Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Yesterday’s body-count lottery rounded out to a solid ‘n’ sturdy thirty! Ten outta Heywood - thanks to unabated gang wars…”

Thirty. About the usual.

Glancing at the clock, Yeosang lightly gnaws at his bottom lip and turns back to his desk, frowning as the news continues to echo from the other side of the apartment. The sound of mechanical clicking joins the newscaster’s voice as he reluctantly resumes typing.

Where the fuck is Wooyoung?

“-so I guess you’re all screwed ‘cause the NCPD will NOT let that go. Got another blackout in Santo Domingo, netrunners are at it again-”

[Delay 2000

 GUI r

 Delay 500

 STRING powershell -w h…]

He throws his head back, huffing in frustration at his inability to concentrate before glancing at the clock once more. This was a stupidly easy program - a short and sweet payload that he had been hired to write for a prank, intended to do nothing but turn someone’s caps lock on and off uncontrollably when run - and he just can’t stop fretting long enough to churn it out.

How can he do anything but worry, though, when Wooyoung was not only running over an hour late, but hadn’t answered a single text or call the entire day?

He peeks out the window as a group of NCPD squad cars fly down the street a block over, sirens blaring, and disappear behind the ramp that leads deeper into the city. Glancing down, he fruitlessly wipes at an old water stain on the desk. Maybe he should buy some coasters…?

[-NoP -NonI -ep Bypass…]

He toes at one of the old synthfood wrappers crammed into the crease between the wall and floor, kicked aside to be sorted later, then turns to glance outside once more. Thin windows bathe the room in blue and pink lights from the city outside, a slim view of Night City’s central river visible across the road; If he could be bothered to open said windows, Yeosang knows he would be able to smell the various food stalls stationed in the Cherry Blossom market on the next street over. Even now, he could remember the scent of the various teas sold by one of the smaller stalls hidden away in the corner.

He and Wooyoung share a small and cheap fourth-floor flat in Japantown, Westbrook, with two main areas - the first is a living area with Yeosang’s computer, a small pseudo-kitchen, the bathroom, and the front door. The other half holds their beds (a bunk bed built into the wall - Wooyoung claimed the bottom the minute they moved in, so Yeosang took the top) and a space for Wooyoung to both do maintenance on his array of weapons and store them when they’re not needed. On the threshold between the two rests a small shrine with incense burning in a dragon-shaped holder, and above it, the television. He shakes his head clear of his daydreams and swivels to face his desk, finishing the last few lines he had been working on.

“-over in Westbrook, Trauma Team’s scrapin’ cyberpsycho victims off the pavement. And in Pacifica…”

[$pl = iwr x dl=1; iex $pl

ENTER]

First file done. 

“I’ll work on the second one later,” he lies to himself, launching out of his shitty desk chair and onto the sad gray couch in front of the TV, eyeing the lock on the door with disdain.

“-join me for another day in our city of dreams!”

An hour of dozing on the couch to the sound of the news passes quickly when Yeosang’s phone suddenly rings, startling him out of his stupor. He nearly falls off the edge in his haste to pick it up, frantically pressing the green ‘answer’ button and holding his breath as a small video feed of Wooyoung’s torso and head appear in the top-leftmost corner of his vision.

“Heeey-” Wooyoung starts, only to quickly be interrupted.

“Don’t ‘hey’ me, do you have any idea how worried I was? You’re dead to the world all fuckin’ day, scaring me half to death, and then when you DO call-”

“I know, I know, I know, ok?” Wooyoung rushes out, voice strained. He glances over his shoulder. “I’m sorry. Shit hit the fan while I was in there and I didn’t get a chance to update you. You know I wouldn’t leave you hanging like that on purpose.” Yeosang’s frown deepens despite making a small noise of agreement; Wooyoung’s voice is muffled and he’s breathing more heavily than normal, clearly speed-walking away from whatever havoc he’s just finished wreaking. Yeosang absently wonders if his voice is as muffled for Wooyoung as Wooyoung’s is for him before forcing his brain back on track.

“And you’re alright?”

“Well, I’m still alive, and I’ve kept all my non-chrome limbs intact, right? If you think I’m in bad shape from a little wheezing, you should see the other guys!” He winks, then realizes Yeosang isn’t laughing and clears his throat. “Anyway, I’m coming home now - only a few blocks away -  aaaand…”

Yeosang raises an eyebrow but settles back into the couch cushions.

“And what?” he huffs, crossing his arms dramatically. Wooyoung’s grainy voice cackles at his antics before holding something small up to the camera feed.

“I got it.” He grins like a cocky little bastard and promptly hangs up.

It takes a few minutes more than expected for the door to slam open, bouncing on its hinges as Wooyoung waltzes in like he hasn’t a care in the world; In one hand he waves a USB before throwing it carelessly onto the coffee table. In the other he holds a small plastic bag of takeout from one of the Cherry Blossom market’s nameless food stalls, placing it down far more carefully.

“Told ya,” he hums, flopping down onto the couch next to Yeosang and sprawling out like a sunbathing cat before reaching up to pet at Yeosang’s pink hair. “Data stick, as promised.” Yeosang, for his part, doesn’t react aside from swatting at Wooyoung’s grabby hands and picking up the USB, inspecting it before standing and moving to his computer.

“And what’s the deal with this?” Yeosang pauses walking to point a foot at the bag of food still resting on the table behind him, then resumes moving. He plops into his chair gracelessly, spinning the USB around in his hands as he waits for his PC to wake up. The tantalizing smell of fresh takoyaki and pork buns begins to permeate throughout the room.

“Thought you might be hungry.” 

“So you took a detour?”

“Detour to some, pit stop to others… hopefully an acceptable apology for being late to one?”

Yeosang rolls eyes fondly but doesn’t look away from his monitor. Wooyoung can tell he’s smiling from how his cheeks bunch at the apples and his eyebrows scrunch upwards for a moment.

“You’re sure this is it, right? They didn’t know you were coming and set up a fake, or something to melt my terminal?” Yeosang stops spinning the small thumb drive to glance at it hesitantly, then peers at Wooyoung over his shoulder, receiving naught but a noncommittal shrug and a grunt.

“Hasn’t happened yet, right?”

Yeosang says nothing but raises his eyebrows, swivels back to his setup, and plugs the USB in whilst ignoring the sound of Wooyoung ripping open the bag of his “sincere apology.” A relieved breath escapes his mouth when he successfully opens the USB’s singular text file and loads it up without his computer exploding. He leans back in his chair with a hand on his chest.

“You just never know,” he finally manages. Wooyoung hums in agreement, although he clearly isn’t particularly concerned as he sidles up next to the desk and places a takoyaki ball on Yeosang’s lips, holding it there until the latter cracks a small smile and bites into it. 

Stretching his arms above his head as Wooyoung retreats back to the couch, Yeosang leans forward in his chair once more and begins going through the lines of text in the file, searching for the hash NTLM he needed - the encoded password that would get them into the Liverpool Shipping Inc. servers.

Nearly two weeks ago, they had received a job through their fixer for a client who went only by “Wooah” for 25 Bakumatsu dialect chips - five Hokkaido-ben, five Sendai-ben, five Kyoto-ben, five Cantonese, and five of their prototypic chips that combined the abilities of both their simplified and traditional Chinese models. All she had requested was that she received them as soon as possible - how, where, and when weren’t important as long as there were minimal delays.

Bakumatsu chips are far from easy to find outside of Japan, let alone in Night City (despite being located right next to the city of Stateline, known for its rampant smuggling), meaning 95% of the time they need to be acquired straight from the importing companies - the only two reputable enough to be trusted with Bakumatsu goods are the Hatashi Shipping Company and Liverpool Shipping Inc., the two largest shipping corporations in the world. The Hatashi Shipping Company was the obvious choice, seeing as they export straight out of Tokyo - but they’re completely out of the question. Owned by Hanako Arasaka, daughter of Saburo Arasaka and current head of the Kiji Faction of the Arasaka Corporation, attempting any sort of tampering in their servers is - bluntly put - suicide.

This left them stuck with Liverpool Shipping Inc., which largely deals with industrial materials. Happenstantially, due to tension between Arasaka and Militech along the coast, a batch of cybernetics that were meant to be shipped by Hatashi were instead being “discreetly” sent with Liverpool’s usual cargo out of their Tokyo docks. It would suddenly be far less suspicious if a few boxes of supplies were to get ‘lost in transit’ and end up in different hands. 

Yeosang and Wooyoung have the tools to make that disappearance happen - and Yeosang is staring at the most important one right now. 

The hash that contains the password to the Liverpool Shipping Inc. servers.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not), Liverpool appears to use the same encryption system that’s used by a majority of corporations. ‘Lazy, lazy, lazy,’ Yeosang chides in his head as he copies the text over to a separate program he had developed years ago - largely intended to decrypt LM and NTLM hashes - and waits, watching the small loading wheel of his mouse spin in endless circles with bated breath. He startles slightly when Wooyoung grabs onto the back of his chair, leaning over his shoulder to stare at the screen, and is otherwise frozen in place.

Partial match.

“It has the word Guardian in it…” he murmurs, then returns to digging through the file. Partial match means there’s something unique in it. Statistically speaking, it’s most likely the birthday of either the account owner, a family member, or a close friend - all he can tell for certain is that, based on the other close matches his program found, there are four characters missing.

“Wooyoung, what day was the Liverpool CEO born?”

Putting down his food, Wooyoung quickly starts searching as Yeosang continues to scroll through the data.

“August 17th.”

Exhaling shakily, he double-checks every security device he has on his computer, then re-opens the connection to the exposed Liverpool server he had found a few days ago. After putting in the admin credentials he slowly types ‘Guardian0817’ into the password box, fingers trembling over the keyboard. They didn’t have time to waste extensively de-hashing a password that may-or-may-not have a verifiable match in Yeosang’s database, especially when it had already taken two weeks just to get the hash in the first place. There was no way Wooah wasn’t getting antsy.

Shaking, he presses enter.

Incorrect. Glancing over his shoulder, he watches Wooyoung clench his jaw. There was no indication of how many tries they get before someone’s alerted, and the last thing they need is to activate some sort of ICE protocol.

“Is he married?”

Wooyoung wets his lips and taps at the small screen projected in front of him.

“Yep. June 20th.”

Chewing on his lips and letting out a low breath, Yeosang reaches to his keyboard once more and replaces the “0817” with “0620,” wavering over the enter key. Rolling his shoulders, he practically smashes his finger onto it and closes his eyes.

Incorrect.

“What about... What about a kid? Is there a kid?” He drums his fingers on the arm of his chair, watching as Wooyoung’s leg bounces to the rhythm of his typing on the keyboard.

“October 24th.”

‘Guardian1024’ is hammered into the computer, the enter key hit without hesitation this time. If he dared to hesitate again, it would lead to overthinking; overthinking leads to nothing but wasting time. The loading wheel spins for what feels like forever.

No rejection message. An old-looking admin panel loads on the screen lethargically, granting them access to everything Liverpool Shipping Inc. has to offer.

“Holy shit,” Wooyoung gasps as he flings himself backwards onto the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Fuck my life, that was way more stressful that it should’ve been. I seriously fucking hate when we get big jobs like this.” He rolls onto his side and watches Yeosang slowly navigate through the panel to find Liverpool’s next delivery date and location.

“Tell me about it…” he murmurs, continuing to dig until he happens upon the list of parcels and recipients for the next shipment from Tokyo. The Bakumatsu packages sit in the middle of the list, and with a few clicks of his mouse and taps on his keyboard, there are 25 dialect chips being delivered to “Vivienne Baek,” the name Wooah had come up with when she had been informed of the plan.

“So, we’ve done what we can do now, yeah? We just gotta get Wooah the info and wait for her to confirm she got the chips?”

Yeosang places his head in his hands and leans on the desk, visibly deflating. 

“Pretty much.”

The waiting game. It feels a bit anticlimactic, if anything. He gets out of the Liverpool server and takes the necessary steps to ensure no traces were left behind, deletes every related file off his computer (not the USB… just in case), and begrudgingly reopens the project he had started that morning to begin writing out the second file. 

[while (1){

Start-Sleep -second 45

$wsh.SendKeys(‘ {CAPSLOCK}’)

Start-Sleep -]

“The food’s getting cold,” Wooyoung calls out from the couch, raising his eyebrows when Yeosang just about flies out of his chair. He picks the bag of buns up off the table and opens it as Yeosang settles back into his earlier position, Wooyoung sliding him the takoyaki pieces he’d saved. “Might as well report to the Captain now while everything’s still fresh.”

Yeosang nods in agreement as he chews, reaching for the remote and switching off the TV as Wooyoung calls up their fixer. The name Hongjoong Kim flashes on his phone’s screen with a small animated picture of a phone ringing, and a few rings later, Hongjoong’s head and torso appear in the corner of both their visions.

“Been awhile,” he raises one slit eyebrow in lieu of a greeting. His head rests on one perfectly manicured hand, large rings adorning each finger and earrings jingling like wind chimes every time he shifts in his seat. “To what do I owe the pleasure, boys? Finally finish up w- hell’re you two eating?” He leans forward towards the camera and narrows his eyes, trying to get a better look at the food on their table.

Wooyoung looks up from where he was stuffing an extra takoyaki ball Yeosang had slid over to him into his mouth, laughing.

“Takoyaki and pork buns. Jealous, gramps?” His voice is muffled as he speaks around the food, grinning as he returns to chewing. Hongjoong pauses to register the words before a scowl twists across his sharp features and he settles back into his chair.

“Gramps?!” he bites out. “I’m paying your fuckin’ bills, Wooyoung, watch yourself.”

Wooyoung grins as he does a mock-salute, Hongjoong rolling his eyes and resting his head back on his hand.

“ Yeosang, dear,” he begins pointedly (much to Wooyoung’s delight), “did you two finish up with the Bakumatsu job?” Yeosang straightens up at being addressed.

“All done. The shipment should arrive a week from today at the Cannery Plaza port in Wellsprings,” he confirms. “It’s being delivered by Liverpool Shipping Inc. to Vivienne Baek, as requested. There was no estimated hour of arrival.”

“And there were no issues? No ICE interference?” The eyebrow raises once more in interest, a sharp nail poking into Hongjoong’s cheek as he slowly nods in approval at the update.

“I was surprised too, but no, no problems at all outside of the usual guess-and-check password cracking. I could see the protocols they had prepared to defend against netrunners, but they weren’t prepared for any alternative modes of attack.”

“Perfect. Goddamn crystaljocks… I don’t know what you’re doing or how you do it, but you’re miracle workers, both of you. I’ll send half the eds when we’re done here. Other half is after Wooah confirms she got the chips, as we discussed.” Yeosang and Wooyoung both nod along to the words as Hongjoong drums his fingers on his table, nails clicking rhythmically. “Honestly, this is very convenient timing. I was planning on calling you two later on tonight anyways.”

“About what?” Wooyoung interjects before Hongjoong can continue. “What’s got you all fired up today, bossman?”

“Don’t call me bossman. I told you it’s ‘Mr. Kim’ or ‘Captain.’”

“Captain bossman? Bossman Kim?”

“Jesus Christ,” Hongjoong groans as he pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closing. Yeosang stifles a giggle behind his hand, prompting Hongjoong to crack one eye open and sigh dramatically. “Don’t encourage this behavior.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,’” Wooyoung snorts. “Seriously, though, what’s up? ”  

“Right,” Hongjoong’s nails resume their rhythm as he removes his fingers from the bridge of his nose, his other hand appearing to gesture dramatically as he speaks. “I’ve got another job picked out for you, if you’re up for it.”

The two on the couch glance at each other for a moment, Wooyoung sprawled lazily over it and Yeosang sitting stiffly by his side.

“We’re down.”

“Great,” he nods. “This is a personal gig from me… in a sense.” Wooyoung’s eyebrows nearly fly off his face with how quickly they shoot up. “Yeah, yeah, save it. Should be a breeze compared to the shit you just pulled, but there’re a few different things entailed.” Yeosang nods as Wooyoung kicks their empty food containers in the general direction of the trash can.

“First off, got a small-time boostergang coming from Northern Japantown for you to wipe. Nothing special, but they tried to fuck with a Mox girl while she was passing through. You know the drill.” He waits to receive two nods before continuing.

“Second,” his expression shifts to a glower, rhythm changing as his nails begin tapping faster. “6th Street have been getting way too feisty lately, acting like fuckin’ gonks cause Militech shipped ‘em a few crates of new high-cal guns. Long story short, they put one of my other mercs out of commission for a few weeks after getting a bit too trigger-happy. I intend to send them a… ‘strong warning’ to stay the fuck away from me and mine.”

Wooyoung leans towards Yeosang and cups a hand against his ear, faux-whispering as he says, “I love when he gets all angry and possessive like this.” This receives another snicker and an exasperated look from Hongjoong.

“Great, thanks for the input. Anyway, we need to meet in person if you accept the job.” The fixer pauses for a moment, visibly turning his next words over in his head. “There’s a… slight catch, you could say. You’re going to have to work with another merc, not quite one of mine.” Hongjoong quickly stops the conversation from exploding as Wooyoung and Yeosang both perk up, mouths open to protest.

“Yeah, I know, I get it, but listen,” he pauses with both hands in the air placatingly, waiting for the mercs to close their mouths and sit back against the couch, visibly suspicious. “The Mox sent this guy, and they trust him one thousand percent. Ten thousand percent, even. Name’s San Choi. From what I gathered, he’s real close with them, probably about as close as you can get without actually being one of ‘em. Seems he has ties with the Valentinos, too, lots of running between them and working to keep everyone on good terms. Impressive shit. Point is - I need more ins with the Mox to keep up with info in Kabuki, this guy is headed to the same place as you anyway, we all hate 6th Street, it’s a win-win for everyone involved.”

“Sure,” Yeosang nods sarcastically, “as long as he doesn’t decide to put a bullet between our eyes once he gets what he wants.”

“I’ve worked with him before plenty of times - he’s trustworthy. The only reason I’m saying he isn’t quite ‘my’ merc the way you two are is he doesn’t align himself with anyone, same thing as I was saying with the Mox. I’m the only fixer he takes jobs from, sure, but he’s not about to say he’s my merc or commit to me that way. Get it?”

Yeosang doesn’t seem particularly reassured by this information but backs down regardless, warily accepting Hongjoong’s reasoning. Despite the furrow remaining in Wooyoung’s eyebrows, any protest is kept private.

“Good. I’ll message one of you the time and place we’ll be meeting after this; I’m thinking tomorrow would be best. San’s going to be joining us so you can meet him before going on the job, as I’m sure you’d prefer that to getting thrown in the deep end, right? Right.” Hongjoong’s rings clank against the table as he rests his hand on it, gestures slowing down now that he was finished with the more difficult part of the call. Relaxing backwards into his chair, he vaguely waves a hand at the surrounding air. “Obviously, we’ll discuss deets and payment during. That’s all I’ve got for now. Talk later.”

As the call ends, Yeosang and Wooyoung near-silently stand and split up, heading to their respective working stations to deliberate the info they’d just received. 

Having retreated to his maintenance table, it’s as Wooyoung’s picking up one of his gun-cleaning rags that his phone pings with a message.

[El Capitán: Tom’s Diner. Little China. You know the one. 4pm.]

Wooyoung sighs and prepares to put his phone back in his pocket when another text suddenly comes through.

[El Capitán: Sorry for the rush. You two seriously did great work]

[El Capitán: Two mercs down so don’t have much time to chat]

[El Capitán: Tell Yeosang sorry too]

[Woo: two mercs? thought only one guy got hit???]

[Woo: and no worries >v< talk tomorrow!!!]

[El Capitán: His partner’s taking care of him so no jobs for either of them]

[El Capitán: C-YA]

Chapter Text

The next morning, Wooyoung wakes up slowly, blinking a few times and squinting against the gradually increasing light in the room from the rising sun. Fighting the remaining grogginess, he moves to roll out of bed only to be abruptly stopped when he bumps into something solid and finally takes notice of the mop of pink hair scattered on the pillow next to him, peeking out from under the blankets. 

It’s not uncommon for Yeosang to crawl into his bed during the night nor for him to ask Yeosang to join him, especially when one of them is concerned or worried about something (using the bottom bunk is much easier than trying to squeeze into the top one), and so Wooyoung resigns himself to his fate and lays back down after managing to grab the remote without disturbing the still-sleeping man by his side. He shuffles to see the TV around the corner, pressing against Yeosang’s body in the process, and slings an arm over his midriff while flipping through channels. 

“-57 bodies yesterday, better get out the ol’ meat wagon-”

“-transported to their final resting place back in his native Japan.ご冥福をお祈りいたします [May he rest in peace]-”

“-another attack, presumably coordinated by members of the gang ‘Maelstrom.’ Their motive is currently unknown, however, a number of cyberdecks-”

He glances out the window as the sun continues to rise, only half-listening to the news. Why did Hongjoong have to go and make shit complicated, throwing a random merc at them? Not to mention the guy sounds like a solo - in Wooyoung’s mind, that just means he’ll be a pain in his fucking ass. And probably Yeosang’s. Every solo he’s worked with has been a stubborn, uncooperative dickhead who thought they were inherently superior because they preferred physical means over netrunning and hacking (because according to them, netrunning is for pussies). At least they’d be meeting this guy before going into a dangerous situation with him, but seriously… Stupid fixers. Stupid ‘convenient’ coincidences. Stupid random solo mercenary stranger guys. ‘Stupid everything,’ Wooyoung thinks with a twinge of satisfaction. Yeah, stupid fucking everything.

“-city's landfill is reporting an increase in uncontrolled fires-”

Yeosang twitches in his sleep, dragging Wooyoung out of his train of thought. He shifts as a bit as he begins waking up, turning over and curling up into Wooyoung’s chest with a groan. 

“You awake yet?” Wooyoung laughs, carding a hand through tussled locks. Yeosang curls up even tighter.

“No…” he whines, voice rough from sleep as he squirms to hide his face beneath the covers.

It takes another half hour for them to finally drag themselves out of bed, brush their teeth, and settle into the kitchen. Yeosang goes back to the bedroom area to get changed and stops in the threshold to light a stick of incense, putting it into the dragon-shaped holder while Wooyoung digs through the fridge and grabs them two bottles of water. He passes one to Yeosang once they’re both seated at the counter, the scent of lavender beginning to drift through the apartment.

“Do we have anything to eat?”

Wooyoung gets up and turns back to the fridge, bending down to peer into it. “Only that holobites peach pie shit you keep buying.”

“It tastes good, fuck off.” 

Wooyoung snorts and throws his empty water bottle at the trash can, not bothering to check if it made it in. “We can go to the machines,” he calls as he goes to get changed as well, receiving an affirmative hum from Yeosang. 

A missed text notification flickers on his phone’s screen as he picks it up and gets ready to leave. He reads it as Yeosang locks the front door behind him. 

[El Capitán: Mind if we meet for lunch instead? Some time opened up at noon]

Wooyoung has no qualms with the change and relays the message to Yeosang as they buy their food, receiving a nod of agreement.

[Woo: 👍]

“So,” Yeosang starts as he finishes eating, empty wrapper crinkling in his hand. “What exactly’s the plan here?”

“Like, what, about later?”

“Yeah, the whole debrief. Hongjoong’s not gonna tell us more than he needs to for the job, and if this San guy’s smart, he’s not gonna tell us anything about himself either. So how’re we gonna do this?”

Wooyoung thinks for a second, understanding now what Yeosang was getting at. Hongjoong said he’s worked with this guy before, but that doesn’t exactly make him trustworthy in Wooyoung’s eyes. Hongjoong is far from the biggest fixer on the scene, meaning he can’t be quite as choosy as the big shots with his mercs. Additionally, what does the Mox trusting San really mean as far as credibility goes? Regardless of reputation and motive, the Mox are a gang. All them trusting him means is that he isn’t a Tyger Claw and doesn’t randomly beat the shit out of sex workers.

“You could try to get a scan on him if there’s an opportunity, maybe?”

Yeosang gnaws at his lip and seems to turn it over in his head. “You think?”

“Worth a shot, right? Some info could be better than none, tell us if the guy’s secretly Maelstrom or something.”

Yeosang grins and crosses his arms, tilting his head back and leaning against the wall as he continues to think, wincing away from the chill of the concrete before settling. “Don’t know if any Maelstrom bastard’s too worried about keeping it a secret.”

“Yeah, yeah, well,” Wooyoung scrambles, “you know what I mean. What if he’s a murderer or something?!”

“ We’re technically murderers, Wooyoung.”

“You get the point!”

Yeosang snickers at his distress. “Either way, I think you’re right. If I get the chance, our best bet might be to go for a scan. Probably. Don’t quote me.” He glances at his phone for a second before pocketing it again, standing up straight. “Should probably start heading over soon, though, it’s 11:50.”

They walk back to the apartment’s parking lot leisurely, Wooyoung climbing onto Yeosang’s motorcycle - a beautiful, sleek black and silver ARCH Nazaré - and putting on his helmet, pulling down the visor. Yeosang does the same and climbs on behind him, wrapping his arms around Wooyoung’s waist as they take off towards Kabuki. 

The drive only takes around 15 minutes thanks to light traffic, the midday rush having already passed. They park in the garage of the apartment complex Hongjoong lives in on Ellison Street and walk the rest of the way to Tom’s Diner.

Chatter from the restaurant’s other patrons and yelling from the market outside fills their ears as they enter, the scent of probably-edible food wafting through the air. They spot Hongjoong sitting in the back corner booth alone, looking more exhausted than usual with a half-filled cup of coffee in front of him. Seems like San hadn’t arrived yet, then.

Yeosang sits first, gently sliding into the booth, followed by Wooyoung simply plopping his ass down on the seat in a weirdly aggressive manner. Hongjoong raises both eyebrows and takes a sip of his coffee as he eyes them. 

“I’d say you’re late, but you’re earlier than San, so I’m letting it go.” The mug clanks down onto the table as a waitress approaches, visibly tired and chewing her gum loudly.

“Just some fries, please,” Wooyoung orders, choosing to ignore the heavy sigh she lets out as she goes behind the counter to grab them. This San guy really couldn’t even show up on time? Sure, they had been a few minutes late too, but that was different! Totally different!

The waitress returns and places their food on the table, then wanders off to take care of the other customers. Yeosang reaches forward and chews on a fry as they wait.

“How’re the two you mentioned doing?” Wooyoung tries conversationally. Hongjoong shuffles around in his jacket with a sigh, pulling out a cigarette and holding it between his lips, gesturing for the waitress to bring over an ashtray from behind the counter.

“Yunho and Mingi?’

“Sure, I don't know their names.”

Hongjoong huffs in amusement. “They’re alright, they’re strong. Only thing that worried me was that the bullet Yunho took went clean through his side, left a hole straight through his abdomen.” Yeosang grimaces as Wooyoung sucks air through his teeth in sympathy. The waitress returns with the ashtray and Hongjoong clicks his lighter a few times, taking a drag of his cigarette. “He’s bedridden for a bit, Mingi’s taking care of him. Pretty sure I mentioned that much to you. Anyway, left me picking up all their slack and unfinished jobs for a bit, so I’m hoping he recovers quickly and doesn’t do anything stupid. Damn nomads can’t sit still for two minutes” 

He takes the cigarette out of his mouth to exhale, taps it on the tray, and then uses it to gesture between Yeosang and Wooyoung. “Neither of you better go getting yourselves shot. I can’t do jack shit with computers, so if one of you goes down, I’m cooked. Got it?”

“Glad you care about us,” Wooyoung snarks. Yeosang rolls his eyes and eats another fry.

They sit in comfortable silence for a few more minutes before Hongjoong glances up at the entrance, pointing with his cigarette once more. “Finally decided to show up, huh?”

Rounding the corner is a tall, cat-like man with black hair, a white athletic shirt tucked into black joggers, and a knife holster on his thigh. He seems to brighten up at hearing the fixer’s voice, turning towards them and sliding into the empty booth seat. He eyes the fries on the table but doesn’t reach for one.

“Now that we’re all here,” Hongjoong starts, smoke curling out of his mouth as he speaks. He rests his cigarette on the ashtray for a moment to run a hand through the back of his mullet. “Let’s talk business. San, this is Wooyoung and Yeosang.” He points at each of them respectively. “Wooyoung, Yeosang, this is San.” 

The other mercenary reaches across the table with a sweet smile, eyes crinkling as Wooyoung meets him for a handshake. He isn’t sure he’s fond of that smile. Yeosang shakes his hand with a bit more hesitance.

