Work Text:
There’s a song Min Hyuk heard once, going to school in the US. He hadn’t really been paying attention to the words at the time, spoken in a foreign language by someone far removed from the world he lived in. The idea of being freed from all care and worry simply by another person’s presence had lost all relevance to his own life when his mother died. Afterwards, he’d sometimes hear it at a café, or on the car radio, and internally roll his eyes before intentionally focusing on something else or changing the music.
Years later, though, he thinks of it as he watches a tiny, doll-like woman casually destroy his father’s pet gang. There’s something in the way she moves, the flick of her fingers sending men flying, or how she turns and looks his way in bafflement at the police station later. He’s always been so disgusted by his own natural fear of any physical threat that he’s momentarily speechless at how she actually goes out of her way to hide her natural strength from the police. At least he can help with that part, not that she necessarily needs it with these idiot police officers. There's only one that's even vaguely competent, and that one just nauseates him even more, for more reasons than one. But if her superpowers are what make him notice Do Bong Soon in the first place, it’s the realization that he, weakling coward pretty boy Ahn Min Hyuk, knows how to help her that finally distracts him from the troubled world he’s been living in.
Of course, giving her a job at the company isn't exactly helping her, not with the way he's blatantly made her his favorite and kept her from actually working the way she'd envisioned. But it did give her something to do, a job, a purpose...payment, at the very least. And if she happened to get to know him a little better in the process, well, that wasn't so bad, was it? He doesn't think so, at least until the phone call comes. Then he realizes that he's made himself vulnerable to her in the worst way, not physically, but mentally, emotionally-and he's not ready for that. "You need to go," he tells her, because suddenly he can't bear her seeing him like this. Ahn Min Hyuk, no longer the handsome, eccentric billionaire CEO, but a mere frightened boy, all because of some cruel words spoken in a rough voice over a phone line.
Threatening phone calls won't stop just because he’s been distracted by a super-powered girl, and neither will his feelings of inadequacy. In Gook Du's presence doesn't help, of course; now that he's figured out Min Hyuk isn't actually gay, he actively goes out of his way to show how very loving and protective he is to Bong Soon, what a perfect boyfriend he would make. He can't really blame the police officer, though; these attacks of self-doubt had happened before, too, but lately the phone calls are what send him careening through space most often. Every now and then, Ainsoft, his video games, the employees he thinks of as family- everything he's come to lean on in the absence of actual familial support seems to lose all meaning, and he'll find himself unable to keep up the facade he goes to work with every day.
Otherwise, he's learned how to force his fear down. Having Super Power Girl as a bodyguard certainly helps with the physical aspect of his fears, but gradually he comes to the realization that Bong Soon herself, with her kind heart and gentle ways, can find him in the depths of his own mind more easily than anyone else. He'll never forget seeing her that first day, but lately it’s more the things Bong Soon says and does that free his mind up to working at its normal amazing speed.
Actually, the more he gets to know her, the less he feels the need for words between them. That whole day at the amusement park passes like a blur. He lets Do Bong Soon put cat ears in his hair and feed him cotton candy, pointing out anything that catches her attention and prattling on about nothing in particular in the most comforting way imaginable. The words themselves are nice, the way they sound, but he knows he doesn't have to pay attention, that she's only saying them to calm him down. She won't let him leave her for the privacy of his own mind so easily, anymore, but when he does she knows exactly how to slowly and gently draw him back out.
Words still come in handy, of course. Words like Min-min and Bong-bong, so ridiculously cute but somehow so precious. Words like, it's easy for a friend to become a boyfriend. It only takes a step. Like this. Or, I do, I really love your daughter, will you let me marry her?
In his vainest moments (moments? she would laugh at him) he thinks they are a superpowered couple. Kidnappers, video games, threatening phone calls, or family drama; nothing can withstand them. He's overcome his own fears in the most ultimate way, now. He knows his own power in the strength of his love for this girl- he can and has faced bombs, knives, death, betrayal- anything and everything he never thought he'd be able to do. Even more surprisingly, he knows his own worth to her, almost as well as he knows her worth to him. Despite all the arguments about who stays home with the twins, or the struggles of daily adult life, they are invaluable to each other. The horrors she sees and meets on the streets would overwhelm her without his ability to think through a problem, honed through the years, and his tendency to sulk and stew in his own brain never survives an encounter with Bong-bong's infectious joy, her delightful way of thinking and strong personality.
Many years later, someone says to him, "Well, Ahn Min Hyuk, you seem like you're doing well." And he can smile back and say, with all sincerity, "If I am, it's because she's with me." And she is, now, and she has been, and she will be, for quite a long, long time.
There's something in the way she moves,
Or looks my way, or calls my name,
That seems to leave this troubled world behind.
And if I'm feeling down and blue,
Or troubled by some foolish game,
She always seems to make me change my mind.
Every now and then the things I lean on lose their meaning
And I find myself careening
Into places where I should not let me go.
She has the power to go where no one else can find me
And to silently remind me
Of the happiness and the good times that I know, got to know.
It isn't what she's got to say
But how she thinks and where she's been
To me, the words are nice, the way they sound
I like to hear them best that way
It doesn't much matter what they mean
If she says them mostly just to calm me down
And I feel fine anytime she's around me now,
She's around me now
Just about all the time
And if I'm well you can tell she's been with me now,
She's been with me now quite a long, long time
And I feel fine.