy tracking hardware.” He aimed at the tallest point he could see from there, promised to buy them waffles for their troubles, and swung himself up, just high enough to catch sight of the bright searchlights in the distance.

As the beating of helicopter blades turned deafening and the gold-white lights of the shopping district grew brighter, Han kept glancing left and right and over his shoulder for what had everyone so worked up.

He had to get dangerously close to being spotted to finally see the mess that spilled into the street—like a tornado had torn through the artsy cinemas and luxury perfume stores and didn’t mind leaving a very obvious trail of broken glass for him to follow. He swung into the mall where the trail ended and, as silently as he could, paced the place for any sign of this winged thief.

It wasn’t long before he reached a jewelry shop… and the odd customer perched on top of the glass display cases.

Were those wings?

…With turbines?

Before Han could begin to make sense of the hulking flight suit in front of him, the head whipped around and revealed the creepiest pair of beady little eyes he’d ever seen.

Han’s body was moving before he even understood what he was doing.

He flipped out of the way of the flight path that would have ended with him get body slammed into a digital display advertising men’s watches, but he barely seemed like an afterthought to whatever that thing was.

It dived straight at the third floor of a department store across the street and trashed the aisles faster than Han could stop it.

“Oh, come on!” He launched through a sea of mannequins and clothes, fumbling to follow it and throw as many of the products back onto the shelves at the same time. “You know how hard they’re gonna have to work to clean up your mess tomorrow!?”

If anything, it reveled in that fact. As soon as the words left Han’s mouth, the oversized wingspan knocked five lamps off their displays, and Han had to flip over them to avoid taking them to the teeth. “You are going to freak when I tell you what ‘you break, you buy’ means.” Han shot two webs on either side of the metallic eagle, right as it soared through the windowed ceiling of the store with a CRASH.

He was fully in the helicopter pilots’ line of sight now.

At least Minho could have a field day when this story broke.

“Wish we were meeting under more-!” Han had to clumsily throw his weight to the side to avoid splatting on a billboard for some new Koca-Soda drink that had to be infringing on copyright law. “Photogenic circumstances!”

The flight suit swerved to the other side so hard Han couldn’t keep his grip anymore, sending him skidding across a rooftop way too fast for any friction to slow him down and keep him from sliding off the edge and he shot out a web that didn’t hold. “Shit,” he hissed, tumbling toward the edge of the rooftop when he shot out another and hit more air. “Shit!”

New plan. With barely an arm’s length before he rolled off, he focused every inch of willpower he had into getting his sore feet under him to jump.

Without resistance on the wings or the sound of webs firing, the flight suit went into cruise control and glided along the street. The stores and businesses on either side were ransacked for their valuables and the air response had been far too late to do anything about it. It turned its head, probably to make sure it had left the helicopters and the wall-crawler in its dust.

Han figured that the last thing it expected to see was Spiderman, the webbing under his arms letting him glide along as smoothly as if he had turbines in his own suit.

“On the off-chance he visits you in jail,” Han said cheerily. “Tell Jeongin I send hugs and kisses.” He double-tapped the button on his palm and blasted his very own home-cooked web bomb at the wings.

Webbing exploded everywhere, catching in the gears and blades of the vulture’s wings and stopping it from going anywhere but down.

Han hadn’t even been sure he wasn’t dealing with a very high-tech drone—but the limbs’ frantic flailing when the suit started to sink convinced him there was definitely someone in there. He anchored himself to the side of a fancy boutique and shot a web to catch the person.

And so underestimated how heavy it would be.

“Woah!” he screamed when the weight pulled him right off the side. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, believe it or not manslaughter isn’t in my M.O.!” He shot a second web up at the helicopters that hovered above them, shining down white-blue searchlights Han had to squint to see through.

“Stand down or we will open fire.”

The bundle in his other hand was starting to jerk.

“Can’t we just sit down and talk about this!?” Han called, trying not to sweat with blinding lights coming at him from all sides and both his hands full and the ground promising to soar up at the two of them if his fingers slipped before he could find an opening. He looked down and groaned. “What am I supposed to do with you, the Metal Vulture?”

With a burst of chills that ran up and down the length of his spine, the person he’d barely kept at bay to begin with ripped themselves free so much quicker than he thought they would.

“Opening fire!”

Han dove out of there as fast as he could. “You’re right, Vulture, that’s a mouthful!” He swung onto the first floor of a clothing store to avoid the hailstorm of ammo that followed him and that sounded a lot like actual bullets and ran for it. His webs pulled him along with more momentum than his legs could muster up to the other side of the store where he craned his head up through the smashed doors to look at the sky.

Even though he could still hear the helicopters circling nearby, he couldn’t see any directly overhead, so he used the cover to dash into the store across the street. He narrowly cleared the counter and hit the floor behind it.

Sweeping searchlights bleached the wall beside him, making him clamp his hands over head and squeeze closer to the counter. God, if armed choppers and police cornered him here… he didn’t want to think about how fucked he’d be.

After a moment that could have lasted an hour, the sound of helicopter blades wasn’t so overwhelming anymore, and the light on the wall, cast by the gradually rising sun, was much softer now.

Han dared to peek up just a little at where he’d landed himself.

A bagel shop.

He flopped over on the floor and heaved out the breath he’d been holding onto. On second thought, they were getting bagels.

Right on cue, one of the little jingles he’d slapped together on a free music production app rang in his ears. He tapped the side of his mask to pick up the call.

“Are you alright!?” two synchronized voices exclaimed.

“God,” Han sighed as he tried to catch his breath. “You guys are so cute when you talk in unison. Unrelated, I can’t feel my legs. And Vulture got away.”

“Vulture?”

Han peeled himself up off the floor and checked that the streets were as empty as he assumed they were for the early hour—though with the mess his new acquaintance left behind, they wouldn’t stay that way for long. “The airborne robber.” He pushed into the back to see what kind of selection this shop had going for itself. “Even though I don’t have much, my money says he’s another one of Jeongin’s mini-me’s.” He huffed a sigh.

“Lix,” he said somberly. “I have a very important question for you.”

“What is it?”

“Cream cheese or no cream cheese?”

Later, the owner of that store, already in shock from the destruction surrounding their business, would see a very unique IOU note written on a sticky note in the back.

Three bagels and three scoops of cream cheese seized as superhero fuel.

Will pay back full amount within the week.

Signed, Spiderman~

-

Minho took the squished paper bag from Han after he stumbled home to their barebones apartment that didn’t even have any seating yet and tossed it at Felix.

Han pointed at the floor next to Felix. “Is that seat taken?” he asked and then laid down on his front without waiting for an answer.

With no chairs for them to sit around the kitchen table (or even a table for that matter) Minho and Felix sat on the floor chewing their slightly soggy breakfast while Han caught them up on everything that happened… with his face pressed halfway into the carpet, muffling his words.

That was about the last thing Minho remembered before he woke to a paw in his mouth.

Minho gently swatted Dori off his face, and then groaned when he realized how much his back was going to protest when he sat up. He lifted his other hand to rub his face with it, but he hit something weirdly warm.

When he turned his head, he saw that it was Felix lying there on his side with his back to Minho. He pushed himself up (ignoring the pain) and had to stifle a laugh when he saw Felix’s arm draped across Han, the two of them loosely holding hands.

As much as Minho wanted to leave the two of them to sleep on his floor like this, of course he had to wake them up so their bosses wouldn’t chew them out.

After taking a picture.

Felix stirred first, blinking a couple times at the person lying next to him. Minho gave his shoulder another shake. “Wakey wakey,” he chirped. “Don’t want Minkyu to notice the comms are gone,” he said, just as brightly.

Han cracked an eye open at all the commotion.

“Good morning, Dr. Han. It’s time to hawk drugs.”

“Yay,” Han drawled. He squinted at Felix. “At least buy me dinner first.”

Felix jolted up as quickly as if he’d been shocked.

Han rolled onto his back and made a show of rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Well, don’t act like it’s that bad.”

“The comms,” Felix gasped, patting himself down to make sure he had all three on him before shooting to his feet. He stopped, started and then stopped again, awkwardly turning to the two of them. “Thank you for the food, and for the…” He darted his eyes away but couldn’t bring himself to stop what he was about to say. “Floor.” He yanked the door open and disappeared behind it.

Han huffed a dramatic sigh, his hands crossed over his stomach. “I hate it when they leave like that.”

“You’re in luck, then.” Minho picked up his laptop from the kitchen counter. “They would have to actually arrive in order to leave,” he said as he walked into his bedroom, which wasn’t in much better shape than the rest of the place.

“Wait,” an indignant voice said from the other room. “Wait, are you saying I don’t-!?”

“Go get ready!” he yelled, bringing up a rival paper’s website.

Han noisily grumbled something before stomping into the bathroom.

Even on a cursory glance of the week’s biggest headlines, it was clear that the news on Vulture was making a splash online, and not because one of Seoul’s biggest shopping centers was currently lying in wreckage. The buzz was all around Spiderman’s Big Comeback and his heroics in trying to stop the winged maniac and the shiny new wardrobe he sported, though a lot of the reception from readers and writers alike was… not great.

Minho might have killed hours like that, just looking through the news coverage of this and the Shocker incident, the two biggest disasters to rock the city in weeks and what they had to say about Spiderman and police action and kind of regretting passing out instead of using his insider best friend knowledge to get the very first article out but-

An email came in from his editor.

Morning, Reporter Lee,

Your request from Monday got approved.

Be in their lobby by 10am.

Minho blinked. And then he blinked one more time.

“You email me an hour before I have to show up for an interview!?” he burst out.

Minho threw his laptop to the side and ran to throw open the bathroom door. “Get out.”

With a beard of shaving cream smeared on his face and a razor in his hand, Han looked at him like he was utterly insane. “Haha,” he said. “I thought I locked the door.”

“The lock is broken, makes you wonder what else doesn’t work. Get out,” he said as he pushed a shell-shocked Han out of the way. “I need to leave thirty minutes ago.” Minho went to close the door, but he gave him a perplexed look. “Who even shaves before showering?”

Minho ran down the street, flagging down a cab that hopefully wasn’t being driven by an evil CEO this time, and climbed inside when it stopped for him.

“What, and I emphasize,” he whispered when his editor picked up. “The fuck!?” he snapped out loud.

“Thought you might be a little put off,” Mr. Lim replied like they were talking about seeing the newest Godzilla movie a little earlier than planned.

“Yeah,” Minho scoffed as he pushed up the glasses he only ever pulled out to look smarter for interviews. “I’m put off right now. Do you even know what this means to me?”

“I’m sorry for the surprise,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “But since you have time to call you must be fine now.”

So that was a no. Minho sucked in a breath so he wouldn’t say anything that really qualified as a fireable offense.

“Listen, Minho,” his editor added after a pause. “I wasn’t expecting this either. It’s only been two days, and he hasn’t seen any other reporter. They got back to us early this morning. I got the memo to you as soon as soon as I could.”

Minho rubbed his eyes with his thumb and middle finger. “Did they say why they accepted our request first?”

“Nothing. Just the same-day time and location. I wish I could tell you more.”

“Of course,” Minho sighed. “Leave it to the OmniLife press team to be as weird about this as possible. Thanks, Editor, please don’t fire me, I love you.”

“…If you keep ending phone calls like that, I might.”

“So much,” he said before hanging up. He slumped in his seat and let out another, much more obnoxious sigh. If Han knew where and who he was interviewing, Minho was pretty sure he’d never let him leave the house again.

So it was a good thing he didn’t know. Hopefully, he just assumed it was some short-tempered politician that had demanded Minho come in on such short notice, and he’d only be hung up on how his shave had been interrupted.

With an uncomfortably small margin of time, Minho arrived at the lobby of OmniLife’s tower—which was back in business after a bit of vertical downsizing—and had to force his voice steady enough so that he wasn’t yelling his name at the receptionist.

She confirmed the appointment with a pleasant smile. “Please have a seat. You’ll be called up shortly.”

Minho nodded, and had to make the effort to sit up like a respectable person and not just flop over when he found the nearest unoccupied seat. As the first journalist to get to question OmniLife’s mysterious new director, at least he wouldn’t also be a late one.

So he waited until 10am.

And then waited a few minutes past 10.

And then it was more than a few minutes past 10 and no one was calling him up.

He walked back over to the reception desk. “Are you sure you let him know I’m here?”

The woman gave him a coldly polite smile and a nod. “I’m sure you’re aware what a busy man Mr. Yang is. He’ll have you up shortly. Thank you for your patience.”

Short of jumping the turnstile next to the counter, there wasn’t much Minho could do. “Thank you, miss,” he said before heading back to his seat.

“Busy man,” he mocked under his breath as he went through the bag he’d brought with him. “Yeah, me too, except I’m not busy blowing up orphanages. Where is it?” he hissed when he couldn’t find his laptop.

Ah, shit. He left it on his bed. His phone would have to be good enough for doing last-minute research, even though he had a pretty good grasp on the questions he wanted to ask anyway.

As it turned out, most of the articles that pinged the key word OmniLife were a snoozefest. Profits are up this quarter, profits are down 2%, sound the alarm, whatever. The company had a couple internal divisions, so much less well-known they probably wouldn’t make much noise on their own, but Minho could always check.

First article, dated to only a few hours back, under the search word I.Energies. It told him that a few minutes after the news on Vulture broke, the division dropped all its shares in energy.

“So specific,” Minho scoffed. But then he read on.

No, they’d quite literally sold every single stock they held in any sector of energy—renewable or not, whether they had their own ventures in it or not—in an instant, they’d sold all of it for the equivalent of a small country’s GDP.

Minho knew jackshit about business, but even he realized most companies do not get rid of all their stake in an industry as vast as energy in a single morning.

A few articles down, after boring speculation written by authors with weekly quotas to fill, he saw something else. At the same time as it was dropping all shares in the industry at large, I.Energies was reportedly pumping mass amounts of money into its R&D department.

With how hard he squinted to make sure he was reading everything right, the crease between Minho’s eyebrows was starting to make itself permanent.

Several more articles down, from the morning of the Shocker attack: the entirety of their HR and legal departments allegedly liquidated and replaced with completely fresh faces.

“What the fuck…?” Minho mumbled to himself, and then he got to thinking, of all the titan-class companies he’s ever had to profile, he didn’t think he’d ever seen one with as few leaks or scandals as OmniLife. For all their success over the years, he’d never even seen that name in a headline before the party a few weeks ago. Now they were covering up the most bizarre business moves by throwing them under the label of their energy division. If Minho didn’t already know its name, he would have thought I.Energies was its own, unrelated company with how separate they kept the two from each other.

He couldn’t help thinking that’s exactly how a certain someone must like it.

“Mr. Lee?”

Minho jumped up like he’d been doing something wrong.

“He’s ready for you now. Follow me.”

On the way down the hall, up the elevator, and into another hallway, Minho made the effort to school his expression to be as easy-going as possible. After all, when people sensed their interviewer wasn’t counting down the seconds until the interaction was over, they tended to open up a bit more.

The woman opened the first door on the right and ushered him in. Minho’s very first impression of the director’s office was that it was eerily similar to the highest floor that didn’t exist anymore. His second was that it was smaller than he expected. He’d almost call it cozy, except the lack of windows or natural lighting made for a very cramped space.

When the woman closed the door behind him again, the wash of all-black hair and clothing that practically blended into his office chair finally looked up from his paperwork.

Minho scanned Jeongin’s face for any sign he recognized him from their single run-in.

After a beat of silence, Jeongin stood up, smiled and reached across his desk for a handshake. “Reporter Lee. Pleasure to meet you,” he said as Minho took his hand.

“Likewise,” he said past a thin smile before taking a seat.

“Apologies if I was late at all.” Minho waited for him to explain himself, and to address the fact that his team had responded, again, hours before they planned to meet, because that’s where Jeongin’s tone of voice seemed to be going.

…Oh, no. That was it.

Minho waved him off with a smile that projected more forgiveness than he actually had in him. “It’s fine, I’m aware what a busy man you are, Mr. Yang.” He tried not to be thrown off by just how different Jeongin was acting. It wasn’t even in the way or the words he spoke, which anyone could change at a moment’s notice.

But it was down to the way he let silences linger longer than anyone else would have been comfortable with, took up space like it was always his to occupy, made and maintained so much eye contact Minho had to remind himself it wasn’t a staring contest.

“We can just get into the questions.” Minho took out a tape recorder, pressed play and set it on the desk. “So, Mr. Yang, if you don’t mind me being direct, I’d like to ask the question you seem to have been avoiding these past 48 hours. How did someone with no record of experience with the company, let alone the business world, come to be the director of one of the country’s most important science- and technology-based companies?”

Jeongin leaned forward to set his elbows on the desk.

And then he glanced away, and any sense of confidence or assertiveness turned to jelly. He reached over and actually turned off Minho’s tape and slumped back in his chair.

Minho watched like a hawk for any sudden moves, but Jeongin only traced the ceiling with his eyes and blew a stray strand of hair out of his eyes. “Sorry, I just… First of all, Reporter, call me Jeongin, okay?”

“…Okay,” Minho replied, instead of what he wanted to blurt out, which was, ‘What is going on?’

“I guess you’re used to this kind of thing.” Jeongin slipped a finger into the collar of his shirt and tugged on it. “But all this stuffiness is starting to suffocate me,” he said with a nervous smile, and suddenly Minho was seeing Jeongin the rookie cop with a cute accent and not Yang Jeongin the lying blackmailing life-ruining murderer. “I’ll answer your questions, and you can take notes, but I’d rather not be recorded. I’m on the spot enough as it is,” he added, laughing breathily.

Minho put the recorder away. “I… don’t understand what this is… Jeongin-ssi,” he said as he took out a steno book and pen, not taking his eyes off him for a second.

He hadn’t said anything funny, but Jeongin laughed again. “You sound like me a month ago. Gosh, where do I begin?

Minho blinked. “I hate to say it, but the beginning would be nice.”

“Sure,” Jeongin said with an amiable, genuine smile. “I guess I’ve made it obvious enough, but I’m not from around here.”

“You’re from Busan.”

He scratched the back of his neck, every move making him look more and more like a nervous teenager who’d only happened to find himself way in over his head. “And not a very well-off part of it either. My grandmother was the one who would spend the weekdays in Seoul, cleaning houses so she could provide, and when I was too young to go to school, she would take me with her. I guess out of all the households she worked for, she figured the Hwang’s were the least likely to sell me for my organs,” he said with a huff of a laugh. “Considering Hyunjinnie-hyung was my age. She’d leave me there all week with him and his dad until it was time to go home.” He cracked a smile like the memories were playing out right before his eyes. “But I never wanted to leave. Figures.”

He met Minho’s eyes again. “You’re right, Reporter. Even though I lived with them, I never actually lived this world. I only officially moved to Seoul when I graduated, and I never thought I was going to amount to anything more than an average police officer.

“Then… Then Hyunjin died. The closest thing I ever had to brother, just, gone, for no good reason. I was having a hard enough time, and then they knocked on my door, saying I was named his successor when I don’t know anything about this world, and this accent they want me to do all the time tastes weird and my back hurts from sitting up straight all the time and I can hardly follow the boring meetings half the time, I…” He cut himself off and glanced away. When he spoke again, his words weren’t so rushed.

“I don’t know how Hyunjin did it all. But he did. Even when he was mourning his father’s death, he worked hard and was able to turn this place around. So the least I can do for the hyung I grew up with is to try my best to live up to his legacy.”

Minho finished up the sentence he was jotting down and looked up. “You wear it well, newbie.”

Jeongin cracked a bashful smile. “Wear what?”

“Responsibility. Power. We need more people like that. Don’t let it go to your head, though.”

“I’m trying my best, Reporter,” he said, pushing a strand of hair behind his ear.

Minho looked back at his notes and added an extra word at the bottom.

Rehearsed?

He flipped to a new blank page. “You alluded to the unfortunate incident that led to you taking the role of director of OmniLife. I wanted to let you know about something that crossed my desk in the aftermath of that event. A survivor claims to have witnessed something even more shocking than the explosion that night.”

Jeongin lifted his brows. “What is that?”

“For their safety, I can’t reveal their identity. And I understand you only recently took power. But what do you say to allegations of blackmailing and coercion?”

Jeongin’s mouth slowly dropped open. “Wh-What? Against who?”

Fucking fascinating response.

When the moment dragged on, Jeongin laughed, a broken, truly nervous noise. “Can you be more specific, Reporter? What is this about?”

“Sure thing. In particular, against a Mr. Dae of Phobos-“

There was a pained grunt outside the door.

Minho didn’t have enough time to figure out if it should have comforted him or startled him even more that Jeongin got to his feet even quicker than he could. “Who do you have outside?” Minho asked tightly.