“Great, try to play nice. Now that that’s out of the way -” Hongjoong turns his body and rests one arm on the table so he can see everyone’s faces, cig twitching around between his fingers as he resists the urge to gesture as he speaks. “You all already know the basics of what needs doing. Firstly, the boostergang. Last I heard, the job was just to wipe ‘em.” He glances at San, who nods affirmatively. “Doesn’t matter how, don’t really care, either. They’ve taken to hanging out under one of the bridges between Skyline, Salinas, and Capitola Street - shouldn’t take too long once you find ‘em.”

“And the Mox couldn’t take care of this themselves because…?” 

“Cause they’re paying us to do it,” Yeosang interjects, staring at Wooyoung with chagrin. Hongjoong chuckles and takes a drag.

“That, yes, and they’re pretty busy with the Tyger Claws right now. No time for smaller stuff like this at the moment.” Wooyoung hums in understanding. “Second, 6th Street. First thing you’re doing is getting info out of their servers, you’ve done this kind’ve thing before. Get as much as you can regardless of the contents. You likely won’t have time to comb through everything for specifics, so just dump it all in. The second thing you’re doing is a bit trickier - well, probably a cakewalk for you two, actually. The main objective here is to upload a virus to their admin system that’ll destroy their servers, theoretically beyond repair.”

San holds his hand up to interrupt. “Sorry, but I don’t think I can be much help with this part. Anyone know where the bathroom is?”

“Around the counter to the left,” Hongjoong says as the other stands up.

“Thanks.” As he’s walking away, Wooyoung and Yeosang make eye contact for naught but a moment before the former quickly draws Hongjoong’s attention to himself. Yeosang peeks over the back of the booth, electric blue forming a ring around his irises for an instant before he turns back around, settling into his seat. Neither notice San watching them from the corner of his eye, gait unfaltering, before turning his attention back to where he's going.

“You were saying?”

“Yes, right.” The fixer clears his throat. “I had a guy try to get into the main server awhile back, and it was damn near impossible, no idea what it requires. The easiest solution for everyone is for you to accompany San to one of their hideouts and get admin access from inside. I’m sure you’ve got some destructive program or another on the back burner you’ve been dying to test out, so here’s your chance.” San returns from the bathroom and slides back into his seat quietly. “And for the love of God, try not to kill anyone. I’ve said it already, but let me reiterate - the point here isn’t to provoke them, it’s to scare them - and hopefully deter them from touching any of you again. This is a stealth mission.” He taps at the ashtray again, cigarette almost burnt out. “You hear me, Wooyoung? A stealth -”

“I’m fuckin’ awesome at stealth, whadda ya mean by ‘Wooyoung?!’”

“Ha! Sure, and I’m the reincarnation of Johnny fuckin’ Silverhand. You’re about as stealthy as a cyberpsycho in a china closet.” Yeosang hides a giggle behind his hand. Wooyoung side-eyes him but says nothing, slumping down into his chair in defeat. “Don’t leave too much evidence, either, if you can help it.”

Hongjoong puts the butt of his smoke into the ashtray and stands up, squeezing past San and tapping his nails twice on the table as he fishes around in his pocket for some eddies. “I’ll let you know if anything comes up or changes. No time to hang around today since all of you decided to show up late - I've got my own shit to do. Get to it.” He leaves the money on the table and saunters away, leaving no room for questions nor argument. They watch out the window as disappears into the market outside. 

“That guy, seriously…” San tries amicably, smiling. “Just strolls on out without even saying bye! Ah, well…” He leans forward slightly, electric blue encircling his eyes as he stares at Wooyoung, then at Yeosang. Wooyoung shoots up in his chair; Yeosang pauses chewing the fry he was eating, glancing between them.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” the former snaps.

“What? You read me earlier, didn’t ya?” San’s smile widens as his head tilts to the side. “It’s only fair, right? Now we’re all on the same page. Wanna share what you learned, or should I go first?” 

He hums and rests his head on his hand when the other two are silent, Yeosang tilting his chin up defiantly and Wooyoung looking absolutely affronted. “My turn, then. Let’s see… You-” he gestures at Wooyoung with his chin “-are from Southern Arroyo. Could tell that anyway, though, from the way you roll your ‘r’s. No serious netrunning gear, so I’m assuming you’re the brawn of this operation, especially considering you’re running a Biodyne OS. Only an Mk.1, too. Some grounding plating, a self-ice system, nothing crazy.” 

Wooyoung opens his mouth to say something, stopping when Yeosang puts a hand on his arm beneath the table. San turns to him, looking all too self-satisfied.

“You, however, are running some very interesting chrome. Must be the deckhead, then. Got some custom quickhacks even though you're running an old Seocho OS, right? Either you develop your own or you’ve been shopping around a night market, definitely haven’t seen anything with those signatures before. And I see that at some point you had a doll chi-”

Wooyoung places both hands flat on the table loudly, threatening to stand. “Shut the fuck up.”

Surprised, San raises both hands into the air in an attempt at being placating. Yeosang stares at the surface of the table silently. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of-”

“He’s not. It wasn’t his choice.” 

A different kind of surprise crosses San’s face now, faux bravado visibly draining out of his body as he realizes he’s very likely just touched on something that he shouldn’t have. He clears his throat and looks away from them, instead fixing his gaze on the corner of the table nearest him. “Sorry.” It sounds sincere, but Wooyoung doesn’t trust it. This guy clearly has some experience with acting.

The tense atmosphere quickly becomes suffocating, the three of them stewing in it silently until Yeosang looks up and clears his throat lightly.

“All I could tell is you were born in New Pyongyang, United Korea. Parents work for Cytech - I’m guessing one of the Arroyo factories. No warrants or bounties registered. Minimal cyberware, nothing too out of the ordinary - biomonitor, cataresist, some cheap microrotors. Other than that, just your bio - name, birthday, whatever.” Once he’s finished, he gazes out the diner window and chews on his lip silently. 

Despite his anger, Wooyoung knows dragging out this kind’ve atmosphere isn’t going to help Yeosang, nor is it going to help the situation at large. Better to move on and brood over it later at home.

“The job,” he says slowly. San looks up and nods, visibly appreciative of the attempted subject change. Yeosang doesn’t look away from the window but releases his lip from between his teeth, picking at the fry crumbs left in the container in front of him. “Hongjoong’s right, it should be easy. We can probably take care of the gang pretty soon - whenever, really. The only hurdle with 6th Street is finding out where their hideouts are, then figuring out which of them have admin access. After that, Hongjoong’s right again. We have a few viruses we’ve been waiting to test out. In and out. Easy work.”

“Cool, cool… So, what, you create a connection, Yeosang downloads the info, uploads the virus, lets us know when he’s done, you disconnect and we delta? You got a netrunning chair in your apartment that’ll work?”

Yeosang turns to look at San incredulously. “Are you serious?” he asks around a mouthful of fry bits. Wooyoung grabs a napkin and reaches over to wipe some salt off his lips. “We aren’t netrunners. I’m going in with the both of you.”

San blinks as he processes this. “Oh, wait, so you two’re - you’re not fighters, so… oh, wait, are you crystaljocks?” Wooyoung sighs and pinches at the bridge of his nose in exasperation. Hongjoong seriously didn’t even try with the debrief this time, huh? At least Yeosang seems to have gotten pulled back out of his thoughts.

“Yes, we’re crystaljocks, not netrunners - usually, at least, I guess. Both. Kind’ve.” Wooyoung tries to keep the scowl off his face, remembering what he had told himself moments ago. Brood later. 

“Sorry, sorry,” San apologizes again. “Just can’t say I’ve worked with any before, so it’s a bit surprising, I guess.” He offers a tentative smile that doesn’t get returned.

“Right. Anyway, 6th Street hideouts. Any ideas?” The three fall silent as they try to think. They should be pretty easy to find, really, considering the way they slap their logo on every fucking wall in Santo Domingo. All Wooyoung can think of offhand is the area in Eastern Rancho Coronado where they hold rooftop parties.

Eventually, San speaks up again. “If you come by Lizzie’s tomorrow, we can ask around, maybe? There’s usually a few 6th Street gangers around later into the night, shouldn’t be too hard to get one of ‘em tagged or follow them, right?” 

Yeosang nods, so Wooyoung does too. It wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever heard.

“We can take care of that other gang before going to Lizzie’s, then, right? They’re pretty close to where Wooyoung and I are gonna be anyway.” Wooyoung hums in agreement - Capitola Street is only a few minutes away from their apartment.

“Nova. Maybe around four thirty or five?”

Wooyoung stands up, throwing a few eddies on the table to pay for their fries. Yeosang had been ready to go quite awhile ago, and this was as good a time as any to pack it up. “Sounds fine. Let’s go.” He reaches out a hand to help his partner stand up and turns to leave.

“Ah- wait!” San calls behind them. They come to a stop, Wooyoung’s glower reappearing. “I need your numbers. So we can, like, plan. And stuff.” He looks embarrassed, one hand coming up to scratch lightly at his arm and adjust the straps of his tank top before tentatively holding his phone out to them.

Yeosang takes it first, putting in his contact information and sending himself a text, then passes it to Wooyoung who does the same.

“That it?” he asks as he hands it back.

“Yeah, yeah, should be. Thanks. See you soon- well, tomorrow.” He steps back a bit after returning his phone to his pocket, offering one more smile. Yeosang glances at Wooyoung, then tentatively offers one of his own, seeming to forgive the earlier misstep. Wooyoung, not as easy to excuse, turns away and says nothing as he leaves. Yeosang was too nice. Too forgiving.

Later, after they’d returned to their apartment and finished their dinner, their phones ping with text messages at the same time. Wooyoung groans as he contorts his body to grab his phone off the counter without getting off the couch, TV blaring. Yeosang snorts at his acrobatics from where he’s curled up into his side. 

“Ah, Christ…” Wooyoung groans once more as he settles back into his seat, back popping. Yeosang leans his head on his shoulder so he can read the messages rather than get up to get his own phone.

[Cunt: hii its san :) ]

[Cunt: but you knew that i think]

[Cunt: where should we meet tomorrow]

Yeosang tries to stifle a laugh as he pats at Wooyoung’s knee. “C’mon, don’t call him ‘cunt.’”

“But he-”

“Was right,” Yeosang interrupts. “We read him first, even if he was a bit… confrontational about it. And he can’t know what’s a sensitive subject and what’s not, he doesn’t know us.” He tilts his head without lifting it off Wooyoung’s shoulder so he can see his face.

“Yeah but- he- what about-” Wooyoung sputters, then falls silent and clenches his jaw, glaring down at the messages. “I don’t like it when you’re right.” He looks about two seconds away from growling as he changes San’s contact name from ‘Cunt’ to ‘San,’ then throws his phone onto their coffee table without replying, crossing his arms and scowling at the wall. Goddamn Yeosang and his goddamn logic and his goddamn cute face. Yeosang rolls his eyes fondly and leans against him again so they can finish watching their show. 

“It’s only until the job’s finished.”

Wooyoung makes a huffy noise but uncrosses his arms to card a hand through Yeosang’s hair. “You’re alright, though, right? After that?”

The hacker pauses for a second to think. “I’m fine, it just… caught me off guard.” Wooyoung hums. “We have to answer him at some point, though. Should we just tell him to show up here and wait outside, or meet him near Capitola? Like, Holly Street, maybe?” Wooyoung hums contemplatively once more. 

“Holly Street. I don’t want him knowing where we live.”

Yeosang waits until they’re heading to bed to reply to San, typing out a quick message before turning off his phone.

[Yeo-yeo: Holly street]

[San: ok! :) ]

The next afternoon rolls around much faster than Wooyoung would like, and before he knows it, he’s on the back of Yeosang’s motorcycle once more on the way to the agreed-upon meeting place. Yeosang slows down as they pass beneath the North Skyline Street bridge, glancing upwards. He holds a hand above his face to shield his eyes from the evening sun.

“Guess this is it?” he asks, voice muffled beneath his helmet’s visor. Wooyoung grunts in agreement and climbs off the back of the bike after they pull over. They roll it down a small set of stairs and into a wide alleyway next to a construction site, parking it out of sight. Not many people were out at this time of day, either already at home or finishing their shifts at work, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Surprisingly - or perhaps not - San hadn’t shown up yet. “It looked like there was an alcove under the bridge when we went by,” Yeosang mumbles thoughtfully. “You saw the stairs sectioning it off, right? That must be where they’re hanging out.” 

Wooyoung shakes himself out of his budding annoyance to pay attention, buzzing with impatience. “Don’t think I noticed anyone going up there, so they’re probably there right now, right?” Yeosang nods.

It takes a few minutes for San to finally pull up. He’s driving an old, dinged up Thorton Colby C125 that must have the best muffler in the world with how silently it’s running. He parks a bit further up the street and jogs over to them, waving almost excitedly. 

Today, he’s wearing a black athletic shirt tucked into black joggers that have white stripes on the sides. A gun holster sits on his small waist as a belt and a row of grenade pouches have replaced the knife holster he’d had on his thigh yesterday. Wooyoung subtly glances down at his own outfit - a flowy t-shirt and whatever pants he had been able to find first that morning - and frowns, wondering if he should’ve actually put in some effort. Yeosang raises an eyebrow at the display before filling San in on what they’d figured out so far. Wooyoung tunes back in right as he finishes.

“-so, we’re figuring they’re over there right now.”

San makes a thoughtful noise. “Do we have any way to scope it out, or…?”

“As a matter of fact, we do.” Yeosang looks very satisfied with himself as he leads them over to a hole he had found in the construction barriers, climbing through and waiting for them on the other side. Wooyoung pats his hair proudly once he’s through.

In front of them is a platform with a tall, square air ventilation building on top, box fans interspersed around it. They follow the pink-haired man around to the back side and climb up, Yeosang going first, then San, then Wooyoung.

Yeosang points at the roof of the building. “If we can get up there, we should have a pretty good view.” Wooyoung puts his hand on his chin to try and think; there were no stairs or ladders going up, nor was there anything that could be easily climbed - the walls of the building were pretty smooth aside from some electrical wiring… he balks as he notices San silently climbing one of the larger box fans in his peripheral vision, train of thought completely derailed. Before he can get a word out, San takes off running, jumping off the fan and managing to grab the edge of the air vent building. 

He pulls himself up to the top, then peeks over the edge and gestures for them to do the same thing he’d just done. They glance at each other with wide eyes, Wooyoung eventually moving to go before Yeosang who hangs back and watches. He doesn’t like how much this feels like taking his life in his hands, running as quickly as he can and jumping off the fan.

San grabs his arms as his torso smacks into the side of the building and forces a wheeze out of him, then pulls him up. The roof consists of naught but three large fans in three corners, the fourth consisting of some electrical boxes and what seems to be an air conditioner. Yeosang eventually makes it up much more gracefully than the other two had - as in, he doesn’t wind himself hitting a concrete wall at full force - and Wooyoung helps him carefully navigate to the corner with the electrical box where San is waiting, crouched down to hide.  

Once all three of them are settled, they peek over the edge of the building towards the bridge. San tries and fails to hold back a startled laugh.

“Are you fucking kidding me? We’re getting paid to kill these guys?” he wheezes. In front of them is a small group of people huddled together and chatting away. Road blocks have been dragged around to enclose them as some kind of cover, black streaks on the ground revealing their paths. This must be the easiest money they’ve ever made.

Wooyoung doesn’t react but finds that, internally, he has to agree. Seriously? This had to be the most pathetic gang he’d ever seen. 

“Yeosang, how many are there?” 

Said man’s eyes ring blue and flit around for a few seconds. “Looks like eighteen.”

San takes two grenades out of their pouches and hands them to Yeosang, then moves to grab the other two he’d packed. 

“Ok, here’s the plan-”

“Who put you in charge?” Wooyoung interrupts with a scowl.

San pauses, still in the middle of handing over the other two explosives, and stares blankly. “Ok, what do you wanna do then?” Wooyoung finds himself caught off guard, not having expected the easy relinquishment of control. He doesn’t actually have an alternative plan ready. 

“I was just- y’know, making sure everyone agreed that we should listen to your plan first,” he sputters, a flush threatening to climb up his cheeks. San doesn’t react beyond a slow blink, Yeosang shooting Wooyoung an exasperated look over his shoulder. “Seems that we all agree on that, then. You can continue.”

“Right… So, Yeosang and I will stay here. It looks like there’s an alleyway that connects to the alcove, so Wooyoung, you go around there to make sure nobody runs out the back. All you need to do is shoot. They’re clumped together pretty tightly, so you shouldn’t have to do anything aside from that. Just give us a signal when you’re ready - and try not to be too close, we’re using the ‘nades.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what my plan was, too…” Wooyoung grumbles, then shifts to slide off the edge of the building. “I’ll give you a thumbs up when I’m good,” he adds, and then disappears over the side. San turns to Yeosang.

“When I tell you to, throw in the grenades. I’ll take care of the shooting from our end.” He unholsters his gun from his belt. Yeosang eyes the weapon in his hand, watching as he attaches a silencer to the muzzle and a scope to the top. 

“You a Liberty user?”

San glances at him once more. “Eh,” he shrugs, “not really. Got myself a nice D5 Copperhead at home, definitely my favorite, but can’t exactly walk around with that in public without drawing attention. So-“ he gestures vaguely with the Liberty “-handgun it is. Why, you got a particular favorite?”

Yeosang hesitates. “Try to avoid physical fights if I can, actually,” he finally settles on saying. “If I had to choose, though, I’m not particularly a fan of most guns - much prefer knives.”

“Knives, huh? Throwing ones?”

“Depends.” He pauses for a second, wondering just how much he should say. “Used to have a real beautiful katana, though. Broke it during a job, blade completely shattered.” San makes a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat.

It’s at this moment that Wooyoung reappears in position, peeking around a corner. He seems to have settled himself onto the staircase that Yeosang had noticed when they’d arrived, using a short decorative wall of fake plants as cover. He checks his pistol’s loaded, then throws them a thumbs up. San glances at Yeosang to make sure he’s ready and receives a nod.

“Alright then. One,” San counts down. Yeosang tightens his grip on the two grenades in his hands.

“Two.” San takes the safety off his gun and gestures to Wooyoung as Yeosang holds the grenade pins between his teeth.

“Three.”

Immediately, Yeosang pulls the pins and chucks the grenades, not bothering to make sure they landed correctly before picking the other two up off the ground. The rhythmic popping of San’s gun firing right next to him is deafening, but he can still hear the panicked shouts of the gang members below them and the echo of Wooyoung’s pistol firing on the other side of the bridge as passerby on the street begin screaming in shock and fear, clearing out as quickly as they can. The first two grenades go off with a loud bang, prompting him to pull the pins of the other two and launch them. Peering over the edge of the roof, he can safely assume that the first two had landed near-perfectly in the middle of the group of people judging by the large splatters of blood that had made it over the road blocks. San stops firing to reload and gives him a thumbs up, grinning, then holds the scope back up to his eye to continue.

He goes through one more magazine before he fully stops firing, the sounds of Wooyoung’s shooting ceasing a few moments later. He reloads his pistol before standing up and stretching - the entire street has fallen eerily silent except for the click of San pulling out the empty magazine and replacing it with a new one, tugging it downwards to make sure it’s locked into place. Yeosang doesn’t realize the action is already over until San leans over and taps his shoulder, gesturing for him to stand up.

They climb down the building and squeeze back out between the construction barriers, San visibly pleased with how well the fight had gone - if it could even be called a fight. “Wish every job could be that easy,” he laughs. Yeosang nods quietly as they approach the roadblocks, stepping around smears of blood and chunks of - Yeosang forces his thoughts in a different direction, not wanting to think about it too much. Disgusting. San kicks at one of them and cackles.

Wooyoung strolls over to them, looking pleased. “We seriously get ‘em all? That was fast.”

San walks around to count the bodies, nearly tripping over a dismembered arm and shooting each one in the head to ensure they were dead. One guy groans and twitches - he’s missing a leg from the explosion, shrapnel embedded in his side and sticking out of his face. 

Yeosang grimaces at the pained whines, San raising an eyebrow. He makes a face that says ‘just how it is,’ then shoots the guy clean between the eyes, blood splattering on the wall behind him as he slumps over. Just how it is, Yeosang thinks as he turns away. He isn’t wrong, really, but it isn’t exactly reassuring. 

“That’s all eighteen,” San calls, prodding one of the bodies with the tip of his boot. 

“Couldn’t have been more than five minutes!” Wooyoung cheers. “Gotta be some kind’ve record, right?”

Yeosang snorts. “For what, fastest massacre?” Wooyoung doesn’t respond, running over to the bodies and starting to sift through their pockets, going through wallets and jackets for cash. San empties out any guns he can find and puts the ammo into his currently-empty grenade holsters, sorting them by type, occasionally picking up random items that pique his interest. Yeosang sits against the decorative wall Wooyoung had been using. The smell of iron in the air isn’t one he gets used to very quickly, and he isn’t sure there’s anything over there he’d be interested in either way. 

San comes over and sits next to him once he’s finished collecting ammo, scopes, and whatever else caught his eye, tucking a half-empty pack of cigarettes into one of his pockets. “Thought you might like this,” he hums, holding out a small knife. He seems to notice the way Yeosang is looking at the blood dripping off it and quickly retracts his hand, wipes it off on his shirt, and holds it out again sheepishly. Cracking a small smile, Yeosang takes it and inspects it, mildly flattered. 

The knife has a comfortable teal handle he can slip his fingers into, the blade flat and ovular with an equally teal core and serrated black edges. The green coloring peeking out from beneath the black coating tells him that this is a neurotoxin knife, perfect for both throwing and close combat. 

Wooyoung, finished collecting eddies off the corpses, approaches to inspect the knife for himself and lets out a low whistle of appreciation. He gives San a nod of approval before sitting down next to Yeosang and throwing an arm over his shoulders, crossing his legs. Yeosang offers San a genuine smile as thanks as he tucks the knife into one of his boots and receives a smile in return.

“We ready to go to Lizzie’s?” Wooyoung asks once they’d caught their breath. The other two nod in agreement - Yeosang isn’t sure he’s finished processing everything that just happened but nods anyway.

“Should be fine, it’s late enough that there should be a good crowd by now.” San hums after glancing at the sky, trying to read the time. They really had been quick.

All three stand up and move to go down the stairs when Yeosang stops and glances over his shoulder, then runs back to the gang’s remains. San sidles up next to Wooyoung, amazed at the fact that he isn’t physically shying away from him the way he had not even an hour ago. Seems the way to his heart was through Yeosang’s… although he certainly wasn’t completely thawed out yet.

“What’s he doing?”

“Eh,” Wooyoung says indifferently. “We’ll find out in a second.”

Sure enough, Yeosang reappears a moment later. In one hand he holds a fresh roll of medical gauze and tape; in the other he has a pack of small bandages. 

“Sorry, I figured they’d have some sort of medical supplies lying around,” he explains. “Can never have too much of this stuff.” 

The street is completely abandoned as they walk back to their vehicles, everyone having run as far as possible during the confrontation to avoid catching potential stray bullets. San bends down and picks up a twenty someone had dropped in the chaos. “At this rate we’re never gonna have to work again, huh?” He jokes. Wooyoung catches himself starting to laugh, signature grin forming, and clears his throat as he tries to hide his face. 

Yeosang climbs on his motorcycle first, relishing the iron-free air, Wooyoung climbing on behind him a second later. The sun's final rays glint off the bike's metal front as it sets behind Night City's buildings, dancing right into Wooyoung's eyes and forcing him to squint.

“Meet you at Lizzie’s, then,” San calls as he continues walking to his car. He receives two noises of confirmation as they put on their helmets and pull down their visors, bike roaring to life as San’s car door slams down the street. With a growl, the motorcycle moves, taking off towards the Kabuki bridge. 

Chapter Text

Wooyoung and Yeosang pull up to Lizzie’s first, slowly pulling their bike into the parking lot past a group of Mox boys chatting at the gate. One of them whistles as they roll past, prompting the others in the circle to laugh and Wooyoung to roll his eyes beneath his visor. He can feel Yeosang giggling in front of him as he steers them into an empty spot behind an advertisement board and puts down the kickstand. Bass from inside the bar lightly reverberates through the ground every few seconds and makes it shake.

The numerous neon signs on top of the bar glint pink and blue off Yeosang’s visor as he pulls off his helmet, painting his face in their colors and highlighting his exposed arms. Wooyoung pulls off his own helmet and puts it into the bag on the back of the motorcycle, taking Yeosang’s out of his hands as he stares at the signs in interest and doing the same. A Mox girl sitting in front of the bar with a spiked baseball bat begins to eye them as they stand around and wait for San to arrive. 

Said man pulls into the lot a few moments later, parking shoddily near a few other cars and getting out quickly, door slamming behind him. “Sorry, someone pulled out in front of me, got stuck behind ‘em.” The girl sitting at the door seems to perk up when she sees him, body language changing to become much more amicable. San waves at her as they approach - she stands up with a grin, throwing her arms open for a hug that San jogs to meet. 

“This is Sua,” he introduces as he steps back. “These are the guys I’m working with that I told you about.” She nods, standing her bat up as she looks them up and down. She’s shorter than all three of them, her short brown hair tied into a ponytail that sticks out in every direction. “What’re you sitting outside for?”

“Eh,” she shrugs, “just taking a break for a bit before it gets too rowdy and they need me in there. Getting some fresh air. How’d the job go?” Wooyoung and Yeosang step back to the door and lean against the wall to wait while the other two catch up. Of course San would waste their time talking to his friends, Wooyoung thinks sourly.

“Good, good. Got it all finished up right before coming down, actually. How’s the crowd tonight looking?”

She shivers. “Big. Gonna get bigger, there was a block party on the border of Northside earlier today.” He laughs and pats her shoulder reassuringly. 

“The others inside, too? Thought I saw Dia’s car.”

“Yep, she’s in there working the bar tonight. Dajeong’s somewhere, God knows where she runs off to half the time. Might be in one of the back rooms right now, but I don’t know for sure. Lola came by, too, brought Rinji with her.”

“Rinji?” San asks with a raised eyebrow. “Thought she wasn’t allowed in, she’s not eighteen yet.”

“Yeah, well, she’s got nowhere else to go. All of us are working tonight and Lola still can’t walk on her own, so I’d prefer she hangs out here where we can keep an eye on her. Better than wandering around alone, getting into trouble. Check in on her for me if you can - the more people watching her, the safer she is.” Sua sighs and rests her weight on her bat, eyes flitting to the door. She looks exhausted. 

“Take your fuckin’ time!” Wooyoung shouts from where he’s waiting. The neon lights highlight the furrow of his brows as he starts getting impatient. Yeosang is looking to the side, inspecting the large Mox mural on the bar’s rightmost wall. With a sigh, San scratches at the back of his neck and glances at the woman in front of him sheepishly. 

“We shouldn’t take too long in there, I’ll drive her home if Dia can take care of Lola later.” Sua smiles gratefully, visibly relieved.

“That’d be perfect.” He pats her on the shoulder once more, holding her bat for her so she can sit down comfortably before handing it back over.

“See you in a few, then.”

San rejoins the two at the door, sliding it open for them and walking through, the shining portière in front jingling as it’s disturbed. Muffled club music sounds from behind a door on the other side, empty kegs of Abydos beer abandoned next to it. San raises a hand at the girl standing behind the front desk, who nods in acknowledgement and goes back to typing. Behind her hangs a large neon sign of a skull with a bob cut and bow captioned “FUCK TO DEATH,” a couch with a full-wall mural on the opposite side of the room.

A second portière is parted, the door to the bar slid open, San gesturing them inside. 

Immediately, the previously-muffled bass of the music begins reverberating throughout their whole bodies, rattling through their chests as more neon lights flash before their eyes. A wall of cigar smoke penetrates their noses and mixes with the scent of alcohol, stale sex, and something slightly fruity. The door automatically slides shut behind them as they step further in, Wooyoung’s nose wrinkling. Talk about sensory overload. 

The entire room glows with a deep purple and pink hue, masses of people milling throughout, the chrome on their bodies shining near hypnotically with the pulsing of the lights. Dressed-up waiters with trays of snacks and drinks expertly maneuver their way through the crowd, occasionally stopping to let somebody take something. On the left is a lounge area filled with people relaxing on couches and drinking, the right largely being used as a dance floor; separating the front and back of the room is a large stage with three poles lined up across it, a balcony on the second floor overlooking the room. 

San leads them through a sea of people dancing and grinding on each other to the music and heads for the back of the room. Wooyoung puts aside his rapidly declining mood to catch Yeosang’s eye for a moment, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. A slight flush begins to climb its way up Yeosang’s cheeks as he rolls his eyes and looks away. Noticing Yeosang’s embarrassment, a passing waiter with a tray of cocktails slows his gait, grinning and holding the tray out towards him, pointing at an orange and red drink near the front. Yeosang takes it hesitantly.

