Chapter Text
The day Baku was certified as a sentinel, it felt like all the puzzle pieces had finally come together to form a complete picture.
His unexplainable strength and similarly monstrous appetite; his refusal to wear anything that wasn’t already softened to threadbare, hating even the feeling of hair brushing against the back of his neck; his tendency towards horrible migraines in crowded spaces and on rainy days.
It all made sense. There was no need to second guess anything or run any more tests, because Baku was the poster boy for sentinels.
He managed to go a full thirteen years alone without a meltdown. When his doctor started getting a little suspicious at his yearly checkup and found that the preliminary tests came back positive, he accepted the fact immediately.
Upon receiving a notice informing him that he was effectively property of the government and was thus required to move permanently to the sentinel housing center closest to their neighborhood, he went quietly. Obediently. They even had him film a couple ads they ran on the news for the troubled teens who were supposedly dodging an official diagnosis.
The day Go Hyuntak became a guide, though? It felt like all the carefully laid-out plans he’d made for himself and Baku were torn to pieces in an instant.
Because he wasn’t the poster boy for guides. Because he never would have been able to reach Baku’s shining record in the first place, no matter how hard he tried. Because his career as a guide was over before it even began, starting and ending the same night his knee shattered into a thousand pieces.
And the boy who broke it still lives in the same dormitory as them. Walks the same hallways. Reports to the same supervising officer at the end of every cycle, keeping the same perfect mission record as Baku. Sometimes, Go Hyuntak can see him eating his meals alone in the cafeteria before Baku’s expression sours at the sight and he walks them right back out.
Once, Baku would have waved instead, dragging Go Hyuntak over to that same table. They would have sat together, eating food that wasn’t enormously bland, perfectly balanced for their nutritional needs. They would have talked about school and sports, not the mission roster or the upcoming evaluations they have scheduled on the fifth of every month. They could have been friends, if Na Baekjin hadn’t chosen to stomp on Go Hyuntak’s knee until he screamed, until he knew for a fact that he’d never walk the same on it ever again — if he could walk at all.
He never asked why. Baku never got the chance to before they were taken away to the center, and Go Hyuntak was alright with that. He could have left the past in the past, if only that past hadn’t come back exactly a year later to haunt them once again.
If there’s a god out there, it must be laughing at Go Hyuntak. Making him a guide that can’t go out into the field with the sentinel he wants to be with most. Making Na Baekjin a sentinel who can keep up with Baku when nobody else can, both of them unrivalled amongst their peers.
Go Hyuntak is nothing in their presence. He’s less than nothing. He’s a guide who can barely even score a B-ranking on a good day, relegated to desk work and unable to go out even on the simplest missions. He might be Baku’s official guide on record, but everybody knows that’s only because Baku threw a fit and refused to go on any missions until they put in the designation.
It’s an open secret at this point: Go Hyuntak is only allowed to stay in the base because of Baku. He would have been shipped off to one of the countryside centers years ago if Baku hadn’t insisted on pairing with him when they first entered, or maybe even released back as a civilian at some point.
At best, it’s humiliating. At worst, it’s a constant stinging reminder of just how utterly useless Go Hyuntak is. How Baku’s supposed worst enemy is more of a help to him out in the field than Go Hyuntak can ever be. The heavy rock of jealousy sitting in his stomach every time he checks over one of Baku’s mission briefs and he sees the bolded words temporary guide at the very end of the page.
But Baku goes through guides like they’re one-use straws. The longest he’s ever lasted one was three consecutive missions, and after that the guide requested a transfer to the Busan branch. Go Hyuntak knows for a fact that Baku isn’t doing anything to them purposefully what with his flawless record of bringing his guides back unharmed, but it does seem strange at times.
There’s the mental strain, he supposes. He’s heard of guides getting overloaded while trying to help their sentinels through particularly bad spikes, but he’s never felt that way with Baku. Even on the days when Baku drags himself to their quarters after a mission still covered in sweat and dust needing guidance, Go Hyuntak’s never felt like he couldn’t handle anything Baku was going through.