“My bodyguards,” Jeongin shot back. Neither of them even breathed as they strained to listen for any sign of danger, both pairs of eyes anxiously watching the door.

Something THUMPED against it so loudly it made them flinch. Whatever it was, it hit the floor outside even harder.

The blood in Minho’s ears rushed louder when he and Jeongin demanded, at the same time, “What is this?”

So if he was going down, at least it looked like Jeongin was too.

The door flung open.

Minho suddenly wasn’t so surprised anymore.

“Get the fuck away from him,” Spiderman spat, marching up to Jeongin’s desk like he meant to put holes in the floor, Jeongin’s face a blank slate of confusion as he looked from the man whose identity Minho knew he knew back to the random journalist.

At least he was supposed to be nothing but a random journalist! Shit, his chance to actually get something out of the man in the center of this mess and Han was ruining it!

“What do you think you’re doing?” Minho choked out, speaking as lowly and quietly as he possibly could in his frustration. But Han didn’t even let him finish before he was shoving himself in between the two of them and making Minho stumble back.

He could tell that, in the moment when Han went for his arm to snatch away luggage that wound up in the wrong baggage claim, Jeongin put the pieces together.

And he was delighted.

Jeongin pointed at Minho, his mouth slowly dropping open like before—except this time it was in a smile. “Your own friend? Working with the police? To figure out your identity?”

Minho’s heart dropped so far his breathing went shallow. So Jeongin did recognize him.

“Oh, Jisungie, that must have killed you!” he exclaimed, his incisors gleaming in his wide smile. He dug his hands in his pockets. “When’d you figure it out?” he asked, taking a step forward that Han instinctively pushed Minho away from. “The night your other friend died? No, no, no, don’t tell me, it must’ve been…” Jeongin lifted a fist to his mouth in faux-disbelief. “After the party? Oh my God.” Han’s grip around Minho’s arm tightened at the mocking laugh he let out. “That’s just perfect. With your luck, I’m surprised the brother didn’t end up dead too, could you imagine the drama after that?”

“Don’t,” Minho hissed when he felt Han trembling to do something he couldn’t take back. “This piece of shit isn’t worth it.”

“No, Jisungie, don’t. Think how it would look if I walked out of a Lee Minho exclusive with a purple cheek.” He peered up at the open door and giggled- He actually giggled and leaned forward to poke Han in the chest. “You already beat the daylights out of my bodyguards. I’ll make that problem go away if you avoid making another mistake before you walk out of here.”

Minho glowered. “Bag, Jeongin.”

Jeongin picked up the bag without worrying that he was taking his eyes off them and handed it over. “Ever at your service, hyung.” He waved when they started stepping backwards out of the office. “You fucked up, Spiderman,” he said in a singsong. “I’ll see you later!”

Han dragged Minho down the hallway, away from the pair of burly men lying on the floor that Minho forced himself to ignore or else he might well and truly explode. “We have to get out of here.”

“You have to get out of here,” Minho said as steadily as a person on the verge of losing his mind could. “I have to be seen by CCTV footage and company staff walking out the way I came, and you have to get out.”

Han swiveled around to show a sad pair of spider eyes that would’ve made Minho feel guilty if he wasn’t already so mad. Why did he have to make them so expressive?

On the way down the hall, down the elevator, and into another hallway, Minho made the effort to school his expression to be as easy-going as possible.

The receptionist turned at the sound of fast footsteps. “Oh! Mr. Lee, I didn’t expect you down so soon, I’ll-”

“Because everyone’s always running so fucking late here?” he snapped, storming past the pathetic waist-high turnstile, out of the lobby and into the daylight. He clearly wasn’t thinking straight, because he didn’t think twice about passing an alley.

Han materialized out of thin air and took him on the most nauseating trip he’d ever been on in his life.

But when they landed on a nearby rooftop, Minho was so livid it suddenly didn’t matter they were a billion feet up in the air. “How could you do that!?”

Han stripped the mask off. “You mean how could I leave you alone with that psychopath? Jesus, can you take one second to think before you go off to do whatever you want!?”

“Can you!?” Minho exploded, utterly, utterly through with this treatment. “Can you think for one goddamn second that maybe, maybe I did think things through and I did have a- I had a plan, Jisung! He was this close to telling me his version of things like I planned and you ruined it!”

“You thought Jeongin was going to tell you the truth?”

For a second, Minho was so beyond anger he couldn’t speak. “Of course not,” he said when he found his breath. “But it was going to be something, somewhere to start, because all we have are memories of creepy diagrams and pictures and that’s it. We have absolutely nothing, and you just threw away a chance at us getting anywhere because you refuse to stop treating me like I’m made of glass!”

The wind changed direction and swept Han’s already messed up hair into his stupid, shocked face. “Min- Hyung. Don’t you… at least get where I’m coming from?”

Minho slapped the back of his hands to his forehead and let out a breath that only fueled his irritation. “I know you care about me, Jisung. But that isn’t everything.” He lifted his head again. “People care about babies, pets, things they own. When I said we should work together, I didn’t mean it like a superhero and the sidekick no one likes. You’re not treating me like a partner who has my back, you’re treating me like Minkyu always-“

Minho clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late.

Han’s eyes were already filling with guilt. “…You can’t think I’m anything like him.”

Fortunately for Minho, when he turned, the rooftop access was right behind him.

He threw his weight against it and stomped down the steps because if he thought about it, yeah, actually, it was ironic how similar this pair of mortal enemies was, two condescending know-it-alls who thought their way was right, screw everything and everyone else. He huffed a hot breath as he continued down the flight of stairs—Christ, how many did he have to go?—those two should talk things out, they’d probably turn out great friends, and they could bond over how incompetent they thought Minho was.

Minho finally spotted an elevator. He pressed the button to head down over and over and over and-

-

Felix had a feeling his forced, polite smiles to the officers he walked past were as awkward as they felt, but it was hard to concentrate on anything other than the weight of three comms he definitely wasn’t cleared to have in his pockets.

When Felix turned the corner and the police supply room was in sight, he glanced over both shoulders. Then he threw himself inside, locked the door behind him, and leaned against it with a heavy sigh of relief. It was a good thing he hadn’t run into any of the especially friendly officers on the way there; the last thing he would have needed was to get stuck in a conversation about the weather or kids he’d never met when he was already risking running late.

He pushed himself up off the door and, as delicately as important police supplies merited, placed the devices back where he’d taken them. Then he rushed out of the room to the elevator.

Now that it came a hundred times easier, Felix smiled at the first person from the AVU he made eye contact with. “Hey.”

“Hey, how are-?” Chan took a double-take and slowly lowered the clipboard in his hand. “…you out of breath?”

Felix pressed his lips together to stop his chest rising and falling and shook his head. “No,” he made the mistake of saying out loud; he couldn’t help the huff of oxygen he needed to take immediately after. “Yes. I got up late. Crazy news, right?” he seamlessly, ever so subtly switched subjects.

At least Chan’s laugh sounded like genuine amusement rather than the suspicion everybody and their dog had been leveling at him lately.

“Yeah, it is,” Chan said more seriously, shaking his head. “Spiderman carrying out his righteous judgment was bad enough when it was aimed at business execs and petty criminals.”

Seungmin came up and threw his arms around their necks without warning. “At least he would actually win those fights.” He sighed as he led them out of the room and down the hall for… some reason. “Where do all these guys come from?”

“Where are we going?” Felix said as he grabbed Seungmin’s arm, stumbling to keep up with his quick pace.

“Special mission.”

Felix laughed at how curt Seungmin said it. “Seriously, where are we-?”

Seungmin turned a sharp corner to an office that was currently unused and led them inside.

At least it was supposed to be unused. But Minkyu was standing in the room with the blinds drawn and the lights off, and that wasn’t creepy at all.

“You three have a special mission,” he said once they closed the door behind them.

“See?” Seungmin said, the vindication all over his face.

On the large center table in front of him, Minkyu pushed forward a headshot—a long-haired, bearded man Felix had never seen before. “We’ve managed to link a certain supplier with the tactical suit the spider wears. One Gong Hildong,” he said as he tapped on the photograph.

Felix definitely would have remembered if Han had brought up someone like this guy. His shoulders dropped with a small sigh of disappointment to think that he was still being kept out of the loop, even after everything that had happened. On the bright side, it would be a lot easier to act like he had no idea whoever this supplier Han was in contact with was. Because he didn’t.

“The textile firm he works for is a few hours’ drive outside the city,” Minkyu went on. “We’ve reserved you hotel rooms and more than enough equipment to profile his routine, contacts and behavior. I checked in advance-”

“Hotel rooms?” Chan repeated, his brows pinched together in disbelief. “Are you saying…?”

“Yes. If all goes well, you’ll only be out of town for a few days. But, depending on how things go… It’s good that none of you put in for time off in the next two weeks.”

Two weeks!? When every single day it was something new here, how was Felix supposed to be any help to Spiderman when he could be out of town for two weeks?

At least Felix wasn’t the only one unpleasantly surprised by this news. Seungmin froze, unfroze and then refroze again trying to process what Minkyu was dropping on them. “But…” he finally said. “I don’t understand what this has to do with the Vulture?”

“It doesn’t. Listen,” Minkyu said when they opened their mouths to protest. “The evidence from the other day and today is shoddy at best, the bank robber won’t talk, and all our leads are running dry. We have to cover all the ground we can, and you three are the ones I trust with this.”

“Shocker won’t talk?” Chan asked.

Minkyu settled his heavy gaze on him. “No. Because I should’ve seen the kid. He’s just doing his best. He’s an idiot, but he’s an idiot who’s doing his best to help people, including guys who don’t deserve it like Shin Hamin. So no, he’s not telling me anything.”

Felix could feel the contemptuous quotation marks hanging on the words. He could also feel his heart quicken from the fact that, as kind-hearted as Shocker’s gesture was, it did not have the same amount of brains behind it. If it weren’t for him, the police wouldn’t have known Spiderman was a ‘kid.’

“Why… is it us three?”

“Changbin is needed here, though he wishes he could join you guys.” Apparently that was all they were getting, because right after, Minkyu said, “This won’t be rocket science, and you’ll be right by the beach. So, think of this as a sort of vacation.”

“A work-mandated vacation,” Seungmin said with a nod. “Should be fun.”

Minkyu pointedly ignored the skeptical comment. “I’ll give you a more thorough briefing before you leave tomorrow.”

On his lunch hour, Felix hid out in the restroom and called Han, who picked up just when he thought it would go to voicemail.

“How can I help you?” Han said, more flatly than his usual peppy greetings. Felix probably should have ignored his tone when this surprise mission might have been more urgent.

“Is everything alright?” he asked anyway.

Han sighed right into the receiver, so loud and sudden it made Felix’s head reel back—right into the paper towel dispenser. “Yeah, I just- What was that?”

Felix silently winced as he rubbed the back of his head. “Dropped my phone. What’s wrong?” he pressed.

“I built cameras into the mask’s eyes,” Han said dully.

“Seriously?” Felix said, genuinely impressed by the smarts and effort that must have taken. “That’s incredible, Han, that could be so useful some day!”

“Well, I was hoping that day might be today…”

Felix hummed for him to go on.

Han sighed again, and there was some rustling coming from his end. “Okay, so listen, uh- First of all, think of Steve Jobs and the iPhone. Actually, this is a great comparison. He was obviously a genius, but everyone else said woah, hey, man, you can’t have a device that plays music and makes calls and takes photos, but, obviously, he did! So now, imagine me, giving myself as many cool tools and ideas as fast as I can think of them, because I’m a genius. And, you know, in my genius I may have committed one, small oversight.” Han mumbled something then, so hurried it was incomprehensible.

“…What? Can you say that again?”

“I may have forgotten how to get the image data off the mini-drive inside,” he repeated, only slightly slower this time.

Felix blinked. “You can’t get the pictures from the camera?” he said once he finally understood.

“This thing doesn’t have anything on it! No port, no home button, no headphone jack- Fuck, I really am designing the iPhone here,” Han said, his voice teetering on distressed. “I definitely didn’t forget to include a way to get the data out…” he said, so quiet and airy Felix didn’t think he sounded very certain about that.

He also had no idea how to help him out with this particular problem. “I’m sure you didn’t,” he said as sincerely as he could. “So can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” Han said, his voice sounding a bit muffled now, like he’d stepped away from the phone or maybe even put the mask back on.

Felix sucked in a breath, feeling nervous for some reason. “What do you think of the name Gil Hongdong?”

“What?” Han said, sharp and clear as if he’d picked up his phone again. “Is this a joke?”

Felix could only shake his head, even though he knew Han wouldn’t see, expecting demands of how he knew that name to follow.

“…Lee Felix, do not change your name to Gil Hongdong, are you kidding me?”

Felix stammered a few times before getting a word through Han’s threats to ‘take care’ of whoever had told him to change his name. “Not for me, not for me, it’s-”

“Oh God,” Han gasped. “Please don’t tell me someone’s- Who’s having a baby? …Felix, why aren’t you saying anything. You’re scaring me. Hello? Felix? What did you do? Hello!?”

“Thanks for answering my question,” Felix said when he finally found his voice again, slurring his words together in a hurry before hanging up the call, as well as his head in utter, utter mortification. Immediately the phone was ringing again. “Did you try Bluetooth?” he said meekly when he picked up.

“Don’t try to change the subject on me,” Han said sternly. “Also, obviously, I… thought of that… first. Huh.” There were a few steps away from the phone, before they came back quickly. “This is not you successfully changing the subject, just give me a second.”

Chapter Text

Getting in an argument with Minho when Han lived with him was bad enough when it was over something that wouldn’t matter in 24 hours—and this was not a fight over someone washing the dishes too loudly. So if he could avoid seeing him a little while longer by waking up and heading out early enough, Han was more than willing to sacrifice the sleep.

Though of course, Minho was there in the living room at the crack of dawn, diligently feeding his children breakfast. When he saw Han in the hallway, shoes in hand and fully dressed for work five hours before his shift started, he straightened up.

Han wishes he could say either of them did an admirable job of not making things weird.

But he hid his shoes behind his back like it was illicit material, and Minho wordlessly held out the bag of cat food to him.

So it was a little weird. After sensing the cat food was more of a peace offering than anything else though, Han relaxed and shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

Minho furrowed his brow and shook it at him more forcefully. Han took the bag and crouched down by the last empty bowl, Soonie’s mewing getting more impatient by the second.

“…Listen.”

“So…” When they spoke over each other, Han glanced up and sucked in a loud breath. “I’m going first, I’ve got a not-so-secret admirer who looks a lot like you,” he said as he shook the food into the bowl. “Do you know if your brother’s into Western pop? Specifically on CD?”

Minho crouched down next to him and picked up the bits of food Soonie had knocked on to the floor. “He isn’t. The only thing he ever listens to is yodeling on old vinyl records.” He looked over with confusion, belatedly realizing what a random question that was.

“Yeah, I’ve technically never met the guy, but he didn’t exactly strike me as a Bruno Mars fan in the music store yesterday. Meaning he tried tailing me. Emphasis on tried,” he said at Minho’s stunned expression. “Lix can tell you I forgot how to get the photos off the camera in the mask’s lens when I built the thing myself, but even I’m going to notice the freakishly tall guy following me into a candle shop. I don’t know what it is, but it feels like the police are up to something.

“Like, I thought our favorite informant called me the other day to announce he was pregnant and- False alarm! But that is the same face I made. Turns out that after the Vulture variety hour, Lix and two other cops are set to look into a ‘connection’ I’ve never met in my life.”

“Well,” Minho said, blinking rapidly and speaking slowly. “If you don’t have any ties to that connection, that means they’re not looking in the right direction. So we’re okay.”

“You’re not getting it. The name they gave the suspect is Gil Hongdong. They made up a fake guy for a fake mission for a fake excuse to get those three out of town for the rest of the month, because-” He threw his hands up in the air and made a strangled noise of bewilderment.

Minho slouched to place his elbow on his thigh and his fist in his chin, not making any more immediate sense of the situation than Han was.

Though Han did mimic the pose to see if it would get the synapses firing any faster. He bumped Minho after a moment.

“The police are always up to something, just so you know. That’s kind of what they do.”

Han bumped him again.

“Six foot is not freakishly tall.”

Han bumped him a third time to see if that would get him to remember what he was going to say earlier.

“Oh, right. The football match at the stadium is on today.”

“Already? Didn’t they just have one here, like-?”

“Ten days ago.”

“…So what about it?” Han asked after another quiet moment.

“Just that you should avoid that part of town today,” Minho said, reaching to pet Soonie now that he was fed and more amenable to being touched. “Reporters, tourists, annoying people like that will be there.”

He’d tried for a self-deprecating joke, but for the third time in just a few moments, they fell into another stiff silence.

Fine. It looked like Han was doing this.

“About yesterday,” he started. Minho only nodded, keeping his eyes focused on Soonie while the other two went their separate ways. “I didn’t mean to cross a line. I just saw how stressed you were and the laptop open on your bed so-”

“I figured,” he interrupted.

“Yeah. I know I messed up,” Han said, losing volume and confidence. “I won’t go through your things again.”

Han has always been so fascinated by how he could know full well what the wrong thing to say was and still trip headfirst into it.

Unsurprisingly, Minho’s hand on Soonie’s back stilled and he closed his eyes. “Did you not hear anything I said to you yesterday? It’s not about the laptop, it’s-”

Han stood and went into his room; he was not going to get the right impression across with words. “I got you something,” he called as he grabbed the thumb drive. When he returned, Minho did not look impressed.

“You got me something?” he repeated with all the expectation of a man who thought Han was about to try to bribe his way back on to his good side with an expired gift card he’d found on the ground.

“I took a little detour yesterday, after all the… you know, but before-!” When Minho’s face did not change, Han stopped with the vague hand gestures and just stuck the drive in his hand. “Can you open this?”

Even as Minho went into his own room to get his laptop and the two of them sat down on the bed, the skepticism was rolling off him in waves. Up until the moment he actually saw what was on the drive. His face went blank with surprise at all the photos of sensitive details and confidential correspondences Han had managed to take in the minute or saw he was up in OmniLife’s offices the other day. Minho turned to Han with wide eyes and twisted back to keep clicking through all the pictures.

“Surprise,” Han said with half-hearted jazz hands. “Suspiciously few people up there for a Monday morning.

“I can’t say this is throw-me-in-jail-and-leave-the-key-at-the-bottom-of-the-Han-River material, but it’s…”

“Incriminating?”

“I was going to say not good, but yeah.”

And he was supposed to be the writer between the two of them.

“I mean, what do you even want me to do with all this?” he asked, barely managing to tear his eyes away from the screen.

Han leaned back on his hands. “Whatever you want. Publish it, turn it into your next big story, maybe confront Jeongin yourself,” he said with a shrug and a detached air (but he really, truly hoped Minho wouldn’t pick that last one). “Whatever you think is best, Reporter Lee. I have your back,” he said sincerely.

Minho huffed a breathy laugh as he started downloading everything. “You’re acting like this doesn’t have way more to do with you than it does with me.”

“Of course,” Han said with a grin. “That’s why it’s a present. So?”

Apparently missing the attention, Soonie hopped up on the bed and waltzed all over Minho’s keyboard, who hastily scooped him up before he could send everything into the recycle bin and dropped him on Han’s lap instead.

“Well,” Minho said after a moment, getting into investigative journalist mode. He crossed his legs up onto the bed and moved so that he was leaning against the headboard, facing Han. “Minkyu being up to something, faking things for appearances… It reminded me, you never understood what Jeongin meant that day.”

Han gestured for him to elaborate; that guy said a lot of cryptic things.

“When he said you’re a performer. You entertain. And you’re going to play into his hand whether he tells what that is or not.”

Han was going to break his wrist if he waved for Minho to go on any harder.

“I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but these past few days, OmniLife has been dropping a lot of bombshells that would have been front page news any other time. Stuffing legal and HR positions with ghosts, investing their entire share in energy into their own mystery projects.”

“Their entire share in energy? So specific,” Han scoffed.

Minho nodded like his head was going to fall off. “That’s what I said. But it’s true, and the news just so happens to break right after the story on the shopping district getting torn apart by two menaces. Not my words,” he added quickly. He gave Han a telling look. “Take this all together, it means…”

“It means… They have a great publicist?” he hazarded a guess.

Minho tilted his head to the side. Except he didn’t really do it like a normal person. Without warning, he snapped his head almost 90 degrees to his right, his eyes wide as saucers.

“They have a terrible publicist,” Han backtracked, but that only made Minho snap his head to the other side like the world’s creepiest doll. “Their publicist… is…” When it hit him, he held up Soonie, flopped over onto his back, put the cat down and stuffed a pillow in his face to stifle his groans at the fucked up positions Jeongin kept finding a way to put him in—all to a polite round of applause on Minho’s part for putting the pieces together. “It’s me, isn’t it? He must have taken a random guy off the street, put him in that suit and sent him after me so our fight would beat out any headline that wasn’t worshipping him or the company.”