“It’s called ‘Sex on the Beach,’’' the waiter yells to be heard over the music, winking at Wooyoung. He laughs at the distressed look that crosses Yeosang’s face and leaves to continue his mission of passing out drinks. The look on Yeosang’s face becomes even more pained when he takes a sip and enjoys the fruity flavor immensely, quickly going back for another.

They catch up to San as he goes around the stage to the back-left corner of the club, revealing the bar. Three women are maneuvering behind it, mixing drinks and passing them out as quickly as they can. The youngest of the girls looks up, runs around the side of the bar, and launches herself at San. She has medium-length loose black hair and a gray hoodie.

“Hello, Rinji,” he laughs as he puts her down. “Dia, Lola, how’s it going?” 

“It’s going.”

“You doing okay, Rin? Nobody messing with you?” She nods affirmatively.

San introduces them quickly - Dia, the one who responded, has short black hair tied in two buns on the side of her head and a deep-cut shirt showing off her chest. Lola, the only one sitting down, has long red hair and bangs with a large cast on her leg. They both look tired but happy, a glint present in their eyes that betrays their mirth.

“It’d be going better if you didn’t cancel on me to go to a damn work meeting,” Rinji grins and punches San’s shoulder teasingly. “You’re really becoming an old man.”

San laughs at her jab. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll go down to the docks some other day. I’ll make it up to you.” She hums, suspicious. “And just to warn you, this old man is driving you home, so you’re leaving when he leaves.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Don’t ‘come on’ me, you’re not even supposed to be here in the first place.”

“Yeah, well, what else was I gonna do all day, play in the fuckin’ highway?” Lola and Wooyoung laugh at her sass. Yeosang silently finishes his cocktail, watching the crowd as they dance and not listening to a word. 

“Oh, and Lola,” San says. She looks up from where she had been mixing a drink. “Wiped out the whole gang right before coming here, they’re taken care of.” She smiles.

“Thanks, San. Knew we could count on you.” Wooyoung glances at her leg again, realizing she must be the one they’d attacked.

Dia catches Yeosang’s attention and gestures for him to hand over his empty cocktail glass as San continues to chat away, replacing it with a shorter one and filling it with something that looks lavender beneath the lights. It nearly spills as she hands it to him, an especially loud bass vibration coming out of the speakers. “On the house, since you’re friends with our Sannie.” 

‘Friends might be a bit strong,’ Yeosang thinks to himself as he side-eyes Wooyoung and wills him away from saying anything - free alcohol is free alcohol.

“What is this?”

“It’s called a bramble, should give you a strong taste of blackberries.” He sips it and nods in agreement. Sweet blackberries followed by a slight citrusy tang - perfect. She smiles at the pleased expression on his face and returns to the conversation. 

“So basically,” San is saying when he tunes back in, “we’re looking for some 6th Street guys.”

“High ranking ones,” Wooyoung quickly interjects.

“Yes, high ranking ones. Thank you. Do you guys know if anybody here fits that description?” Wooyoung looks like he wants to say something about the easy dismissal but drops it, not wanting to get on the Mox girls’ bad sides.

Dia thinks for a second, peering at the dance floor. “Not off the top of my head, no. I’m swapping shifts out with Lola right now, so I’ll see what I can do. Talk to DJ if you want a fast answer, she deals with the usuals the most out of all of us - should be upstairs right now.” San and Wooyoung nod in thanks as she puts on her jacket and slides around the bar, disappearing out the front door to join Sua for a break. Yeosang is staring dazedly at the moving crowd again, nursing his bramble.

By the time he zones back in they’d already begun to head up. Lola points him in the direction of the staircase with a fond smile - the back right corner, this time, the polar opposite of the bar - and Rinji waves goodbye as he jogs off. 

He catches them at the top of the stairwell, San scanning people’s faces as he presumably looks for the girl named DJ. The atmosphere up here was far more intimate and cramped, a glass railing providing a view of the whole lower floor with far more tables and chairs, most people sitting to talk, flirt, or have a smoke.

Eventually, his gaze pauses on a girl with long, wavy red hair and a cropped blouse sitting on a couch along the back wall, chatting somebody up and swirling a blue drink in her hand. 

“Dajeongie!” he calls, waving excitedly when she looks up in surprise. She winks at the man she’d been talking to, blows him a kiss, and makes her way over to the three waiting for her. She, too, greets San with a hug.

“Sannie,” she coos, “how’ve you been?” 

“I’m good, I’m great! How’re you doing?”

“I’m doing fine, I’m sure you already talked to the others when you came in.” San nods. “I heard you’re doing a new job?” She glances at Wooyoung and Yeosang standing awkwardly behind him before looking away again. 

“Ah, yeah, I am. That’s why I’m here, actually. Why don’t we talk somewhere more private?” She nods and leads the boys back downstairs, across the club, and through a large double door to the right of the bar. They pass by Dia coming back inside with Sua on the way, San throwing them a thumbs up. Dajeong waves at Lola and Rinji as they go through the doors, double-taking when she registers Rinji standing behind the counter. Lola shrugs dismissively.

Behind the doors is a narrow pink hallway with very few people inside - they follow Dajeong into a room directly across the hall and to the left. A large, crescent-shaped couch fills the majority of the private room’s floor space with a small table in its center, the surface covered in champagne bottles and raunchy magazines. Here, the music is far more muffled. Soft white lights emanate from a ceiling lamp and blend with the pink bleeding through the cracks in the door and the warm maroon radiating from small lights embedded in the walls. She sits down in a corner of the couch and pulls up her legs, San following suit. Wooyoung seats himself on the other end, Yeosang sliding in next to him.

He passes Wooyoung his glass so he can try his cocktail as San catches Dajeong up on their job. “It’s called a bramble,” he whispers. Wooyoung stifles a laugh at how proud he seems of this newfound knowledge, allowing himself to be fed a blackberry off the tiny plastic sword that’d been stuck in the drink before tuning back into what San was saying. 

“So, we were hoping you could help us out a bit.” Dajeong seems interested in the proposal, sipping her own blue cocktail lightly. “Dia said you know the usuals here better than anyone else.” The interested look becomes wary. She tilts her head and swirls the drink in her hand, sizes up Wooyoung and Yeosang, then looks back at San. 

“You’re lucky I owe you a favor. What exactly do you need?” 

San smiles gratefully - Wooyoung really isn’t sure if he should be insulted or not. “Is there anyone here who's high rank in 6th Street? Like, high rank enough that he would have admin access to their computer networks…?”

She pauses, tilting her head back as she thinks. “High rank…? There’s a few off the top of my head, not a whole lot, though. Two, maybe? Only one’s here right now, the other comes in later on. Can’t guarantee anything with the computer stuff, obviously, but I do know he’s pretty high up there.” 

“That’s perfect. You think you could get him into one of the back rooms? Tune him into a BD?”

She snorts. “I could do that in my sleep - however…”

“However…?” San asks slowly, nervous.

“That sounds like more than one favor to me. I’m gonna need something in return.”

He groans. “I’m driving Rinji home right after this, isn’t that good enough?”

She leans back in her seat and looks at the ceiling. “For now - but we both know she can take care of herself. I’ll think of something later.” God dammit. “I’ll go get the guy. Wait in back and I’ll tell you when you can come in. And what’s going on with these two, exactly? Why are they here?” She waves her empty hand at the other two mercs. “Actually, you said this is a job that requires computer skills. Why are you here, San?” She smiles at him, teasing, and points a finger at him accusingly.

“Oh, y’know, the usual shit. Headed to the same place anyway, so we’re going together.”

She looks at Wooyoung and Yeosang again and doesn’t say anything, seeming to pick up on how tense Wooyoung is. His sullen mood from earlier hadn’t completely dissipated. Reaching over, she twirls some of Yeosang’s hair in her hand, long nails lightly separating the strands as she plays with it. Both men sit frozen. 

“I should do this with my hair,” she says thoughtfully. “That’ll be the deal. I’ll help you if you help me dye my hair this color some time.” With a wide grin, she lets Yeosang go. “We’ll match!” 

Wooyoung looks about two seconds away from jumping out of his skin. She points at Yeosang’s drink. “We’re already matching with these! Mine’s blueberry, though. Doesn’t Dia just make the best cocktails?”

Yeosang pauses, relaxing and hesitantly letting his lips turn upwards when she gives him a cute smile, her eyes crinkling. “It’s one of the better ones I’ve had,” he settles on. “And I think you’d look amazing with pink hair.”

She squeaks happily, going to clap her hands in excitement before remembering she’s holding a glass. “Well now I have to do it! You’re helping me, ok? We don’t need Sannie.” She grabs and plays with Yeosang’s hands excitedly as San gives an offended look from the side, Wooyoung laughing as he starts to relax into his seat. “My roots are starting to come in, I need to redye them anyway, this is so perfect!”

She releases Yeosang once more and gets up, smoothing out her skirt and adjusting her bra from where it had started to slip. “Ok, ok, let me go get that guy hooked up for you. But don’t think I’m forgetting about this.”

She peeks at Wooyoung as she starts to move. “Feel free to take one of those magazines, m’kay? Maybe it’ll help you un-tense a bit, have a little fun.” Wooyoung glances down at the magazines again, frowning. He isn’t tense. He’s literally so chill, like, all the time. He’s never been tense in his life. Ever. 

Upon closer inspection, the magazine on top of the pile’s cover is a pair of legs in fishnets - her eyes flit towards Yeosang pointedly, causing his gaze to sharpen as he, too, gazes at Yeosang in his peripheral vision. Dajeong tries not to giggle at the intense look that flits across his face, her mission accomplished. 

“I like these two,” she teases San, holding the door open a crack as she steps out. To Wooyoung, that sounds like code for ‘these two are easy to rile up.’ “Try and keep ‘em around, will ya?” Letting the door slide closed, she disappears to return to the main room of the bar.

San gets up and re-opens the door a few moments later, holding it for the other two. Yeosang tugs Wooyoung’s shoulder to get him up and out of his thoughts.

Stepping back into the pink hallway, San leads them deeper into it, eventually crossing a threshold lined with neon signs in the shapes of hearts, a few specifically labeling the area as 18+ despite the entire building being so, and turning left. The next hallway is lined with clear rooms, the front of each made of glass. “These are the back rooms,” San explains as they glance inside curiously. Most of them are empty save for a carpet and a couch, but a few have people sitting inside - nearly all of those being somebody on the couch watching a braindance and a member of the Mox standing or sitting on the side, looking bored and scrolling on their phone, waiting for them to be finished.

San ushers them to the right - another shorter hallway branches off into a small nook with bathrooms. He herds them into the back corner and peeks his head around the wall, black hair falling into his eyes as he leans forward to keep an eye out for Dajeong. The lights in this hallway are more intense than the others had been, completely drowning out any other lights or colors that threatened to bleed into the space and making their skin radiate pink. The music has gotten even more muffled, the still-rumbling bass accompanied by the now-audible hushed conversations of the Mox and other patrons as they filter in and out of the glass rooms.  

Yeosang frowns, realizing he forgot his cocktail in the private room they had just left. God dammit. At least Wooyoung got to try one of the blackberries, and it was mostly dregs at that point, but still… 

He relays his thoughts when Wooyoung asks why he looks so sad. 

“I’ll get you another one,” San laughs reassuringly as he adjusts his stance, turning his body back into the nook to look at them.

Wooyoung frowns. “ I’ll get him another one,” he huffs, voice defensive. San shrugs indifferently and goes back to watching for DJ, Wooyoung managing to look smug at his imaginary victory despite his own sudden hostility. Yeosang pets lightly at his arm in an attempt to cheer him up, unsure what had upset him in the first place. 

San quickly backs up into the corner of the nook as Dajeong’s giggly voice floats down the hallway, the sound of a door opening and closing following. It takes a few minutes for the door to open again, her head peeking around their corner as she gestures for them to hurry. “You’re good, he’s all plugged in. Make it quick.”

They file out as quickly as possible and follow her to the room she had left the gang member in. Sure enough, a large 6th Street insignia tattoo covers one of his arms, the other composed of a sleeve of hyper-patriotic NUSA symbolism. Good God, Yeosang thinks, but keeps it to himself. A braindance wreath covers his eyes and renders him oblivious to the outside world as his arms and legs occasionally twitch; Dajeong plops onto the empty part of the couch, pulling out her phone and waiting for them to be done. 

Yeosang reaches behind the man’s head and pulls him forward, feeling around his neck. San looks confused until his nails sink into a small, near-invisible crease, pulling. A panel on the back of his neck pops open and exposes two USB ports.

“How the fuck did you know that was there?”

“Most people have one,” Yeosang hums. “Majority of the time it’s either the neck or the wrist.” San exposes himself by glancing down at his wrist for a moment, frowning.

As if proving Yeosang’s point, a chunk of the skin on Wooyoung’s wrist lifts into a panel and slides to the side, revealing the wires beneath nestled around two prominent components - a wire with a USB drive on the end and an input port. Yeosang holds the man’s head down to stop him from twitching as Wooyoung maneuvers the wire and plugs it into the man’s neck, his irises glowing with a ring of electric blue once the connection is properly established. 

“Sorry, are you two just not gonna tell me what the fuck you’re doing?” San looks queasy. Wooyoung glances at Yeosang, miffed by the interruption while he’s trying to focus.

“In short, he’s first uploading a virus that tracks the infected person’s location, then downloading any locally saved files with location names within them and anything that references those files; things like saved routes, building layout maps, even just internal notes that mention them. All of these things combined should tell us where we need to go and what to expect inside.”

Wooyoung nods, barely perceptible. “We’ll put it on a shard for you when we’re done here.”

“You just have that stuff ready to go? Those kinds’ve viruses?” Now, he looks somewhere between impressed and horrified.

“It’s really not that crazy,” Yeosang says flippantly. “All it does is ping geographic location every few minutes. Your phone does the same thing when you’re following directions to get somewhere, but that does it much faster. This has to go at a slower pace so there’s less risk of somebody picking up on the signal.”

A few minutes pass, Dajeong tapping at an imaginary watch on her wrist when she finally looks up from her phone. “BD only lasts for so long, boys. Hurry it up if you don’t wanna get caught.”

“Yeah, well, it’s taking a little longer than expected since this guy keeps humping the air like a fuckin’ dog,” Wooyoung snaps. A few seconds later he disconnects, disgruntled, and wipes the wire off on his shirt with a sneer. Yeosang slides the man’s panel back into place on his neck with a soft click.

Dajeong stands up and waits for them to be done, quickly shooing them out of the room right after.

“Thanks,” San manages to get out. “Talk later. Help Dia get Lola home later, if you can.” She smiles and nods, then closes the door and waves them off, turning back to the man still sitting on the couch behind her.

The three trek back down the hallway, Wooyoung sliding his wire back into his wrist and closing the panel. San still looks slightly squeamish, avoiding looking in Wooyoung’s direction until his wrist is whole again. 

“You ok?” Yeosang asks warily.

“Yeah, it’s just always a little… different, I guess, to see wires come out of people like that. Especially when you plug them into people’s necks like that, oh my god…” Wooyoung doesn’t say anything but brightens up a bit at having grossed San out. “It’s seriously that easy for you to just… look into someone’s brain? Or files? Circuits, I dunno what you wanna call it.”

“Yep,” Wooyoung says, popping the p. “That easy - for us. Not everyone can do that.” San looks perturbed but drops the subject. He slightly regrets provoking them at the diner the other day, knowing what he knows now. They probably could’ve blown his head up with their minds if they wanted to, or something equally grotesque. He still doesn’t know what kind’ve quickhacks Yeosang is running - the cute, quiet demeanor could be hiding a guy who specifically develops chrome that blows up peoples’ heads… People named San…! Ew, ok, he’s starting to feel nauseous. Stop thinking about this, San, nobody’s blown your head off yet… Yet?!

They go back through the double doors, returning to the main room of the bar and directing his attention away from his rapidly spiraling thoughts. Sua’s taken Dia’s place behind the bar and is showing Lola how to make a drink with an ombré.

“You get everything you need?” Dia asks from her seat on one of the barstools, supervising the drink-making process. Yeosang nods, all three of them smiling, and Lola sends them a double thumbs up. Rinji groans at the realization that this means they’re leaving but gets up regardless, rounding the bar. Wooyoung and Yeosang stand to the side awkwardly as everyone says their goodbyes, offering small waves as San takes the lead once more with Rinji, who’s begun talking about a song she’s working on writing. They pass through the two front doors - San says goodbye to the girl at the front desk - and enter the significantly chillier air outside Lizzie’s, a cool breeze greeting them. Wooyoung shivers.

“I’m driving since you had two drinks,” he says as they walk towards their motorcycle. Yeosang nods and starts putting on his helmet. San keeps walking, herding Rinji to the side as a different car begins to pull out and looking over his shoulder to shout at Wooyoung.

“You forgot to get him that third cocktail!”

The neon lights coupled with the darkness of the night make Wooyoung’s glower look even more extreme than it normally does. San pales - don’t piss off Wooyoung. Right. Do not get brain blasted.

“I’m making you something when we get home,” the former promises, tone laced with both spite and annoyance. Yeosang hums in approval. Who is he to turn down free alcohol?

“You got everything, though, right?”

“Yep, all of it.” Wooyoung confirms as he starts putting on his helmet.

“Including…?”

“Yes, including the ticket.”

Yeosang smiles and puts his own helmet on. Perfect. 

Early on into their partnership, Wooyoung and Yeosang had discovered a heavily overlooked vulnerability in the vast majority of cyberware - almost every piece kept its individual hardware identification code hidden somewhere deep within its data. Presumably, this was only intended to be looked at by a corporation processing a return on a part or documenting a defect to make their own jobs easier, or for outside uses such as in law enforcement to ensure that they had the right person if they had a specific ID they could compare against (not that they gave enough of a shit for it to matter). 

This wouldn’t be a real vulnerability at all if it weren’t for the fact that, not long after they figured out how to view IDs, the two found a crack within most cyberware’s security that allows them to change those IDs. ‘Ticket’ is the nickname they gave to the individual ID assigned to every person the first time they buy a piece of chrome, named after the Kerberos authentication ticket used in numerous systems to verify identity. 

By pairing tickets with individual cybernetics’ hardware IDs, they created a nearly untraceable form of identity theft that could grant them access to nearly everything somebody owned. Changing each other’s IDs at home takes time, but always pays out in the end.

As far as they’re aware, nearly nobody else knows about this except for them. Very few know how to view identification codes in the first place, let alone change them. It had taken months of experimentation, burning through cheap chrome, and throwing every ICE cracker they had at the damned things to finally find a method that worked consistently enough to be reliable.

Yeosang climbs onto the back of the bike behind Wooyoung, head beginning to swim pleasantly with a light buzz. 

“What kind’ve drink do you want when we get back?” Wooyoung asks over his shoulder, Yeosang wrapping his arms around his waist.

“Umm… a southside?”

Wooyoung smiles beneath his visor as he pulls out of their parking space. “Sounds good.” He turns out of the parking lot and onto the main road, already planning out the ingredients he's going to need in his head.

Chapter Text

Yeosang wakes up with a hangover, eyes bleary and head throbbing, sunlight bleeding into the room from the open curtains. It takes him a moment to remember what exactly had happened after they’d gotten home - perhaps he’d had more than just a southside, he thinks, eyes landing on the various empty glasses on and around the bedside. One teeters dangerously close to the edge of the bed, a small damp spot on the blanket beneath the rim. Wooyoung peeks his head around the doorway when he hears the blankets rustling and turns down the TV with a mischievous grin, the newscaster’s voice becoming muffled.

“Had fun last night?”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Yeosang huffs with no real bite behind it; he scowls and burrows beneath the covers, nothing but a fluff of hair and one narrowed eye peeking out. Thankfully, Wooyoung puts aside his amusement and closes the curtains before bringing him a bottle of water and some painkillers, waiting by his side as he slinks out from beneath the blankets to quickly down them. The glint in his eye gives away the fact that he is, in fact, still highly amused by Yeosang’s enhanced grogginess.

Once his headache is cleared up enough that he can move without being in pain he tumbles out of bed and joins Wooyoung in the main living space, arms laden with the empty glasses. 

“Work day?”

Wooyoung sighs and lets his head fall onto the back of the couch limply, staring at the ceiling. “Work day. But why’d you have to go and say it out loud, huh?” He hears a snort from behind the kitchen island, unable to see what Yeosang’s doing from his slumped position.

Depositing the glasses in the sink, the other turns his computer on. He makes sure it begins doing its usual updates and security checks, then flops over the couch and drapes himself over Wooyoung.

“That the data on the table?”

Wooyoung grunts under the sudden weight, then makes a noise of affirmation. “All ready to sort through. Now get the fuck off me and go brush your teeth.” His words contradict his actions as his arms snake around Yeosang to hold him, giving in to the physical affection.

Yeosang shakes his head teasingly, leaning even further into Wooyoung’s space only to go flying off his lap with a wail when he leans forward, lips puckered exaggeratedly and eyes scrunched closed as though he’s going to kiss him. 

A moment later, the sound of running water echoes through the apartment; Yeosang reappears from the bathroom just as an advertisement for Naranjita starts playing. Wooyoung turns the TV off with a groan, stretching his arms, and gets up to join Yeosang at the computer after picking the USB up from the table.

He plugs it into the computer tower to start loading as Yeosang prepares folders for sorting the contents - maps, upcoming dates and calendar events, personal information and notes, information on 6th Street’s inner workings, and junk files they didn’t need at the moment that they would keep for themselves.

Wooyoung laughs quietly to himself as he looks at the junk folder, then at the bucket of old USBs behind the monitor, each labeled with what was on them. They’re kinda hoarders, huh? Better to have too much information than not enough, he reasons with himself, and starts spinning Yeosang around in his chair as they wait for the USB files to open, dodging his flailing limbs and ignoring his cries of protest. They both quickly settle down and get to work as soon as a window with the data stick’s contents opens on the computer monitor. 

It’s late afternoon by the time they’ve finished sorting through everything, the sun beginning to set and the temperature outside cooling off. Wooyoung shoots San a text as they wait for the folders to upload onto a shareable datashard they were creating for San. 

[Woo: finished. when can we get this to you??]

[San: im free at 7 :)]

Wooyoung glances up when he hears a sudden clicking noise, startled. It had only been Yeosang disconnecting the shard from his computer. He frowns and looks back down at his phone.

[Woo: where.]

[San: i live in kabuki]

[San: meet at the construction bridge in front of araiguma laundry?]

[San: on allen st off the pinewood street ramp]

Wooyoung feels his face scrunch up in annoyance, putting his phone away without replying. Yeah, sure, because he just knows where Araiguma Laundry is - he ignores the fact that he can use a map, intent on being frustrated as he relays the messages to Yeosang. The latter eyes him, unsure what’s causing his partner’s eyebrows to furrow but deciding he doesn't want to push it at the moment. He tosses the completed shard on the table to grab when they leave later. 

“He’s a bit funny, isn’t he?” Yeosang muses as he gets up to dig in the fridge, ignoring the way Wooyoung is watching his waist as he walks. It seems Dajeong had really done a number on him with the magazine talk - Yeosang knows he comes across as a bit ditzy, but he’s not a complete airhead. He had caught their little exchange and decided not to say anything, unsure what he could say about it in the first place. Was it strange that he’d felt a slight thrill when he’d realized what Wooyoung was thinking about?

Wooyoung tears his eyes away to seat himself at the counter. “Define funny.”

“I mean, you saw him last night. He got so squeamish watching us plug into that guy, but right before all that he’d been tossing ‘nades and blowing people’s brains out without a second thought.” Wooyoung hums in agreement, unsure how much he should care. “Just a bit different to see someone grossed out by wires.”

“Well, you said he was probably living in Arroyo near the factories, didn’t you? Don’t usually see this kind’ve thing down there - nowhere near as much as you’ll see physical violence with blood ‘n guns ‘n shit. Probably just not used to it.” He wiggles around on the stool, mind beginning to wander. They should’ve splurged and bought the spinny ones.

Yeosang flops back into his computer chair. “You’d know about that better than I would.”

It’s 7:10 by the time they park at the end of Pinewood street and make their way down the ramp.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Wooyoung mutters as he finally gets a look at where they were supposed to be meeting San - construction barriers span up and down the entirety of Allen street. They seem more like permanent installations than places where anything is actually going to be built.

They meander up and down the street, checking every storefront they pass by for one that says anything about laundry - the majority of signs, unfortunately for them, aren’t in English - before finally finding the place nearly ten minutes later and three blocks away from where they’d started. Yeosang messages San that they’ve arrived as they cross a stand-in bridge made of sheet metal connecting the storefronts to the sidewalk and spanning a small river, water brown and shallow.

San rounds the corner not a minute later, a wide, friendly grin spreading across his face. Yeosang nods in lieu of a greeting. Wooyoung fights down the instinct to smile back at the welcoming demeanor - be annoyed, he chides himself, this guy can’t even give directions properly.

“By the construction site, he says.”

San’s smile wavers when he glances up the street. “Those, uh,” he stammers out, “those weren’t there a few days ago. Promise.” Wooyoung would feel bad about how embarrassed he seems if he didn’t find it so amusing. 

“Just c’mon,” San sighs. He waves for the other two to follow him as he begins walking down the narrow alley he’d turned out of - Wooyoung pats Yeosang’s butt to get him in gear when he doesn’t move right away - and guides them through, waving and greeting nearly every shopkeeper they pass. Seems that he’s just as well-liked here as he is at Lizzie’s, Wooyoung thinks, and catches Yeosang’s eye as San gratefully accepts a free plate of food someone passes to him out a store window.

He leads them past doors with 18+ stickers slapped on them and holographic cherry blossom trees, branches sticking out of the walls and falling petals making their skin tingle where they land. Strings of paper lanterns light up every alley, uneven shadows distorting people’s features alluringly as they pass. The entire place feels like a maze as the alleys get narrower and narrower until San leads them up a steep flight of stairs. They suddenly walk out into an open area, Night City’s river sparkling in front of them as they head up a second winding staircase made of concrete.

Finally, they surface at the top of the stairwell. A highway stretches in front of them, a narrow sidewalk leading them past more vendors, piles of trash, and people sitting on old couches they’d dragged over. The group gets to the edge of the structure and are met by a rickety staircase slapped on the side; Wooyoung cringes at the smatterings of rust on it as it creaks in the wind, Yeosang’s expression unreadable. He looks up from it to see where it leads - in front of them stretches a small city of shacks situated in a square and covering a few rooftops, connected by nothing but metal sheets thrown over the gaps between the buildings. There looks to be two layers to the derelict complex, the metal pathways winding throughout giving it a labyrinthine feel not unlike that of the alleyways they had just traipsed through.

San steps down first, Wooyoung following warily and holding out a hand to help Yeosang. One of the sheets creaks ominously beneath their weight. Wooyoung side-eyes it and hurries to catch up to San.

They’re led past the rickety homes and broken windows, people sitting outside greeting San just as the people on the streets below them had. Now that he’s closer, Yeosang can tell that the homes are made from the same material as the bridges and the stairs. None of them have doors. 

They cross one of the strange metal bridges and stop in front of a small, one-room shack in the corner of the square that has nothing outside but an old couch, a folded umbrella, and stacked pallets acting as a table. San places his plate of food on the impromptu surface and sits on the couch, gesturing for the two to join him. 

Peeking into the home as he passes by the empty door frame, Wooyoung sees it’s nearly empty except for a frameless mattress and a pile of clothes in the corner. Yeosang reaches into his pants pocket and passes San the datashard. 

“So, we don’t have anything concrete yet?”

“Nope,” Wooyoung affirms, popping the p. “All we’ve done so far is the sorting.” San takes in the info on the shard and skims the folders, eyes blue.

“It’s going to take more time to go through every map and document,” Yeosang adds. “If we split this up we can probably have it done in a few days - maybe even by tomorrow night, if we’re really efficient.”

San purses his lips as he continues browsing before nodding. “The fact there’s only four folders makes the splitting easier,” he says. “I can look through the maps and event information, if that’s fine with you guys.”

Wooyoung shrugs and nods - Yeosang’s already tuned out and is staring at the river next to them. He has to admit, the view of the water and Japantown’s skyline is beautiful, especially at night. 

He begins paying attention again as Wooyoung pats his thigh, done talking to San. “If you want to sort through the folder on 6th Street’s info I can take the folder on personal stuff,” he offers. Yeosang nods and opens the agreed-upon folder, the three of them getting work. They fall into a comfortable flow for the next few hours, San occasionally picking at the plate of food in front of him. Even Wooyoung manages to relax despite being seated so close to San they’re nearly pressed together. The couch is smaller than it seems when three people are trying to squeeze onto it. 