In fact, it seems more like Baku comes to receive guidance most often when he doesn’t need it. When the only coherent strain Go Hyuntak can sense in his mind is vague fatigue, not a scratch on his body. On days like those, Baku always insists that he needs guidance (usually received in the form of a suffocating hug) the instant he walks through the door, and Go Hyuntak will always give it to him. No matter how tired he might be, no matter if he knows Baku doesn’t need it or not.
It’s the least Go Hyuntak can do. Even though guiding Baku might feel easy, the test results don’t lie. When he’s got the wires taped to his skull and IV drip connected to his wrist, the onslaught of sensations flooding into his brain, it feels like the hardest thing in the world to sort out the strands of thought back into their proper places.
He just doesn’t find it intuitive. He doesn’t have any thread to catch on, a familiar thought or face or habitual observation that he can use as a basis for guiding the mind into a calmer state. Of course it’d be easier with Baku – Go Hyuntak’s never been out on a mission with him, trying to guide him in the stress and commotion of an active situation.
He’s never had the chance to. Guides are expected to keep themselves at top physical condition at all times out of necessity, and Go Hyuntak knows better than anyone that he’s far from it. Even if the sentinels handle most of the actual mission running, guides can’t lag too far behind them in case a zone-out or spike happens and physical contact is needed to bring them back. Guides need to be strong. They need to be fast.
There’s no such thing as a guide with a knee that stiffens at the mere suggestion of jumping and aches like an open wound every time it rains. There’s no such thing as a guide who can barely even break average in his physical examinations, much less keep up with the best sentinel this center has seen in over a decade.
If not for Na Baekjin, Baku would probably never have been ousted from his number one spot in the rankings for efficiency. What Baku lacks in careful planning and infiltration, he makes up for with raw strength. What Na Baekjin lacks in overwhelming power, he makes up for with pinpoint accuracy.
It all evens out in the end. The number one and two spots belong to Baku and Na Baekjin, often in no particular order whatsoever. They switch places every week, every mission. Every time he passes by the bulletin board and sees the names Bak Humin and Na Baekjin up there in bolded letters, he walks a little faster.
Sometimes, he lets himself smug over the fact that Baku has beaten Na Baekjin. Other times, he curses Na Baekjin’s name under his breath. But without fail, the physical proof of Baku’s complete superiority will always makes his stomach drop to his shoes.
Knowing that Baku’s been setting these records without him. Remembering that Baku doesn’t need him, hasn’t ever needed him for anything other than companionship. Being reminded of the fact that he’s the guide who hasn’t been on a single mission, hasn’t guided a single sentinel that hadn’t already gone through the post-mission procedure to settle any oncoming spikes.
Go Hyuntak is a useless guide. He’s worse than a civilian, eating up resources and reaping the benefits of Baku’s success while he sits and types up reports and makes what seems like a thousand photocopies every day of the files he sorts through. He knows it and everybody knows it and he can feel the resentful stares of the other guides in their dormitory on him every day.
There’s a reason why he has absolutely zero fucking friends here save Baku. Why he finds himself pacing their dorm every time one of Baku’s missions goes on for longer than two days, bored and worried and going stir-crazy. The other guides have never liked him. They have no reason to, because he’s not one of them. Nothing more than a leech and a suck-up and Baku’s bitch, as he’s heard one of them call him before.
He can’t even argue against it. It’s true: he’s never been out on a mission, and he is Baku’s bitch. His little minion. His childhood friend, his best friend, his guide who can’t even follow him on missions or do anything to help him except comfort him for a while after everything’s already been finished up.
Baku is Go Hyuntak’s everything. Go Hyuntak is nothing without Baku. They both know it even if neither of them will say it aloud.
So would have thought that his first time out in the field, the first time he ever saw a sentinel on the verge of total mental collapse from a horrible spike, it wouldn’t be Baku at all?
Who could have guessed that the first sentinel he ever gives proper guidance to would be Na Baekjin of all people?