“And if that’s the case for Shocker, Vulture might not be that different. My point is, we don’t know if or when he’ll send someone else after you to cover up news he’s replacing flu vaccines across the country with sparkling water.”

“But I can control how big of a show I make it,” Han finished, knowing what that meant as he said it.

He’d have to stop quipping.

Maybe Felix was wrong about this whole power and responsibility thing, maybe some things were just too much for one person to bear.

“And I can…” Minho seemed to be in an equal amount of pain. “I can not publish these if it means the attention goes where it matters. I can send this into the police as an anonymous tip,” he said, looking down for Han’s approval.

He nodded, staring up into the ceiling and wondering what his next move should be.

Now that he was still and quiet again, Soonie saw his opening and hopped up onto Han’s chest for affection. Except he buffeted the attempts at petting him, so maybe it was just for his warmth.

“You should try talking to him, you know,” Minho said as he typed something up on his laptop, presumably making his 39th email account.

At this point, Han’s life was so weird he was over questioning Minho’s odd requests. He gently picked up Soonie’s little paw and shook it up and down. “Good morning, sonnim, how did you find your breakfast today, sonnim? Good?” he cooed. “Good?”

The typing came to an abrupt stop, and when he glanced up, he found Minho staring like today was the day he’d finally realized Han Jisung had a screw loose.

And then Minho ducked and burst out laughing so hard he scared Soonie off.

“Wh-What, is that not what you…?” Han broke off, Minho’s infectious Joker laughter rubbing off on him as he half-wondered when the last time he’d heard it was.

“No!” he laughed, thwacking his arm. “Talk to your stalker,” he said as he recovered. “They wouldn’t be making all these weird plays if they actually had the evidence to pin you as Spiderman, after all.”

“…So I should risk giving them that evidence… why?”

Minho rolled his eyes, though the smile on his face told Han it was only playful. “As much as we both know you can talk yourself into trouble, you talk yourself out of it twice as well. If you play it right, you’ll throw them off the trail for good, I know you will. When you go out, at least leave the suit here.”

Han blinked. “Why?”

“You might run into the cop who wants Spidey behind bars whether you mean to or not?”

So Han found himself glancing back at every other storefront window and motorcycle mirror he passed, wondering how much aimless wandering through the city it would take to draw out his tail, if he even had one at all today.

At some point, he walked past a cosmetics store with cute, frilly branding he’d never gone in before. And then he stopped on the sidewalk, took a few steps backwards without turning around, and looked over at the ad with IU’s smiling face by the entrance.

He ducked in, because now that she mentioned it, Han really did have to restock on sunscreen. Plus, he wanted to see if his biggest fan had the gall to follow him in there.

Not that the short pink and white shelves that illuminated all kinds of lip stains and eyeshadow pallets and nail polishes were giving him any pause, but he didn’t have as easy as a time strolling down the aisles as he’d expected. By the time he was declining, as politely as possible, the help of a third pushy employee, he wasn’t sure whether to take all the attention as a compliment or as genuine doubt in his ability to tell an eyelash curler from a pair of nail clippers.

He didn’t have much time to think about it when a wash of black and dark blue entered the store. God, even if he didn’t tower over customer and employee alike, Minkyu could not have looked more out of place if he’d tried.

Without looking in his direction, Han shuffled over to the most secluded corner of the store and scanned whatever the selection in front of him was, humming and nodding to himself like the difference between a flat-top and a contour brush mattered to him.

Sure enough, the dark blob that didn’t blend into his peripheral vision eventually, subtly made its way over to the aisle opposite him.

He wondered how long Minkyu would just stand there like he wasn’t clearly watching him out of the corner of his eye. Or far he could push this charade.

Han lazily rounded the aisle like he was just spending an easy day out window shopping, and he eyed the different tinted sunscreens on display the way Minkyu was pretending to. Minkyu shuffled away a little, but it wasn’t until Han managed to get an arm’s-length away that he finally looked up at the personal space intruder with some bemusement.

Han swiped two shades of his usual cream from the shelf and held them up on either side of his face. “Usually I go with Sandy Gold here, but lately I’ve been running around in the sun so often I’m pretty sure I need to go a shade darker. What do you think, officer?”

He cracked a smile when Minkyu’s stare turned scrutinizing. “Oops. Unless we ran out of BB cream at the same time, I think I might be in trouble.”

“You know who I am?” Minkyu asked with that same stare.

Han deflated with a sigh. “Obviously I can tell you’re a cop, I mean-” He gestured to his humorless stare and his crossed arms and his overall… vibe. But when his face didn’t change, Han remembered—this guy had seen him have a very well-acted breakdown in Minho’s arms the day Shocker trashed the bank. What he wanted to know was if his brother had tipped Han off to the fact that he was the lead investigator on the Spiderman case.

Which… he sort of had, all those weeks back when he brought up how Minkyu had formed the AVU. But he hadn’t known Han was Spiderman then! And Han would have probably figured it out without him anyway!

But either way, confirming that they did in fact talk about Minkyu behind his back would have been a really, really bad look for them.

“I mean, who else would you be?” Han said as he leaned against the shelf next to him and crossed his ankles, delivering the line like he was gunning for a Best Actor award.

Minkyu kept up his hard stare a moment longer before dropping his arms. “You’re not in trouble,” he finally said. “I’d just like to ask you a few questions down at the station.”

Han lifted his eyebrows for him to explain.

“At the station.”

Han knew he was going either way. Still, he didn’t want to look he was just throwing himself at the guy. He took one of the bottles in his hands and pointed it in Minkyu’s face. “You’re not putting me in cuffs?” he asked, though he made it sound more like a command than anything else.

Minkyu slowly nodded. “Right.”

“So I’m not under arrest.”

“Right.”

“So, hypothetically, if I were to say-”

“No, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Minkyu interrupted, his voice steady but a sense of weariness already creeping into it. Wow. When Han wanted to, he could really have that effect on people and sometimes when he didn’t want to. “Your answer will simply be noted for the record.”

Han blinked and stood up straight. That made absolutely no sense. “In this, remember, hypothetical situation, I’m not answering any questions. I don’t even know what I’m not answering, man- Officer,” he quickly corrected.

Minkyu shrugged. “It’s up to you, Han Jisung.”

“Not much of a choice,” he muttered as he walked past Minkyu, who looked surprised for the first time. “Relax, I’ll go. But I wasn’t joking about the BB cream.”

Riding in a cop car was fun.

For about sixty seconds.

Then it was dawning on Han what a very real possibility it was that if he screwed up now or in the future he’d wind up back there again, only that time, with handcuffs on his wrists.

So the rest of the ride was a harrowing few minutes.

When they got out of the car, they walked up the steps of the station, through the glass doors and then to one of the many desks where they probably questioned most people who weren’t active suspects in a case.

Another, older cop was waiting for them there. He shook Han’s hand and introduced himself as Kyo Taekyung or something like that, but it was honestly hard for Han to focus on the name when he was greeting him as if this was a meeting of equals and not a conversation that could go terribly wrong for him and the people he cared about at the slightest slip-up.

Oh God.

He was so fucked.

Han introduced himself like they didn’t know his name and forced a smile. Why did Minho tell me I could do this? Why did I believe him??

“Pleasure to meet you,” the officer said as the other two took a seat opposite each other. “Loosen up a bit, son,” he said with a good-natured smile. “We just want to ask you a few questions.”

Apparently, the tension was showing. Han’s grimace at the cop’s words must have made it worse, but he couldn’t help it. It’d been a while since he’d been called that.

“Where were you the morning of July 18^th?” Minkyu asked right out of the gate. If it were any other date Han would have been stumped; he could hardly remember what he was doing six hours ago on a good day. But he knew that was the day he had—among other things—saved Minkyu’s life.

Not that he did any of this expecting somebody to throw a parade, but come on. Talk about gratitude.

“July 18^th…” Han made a show of counting down from the current date before shuddering. “When the Kookmin got robbed?”

“Well, the suspect didn’t succeed in getting away with anything, but yes,” Minkyu said. “It is. What do you remember of that morning?”

“Well,” Han said with a shaky breath he didn’t have to entirely play up, worried about toeing the line between giving up too much and too little. “I was just trying to take out a check when this thing barged in and demanded all the money in the safe. I ran into the restroom and didn’t come back out until it was all over, I was just-” He didn’t notice his leg had been bouncing up and down like a jackhammer until it bumped the side of the desk. He forced it to still. “Just so scared.”

“Happen to have any friends with you?” Mr. Officer, as Han was resigned to calling him in his head, pressed.

Han let out a huff of air. “Yes. Lee Minho, someone I know from school,” he said as vaguely as possible. “He didn’t stay with me in the restroom, he-”

Again, Han did not need to play up his exasperation. “He ran back out to help the webslinger. And I mean, actually grabbed the taser off the knocked-out security guard and hit Shocker with it, that’s the kind of stress I have to put up with. And sure, maybe I can’t blame him for not knowing Spidey didn’t need the help and maybe I should’ve been a little less edgy after the fact and I could afford to at least told him good-” He cleared his throat at the wide-eyed look Minkyu pinned him with. “I’m assuming he didn’t need help, I didn’t see him but he- he sounded pretty confident.”

But Minkyu wasn’t even focused on that part. “He did that? For the bug?”

All at once, Han felt the need to defend Minho, himself, and also, to agree with the sentiment. He nodded his head feverishly. “That’s what I said! He has no sense of self-preservation!”

The third need beat out the others.

“Tell me about it,” Minkyu scoffed. “He’d throw himself into traffic if someone just told him it would be a good idea to look both ways before crossing.”

Han didn’t know if it was his imagination, but he thought that all at once, everyone got hit with the wave of how weird it was that they’d just… agreed on something. On Minho of all things. Minkyu lined up already organized paperwork in the quiet that followed.

“So you know him too?” Han asked belatedly and maybe a little too abruptly. He squinted at Minkyu, tilting his head from side to side. “Now that I think of it, are you guys, like… cousins?”

Minkyu huffed a dry laugh. “You really don’t know, do you?”

Yep, that was Han, completely clueless, not knowing a thing.

“Where do you live?” he asked, changing subjects.

Han gave his old address, though of course he stuttered saying the name of the street.

Minkyu sure wasn’t one to hesitate to call him out. “The landlord who manages that unit says no one’s been home for weeks.”

Snitch.

Han shrugged and threw a lazy arm over the back of his chair, trying to regain that air of confidence he might not have given off in the first place. “Well, that’s the last place you could call my address. I’ve been…” He waved his fingers around vaguely. “You know?”

Minkyu shook his head without breaking eye contact. Now that Han thought about it, it was… pretty eerie how little he blinked.

He went to examine his fingernails like nothing about this particularly mattered to him (and promptly realized the tragic state of his cuticles). “Hotels, crashing on friends’ couches, that stuff.”

“Which friends?”

So far neither of the officers had been writing or recording anything. Hopefully that meant none of Han’s answers mattered. Otherwise, it meant one of them had a photogenic memory and Han had to worry every single word, pause and facial expression he made would be retained forever.

He chose to believe in the nicer world and veered on the side of honesty. “I mean, again, sort of just the one friend, Minho. How… do you know him?” he tried again.

“You should ask him. How do you?”

“Like I said, from school. Normally we would have ended up in different school years and probably never met, but-” Han capped the sentence with a shrug.

“Your educational record says you skipped two years in school. Is that why you call him by his first name?”

This was riveting interrogation work. Han shrugged again. “I guess someone needs to keep him humble.”

“You’re not wrong,” Minkyu sighed, and Han almost asked him to stop agreeing with him, it was starting to weird him out. “Even if you didn’t finish school, your record also says you’re somewhat of a student of science. I wanted to ask for your insight on something.” Unexpectedly, he pulled something out of his pocket and held it up in the space between them.

It took everything Han had in him not to bolt upright at the sight of the solution. Even the older officer hadn’t seemed to know that was coming, looking curiously between the vial and Minkyu.

“What’s this?” Han asked as he took it, knowing full well what his own web dissolvent looked like.

“It was found in the home of someone who seems to have a friend at this- Well, that’s for us to know,” Minkyu said. “What you get to know is that it’s a very acidic, polar protic solvent. Nothing on the market like it. What do you think it would be doing in a civilian’s apartment?”

Han’s face was paper-blank while his heart thudded in his throat, refusing to look up as he uselessly turned the vial around and around.

Holy fucking shit. This is it, I’m actually going to jail.

“Han Jisung. What would a civilian need a compound like that for?”

“I, uh-” he exhaled, the quick wit that came through for quips and jokes failing him in the moment he needed it most. “Well, maybe someone-“

“Minkyu.”

The shock of a new voice jerked Han’s head up to its source. Another cop, a little younger, holding a tablet and looking very uneasy.

“Not now,” he said, directing that same toneless voice at his subordinate without so much as looking up.

The cop, Detective Bang Chan the badge hanging from his neck read, took a hesitant step forward. “It-It’s about the football match.”

“That doesn’t start for another-” Minkyu shook his head. “We’re not traffic control, Chan, that doesn’t concern us.”

“Yeah. We’re Anti-Vigilante and it’s- Well-“ Chan glanced at Han before flipping the screen for the three of them to see, and what Han saw was even worse than the threat of getting arrested for not cleaning his old place thoroughly enough.

Someone dressed as Spiderman ran through the streets of Seoul, throwing up stupid hand gestures at the live cameras set up for the game and taunting the reporters that jumped to get a shot of him.

No, that was the Spiderman suit. As far as anyone was concerned, that was Spiderman—throwing up a cocky peace sign live on KBS news.

“The fuck is he doing?” Han burst out in disbelief. “Does he not realize Spiderman is a wanted criminal!?”

Minkyu and Kyung Taeko—he finally remembered—got up and followed the detective without hesitation, muttering in low, alarmed tones and leaving Han just… standing there.

“A-Am I free to-?”

He took in as big of a breath as he could.

And then buried his face in his hands and dropped back into the chair.

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” he laughed, half-hysterical with the roller coaster of emotions coursing through him. “I am friends with the biggest idiot in the world.”

“Hey… are you okay?” a gentle voice behind him asked. Han twisted around to meet a pair of very concerned eyes.

“Fine. Perfectly fine, I just-” He swiveled his head in the direction the three of them went, but they’d already disappeared. “How long did your boss want to keep me?” he asked, a little too desperately but sue him, Minho was out there flaunting the Spiderman suit surrounded by what must have been dozens of reporters and bystanders and cops and the thought was freaking Han out all over again so he focused on getting away from the guy in front of him instead.

“I… don’t know. I didn’t know he was questioning anyone today.” He glanced him up and down. “Who are you?”

Han worried his bottom lip and looked past the cop. “Hey, what’s that?”

He didn’t even get a chance to turn around before Han was darting out of the station, repeating the same mumbled mantra as he ran into a crosswalk. “I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna-”

Instead of hanging back or picking up the pace when he sensed a car speeding into the crosswalk, he wheeled on it and made it come to a screeching halt in front of him. “WHY DOES NO ONE IN THIS CITY KNOW HOW TO DRIVE!?”

After what felt like hours of racing through the streets like he was that maniac in the suit, Han finally spotted the imposter on a street without cameras or fanatics, and he could have sobbed at the damage done to his image.

Spiderman doesn’t jog on the sidewalk.

Han pressed himself into an alleyway and yanked the faker when he ran by.

Minho gasped in shock and readied a potentially devastating left hook before he realized who’d grabbed him. In a few jerky, graceless movements, he wiggled off the mask and grabbed Han’s shoulders and had the audacity to beam at him. “Did it work?”

“Did what work!?” Han said, glancing back out of the alley to make sure he hadn’t been followed. “If we’re talking about your brain, then clearly-”

Minho’s excitement wasn’t tamped down. “Did they see you and Spiderman at different places at the same time?”

“Did they…?” Han gaped at the mastermind in front of him. “You did that to give me an alibi? Are you serious!? Minho, I was so stressed I almost gave them my credit card information!”

“But did you?” he asked with a self-confident grin.

Han tried so hard to muster up any anger he could. “Do you know how bad this would have been if you’d been caught, you dumb-? Why are you laughing!?”

“I get why you do this full-time,” Minho laughed as he held up and stared at his arms. “That felt so cool, how does this even work? Do I just put up my hands and-?”

Han snatched the webshooters off of him and gestured for him to hand over the suit. “Take that off, it’s disrespectful.”

Minho looked down at the suit and sobered up. “…I don’t have any other clothes.”

After Han came back from a quick trip to the department store, Minho was not pleased. “This is a dress shirt.”

Ansty, Han waited at the mouth of the alley, checking both ways to make sure no one would walk in on them. “Yes, I know, it’s summer but it had to have long sleeves to cover everything up,” he said without glancing back.

“And a pair of track pants… A tie?”

Han waved an anxious hand at him, gesturing for him to hurry up while the coast was still clear. “Sorry I didn’t bring you a coordinated outfit, Sir Gucci, put them on.”

“One fingerless glove. Is this a wallet chain? Oh, no, it’s a belt. For the track pants. Seriously, at this rate, I’d look less suspicious walking around with the suit on.”

“Minho, I swear to God, just put them-” Han whirled around, and found him completely dressed in the budget department store outfit.

“I’ve been dressed for sixty seconds. Come on,” he said as he passed Han, who kinda resented how well Minho could make the disastrous outfit work. “What should we have for breakfast?”

Chapter Text

Felix couldn’t even get an uneventful drink from the water dispenser these days. He was so dumbfounded by what he’d walked in on; it was a wonder he didn’t drop the cup of water straight onto the floor.

Seungmin threw a glance over his shoulder as he walked up to him. Whatever he’d just said, Felix didn’t process it. He blinked as he came back to earth. “What?”

Seungmin tilted his head, trying to understand Felix’s reaction. “Did I screw up that bad? I don’t know who that was supposed to be. Should I have stopped him?”

“Seeing as that was Spiderman that ran out of here, yes, but I am so glad you didn’t,” Felix did not say. Instead, he downed the water in his tiny paper cup and wiped his mouth. “Surprised by the nerve is all,” he said and hey he wasn’t entirely lying. Small wins. “If they didn’t bother to fill us in, it couldn’t have been that important. I’m sure it’s fine,” he offered with a smile.

Seungmin held out his hand for the paper cup, and when Felix handed it over, he tore it open at the seam. He’d been torturing the paper cups like this for so long, it was a little late to ask why he did it now. He glanced over his shoulder again as he ripped along the edge where the sides met the bottom and huffed. “Hopefully. You don’t think something about that guy seemed kinda familiar, though? Like he’s on TV or something?”

Felix had to make sure he shook his head no at a normal speed. “I would remember a person with blue hair. Come on, we should find Chan and get-”

As he spoke, the noise of a whole chunk of the force gearing up drew their attention to the front, and the first people Felix immediately recognized were Minkyu, Changbin, and the very man he’d mentioned.

Seungmin pointed Chan out. “I found him.”

Felix tried to make his way over to the commotion, but they were already wheeling out with sirens blaring and guns blazing, so he turned to the officer at the front desk. “What’s going on?”

She glanced out the window at the retreating cop cars. “Something about sighting the Spiderman over by the stadium.”

“What?” Han had literally just left. Even if he was fast, he couldn’t be get-to-the-other-side-of-town-in-two-minutes-flat fast. “When?”

“…Now? I heard he’s treating the live pre-game coverage like it’s his own personal show.” She shrugged. “I don’t think the traffic controllers are equipped to get him, and if he has half a brain left up there, he’ll be gone before the others get there. Sorry,” she added at the stricken look on Felix’s face, taking it for despair that the masked menace would get away again.

In the office, practically abandoned except for him, Seungmin and a handful of others, Felix stared blankly at a report he should have been filing, silently catastrophizing until he thought his head might explode from all the worst-case scenarios flashing through it.

At a certain point, pretending to work while he waited for everyone to get back became too torturous. Short of pulling the internet so he could have a good excuse for not having gotten anything done in the past half-hour, the only thing there was to do was pace around to try and clear his head. When he passed behind him, Seungmin looked up with curiosity.

“I’ll be back,” Felix said, glancing down at the desk and seeing, for one, that with the dinosaur game open on his computer, Seungmin wasn’t getting much more work done than he was, but also that there was a clipboard with papers on it. “I can file this,” he said as he scooped it up. But when he read the paper on top, he realized it was just a record of the names of their coworkers and where they sat in the office.