It’s past midnight when San stands up again, back cracking with a groan. “Gonna take a smoke break if anyone’s interested in joining.” Yeosang looks at him and then looks back at his work, shaking his head. 

Surprisingly, Wooyoung stands up to go with him despite his skepticism towards the fact that San wouldn’t just smoke on the couch while they work. “We gotta go somewhere for this?”

“I don’t smoke down here, don’t want the smell seeping in.” He gestures for Wooyoung to follow him and walks around to the other side of his shack, hauling himself over a sheet that had been propped up to act as a guard rail and onto a large pipe that winds between the buildings. Wooyoung copies his movements with more hesitance, continuing to follow as San uses the ridges and connective bolts of the pipe to haul himself upwards and onto a roof outside the makeshift city.

They settle on the edge, legs dangling. San flicks at an old-looking lighter and pulls out a cigarette, smoke starting to curl upwards from the tip. They sit silently and observe the city across the river. 

“Sorry for being so hostile back at the diner.”

Wooyoung scoffs. “You weren’t - eugh.” He looks pained as he remembers Yeosang’s words. They had instigated - San had simply retaliated. “You weren’t in the wrong. We should’ve just asked you about yourself and whatever.” San shrugs, satisfied that he had apologized regardless of whether it was accepted or not. 

“Can’t say I blame you for trying to cut out the middleman. Don’t blame you for your hostility, either, by the way. Not in this city - you’d be stupid to trust me, if anything.” Wooyoung frowns and doesn’t look at San, slightly uncomfortable at having his antagonism addressed so directly. “So, what’re you doing all this for?”

“All this?”

San gestures vaguely. “This. Being a mule for fixers, risking your life every day, whatever.”

Wooyoung frowns, discomfort forgotten. “Fuck’s it your business for?”

San shrugs and turns his gaze back towards the river. “It ain't, just making conversation. I’m saving up to get my car fixed right now.” Wooyoung raises an eyebrow, prompting San to laugh. “Yeah, I know it’s a clunker, but it runs real nice. Just some superficial damage on the paint ‘n shit I want to get ironed out.”

Wooyoung’s other eyebrow shoots up. “The second that thing rolls out of the garage someone's gonna T-bone it.”

San laughs again, loud enough that Yeosang’s mop of pink hair leans towards them from below in interest. “Probably. Want to go to Chicago at some point, too, visit my parents.”

Wooyoung tilts his head towards him, gaze scrutinizing. “Don’t have anything specific we’re saving up for. Cybernetic upgrades, food, whatever. Surviving.” 

“Surviving, tell me the fuck about it. No dream home?” San asks. He taps his cigarette on the edge of the building, ash fluttering down the side. “Could always fuck off to the Badlands or something, live out of a van for a while, travel the coast. Doesn’t sound too bad.”

“No way in Hell,” Wooyoung snaps, hackles raising defensively. “That shit’s for nomads, I love this life.” 

San looks at Wooyoung from the corner of his eye, studying him in turn and unsure what had caused him to close up so suddenly. His next words flow out of his mouth before he can stop them.

“Do you love this life,” he asks slowly, “or do you care about Yeosang so much that you don’t want to take any risks leaving it?”

Wooyoung, contrary to San’s expectations, doesn’t blow up - he freezes completely. Both of their gazes slide to the man sitting on the couch below them, idly playing with the throwing knife San had given him. He’d clearly gotten bored with both the documents and trying to eavesdrop on their conversation, resorting to entertaining himself.

“There’s nothing you’d rather be doing? Nowhere you’d want to take him, nowhere outside this shithole city you’d want to explore?” He takes a drag; Wooyoung says nothing, clearly turning the words over in his head. “It’s just something to think about,” San finally says, unnerved by his companion’s uncharacteristic silence. “We both know there’s no way out of this death trap, anyway. Doesn’t hurt to dream.”

San knows he’s overstepped, an anxious feeling settling into his stomach. Things had been going so well, however… Wooyoung doesn’t seem angry, just contemplative. 

He gestures for San to pass his cigarette and takes a drag silently, head turned away. Clearly, this conversation is over. San crushes the embers between his fingers once he gets his smoke back and flicks the butt over the edge of the roof. 

They sit there for a few more minutes, Wooyoung remaining silent and San occasionally peeking at him from the corner of his eye. The one time they’re having a nice conversation - friendly, even - and San feels like he’s fucked it up incredibly. 

Wooyoung, on the other hand, isn’t sure how he feels. It certainly didn’t feel good to have so many things he’d been avoiding addressed so directly - especially so suddenly - but… it wasn’t bad . San hadn’t been pushy or rude, he had simply stated what he’d observed and left Wooyoung to do with it what he would. 

They’re both snapped out of their thoughts when Yeosang yells for them to hurry it up, holding his knife up threateningly.

Wooyoung sticks his tongue out as Yeosang pulls his arm back to a throwing position. San looks nervous. “He’s not actually gonna throw that, right?” Wooyoung stands up with a shrug.

“If he does, he won’t miss.” San is decidedly not reassured by this but stands up as well. Yeosang turns back around to wait as they climb back down the pipe. 

“Your turn for a break?” San asks as they settle back onto the couch, Wooyoung ending up in the middle once more. Yeosang hums noncommittally. San hesitates on his next words, unsure how to bring the subject up naturally and not wanting to say the wrong thing again. “I’ve been wanting to ask… what kind’ve quickhacks do you develop, exactly? I’m just assuming they’re customs since you don’t seem like the type to go crawling around a night mart for what you want.”

Yeosang glances up, eyes flitting to Wooyoung next to him. “A lot of different kinds,” he finally says. “Mostly utility, some combat.”

“And all the ones you’re running right now are homemade?”

“Pretty much. Wooyoung helps me with all of them, too. You’re right that - well, it’s just easier to make what you want yourself if you can. Much simpler than trying to tweak someone else’s code after buying some half-assed gear.”

San lets out a low whistle, impressed. “What’ve you got on you, then? What do they do? You only have four slots, right?”

Wooyoung side-eyes him but doesn’t intervene; Yeosang looks pleased but flustered with San’s genuine interest in what he does.

“Only the four. You recognized that I’m running a network ping, I’m sure.” San nods. “Most people buy theirs since they’re pretty simple to make, but bought ones are shit. Half the time they can’t even detect every available network. Mine can, among other things. The second one reboots optics. Most people have Kiroshi implants - or whatever brand, y’know - and this just turns ‘em off for a bit. Completely blinds ‘em until they turn back on.”

San looks impressed, Wooyoung grinning with pride for Yeosang and slinging an arm over his shoulders. Yeosang fights down a blush.

“Third is a short circuit - pretty simple, other people have similar things. All it does is mimic a small EMP on a piece of cyberware. It could work on more than one piece at once, depending on the person it hits; it pretty much disables chromejocks.”

“So mostly stuff for disengaging and disabling,” San says contemplatively. Yeosang grimaces at the words.

“Well, the last one is…” He hesitates and leans towards Wooyoung. “It’s for emergencies, I don’t - I don’t really use it ever. It’s just like, y’know, a last resort.” He nearly looks ashamed, eyes avoidant and hands beginning to fidget. San waits for him to continue silently. 

“It’s called synapse burnout,” he finally says. “It basically targets the places where your neurons connect to each other in your brain and destroys them.”

San has to stop his jaw from falling open in both awe and horror. Holy shit, he thinks, I was right. Behind that cute facade is a man who not only makes quickhacks that blow up heads… but quickhacks that make your brain melt out of your fucking ears…!

But, he quickly reminds himself, he certainly doesn’t look proud of it. He should be, really - there’s no way that had been easy to develop. 

“I’m assuming you know it does that because, well…”

“Yep. It was a commission job - the guy who ordered it, he- well, he didn’t think I was capable of developing it properly and forced me to test it out on him.” San hides a snort behind his hand, Wooyoung grinning. Yeosang cracks a small, shy smile.

“I take it you developed it properly, then,” San snickers. Yeosang hides his face in his hands.

“Maybe a bit too properly. The guy’s whole head caught on fire, oh my god, Hongjoong’s place smelled like burnt hair for a week,” Wooyoung cackles, his laugh high-pitched and incredibly endearing. San’s nearly in hysterics at this point as he imagines the scene - Hongjoong sitting all prim and prissy in one of his gigantic coats, nails clicking around on his desk, when suddenly his client’s head just explodes into a ball of fire. Dumbass probably ran around like a headless chicken before keeling over - this is just too good!

San can barely breathe through his laughter, stitches racing up his sides. Hongjoong probably didn’t even give a shit about the dead guy, he would’ve been more pissed about his apartment smelling. Wooyoung is bent over and shaking, laughing so hard he’s gone silent. Yeosang whines and smacks at both of them, indignant but unable to fight back a grin at their mirth, pleased that they’re getting along even if it’s at his expense. 

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding,” San finally wheezes. “There’s no way anyone is that stupid.” He wipes a tear from his eye and leans back on the couch, gazing at the sky as a few more giggles escape him sporadically. 

“I’m not joking!”

Wooyoung manages to fight off his giggles and leans back as well, looking exhausted.

Yeosang glances at the work they’d done that day, hoping to change the subject away from his misfortune. “It’s gonna take awhile to cross-reference all of these documents,” he says, regaining the attention of the other two. “I don’t think we’ll be done tomorrow - there’s way more than I thought there was when we started.”

San makes a noise of agreement. “We can meet here as long as we need,” he reassures them. Yeosang nods appreciatively, Wooyoung saying nothing as he looks through what he’d gotten done so far. “Is the geographic ping thing you mentioned still working?”

Yeosang shrugs. “Need to be at home to check that, but it was working this morning. I’ll bring the data once we finish with these.”

San stands and smiles at them, offering a hand to help Wooyoung up when he notices how worn out he appears. Wooyoung hesitates for a moment before nodding and accepting, grunting as San pulls him to a standing position. 

“We’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Yeosang says as Wooyoung groans and stretches. “When are you free?”

“All day. Just text me when you’re here and I’ll come down to get you.”

Yeosang nods and waits for San to take the lead, escorting them back through the alleys and to their bike. Yeosang gets in the driver's position, waving goodbye to San as Wooyoung situates himself against his back. 

Wooyoung is laying on his back in bed and staring at the ceiling. Yeosang is curled into his side, an arm slung over his stomach and rubbing gentle circles into it as he shifts to look at Wooyoung’s jaw - he, too, had yet to fall asleep. Wooyoung glances down at his curious eyes, the electric blue lights of the city outside shining in through the window and outlining his sweet face.

“What’s on your mind?”

Wooyoung gazes upwards once more and frowns at the bottom of the bunk above him. He opens and closes his mouth a few times before speaking. “Do you ever wish… do you think we’d be happy somewhere else? Doing something else?” He can’t stop turning his conversation with San over in his mind, replaying the other man’s words on loop.

Yeosang pauses, warm hand resting on top of his bellybutton for a moment before resuming its gentle circles. 

“I’m happy wherever you are.” 

Wooyoung raises his own hand to gently rest on top of Yeosang’s on his abdomen. Yeosang squeezes it softly. “What brings this up? Did something happen?”

“No, no, nothing. Just thinking, like… if we weren’t doing work for fixers, or we weren’t living in Night City, what would we be doing, y’know?”

Yeosang makes a low noise and closes his eyes, now rubbing the back of Wooyoung’s hand with his thumb. “I heard New York is nice, maybe we’d be there.” 

Yeosang feels Wooyoung’s pensive hum as it rumbles through his chest. Another moment passes before he speaks again. “We wouldn't’ve met without Night City, huh?” he muses, eyes shifting to the windows.

“Probably not,” Yeosang says, beginning to drift off. “So I guess it isn’t a total shithole. I’d be rotting in a dump somewhere, and you’d - well, maybe you would’ve gone off to some other city, I dunno. I don’t think you would’ve stayed here longer than you needed to. Maybe you’d join a nomad family or something, travel the world in a kombi.” 

Yeosang is nearly melting into his pillow at this point. Wooyoung pulls him closer, no more words needed, and only lets himself drift off once Yeosang’s breathing has evened out.

A week of meeting at San’s home - Wooyoung refuses to call that thing a house - passes before they finally finish going through the documents, compiling their information and cross-referencing it before gathering the data from the geographic ping and cross-referencing that as well.

Yeosang places the shard with the compiled ping data on San’s table.

“We stopped getting anything three days ago,” he says, “so our guy either cleaned his system out or someone noticed the signal.”

“Or he got zeroed!” Wooyoung adds helpfully.

“Or he got zeroed.”

“We got enough info either way, right?” San asks.

“Should be more than enough, really.”

San opens their marked-up map of Santo Domingo and begins adding dots to it, highlighting the places that the man had stayed at for an extended period of time. They end up with three likely candidates. 

“Here, here, and here,” Wooyoung murmurs as he draws stars over them. He crosses the first one out. “This place is way too close to the factories, they’re not gonna risk anyone starting shit with the corpos when they have their parties. Pretty sure that Yunho guy got shot passing by one of their parties and look where that’s getting ‘em now. This one,” he says as he puts a large X over a second location, “is way too deep into beaverville. Guy probably just lives there.”

They’re left with one glaringly colorful dot staring at them in the heart of Arroyo. Wooyoung places a mark directly over it. 

“Santa Rosa street,” San murmurs as he leans closer to the map.

“Megabuilding H6,” Wooyoung confirms. 

“Well then,” Yeosang says slowly. He leans forward in his seat, a grin creeping across his face. Wooyoung and San’s grins match his own as they realize what this means. “It seems we’ve got our admin panel.”

Chapter Text

Hongjoong agrees to meet up with Yeosang the next day for a check-in, suggesting they meet at RuLai - a bao restaurant beneath San’s house - sometime in the afternoon.

 Wooyoung stays at the apartment to rearrange their furniture and make the place as comfortable as possible; when Yeosang gets home, they plan to re-encode his hardware with the information they had gotten off the man at Lizzie’s. When asked about where he is, Yeosang only tells San that he’s ‘tying up some loose ends,’ becoming cagey when San tries to ask what that means. 

He’s a better actor than San had initially thought, but not good enough that he can’t tell the other is lying. It’s not worth pushing it at the moment. 

RuLai is a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant at the very back of the labyrinth beneath San’s place. There are only two stools outside the ordering window and one small, angry-looking woman behind the counter who’s cooking up a storm despite the current lack of patrons. They take their food and walk a few meters away, heading down a dock and settling on the edge, legs dangling over the river.

The water sparkles beneath their feet in the afternoon sun, Southern California heat making them sweat in the stagnant air. A light breeze occasionally blows by and ruffles their hair. San slips his shoes off and dips his toes in the water, wiggling them to create ripples. Yeosang watches the patterns with detached interest as he regularly glances over their shoulders, searching for a tiny man with a mullet.

They finally get a call from Hongjoong nearly twenty minutes later than they had agreed to meet. San scowls as he picks up the phone.

“You’re always on my ass about being late, but when I actually show up on time, you can’t even be bothered to drag your ass over here?”

“Yeah, yeah, save it - and hello to you, too. I can’t make it today, so a call’s gonna have to do. You’ll live.” San’s frown deepens. He opens his mouth to retort only for Hongjoong to interrupt him, holding up a freshly-manicured hand.

 “I got a call from a high-profile fixer in the next city over asking to meet up and this is the only time he’s available. Sorry, boys. I would’ve given you some warning, but I only got the call a few hours ago. Look at it this way - this might be your chance to go big time if I can get a good word in for you.”

It’s Yeosang’s turn to frown, his eyebrows twisted downwards in confusion. “Go big time?” 

“Yeah, y’know, big time. The big leagues. Hotshot fixers banging at your doors, babes throwing themselves at you cause you’re the most sought-after merc within six area codes. Big jobs, bigger paychecks? That shit.”

Yeosang’s head tilts to the side adorably. “But we don’t want to go bigger, we’re happy working with you.”

Hongjoong pauses, shock evident in his sharp features as he quickly tries to recompose himself. “Oh,” he sputters, fluffing the neck of his large coat. “Well… Well alright then.” San almost wants to laugh at how caught off guard he seems, his usually impenetrable haughtiness obliterated in the face of Yeosang’s honesty. Instead, he shrugs.

“Put two good words in for me, then,” he says around a mouthful of bao. Immediately, Hongjoong collects himself and scowls at him, expression turning huffy like a child about to throw a tantrum. Yeosang rolls his eyes.

“Anyway,” he interjects before Hongjoong can get properly annoyed with San, “Wooyoung and I did some work after getting home last night. The best time to go in is a few days from now - most of 6th Street’s people are gonna be in Rancho Coronado for a party near Woodhaven.”

Hongjoong nods approvingly, turning the information over in his head. “Good job. Pass a good word to Wooyoung for me, too. All three of you have done exceptionally well with this assignment. Let me know if you need anything from me.”

“Actually,” San says quickly, “do you think you could be our ride? My car can’t go fast enough to get us out if something goes wrong, and these two only have a two-man bike.” 

The fixer grimaces at San’s request but nods. “I’ll see what I can do - if I’m free, my answer is yes.” San smiles gratefully, Yeosang impressed with his thinking.

He leans towards San, whispering a quiet “good idea” into his ear before backing away again. San turns to him and smiles once more, a small dimple appearing in his cheek.

“I really do have to congratulate you,” Hongjoong says as his car seems to slow down, the rumble of tires on gravel distorting his voice. “I wasn’t sure how long you’d take with this, but you got it done faster than I expected. If everything goes well with the actual … everything,” he says vaguely, hand waving around as though that explains what he’s trying to say, “I may throw in an extra reward for you three. Consider it an incentive.” 

San’s eyes nearly turn into dollar signs at the words. Yeosang lets out a quiet snicker at the sight.

“Unfortunately, I fear I have to cut our little chat short. It seems I’ve arrived at my destination - wish me luck!” Before either of them can respond, Hongjoong hangs up. The dock falls silent around them for a moment.

San shakes his head near fondly at Hongjoong’s habitual abruptness, turning back to Yeosang as his companion takes a bite of his food. He’s quite the messy eater, isn’t he.

“I take it you like it, then,” he laughs as Yeosang barely finishes the previous bite before trying to shove another into his mouth. He looks up sheepishly before wiping at his face and nodding. 

“It’s pretty good,” he concedes. “Not bad for something that came out of a two-by-two shack.” 

“You’ve had better, then?”

Yeosang nods around a mouthful of food, quickly swallowing before answering. “You're not gonna get better than Pepper & Spice.” San raises his eyebrows in interest, waiting for an elaboration. “They make a special dough with bits of vanilla in it if you know to ask - probably the best bao I’ve ever had, totally blows everything else out of the water.”

Now, San just looks perturbed. “Vanilla and - what, synth pork? Beef?”

“Either, or. It’s better than you’d think, trust me. I had the same thought when I first heard about it.”

“Sounds like you two might have to take me there some time, then, no?” Yeosang glances up from his food to shoot him a dry look but doesn’t immediately turn him down. 

“Not sure you’ve been around long enough to be asking me out, let alone asking me for two people.”

“No, no, sorry,” San says quickly, hands flailing in the surrounding air. “I didn't mean it that way - I just don't want the end of this job to be the last time we ever talk. You two are pretty interesting.”

“Interesting.” Yeosang’s voice is bordering on derisive as he lets out a noise somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. His legs swing lightly and brush at the water beneath them. “Not sure that that's a great thing to be.”

“Certainly doesn't hurt, so long as you're not interesting to the wrong people.” San stretches out his leg and nudges Yeosang’s foot with his own playfully.

“And are you 'the wrong people,' Mr. Choi?”

San smiles blithely at his tone. “I'd like to think not, but I don’t know if you should trust me to answer that honestly.” He takes a bite of his own food, watching as Yeosang visibly tries to slow down his eating. “While we're on the topic, though, are you and Wooyoung, like ... a thing?”

Yeosang does his adorable head tilt again. “A thing?”

“Y’know, is he your mainline, or…?”

Yeosang’s eyes stray to the side as he thinks, his hand hovering in the air with the bao he had been about to take a bite of. “I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it,” he finally says, “but I’d like to think so. We kiss and do other … ‘couple-y’ things, so I’d say yes. 

San nods at the words. He can tell Wooyoung thinks the same thing. The fondness in Yeosang's eyes is visible any time he looks at his partner, listens to him speak, or talks about him to other people. It makes their dynamic easier for San to understand - why Wooyoung seems to be protectively aggressive towards him rather than just plain hostile like he had initially thought. 

He can understand where that hostility stems from, now; it’s not just the usual blind aggression you find in Night City (at least, not totally) - he also wants to protect Yeosang. Frankly, San is pretty sure Yeosang can protect himself, but he’s not exactly going to say that to either of them. It’s none of his business.

Yeosang is, however, a bit too kind in San’s opinion. Despite that, he wouldn't call him overly trusting or naive; he had picked up on how his eyes would watch San's hands every time they strayed too close to his food, the way he would hold himself in relation to other people and would give himself space to react if something unexpected happened, the way he would carefully arrange his limbs when he was sitting down so that he could stand up as quickly as possible.

And yet his hands are gentle, nearly dainty, as he folds up the now-empty food container and tucks it into his pocket to throw out later.

San can see the change that ripples through him the moment he realizes he’s being observed from the way his eyes sharpen. He leans his weight a bit on the table, threatening to enter San’s personal space, his entire posture seeming to change in an instant. He doesn’t even bother pretending to hide the way he analyzes San in turn, every metaphorical card currently laid out on the table. What an interesting person, San thinks to himself, expression giving away nothing. 

“You’re not the mercenary type,” Yeosang finally says. Is he dropping the cutesy persona on purpose, or was that a slip? This is the side of Yeosang he had been hoping to see - Wooyoung has always been the one taking the offensive stance between them, the other man sitting back to analyze. It’s about time they switched it up. 

“No?”

“No. You fit the bodyguard role far more. How, exactly, did you meet Hongjoong?”

San ponders the observation as he drudges through his memories. Bodyguard, huh? He can see it.

“Geez, it was kind’ve a while ago, y’know?” he laughs when he finally finds the memory he’s looking for, making a ‘tch’ noise as it comes back to him. “We met at the bar, funnily enough. He came in trying to get some info for a job, and the girls sent me to talk to him since they were all busy at the moment. I’m sure you’ve noticed, but he doesn’t look like the kind’ve guy you want to keep waiting for too long. We talked for a bit and he wanted to keep in contact so I could feed him info as he needed it. After a while, he got a new job that he thought I might enjoy, contracted me for it, and I guess he was happy with how it went cause he kept reaching out to me afterwards.”

Yeosang had started gnawing on his bottom lip halfway through the story, listening intently. 

“And stop doing that before you hurt yourself.” 

Yeosang pauses. “Doing what?”

“Chewing on your lip like that, you do it a lot. It’s gonna split at some point.” Yeosang looks caught off guard by the comment but releases his lip from between his teeth - San is already running through ideas in his head of alternative things he could do to keep himself busy. He’d heard somewhere lollipops are good for this kind’ve habit, maybe he should carry some around? “Regardless,” he says, stowing the thought away for later, “how did you guys meet him?”

Yeosang seems to weigh the details of San’s story, checking it for flaws or inconsistencies before answering. 

“We needed money. He had it. Not too much more to say.” They both know he's not telling the full truth, and frankly, San’s a bit tired of them dancing around giving out info about themselves while trying to get as much as possible out of him. He raises an eyebrow challengingly. Yeosang looks away with a slight grimace, seeming to sense his change in mood. 

“Wooyoung already knew him when the two of us met - I needed a ripper at the time, so Hongjoong hooked us up with a guy who was available. I just happened to stick around afterward.” 

This time, he seems to be telling what he can without getting too deep into details or entering territory that makes him genuinely uncomfortable. San backs off, satisfied for the time being. Yeosang seems to relax slightly despite having just been pushed for information, shoulders dropping a bit from where they had been tensed. 

San's eyebrows furrow slightly as he notices a smear of food on the other man’s cheek and instinctively reaches over to wipe it off. Yeosang startles slightly but doesn’t lean into it, nor does he pull away.

“Sorry,” San says quickly, “you had a little something there.” Shit. Did he overstep again? Seriously? Get a fucking grip, San. Yeosang thanks him hesitantly, ignoring the constipated look on his face. 

He pulls himself out of his thoughts at the words. “Ya know,” he starts suddenly, feeling the need to say something . Yeosang looks at him again in interest.  “I did do bodyguard work for a bit,” he offers; it sounds like more of a preemptive peace offering than an actual conversation topic. Despite this, he now has the other’s attention. “I'd guard the ring during underground boxing matches over in Pacifica.” 

“You got arm implants or something you're not telling us about?” Yeosang asks with raised eyebrows, disbelief evident. There’s something impressed about his tone, if not smug about being correct regarding the whole bodyguard thing. 

“Nothing like that, no. It wasn't any big-time boxing or anything - mostly just people getting together for some old-fashioned fun. I was just there to make sure nobody interfered with the ring.“ Yeosang is looking at him with new interest, eyeing his small biceps contemplatively. San laughs. “Fighting isn't always brute strength - you, of all people, should understand that.”

“Me, of all people?”

“You're a fuckin' techie, choom, yes you.” Yeosang looks flustered as he finally understands what San is saying. ”I studied martial arts a lot as a kid - most of those dumbasses just start swinging without thinking, none of ‘em ever expect any actual technique.”

“Technique, huh? What kind've martial arts were you doing?”

“Taekwondo. I’m a third degree black belt,” he says, jabbing a thumb into his own chest with thinly-veiled pride lacing his tone. The other seems heavily engrossed in what he's saying now, holding back a smile at the way his chest swells with his achievement.

Yeosang's phone suddenly pings with a message, startling him out of his interesting-information-induced haze - he glances down to read it and quickly stands up, throwing San an apologetic look. 

“I gotta get going, I’m sorry. This has been lovely!”

“Don’t worry about it!” San laughs and tries not to let his disappointment bleed into his tone. He feels like he’s really gotten somewhere with the other today, so he’s not too upset about his abrupt departure. He shakes the water off his feet and puts his shoes back on, then walks Yeosang to where he’d parked his bike, occasionally doing fake, goofy taekwondo moves and making exaggerated noises to get him to laugh. 

He’s still giggling as he peels out, waving goodbye before turning his eyes to the road and joining the flow of traffic on the street. 

San sighs as he watches Yeosang disappear between the cars and around a corner, turning to head back up to his house. He’s planning on cleaning off a few of his blades in preparation for their … raid? Invasion? Whatever it is.

He takes a quick detour on the way to the staircase, stopping at a small convenience store to buy a large variety bag of lollipops and putting a raspberry-flavored one in his pocket before he can forget.

Wooyoung greets Yeosang at the door when he gets home, expression twisted anxiously despite his attempts at putting on a smile. He tries to look reassuring for Yeosang’s sake, putting an arm around his shoulders, closing the door behind them, and guiding him to the nest of cushions he’d created in the middle of their living space.

Yeosang sits down and tries to get settled. Numerous wires are laid out next to the nest alongside bottles of ice water, a USB drive labeled ‘Hardware 6th.01,’ and two packages of holobites pie. 

”Is everything for the reassignment ready?“ Yeosang asks as he shifts around, picking at his shirt as he contemplates taking it off. He doesn't really want to get it all sweaty.

Wooyoung nods as he turns off the lights in the apartment and closes the curtains.  ”Incense?“

”Incense.“

He places a stick in their dragon holder and lights it - the smell of warm cinnamon begins to float through the air, filling the apartment. Yeosang closes his eyes and inhales deeply, relishing the sweet and spicy aroma. 

Finally, Wooyoung sits down across from him, their knees bumping lightly. 

”Are you ready?”

Yeosang nods and reaches for his partner’s hand - Wooyoung takes it immediately and then leans forward, lightly pressing their foreheads together.

”You're still tense. Relax, first. Did everything go well while you were out?”

Yeosang nods again, lips forming a pout as the cinnamon’s scent gradually relaxes him further. “Hongjoong's happy with our work - he says good job and thanks, by the way - and San and I had a good conversation. The food there is fantastic.” He pauses for a second, contemplating his next words. “We should bring San to Pepper & Spice,” he finally murmurs, eyes closing as Wooyoung runs a hand through his hair and scratches at the back of his scalp.

“What brings that up?”

 “I don't know, I just think it might be fun - assuming you can avoid trying to kill him with your mind for the duration of a meal.”

Wooyoung’s mouth curls downwards until he decides not to chase that thread of conversation. Right, trying to relax Yeo. Worry about everything else later. 

”You gonna take both of us to RuLai, then, since I didn't go today?“ Yeosang hums quietly in agreement and gently rubs their noses together before puckering his lips. Wooyoung laughs quietly and adjusts so he can gently press their lips together, holding the kiss for a moment before pulling back.