“That’s… Sure, thanks,” Seungmin said as he turned back to his computer, waving him off when he gathered that it was more about Felix looking productive while he stepped out than anything else.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t do much for him when someone trying to pass him on the first floor veered a little too close and he bumped the documents out of their hand.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Felix dropped to his knees, scrambling to gather up everything that had spilled out of the manila folder labeled Property Crimes while the other officer, much more calmly, picked up his clipboard and pages for him. “Here, sorry,” he said as he looked up to hand it over, but the leery grin on the other man’s face almost made him drop it again.

“Thank you,” he said, swapping the clipboard for the folder slower than necessary.

“You’re…” Felix warily watched the officer walk back the way he’d come. “-welcome.”

He forgot about the weirdness as soon as one of the people he’d been waiting for marched into his line of sight. Felix pushed himself to his feet when he saw Changbin and chased him down to the elevator. “Hey,” he breathed once it was just the two of them, trying for casual (and to politely ignore that Changbin had been visibly spamming the button to close the door on him a second ago). “What happened out there?”

Changbin gave him a once-over and crossed his arms. “Spiderman being a jackass again. Nothing new.”

Felix didn’t know his foot-tapping would make so much noise against the floor until he did it. Changbin let out a huff of a laugh when he self-consciously stopped. “We didn’t get him, if that’s what you’re wondering. Oh,” he added. “And it looks like the powers that be are calling off your guys’ mission.”

“All of a sudden? Are you sure nothing happened out there?”

Changbin’s face showed jarringly little emotion as the elevator doors opened and he said, “Because Gil Hongdong died. Peacefully, in his sleep.” And then he stepped right out.

The doors closed on Felix’s shocked blinking. Han apparently had no idea who the suspect was even supposed to be. Now he’s dead?

The elevator came back down to the ground floor for Minkyu. “Going up?” Felix asked as his superior stepped inside and nodded. And sort of ‘accidentally’ hit the second-floor button along with the third. “So what was that about?”

“Nothing important,” Minkyu said, and it would’ve been the same eye-opening he’d had with Changbin, except the even flatter-than-usual tone told him that whatever it was, it wasn’t something he was happy about.

Felix almost started up his foot-tapping again, but he resisted the urge. “…And we’re not taking off for the mission today.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Changbin just told me what happened to Gil Hongdong. He… passed away?” he added when Minkyu stared at him without any sort of comprehension on his face. “Isn’t that kind of a deal breaker?”

Minkyu looked away as they stopped at the second floor, where neither of them got out. He nodded as the doors shut. “Right. I can’t justify the resources now that my best hunch has had a hole blown straight through it,” he said, and Felix couldn’t help thinking that the word choice didn’t seem very reflective of someone passing peacefully. "I still don’t understand how this could have happened,” he said, as if to himself.

The next few moments were spent in a silence Felix was anxious to break, but wasn’t sure how. When they arrived at the third floor, Minkyu took a second to walk out.

-

Seungmin liked Chan and Felix, but he doubted his ability to stay sane put up in a room with any two people for days on end.

So now, as he walked home, the light of the sunset boxed in by the mid-rises surrounding him, the only thing on his mind was relief at finding out they wouldn’t be going after all. So he didn’t think twice about crossing through the park instead of taking the long way around until he was well within its treelined perimeter.

If he was being honest, calling it a park is generous. The most interesting thing about the round crop of trees he could see from his bedroom window was the fountain at the center. Even that was a sign of how ill-kept the park was, because it was too much to ask that a water fountain have actual water on its surface instead of dirt and debris.

By far, the worst part was that when it was as late as it was now, the densely packed foliage blocked out so much of the sun and the streetlights it was hard to make out so much as the grooves in the stone path. All he could do was walk straight ahead with synthetic confidence that nothing would jump out at him from the darkness on either side of him.

Obviously, nothing ever had. That didn’t stop him from yelping out loud when a squirrel ran past his feet.

“Fuck this.” He didn’t care if it was overkill. He was pulling out the flashlight. He cast the light behind him and eyed about eight benches he’d already passed. So only twenty-two to go before he’d be home.

Hopefully his neighbor wouldn’t be blasting that music until midnight again.

Nineteen benches.

If his math was right, there was a fifty/fifty chance that when he called his sister back, she would either have something genuinely important to say or she would just be messing with him.

Fifteen benches.

Branches crackled ahead.

Seungmin swung the light in the direction of the noise, and he could have laughed in spite of himself. It wasn’t a crime for someone else to be walking through the park, he jumped to explain to his jittery nerves. Even if they were taking a detour through the trees, for some reason.

Whoever had made the noise, the leaves were too dense and low-hanging for the light to reach them from this angle.

Seungmin took a few steps closer.

Then he heard a voice, closer than he’d expected, and he ducked behind bench number fifteen. The words, unintelligible from here, came so quick and high-strung they sounded… scared.

Shit. If he’d walked in on a mugging or some deal gone wrong, he needed to do something about it.

He closed his hand around the police badge in his pocket and steeled himself to stand.

But the gargling scream the man suddenly let out wrenched a startled breath out of Seungmin.

He looked up over the bench and through the break in the treeline—and nothing in the world could have prepared him for what he saw.

Coming out of a second person was that thing he swore he’d seen the last of in May, that creature that didn’t make any earthly sense but was somehow here, in front of him and tearing off a man’s head with its teeth.

Seungmin’s hands flew up and clamped over his mouth. The scream of terror he wanted to let out melted into a distressed moan that didn’t get past his teeth when he saw that monster…

When he saw what it ended up doing with the man’s head.

Seungmin pressed his forehead against a cold metallic frame until it hurt and screwed his eyes shut, silently pleading with everything he had in him that he wouldn’t be next.

Happy now?

This time Seungmin couldn’t help his gasp that not had he been spotted, that thing could talk all along?

But that monster wasn’t standing over him.

There was the sound of trees snapping and cracking up ahead, but then nothing for eight excruciating seconds.

Fifteen.

Nineteen.

Twenty-two.

Thirty.

He let himself peek up over the bench again.

It was gone.

The only thing in its place was a human-shaped bundle.

Seungmin tripped over his feet on his first attempt to stand and bolted out of the park after his second.

In his blind rush to get away, get away, get away he cut through the overgrown grass and weeds and when he burst out into the comparatively blinding light of the cityscape he spotted someone nearby and he rushed over to them but he could barely speak over his gasping breaths.

“Hey, slow down, slow down, are you okay?” The man gestured for him to breathe, taking much more kindly to a strange, haggard person scrambling out of the park than Seungmin ever would have himself.

He nodded rapidly, he was fine, but- But-

He didn’t even know what he wanted to say, or ask, or if he should even be sticking around and talking at all, until the man asked something else. “Do you need to call someone?”

Seungmin nodded his head, absentminded at first when he needed a second to process the question. “Yes. Yeah, call, I should…”

When he patted down his pockets, his heart fell.

He’d left his phone back there.

He let out a shaky breath as he turned back to the man, questions clearly swirling behind his eyes so Seungmin started trying to explain. “God, it- it was- There were these people. The point is one of them just-”

But it was insane. It had been insane to see and now he would sound insane describing it because who ever knew there was an actual person inside that thing? “You’d never believe me,” he broke off hopelessly.

The man gave him a very pointed look.

“Right, right,” Seungmin said, shaking his head to try to get his thoughts to come a little more rationally. “This is the city with flying spider and bird men,” he said with a dry, humorless laugh. “You might as well believe anything that comes out of my mouth, that’s how crazy-”

“Dude, did you want a call or not?”

Seungmin looked down and realized the man had been offering his phone, not asking him to try his suspension of disbelief.

He took it with an awkward apology and punched in Felix’s number faster than he’d ever typed anything and hit the call button.

Even though he knew it must have been his imagination, the tone seemed to get louder the longer it droned on and there must have been hundreds of windows facing this direction and they had to be entirely too exposed out in the open like this and-

“What happened?” the man asked, snapping Seungmin out of his spiraling thoughts. He cast another glance around at their increasingly too-dark and too-quiet surroundings.

“We should get inside,” Seungmin said as he took a few tentative steps. The man took a look around too, and it was clear from his face that nothing about either the environment, or Seungmin and his frazzled behavior for that matter, particularly freaked him out.

Seeing as he wasn’t exactly built like an Olympic weightlifter, it was a wonder where that confidence was coming from. He either had to be either hopelessly naïve, or he was the exact seedy type Seungmin should have been wary of.

He was following him now, though, and it was too late to be suspicious of him because Felix finally picked up. “Do you think you can make this quick?” he said before Seungmin could get a single word in. “I’m a little busy burning the shit out of this pasta recipe I saw on-”

He would have never guessed that was how Felix answered unknown numbers. “Felix, I’m- It’s not a scam caller.”

Save for the sound of what must have been actual sauce boiling, the other end of the line fell silent.

“I… I need you here, something-” As they walked across the empty street drowned in uncanny orange streetlight, Seungmin cast another look back, and found the stranger’s face twisted in sudden… discomfort. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay, why wouldn’t I be okay?” Felix shot back as the stranger forced a smile and held up and OK hand sign. “What is-?” He stopped and started a few times. “What are you doing calling me from this number, Seungmin?”

“It doesn’t…” he forced himself to look away from the man’s odd expression. He had not conveniently run in the direction of his apartment so the building they were about to enter wasn’t his own but it would at least be some kind of cover and relief for the paranoia building inside him. “It doesn’t matter right now, just please come to the-” He made sure he had his bearings straight. “The southwest corner of the park on Jong-ro and Samil-daero. I… I saw it again,” he said as he walked up the stairs to the building.

“Saw… Saw what exactly?”

Seungmin sucked in a breath before he spoke. “I know it’s insane because we assumed Spiderman had blown it up and we haven’t seen it in weeks, but I swear to you, I saw that monster. The- The symbiote, it-”

“What?” Felix exclaimed, but that wasn’t why Seungmin cut himself off.

“Hey!” he called after the man who was dashing back toward the park. “Hey!” Dread crawled its slimy way up his throat as the stranger disappeared into the greenery because what part of monster come back from the dead would make someone turn around and run back!?

And why am I following??

-

The only thing Han had ever known the symbiote to feed on was stray cats.

But that might have only been because of the strength of the last host’s morals.

The headless body in front of him (like the one in the penthouse Felix described over the phone the other day) was proof that if this was Venom’s work, whoever the current host was lacked either strength or morals.

Maybe it was both.

He picked up the phone on the ground, doubled back and ran into the cop—Seungmin, Felix had called him when he came about this close to giving himself and Han away—who he was pretty sure didn’t recognize him from earlier that day. Han sure hadn’t recognized him at first and it helped that the sun was down now but maybe once he calmed down he’d get a little more inquisitive so he had to make his great escape soon. “Done with this?” Han asked as he switched the phones and dashed away without waiting for an answer.

“Wait.” Oops. Something about that might have been a little too reminiscent of earlier and stirred Seungmin’s memory. “Hang on, get back here, I need to-”

Han did not have time for that. Before he could catch up and see him, Han snapped on a web shooter and zipped up to the top of one of the nearby buildings.

When he landed, he saw Seungmin run up to the spot he’d just been standing and look around, baffled as to where Han had disappeared to.

He backed away from the ledge to put on his gloves and mask and yanked off the T-shirt he could afford to misplace and the black and white Nikes he would really prefer not to and launched off the rooftop.

He swung along the streets, trying to relocate the threat that had drawn him over in the first place before the portent of danger had vanished off his radar and left only a shaken Seungmin in its wake. But before he could fully focus his senses and find even a hint of what was out of place, a string of electronic, musical meows in his ears broke his concentration. Which is to say, Minho was calling.

“I’m busy,” Han said and then hung up.

Minho didn’t waste a second before calling him back.

“I know, okay?” Han said as he stopped on a radio tower. “I was there, I’m on it.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” was Minho’s unexpected message.

Emotion swirled in Han’s stomach. A very unhelpful one. “Usually not my intention, believe it or not," he said as he jumped and got to patrolling again. Surrounded by the tall buildings of the business district and the light of all those offices with employees still at work, Han rapid fire scanned the people on the street.

“You know what I mean.”

“My powers don’t include telepathy,” Han said, his eyes locked on a man sitting alone outside a restaurant.

“I mean that if anything happens, lead with your brain, Han Jisung, not your guilt. No one gets anything out of you getting hurt.”

As the spring inside Han coiled tighter in anticipation, the man turned to look over his shoulder. “Yeah, except the bad guy.” Who he might have been looking at.

Minho let out a short sigh. “All I want to say is enough people want to beat you up as it is. Don’t be one of them.”

“Bye,” Han said, sensing the end of the conversation, but Minho had already hung up. He kept his eye on the man and his compulsive phone-checking a moment longer, before he realized…

He was wearing a suit and tie. There was a bouquet of flowers on the table. The seat in front of him was empty.

All the tension in Han’s muscles flowed out and reduced them to jelly. He laid back on the sloped glass roof, thankful that the only threat this guy posed was to the nation’s natality.

“Wow,” he said with a breathy laugh the second after the thought popped into his head. “I’m such an asshole.”

A phantom sense of vertigo jerked his head up at the incoming shadow. “Agreed.”

Han’s first instinct when two death grips closed around his arms and raised him up into the air was blind panic that he’d found his target but his second was that unless the symbiote had sprouted wings since the last time they’d met and taken flight—someone else found me.

He slammed against the side of a building, cracking the glass with every movement as the Vulture fought to pin his arms down with one set of talons while the other withdrew a sharp, gleaming…

“Woah, woah, woah!” Han exclaimed, trying to push up and away but he couldn’t get any distance so he webbed the visor and brought his knee as fast and hard as he could.

The direct hit to the head stunned the Vulture long enough for Han to shoot out and get away from the syringe and needle aimed at him. “I’m up to date on all my shots, thanks!”

He wanted to swing back around and kick the bird of prey through the window, but the office was as full as if it were the middle of the workday and rather than run screaming from the threat of imminent injury and/or death, everybody inside was pressed against the window for a front-row seat of the action.

“I think I saw a movie like this once.”

Han stalled for too long. The Vulture recovered and soared at him, taking him straight through a window but at least the lights were off in that office meaning no one else would be getting hurt.

Then he got put through concrete floor and steel rebar. And there were employees in that one. More than the first one, though that might have been the double-vision talking.

“I can’t really tell,” Han struggled to say against the weight on his chest. “But you guys better fucking be running right now.”

The Vulture lifted him up to slam him through the floor again but Han had enough wind knocked out of him the first time around. He webbed the wall to wrench himself free and he meant to take advantage of the enclosed space but it was like the Vulture read his mind and he burst outside through the window.

Seeing as the place was already deserted, Han thought all the workers had gotten the memo until he spotted the young man pressing himself into the far corner and shaking like a leaf. “Don’t just stand there, dude, get out of-!”

Han hit the floor when the hairs on his neck stood on end. “Stay right there!”

With a roaring rumble over their heads the Vulture’s wingspan missed the both of them by a margin so narrow it drew a startled cry out of the employee.

In the blink of an eye, the turbines switched in place and the Vulture turned on a dime. Han jumped up onto the ceiling to avoid the hit, almost blowing right off with the force of the winds generated. “Okay, now!”

The man scrabbled over the rubble that the Vulture—more specifically, the Vulture using Han’s face—had dislodged from the ceiling and out of the office but Han couldn’t feel too good about himself yet because he was barely noticing the employee crouched under a desk on the other side of the room.

And he couldn’t reach her before the Vulture was swooping back in and grabbing her. He dangled her in midair in front of Han, struggling wordlessly against the only things keeping her from meeting the concrete as they dug harder and harder into her arms, barely able to let out choking, anxious breaths that Han’s senses amplified a hundredfold until it was filling his ears and blocking out even the deafening whirr of the turbines.

“Stop,” he said, barely daring to inch forward. “Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, you win, okay? You win, stick me with whatever you want, just let her- Put her back on the floor.”

Calculative, the flight helmet tilted to the side. Slowly, the Vulture hovered over. Han was ready to jump in the sure case the unoriginal bastard dropped her.

But to his surprise, he handed her over, no tricks. Han took the hyperventilating woman by the arms and placed her on solid ground and tried to calm her with repeated assurances that you’re okay, you’re safe, it’s alright that might have been more for his own sake. The Vulture even let him help her over to the door, which was good because she was trembling so much she might not have made it out on her two legs, and make sure she knew which way led out.

He webbed the door shut and looked back out at the hovering figure, framed by broken glass and a needle in one hand.

And then webbed his wings and pulled because fuck keeping his word to a bona fide supervillain. “My roommate might tell you otherwise,” he said with effort, every yank bringing the Vulture closer and closer even as the turbines strained to resist his strength. “But I’m pretty picky about what I put in my body. What the hell is that thing?”

“Never heard of flu season?” the brusque voice spoke up for only the second time.

“What? It’s the middle of- HEY!”

The Vulture jerked to the side, angling the taut web so that the jagged glass would sever it and free him. Han sprung back, but rather than charge for him again, the birdbrain just… dropped.

The flight suit must have run out of juice.

Han sprinted to edge, already thinking up how he’d catch him a bit more gracefully than the last time this happened.

He was too slow to avoid the (okay, yeah, in hindsight, glaringly predictable) uppercut to the chin.

Han staggered and clapped his hands over his face and tripped back on to the floor, in which time the Vulture perched on the edge, smoothly disengaged from the flight suit, and marched over to him. Han shot a web at the ceiling to get to his feet, but the figure with those green beady eyes clutched his talons into a metallic fist and struck Han in the face, making him hit the floor head-first and his vision flash pure white.

The second he stopped telling his muscles to move, they took that as their cue to turn into useless bundles of fibers and refuse to come back online. As he caught his breath, Han got the sense that this was what sharks in their relentless quest to keep moving at all costs were avoiding. Turning into nothing but seafoam at the bottom of the ocean.

“This is nothing.” He didn’t move an inch as he spoke. The only thing he wanted was to sink into the darkness wrapping around and weighing down his limbs. “I’ve been shot. With a gun. Broke my nose. Tangoed with a demon. All on the same day.” As much as his body willed him to stay down and sleep, let in the blackness creeping along the edges of his vision, Han forced himself to curl around his middle protectively. “I still have a monster to wrangle, so I’m warning you now,” he breathed as he got his elbow under. “Surrender before you regret it.”

The Vulture wasn’t fazed. More forcefully than Han had the energy to fight back against, he kicked him onto his back and pinned his chest with a knee. “Poor arachnid. Everything I did to you and you were still going to save me,” he said as he took down the air-supplying visor, revealing an older face than Han had expected.

“Thanks for getting your arthropod facts straight,” Han grunted against the heavy weight on his chest. “Everyone else is always calling me bug, or insect, or vermin, or late for dinner.”

It was as if Han hadn’t even spoken. “You must be tired of being so good all the time.” The needle emerged and even as the sight of it threw all his emergency systems into white-hot alarm Han couldn’t muster the strength to throw the Vulture off of himself. “You can thank me later.”

After the pinch in his neck and his gasp, Han thought it would all go black. He thought any power he had left in him would drain out for good.

He thought he would at least feel something, because Big Bird was looking at him just as expectantly.

“It’s all… going… black…” He shot a web at the right wall and hauled himself out from under the Vulture’s weight.  “Thanks for the lie-down, God, I needed that.”

With two webs at the ceiling, he pulled himself into the air and got two kicks in at the Vulture’s back. The man stumbled forward and turned around, uncertain for the first time. He had not anticipated Han would get up as easily as he had, and now there was a Spiderman between him and his flight suit.

“What was in that shot?” Han demanded when he felt it was pretty clear who had the upper hand here.

But Vulture charged forward, angling a punch at Han’s head he easily deflected.

He kicked out the Vulture’s leg, and when his arm shot out toward the nearest surface to catch him Han webbed his hand to the desk.

“You hit me one more time, I’m going to start getting annoyed. What was the shot meant to do?”

The man scowled up at him, heaving hard. “Take a burden off your shoulders.”

Han threw his hands up in the air. “Of course. And I’m sure you can tell me all about how Venom is back too.”

His expression remained exactly as unresponsive as Han assumed it would. “Take a burden off your shoulders,” he mocked. “You don’t know a thing, do you?” He turned to swing out through the… open window and leave the unarmed man and his suit for the police. “You’re just another one of his henchmen,” he scoffed.

“It’s an antidote.”

When Han whirled around, he was struck by the darkest, most hateful glare he’d ever been on the receiving end of.

“A cure for the bug bite that has caused a whole lot more problem than it’s worth.” The Vulture’s face split with a grin. “Business was good when you were off the streets, Spiderman. I bet you were a lot less stressed out too. I did us all a favor.”

Han pulled his face in horror, as if some grim realization were just dawning on him. And then he laughed wryly. “It was meant to get rid of my powers? Buddy, you might have to fire your lead chemist because, I don’t know if you noticed-” With a single hand, Han lifted a work desk and held it up over his head with his fingertips. “Didn’t really work.” He dropped it again, staying stoic even when the desk made a thud that aligned painfully with a throbbing in his face that sorely needed icing.

“And you’re going to jail anyway,” he added, webbing the man’s hand a few more times while his sneer grew more and more antagonistic. “Thanks to a couple of genius amateur detectives, they’ve opened a case into the big bad himself, and I think you and this whole get-up are going to work out great as evidence, so thank you!” He stepped to the ledge and dropped backward.

It was a few moments later when Han was sailing through the window he’d left open and tumbling into his apartment.

He grabbed the countertop he’d landed by in the kitchen to get to his feet. “Coming in hot and- Holy shit.” Now that he wasn’t in imminent, mortal danger, his knees unilaterally decided it would be funny if they just buckled under him.

His face would’ve met the floor (again) if Minho hadn’t rushed over and caught him around the waist. “Are you okay?” He ducked under Han’s arm to guide him over to the couch that had not been there that morning. “What happened? Did you find it?”

Han took off the mask and tossed it onto the counter. Or at least the general direction of the counter. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he said, more breathy than he’d meant to. “I just need a cold compress,” he said as Minho deposited him on the couch like dead weight. “And a strong drink.”

He kicked his feet up onto the armrest, huffing a breath as the adrenaline left his system and the full-body ache set in. “And to maybe go into a coma for a few days.”

The moment he said it, he expected Minho to hit him with something dry and snarky about how he could definitely help him get one of those. But from where he was rummaging around the freezer, Minho only looked up at him with features pinched by concern. He went back to loudly yanking the iced-over drawers free, and he finally emerged with…

“You’re showing me dinner, right?”

Minho handed over the frozen, plastic-wrapped bundle of chicken wings.

“…We don’t have a bag of peas lying around?” he said even as he placed the icy package on his cheekbone because the stare Minho leveled at him was starting to freak him out more than any moment from his tussle with the rat with wings. Then his friend wordlessly left the living room to loudly rustle around in the bathroom cabinets instead of the freezer drawers.

Han did his best to wait for him, even while lounging around when someone who could have been finishing their nightly routine at that moment was instead lying dead on the ground was making him more and more restless by the second. “What’s that you got?” he said when Minho came back with what was clearly a first aid kit but he couldn’t help that habit of filling as much silence as humanly possible.

Minho crouched down in front of him with misplaced worry on his face. “What happened?”

Han tipped his head back and sighed like he was about to regale him with the tale. “Did I tell you I’m not really off the clock?” He jumped off the couch to go grab his mask and he had to bite back an immediate groan because wow that should not have hurt his everything as much as it did. “I’m sure you’d make a sweet nurse but your second favorite lab experiment is still at large, so I’d better-”

“Can you at least wait until you don’t look like you’re about to keel over?”

“Minho,” he said seriously. “I can’t crash yet, I need to get back out there.”

“So why didn’t you stay out there?”

Han opened his mouth to respond, but realized he had no idea what that meant or what to say to that.

“I’m not asking you to give up the search. But you came back because you must feel like and definitely look like hell. So stop acting like it’s such a crime to get bandaged up and sit down.”

Han started and stopped himself a few times before trudging over. “You’re great with words,” he grumbled as he reluctantly laid down again, his muscles protesting all the way. “You should go into journalism or something.”

Minho didn’t repeat his question. Han didn’t tell him what happened, least of all about the antidote that didn’t even end up doing anything. He closed his eyes, and he let a long silence stretch between them, only broken by the breath he sucked in when the sting of isopropanol on broken skin zapped through his sensory nerve endings.

“Since when were you so protective, hyung?” he finally mumbled, veering on sarcastic but with how foggy and far away everything felt, including his energy and even the pain, it came out softer than he’d meant it to. “Thought… I thought you’re the one that said caring… Where did you get this?”

“Couch store,” Minho said, knowing what he meant even after the abrupt switch.

“You could have told me. I bet getting it up the stairs was… must’ve been murder.”

He swears he spent a second thinking about the logistics of how Minho could have gotten the couch up there by himself, but when he opened his eyes again, the only light in the room was being cast through the window by the surrounding buildings.

Blinking blearily, Han propped his elbow underneath himself, and then felt a weight on his abdomen that must have been one of the cats picking his tattered suit over their own bed.

But when he looked down, it was Minho’s head resting on his stomach, with an arm slung around Han’s middle like he would be doing the protecting if someone were to break in. He laughed a little and shook Minho’s shoulder—though he roused so quickly he might not have been asleep to begin with. “Hey.”

The instant he saw Minho’s sad, red-rimmed eyes, Han couldn’t help blurting out, “You look like shit.”

He let out a wet laugh as he wiped at his eyes. “Coming from you, that’s not good.”

“I…” He slowly lowered himself to the floor in front of him. “Minho, what’s wrong?”

“Rubbing alcohol in my eyes. Go now. You’re all bandaged up,” he said with a small, utterly un-Minho smile that hurt to look at.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this would- I mean, sure I’ve looked better but the pigeon? He’s nothing, I clipped his wings and grounded him before he could even tell which way is up, I swear you don’t have anything to worry about. Believe me, I have been through way worse than him.”

“Yeah,” Minho said quietly, dropping his gaze to the floor. “That’s what I thought.”

“Please don’t cry,” Han said soft and quick, putting his hands on either side of his face. “I’ll be fine before you know it. Look at me, I always am. A-And, you know,” he said as he let go again, trying to phrase this as gently as possible. “This is part of the job. I thought you got that.”

“I get it.”

“Minho…”

“I do,” he said before blinking, flattening the next few words. “I knew what I signed up for when I let Spiderman move in. But before then, you must have come home so much worse off so many times, and the only person who knew and could help was you. I just…” His voice wavered, and a look of frustration crossed his face like it did every time emotion threatened to get in the way of the point he was trying to make. “I wish I’d known sooner,” he said, emphasizing each word. “So you wouldn’t have had to be so alone.”

And wasn’t that one big elephant they’d been skirting around these past few weeks.

“I’m… sorry,” Han said again.

“What is it now?”

“That we never got to talk about how I almost really, really messed us up. It’s just that so much has been happening and you didn’t bring it up but I… That night at the party…” he said, barely daring to speak above a whisper now. “Was that really when you found out about me?”

“No.”

“What?” he let out, not expecting such a sure answer right off the bat.

Minho tried to muster up something like a wry smirk, but he didn’t have it in him. “Do you know what a bad liar you are? Looking back, it’s really insulting.”

Han was stunned. “And you pretended to not know for- for how long?”

He shrugged, one-shouldered. “It’s not like I knew. But I’m certain that if I sat and thought about it for more than two seconds, I would have figured it out. I think I just… didn’t want to.”

For lack of anything else to do with Minho looking smaller and sadder than Han had ever imagined the strongest person he knew would, all because of him, he leaned forward and pulled him into a tight hug. He was such an asshole.

“Don’t do that,” Minho mumbled.

“…do what?”

“Beat yourself up. I can hear you from here.”

“I’m sorry.”

Minho pressed his face into Han’s shoulder. “Stop saying that, Hannie.”

“I’m… Okay.”

-

The pasta was a lost cause anyway.

Felix had drowned the saucepan in the sink before running out the door, but at the top of the staircase, he promptly turned back around to tell Minho what had happened—who had as good a guess as he did as to why Seungmin would have Han’s phone or why they would be together in the first place. When he ended the call, he proceeded to wrestle the SIM card out of his phone with an earring and promptly stuck it inside the microwave.

Then he ran out the door.

Now he was looking around for either of them in the spot Seungmin said he would be, but there was no one on the sidewalk, the path, anywhere. He followed the road where it curved around the park, away  from the busier and louder main street. He stopped short when he noticed, above the treetops, red and blue lights flashing on the exterior of the apartments.

His heart only beat faster when he came closer and saw that, not only were there a dozen officers on the scene, but silent ambulances on the side of the road, and four paramedics carrying a covered gurney into one of them.

A voice from a different ambulance caught him off-guard. “Felix?”

He turned and made eye contact with a detective he recognized from Violent Crimes, but to his surprise, he wasn’t rushing to confront him. His face didn’t even seem to sharpen in recognition. But he wasn’t the one who had called him. “Seungmin?” he said, his friend sat in the back of the vehicle with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and the detective hovering by him. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure? There’s police every- I mean, this is what they give people go into shock,” he said as he touched at the gray ragged blanket, but Seungmin was pulling it off his shoulders before Felix could even finish speaking.

“I asked for it. I wanted to feel like I was in a movie.” He shrugged. “It’s too scratchy to- What are you doing?”

Felix crushed him into a hug. Seungmin let out a faintly amused laugh, hugging him back and starting to say something under his breath.

But the detective that was apparently not going to arrest him piped up. “Sir, if you don’t live in the area, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Ouch. Felix didn’t exactly know his name off the top of his head but he thought they’d seen each other around enough.

“Sir, I said that-”

Apparently not. He fished out his badge, handed it over and wrapped his arms around Seungmin’s shoulders again.

“Sorry about that, officer,” he said, not sounding very apologetic, before placing it next to Seungmin and giving them some space.

“I thought he would never leave,” Seungmin sighed. “I’m so tired of repeating myself.”

Felix pulled away enough to see his face. “Repeating what?”

He told him the whole horrific story of running into the symbiote, watching it bite off and eat a man’s head and then running into a stranger who let him borrow his phone, all with the energy of someone reading off furniture assembly instructions.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Felix eventually managed after a stunned silence. “You weren’t scared at all?”

“Oh, I felt like I was about to die,” he said, more sedately than anyone had ever said those words. “But I don’t know. I think it looped back to feeling more like a dream than real life. Especially because I thought I might have hallucinated that guy.” He gestured to Felix with open hands. “You’re here though, so I guess he must have been real.”

“And Ha- that person… just happened to be here?” Felix asked, finally grasping that none of this had anything to do with either of them personally.

But Seungmin looked like he hardly heard him, staring off into space as he nodded. “So everything else must have been too,” he added to his own words airily, as if the fact was only now dawning on him.

Felix glanced over at the officers who he gathered were much more concerned with identifying the headless victim. He grabbed Seungmin’s shoulders and crouched a little so they were eye level. “Were you planning on staying at your own place tonight?”

The haziness that had been in Seungmin’s eyes for a moment cleared. “Not now that I know that thing isn’t always in monster mode.”

“Then come on,” he said quietly, and Seungmin did not need to be told twice. But Felix quickly whirled back and grabbed the blanket. “I don’t have extras at home,” he muttered as he tucked the blanket under his arm and followed Seungmin, who found that disproportionately funny. “Swit!” he quieted, holding back his own laugh. “We’re escaping police custody!”

“Yeah,” Seungmin said, containing his laugh before his smile petered off. “Do you ever think about quitting?”

Felix almost walked directly into the pile of trash on the ground.

“Because if you don’t, neither do I,” Seungmin added hastily. “I love being around firearms every single day. Reminds me of home.” While Felix was still trying to think of what to say to that, they came out to the main road and kept walking along the sidewalk. Seungmin tacked on in a thick, caked-on accent, “America.”

“I mean, maybe?” he said, if only to defuse the clear tension, but Seungmin wasn’t settled.

“Land of the free,” he added meaninglessly, looking through dark shopfront windows where there was nothing to see. “City of angels.”

“Well, listen, I-I know things suck right now with the…” He gestured vaguely, hoping Seungmin would understand.

“Face-eating monsters and bank-robbing supervillains,” he said with a nod.

“But it hasn’t been all bad. I met you.” He bumped Seungmin’s shoulder with a smile, making him turn his face away with a huff of a shy laugh. “And I’m making a difference. I’m helping people. That makes it all worth it to me.”

“You seriously feel that way?” Seungmin said as they came to a bus stop, taking out his phone.

Felix nodded. He really did.

He took a seat as he pulled up the bus schedule to make sure they wouldn’t be waiting for a ride until morning. “Even though we’ve been stuck on paperwork duty for, like, ever now?”

Felix was glad Seungmin was focused on his phone, or else he would have seen the look on his face when he realized that, yeah, from anyone else’s perspective, he hadn’t been doing anything very productive in the way of actually ‘helping’ lately. He was about to offer some lame justification that paperwork is very important to public safety actually, Seungmin shook his head and put down his phone. “Scratch that,” he said as he looked up at him. “Is it even worth it, though? A guy in tights the colors of the flag almost blew us up. You literally could have died because of Mr. Korea.”

It wasn’t Han’s fault. Jeongin had taken advantage of him the same way he had everyone else, and people didn’t even realize it. But now wasn’t the time to bring this up, so Felix played dumb and nodded.

Seungmin gave him a very exasperated sigh and sat back. “You know one thing the papers are right about?”

Felix sat down next to him, cautious.

“We weren’t dealing with supercharged thieves before he popped up. Isn’t that weird? It’s like they’re all coming out of the same shitty factory. And we’ve only managed to catch one.”

“Seungmin, what are you-?”

“I’m saying that this is not what we signed up for, and you’ve never thought about leaving it behind once?”

“No.” Felix shook his head. “No, of course not. Even if it’s not my fault, I can’t let myself think that.”

“You can’t?”

“I mean, I’m not saying I would judge you if you left, but to me, those thoughts are…”

Seungmin cocked an eyebrow as the bus pulled into view.

“Everything that’s going on is way bigger than just me,” he said in lieu of indirectly calling Seungmin selfish because that is not at all what he meant. “If I can help, then I have to do my best. That’s all.”

“Hm. I was curious…” Seungmin said as he took out his wallet, sounding like he was about to drop a bomb on Felix. “Were you really making pasta earlier?”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah I was.”

“How did it turn out?” he asked as they climbed up the steps and swiped their passes.

Felix sighed. “Nothing like the video.”

“I wouldn’t worry about how it looked in the video. They’re all faking it anyway,” Seungmin said sagely.

-

On second thought, if they had still been on for the super secret special mission and it could have turned out anything like that night, maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad.

Seungmin couldn’t remember a single thing they talked about when they got to Felix’s rooftop house, which was a nice change of pace from the work conversations that revolved around all the different ways the world was falling apart. With Felix, he could just relax. Eat the spicy rice cakes he was afraid of. Find himself less reluctant than he would’ve guessed at the idea of sharing the bed.

In the morning, he opened his eyes and met Felix’s sleepy, barely open ones.

“Hi,” he said. “We should be getting ready.”

Felix huffed a breath and burrowed closer, hiding his half-awake face from the stubborn rays of sunlight that found their way around the blinds. “Later.”

Seungmin let out a small laugh when he sat up and Felix couldn’t be bothered to move his arm properly. He just let his arm slide off like it wasn’t even attached to him. “It is later.”

“Bathroom over there,” Felix mumbled as he shifted and pulled the pillow over his head. Even if Seungmin hadn’t already known where it was, Felix’s vague gestures would not have been very helpful. “Take a change of clothes from the closet, it’s all clean,” he added. “Except for what isn’t.”

Seungmin tilted his head at him, hoping he could feel his stare through the pillow. “Thank you ever so much, Officer Lee.”

“You’re smart, you’ll figure it out,” he said, barely audible.

After Felix finally pried himself out of bed and washed up, they were able to head down to the police station together. Despite everything that had happened, Seungmin felt remarkably calm, a feeling Felix did not seem to share. On the last stretch of sidewalk, he picked up the pace and walked too far ahead for Seungmin to care to catch up with.

He wished he hadn’t figured he’d get there sooner or later. Because somehow, mind-bogglingly, it was in that space of maybe a minute their entire lives managed to flip on their heads.

Through the glass doors of the precinct, Seungmin saw what looked like a hundred cops ganged up around Felix. He burst through the doors, indignation flaring when he saw Captain Noh had cuffs around Felix’s wrists. “What are you doing?”

No answer. The captain callously tightened the cuffs, not caring that Felix looked on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“I said.” Seungmin tried to get through the wall of people that rushed to block him from the captain. “What the fuck do you think you’re-?”

Captain Noh’s subordinates shoved him back with threats of suspension and following his friend to a holding cell, and Seungmin almost did something that would have actually warranted that treatment.

But then pushy arms on his shoulder and his chest forcefully reeled him back from the crowd, away from Felix as he was getting led down the hall to the dingy cells and it wasn’t right, it had to be a sick joke because that’s where criminals go and it was quite literally unthinkable that Lee Felix could have ever hurt anyone in his entire life.

In the quiet corridor, Seungmin finally recognized the voices yelling at him to calm down. He lurched away from Chan and shoved him, directing all the anger he couldn’t take out on those traitors onto him. “Why did you stop me!? Look where they’re taking him!” he exploded at Changbin, at Minkyu, but all three of them were giving him the exact same infuriating looks of pity.

“Seungmin-ah,” Minkyu said gently.

“I am not your friend,” he seethed through clenched teeth.

“…Seungmin-ssi. Nothing is as you thought it was,” he said as he held up a sheet of paper.

Seungmin glared between him and the sheet. “What is this?” he said even as he read the heading. General expenses report. All of the precinct’s spending over the past month.

“Felix tricked us,” Chan said roughly, like the words scraped on their way up his throat, and it was only when he spoke that Seungmin realized it wasn’t pity they were leveling at him.

It was grief. Nothing made that more clear than Changbin’s next words. “He betrayed all of us.”

Chapter Text

On the last swing home, Han overestimated the distance and wound up on the wall beneath the window instead of soaring straight in. Minho’s head stuck out, probably in response to the groan Han let out when he thudded against the wall, and he gave him a very unfair look. “Let’s see you do better,” Han huffed as he climbed up.

Minho let out a single dry laugh. “Absolutely not.” He reached down and grabbed Han’s arm, hauling him up the rest of the way and over the windowsill. “Anything?” he asked without much hope in his voice. He probably figured that if Han had managed to find and take down Venom and whoever his new host was, he wouldn’t have just let himself flop on to the floor.

“Nothing.” Last night, he’d been this close, he’d felt that stab of unmistakable danger and followed it all the way to that neighborhood.

Only to lose the trail on Venom. And even after prowling the city until sunup, his senses hadn’t given so much as another spark in the right direction.

Han peeled off the mask and let his closed hand hit the floor. No amount of feeling bad would bring back Jeong Seongmin, he knew that. There was no point in self-pity.

…But still, that hot, prickly guilt he’d been trying to push away since the moment he saw the victim’s headless body welled to the surface all over again. If he was stronger, smarter, faster, he could have caught up to it, stopped it from doing whatever it would do now that it was back. If he’d been better all those weeks ago, this wouldn’t have even been happening, Jeong’s kids wouldn’t have had to wonder what happened to-

“Are you with me?”

Han blinked. “What?”

Minho waved his hand in front of Han’s face. “Are you still with me?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He pushed himself up and those useless feelings down. “Do you have anything new?”

Minho hummed. “Not much. Just work,” he said, sitting back down on the couch and picking up his laptop.

Han propped himself back on his elbows. It was something he didn’t think much about, but it wasn’t lost on him that, as the reporter on the Spiderman case, Minho’s work was technically Han. “What does your boss even think you do all day?”

“My job. Because I am.”

Han cocked his head to the side. “You’re not planning on selling me out, are you?” he joked, but the nervous laugh that bubbled out of him made it seem like more of a genuine concern than it really was.

“I don’t know,” Minho said airily. “Maybe.”

Han laid back. “Good to know.” He sighed, wondering what was left for them to do. Ideally, they’d find some kind of evidence of Jeongin creating Venom in the first place and expose it to the world. But even if the lab hadn’t gone up in flames, he couldn’t imagine Jeongin keeping that kind of thing around, not for this long. He hardly had time to think of another angle before the phone on the armrest started buzzing. “…You know your phone’s ringing?” he said when Minho made no move to pick up.

“Yes.”

Eventually, it stopped buzzing.

And then it started up again.

“Oh my God.” Han grabbed it with a web and, speak of the Devil, read the name Editor Lim. “It’s your boss.”

“Send him to voicemail,” Minho said without a trace of humor.

Normally, Han would have obliged. But he kind of resented how he would never have been able to get away with treating his own boss like that, so he picked it up and turned on speaker mode.

Immediately, the matter-of-fact voice went ahead and said, “Update on the Yang piece?”

…Surely he meant a different Yang.

Judging by Minho’s death glare, Han guessed he did not. This had to be about the interview with Jeongin two days ago. “Sorry,” Han said hesitantly. “Minho is…”

He glanced back over. Minho’s glare only darkened.

“Dead. He’ll get back to you soon,” he said before fumbling to hang up.

Minho rolled his eyes so hard they could have fallen out of his head. “Hello, Editor.”

“Oh,” Han managed as he got to his feet and handed the phone over. “He got better!”

“Can you have your friend leave for a moment?”