”Think you're actually ready now?“

Yeosang smiles teasingly and quickly steals another peck before pulling back.  ”Let's get it over with.“

Wooyoung picks up a few wires and slides open his wrist panel, plugging them in one by one. He plugs the labeled USB into his wrist’s port before adding a few more wires to the mix. Yeosang holds out his arm when Wooyoung reaches for it, his own panel opening. He connects the wires in his own arm to their counterparts in Yeosang's before he picks up the final cable - one much thicker than the others with different shaped prongs - and plugs it in last.

They both wince at the strange feeling that ripples through their bodies. They would never be able to get used to it, no matter how many times they did this. Yeosang’s leg jerks out instinctively until the sensation runs its course. 

”I'm gonna start now,“ Wooyoung warns, voice gentle. Yeosang nods and braces himself, quickly taking Wooyoung’s free hand in his own and squeezing it before he loses control.

Wooyoung's irises become encircled by a warm ocean blue for a moment before they flutter closed. His physical body relaxes involuntarily as he navigates his mind through Yeosang's body, letting his consciousness lightly brush over everything on the familiar path to his hardware information. 

He looks through the text file he had included on the USB in his arm - on it is all the information they had taken from the man at the club, the most important being his cyberware details. He starts with the pieces that that man and Yeosang have in common - their cyberdecks, wrist ports, and Kiroshi optics. 

Yeosang twitches around in his arms as he re-encodes the three pieces, hissing when he’s finished. Wooyoung forces his arm to the side, nearly knocking over one of the water bottles as he grabs it and shakily uncaps it, holding it up to Yeosang’s lips until he takes a large swig.

“Not too bad yet,” Yeosang finally mutters. “Keep going.” He takes the bottle out of Wooyoung’s hand so the other can focus, the sound of the cap twisting shut drifting to the back of his mind as he refocuses on the task at hand. 

Now comes the more difficult part - changing the parts that don’t match. There’s a very, very fine line between what your own body reads and what other systems read that Wooyoung needs to balance on with the skill of a professional acrobat. 

It’s more along the lines of having a tightrope walker try to cross a fishing line with no safety net below them - the difference lies in that if he falls, the love of his life’s head metaphorically explodes. It could also be literally, he supposes, depending on which piece he fails with. 

Maybe he shouldn’t think about this right now. He won’t fall off that rope, he never has before - He knows what he’s doing, even if it isn’t exactly easy to make a detoxifier register as mantis blades to other people and machines all while making sure the owner’s body will still interact with the cyberware as a detoxifier. Yep. Totally easy. Nothing could go wrong. Wooyoung tells his brain to shut up and tries to focus on what he’s doing.

Only two pieces need to be touched on - Yeosang’s self-ICE system and his bioconductors. 

He starts with the easier of the two, the bioconductors, and tries to get them done as quickly as possible. Yeosang thrashes wildly as his body tries to figure out what to do with the changing numbers until Wooyoung wraps his free arm around his back and restrains him against his chest, trying to ignore his pained whines until he finishes.

Tightrope, he reminds himself. Don’t get distracted.

It takes five minutes for him to finish. He immediately pulls his mind back into his body and unwraps one of the prepackaged pies, feeding it to Yeosang between his pained sobs. Wooyoung’s heart wrenches in his chest - he knows how it feels to go through this shit, like your skin is melting off your body as stray shocks rip through you and your implants send out weird signals, unsure how to interact with each other. 

It only stops when the data is finished being rewritten and they can go back to feeding each other streams of information and commands without one of them sending the equivalent of gibberish. 

He gently rubs at Yeosang’s back until his hiccuping stops, feeding him the last bit of pie.

“Only one more piece, you ready?” Yeosang nods but turns himself around in Wooyoung’s arms, leaning his back against his chest. Wooyoung wraps an arm around his waist and lets their heads press together as he closes his eyes, nose buried in his hair. 

The self-ICE system is far more fragile than the bioconductors simply due to its nature - it's inlaid inside his head, interacting with every bit of cyberware in his body at the same time. He has to force himself through nearly fifteen minutes of Yeosang borderline shrieking in his arms, limbs jerking every which way as he tries not to throw up on himself until Wooyoung pulls his mind back to his body and quickly works to disconnect the wires attached to their arms.

The second he’s free, Yeosang scrambles to stand up and disappears into the bathroom. Wooyoung can hear him vomiting into the toilet for the next ten minutes; eventually, he trudges back out and flops down into the mess of blankets and pillows, burying his head in Wooyoung’s stomach. Wooyoung turns on the television for him to listen to as background noise while he tries to unwind.

“We should’ve been monks,” Yeosang finally murmurs, voice exhausted and muffled against Wooyoung’s shirt. He really should’ve taken his own off when he thought of it - he’s going to have to wash it now, sweat soaking through his armpits and dribbles of vomit staining the neckline. He wiggles around with his arms up until Wooyoung takes the hint and slides the soiled shirt off him, throwing it blindly onto the couch and stroking a hand down his sweaty back. 

“I don’t think monks have it that great, either,” Wooyoung finally sighs. Yeosang doesn’t respond aside from curling up a bit more against him. He tilts his head to the side when he hears Wooyoung rip open the other package of pie, opening his mouth as he waits to be fed. 

Wooyoung rolls his eyes fondly when he notices but tears the snack into pieces anyway, rubbing at Yeosang’s stomach when he fully turns over in his lap and laughing at the way the other man nearly melts at the affection. He looks like he’d be purring if he could, eyes seeming far more alert than they had a few minutes ago despite the way they keep threatening to close with exhaustion.

“There’s no residual pain, right?” Wooyoung asks as he crinkles the empty wrapper in his hands and tosses it somewhere in the general direction of their trash can. Yeosang hums affirmatively, eyes slipping fully shut despite his valiant efforts at staying awake. Wooyoung grins and pats his stomach a few times.

“Just go to sleep if you're so tired,” he murmurs, voice as quiet as he can get it. “You don't have anything else to do today.”

Wooyoung shuffles to rest his back against the couch as Yeosang near-instantly passes out on top of his legs at his words. He sighs and lets his fingers return to running through the other man’s hair, his own eyes eventually slipping shut.

With this, it seems they’re finally ready for the main event.

Hongjoong parks on MLK boulevard where it connects to Santa Rosa street, eyeing the rows of buildings in front of him with visible distaste and scowling at the various ‘no parking’ signs running up and down the block. Yeosang had called shotgun the second he pulled up to their apartment, banishing San and Wooyoung to the backseat as he fiddled with the radio until Hongjoong simply ripped the knob off the console and threw it out the window. 

Large, gaudy sunglasses hide the fixer’s eyes as he turns to look at the boys occupying the other seats in his car and sniffs. “I'm sure you all have some sort of plan, yes?” They all glance at each other, fully aware they don't.

 “Of course we do, god, what do you take us for?” Wooyoung huffs. His voice is wildly unconvincing. Hongjoong lowers his glasses to stare at him over the top of the frames, gaze caustic. 

“Of course. How foolish of me,” he finally says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “One last request before you go in, though - try not to die on me, ok?” A bit of genuine concern bleeds through his usual pompousness. San offers him a stone-faced salute, Yeosang giggling at the sight and copying him. 

“Aye aye, captain,” Wooyoung cackles as he climbs out of the car, San and Yeosang following. Hongjoong pushes his glasses back up his nose with an eye-roll, leaning back in his seat to wait - that’s the last time he tries to share any genuine feelings with that gang of nitwits.

They make their way down the street and climb up the cold concrete stairs of Megabuilding H6, walking past roaming tenants and various vendor stalls until they get to the back of the entryway and enter an empty elevator. San hovers a finger over one of the buttons.

“It’s floor nineteen, right?”

Wooyoung makes an affirmative noise, eyeing the button San pressed in response. “Apartments, huh? Guess they’re renting out for their shit. Weirdos.” 

He leans against the elevator wall once the door closes, gears rumbling to life around them as they begin to rise. “Can't fuckin' stand being in this part of the city anymore after spending so long in J-town...“ he sighs, eyes closing. San looks at him inquisitively - they're both from Arroyo, yet he has no qualms with being back despite living in Kabuki. ”It’s too goddamn gray, and everyone looks so miserable.” 

Yeosang and San both think about it for a moment - the surrounding elevator is completely gray and beige, a damp, musty smell lingering near the corners. The building’s entrance corridor had been nothing but concrete slabs and sterile steel. The only splashes of color Yeosang can recall from the drive here are dark oranges and dusty yellows, everything else gray - even the sky was covered in a layer of smog. “At least in Westbrook and Watson people get angry about shit,” Wooyoung continues. “Everyone here just seems so ... defeated. I don't know. I'm too used to getting my eyes blasted with neon signs ‘n ads ‘n shit, I guess.“

San offers a small smile, indifferent on the subject, and goes back to watching the floor counter tick upwards without offering any insight on his opinion. Yeosang looks between them silently and double-checks he has the virus USB in his pocket, deciding he's uninterested in what they're talking about - he didn’t grow up in Arroyo, so he doesn’t particularly care. 

The elevator eventually shudders to a stop, the number 19 flashing on the floor counter above the door. They step out and immediately spot two 6th Street members chatting on the pathway they need to go through. Wooyoung groans - they can’t go around them, the pathway being far too narrow.

“Just act like we live here, be natural, and don’t get confrontational,” Yeosang murmurs as he takes the lead. “It’ll be fine.” He remembers too late that Wooyoung is one of the worst actors the world has ever seen throughout the entirety of human history - it’s when he peeks over his shoulder to see what they’re up to that he discovers San might arguably be worse. Both of them are trying way too hard to appear casual, glancing around suspiciously and walking with an unnatural swagger. Good god.

They get stopped by the two men as they're trying to walk between them, one of them grabbing Yeosang’s shoulder and tugging. Yeosang quickly adjusts himself to take their full attention in the hopes of avoiding the other two being addressed. They manage to take the hint and hang back, still trying embarrassingly hard to be inconspicuous.

”Haven't seen ya around here before.“ The man’s voice is gruff and hostile. Yeosang tries to put on his best rimbo voice - he knows that the man still holding him knows he’s armed. A strange, unnatural giggle filters out of his mouth and he lightly touches his pink hair, attempting to look sweet.

”Yeah, we're not tenants or anything.” His voice drawls, slow and syrupy. Perfect. “Just visiting some friends of ours, is all.”

The man raises an eyebrow, lightly squeezing Yeosang’s shoulder as he lets his guard down. Hook, line, and sinker. 

”Just visiting friends, huh? Fuck's up with the other two, then? They tweakin’?“

Yeosang forces out another giggle and leans towards him conspiratorially. The second guy behind him slides up to his side, saying nothing. He had nearly forgotten he was there. ”They’re suuuper out of it,” he faux-whispers, “totally short-circed. They took some blue glass on the drive over here, oh my gawd , you should've seen 'em ten minutes ago. I told 'em to try and act normal in case there were any officers around.“ He leans even closer and grins. “You can see how good of a job they’re doing.”

He can practically feel the heat of Wooyoung’s rage rolling off him in waves as he watches the way the two men handle Yeosang - but he knows he can’t intervene without risking their entire job. Son of a bitch.

The man Yeosang was whispering to laughs at his comment about their acting and starts to massage the shoulder he still had a death grip on. His partner leans back against the railing, watching the exchange play out once he accepts that Yeosang isn’t going to give him any attention.  

”Aw man, blue glass fucks you up. Don't let ‘em jump over the railing trying to touch the pretty lights 'n shit. Usually ain't much of an NCPD presence around here, though, don't worry about that too much, sweetheart.“ He gives Yeosang's shoulder a few quick squeezes, waiting for the other to smile at him and cover his mouth bashfully before he releases him and turns back to his friend.

“By the way,” he adds as Yeosang begins to retreat, “I’m here all week. Come pay me a visit if you want to make some new ‘friends.’” He blows a kiss as Yeosang shoots him a wink and continues to walk away. 

The hacker waits until he’s turned the corner of the hallway to let his face twist, mouth curling in disgust as he wipes at his shoulder. Wooyoung and San catch up to him quickly, the former looking about two seconds away from having an aneurysm. San’s hands are clenched into fists by his sides.

“Are you okay?” they ask at the same time. Yeosang nods.

“Let’s just forget that happened. You gotta do what you gotta do.” San looks at him in concern, the red of Wooyoung’s face now beginning to enter stroke territory. They can practically see steam coming out of his ears.

“What’d you tell him?”

”I said you’re both tripping balls and trying to be cool about it.“ He decides not to bring up the rest of the conversation, skin crawling as he remembers the way the man had called him sweetheart. Ew. That’s all he can offer right now - just ew.

They make their way down the hallway, Wooyoung throwing a possessive arm around Yeosang’s waist as they walk (which Yeosang is grateful for - it gets rid of the strange lingering sensation on his shoulder). San, too, lays a gentle hand on his upper arm before retreating, unsure what was helpful and what would make him feel worse. 

They eventually spot the door they’re looking for, a large orange ‘R6’ slapped over the top of it. Yeosang’s irises ring with neon blue as he stares at the security camera outside it, pinging off it before shutting it down.

“We chose correctly,” he murmurs as his eyes flit around. “I only see two people inside. One’s right behind the door. The other is to our left doing something and facing the wall.”

They approach the door slowly, the walkway leading up to it damaged and covered in rubble from the upper floors. Sunlight catches the dust floating around in the air and reflects off an old-looking vending machine that teeters dangerously at the edge, the wires barely connecting it to the wall sparking. 

They peek in through the small window embedded in the front door. The entire place looks messy, crowded with shelves and boxes - a woman stands off to the side, hunched over a computer. They watch until she straightens up and walks into the left side of the apartment, disappearing around the corner of a threshold. 

“That’s where the other guy is?” Wooyoung asks quietly, gesturing in the direction she’d gone. Yeosang nods as San slides the door open as slowly as he possibly can, cringing every time it lets out a squeak. 

“Remember,” San whispers, “stealth mission.” He stops opening the door once the gap is big enough for them to squeeze through, then lets it slide shut slowly behind them, only releasing it once the latch clicks into place.

Practically commando crawling, they make their way over to the computer the woman had been using - the screen is still on. San watches the doorway she had disappeared through as Yeosang and Wooyoung click around, looking for something - San doesn't understand what they're doing and doesn't particularly care at the moment. He can ask later.

“It's not this one,” Yeosang finally murmurs, backing away from the screen and closing the window they had been reading through. San can’t hide the disappointment in his expression but shrugs. That would’ve been too easy, he supposes.

They scuttle towards the doorway that leads to the left half of the apartment, spotting a staircase going up on the other side. Wooyoung peeks around the corner first, spotting the man Yeosang had warned them about - he’s still facing the wall, sifting through boxes and attempting to organize the contents. To his side lies an unconscious woman in a netrunning chair, different from the first they had seen, wires running out of her arms, chest, and the back of her head. 

They’re separated from the back of the room by dark curtains, rolling tables of junk and destroyed scaffolding occupying the rest. San sneaks by first, nearly gliding over the ground as he quickly heads towards the staircase. Wooyoung and Yeosang go by slower, both holding their breath as they slink along the back wall.

The staircase suddenly squeaks, all three of them nearly jumping out of their skin - the first woman they’d seen must be coming back down. The two hackers nearly fly behind one of the curtains, San wedging himself between one of the rolling tables and the wall just as the man sorting through boxes swivels around in his chair.

The woman reappears from the stairwell, a gun and a cleaning rag in her hands. Wooyoung peeks around the edge of the curtain to watch what they’re doing.

“La encontré,” the woman calls, waving the gun in her hand around pointedly before tossing it to the man. [I found it.]

Wooyoung ducks back around, heart racing. The man in the chair had nearly seen him, his body suddenly twisting so he could catch the gun she had thrown.

“Oh, preem! Where was it?” the man asks. There are more sounds of walking, the woman’s short heels clicking on the floor, and then a chair squeaking as she must sit down. Yeosang grabs Wooyoung’s attention - San is gesturing for them to head towards him, sliding out of his hiding spot and preparing to go up the staircase. The other two make their way over as quickly as possible without making noise.

“You forgot it en tu escritorio” she grumbles. Her voice fades out as they reach San and slowly begin to ascend the stairs, carefully testing to make sure none of the steps squeak before putting their full weight on it. 

She rolls her 'r's the same way Wooyoung does, Yeosang notes with amusement. Wooyoung either didn’t notice or doesn’t care, focused solely on not falling down the stairs or giving them away. 

Near the top, they crouch down and peek over the edge of the last stair, ascending the rest of the way when they don’t see anybody around. Yeosang holds an arm out suddenly, quickly deactivating a security camera that had been hidden in the corner before signaling that it’s safe for them to keep moving. They pass through a room with no computers in sight and into the only other room around, entering the area above the front door.

A large computer with three monitors sits cleanly in the middle of the space. There’s practically a spotlight shining on it in their eyes, party poppers and fireworks going off in their heads. Yeosang and Wooyoung quickly make their way to it, Yeosang digging in his pockets for his USB as he focuses on cushioning his footfalls. San positions himself to watch the door, carefully scanning the room for anything they might have missed but not seeing anything dangerous. He’s uncomfortable with how visible they are from the stairwell. 

This computer’s locked when it turns on, the login screen flashing and requesting a password. 

”Shit,“ San murmurs when he glances at them. ”What do we do about that?“

”Don't worry about it,“ Wooyoung mutters. San looks away as a wire slides out of Yeosang's wrist, plugging him in. Everything is silent for a few seconds.

“Hardware credentials worked,“ Yeosang finally says as the login screen switches and a desktop home screen loads lethargically. San stares between the two of them - they really need to explain what the fuck they’re doing at some point, because this was starting to seem like magic to him.

Wooyoung smiles and plugs himself in too, clicking around a bit before opening up an administrative panel and getting to work dismantling a few of the tougher defensive firewalls installed on 6th Street’s network. Yeosang works on getting rid of the weaker ones as San shakes his head and goes back to watching the staircase. 

Yeosang frowns when he realizes there's only two USB slots on the computer - the ones he and Wooyoung are using to connect to the network. 

All three of them nearly shit their pants when a door suddenly opens and closes downstairs. San tiptoes to the window and peeks out, slightly adjusting the shutters so he can see. The sudden stream of sunlight forces him to squint, having already become accustomed to the darkness of the room. The man and woman from downstairs are standing outside the front door and talking, sounding as though they're continuing their conversation from earlier; San purses his lips frustratedly, unable to speak a word of Spanish. 

“Cheap fucks,” Yeosang murmurs behind him, plugging the USB into the port in his wrist. A few moments later, the virus begins to upload. “‘Course they wouldn’t get a system with more than two ports.”

A few tense minutes pass uneventfully when the stairs suddenly creak - the woman who had been passed out in the netrunning chair stands at the top step, eyes wide. She stares at them in shock as San grabs for his gun - suddenly, her pupils become ringed with a bright purple, different from the blue of both Wooyoung and Yeosang’s ocular implants. Wooyoung makes a choking noise and bends over, resting his weight on the desk. The wire on his wrist lets out a few sparks.

San's gun refuses to fire as her gaze turns to him. He panics, reaching for his knife but not making it before Yeosang's head whips around, his familiar icy-blue stare landing on her. A moment later, her eyes roll back in her head, smoke rising from her eye sockets as she crumples and smashes her skull on the stair landing with a sickening crack.

San is frozen for a moment before he finally hears Wooyoung groaning. He turns back around just in time to see the other straightening himself up, hissing and holding his head. ”Unplug him,“ he gasps, voice frantic. Yeosang is sitting ramrod straight in his chair, head still turned towards the stairs. San hesitates - the file hasn’t finished uploading. Aren’t you not supposed to interrupt that kind’ve thing?

”San, fucking unplug him now .” San hesitates for a second more, then scrambles when smoke slowly begins to rise from the wire in Yeosang's wrist, his eyelids and fingers twitching. He realizes Yeosang hadn't blinked the entire time he'd been looking at him with a rush of worry.

Wooyoung smacks his arm weakly when he reaches for the wire with his bare hands. ”Knife.“ San immediately switches courses, fumbling with his belt and pulling out the knife he had been reaching for barely a minute ago before slashing the wire straight through the middle. Yeosang immediately crumples, falling out of the chair and slamming his head into the edge of the desk with a dull thud.

Wooyoung shakily helps San pick him up, cradling him in his arms. His eyes are still open, gaze empty and body completely limp. Wooyoung looks like he can hardly stand. San can barely process anything that just happened - did he just watch some sort of netrunner fight or something? What the fuck?

”What the fuck,“ he whispers aloud following that thought. That’s about all he can currently contribute. 

Wooyoung grabs Yeosang's arm and takes out the USB, weak grip causing his fingers to slip a few times. He plugs it into his own arm and reconnects to the computer, ignoring the sparks coming out of it. 

“San,” he manages to get out as the file resumes uploading, voice deathly serious. “You need to get him the fuck out of here and to a ripperdoc right now .”

San can’t shake the shock from his system.  “What about you? Seriously, what the fuck just happened?!” The scent of smoke begins to penetrate his nostrils, eyes watering from the acridity.

“Get the fuck out of here and help him ,” Wooyoung snaps. “We can talk later.” 

San's brain finally mercifully catches up to the situation as he takes off in a sprint, jumping over the corpse on the stairs and bursting through the apartment's front door. He holds Yeosang to his chest tightly, trying to keep him from jostling around too much. 

From his seat at the computer, Wooyoung hears the front door burst open below, two gunshots going off seconds later as San passes by the man and woman that had been inside a few minutes ago. Seems his gun is working again, then. Stupid bitch on the stairs must’ve had some sort of quickhack that jams firearms - he’s seen a few of those floating around night markets, but never seen one in action before.

Two more shots ring out a bit further away as San presumably approaches the elevator and deals with the scum they had gone by on the way in. Good, Wooyoung thinks absently, thoughts feeling like they’re floating ten feet above his head. Kill those sleazy fucks.

Everything around him falls silent once San disappears into the elevator, the virus's upload progress slowly ticking upwards as his vision gradually stops swimming and he feels less like his head is going to split open - instead, his heart feels like it's going to explode. The sight of Yeosang folding - his brown eyes staring at nothingness in San's arms - replays over and over in his mind. Distantly, he hears what must be Hongjoong's car screech out of its parking space.

He disconnects from the computer the second the upload progress reaches 100%, replacing the virus's USB with a second empty one he’d been carrying and uploading the full contents of the computer into it to pass off to the Mox. He can feel himself dissociating from the situation and quickly forces his brain back on track.

He can't think about what just happened right now. Later. Yeosang will be fine. He's fine - no matter how bad it looked, he's fine. He’s strong, he’s been through way worse than this. 

Wooyoung rips the second USB out of the computer the second it’s finished downloading everything and stands up far too quickly, nausea overtaking his senses as a lightheaded feeling runs through him. He nearly faints and quickly sits down again, standing up much slower when he tries a second time. He stares at the three monitors before pulling out his own pistol and smashing them, then heads towards the stairs, stumbling, and shoots the still-smoking woman's body through the chest as he makes his way down.

Honestly, he has no idea what the fuck she hit him with. All he knows is that it was strong - his self-ICE couldn’t neutralize it the way it was made to, instead resorting to deflecting it through his wire, into the computer he’d been attached to, and back out into Yeosang. All of that and he still feels like shit - what the fuck kind’ve gear did she have on her?

The other four bodies he passes each have a bullet hole cleanly placed between their eyes. He shoots each one again just to be sure, head continuing to throb as he finally reaches the elevator. 

Fuck. He really can't get anywhere like this.

He ends up pressing every button on the elevator’s control panel, unable to read what the different floors and numbers are. At some point - he has no idea how long he was in there - he ends up on the ground floor. Stumbling past the tenants and vendors in the entrance hall, he manages to make it to the front steps without spilling out and sits down, the chill of the concrete beneath his ass giving him something to anchor his mind to. He draws his knees to his chest and sits with his head in his lap, the light of the sun nearly obliterating his skull with a stabbing pain rather than the dull, throbbing ache it had been before. 

He sits there for nearly twenty minutes, swaying back and forth and feeling unable to get up - it’s a miracle nobody's tried to mug him at this point. Eventually, his phone dings with a message from Hongjoong, the noise forcing an involuntary groan from his mouth.  He cracks his eyes open to read it. All it contains is an address - somewhere in Little China, he notes.

His hand shakes as he scrolls through his contacts, eventually pressing call on the one labeled “Delamain.” It rings thrice before the call is answered with a grating click.

“Good evening, Mr. Jung. Thank you for calling Delamain Limousines. How can I-“

”Fuck off. Need a ride. I'm at-'' he stops for a second, the feeling of needing to vomit suddenly making itself known again. ”I'm at Megabuilding H6 on... fuck. On Santa Rosa. Arroyo.“

”I understand. One of my cars will be there shortly.“

”Cool, cool, thanks Del... Show you the address once you're here.“

”Certainly. Unfortunately, your ride will cost extra for telling me to, quote, ‘fuck off.’ Thank you for trusting Delamain Limousines.“

With that, the call ends and Wooyoung feels himself gag once again, hand clenching around his phone to prevent it from falling as his body lurches forward - this time, he actually does vomit, the painful sting of stomach acid ripping through his throat.

Chapter Text

Wooyoung wasn’t aware he passed out after getting in the taxi, but the surface he wakes up on most certainly doesn’t feel like the back of a cab. 

A sterile smell hits his nose first, the clanking of tools on metal filling the air as his eyes snap open and immediately shut again. A blinding white light above his head shines directly into them, unforgiving in its luminosity. The roof of his mouth feels weird and tangy, the taste of old stomach acid and vomit coating it.

He finds that his arms have been tied down when he tries to lift them, twisting his head to the side as the beginnings of panic grip at his chest and he wrenches his eyes open once more.

The first thing he sees are curtains - white ones, completely surrounding the chair he’s strapped down into.

The second thing he notices is the man sitting by his side. He only looks up when Wooyoung begins to thrash around, attempting to escape, and lifts his hands up - he’s holding a pair of small tweezers and a bloodied scalpel. 

“Uh oh,” he says simply, sounding completely unbothered. “You’re not supposed to be awake yet.”

Wooyoung’s heart nearly drops out of his chest when the man rolls his chair backwards and picks up an empty syringe, filling it up with a mysterious clear substance before rolling back to Wooyoung’s side.

“C’mon, man,” Wooyoung tries desperately as the man places the needle to his skin. “We can talk about this, okay? We can-” He freezes, eyes nearly popping out of his skull when he’s completely ignored, the needle sinking into his skin and injecting him with whatever was inside.

It only takes a few seconds for his vision to start swimming, his head thumping back against the chair as the stranger picks the tweezers back up and returns his attention to Wooyoung’s restrained arm. That’s the last thing he sees before he loses control of his neck, head lolling to the side, vision blacking out a moment later.

The next time Wooyoung wakes up, he still has no idea where he is or how long he was out. His head feels strange and there are a few bandages on one of his arms. 

The room he’s in is dark, soft purple lights emanating from sources he can’t see from his position. The strong, heady scents of burning sage and frankincense assault his nose and make his body feel heavy, presumably permeating throughout the entire room and so powerful he can nearly taste them. He’s sitting up and can feel someone’s shoulder beneath his head.

He tries to move as little as possible, peeking at who it is - San is by his side, his head in his hands and his hair a terrible mess. He looks like he hasn’t slept in who-knows-how-long, perking up when he notices Wooyoung’s eyes are open and alert. 

“Where the fuck am I?” is the first thing Wooyoung asks, trying to get every important question out before he forgets them. “Where was I earlier - who was that with me?” His speech is slurred and unsteady, tone wobbling, tipping back and forth like the ocean’s waves. 

He realizes his head doesn’t hurt anymore, nausea cleared up - but his bandaged arm feels strange and unfamiliar. San instinctively puts an arm around his shoulders to try and keep him calm.

“You’re at a ripperdoc,” he explains, “someone Hongjoong trusts.” He looks up at the other side of the room; Wooyoung turns his head to see what he’s looking at and feels his heart jump. The man he had woken up to earlier - the man who had shoved a needle in his arm like it was nothing - is sitting behind a counter, looking bored and shuffling a deck of tarot cards. A register sits in front of him with a bundle of burning sage and frankincense set up next to it. He looks up when San signals to him with his free arm, quickly standing when he notices Wooyoung is awake.

“How’re you feeling? Any pain? Can you move your wrist in a circular motion for me?”

Wooyoung scowls and leans into San to get away from him as he approaches. “Who the fuck are you?” he asks again, pointedly not moving his wrist or answering his questions.