“Yup, yup, going now,” Han said as he crossed over to the front door and pulled it open. Minho shook his head, mouthing don’t go, but Han was already closing it again, making sure it shut loud enough for the receiver to pick up on without actually leaving.

“Sorry,” Minho said, keeping speaker mode turned on.

“It doesn’t really matter,” his editor said.

“No, not about him.” From the way his glare flickered up at Han, Minho could have fooled him. “I mean I don’t have the outline for you. And I won’t have it.”

Han silently padded over to the kitchen, half so he could scoop up the cat that had found his way on top of the bare counters, and half to put distance between himself and the look he only kinda deserved.

“Just so you know,” Minho went on when his editor said nothing. “I swear, I did somehow get there by ten, and then they made me wait about another hour in the lobby.” Seriously, he mouthed to Han. “When Jeongin finally did call me up, he made me write everything by hand, but we did get through a few questions.”

“And then?” his editor prompted. Han stroked Dori, who was being unusually receptive, and also wondered how Minho was going to cover up the… small blunder he’d made that day.

The answer was that he wasn’t. “And then Spiderman showed up thinking I was in danger and ruined the interview.”

Han jolted so hard Dori jumped out of his arms.

“I had everything under control up till then, by the way,” Minho said, completely unaffected by the look of betrayal Han gaped at him with. “But he only did that because it turns out this case goes much deeper than you would ever expect, and I’ve been working with him to get to the bottom of it.”

What is wrong with you!? Han mouthed, so frantically he had to cover his mouth before it turned into an actual shout.

“So I won’t have the piece for you.” Minho looked at him dead in the eyes when he said, “Please forgive me.”

After a moment of torturous silence spent wondering what the fuck he was supposed to do now that Minho had just linked himself to the most wanted man in the city, Editor Lim finally spoke. And he didn’t sound impressed. “Can you just tell me you couldn’t get there on time?”

Han’s eyes went huge with confusion, but the evil grin Minho had managed to suppress this long crept out and gave him a clue. “But I’m telling the truth,” he drawled.

“You used to actually try to convince me with your excuses,” his editor said, unknowingly making Han collapse to his knees in relief. “You didn’t have to ignore my emails over this, Minho. Just make sure to have something by the end of the week.”

“I’m glad you’re taking this so-”

Editor Lim hung up. The second the call was over, Han got to his feet and grabbed Minho’s phone. “I hate you,” he said before throwing it and webbing it to the ceiling.

Minho stared up, unblinking. “Han Jisung. Please get that down now.”

Han didn’t care how petty he was being. He stomped in place and crossed his arms. “No.”

Minho clambered to stand up on the couch. “Why do you think I told you to send him to voicemail!?” he burst out, his phone still too far out of reach. “I’ve been avoiding him all weekend because I didn’t know how to tell him I didn’t have the interview I had asked him for. Get my phone off the ceiling, Han!”

“I still hate you,” Han grumbled before jumping up onto the ceiling and spraying dissolvent until the phone dislodged itself.

“Good job,” Minho said once he’d caught it.

Han lowered himself from the ceiling, hanging upside down by a thread of webbing. “You’re just being a jerk now.”

The corner of Minho’s mouth quirked up as he sat down again, grabbing his laptop again. “I mean on the Vulture last night.”

Oh. So they’d published that headline already.

“Looks like Tu Munseu seriously messed up you and those buildings, but the police were still able to take him into custody.”

Han puffed out his chest, as least as much as he could while hanging from the ceiling. “What are the people saying?” he asked as he craned his head to try to get a look. If he’s being honest, he’d probably only gotten the upper hand on the Vulture because the guy had wasted his time on a dud.

Han was not being honest at that moment, so he didn’t mention that part.

“You’re a hero, we should rethink the charges against you, you’re a menace, the police should…” Minho trailed off.

“Do you think you can keep reading the nice ones?”

“Thirteen of fourteen officers from Gandong’s Property Crimes Unit arrested.”

Han took a second to process the headline. And when he did, he lost his grip and dropped to the floor. “What?” he exclaimed as he scrambled up next to Minho. “Property Crimes,” he repeated, his mind firing on all cylinders trying to remember why that was so familiar. “Property Crimes, isn’t that the people supposed to be following up on your OmniLife tip?”

Minho moved his mouth as if to answer, but he was so dumbfounded nothing came out. He leaned close to the screen and read out loud: “Charges of possession of illicit drugs and weapons. Conspiracy to extort OmniLife’s director-in-chief, Yang Jeongin. All have denied knowledge of the paraphernalia found in their homes.”

Han shook his head, and then shook his head again. “This makes no sense. These are the guys who are supposed to be investigating Jeongin, but now they’re blackmailing him?”

“Han,” Minho said with a gravity that scared him. “I don’t think they were.”

Confused, Han’s eyes flicked over to the screen again, where he read the sentence that made it click into place.

In addition to the arrests, reports indicate that an officer from the contentious Anti-Vigilantism Unit has been detained on allegations of misappropriating police funds, identified as Lee Felix.

Han grabbed his mask, but somehow Minho was at the window first and blocking his path. “Minho, what are you doing?”

“What do you think you’re doing?” he returned more forcefully.

“To help my friend?” When Minho made no move aside, Han looked at him incredulously. “Felix obviously didn’t steal from the police!” He tried to move past Minho, but his friend only grabbed his shoulders and shook him back and forth like a ragdoll.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he repeated, enunciating like he was talking to an alien. “What is the plan?”

Han grabbed Minho and forced him to stop shaking him so hard. “Break him out,” he said without meaning for it to come out so obnoxiously but what else would he be doing?

Minho remained unimpressed. “Think about how that would go for five seconds.”

Han counted to five in his head before speaking. “I’ll punch some cops, pull apart the cell bars, look awesome and save the day,” he said with a smile, but Minho stopped him when he tried to walk past again.

“Think about it. For five more seconds.”

When he counted to five this time, he had nothing.

“Maybe,” Minho said, “the cops will link you two together, piece together the crimes Felix actually broke for you, and now Felix is a fugitive who doesn’t even get to have a secret identity like you do.”

Han hadn’t thought that far ahead. But still! “If the police get anything about either of us from Felix, we might be screwed anyway.”

Minho’s gaze sharpened. “Felix wouldn’t rat us out.”

Han couldn’t help it, he patted Minho on the head, making him furrow his brow. “Of course not. That was sweet just now. But, I don’t know, his phone might.”

“And if you go in there flipping over desks and swooping out with Felix, he’s definitely screwed.”

Han sucked in a breath to refute him, but he didn’t actually have anything. He stopped and started a few times, before burying his face in his hands with a loud groan. Why did everything have to be so complicated? “So what am I supposed to do? Just pretend like he’s not in jail because of me?”

A hesitant, uncharacteristic look flashed across Minho’s face, gone as soon as it appeared. He glanced at his laptop. “The other PCU cop. The article said the only one who wasn’t charged with anything hasn’t been seen since the arrests.”

“I would also be embarrassed to show up to work all alone.”

Minho picked up his laptop, scanning the article again. “I know it could be nothing. But he’s not answering calls from his coworkers or the media. The least we can do is check.”

Han couldn’t disagree with that. “What’s his name?”

“Doesn’t say.” A notch formed between Minho’s brows before he glanced Han up and down. “I think you should get dressed.”

It was laundry day. The only things in his wardrobe were some socks and a pair of jeans. So he had to steal something from Minho.

When he walked out of Minho’s room in the only clean shirt in the household, he half-expected Minho to say something, and he might have, if he wasn’t on the phone with someone already.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know,” the distracted woman on the other end said. “I’m sure you can guess we’re dealing with bigger things than trying to find out where Dongcheol is relaxing.”

Police, he mouthed as Han sat down on the armrest. “You think he’s just relaxing?”

“Probably taking it easy at the Jungle,” the officer said with a dry laugh. “If you do see him, get him to at least call in sick properly.”

Minho and Han exchanged equally baffled looks. “…He went to the jungle?”

“No, no, it’s the name of the place he drinks in when he’s not working, the Jungle. I hope that’s all, Reporter Lee,” she went on when Minho spent a moment too long thinking that over. “I have to get going now.”

“Wait a minute, where is-?”

The officer hung up.

For as annoyed as Minho looked to be hung up on midsentence for the second time that day, Han was just impressed at how fast he’d gotten both the man’s name and his potential location.

His feelings quickly turned to discomfort once they were actually there. “I have never been in a bar this early,” Han whispered. He wasn’t sure if the few people in this uncannily bright place were holdovers from last night or early morning newcomers. Either way, he didn’t want to leave his eyes lingering on them too long. “Could he seriously be in here?”

Minho was fine with scanning the lethargic patrons a little more closely. “That would be convenient,” he said aloud. When he crossed over to the bar counter, Han reluctantly followed, anticipating judgment from the man behind it.

But the barkeep regarded them with something closer to… wariness? Han was currently drowning in Minho’s button-up, which he imagined should have canceled out any of Minho’s work-mode intensity.

“What can I get you?” the man asked as he looked between the two of them.

Minho peered at the bottles on the shelves. Right as it seemed they were literally about to start their day with hard liquor, he dropped his eyes and said, “Two waters, please. With ice.”

When the man picked up two glasses, Han leaned over to ask Minho what he was waiting for. But he hesitated when he saw that the barkeep wasn’t leaving. In fact, he barely took two steps to plink spheres of ice into each glass, fill them with water at the tap behind him, and turned right back around to serve them without fanfare. He did not give them space even after placing the waters down.

“…Thanks.” Minho took a sip. Han decided to avoid picking up his glass, because he figured that if he did, the nervous shake in his hands would make the ice audibly clink against each other. The barkeep was still standing right in front of them. Minho cleared his throat as he put up his elbows on the bar, seemingly figuring that he might as well start talking now. “So you know your customers well here?”

“Pretty well.”

The silence after that stretched on so long Han could hear the faint sound of boxes shuffling around in the back. While trying to look hm, anywhere else, he spotted a wrapped, unused straw on the bar to his right.

“Most of them? Or just a few of them?”

The man might have balked, or narrowed his eyes, or squared his shoulders in defense, but Han was putting a disproportionate amount of effort into trying to nab the straw without making it too obvious.

“I know the ones I know.”

“Would you know if something happened to one of them?”

“Depends.”

When Han’s hand snagged on it, he pulled it under the countertop to unwrap and subtly dropped into his glass. Now he could actually drink from it without letting the whole place hear it.

Minho blinked a few times, considering. “Let me be honest, sir. I’m a-”

Immediately, ever so gracefully, Han’s sip of water arched right into his trachea. His sudden coughing fit cut off whatever Minho had been saying and, exactly as he’d hoped to avoid, drew all the attention in the bar to himself.

“…Are you okay?” Minho asked.

Han cleared his throat and tried to carry on. “Mhm.” He only managed to scratch his throat the wrong way and start coughing all over again. “Fuck,” he croaked as he ducked his head down on his arms and waved a hand. “Ignore me.”

Who needed a civilian persona anyway? Han could just become one with Spiderman and never have to show his face in public again.

“You don’t have to say it,” the barkeep said. “I know who you are.”

Actually, it was a good thing Han’s face was to the floor, because he wouldn’t have been able to keep his eyes from widening at the words that could have meant either nothing, or literally the worst thing ever.

“I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t do anything. I suggest you two leave before you make it even more obvious you’re cops.”

Han’s head jolted up. Of all the things he’d been called, that was brand new. “Really? You seriously think I’m a-?”

“That obvious?” Minho said, sounding just bashful enough to make it sound like the truth. “Yes, my partner and I are trying to find a colleague who’s supposed to be a regular here.”

As much as it would have pained him, Han tried to think up some way to play along, but the barkeep spoke first. “Again, I don’t know anything. Have a good day, officers,” he said, only now turning to head to the back.

Minho got up with so much urgency he looked like he was about to chase the man down. “Was Cheon Dongcheol here last night?”

The barkeep stopped in his steps. “Did something happen to him?”

“Probably not. We just want to make sure he’s okay. I don’t know if you saw the news, but that was his whole team that just got busted. Everyone except for him. Is there anything you can tell us?”

The man leaned his weight against the bar and signaled to their right. “Even if he doesn’t come in the entire week, he’ll still be there every Sunday. He’s usually taking a call, so I don’t bother him too much. I never knew he was police.”

Han and Minho stayed silent as the man tapped his fingers on the bar, sensing there was more.

“I’ve been trying not to think anything of it. But it’s been every Sunday, except for yesterday.”

Han picked up his glass and, sure enough, the cacophony of clinking was so loud he had to put it back down without taking a sip. “Did he tell you where he’d be?”

“No. I only know where he lives.”

“That works for us,” Minho said. “Can you tell us?”

The barkeep massaged his jaw. “I can take you there. I do have a package of his to deliver.”

Han and Minho exchanged glances. “Perfect,” Han said.

It was a moment or two he spent in the back, until he emerged with a small cardboard box. “Oh, hang on a second,” he said as he placed it on the bar. “Jaesang!” he barked, presumably the name of one of the employees. When a guy ambled out from the back, the barkeep threw a rag that landed right on his tired face and told him he’d be stepping out a for a minute.

“So,” Minho started once they were headed down the sidewalk. He stepped into place beside the surprisingly fast-walking barkeep. “Why does a bartender deliver someone’s mail?”

When he said it like that, it sounded like the set-up to a bad joke.

The barkeep shrugged. “Dongcheol insists on getting his mail delivered to the bar. He tips well enough for it, so we just go along with it.”

Neither of them knew what to say to that. Han let himself fall ever so slightly out of step behind them.

It was a few more minutes before they turned a corner, and then another, and then they were on a small seedy street that was great for getting murdered on if Han was anybody else. Seeing as he was Spiderman, he paid more attention to kicking rocks out of his way than anything else. The barkeep led them up the sloping road to the front door of a ground-floor apartment. “This is the place.”

Minho knocked on the door first. Nothing stirred, to the point that Han could hear cars passing in the distance before anything that might have been coming from inside the apartment. “Do you hear anything?” Minho asked after a long while.

Han shook his head as he stepped up to peer through the covered windows. Then he knocked on the door, a little more forcefully. “Hello,” he called. “It’s your friends, the police.”

Still, nothing.

He backed away, looking up and down the street for any sign of the man. Even with his enhanced hearing, all he could make out was a baby crying on one of the upper floors, creaky plumbing somewhere above them, but nothing that pointed to Cheon Dongcheol at all.

“Dongcheol?” the barkeep called, placing the package down by the wall. “It’s Seokwon. I’m leaving this here.”

Han pulled Minho a little farther away as the man continued to speak to someone who wasn’t here to listen. “Where else could he be?” he hissed.

“I don’t like it either,” Minho muttered. “But I think we’re at a dead end again, Han.”

Fuck that. Han glanced up and down the street one more time until he was sure there was no sign of anyone coming in the next, oh, five minutes. “I’m going to kick down the door,” he said aloud.

The barkeep, Seokwon, turned to Han with a start while Minho blinked out and let out a dry laugh. “I just heard you say the craziest thing, I thought you said you were going to kick down the door.”

Han walked up and motioned for the two of them to give him some space. “Three…”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Seokwon said. “If you two work with him, did you really need my helping getting to his-?”

“Two-one, I’m going.” Han crossed his arms up in front of himself and put his sneaker down by the doorknob. The door instantly gave way as he brought his hands down by his sides again and stumbled back. “Cool, I’ve never done that before.”

He carefully stepped over the knocked over door, not pausing to see if either of them were following him into the unlit apartment.

Minho, of course, was right behind him as he walked into the kitchen. “If you’re here, sorry for the mess. I promise we’ll make it up to you.”

Han took in the unwashed dishes, the mess left strewn across every surface, the clutter in random corners. “He is definitely not here,” he said as he opened cabinets, the spices and bottles in a similar condition as everything else. “And he hasn’t cleaned up in a while.”

Seokwon had stayed firmly back at the front of the apartment. “…What precinct did you say you’re from again?”

“The big one,” Han called before dropping to a harsh whisper. “We are not leaving until we finally get something.”

Minho nodded once, already looking through the things on the dinner table.

Han turned and went for the closest closed door. Tiny bathroom. He checked behind another. Messy office. “Could be something here,” he whispered, leaving it open for Minho to give a look over.

“I think you guys should come out now,” Seokwon said, his voice harder than before.

“Just a minute!” Han said as he peeked into what looked a storage room. “I left my… earphones somewhere around here, the other day.”

Seokwon had run out of patience. “I’m serious,” he said as he walked in, sending warning sparks of danger into the air so he was at least intent dragging them out or worse.

Han darted between him and Minho. “Hang on a minute, hang on, we’re just-”

He cut himself off when the worst smell he’d ever had the displeasure of suffering hit his nose. When he spun on the door Minho had started opening, he stuck out his hand, barely stopping himself from webbing it shut and exposing himself. “Wait, wait, don’t go in there!” he yelled instead. But it was too late. Even though Han couldn’t see into the room from this angle, Minho’s bloodless, petrified face made him brace for the worst.

“H-He’s in here,” he breathed. “He’s dead.”

-

“This isn’t making any sense to me,” the investigator said. He was practically echoing the first thing Felix had blurted out when he’d seen his own bank statement with all his normal paychecks and expenses, along with extra payments directly from the precinct’s account that looked a lot like embezzled funds, dating back from the very week he’d been placed in the AVU.

But the investigator wasn’t talking about that. He had no doubts that Felix had stolen from them. He just thought he didn’t have the full picture. “You can only help yourself out by telling me—are you authorized to access the precinct’s finances?”

Obviously fucking not. Felix turned to study the crack on the wall opposite the one-way mirror. He refused to so much as glance at the thing. “No.”

The investigator leaned back in his chair. They thought he had an accomplice. Someone who would have had to be here since before he even worked here, and did anybody think that made no sense? Was anybody wondering why he would even risk his present and future employability when, even by the most generous standards, he couldn’t exactly be considered down on his luck?

“Help me out here, Felix. People who do what you did usually have one of two reasons. Thrill.”

Felix looked at him when he went silent, holding up one finger, and found him lifting an eyebrow. The second seemed so obvious he wondered if it was a trick question. He lifted his upturned hands with a shrug, but he could only hold them so far apart from each other with his wrists in cuffs. “Money?”

“You haven’t missed a single bill in 24 months. No surprise medical expenses on record.” He let out a laugh that lacked a drop of mean-spiritedness. If Felix were in almost any other situation, he would have described the older man’s presence as soothing. “You donated 10,000 won to Wikipedia last month. Twice.”

“They can’t run ads,” he mumbled.

Wait. They were wondering why he’d risk his employability.

Felix smoothed his expression over, trying to find that branching crack in the wall again. Because it wasn’t really a relief that they were questioning what had happened here. Of course they were, the police weren’t brainless. But to clear his name of this crime, he would have to confess to another, and that would implicate more people than just himself.

He had to let them think nothing but embezzlement was going on here.

“Do you know who called in the tip?”

That shame Felix had been trying so hard to avoid flooded into him again at the thought of it. Chan, Changbin, Seungmin, all on the other side of the mirror, thinking he was a thief, believing he’d been using his friends for something as meaningless as money.

“It was supposed to be anonymous, but we were able to trace back the call to one of our own officers.”

Felix ducked his face onto the backs of his hands. It was so unfair. He was on the verge of losing everything for something he didn’t even do.

“Does the name Cheon Dongcheol mean anything to you?”

“Shouldn’t I have a lawyer here with me?” Felix said, biting back his irritation and maybe not succeeding.

The investigator tapped his fingers on the table. “Are you invoking your right to counsel?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Cheon Dongcheol is the one who reported you, along with his entire crime unit.”

The name meant almost nothing to him. It was vaguely familiar, the way every officer’s name here was when he worked in a precinct as big as this one. It was hard to think it mattered who that single officer was. Felix’s face shuttered anyway. “You can’t question me anymore.”

“I’m not. I’m informing you. I’m also informing you we’ve searched your phone.”

Shit. That mattered.

“It’s missing its SIM card. Meaning no messages. But your call log is intact. You’ve been in contact with that reporter.”

Felix swallowed thickly, training his eyes on the table in front of him to try to hide whatever his face was definitely revealing. And then it belatedly occurred to him, that was the point. The officer was watching him for his reactions. This was cheating.

“Besides his stance as pro-vigilante, I wonder if-”

“I’ve invoked my right to counsel,” Felix said as firmly as he could. The investigator didn’t say another word. He just picked up the file and left.    

Felix let out a heaving sigh once the door behind him shut. Frustration was pointless. Getting a lawyer was pointless. Everything was pointless when Felix was on the hitlist of someone as powerful as Yang Jeongin. He had the means and the motive, after all; it was the only explanation that made sense.

Except it didn’t.

Because if he was framing Felix after finding out he was on Spiderman’s side, Jeongin obviously had to know he was aiding and abetting a vigilante. So why not use that against him?