A curtain behind the counter swishes open, an average-sized man walking out and wiping at his bloodied hands with a disgusting, ruined rag. His torso is covered in spatters of blood and he’s sweating profusely, rivulets dripping down his forehead and arms. He throws the rag haphazardly at the counter, nearly knocking over the sage and making the original stranger flinch in disgust. 

“Don’t even recognize this place? I’m hurt.” Wooyoung pauses in shock, then quickly grows excited. The bloodied man is Eden, the ripperdoc who had saved Yeosang all those years ago when they had first met. San has to hold him down to stop him from jumping out of his chair.

“Yeosang’s here too, right?!” he chokes out, trying to fight against San’s grip on his waist and failing miserably. “Is he ok?! Where is he, he’s ok, isn’t he?”

Eden laughs at his enthusiasm and worry, remembering when he had first arrived with Yeosang in his arms and had been acting the same way. It seems some things truly never change. “He’s fine, I have to do some more work on him before I can let you see him, though.” 

Wooyoung’s eyes are ablaze, clearly preparing to set off on some sort of personal warpath. “Let me see him.” The mystery man side-eyes Eden when he sees the expression on his face, wishing they could have left Wooyoung strapped down on the surgery table. 

Eden sighs and hides a grimace. “I just told you, he’s not ready yet. I have to get back to work on him - I only came out to get some water. Ask again in a few hours and we’ll see.”

Wooyoung turns to the mystery man - who has returned to his seat behind the counter - as Eden bends down and grabs a bottle from a mini-fridge tucked in the corner of the room. “So who the hell is this guy, exactly?  And what the fuck did you do to me?”

Eden works at unscrewing the cap of the bottle with slick fingers, quickly-drying blood smearing all over it. “This is my assistant, Jongho - he mostly handles the finances, scheduling, whatever. Front-end stuff for patients. I’ve been teaching him how to do minor repairs, though, so I figured he could practice on you since most of your damage was superficial.” Wooyoung gawks. “Well? Did he do a good job?”

“You let your secretary do surgery on me?”

Eden seems genuinely confused by his horror, shrugging nonchalantly. “Should I not have? It turned out fine, right?” Wooyoung sinks back against San involuntarily, suddenly not keen on moving until someone gives him the green light. Who knows what might happen, his whole arm might fuckin’ fall off. He eyes his wrist suspiciously at the thought. 

Jongho glares at him, insulted, and returns to messing with his tarot cards.

“You’re not in any pain, right?” Eden asks as he finally gets the cap of his water off and takes a swig.

“Yeah, so?”

“So you’re good to go.”

He disappears back behind the curtain with another dramatic swish. Wooyoung ignores Jongho shooting him another dirty look and tilts his head back against San’s chest to look up at him, still slightly out of it from the sedatives. San looks down at him in amusement.

“Where’s Hongjoong?”

San shrugs. “I think he went to get food or something.”

 Wooyoung nods and lets his gaze wander around aimlessly, mostly unable to decipher what he’s looking at. He ends up passing out again as Jongho lays a tarot spread out on the counter, looking up at San.

“Interested in a reading?”

He rouses to the smell of food, Hongjoong having returned with a takeout bag from RuLai held in his hand victoriously. He still feels bad about having flaked before, even if he won’t admit it out loud. The sentiment is there.

Wooyoung’s head feels significantly clearer than it had however-long ago, his stomach growling aggressively and getting an uncharacteristic snort out of Hongjoong, who quickly tries to cover it up with a cough. He’s pretty sure the sedative is done messing with his system, now, considering he finds the energy to laugh at the slip up. 

They explain what happened during the mission to Hongjoong as they eat, San fully taking over when Wooyoung gets choked up as they get to explaining what happened to Yeosang. Jongho pretends he’s not listening despite the fact that he’s very visibly leaning towards them and the magazine in his hands is upside-down. 

San takes Wooyoung’s hand and rests it on his stomach, assuming that he’s still woozy from being drugged and trying to comfort him once he finishes their story. Wooyoung decides not to correct him and doesn’t pull away. Instead, he leans into him a bit more, avoiding looking anyone in the eyes. Hongjoong’s lip is trembling as he processes everything San had told him, turning his head away to hide his face until he gets himself back under control.

Nearly two more hours pass in silence, San falling asleep sometime during it. The sun is beginning to rise by the time Eden reappears, golden rays slowly filtering into the room through the front windows. He tosses his empty water bottle into the trash can and glances at them, looking surprised that any of them are still awake. 

He’s completely drenched in blood at this point and holding a few pieces of destroyed cyberware, mostly blackened and looking like they’re going to crumble to dust at the slightest breeze. Glancing at them contemplatively for a moment, he ends up throwing them into the trash can with the water bottle when he deems them completely destroyed. 

Wooyoung stares at him intensely until he finishes what he’s doing. “Well?”

Hongjoong, who had been dozing, perks up with worry etched deep into his features. San startles when Eden suddenly speaks, half a snore ripped from him as he jolts awake. 

“He’s going to be fine. He’s still asleep right now - had to replace nearly his whole system.” Wooyoung feels relief course through him, shoulders dropping and jaw unclenching. “You’re lucky you got him out of there when you did, or he would’ve been much worse off - it’s incredible I didn’t have to amputate that arm. It’s gonna take a few weeks to fully heal, though, and until it is, he cannot do anything strenuous. No jobs, no errands, no sex, and for the love of God no driving until his body acclimates to all the new cyberware.” Wooyoung takes notes in his head. Nothing strenuous - this should be easy. Just treat him like a princess. He could do that in his sleep.

“And before you ask - no, there’s no more risk of him going cyberpsycho than there was before. He actually has less cyberware than he used to, since I didn’t have any spare bioconductors lying around.”

“So, when can we see him?” Wooyoung and San ask at the same time. Eden raises an eyebrow at the display but doesn’t comment on it.

“Come back in a few days.”

“A few days ?” Wooyoung balks, jaw hanging open. Hongjoong frowns and glances at him, concerned. 

“Yes, a few days. I need to monitor him after he wakes up and do a few final adjustments, make sure he doesn’t tear anything open. I can’t have any of you distracting him while he’s healing until he’s healthy enough that that isn’t as much of a risk - and that means get out.” 

He looks at Jongho pointedly, who stands up and shoos them out the door, looking more annoyed at being used as muscle than anything else. Wooyoung’s complaints and contradictions are completely ignored until the door is slammed in his face, the small “open” sign hanging on it flipping to “closed.”

A week passes uneventfully, but it feels like it takes ten million years - or more! Wooyoung finds himself hanging out with San more often than not. His worry never leaves him, every noise his phone makes causing him to jump and making his heart flutter with hope until he realizes it’s just another spam text or email. 

The two of them are lazing around at San’s place in the middle of the afternoon when Wooyoung gets a call from an unknown number. Hesitant, he picks it up, prepared for another spam call or telemarketer.

“Hello?”

“Is this Wooyoung?”

“Yeah, who is this?’

“Jongho. From Eden’s. Yeosang woke up a few minutes ago.” In the background, he can hear Yeosang ask Jongho if he’s talking to Wooyoung, followed by a clattering noise and Eden’s panicked yelling as he tells him to lay back down. Jongho sighs into the phone. “He’s ready to be visited, if you couldn’t tell.” He then hangs up without saying a word more, leaving Wooyoung frozen where he stands. San looks at him with a raised eyebrow.

Suddenly, Wooyoung springs off San’s couch and takes off in a sprint. San looks at him with wide eyes before following, chasing after his rapidly moving figure. “Where’re you going?!”

“Yeosang’s up!” Wooyoung cheers, practically flying over the ground as he runs, a wide grin splitting across his face. San feels something fond flutter in his chest as he quickly catches up to the other man. Wooyoung shows San how to sit on the back of his bike once they reach it, putting up the kickstand and pulling out at a much faster speed than he probably should. San holds onto him as tight as he dares, a bit worried about falling off the back with how fast they’re going. 

An NCPD officer watches them fly by and starts to move to his car to pull them over, sighing and giving up before he even gets there. He returns his attention to the donut in his hand. Not worth it. 

Wooyoung doesn’t even bother to properly park the bike when they arrive, turning it off and leaning it against a wall as he runs in, the door slamming shut and rattling in its frame behind him. San moves the motorcycle to a safer spot in an alleyway nearby, hiding it behind some trash cans, and follows his partner as quickly as he can. He opens the door with much more care than Wooyoung had, only to find Eden trying to stop the other from busting into the surgery room.

“-rules , Wooyoung,” he’s stressing as Wooyoung tries to duck beneath his arms. “There are rules, you can’t just-” 

He’s cut off with a grunt as Yeosang appears in the threshold and simply throws him to the side like a wet sack of flour. He throws himself forward and into Wooyoung’s arms; they hug so tightly that San almost expects one of them to make a squeaky toy noise, Wooyoung burying his face in the other’s hair with a quiet whine that sounds more like a wail.

Yeosang certainly looks worse for wear. His dyed hair has visibly begun to grow out, black peeking through his roots, and there are heavy bruises beneath both his eyes. Bandages lace up and down his arm much like Wooyoung’s had a few days ago, but heavier and thicker, likely hiding gauze and ointment beneath. Another bandage is placed on the side of his head where he had hit the desk when he fell. San can see even more peeking out from beneath his shirt, but can’t see the extent of the damage - he politely averts his eyes as the duo kiss a few times, going back to hugging a few moments later.

Hongjoong sneaks in at some point as the two stand in place, still holding each other just as tightly as before and practically cuddling standing up. He looks at them and smiles fondly, eyes soft, before realizing San is watching him and quickly putting on his usual indifferent front. 

Finally, they pull away. San approaches carefully and gives Yeosang the half-crushed raspberry lollipop he had stored in his pocket. Yeosang laughs, remembering what they had talked about with him biting his lips, and captures him in a hug as well. Wooyoung quickly back-hugs him, unable to let go, and squishes Yeosang between the two of them.

He manages to wiggle an arm out from between them, signaling Hongjoong over, who looks surprised but gets up and joins the amalgamation of limbs. 

Eden waits a few moments before interrupting. “Alright, alright, this is all very touching, but I do need to give you your report.” 

Wooyoung quickly leads Yeosang to sit down, an arm around his waist. He takes his hand once they’re sitting down and begins to rub small circles into the back of it with his thumb. San sits on his other side and lets Yeosang take his hand with the one not currently being capitalized by Wooyoung. Hongjoong stands near them, uncharacteristically silent and eyes slightly shinier than usual. 

“First off, your bioconductors are kaput. Couldn’t salvage any of ‘em, and I didn’t have any spares, so they’re gonna need a full replacement if you decide you want that. Had to completely replace your ICE, too, the thing was completely destroyed. It’s honestly a miracle you didn’t get some sort of brain damage from whatever caused that.” Wooyoung squeezes his hand almost painfully tight, San paling and glancing at him from the corner of his eye. They both remember the blackened cyberware Eden had brought out and thrown away with a shiver.

A loud clang suddenly comes from the surgery room, Jongho appearing from inside a moment later. He pauses in the doorway, hand still holding the curtain back, and takes in the distraught faces in front of him, confused.

“What,” he asks slowly. “What’d I do?” Eden gives him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“Just giving them the diagnosis.” Jongho’s mouth makes a silent ‘o’ as he slips behind the counter the same way he had last week, digging around in a drawer, presumably searching for a magazine he hadn’t yet read or looking for his card deck.

“Right, anyway, where was I… ah yes, brain damage! One of your eyes had to get replaced. The damage wasn’t too bad, but it was going to get worse over time if we left it. I tried to use the same model as your other eye, so you shouldn’t see any drastic differences. Ha! Get it?” He laughs, clearing his throat when he takes in the distraught (and decidedly unamused) faces in front of him.

“Right, moving on. Your arm needed a full replacement - the cybernetic part, that is, not the flesh. I tried to give you a bit of an upgrade, added a few more ports ‘n whatever other netrunner shit was in there, but let me know if anything goes wrong with it. It’s probably going to be stiff until it’s healed enough that you can take those bandages off. Now, your OS system…” Eden says slowly, Jongho looking up with a slight grimace. Wooyoung does not like the look of that . 

“It was annihilated,” he finally sighs, “and I don’t usually work with cyberdecks, so I didn’t have a suitable replacement. All I had available was a Militech Paraline.”

Hongjoong jumps forward before Wooyoung can, indignant.

“A Paraline , Eden?” he chokes. “These two are my best techies and you give him a fucking Paraline?! ”

Even Yeosang looks frustrated from his spot between San and Wooyoung, mouth turned downwards and eyebrows furrowed. San just looks bewildered, not particularly well-versed in most cyberware specs.

Wooyoung leans over to whisper to him. “That’s, like, the worst deck on the market.” San’s eyebrows raise, understanding the issue, and he makes a face at Eden, who scowls.

“You’re lucky I took him at all after you showed up here with no warning and practically threw him on my table. Sorry I don’t have top-of-the-line shit ready to go whenever you need it.”

Hongjoong backs down, dragging a hand down his face. “You’re right, you’re right, thank you.” The other three all echo the sentiment, although Yeosang still looks slightly uncomfortable, glancing at his wrist before looking back up. Eden nods appreciatively. 

Hongjoong nearly jumps out of his skin again when he suddenly gets a call, sighing when he looks at the name on the screen. His eyebrows furrow in frustration. “I need to take this,” he groans, and steps outside with his phone to his ear. 

“Now,” Eden continues, “if you can manage to get your hands on a better deck I’ll install it for you at a quarter of the usual price. Consider it an apology for being under-prepared.” Jongho sighs quietly and puts his head in his hands. The other three quarters were definitely going to come out of his paycheck. 

“Anything else we should know?” Wooyoung asks, eager to get away from the smell of frankincense. He doesn’t dislike the smell, but the strength is starting to make his nose tickle. 

“Not that I can think of.”

Wooyoung helps Yeosang stand up, fretting over him. Jongho comes over to help as well - Wooyoung is hesitant to let him until then sees how easily the other simply picks Yeosang up by his armpits. He essentially glues himself to their sides as they walk, not letting go of Yeosang’s hand. San flanks Wooyoung on his other side, trying not to crowd Jongho so he can maneuver them to the door without hitting anything.

Jongho opens the door for them so they can get Yeosang out, who seems a bit woozy after so much excitement right after what had been a pretty intense series of surgeries, and offers a small wave before turning around to return to his spot at the counter. 

“Make sure to tell Hongjoong he still needs to pay me,” Eden yells at the last second. All of them roll their eyes.

The door clicks shut behind them unceremoniously as they step out into the neon pink lights of Urmland street, waiting as San jogs off to grab Wooyoung’s bike from where he had hidden it. Hongjoong stands across the street, trying to get off the phone and escape his conversation - he comes over after putting his phone back into his pocket.

Wooyoung smiles at San gratefully when he returns, taking the bike out of his hands and holding onto the handlebars. 

“What’s with all the important calls?” San asks. Hongjoong glances at him wearily.

“Same guy I flaked on you for,” he groans, shifting his weight back and forth. “Think I got in a bit over my head.”

Wooyoung snorts as he makes sure the bike’s kickstand is up before letting go of it. “What else is new?”

“I’m serious this time,” he scowls. “Guy’s based in fuckin’ Dogtown.”

“Oh my- Hongjoong-”

“Yeah, I know. I thought it’d be fine, but he’s being a pain in my ass.” He sighs again, lighter this time. “On the bright side, he introduced me to a merc who’s looking to come back to Night City, so I guess we’ll see how that goes. He seems easier to work with than this douche.” Wooyoung snorts, Yeosang cracking a small smile where he seems to be dozing against his side.

“Would we know ‘em?”

“Doubt it, this guy won’t even tell me his damn name. Keeps insisting that I call him “Raven” or “Crow” or some shit.” His sharp features are twisted in frustration, nails digging into his arms since he has nothing to tap them on.

“Sounds like an edgelord.” 

“You’re telling me. I need to go meet up with him, but…” Yeosang laughs at the hesitant look thrown at him. 

“Go, go, it’s not like you can’t talk to me later.”

“I just feel bad that I keep flaking out on you.”

“Make it up to me with food.” Hongjoong looks at him dryly but fishes a twenty out of his wallet, handing it over easily. He leans forward and puts a hand on Yeosang’s shoulder, eyebrows scrunching as he looks him up and down, taking in his battered appearance. “I’m really glad you’re okay. Seriously.” 

They say their goodbyes, Hongjoong clearly in a hurry, and watch him disappear into the crowd. Yeosang feels a bit stunned by the honest display of emotion.

“He’s really going through it recently, huh?” San remarks absently, watching the spot he had disappeared in and crossing his arms over his chest. He’s wearing another one of his stupid white tank tops. 

Wooyoung shrugs. “Think we all are.” He puts up the kickstand on his bike and grabs it by the handlebars again, looking at the other two questioningly.

They start moving when San shrugs in agreement to both his statement and the silent question, turning left and heading up to the market that was situated at the end of Urmland, following the smell of food. Yeosang could definitely use something to eat, judging by the way he perks up the second the meld of scents wafts towards him. 

San notices the way he carefully avoids looking in any of the dollhouse windows they pass by, frowning before speeding up to flank him, his body blocking the displays from his sight. He can feel Wooyoung’s eyes burning into him for a few seconds - he can’t tell whether the gaze is approving or not, but considering he’s still alive, he assumes so. 

Eventually, they stop and sit at a stall called Yagami Market. The woman behind the counter takes their orders and gets to work, looking like she’s struggling in the heat. 

They pay with the twenty Hongjoong had given them when she slides them their food, letting her keep any change as an extra tip. She smiles gratefully, sweaty and looking like she needs a break, and turns to a different group to take their orders next.

Wooyoung glances at San from the corner of his eye, then looks at his motorcycle where he’d let it rest next to them. “We can fit three people,” he finally says nonchalantly. San glances at him, confused for a second, before realizing his best bet for a ride had just been summoned to who-knows-where and his car is still at his house. He nods gratefully around a mouthful of food.

They finish eating as quickly as they can, stopping at a different stall to buy Yeosang an oolong tea and milk chocolate bar. Afterward, they ride back to San’s place, Yeosang seated between the two of them so there’s less risk of him falling off if he gets woozy again and San standing on the back wheel’s pegs, arms wrapped around Yeosang’s neck as he holds on for his life. The bruises beneath the other’s eyes seem a bit lighter after getting some liquids into him. 

All of them settle down on San’s couch - which seems to have become their new normal - in an attempt to relax after the stress of the past… well, however long it's been. San isn’t complaining, pleased with the company and the way they seem to have warmed up to his presence. Wooyoung takes Yeosang’s face in his hands and gently begins to rub at the bruises beneath his eyes to get the blood flowing again. 

Yeosang stands up and holds Wooyoung’s hands to his face so the other won’t let go, turning himself around so he can look at San and settling back against Wooyoung’s chest. He releases the other man’s hands so he can continue his ministrations. Wooyoung rolls his eyes playfully, but happily continues where he’d left off. 

It’s mid-afternoon by now, the sun’s golden rays shining across them and making their skin glow as a soft breeze kicks up in the surrounding air. The roof’s altitude amplifies it, giving it a refreshing chill as the heat of the day begins to wane. 

“San,” Yeosang says suddenly, eyes barely cracked open.

“Hm?” San looks up from the page he’d been reading in a magazine he’d swiped from Jongho’s stash.

“How did you know?”

“Sorry?”

“That I used to have a doll chip. That day at the diner… you shouldn’t have been able to tell. How did you know?”

“Oh, that - listen, I really am sorry that-”

“It’s not that.” Yeosang disperses San’s concerns easily, waving his good hand in the air dismissively. “How were you able to tell?” Wooyoung is quiet as he thinks about how San had blocked Yeosang’s view of the dollhouses earlier that afternoon, listening carefully.

San looks surprised, then seems to understand. “There’re a few specific lines in everyone’s memory that get altered when a doll chip interacts with them. They’re the only lines that don’t get reverted when the chip is taken out or the data is erased. It’s… like browser cookies, I think. Or cache. One of ‘em. It keeps your cyberware prepped for potential re-insertion of the doll chip to make things as fast and easy as possible for whoever inserted it.”

Yeosang looks away from him contemplatively, eyes turning to the sky for a few minutes as he thinks. He watches a cloud float overhead lazily before returning his gaze to San. 

“Overwrite them.”

“Yeosang,” he says quietly, eyebrows knitting. “I can’t just-”

“San, please. I can’t edit my own data. Not that kind, at least.” He glances at Wooyoung, thinking of when they had altered his hardware information not long ago. It can’t be much different than that, right?

“You seriously trust me enough to edit your fuckin’ memory data?” San looks floored as he asks, not even bothering to fight the idea anymore. Yeosang clearly has his mind set on this. 

“San,” Yeosang repeats once more, voice serious. San takes in the sight of him where he’s lounging against Wooyoung, looking nearly regal despite the bandages and scrapes covering him. “If you were planning on killing me, hurting me, whatever - let alone killing us - you would have let me die when I was incapacitated. You could have just left me on the ground somewhere, or thrown me over the balcony, or shot me if you really wanted to. If you wanted me dead, I would be dead. You know what you did? You got me out as fast as you could, took me straight to Hongjoong, and saved my life.” 

San’s eyes look shiny as he quickly turns his head away. He takes a few minutes to think, Yeosang’s words reaching some weird place in his heart that he hadn’t known existed. “I’m- ok. I’ll do it,” he finally says, “but I’m warning you, I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do. That’s up to you to figure out.” 

Yeosang smiles and closes his eyes, taking one of Wooyoung’s hands off his face and putting it on his sternum, letting go so he can continue making small circles. His thumb lightly digs into the spaces between his ribs, making him melt and his limbs turn to jelly. 

Wooyoung is quiet as he turns Yeosang’s words over in his head, seeing the truth behind them but not quite knowing what to do with it. He’s not sure how much he likes the idea of showing San their method of connecting, but wants this to be the other’s choice. Still…

“Yeosang, you really need to wait on this.”

“What?” Yeosang starts to sit up before Wooyoung digs his thumbs deeper into the gap between his bottom ribs and pushes him back down. He goes without a fight.

“Eden very specifically said no strenuous activities until you’re fully healed, and if it’s anything like what we do normally-”

“Woo-”

“Yeo.” His voice is firm, but the look in his eyes is dismayed. “I’m not letting you hurt yourself more. At least wait a few days, okay?”

Yeosang is quiet, eyes flitting over Wooyoung’s face, searching for something San can’t place before he relaxes again. “Okay,” he finally relents, voice soft and quiet. “Only a few days. Then, we’re doing this.” Wooyoung nods and squeezes him in his arms. San stays quiet, watching them affectionately.

The next couple of days pass by in relative peace. Wooyoung and Yeosang coop themselves up in their apartment, San occasionally calling to check in on them and make sure they’re both still feeling okay. He seems worried about them being inside all day, not seeming to understand that that’s how they tend to prefer it.

Wooyoung’s wrist is feeling significantly more normal than it had when he’d woken up at Eden’s clinic, his body and mind eventually getting used to the new cyberware installed. Yeosang, too, seems to be improving rapidly. On the third day, they remove the bandages on his head, the bandages on his torso following not long after. Wooyoung helps him slather ointment on his injured arm and re-wrap it in gauze and bandages every morning.

He finds he doesn’t mind the doting and princess-pampering - enjoys it, actually - but it does get a bit excessive at times. Wooyoung is nothing if not a worrier. Yeosang knows it’s because he loves him, but seriously, he doesn’t need to follow him around the apartment like a lost puppy following a stranger that gave it some food scraps. 

“Wanna go buy some diapers so you don't have to lose sight of me while I'm using the bathroom?” he snaps from inside the shower, yelling to be heard over the sound of running water. He rolls his eyes when he hears Wooyoung’s footsteps frantically retreat from outside the bathroom door - presumably, he’d been trying to make sure he didn’t slip on the wet floor. As much as Yeosang appreciates the good intent, he does need some semblance of privacy. 

He lets Wooyoung spoil him as much as he wants after he dries off and steps out of the bathroom, not complaining when he’s tucked in on the couch and cuddled, his favorite show playing on the TV.

They find themselves back on San’s couch a few days later, Wooyoung holding up his end of the deal happily. He places down a bag of wires, water bottles, and three takeout bags of popcorn “chicken.”

Yeosang is in much better shape than the last time he’d seen him in person, the bruises beneath his eyes nearly faded. He’s a fast healer, San notes, but also easily damaged and with the ability to deal a lot of damage at once. A glass cannon, if he’s ever seen one. 

They settle in and Wooyoung passes San a bottle of water, helping Yeosang uncap his own to save him some effort with his still-stiff arm. 

He waits a few seconds to let them drink before he looks at San seriously. “Have you ever done any kind of netrunning before?”

“No, not that I can think of, at least. Is there anything I should know?”

“The most important thing is that you can’t freak out during this. No matter what happens - no matter what anything looks like or sounds like or whatever - you need to stay calm. If you feel like you need to back out and take a breather, then back out.”

San is caught off guard by how intense he’s making it sound. “Why would I freak out, exactly?”

Wooyoung glances at Yeosang. “He’s probably gonna be in a lot of pain and start - umm, well, he’s probably going to start screaming. He’s not really going to be in control of his body while you’re doing this. Also, cyberspace is unpredictable.” He looks wary as he speaks, racking his brain for any important information. “You really just have to be ready for anything.” 

San looks disturbed but nods slowly, visibly more hesitant than he was before. He had assumed this would be an easy-in-easy-out type of thing. What the hell did ‘unpredictable’ mean? 

“And this is - I mean, you’ve done this before? Is it normal for all of that to happen? The- y’know, the pain? And the… screaming?”

They nod in unison. “The best thing you can do is get it over with quickly.”

San says nothing as he puts down his water bottle, trying to hide the way his hand shakes nervously. Wooyoung shifts where he’s sitting and opens up his wrist, beginning to plug the wires he’d brought into him with no preamble. 

“Is there a reason it’s like that?” San asks, watching his hands work. 

“All code interacts,” Yeosang explains so Wooyoung can focus on plugging the wires into the correct places. “Even the tiniest change alters how every line interprets every other line - with cyberware, it’s mostly how it interprets physical commands and biological responses.” 

San nods, eyes widening when Wooyoung brings out the final thick cable and starts trying to find the correct port for it in his arm.

 “So when one line from a series is deleted, there’s… basically just a bunch of gibberish left over, since it doesn’t have a starting line to contain it or tell it how to read the things sent to it. But the gibberish is still interacting with the rest of the code, altering the commands it sends out to the rest of your cyberware.”

San silently mouths an ‘oh,’ the concept suddenly clicking. “So it, what, just fucks up your system until you’re done messing with it?” Wooyoung finishes messing with his wires, moving on to Yeosang. 

“Well, your body moves because your nervous system sends out electrical pulses, right?”

“Yeah?”

“So it’s just like that, except there are way more than there are supposed to be and in places that they shouldn’t be at the time. Do you get it?”

“Totally,” San says, back to not getting it at all.

Wooyoung waits for them to finish before interjecting.

“I’m gonna warn you,” he says, looking at San and holding up the other end of the thick wire. “This is gonna feel fucking weird.” San is starting to think he might have gotten in over his head with this, but nods.

The second Wooyoung plugs the wire in, an unnatural sensation flows through him, starting at his wrist and spreading throughout his entire body. It feels like being dumped in ice water in the middle of winter, then being pulled out straight into the summer sun, then dunked back under and spun around because whoever’s dunking him hates his guts. He inhales deeper than he thinks he ever has, the action entirely involuntary, and stares at the clouds floating by overhead as he waits for the feeling to pass.

His eyes are watering when it’s finally over, a new feeling cropping up in its place. He looks down from the sky again - Yeosang smiles lightly when they make eye contact. The only way he can describe the feeling is being … connected, like he’s seeing things from an entirely new perspective that isn’t entirely his own. Like he doesn’t entirely control the blood running through his veins.

His awareness of his surroundings suddenly comes flooding back - when had he gotten that deep into his own head? - and Wooyoung’s face appears inches from his own, looking at him with concern as a hand lands on his shoulder.

“You good?”

San nods, not trusting his tongue to form comprehensible words at the moment. He moves it around in his mouth for a second, working his jaw before speaking. “Aren’t I supposed to be in an ice bath or a special netrunning chair for this or something?

Wooyoung laughs, not unkindly. “You’d need that if you were going into the actual Net. This is just Yeosang.” He thinks for a second when he notices San’s confused expression. “It’s like saying you need to bring a boat with you to go into a kiddie pool.” 

San resigns himself to the fact that he’ll never understand what these two are talking about and closes his eyes.

“We’re good to start?” Yeosang asks. San nods, not moving an inch otherwise.

He finds himself trying to think of what he had seen netrunners do when he was hanging around them; close your eyes, relax, and let your mind detach, they would say. Whatever that means.