Felix buried his face in his hands and scrubbed hard. How did Jeongin even know to begin with? Felix wasn’t the most thorough, but he liked to think he was a little better than the two who’d gotten him into this mess, and yet Felix was the one-

Ew.

For the first time, Felix looked at the mirror and snapped himself out of whatever woe is me spiral he’d been about to fall down. He sucked in a stabilizing breath. That wasn’t who he was. As weird as the specific circumstances were, of course he’d know this was always a real possibility for trying to do the right thing. He couldn’t pin the blame for that on anyone except Jeongin and his lackeys.

He didn’t know what he was going to do or what was going to happen to him. But he was going to do what he always did, and try to make the most of this shitty situation.

“…You can’t see me, can you?”

Felix jumped out of his seat at the voice that came over the room’s comms. “Changbin?”

“You looked at me right as I walked in, that was creepy.”

“Is anyone else in there with you?” Felix asked in the mirror’s direction, beaming.

“No. No one else will see you.”

Felix’s heart dropped as low as it had just soared. “Why… Why not? Changbin,” he let out, more desperately than he meant to. “You can’t believe I actually did all of that.”

The comms clicked, the signal that Changbin had stopped pressing the push-to-talk button in the observation room. It was a long moment spent staring at his reflection, wishing it wasn’t his own face he was talking to. Click. “Because of that.”

Felix’s breath would get stuck in his throat if he wasn’t careful. “Because of what?” he managed.

“Because of the way you’re staring at me like a kicked puppy, Felix. We thought if we saw you, we wouldn’t be so sure of the hard evidence right in front of us, so we agreed to wait to see you. Turns out we were on to something because no, if I didn’t think you did before, I cannot believe you stole from the police.”

Felix shifted his weight. Was there a reason it still felt like Changbin was scolding him? “So, then… why are you here? If you all agreed not to see me.”

“You’ve been hiding something from us. And it’s not a million won in your bank account.” He sighed when Felix only worried on his bottom lip, unsure what to say to that. “I already knew you’ve been talking to Minho. You made that pretty clear with the bank situation the other day.”

“It’s… not what it looks like,” he said, but even to his own ears, it sounded like a pretty lame line.

“I don’t know what it looks like. Whatever’s been going on with you, Felix, I need to hear the story from you. Not your call logs or your bank statements. From you.”

Felix became acutely aware of the sound of his own breathing as he glanced up at the camera, expecting to see that intrusive red light blinking away.

But to his surprise, the light was missing. Changbin had turned off the recording. It was just the two of them now. “I… Changbin, I can’t just-” He dropped his voice to a whisper he wasn’t certain would get through the mirror. “If Minkyu found out what I know…”

Felix cut himself off with a start. Had the ringing in his ears always been this loud?

He only realized the increasingly loud buzzing was coming from the overhead light when it slammed off, plunging the room into darkness.

“Changbin?” Felix called out, spinning in place. It wasn’t just the interrogation room. If it was, there would have been light coming through the slits around the door. He would have been able to see into the observation room. But he couldn’t make out a thing in the pitch black.

Click. “I’ll be right back.” Click. Even when Changbin must have opened the door leading out of the observation room, Felix still couldn’t see any light through the mirror at all.

And then the light slammed on again, brighter than before.

It could have been the emergency power reserve, but Felix hardly had time to wonder if the precinct even had one of those before he was thrown into darkness again. “Hello?” he called out, increasingly antsy at not even being able to see his own hands in front of his face. He pressed himself against what he thought was the door, but when he reached out to try the knob, the light came on and revealed he was on the opposite side of the room from it. “Hello?” He crossed the room with the moment of light he had, failing to keep the fear from climbing up his throat as it went out again. The door didn’t budge.

If someone had asked Felix what kind of movie he felt he’d been in for the past couple of months, he might’ve said action, maybe a drama.

Right now as he banged on the unrelenting door, straining to hear if there was anyone on the other side, it felt as if the movie had only just begun, and that it was a horror movie.

He fucking hated horror movies. “Hello!?”

The light flashed on, practically blinding him.

“Felix.”

No. He did not scream… that loudly.

“God,” Changbin mumbled. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

“Wh-What’s going on?” Felix said, trying to regain his composure even as the light slammed off again.

“Calls are coming in about an energy-sucking monster making its way through the city. It might have even reached the power grid by now. So, you know, the usual.”

After Changbin’s nonchalance, Felix’s first thought was… where monsters were concerned, there was one person who was always there.

The light turned on.

Han must have been out there.

“Changbin, you have to let me out. I know I’m asking for a lot, but I promise, I’ll come back after I’m done with what I need to do, right now I just need you to trust me, please.”

Darkness. “I don’t trust you. I don’t even know who’s side you’re on, Felix.”

Felix balled his hands into his fists in frustration. There was no time for this. “Changbin, I know everything is all messed up, but I promise, later I’ll explain-”

Click. Changbin had stepped away from the comm.

“Changbin!?”

When the sterile light came on, it illuminated every inch of the empty room, every scratch in the metallic table and every imperfection in the cracking paint. “Actually- Honestly, I don’t need to get out of here,” he called out without knowing if anyone could hear him.

Then the door opened before Changbin quickly shut it again, making sure it was locked before turning to Felix. This was bad. “On second thought, I’m okay,” he said, punctuating the words with a firm nod.

Off. “No, you’re not.”

“Seriously,” Felix said as he nodded quicker. “I’m fine staying right here.”

On. He glanced away from Changbin’s stare to the mirror. How thick was that thing anyway? “It will take longer for you to get through tempered glass then to talk, Felix.”

He was cornered.

Felix sucked in a breath. Han, I am so sorry.

The lights cycled through five, fifteen, fifty times—enough to give Felix a headache—before he was finished summing up his side of the past month, all the way from what he discovered at OmniLife’s party to their sinking suspicion of who exactly was responsible for everything that had been going on lately.

If nothing else, he hoped the truth sounded just bizarre enough that Changbin knew he wouldn’t have been able to make it up if he’d tried.

He stared at Felix a long while before the lights flicked off. “So Jeongin is behind everything, and that weirdo friend of Minho’s is Spiderman?”

Felix could not fathom when Changbin would have gotten the time to meet Han personally, but they had more important things to get to. “Yes.”

Keys jingled, and then the ever-present pressure of the cuffs on his wrists suddenly disappeared before metal crashed onto the floor. When the light came on, Felix saw that his hands were actually free. “You believe me!?”

Changbin smiled. “Of course. We’re friends, after all,” he said as he got the door and started towards the lobby. “As long as you don’t lie to my face again.”

“Wait,” Felix whispered, glancing over his shoulder just as the lights shut off, leaving them with the late afternoon sunlight coming through the windows. “People might see me. There’s an exit back here.”

“Almost everyone has been dispatched. Plus,” he said as he ran ahead. “We might need backup.”

“What are you-?” Felix broke into a sprint, but somehow his longer legs did not help him catch up. “Changbin, no! It’s bad enough I told-!”

Changbin darted around the corner and proceeded to startle a yelp out of someone. “Where were you!?” that someone hissed, and- Oh, no. It was Chan. Felix considered running out the back exit for himself. “Minkyu left us in charge of-”

“Han Jisung is Spiderman, Minho is his best friend, Jeongin is evil and might have killed Hwang Hyunjin.”

“Fucking- huh, wait, what!?” Seungmin sputtered so great! With his luck Minkyu would be standing right behind them and now he was going to head directly to Han’s apartment to wait for him out if he survived whatever was messing with the city’s power and why did Felix ever say anything!?

“And Felix is behind the corner,” Changbin added.

Chan and Seungmin stuck their heads around the corner, brows furrowed in disbelief. “H-Hi. I didn’t steal.”

Seungmin kept staring at him, mouth agape as Chan whirled on Changbin. “You let him out!?”

“He didn’t steal. Come on.” Changbin stepped into view and pointed at Felix. “Look at him.”

“Changbin-”

“Look at him and seriously tell me that’s the face of a white-collar criminal mastermind,” he insisted.

Despite his scoff of disbelief, Chan turned. Felix tried his best definitely-not-a-thief smile, and even though he was really not feeling it, Chan’s face softened, seemingly in agreement that yes, it was ridiculous to think Felix of all people would ever use them for money.

And then Changbin had to say, “He has been working with Minho and Han Jisung behind our back though.”

They were plunged into darkness.

“So are we going or what?”

“Going where!?” Chan exclaimed, fired up all over again. “You just said he’s been working with Spiderman this whole time!”

“It’s only been like… a week,” Felix tried.

“Anyway,” Seungmin said as he blinked. “You’re saying ‘Han Jisung’ like I’m supposed to know what that is.”

Felix was going to explode if he wasted any more time. He made to walk past the three of them, but Chan grabbed his arm before he could. “Wait a minute, where are you going?”

Felix tried to pull his arm away, but Chan was stronger by far. “My friend might need my help! Just, say I broke out and let me go, Chan.”

“Your friend Spiderman?” Seungmin said. “Who landed you and Minkyu in the hospital?”

“That wasn’t him, Seungmin!”

“It was Jeonginnie?” he said skeptically. “How can you know that, Felix? Because whoever this guy is told you so?”

“Yes!” he said, but that wasn’t good enough for Seungmin or Chan. He looked over at Changbin. “He believes me.”

Changbin crossed his arms. “I believe you believe your version of things. And if it turns out someone has been stringing you along as their patsy, I’ll kick their ass, superhero or not.”

Felix gaped at him. “Changbin! Han isn’t lying to me!”

“That’s fair,” Seungmin said with a nod. “I’ll go with you too then.”

Felix let out a disbelieving scoff. The sentiment was nice but this was not the kind of back up he wanted!

“Do you even realize what you’re doing here?” Chan said, still not letting go of his arm. “If all of this is true and Jeongin did frame Spiderman for the party, why would go up against our own coworkers to help him? Why would we make ourselves enemies of the most powerful person in the country!?”

Felix took in a deep breath. “I’ve already done both of those things, Chan. I was probably only detained because I’m on Han’s side. I get the danger, but this is my choice. Please. Let me go handle this and I’ll come right back.”

Chan stared at him as if he was meeting a stranger for the first time, and glanced over at the other two.

“He didn’t stutter once,” Seungmin said. “He must be serious about this.”

“I can punch you if that helps.” They all swiveled their heads to look at Changbin. “What? You know, so he doesn’t get in trouble for not stopping us.”

“Do not punch me.” Chan rubbed his eyes with his free hand. “Fine,” he said as he let go of Felix’s arm. “I’ll come too. Han Jisung better not make a single wrong move.”

“Speaking of,” Seungmin said, peppily leading the way. “Who the fuck is that?”

Felix was quick to follow him through the deserted foyer. “Yesterday, right before Spiderman was apparently seen the stadium, do you remember that guy Minkyu randomly brought in for questioning?”

“No.”

“With the… nails?”

“No.”

“Really jittery?”

“Felix, the only thing I can remember from yesterday is that monster. And how hard you had to scrub that burnt pasta out of the pan.”

That was reasonable. But even when Felix turned to Chan, he also looked lost. “It doesn’t matter. Changbin, which power plant is it?” he asked as they pushed through the front entrance.

“I’ll get us there,” he said, spinning a set of keys around his finger.

Chapter Text

Before he’d broken into a dead man’s apartment, Han had already had a hunch. If Cheon Dongcheol was the single detective in the Property Crimes Unit who hadn’t been arrested on suspicious charges, he might have been the one Jeongin used to plant false evidence on his fellow officers. Including Felix.

When Han pulled Minho away from the sight of that man’s body hanging from his own bedroom ceiling light and met his eyes, wide with horror, he knew they’d come to the same conclusion. After Cheon’s job was done, all he was to Jeongin was a loose end. Not even being his man on the inside could save him.

So with Felix stuck in police custody, there was no telling what could happen to him.

They didn’t speak until they hit the sidewalk running, some distance between them and the crushing atmosphere of that apartment. “I get to Felix, you call the cops and ambulance,” Han said, speeding ahead of Minho.

Minho wasn’t letting him get away that easily. “You call them. I’ll go ahead. I can pretend I’m working, find Felix, and if anything seems wrong then you can-”

Han grabbed his arm and brought them to a sudden halt.

“Don’t be so stubborn, Han, this way you’re not going in blind!”

It wasn’t Minho’s words that gave him pause. Somehow, there was too much static crackling in the atmosphere.

Han whirled around, startling Minho and irritating the pair of women trying to pass by. There, in the middle of the street, he spotted something. A small figure dressed in all-black, uncaring about the cars honking and swerving around them.

“Do you see that?” Han said, but it was clear from the way Minho looked ahead and back at him that all he saw was the busy street. “Hey.” He took a few steps down the sidewalk. The hooded figure started to raise their arm, as if reaching for the newest phone model on the digital billboard. “Someone’s going to get hurt if you don’t move!”

The static in the air buzzed louder the closer got to the person, their hand shaking in place more and more. “I’m serious!” he yelled as he broke into a full-on sprint. “Move it!” He looked for his chance to web them and drag them out of the street himself, but there were too many cars coming for that to be safe, and still that incessant buzzing was getting louder. “Get out of the-!”

The tension in the air snapped and a bolt of lightning struck the billboard. It glitched, gave off sparks and turned black before crashing on to the roof of the building it was posted on. With a start, Han realized that bolt of lightning hadn’t come from the clear, cloudless summer sky. It had jumped from the billboard, and now it was circling the mystery figure’s hand.

He darted into the street without a second thought, hopping the hood of an oncoming car to get to the figure. “Hey! What did you just-!?”

The hood of the black sweater fell back as the figure turned, revealing a teenage boy’s face, who wrenched his arm back and threw the ball of electricity right at Han.

There was a blinding flash of pure white, and all Han knew was that every muscle in his body was pulled so taut it burned.

A pained scream tore out of someone nearby. It wasn’t until Han was cognizant enough to understand he’d crashed through a storefront window that he realized that scream was his.

After gaining control of his own body again, Han sucked in as big a breath as he could and started getting his bearings straight. He was lying in a pile of broken glass, rolling chairs, and tables. Something reeked of acetate and alcohol. Shrieks rang out around him. When he turned to his left, there was a shell-shocked girl to his left with her knees drawn up to her chest. Her fingernails were impeccably done.

Han let his head loll back when he figured out where he’d been flung. “Do you think I can get a manicure on the house for this?”

“I… I don’t work here,” she managed.

Han closed his eyes and sighed. “Figures.”

“Han!” Minho yelled, pushing past the stream of women running out of the building to get to him.

“Here,” he called without much effort. But when Minho ran up and reached for his hand, Han flinched back. “Wait, I-” He winced as he pushed himself up on his hands, shards of glass sticking into his palms. “I wouldn’t.” He looked down at himself, his shirt still smoking with the heat of the electricity he’d been hit with. Well, Minho’s shirt, to be exact.

He figured that wasn’t the reason Minho was looking at him with so much concern. “Are you okay?”

Han looked back to his left, making sure that girl had finally gotten up and run, and got to his feet. “Which way did he go?”

“South,” Minho said hesitantly. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I’m standing, my heart’s beating.” Han spotted the nail salon’s two CCTV cameras, webbed both with either hand, and tore them out of the ceiling. “That’s pretty good for me these days.” To double-check he hadn’t somehow held onto that electricity, he webbed one of the metal table legs that had broken his fall and planted his hand on it. “No sparks. Great.”

“…Listen, Han-”

Han grabbed his arm and dragged him into the backroom behind the curtain. He took his gloves and mask out of his pocket and threw them on the floor. “I’m listening.” He yanked what remained of the shirt off his back.

“A few months ago I wrote a piece on the city power plant.”

Trying to toe his jeans off, Han fell back against the ceiling-length mirror behind him with a crack. “Cool.”

“They showed me around the control rooms and I saw all the failsafes and manual overrides. I didn’t publish this, but if they have to force the power off, they turn four keys in the southern control tower.”

Han slapped the button on the chest of his suit and caught the heap of spandex before it hit the floor. “I’m proud of you and I’m sure it was exciting but can this wait until-?” The lightbulbs framing the mirror shut off, casting the room in darkness before humming to life again a moment later. “After I take care of that?”

Minho gave him a puzzled look. “I thought you were suiting up, why did you take it all off?”

One by one, Han had started pulling the limbs of his suit so that the inner black-and-gold layer faced outwards. “I told you, when this suit is inside out, the outer layer makes a circuit for electricity while the inner layer protects me from it.” He slipped it on his right foot and started hopping to get it over his leg. “I told you that, right?”

The bemused look on Minho’s face meant, nope, Han had forgotten to explain that at the time, and now he understood why it might have been a little weird that he’d stripped down to his boxers without warning. “Are you positive that’s going to work?”

Han smirked, until he realized that was a genuine question and not Minho’s attempt at a science joke. “Yes, Minho,” he said, yanking the suit onto his shoulder. “You were there when I tested it in the lab!”

“That’s why I’m asking. If this is the one I’m thinking of, the sparks that flew off that thing almost hit me on the other side of the room.”

Han hit the button on his chest again, and this time it made the suit cling close to his skin. “You’re thinking of a different one. Also, it was supposed to do that.”

Minho narrowed his eyes at him. “Anyway. I wasn’t making small talk. You saw it as clearly as me. I think. Electro takes his power from the environment, so he has to be heading for the biggest source of energy in the city.”

“The power plant,” Han belatedly realized. He gave the gloves and mask the same inside-out treatment. “Electro, did you just come up with that yourself?” he added while pulling on his gloves. “That’s perfect, you really learned from the best,” he said, pulling the mask over his proud grin.

Minho cracked a wry smile in response. “Let’s go,” he said as he pulled the curtain aside.

“Wait.”

Minho locked eyes with him. His every intention of helping Han more than he already had was clear enough on his face, even without having to say, “I’m coming with you.”

“Of course. Grab that over there, we could use it.”

Minho walked up to the salon chair Han gestured at. “What are you talking about? There’s nothing here.”

Han pretended to share in his confusion. “What, no, I totally thought I saw…”

Minho turned around with a baffled look on his face.

And then Han webbed him to the chair.

Minho tugged against the webbing, as if he wasn’t sure what had just happened for a moment. “Are you-!? Get back here, you dumbass, you need me!”

“Sorry, don’t hate me, see you at home!” Han called as he got a running start.

”JIS-!” Minho cut himself off, and the last thing Han made out was a long, frustrated groan.

Tracking down Electro wasn’t hard, all Han had to do was follow the trail of sparking streetlights and glitching billboards. Trying to figure out how in the world he was going to get the power off by himself if it came to it… was getting him nowhere.

By the time he plopped down on the ground behind the world’s moodiest ball of electricity, he wasn’t much closer to a plan.

So forgive him for opening with, “H-Hey.”

The boy turned around faster than should have been possible. The thick power cables he’d ripped out of the ground were clutched in his shaking fists, so much electricity flowing through his body his eyes were glowing blue. It should have killed him.

“You better put that down, kid,” Han said, less authoritatively than he would have liked. “People need that stuff.”

The boy closed his eyes, and for a moment, Han hoped it would have been as easy as that. Then he yanked out the cables even further, and even behind his eyelids, his eyes flashed a blinding blue. “Not as much as I need it,” he growled, snaking the cables tighter and tighter around his arms.

Surges of power coursed through the lines, causing who knew what havoc across the city. “What… happened to you?” Han tried as calmly as possible. With a certain someone’s track record, he could guess who did this to him. “What are you going to use it for?”

Between the scrutiny and electricity coming from his eyes, Han was pretty sure the look in the kid’s eye could kill. “Back off. Now.”

Was he… starting to float?

Han put his hands up and took a few steps back, putting distance between the two of them. “Alright, alright.”

The boy seemed satisfied with that, and the ire in his face cooled off. Also, he was definitely floating, his feet clearly dangling several inches off the ground now.

“If you won’t give me any answers, I’ll give you some space. But unless you’ve been living under a rock… you’d know I’m really not in the business of letting people trash my city.”

Han tensed to fight, but before he could even jump, Electro sent a bolt straight at his chest.

The sudden force pushed Han onto his knees. “That tickled,” he said when he got back to his feet.

-

“Changbin. Changbin. Changbin, we can’t drive here- We’re going to hit whatever the fu-!“

At well over too many miles per hour, the car slammed into the figure that had just electrocuted Han, Felix barely catching himself before his head hit the seat in front of him.

Changbin, to his credit, glanced back to make sure the other occupants hadn’t burst into a ball of flames, and then threw the driver’s side door open before he could be sure of much else. When Han seemed fine, Felix would have laid back to catch his breath and make sure his non-existent lunch didn’t come back up, but it occurred to him that he was going to have to explain… everything.