He most definitely understands what that means when he reopens his eyes and finds himself in what is quite possibly the scariest place he has ever seen or been in his life - not scary as in dangerous, but scary as in wrong . It sends a shudder through his body, everything around him pitch black and empty save for thousands of neon blue dots in endless, neat rows absolutely everywhere, occasionally rippling forwards and backwards with an unseen force. 

He can feel the same sensations Yeosang must be feeling somewhere in the back of his mind, not quite feeling them for himself but more… understanding where they are, like feeling something in a phantom limb. Wooyoung pressed against his back, the couch cushion beneath his butt, the bandage on his arm squeezing his skin.

A figure appears in his peripheral, clumps of dark red dots - the same as the ones forming the ‘walls’ - adjusting to mimic Yeosang’s body and smiling face. He’s completely uninjured, form rippling when the dots on the walls do. San glances down at his own hands, noticing he’s colored with a soft, warm orange.

He can’t smell anything, can’t taste anything, and currently can’t feel anything except for a firmness beneath his feet and the weird phantom-limb sensations. Everything around him is suffocatingly silent except for a slight staticky buzzing in his ears whenever the dots get close to him, the ‘air’ completely stagnant. At least he can see, he supposes, not that there’s much to see.

He tries to make his physical mouth move, working his jaw until he can get his vocal cords back in gear.

“What the fuck?” he manages to croak, closing his mouth when his mind begins feeling weird from trying to be two places at once. The dots vibrate and shake in place as real-world Yeosang giggles, settling down when he falls quiet again. Yep, San thinks to himself, I hope I never meet another netrunner again in my life. He is in way too fucking deep.

The… phantom(?) Yeosang silently gestures for San to follow him, taking his hand when he remains frozen and leading him silently. It’s a strange sensation, slightly tingly and tickling him as the dots forming his body wiggle around against his palm. 

They walk for nearly ten minutes before the blue dots suddenly begin to change, rippling intensely and clumping together to form new shapes. A few moments later, rows and rows of data stacks sit in front of him, all identical in appearance. Occasionally, one will shift and turn in place for seemingly no reason. A nearby one turns when he feels - no, Yeosang feels - no, wait… when real-world Yeosang feels a slight breeze brush against his face. 

The phantom takes his hand and begins to walk, leading him through the rows and stopping in front of a stack. It forces his hand upward to touch one of the dots forming it - San’s vision smears with electric blue, the phantom Yeosang disappearing as the sensation of falling overtakes every single one of his senses despite his feet remaining on solid… solid something. He doesn’t feel right calling it ground. 

He realizes Wooyoung has been talking, his voice filtering into his mind as though underwater. He must be trying to guide him through what he’s assuming is happening, he thinks, but he can’t make out a word being said. 

The vertigo fades as his vision eventually clears, the smears washing out of his sight like watercolor paints and revealing a small, cramped room - a closet? He can’t tell for sure. 

All he knows is there’s a boy sitting on the floor in front of him, made of the same maroon that phantom Yeosang had been, staring at him with scared eyes. It takes a few seconds for him to realize the boy is Yeosang , but much, much younger - he can’t be more than eleven or twelve, cheeks still soft with baby fat and body clearly still growing. A gap in his mouth where an adult tooth is still coming in makes itself known when the boy puts a finger to his lips and makes a shushing sound. 

They listen as footsteps walk by outside, a gruff man’s voice shouting something in a language San can’t comprehend - but it’s English. He feels like he’s having a fucking stroke already, and he just got here. Why can’t he figure out what this guy is saying? He speaks English fluently.

“怖いです,” Young Yeosang whispers once the footsteps have faded. [I’m scared.]

San is frozen. Was that Japanese? Why is Yeosang speaking Japanese - and why can he understand it?

“何が起こっているのですか?” he asks, keeping his voice to a whisper as well, and just about shits his pants. Why can he speak Japanese? [What’s going on?]

“知りません,” Young Yeosang whispers, glancing at the door again. He has a slight lisp in his voice and a discolored section of dots next to his left eye. [I don’t know.]

He looks at San carefully, large eyes flitting over his face, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a long, narrow piece of paper. He hands it over and watches San fumble with it before pulling his knees up to his chest and looking away, staring at the wall. He’s trembling slightly - San wishes he could comfort him, but instead, he looks down at the paper in his hands to inspect it. 

Everything on it is jumbled, strange, the only intelligible words being Yeosang’s full name - Yeosang Kang - and a large number with a currency symbol next to it. San feels his stomach turn when he realizes what it means, glancing up at the little boy in horror before looking back down at what he now realizes is a receipt. 

At the bottom of it, where the barcode would normally be, is a scrolling line of text. A triangular bracket at the end of the line reveals it to be code. San watches it roll by five times, searching for some sort of significance, before realizing it’s one of the lines he’s looking for. Well, shit.

He tries everything he can think of - folding it, rolling it, crumpling it in his fist - before grabbing it in both hands and tearing it in half. Young Yeosang looks up at him, eyes shining proudly in the dark, and then melts into the floor. The maroon dots forming his body turn neon blue and race off. 

San almost wishes that his vision would smear again, becoming dizzy from the rapid movement of everything around him as every other dot begins to move at once. Eventually, they settle down, forming what must be some sort of high-class bar or luxury corporate office. 

A new shape forms, more of a rosy pink than a deep maroon like the previous one had been. It’s another Yeosang, older than Young Yeosang had been, a doll chip embedded deep in his neck and wearing … very, very little. He glances at San from where he’s seated at a bar counter in the back of the room, summoning him over with a curl of his fingers and an alluring smile. San feels sick at the sight but makes his legs move, settling into a bar stool next to him.

This Yeosang gets up and moves behind the counter, his hips swaying in a pattern that’s far too calculated to be natural as he walks. He stops at the back wall - San quickly drags his eyes up towards the faux ceiling as Yeosang turns around and bends over to take something out of a hidden compartment beneath one of the liquor cabinets. 

He lets his eyes wander back to the other man( ...manifestation?)’s face as he turns back around and hands him something, cupping it in both palms much like Young Yeosang had. 

San takes it more hesitantly than he had in the last scene (he isn’t sure what to call these apparitions), glancing down to see an NUSA government ID. Everything on it is unreadable, the headshot on the side blurred beyond recognition. All San can tell is that it isn’t Yeosang’s. 

“Whose is this?” he asks, relieved when he finds himself speaking English again. All Yeosang does is shake his head silently and gesture towards it again, leaning against the bar counter. From this close up, San can see the emptiness behind his eyes.

“You don’t know?” Yeosang shakes his head again - San doesn’t know what that means in response to his question. Can Yeosang not talk…? He glances back down at the ID, frustrated. A second line of code scrolls by where the person’s legal name should be. 

He tries to tear it in half like he had with the receipt, frowning when the plastic doesn’t budge. Yeosang watches him for a moment before he moves to help, digging around behind the bar once more. 

As he waits, he can hear Wooyoung’s voice filtering through the static in his head again, sounding worried. San tries to speak to reassure him that he was ok, just going through the trip of his fucking life and seeing things he definitely shouldn’t be seeing; he can feel his physical mouth move, unsure whether any sound comes out or not. 

He’s quiet when he hears Wooyoung’s voice shift a bit farther away, presumably addressing real-life Yeosang - he should not be seeing these not-memories, he knows this, but what the hell is he supposed to do? Say no? There’s clearly a reason he’s being shown them, right?

Wooyoung and Yeosang had warned him - both separately and together, even right before starting however-long ago - that cyberspace could be unpredictable, sometimes erratic, sometimes volatile, and that they weren’t really sure what he would see. They were only assuming it would be the same as whatever “the usual” meant, and frankly, he has no idea if this is normal or not. 

This Yeosang suddenly snaps up, fear filling the void behind his eyes, and grabs San by the wrist, pulling him behind the bar. He pushes on San’s shoulders until he crouches down, pressing their backs against the front of the counter so they can’t be seen over the top. He makes the same shushing motion Young Yeosang had as the sound of a door opening and closing echoes through the entire scene, a new voice shouting obscenities directed at Yeosang that San wants to throw up at. 

Yeosang hands him a knife and makes a stabbing motion in the air, then points at the ID. San hesitates for a split second, then starts absolutely going to town on it as the footsteps get closer, approaching the bar. He can feel his heart racing - he doesn’t know why, barely understands what’s going on - when he tries to break the ID again. It snaps in half just as a shadow projects over the bar’s counter.

Yeosang smiles at him softly, gratefully, then melts into the floor. 

The scene around him shifts again, expanding and becoming an open space like the one with phantom Yeosang had been. The dots continue to shift and wave around, a few brushing by him and making his skin tingle strangely until they eventually stop. When his vertigo clears, he finds himself in a familiar place - the gigantic dump outside Rancho Coronado, the one that bleeds out into the Badlands.

Surrounding him are mountains and mountains of garbage bags, a narrow path winding through them. A motorcycle leans against one of the smaller hills.

Two figures form in front of him this time, one a rich, royal purple and one a deep blood-red. He kneels down to look at them closer.

The purple figure reveals itself to be a younger-looking Wooyoung (although not by much), the red forming Yeosang as San had come to expect. Wooyoung has one finger on the pulse point of Yeosang’s neck, the other holding his wrist. Yeosang’s eyes are closed, body limp and chest unmoving, both completely frozen in time.

San is about to stand up again when Yeosang’s eyes snap wide open, the arm Wooyoung isn’t holding shooting out and grabbing San’s wrist like a vice. San is pretty sure he nearly jumps out of his skin at the sensation, choking back a fearful sob. 

This Yeosang simply pulls him, forcing him down to his knees and placing San’s hand on his neck, only letting go once San’s fingers are resting over the still-implanted doll chip - the same one the second Yeosang had had. He stares at San unblinkingly, frowning when the other doesn’t move. 

He raises his arm again and presses on San’s fingers until his nails are digging into his neck, nodding reassuringly when the other looks at him in something straddling the line of terror.

“Yeo-” he tries to start, but the other shakes his head, grabbing San’s hand a third time and squeezing so hard that he’s forced to maintain a grip on the shard in his neck. He then draws both their hands back so San is forced to join him in pulling it out. He lets go, giving a small nod once more when San hesitantly continues to pull until the chip is completely removed.

Yeosang’s eyes slide shut again, freezing back into the position he had started in the second the chip is disconnected. San hates it here. Genuinely. This has got to be one of the worst experiences of his life. Why do netrunners subject themselves to this shit on the regular? There’s no fucking way this is normal, right?

He stares at the chip expectantly. Sure enough, a line of code flits by where the brand, manufacturer, and developer names would normally be printed. 

He wanders around the edges of the trash piles, eventually giving up on finding a rock and returning to where he had started next to the two still kneeling on the ground. 

San hesitates for a second, glancing at phantom Wooyoung apologetically before going to his bike and kicking at one of the handlebar mirrors until it snaps off. He ignores the unnatural prickly sensation in his hand as he picks it up, the dots forming it feeling like they’re biting at him as he places the chip on the ground and begins hammering at it as hard as he can.

He has no idea how long he’s been going at it before the chip starts to break, putting his whole body into every motion. Spiderweb cracks slowly spread throughout out, a sound like crunching snow following every line that forms. He continues to bash at it like a man possessed, the mirror an unrecognizable mess of metal and glass shards. His hands sting with cuts, the blood racing down his arms the same color as his skin instead of the red it should be. 

He barely notices when the chip completely shatters, only stopping his wild movements when a hand gently touches his chin and tilts his head up. The phantom Yeosang’s shining face smiles down at him, surrounded by the neon blues and pitch blacks of his personal cyberspace and framed by two data stacks, faux hair gently hanging down and tickling San’s nose. 

He helps San stand - when had he fallen? - and leads him back in the direction they had come from at the very start, stopping after an amount of time San can’t even begin to estimate. His arms and legs ache, his heart panging as he thinks about everything he had just seen. Slowly, his brain is able to piece together a vague overview of Yeosang’s past. He can see why he had been so adamant about ridding any trace of it from his body.

He understands now why Wooyoung had reacted the way he had at the diner. “He didn’t have a choice,” he had said, and San’s stomach turns, practically doing somersaults inside him. He feels far beyond terrible; he never should’ve seen any of that. If Yeosang wanted to tell him about what happened to him, it should’ve been his choice.

Phantom Yeosang offers a small wave as San turns around to face him, vision beginning to smear again. San finds himself waving back, and Yeosang smiles as he melts into the ground below, clumps of dots dispersing and racing off to where they’re needed.

Wooyoung’s face is directly in front of his when he comes to, gasping for air like a drowning man who had just been pulled onto land. Yeosang jolts similarly, and San can’t even describe the feeling that goes through him when he sees the bruises and bandages laced across his body, brain running through all the different versions of him he had seen as he looks at the man sitting inches away from him.

“San?” Wooyoung calls, clearly beginning to panic at the look in the other man’s eyes. He pats at San’s cheek until the other turns to look at him, expression far beyond distraught. Wooyoung’s eyes flit over his face, his own expression slowly growing more upset before he rushes to unplug the other two as quickly as he can, practically ripping the wires out of their arms.

Yeosang looks at him and reaches for his hand, ever sweet, ever gentle. “Are you okay?”

San bursts into tears before he can get his emotions under control. “Never,” he sobs, “and I mean never ask me to do something like that again.”

Wooyoung is staring at him in horror, Yeosang’s eyes widening before he jumps up and wraps San in a tight hug.

“It’s done,” San sniffles after a few seconds, his eyes blue as he looks at Yeosang in his arms. "The code is completely gone; your cyberware is functioning like it normally would." Yeosang looks up at him, face twisting.

“I don’t give a shit about that right now, are you kidding me? Are you alright?”

San nods hesitantly. He looks shaken in a way neither Yeosang nor Wooyoung had ever seen someone look after a run - never, except for those who had touched the Blackwall and come back alive.

Yeosang glances at Wooyoung, who shuffles over on his knees and touches San’s shoulder.

“What did you see?”

He should’ve known something was wrong. Should’ve known as soon as San had seemed unable to hear them, had stopped responding to Wooyoung’s voice and Yeosang’s physical touch. He had been uneasy about the fact that Yeosang didn’t flinch even once, had remained in control of himself the entire time, but had chalked it up to the processes of hardware reassignment and memory editing (or whatever San was up to) being different.

Now, San is a trembling mess in front of him, looking like he’s on the verge of a breakdown, and he can’t help but wonder if he could’ve done something differently despite the fact that he knows he couldn’t have. You don’t pull a netrunner out of the Net before they’re ready. 

San shakes his head at Wooyoung’s question, snot and tears dribbling down his face. “I’ll be fine,” is all he whispers before burying himself back in Yeosang’s arms. Wooyoung wraps his own around San’s back, concern growing.

San finally pulls away a bit to speak.

“Just give me some time to - to process all that. I don’t think any of that was normal. There was - there were a bunch of Yeosangs and everything was all red and blue, and there were all these dots, and the Yeosangs were made of them, and I… just give me time. I need to - I don’t know.”

Now they’re both worried, eyes widening in horror at the picture San is painting for them. The way he describes his experience certainly makes it sound like he’d touched the Blackwall, but that was far beyond impossible - the only things Wooyoung had ever heard described as ‘made of clumps of red dots’ in the Net were rogue AIs and victims of Alt Cunningham's Soulkiller program. Was it because he’d gone into Yeosang’s memory drives…? Were they that different to interact with than every other piece of cyberware?

“It was just… scary. I’m fine,” San eventually continues. “We can - can we talk about it later? We need to meet up with Hongjoong soon, right? To give him the USB thing you have?” They both nod. “We can talk about it then. I think I need to lay down.”

They help San get into his shack and onto his mattress, leaving the chicken and water by his side for when he feels up to eating something before retreating back down the stairwell and to their bike, thoughts churning.

Chapter Text

Wooyoung wakes to an empty bed and the strong scent of bleach making his nose hairs curl. Throwing himself out from under the covers and stumbling for a moment when his legs become tangled, he throws on a pair of boxers before running into the main living area in a tizzy. Weird chemical smells plus a missing Yeosang can only ever equal disaster.

A second wave of bleach hits the air when the bathroom door cracks open, Yeosang peeking out curiously and snorting when he takes in Wooyoung’s frazzled appearance. His hair is hidden beneath a plastic bag, a towel wrapped around his shoulders with spots of discoloration spattered all over it. 

Wooyoung freezes and then quickly adjusts, trying to pose as though he wasn’t just fighting for his life to get on some underwear.

“Hey there,” he says with a grin and a wink. He shoots a finger gun and immediately regrets it, returning his hand to his side. Yeosang rolls his eyes. 

“Good morning,” he finally says, turning back to the bathroom. Wooyoung quickly crosses the apartment and follows him in, peeking over his shoulder as he removes the bag and opens a box of hair dye. A woman with blonde hair beams at him from the front. Wooyoung gawks, eyeing the matted-down strands of pink slowly getting covered as Yeosang opens the tube of dye and gets to work.

“Blonde?”

The other hums in confirmation and continues his ministrations, spreading the dye through his hair. “Can you get the conditioner stuff out for me?”

Wooyoung bends over and digs for the protective conditioner, eyes roving to the side so he can continue to watch. The tip of Yeosang’s tongue is peeking through his lips adorably, his eyebrows furrowed in focus. Wooyoung finally finds the conditioner and yelps when his back cracks as he stands up to pass it off. 

“My roots were starting to grow in,” Yeosang finally elaborates. He puts the bag back on his head and places the conditioner in an easy-to-see place in the hopes it’ll remind him to use it later. “The pink was too unique, too, and I’ve had it for too long. Someone probably saw us at some point even if nobody’s come after us yet. Way too recognizable.”

Wooyoung can’t argue with that reasoning, but he still finds himself mourning the loss. The pink had been so cute… 

Yeosang frowns silently and squeezes around Wooyoung to get out of the bathroom. “I don’t think we can ever go back to Lizzie’s,” he finally sighs as he flops onto the couch, Wooyoung following. He’s careful not to let his head touch the back, leaning forward with his arms on his knees. “That girl wanted to have the same shade of pink as mine… or she wanted to match, or something.” 

Wooyoung digs through the random shit that’s accumulated on their table for the remote. “You don’t think she’d like blonde?” 

“She seemed pretty serious about the whole pink thing.” 

Wooyoung holds up the remote with a sound of triumph and shrugs. “We’ve never even been to Lizzie’s before San, so it’s not like it matters. You’ll look cute, blonde, anyway.” He shrugs indifferently once more, flipping through the channels with increasing frustration. Why is daytime TV always so awful?

He finds himself tuning out the sound of the show playing in front of him, thinking about San once more now that the man had been mentioned. He seemed to have a near-permanent place in Wooyoung’s brain these days, especially after the events that had transpired a few days ago. 

He’s still talking to them - he messages them daily - but the conversations are mostly meaningless small talk and San trying to weasel information out of them; their favorite foods, favorite movies, favorite colors. He hadn’t brought up anything that had happened, not even the 6th Street job. The only indication he gave that anything had transpired was asking how they were feeling and whether they were healing well or not.

None of it makes sense to Wooyoung. He doesn’t understand the behavior, primarily, but he also can’t stop thinking about how San had reacted to netrunning. Something must have gone wrong, but Wooyoung had been guiding him the whole time - although San hadn’t shown any indication he could hear them aside from the occasional grunt. 

He runs through the past few days in his head, eyebrows furrowing. The only thing he can think of that could’ve caused an issue is Yeosang’s cyberware replacements, but those shouldn’t have had any effect on anything. Maybe San’s cyberware reacted weirdly to them? Were they incompatible? But that had never happened before… Maybe it was just the nature of the work San had been doing, editing memory storage stuff?

There are way too many unknowns here, and it’s bothering Wooyoung way too deeply. He needs to know what happened for his own sake, at this point. 

A weird thought pops into his head as he goes over every single thing he can remember from being at the clinic - wasn’t that Jongho guy messing with tarot cards? And hadn’t he asked San if he wanted a reading? He’s pretty sure he’d passed out before hearing San’s response, but knowing him, he’d said yes. 

Wooyoung doesn’t particularly believe in mysticism or any of that spiritual tarot bullshit, but…

A lead is a lead. Maybe the tarot would show him something he’d missed before, like “your life's gonna suck for a little bit.” Is there a card for that? There must be.

He goes through his recent calls, eventually finding the one from an unknown number - he quickly adds it to his contacts as Jongho - and dialing. He waits nearly a full minute before the other man finally picks up.

“You did a tarot reading for San before, right?”

Jongho is silent. Wooyoung can hear Eden shuffling around in the background - it sounds like they’re in the middle of a procedure.

“Hello to you, too. I’m good, thanks for asking.” Wooyoung rolls his eyes. Yeosang gets up to check the box on his hair dye again, not sure what Wooyoung’s up to. 

Jongho waits another moment before speaking to make sure his annoyance properly seeps through the phone. “Yes, I did a reading for San. Why.”

“What was it? Like, what was the fortune? The reading?”

“He wasn’t very specific about what he wanted, so I did a general three-card spread. Past, present, and future. Everything is pretty open to interpretation.” 

“Yeah, but what was it?”

“Yeah, sure, let me just remember every reading I’ve ever done in case someone calls to ask about them… Give me a moment, good god,” Jongho huffs in frustration. Wooyoung can hear him shuffling through papers before he clears his throat.

“Reversed Six of Swords, Judgement, Two of Cups.”

Wooyoung finds he has no idea what that means. He can physically feel Jongho’s exasperation through the phone and looks around the room, embarrassed. Yeosang continues to shuffle around in the bathroom obliviously. 

He grasps for straws, not wanting to feel like he’s wasted Jongho’s time. “Can you come do a reading for me and Yeosang? At our place?”

Jongho near-audibly frowns. “I don’t do house calls.”

“Not even for me?”

The other end of the line is silent.

“Not even for -” Wooyoung digs through their mess to see what offerings they have lying around. “-a gift card to Capitán Caliente?”

“I’ll be there in twenty. Send the address.” Wooyoung does a little dance in celebration once the line clicks with the end of the call and quickly sends Jongho their address. Yeosang’s voice floats out from the bathroom, cutting Wooyoung’s celebration short.

“What happened to not wanting anyone to know where we live?”

Wooyoung’s cheeks tinge with pink. “That was different ,” he sputters. “Eden trusts this guy, so he’s fine! It’s different!”

Yeosang laughs and returns to whatever he was just doing - Wooyoung assumes he’s putting the protective conditioner into his hair based on the slightly floral scent beginning to mingle with the bleach from earlier. He throws himself onto the couch, huffing and crossing his arms, then near-immediately stands up and faux-stomps his way over to Yeosang.

Whatever he was going to say is lost the second he turns the corner, his brain filling with static. Yeosang finishes fluffing his hair with the same towel as earlier, looking up at him and beaming. Clearly, the dye had finished setting, the conditioner giving his hair a soft and fluffy texture.

“How’s it look?”

Amazing. Stupendous. Phenomenal. You look like an angel. This might turn me to religion. Holy shit.

Despite these thoughts, Wooyoung says nothing, his brain’s processing power completely shot. He finally manages to get himself back in gear when he starts choking on his own spit, closing the door behind him and crowding Yeosang against the sink. 

“We’ve got twenty minutes.”

Yeosang laughs and lets himself be shuffled backwards. “I’ll take that to mean you like it.”

Jongho’s nose wrinkles at the absolutely revolting amalgamation of smells that hits him when the apartment door squeaks open. He chooses not to comment on it, nor does he comment on Wooyoung’s disheveled appearance as he gestures for Jongho to take a seat on their couch.

The table in front of him is clean, but he can see the things that must have been on it moments ago peeking out from beneath the couch. He’s hesitant to place his deck on it, unsure how sanitary it is. These two don’t exactly seem… well, actually, they seem pretty par-for-the-course as far as tech-bro mercenaries go. Yuck.

“So what’s going on, again?” Yeosang asks when he emerges from some room in the back. He’s blonde now, Jongho notes with mild interest. That explains at least half of the stench. He also has his shirt on backwards.

Reluctantly, Jongho pulls his tarot deck out of its case and sets down the stack, poking at the sides until the edges are all perfectly aligned. Wooyoung nestles into Yeosang’s side when they join him on the couch - there is a world, he’s sure, where he’s puking his guts out at how affectionate these two are. If they don’t stop, it’s going to be this one.

“He’s going to do a card reading for us!”

“I thought you didn’t believe in ‘spiritual bullshit?’” Yeosang asks, confused as he makes air quotes, then seems to realize what he’s just said and turns to Jongho. “No offense.” Jongho shrugs, only mildly offended. He’s heard worse.

Wooyoung forces a laugh, unsure how he’s supposed to get out of the social hole he’s dug and not realizing that Jongho really doesn’t care that much. “Well, you like it, don’t you Sangie?”

Yeosang nods in agreement, clearly not buying what Wooyoung’s trying to sell but deciding to go with it. “I don’t do tarot, though,” he adds before they move on, “I do astrology.” Wooyoung looks pained.

“Right,” Jongho says slowly, “anyway.” He gestures to the evenly-spread cards on the table. He had laid them out while the other two were talking, uninterested in whatever Wooyoung’s trying to convince him of.

They’re a beautiful, rich black with golden detailing and silver embellishments that reflect in the sunshine and neon lights filtering through the windows. Yeosang wipes his hand on his pants to make sure it’s clean, then gently runs a finger over one of them - they’re clearly beyond high-quality, feeling like thick, weighty cardstock. They hold a strange softness not unlike that of watercolor canvas. 

“What’re you looking for?” Jongho continues. “There’s three-spreads, five-spreads, a full read… I can do whatever.”

“Is there one that’s kind’ve… in the middle? Between a basic one and a full one?” Yeosang finally asks when Wooyoung does nothing but look lost.

Jongho nods. “Five-spread,” he hums, adjusting the cards so the other two can reach them more easily. “I’ll keep it simple, since I’m assuming this is your first time. Cards one, two and three are what you’re leaving, your present situation, and your potential future. Card four is a hidden influence in your life - usually something that’s holding you back - and card five is the same, but something that has an influence on your future.”

He waits for them to process what he’s said before continuing. “Focus on the cards, see if you’re drawn to any of them, and only think of what you’re looking for. Most importantly - always leave what you’re looking for vague and open-ended. Instead of asking, ‘what’s my future,’ ask about potentials. ‘What might happen in the future based on where I am now?’ That kind’ve thing.”

“Why?” Wooyoung asks, running a finger over the cards much like Yeosang had. He makes a quiet pleased noise when he touches one of the gilded edges.

“Ask in absolutes and you’ll deal in absolutes.” Jongho looks deathly serious as he says this. Wooyoung finds himself wondering, not for the first time, what exactly he’s just gotten himself into.

“I’ll go first,” he finally says. Jongho nods and gestures towards the cards, organizing them as Wooyoung pulls them out. He’s surprised - and slightly freaked out - when he does feel the pull Jongho had described, his hands gravitating towards certain cards as a strange weight settles in his chest and directs him in the correct direction. They feel just as expensive and high-quality as they look between his fingers - he handles them with as much delicacy and grace as he’s capable of.

Once he’s finished picking five he leans towards Jongho, Yeosang joining him with barely-veiled intrigue. Jongho hides a smile at the looks on their faces, their eyes gleaming with interest as he flips over the first card. 

Yeosang explodes in laughter, throwing himself back on the couch and nearly rolling off it as Wooyoung’s ears burn red in embarrassment. Sitting in front of them is The Fool.

Jongho barely stifles a laugh himself. “It looks bad,” he reassures, “but much like Death, it has a very different meaning than you’d expect at first glance. It’s not calling you stupid.” Wooyoung looks away with a scowl, crossing his arms and leaning back as well.

“What’s it mean, then?” he pouts childishly. Yeosang wipes a tear from his eye as he tunes back in, fighting back his giggles.

“New beginnings,” Jongho says with a nod, “and new journeys. Think of it as a sign to take a leap of faith - an opportunity presenting itself to you when you need it most. Because this is your ‘past’ card, you took that opportunity when it was presented to you and ran with it.” Yeosang’s stopped laughing, both of them now listening with rapt attention. “You overcame some sort of fear, likely fear about beginning something new, taking that leap, or even closing a chapter of your life to begin a new one. Which brings us to the present.”

He flips over the second card, raising an eyebrow. “The Wheel of Fortune,” he says, “another Major Arcana. Interesting. Whatever you started with, The Fool has gone through the motions it needed, and something new is going to take its place. You’ve likely been presented with another opportunity - whether you take this one, though, is up to you. Where The Fool guides you to a new place in a time of need, The Wheel continues to turn regardless of what you choose. Think of it as representing the cycle of life. You can’t beat The Wheel. Go with its flow until you either decide to take the opportunity or it passes and the next cycle begins.”