He ran after Changbin, just in time to catch him saying, “That was the bad guy, right? I hit the bad guy?”

Han was petrified in place as Seungmin and Chan stumbled out of the car too, to the point that he might have hoped that if he stayed still for long enough they would just go away.

Changbin scoffed after a second of that. “You can give it up, Han Jisung, we know it’s you.”

Han’s mask went long with shock, his jaw clearly hanging open as he looked right at Felix. And then he tried to play it cool. “Who’s Han Jisung?”

When he saw he wasn’t fooling anyone, he yanked off the mask and rounded on Felix, betrayal in every line of his face. “What the hell, Felix, don’t you get that the point of a secret identity is that it stays a secret!?!” The tension withered out of his shoulders as he clapped his hands to his face. “This is fine, this is perfect actually,” he said before Felix could even choke out an explanation or a lame sorry. “I love that there are exactly four of you, it’s like destiny.”

Seungmin glanced at the others. “What are you-?”

“A few months back… It doesn’t matter. The point is there are four keys you have to turn up there-” He stabbed a finger at a tower which already had several windows blown out. “In order to force the power off. Since Electro has to take power from his environment, you’ll be taking away his biggest source of energy, and it might give me enough time to get the upper hand on him.”

“Might?” Chan repeated.

“I’m sorry,” Han drawled. “It’s my first time fighting a living battery, officer, I’m learning as I go.”

“So, what, is it just you out here? Where’s Minho?”

Han narrowed his eyes at Changbin. “The nail salon.” He pulled the mask on. “Go do your jobs.”

Felix started in the direction of the control tower, figuring there would be time for everyone to explain later, but the others hesitated.

Han suddenly flipped through the air, avoiding the electric jolt that burned the ground he’d just been standing on and that sent the others scattering. “Today, please!” he yelled as he swung away from them.

Chan reached the entrance to the tower first. He stopped just short of running into the door and yanked it open for the other three others to duck into. Felix was second, and he nearly tripped before Changbin yanked him back to his feet. “Shit,” he breathed, looking down at what would have broken his fall.

The emergency light wasn’t affected by Electro’s power surges. Still, under the overhead red light, it took Felix a moment to see. It was a uniformed employee, lying motionless on his back.

Seungmin kneeled down beside him, jabbing his fingers lengthwise into the man’s neck. He felt around for a moment, his eyes widening. “He… He doesn’t…”

Chan grabbed his hand and moved his fingers sidelong.

“Oh, he has a pulse.”

“And his chest’s moving,” Changbin said. Felix thought he was going to lay the man on his side for his safety. But instead he started feeling through his trouser pockets. As soon as his hand emerged with a ring of keys, Felix pulled at the man’s arm to get him on his side.

“Wait, how are we supposed to know if any of those are the right keys?” Felix asked as the three of them started pushing forward like that was good enough.

Changbin, very confidently, turned around, and then he mumbled, “I don’t know.”

Seungmin and Chan split off into the other corners of the first floor, but seeing as there was barely even any space for the base of the staircase, they didn’t find anything. “Or if the employees ran off with them already?” Felix worried out loud.

They rushed to the second floor, where the only thing they managed to do was hear the electricity surging outside. That and some unintelligible quipping. “Who the hell is he even talking to?” Seungmin said after another one-liner they couldn’t quite make out through the walls.

Felix did not have an answer for him.

They worked through the third, then fourth floor, each time finding nothing. “What did he say they looked like?” Chan said, crouching and peering under the staircase to make sure they weren’t missing anything in the shadows the dark red light couldn’t reach.

“He didn’t say anything, except that this might not even work,” Changbin huffed.

The anxiety Felix had been trying so hard to funnel into a productive buzz started crawling up his throat. Inside, the space that was definitely not meant for four bodies at once felt as if it were slowly closing in. Outside, the crashing and electricity whirring were louder than ever, and now even Han’s quips were starting to get sparse.

Seungmin pushed past Felix, his footsteps on the metal staircase clanging almost as loudly as the fight outside.

There was just one floor left, the control room where they needed to turn those keys, and Felix doubted that they would already be in the exact place they needed them to be…

“They’re up here!” Seungmin yelled down.

Chan and Changbin rushed up as fast as they could. Of course. Felix could never predict his luck.

He followed quickly after them, and when he almost ran into Changbin, he wondered what they were still standing back for.

When he saw the four engineers who’d tried the same thing as them, a brightly colored key in each of their hands.

On the right side, Electro’s bolt must have pierced straight through the observatory window. Through the windowpane, Felix could see, even though Han had shock-proofed himself, he was still struggling to keep up and get Electro’s attention as far away from them as possible. So they had no time to lose.

Felix grabbed the key out of the clutched hand of the engineer on the right and rushed toward the failsafe. When he turned to see the others staring at him in bewilderment, he yelled, “Hurry up!”

They snapped to action, Chan doing double takes until all at once, they had the keys in position. Electro had Han down, and he was draining more power from the grid than ever.

“Now!” Felix called.

The four of them turned their keys, and watched intently for the moment Electro’s power would wane.

And they watched.

Until he turned directly toward them.

The second Felix met those electric glowing eyes, he gasped and hit the floor as fast as humanly possible.

The others ducked too, just in time to miss the rest of the window blowing out with another bolt. As soon as the glass was clear, Felix peeked back up to see Han heaving a massive pile of scaffolding on top of Electro, burying him in it before swinging up into the newly opened window. “Hello!? What are you guys doing up here, checking out the sights!?”

“Your stupid plan didn’t work!” Seungmin shot back, so outraged his voice cracked. He started raising his head, presumably so he could tear into him better, but when the metallic staircase rang out with heavy footsteps, he clamped his hands over his head and flinched back.

“My stupid plan,” Minho huffed, his face emerging from the staircase. Seungmin relaxed ever so slightly, but now Felix was the one who was almost scared. Red in the face, sweat dotting his forehead, Felix swore, Minho was angrier than he had ever seen… a lot of people. He walked past the engineers, past the four of them, and right up to a control panel he wasn’t intimidated by in the slightest, where Han was perched in the window. “Only when the keys are turned, someone has to hit the master switch in the control centeer to finish the shutdown.”

In any other situation, they would have been the most boring words Felix had ever overheard, but Minho was delivering them like he was handing down a criminal’s life sentence. Felix slowly got to his feet, half-expecting Han to wither under the force of Minho’s intensity.

Instead, he peppily hopped into the room. “Great, we’re halfway there then. Seungmin, you go.”

Seungmin’s face flashed with confusion, and then outrage again. “Wh-? I can’t-”

“I’m going, Spiderman!” Minho exclaimed. “I’ve been in there, it’s a maze, and I’m the only one who knows the layout. I would have told you all this sooner if I knew you were going to web me inside an abandoned building like a barbarian!”

Felix swiveled on Han, who did not look the least bit chastised. “What? Is that what you meant by-?”

“For the record,” Changbin said, betraying his total apathy toward that last detail. “We know that’s Han Jisung.”

When it was Felix’s turn to be on the receiving end of Minho’s withering gaze, Felix could have throttled Changbin. “To the cops?” he said with disdain so audible, there were outbursts of hey, what’s that supposed to mean? “Felix, the point of a secret identity is that it stays a secret!”

The indignation in Felix flared so suddenly, before he could tamp it back down where it belonged, he burst out, “I didn’t have a-!”

“Can we stop yelling and start doing something?” Chan cut him off. “Electro’s not staying down forever, right?”

“Completely right, Detective,” Han said as he took off his mask. “Minho, tell Seungmin which way to go.”

“H-? How do you even know my name?”

Minho planted his hand down on the control panel, precariously close to a big yellow button. He was more collected now. “They stay up here. I need to be the one who gets in there. And you’re going to cover me. There’s no other way to keep him from draining the city of its power, Spi-” He slid a look over at Felix. “Jisung. You know that.”

As they stared at Han, Felix was still dimly aware of the crackle of live electricity outside, but the room seemed to fall entirely silent.

“Well?” Changbin eventually demanded.

“Say something,” Chan said.

The look on Han’s face was unreadable. Then he turned to see where he’d left Electro buried, just before Felix caught the quiet groan of shifting metal outside. Han pulled on the mask and stepped toward Minho.

“We’re taking my shortcut,” Han said as he unceremoniously scooped him up.

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait, the stairs are fine, HAN-!”

And then they dropped out of the window.

“…So what’s that about?” Seungmin asked.

Felix rubbed his face, resisting a deep sigh. “Don’t ask me.”

-

Han had to give it to Minho. After Electro shot the mess of wire, steel and scaffolding off of himself in a rage, Minho clamped down on his height-induced complaints pretty quickly.

With the two of them having to leg it the rest of the way without somehow getting spotted, that was about all the positives Han could spin on the situation. As quickly and quietly as possible, he lowered the two of them to the ground, just behind a transmission tower that would not hide them well enough if Electro, hovering above the center of the plant, happened to glance their way. So when Minho tried to crouch down and stay hidden behind nonexistent cover, Han pulled on his arm and mouthed to Keep going!

Han tugged him forward, slinking forward one step at a time with his eye fixed on Electro.

The big blue buzzing ball zipped to the far side of the plant. Then another, zapping the machinery to try to scare them out of hiding. With Electro so far off their trail, Han picked up the pace, slowly closing the distance between them and the entrance to the control center.

There was a phantom sensation, a loud crunch underfoot. Han quickly grabbed Minho’s shoulders and pushed him to the side before he could distractedly crush the broken glass on the ground. Minho stumbled, and Han had to catch him by the arm to keep him from tripping. Han glanced over. They were almost there. But the door was solidly shut. Even if it was unlocked, the sound would probably get Electro’s attention.

This was it. The end of the line. If he went through with this, everything would either turn out great, or terribly. If he didn’t and decided to swing Minho out of there, he could guarantee Minho would be safe. He would hate him, obviously, but he’d also be safe.

And the city might never get the infrastructure for this much power back up this century.

A tinny, little voice in his head told him that wasn’t their problem.

Everything else made him shoot a web at the heavy metal door and start pulling.

The door’s deadbolts slammed against the frame. Han yanked, harder than anything else he’d ever put his strength into.

The first deadbolt tore through the metal doorframe. Without having to turn to look, he sensed Electro’s crackling attention had turned to him. And that he was still pissed.

The second bolt ripped out of the strike plate. The sizzling that followed Electro got louder in a series of bursts, until Han could hear him hovering just overhead.

“Found you.”

The rest of the doorframe tore out of place and the door swung open. Han shoved Minho forward. “G-!”

His spidey senses warned him of the next jolt of electricity he was about to take. With his resistant suit on, it wasn’t a problem, but his web was still connecting to the building through the door. He clamped a hand down on his webshooter, just before Electro hit him with an even stronger bolt than before. Minho whirled around, his eyes wide with horror.

“I’m fine!” he got out, getting to his feet. “Hide out in here!” he had enough presence of mind to tack on.

“I’m not after him. You’re the one who’s in my way.” His voice distorted with the electricity he tried to hit Han with again. He quickly swung out of the way and on top of a maintenance crane, where he could finally meet Electro eye-to-eye. Seeing as he kind of hurt to look at, it wasn’t advisable. Han tried to get the cogs in his head going as he jumped out of the way of another bolt.

It was clear there was no mechanical technology going on here. Somehow, the kid had been changed on a biological level. Like Han.

"What did Jeongin offer you?” Han said as he swung between towers and power lines. “Money? Fame?”

It was hard to tell with all the sparkles, but the boy’s face seemed to soften in confusion.

Han landed on another tower. “Don’t tell me you’re doing this free of charge. I could have sworn Shocker and Vulture had to be in it for the money.”

Even the furious crackling seemed to quiet down.

“You’re some sort of diversion, anyway. Did the big guy let you know what exactly you’re supposed to be distracting me from, or did he not bother to let you in on it either?”

Electro was sinking, ever so slightly. “I… What are you talking about?”

Confusion hadn’t exactly been Han’s angle here. “You did come out of Jeongin’s lab, right?”

“Who… Who is Jeongin?”

In one eerie moment, the entire city, for the first time in what had to be decades, quieted down to the sound of nothing but nature. Electro, still tangled in a mess of lines and cables, seemed to be drained of all his power in moments. Han quickly swooped in and grabbed the boy before he fell too far. He was unconscious. As quickly as he could, he swung out of the power plant, where he was relieved to see a perimeter of cops around the area, still debating their entrance. “Got your guy,” he said when he landed behind them. A few jolted back from the unexpected voice. Others immediately drew their weapons on him.

“Is that the suspect?” one barked at him.

Han narrowed his eyes as much as he could through the mask. “You guys know I can dodge that at this point.”

The closest officer with his gun on him shifted uncomfortably.

Han slowly stepped forward. “If we could talk like civilized adults…”

“Says the freak in a mask,” one brave officer chimed in.

Man, how does Felix work with these people?

“Fine, I’ll do the talking. Electro is just a kid, clearly been experimented on by who knows who, and he needs a hospital now. Can I put him down, or are you going to shoot me in self-defense?”

The captain nodded brusquely. “Lower the weapons. Park, call paramedics.”

As Han eased Electro onto the ground, the captain started speaking again. “We’re not done with you, Spider- Hey!”

“Sorry, can’t hear you, got web in my ear,” he called. He was midswing when the city’s generators, and its power, roared back to life, drowning out any other natural sound.

By some miracle, they’d pulled it off.

He swung down to the entrance of the control center he’d torn out of its reinforced metallic frame, kind of impressed he’d done that. He would have flattered himself for longer, but Minho was rushing out of the building.

“Did you do it?” he asked. “Did you beat-?”

Han crushed him into a hug.

“Ow, ow, Han, you’re killing me,” he choked, but his dramatics revealed themselves when he let out a laugh and hugged him back. “Thanks for letting me help. …So what are we going to do about them?” he said in a much lower tone.

Han let go and turned around. “Officers,” he said, straightening his posture.

“Spiderman,” Chan said.

“Do we… have a problem?”

Three of their gazes slid over to Felix, who looked as worn out as any of them. But when he noticed they were waiting on him to weigh in, his eyes widened and he shook his head.

“Nope.”

Huh… Just like that, they decided they were fine because of Felix. Han definitely wanted to find out about that. But Changbin seemed to have something more pressing on his mind. “There’s just one thing. If we’re gonna keep your secret, we need to figure out what exactly we’re supposed to say happened here.”

A crushing weight seemed to land right on Han’s chest. God, couldn’t he catch a break for a second? “Okay…” he started, looking over Changbin’s shoulder. “We could say an eight-legged prosthetic user was going for a test-run in the middle of the local power plant… Because that’s what’s happening.”

A baffled expression crossed Changbin’s face before the four of them whirled around to see… exactly what he described. Somebody in a suit with way too many limbs was coming straight at them, maneuvering over the crushed and fallen debris, ripping a panel out of a generator, all without breaking stride. As if that wasn’t enough, a smaller figure on a hoverboard in some kind of green exoskeleton was hovering above them. “Perfect,” the distorted, amplified voice said. “The three of you in one place. That makes things much easier for me.”

Han had no idea which three out of the six of them this little goblin was talking about. But he pushed and stood in front of them all, frantically jabbing his thumb for them to run for the building behind them. “Do you think we could do this another day, gobby? I’m booked through the week, but maybe we could do next Tuesday if that-”

“Doc Ok. Shut him up.”

Like an attack dog, the figure charged forward, its mechanical limbs crushing the debris in its path like paper. Han tensed to get this thing away from his friends.

He jolted back when a black streak of goo crashed into ‘Doc Ok,’ slamming them into the dirt. Nobody moved as four strong but spindly mechanical limbs struggled to peel the monster off, the human’s limbs thrashing wildly.

His heart stopped beating when the person lost the fight, and Venom, bigger than Han had ever seen him before, grabbed the limp figure and bit their head off.

When Venom let out a roar, everyone else on the ground had the sense to run into the control center for cover. It wasn’t until Venom charged straight for them that Han could even react.

When he finally snapped out of it, he could tell that at the back of the pack, Seungmin was right in Venom’s crosshairs. Han grabbed him and yanked him out of the way, Seungmin’s clothes rustling with how close Venom had rushed by. “I-I remember you now,” Seungmin started as Venom landed, right on his feet. “Last night, you were that guy in-”

Venom was gearing up to double back. “If this is how you tell me I’m the man of your dreams, you really need to work on your-” Han picked up Seungmin and launched them up into the air, avoiding Venom’s second charge. “Timing.” From the top of the tower, Han whirled around to face hoverboard-man. “What-?”

“The fuck is going on here!?” Seungmin blurted out, his fingers digging uncomfortably into Han’s shoulder.

“What he said. Were you and your partner with Electro? Did you know-”

Venom roared from the ground.

“That thing was going to be here!?”

“Stop asking questions,” the figure responded, following Han’s gaze. “Sh-She won’t be the only casualty if we don’t do something.”

“We? You just sicced an octopus on me! I don’t even know who you are!”

Seungmin’s fingers tensed. “Uh. Spiderman,” he said anxiously and yes Han could see that it was climbing up the tower opposite them but he was having a conversation!

“You know I need to get that thing off its host. That’s all that matters.” Then the figure dove, just in time to avoid Venom’s attempt at batting them out of the air.

So Han and Seungmin became his next targets.

“Spiderman!”

“Trust me,” Han said, and then pushed Seungmin off the top of the tower and threw himself backward. All Venom caught was the space in between them as they fell in opposite directions. Han grabbed Seungmin with a web to the chest, swinging him down in front of the entrance to the control center.

“Don’t… Do not do that again,” Seungmin huffed, trying to tug the webbing off.

With a quick move, Han pulled the webbing off and Seungmin toward the entrance. “Move everyone to a safer shelter, I’ll draw away…” Han watched as Venom licked its lips with one big, disgusting tongue. “That thing.”

As he swung up into the air, Han realized he had no idea which way hoverboard guy had gone. “Hello? Goblin man? I thought you were going to-!”

In one massive leap, Venom launched himself up at Han. In a blind panic Han webbed the first thing he could reach, hit a maintenance crane, and pulled it right on top of Venom. When he landed on the nearest tower to take a breather, he spotted them. The figure in green, right there in the control tower that overlooked the yard.

Han shot right through the broken window.

“Hey, hey, hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Han tried to get in between the figure and the control panel they were furiously tapping at. But they managed to push him out of their way with one hand and keep hitting the panel with the other. Without their eyes even visible, the figure sent him the most hateful little glance before slamming one of the buttons on the panel with finality.

“What was th-?” Han clamped his hands over his ears at the sudden piercing alarm that rang out through the entire plant. “What did you just do?”

The figure nodded toward the window. Out there in the yard, Han saw as Venom, having barely gotten the crane off of himself, was now stumbling and screeching in pain as shreds and ribbons flew off into the air.

“Work your magic, Spiderman.”

Lowering his hands, Han looked at the figure, at a loss.

“Pull the host out.”

With Venom seemingly stunned, Han would have stayed and made this little green goblin answer a few questions. But when he looked back out the window, he could see Minho and Changbin stalking up to Venom.

God, you leave kids alone for one second.

Han shot out the window and reached a perch above Venom. He motioned as strongly as he could for the two- Wait, no, now Chan, Seungmin and Felix were approaching too, all with some kind of firearm, metal rod, or in Changbin’s case, just a fire extinguisher in hand. The latter looked up at Han with a smile and an OK sign.

What!??

As it turns out, they caught on pretty quick. Instead of turning their ‘weapons’ on a man-eating lab experiment gone wrong, like Han suspected was the original plan, the guys with the metal rods braced them against the ground, and looked to Changbin. Who took his fire extinguisher and smacked the shit out of those rods.

Venom clutched his head in agony as Changbin raked the extinguisher back and forth, the sillohuette of the human host becoming clear. As soon as he could see them Han webbed the person inside and pulled.

Clearly, they didn’t want to budge. As the figure on the hoverboard landed nearby and the sound of screeching steel got louder and louder, Han looped the webbing around his hand and strained as hard as he could to get whoever was deranged enough to kill and leave bodies all over his city out.

No. No, no, no, no, “nononono, NO-”

The man inside flew out of Venom’s back, tumbling through the dirt and mud of the yard, until he firmly hit the corner of a broken generator. His arms were raised over his face.

Han swung over, but Changbin was faster. “Get up,” he said as he loomed over the man. He grabbed his arm and yanked up. “I said get-”

As soon as Han landed, he saw what exactly stunned Changbin into silence. They were looking at a dead man.

At least he was supposed to be.

In black slacks and a turtleneck, as fashionable ever, Hwang Hyunjin looked up at them in a daze.

When the figure approached, somehow looking as surprised as any of them in a full body suit, Hyunjin’s eyes flicked over to them. “Jeongin-ah…” he breathed. “Sorry.”