Wooyoung frowns, unsure he likes how accurate this has been thus far. Jongho turns the third card before he can say anything and lets out a low whistle.

“The Lovers,” he nearly laughs. Yeosang grins merrily and pokes Wooyoung’s leg. “Three Major Arcana, let alone in a row… you’ve got some major shit going on, man.” Wooyoung finds himself agreeing with an internal sigh. 

“With this following The Wheel, it’s pretty safe to assume you’re being given the opportunity to form new connections - not inherently romantic, but that’s not off the table. Could be a friend, could be something with your family, could be a job - probably not that last one, but it’s not unheard of. You need to be willing to communicate honestly with those you care about. Honesty and genuinity will strengthen your most important bonds. You also need to be more honest with yourself - who you are, your morals, your values. Don’t put those things aside to make someone else happy. All that’s going to do is hurt both of you.” 

He taps the card with a finger, looking up at Wooyoung seriously. “Be honest with yourself and those around you and you’re going to end up with strong lifelong connections. Personally, I would recommend figuring out who or what The Wheel is bringing you, taking it, and never letting go.” 

Wooyoung nods seriously. Yeosang looks contemplative next to him.

“Card four,” Jongho continues, “Four of Swords. Before going for that new opportunity, you need a break. The Wheel is willing to wait for you to regain your sense of self and stability before it continues turning. Separate yourself from anything that’s draining you, relax, and recollect before you take another step. Enjoy what you already have before going for something new.” 

He pauses before picking up the final card. “As your surgeon, I do have to agree and encourage you to rest. Stop doing dangerous shit for a bit. I’d rather not have you on my table again for a while - you’re very expensive, you know. Very high tolerance to anesthetic, I had to give you nearly double the usual dosage and you still woke up in the middle of the procedure.”

Wooyoung shrugs sheepishly.

“Final card - Ten of Cups.” Jongho blinks. “With The Lovers, wow. You have the potential for a beautiful future.” Wooyoung grins proudly, Yeosang smiling next to him. “The long story short of this card is that your relationships are thriving and as strong as they can be, especially romantic connections. You have everything you need to be happy and everyone around you is getting along - very harmonious. With the rest of your cards… Take that break, then take that opportunity and you’ll probably be the happiest person in Night City.” 

Wooyoung makes a joyful noise, wiggling in his seat. Yeosang laughs fondly as Jongho puts the five cards back into the deck and shuffles them before spreading them out once more.

“You want one, too?” he asks Yeosang once the two are done doing whatever it is they’re doing, bouncing around and singing like they’ve just won a sports match. 

They quickly reseat themselves as Yeosang nods, following the same process Wooyoung had. If Wooyoung thought he had been gentle with his handling of the cards, Yeosang is near reverent.  

Jongho turns over the first card and immediately grimaces. “Nine of swords,” he says simply, as though that explains everything. “I won’t go that deep into this one, but it signifies a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety, lots of negative emotions. You needed help with… something , and I’m assuming you got it since you’re sitting here.”

He turns over the second card quickly. “Death.” Wooyoung almost recoils before remembering what Jongho had said before - often misinterpreted. Ok. Sure. Not scary at all.

“It represents major change, much like The Wheel,” Jongho quickly elaborates when he sees the face Wooyoung is failing at hiding. Yeosang looks more-or-less indifferent. “The difference is that whereas The Wheel brings the changes to you in the form of opportunity, Death is the end of something major - a relationship, a career, a life - or the beginning of a new one. Following the Nine of Swords, however, this is a very positive card. It likely signifies the end of whatever was weighing on you - whatever called on the Nine is making way for a new chapter in your life, which is…”

He reaches out, turning over the third card. “The Star.” He frowns, eyebrows furrowing. “What’s up with you two and Major Arcana? This is getting ridiculous.”

“We’re big deals,” Wooyoung says with a shrug. Yeosang and Jongho roll their eyes in unison. 

“Right. Anyway, The Star. This follows The Tower in the order of Arcana - it signifies a period of peace and relief where you can really do anything . You have a completely blank slate to work with. You’ll have a lot of time to figure out more about yourself, maybe pursue some goal you’ve been working towards, that kind’ve thing. You’ve got the space and support to make … well, you. Pick up a hobby or something, too.”

He turns over the fourth and fifth at the same time, glancing at his phone when it starts to ring before putting it back in his pocket wearily. 

“The Moon,” he sighs as he looks at the fourth, “and The Four of Wands.” He taps at The Moon pointedly, looking up at Yeosang. “You’re letting your fears control you. Things from the past - likely the Nine of Swords - are still lingering and they scare you. You’re basing your decisions, behaviors, actions - consciously or not - on those experiences. I’d suggest dealing with that before The Star becomes relevant, or you could really fuck yourself over.”

He taps at The Four of Wands and then begins to pack up the cards, returning them to their box. “Basically, this means you’re where you need to be. Think of it as a sign that you’re in your true home. This one and The Moon are going to fight a lot, though - your surroundings versus your subconscious. They both want what's best for you, but The Moon is going to go about it the wrong way. Recognize what comes from which source and you’ll be fine.” He puts the box in the bag he had come with and heads towards the door.

“Leaving already?” Wooyoung sits up, confused. Jongho rubs at the back of his neck sheepishly.

“I kind’ve didn’t tell Eden I was leaving…?” he says slowly. “Don’t worry about it; Where’s my gift card?” Wooyoung groans- he’d kind’ve hoped Jongho would forget - and gets up to grab it, tossing it over. Jongho catches it expertly and disappears through the threshold, fumbling around in his pocket for his phone. They can hear Eden's yelling from the stairwell as the door clicks shut.

Yeosang sits on the couch, chin in hand as he goes through everything Jongho had said. Wooyoung clearly wasn’t overly concerned as he bounces his way back over, flopping back onto the couch next him.

“Pick up where we left off?”

Yeosang snorts. “You’re gonna have to get used to this hair at some point. Did you even listen to anything Jongho said?”

Wooyoung gasps in mock offense. “Of course I did! He said our lives are gonna be awesome, I have to chill out, and you should pick up a hobby! And some other stuff.” Yeosang looks at him, exasperated as Wooyoung squishes against him, puckering his lips exaggeratedly. “Worry about it later?”

Yeosang looks at him and shakes his head fondly. “Later is good.”

Yeosang groans and rolls over when he hears his phone make a noise, cracking his eyes open.

He squints against the midday light where it’s shining directly into his eyes through the window. There’s a text from Hongjoong asking him and Wooyoung to meet up so they can give him the USB with the computer data on it and get their pay. 

He shakes Wooyoung awake to make sure it’s okay with him, texts Hongjoong an affirmative, and turns back over.

When he wakes back up he actually reads the text. Hongjoong wants to meet at the docks off Holly street at dusk - Yeosang pats his shoe at the mention of Holly street, making sure the knife San had given him was still there. He had taken to carrying around bandages and some basic medical supplies, too, any time he was carrying around a bag. 

He tries not to worry about San too much but finds it difficult - the man had been so freaked out, he can’t help but wonder if there was something he could’ve done to avoid whatever had happened. 

Before they leave, Yeosang makes a copy of the USB onto one of their numerous blank ones, slapping a hastily-written label onto its side and tossing it into their bucket.

When they walk down the ramp to the dock, they find San and Hongjoong have already arrived. San is sitting on the roof of Hongjoong’s car - the only reason he’s getting away with this is that Hongjoong is on the phone a few steps away, gesturing wildly. Yeosang can’t help but notice the way San seems to avoid his gaze as he waves to them in greeting, doing a double-take when he notices Yeosang’s hair. He says nothing about it. 

Hongjoong hangs up the phone, fuming, but seems to calm down when he finally notices them. He, too, does a double-take at the new hair color.

“Looking good,” is all he offers before refocusing.

They toss him the USB and sit down. He inspects it for a second, spinning it around between his nails - they look more like claws, today. He’d clearly gotten a manicure done since the last time they’d seen him. Finally, he nods in approval and stows it in one of his pockets.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet,” he says, eyeing the spot San is sitting on warily. “It’s too dangerous to just have you send me it, I’m sure you understand.” He transfers them the money a few seconds later, Wooyoung nodding gratefully once it’s gone through. 

He tunes out when Hongjoong starts bitching about that Raven guy again, not particularly interested in whatever it is he’s up to with that mess. He finds his eyes straying to San every few seconds, watching him.

He had researched the cards Jongho had mentioned San pulling, having forgotten to ask about them when he had been at the apartment. The only one he could remember was Judgement, the Major Arcana. He didn’t want to ask what the other two were again, feeling as though he had bothered Jongho enough. 

Judgement is significant of change, although a different type of change than Wooyoung’s and Yeosang’s had been. It was more along the lines of reaching a significant stage in your life - when you finally reach the moment that everything’s been building up to. Something about making decisions… he can’t remember all of it. 

San keeps glancing at them, too, although he’s less subtle about it. Wooyoung can see the bags under his eyes from here. He tunes back into whatever Hongjoong’s ranting about now - ah, still Raven - and tries to keep his eyes from straying too much.

“And he wants to meet up, like, all the fucking time! I’m busy! I barely get a fucking minute to myself, I mean, he’s probably gonna call again in five minutes and-” 

As if on cue, his phone begins ringing. Yeosang looks at him in concern as he scowls at it, nose scrunching. 

“Are you doing okay?” he asks hesitantly, watching the way Hongjoong grasps at his hair with one hand. He huffs at the question and shakes his head in exasperation but doesn’t answer, looking as though he’d like nothing more than to throw his phone off the dock into the river.

“I’m supposed to be meeting him a few minutes from now at Tom’s. I’m not even late and I’m getting calls, like, have some patience… god.” He retreats to his car slowly, picking up the call on the way and immediately putting it on mute.

“Good job, blah blah blah, same shit I always say. Don’t blow all your money on bike upgrades this time.”

“Hey,” Wooyoung snaps, “the light-up rims are fuckin’ awesome.”

Hongjoong doesn’t even try to argue against this - they are, in fact, pretty awesome. 

“Whatever. Wish I could stay around and chat like we usually do, though. I feel like I’ve been kind’ve bailing on you guys recently.” All three of them shrug; he does look genuinely apologetic, even as he climbs into the driver’s seat. San slides off the roof as the car turns on.

“You’re busy, man, go take care of your shit. We can talk some other time.” San waves him off.

Hongjoong raises his eyebrows in something along the lines of skepticism. “Sure, if I ever get Raven to leave me the fuck alone. Every. Five. Minutes.” He punctuates the last few words by jabbing at the air with a finger, then raises his phone to his ear and unmutes as he begins to pull out, waving at them half-heartedly. 

“He needs a break,” Yeosang sighs as they watch his car disappear. Wooyoung makes a noise of agreement and sits down next to him. The silence around the three of them is suffocating as San stutters in his movement, unsure whether to sit with them or not until Wooyoung pats the empty spot at his side. San ends up perching on a crate at the end of the dock - the spot next to Wooyoung was damp and way too chilly for him to be comfortable. 

The sun finishes setting fully, oranges and reds disappearing as the dark sky fully engulfs the city. The surrounding air is stagnant and muggy, humidity rising as the minutes pass until Wooyoung feels his hair threaten to frizz. He attempts to pat it back down futilely. Across the river, the neon lights of Kabuki’s nightlife reflect off the water, wavering with the gentle ripple of the waves.

“Are you… doing okay?” Yeosang finally ventures, watching San as he pulls out a cigarette and digs through his pockets for a lighter. He nearly jumps at the question, forgetting about his search and clearing his throat. The cigarette falls out of his mouth from where it had been hanging, rolling off the end of the dock into the water - a new one is procured with a forlorn gaze. San holds it between his index and middle fingers, twirling it absentmindedly.

He avoids eye contact. Closer up, Wooyoung can see just how tired he looks - or maybe tired isn’t the right word. More like strained, like he was spreading himself too thin. Like he was still trying to remain positive and friendly but had too much on his mind. 

“I’m, y’know. Getting by.” San’s face twists. He looks upset now. “It was just too much - I mean, it still is. I almost watched both of you die, you keep switching between being friendly and hostile towards me, nobody tells me what the fuck is going on most of the time or what they’re doing, and now whatever the fuck happened with the whole… thing.” He waves his arms as he speaks, then looks back out over the river.

Yeosang feels guilt wrack his body, Wooyoung overtaken by shame. They both should’ve tried harder, done things differently. Something. They glance at each other and silently agree - when San is feeling better, they’ll explain. Now isn’t the time, especially with how freaked out he seems to get about wires.

Somehow, it doesn’t seem appropriate to apologize. Wooyoung offers a tentative “we’re sorry” irregardless. It sounds weak, even to his ears. 

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” San shrugs in response. “Like I told you before, you’d be stupid to trust me right off the bat. I don’t blame you - either of you - for anything. Just the way things go. What were you gonna do, not explode in front of me?” he snorts with no amusement. “I just needed some time to, I dunno, go over it in my head, I guess. Process stuff.”

Wooyoung nods in understanding, adjusting so Yeosang can lean against him. He throws a leg over the other man’s, their ankles crossing beneath the dock, then slides the jacket he’d worn off his shoulders and wraps it around Yeosang’s. 

San glances at them, hesitating for a moment before words begin spilling out of his mouth. He describes everything he’d seen - the data stacks, the different Yeosangs, Wooyoung appearing in the junkyard, the disembodied voices in the scenes. Everything he could remember.

They both listen silently. Wooyoung finds himself just as confused as San, Yeosang’s face unchanging next to him. It takes nearly ten minutes for him to finish his retelling, his voice cracking near the end.

Wooyoung blinks a few times as he slowly filters through what San had told them. Baby Yeosang speaking Japanese. Older Yeosang doing … something in an office bar thing. The day they had met.

“Wow,” Wooyoung finally says, floored. “Yeah. That’s not normal. At all. Like, holy shit.” San throws him a weary glance and returns to digging for his lighter, Yeosang smacking his shoulder. Wooyoung makes a ‘what’ motion and returns to looking at San. 

“I just, I mean,” he tries, fighting to figure out what to say as he flicks at his lighter. His words are muffled around the cigarette. “I don’t know. Now that I’m not there , it isn’t as scary. I just feel - I mean, what the fuck kind’ve invasion of privacy is that? I don’t even know what I was seeing, or if it was real or a memory or what, but it was clearly private, right?” He looks at Yeosang as he falls silent, unable to articulate his feelings properly.

“Don’t feel bad,” Yeosang finally mumbles. “You didn’t get a choice, I didn’t get a choice; like you said, it is what it is. I don’t care about the stuff you saw, it’s not like it’s a secret, or you didn’t know. The whole reason we were there was to get rid of the doll chip remnants. I really don’t care about what you saw, I promise. Don’t let it weigh you down like this, please?”

San wants to tell him it isn’t that simple but nods along to the words, unable to crush the hopeful note in Yeosang’s voice. He finds himself relaxing more than he had in the past few days, a bit of the weight in his chest lifting at the reassurance that neither of them were upset with him. 

“So what exactly was all of that?” San wishes he could shut up. Why in the world did he blurt that out? Right after talking about how he was upset about invading Yeosang’s privacy? 

Yeosang looks down, silent. “I don’t know.” Wooyoung glances at him, gently swinging their legs together. 

San quickly backtracks, waving his hands in the air. A trail of smoke follows his motions. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, I mean-”

“No,” Yeosang quickly interrupts. “I mean I really don’t know. I barely have any memories from that time. The first few years, at least. I have more from the later few.” San stares at him in a mixture of surprise, shock, and horror. Yeosang can barely believe this is the same guy he’d watched blow multiple peoples’ brains out - he has such a cute expression, his lips slightly parted and eyes shining. 

“That’s how that kind’ve doll chip works,” he clarifies. “It’s meant for - for dollhouses. It wipes your memory of anything that happened while you had it in, so patrons don’t get exposed and you don’t remember anything traumatic. Mine was in for so long that I guess it just, I don’t know, wore out?” Wooyoung is nearly smothering him with his body by the time he’s done talking, then starts trying to press kisses to his cheeks as Yeosang laughs and dodges, squirming.

Wooyoung suddenly freezes as something clicks in his head. 

“Were those memories? Like, repressed memories?” San glances at him. Yeosang feels disappointed when he notices the way San still doesn’t look at him for too long, guilt filling his eyes. 

“It’s possible,” Yeosang finally answers when San doesn’t offer any insight. “But I’ve never heard of anything like that happening. What would it be, my subconscious?”

San frowns, his mouth twisting downwards. He feels worse, now, somehow - if anyone should’ve been shown that kind’ve thing, it should’ve been Wooyoung. Why was it him?

“So it must’ve been me as a little kid, obviously,” Yeosang hums. 

“What about the spot next to your eye?” San suddenly asks, ripped from whatever had been going on in his head. Yeosang looks at him curiously. “You had a spot next to your eye, right here.” He touches the top of cheek where the folds of his eye connect. Yeosang smiles and tries not to look sad. San already looks like he regrets asking.

“I had a birthmark there,” he says, touching the spot on his own face. “I don’t remember the majority of my childhood, either, but I know that. I had a lisp, too. I suppose whoever took me - bought me - dealt with them. Probably made me a less valuable doll.” 

“And the Japanese?” San asks, trying to brush over the matter-of-fact way Yeosang had said that. Wooyoung looks like he’s about to explode as he stares at Yeosang, holding him tightly.

The blonde tilts his head to the side inquisitively. “I don’t know,” he finally says, frowning. “It’d make sense if I’m not from Night City, I suppose, but I’ve always assumed I was born in the NUSA. I could be from Japan, I guess. There’s no way for me to really know.” 

When San looks away, Wooyoung steps up. He was going to try to be more open with the other man starting tonight. He wants to be more honest with him.

“The junkyard - the third scene thing you mentioned - was the day we met, like I said.” San looks at him, listening attentively. They all silently agree to brush over the second thing San had seen. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what had been going on there, and despite his willingness to discuss it thus far, Yeosang looks a bit wary of broaching that particular topic. They both notice the way he deflates in relief when they don’t bring it up.

“How did you meet?” San asks quietly, taking a puff of his smoke. He’s leaning towards them now, finally slipping off his jacket - he was finally wearing something besides a fucking tank top - and placing it over the damp spot on the dock so he can sit at Wooyoung’s side.

Wooyoung looks at Yeosang, who nods - a silent go-ahead for him to tell the story.

“It was, well, it was what you described seeing. I was digging through the giant scrapyard - you were right, it was the one outside Rancho Coronado around the Medeski gas station. Anyway, I was looking for some spare parts, seeing if anyone threw out anything I could use, you know how it is. Suddenly, this big expensive car rolls up and parks near me. Some suits get out and start dragging a body out of the trunk - they don’t know I’m there, I hid pretty well behind one of the scrap piles - and they’re talking about no-shows and whatever. The body turned out to be Yeosang. They bent down and pulled something out of his neck - found out later it was a doll chip, I’m sure you figured that out.” 

“From what I could hear of their conversation, they’d been planning on selling him to a scav group who hadn’t shown up to the sale meeting, so they dumped him. I’d assumed he’d already gone cold, but he was still breathing even though it didn’t look good for a while. I took care of him for a long time. Eden fixed him up until he wasn’t at death’s door, then I took over and did what I could. By the time he’d recovered, we’d already become inseparable, so we just… never split up. That was a long time ago, of course, but…”

Wooyoung lets his sentence trail off into the night, Yeosang remaining silent by his side.

San turns back to gaze at the river and takes a drag of his cigarette, smoke curling out around his lips as he thinks of the little boy in the closet he had seen in Yeosang’s mind. His heart pangs painfully. “Fuck this city.”

A smile creeps across Yeosang’s face as he curls further into the jacket wrapped around his shoulders, tilting his head to take in the sight of the two next to him against Kabuki’s distant lights. “Yeah. Fuck this city.”

“What about you?” Wooyoung asks. He reaches out and grabs San’s cigarette, taking a drag from it before San can react and then placing it back between his fingers. San blinks. “I’d share, but I’m not that interesting. Grew up in Arroyo, became a merc, met Hongjoong, met Yeosang. Now I’m here.”

“A simple story is better than a complicated one, if you ask me,” San finally offers. “I don’t think I’m too interesting, either, to be fair. Born in New Pyongyang, came to the NUSA with my parents when I was around ten. We started out in Stateline. That whole place is a shithole, so we moved pretty quickly to Night City - which is less of a shithole - and lived in Arroyo for a while. We saved up some money and eventually moved to Rancho Coronado. Did some work for the Valentinos for a bit, actually,” he says with a bit of a laugh. “I was basically a drug mule for ‘em. Kinda miss it, pretty easy work.”

“I made some money doing underground boxing for a bit but never went big, didn’t want to start getting implants for it and look like some kinda chrome-jock musclehead like those top fighters do half the time.” Wooyoung laughs. “C’mon, you’ve seen ‘em. Half of them belong in a fuckin' zoo. Anyway, I met the Mox, moved to Kabuki, met Hongjoong.” He hesitates for a moment. “Met you guys,” he finally adds, hoping the dark of the night is hiding the burning in his cheeks. 

“No wonder you could recognize the Arroyo ‘r,’” Wooyoung says with interest. “Why’d you guys leave United Korea?”

“Big impending economic collapse,” San answers easily, “and we were way too isolated. Korean society is very focused on kinship and family connections - we were the only ones of our family left. Everyone else got wiped out by the Busan bioplague.”

Yeosang looks at him sympathetically, reaching around Wooyoung to pat his shoulder. Wooyoung frowns. 

They sit quietly for a few more minutes, the silence comfortable. It’s still warm out despite the late hour, although less so as the colder months begin to approach. San isn’t sure he needed to bring his jacket with the sudden spike in humidity. 

He glances up at where the moon is crawling across the sky lethargically. “I should probably get going,” he sighs as he snuffs out the tail end of his cigarette on the edge of the dock and moves to stand up. Wooyoung and Yeosang quickly glance at each other, communicating silently. They nod curtly at each other.

Yeosang looks at San and clears his throat. “It’s pretty late out,” he offers tentatively. “Our place is close by.” 

San freezes where he stands. He turns back towards them, hopeful but clearly in disbelief. “Are you sure?”

Wooyoung and Yeosang stand up at the same time, moving to flank San and herd him up the ramp onto the main street. “Wouldn’t offer if we weren’t sure,” Wooyoung grins mischievously. San glances behind them to make sure his car is hidden before letting himself be pulled towards the apartment. He doesn’t think he actually gets a choice in this scenario, but even if he did, he wouldn’t turn this chance down. 

San wakes up squished between unknown entities and way too comfortable. It takes a moment for his brain to catch up, realizing the things squishing him are Wooyoung and Yeosang - both are buried beneath the covers on either side of his torso and clinging to him like leeches. He manages to wiggle out from between them without waking them up and makes his way to their small kitchen with the idea of making them breakfast.

They had lent him a pair of sleeping shorts and an oversized shirt for the night. He hadn’t gotten a chance to look around when they had first let him in, but now that it’s daytime, he takes the opportunity to absorb as much as he can. 

It's clear who contributed what throughout the rooms as well as what had originated from both of them. The incense holder was certainly a shared contribution, but the labelmaker on the computer desk and the organized containers of what appears to be USBs must have been Yeosang. The guitar by the couch and cooking supplies hanging off the walls, on the other hand, couldn’t be anyone but Wooyoung. He makes sure not to touch the computer desk as he shuffles by to glance inside the fridge. A frown twists his face when he sees it’s nearly empty except for prepackaged snacks.

He zones out as he closes the refrigerator door, looking back out over the apartment and trying to figure out what he can do. The sound of someone shuffling into the room catches his attention a few minutes later: Yeosang rubs at his eyes and looks up at him, grumbling something along the lines of “good morning” before disappearing into the bathroom. Wooyoung follows soon after taking Yeosang’s place when he reemerges.

“What’re you doing?” Yeosang asks curiously, eyeing the way he leans against the fridge. Wooyoung steps back out of the bathroom and takes a seat at the counter. It feels comfortable, having the three of them together like this. Neither of them had bothered to put on actual clothes, Wooyoung in his boxers and an old t-shirt and Yeosang wearing sleep shorts and a tank top that matches the ones lent to San.

“I was going to try to make you some sort of breakfast, but all you have is…” He squints at the things in the fridge. “Holobites?”

Yeosang has the decency to look ashamed, ears turning red as he coughs. Wooyoung makes his way to the computer, feet dragging as he fights off the last remnants of sleep, and sits down as Yeosang disappears out the front door to get food from the vending machines down the block.

San watches as Wooyoung digs through one of the bins on the desk and reads each label, eventually plugging one into the computer and waiting for it to load. “It’s a copy of the info we took during our job,” he explains when he notices San’s surveying. “They’ve gotta have some shipments or something on here, but Hongjoong and the Mox aren’t gonna give a shit about that stuff. It’s basically free game.”

San sits by his side and watches him sift through folders. Yeosang eventually returns with three bags of food and hands them out, joining San at Wooyoung’s side. By now, he’s found the folder with all of their receipts, transactions, and trades. It’s surprisingly well organized, taking into account how intelligent the average member of 6th Street is.

The vast majority of the products are cheap guns, cheaper knives, and some vehicles. Sporadically, one of them will let out an intrigued hum but ultimately move on from what they were looking at. Things slowly increase in quality as they reach the later folders - mostly labelled as products for suits, big-name fixers, and higher-up members of rival gangs. The name “Maelstrom” appears more than once.

San is cleaning up the remnants of their breakfast and taking them to the garbage bin when Wooyoung lets out a loud gasp, Yeosang’s eyes widening as he nearly falls out of his chair. He quickly drops off the trash and sits back down next to them, frowning once more when he realizes he has no idea what he’s looking at.

“A Rippler,” Wooyoung whispers, voice reverent. 

“A Tetratronic Rippler Mk.4,” Yeosang elaborates when that clearly doesn’t help San’s confusion. “One of the rarest and most expensive cyberdecks on the market - and one of the most powerful. Only a few were ever made.” He, too, seems to nearly worship the cyberdeck in question, his eyes shiny. 

San’s eyes widen, too. “Why didn’t we see any of this on the guy from Lizzie’s?”

Wooyoung cackles at the question. The light in his eyes is brighter than San has ever seen it. “Cause that guy was just some fuckin’ lackey, are you kidding me? Would the NUSA give their nuclear launch codes to their janitors?” He turns back to the computer and scrolls through the information, squinting and tapping his fingers on the edge of the desk. 

“It’s going to Maelstrom,” he murmurs to himself, “but…”

Yeosang looks at him, horrified. “No. No, no, no. We’re not getting involved in this.”

San sits back as Wooyoung spins around in his chair, dismayed. “Think of what we could do with that,” he says, voice strained in its passion. “Think of what you could do with that!”

“I don’t need another deck-”

“You have a Praline,” Wooyoung interrupts. “You do.” San looks between them and decides to let them figure it out themselves. He tries to remember what Yeosang had said last night when the blonde looks at him pleadingly, hoping he’ll knock some sense into Wooyoung - don’t feel guilty. Don’t take his side just because you feel bad. 

Yeosang gives up turns back to Wooyoung.

“We could barely handle 6th Street, how the fuck do you want us to handle Maelstrom, huh?”

Wooyoung actually pauses to think about this, Yeosang feeling his heart sink when he sees the scheming look in his eyes. He’s not winning this debate, they both know it by now. Wooyoung is too stubborn once he sets his eyes on a prize - especially if it’s a prize he wants for Yeosang. 

“See what else they’ve got,” he says. Yeosang looks at him, exasperated, but concedes. He slides into the desk chair when Wooyoung stands up and flops onto the couch, pulling out his phone. “And hide the Rippler info - we can’t let anyone else know about that, or we’re screwed.”

Fuck taking a break, Wooyoung thinks to himself gleefully. He can take a break once he gets that Rippler - this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

The phone rings a few times before being picked up, Hongjoong’s snide voice snapping a quick "what.” Wooyoung can hear the sounds of a diner and a smooth, deep voice attempting to regain the fixer's attention.

“Hey Hongjoong,” Wooyoung says, voice mischievous. He ignores the man’s dramatic sigh at being addressed by his first name and cuts him off before he can correct him. “Got a list you might wanna take a read through, if you’re up for some shopping. Let those other two guys you work with know, too. I’m sure they’ll find something they’re interested in.” 

Yeosang looks at San and throws a gesture signaling, “See what I have to deal with?” San smiles and watches as Yeosang gets out a blank USB, uploading the Rippler’s file onto it and handing it off to San, pointing at the label printer as he deletes the information from the original folder housing it. 

They both just hope that Wooyoung knows what he’s doing.