Chapter Text
φβΣ
Every morning, the sun shines unhindered through the large windows on the fifth floor apartment. The windows are never open, latches firmly shut regardless of temperature, but the glass remains unobstructed to display the rooms within the unit. Whether the current resident, a Mr. Namjoon Kim, ever bothered or thought about buying curtains or not is neither provided nor relevant, all things considered. The only paramount information that Jimin really needs as the sun rises is that Mr. Namjoon Kim is going to die before the end of the month.
There is no option to this reality, no room for argument or debate. Arguing about the aesthetic tastes of Mr. Namjoon Kim is not among Jimin's allowances on his assignment.
"What kind of moron doesn't buy curtains?" Jimin grumbles into his headset between sips of morning coffee. It is bitter, much like his attitude at being up this early to watch Mr. Namjoon Kim proceed about his morning routine at the unseemly hour of dawn's first light. Naked.
"The kind of person who doesn't expect his neighbors to be spying on him at the ass crack of dawn," Yoongi grumbles, voice scratchy with sleep. "Who the fuck cares about curtains? This makes your job a fuck ton easier. No curtains, better surveillance. Now shut up, and let me go back to sleep."
“I thought you were up anyway for your assignment?” Jimin says, frowning as Namjoon ambles through his apartment, dressing haphazardly. “You’re dispatching today, right? That scientist job with the weapons schematics.”
In the apartment on the fifth floor, Namjoon has managed to find pants: gray slacks and a belt. In the gray light of early morning and the thin yellow illumination from the standard issue lights in Mr. Namjoon Kim’s apartment, he looks tired and groggy, proceeding about his morning routine in a habitual daze. Sitting hunched at a table in the kitchen corner of apartment 604 in the building opposite Mr. Namjoon Kim’s unit, Jimin can relate. However, unlike Namjoon who is afforded the luxury of ambling about his apartment to return to his specified public service position to remain an essential member of their Glorious Community, Jimin will not be leaving his apartment today.
‘His apartment’ being a relative term, considering the apartment is actually owned by a ‘Mr. Jeongguk Jeon,’ who is currently on holiday in Sicily. A work holiday, apparently, as they prepare to convert the area for agriculture and irrigation, much like they had done with the Yellow Sea when Jimin was a boy. Bad memories.
No, Jimin will not be participating in service to the Glorious Community today or any fuckin’ day in the future. Instead, he’ll be squatting in this apartment, surveillance equipment set up and his tech positioned to be put away at a moment’s notice as he tries to ascertain the best way to kill Mr. Namjoon Kim before the end of the month.
For every other person in these apartments, they go about their daily lives participating in the Glorious Community as just another cog in the machine, stuck in the endless life of servitude, fear, and protection. All of them are in the correct states, countless fuckers born into the right families and with the right genetics where they don’t get ‘purged.’ They don’t give a shit about the millions of people who weren’t so lucky, who aren’t in these nice government provided apartments. They don’t bother with the people trying to stay alive and having their homes and land ripped up and destroyed for agriculture plots, only to be shucked back there as slaves on farmlands until they die and are left to act as fertilizer.
These fuckers don’t give a damn about people like that, people that Jimin bothers to care about and who are labeled as ‘enemies of the Glorious Community’ because they give a damn.
So no, Jimin doesn’t really feel that bad about planning to put a knife in Mr. Namjoon Kim’s fuckin’ head if it means another step towards bringing down the Glorious Community and its prejudiced bullshit and tyranny. Jimin doesn’t care that he’s squatting on some jumped up kid who’s never really had to pay up and deal with the real world, who’s probably been brainwashed to kill people just because he’s told they’re worthless. Jimin is planning on drinking all of the high grade coffee in this apartment before the little shit gets back actually, even if he does hate coffee. He’ll bleed the little bastard dry and leave him to experience a taste of what suffering might be like.
Screw ‘em all.
“Yeah, I head out in a few hours,” Yoongi mumbles. Almost every light has been turned on in Namjoon’s apartment, flooding the area with light and making the unit look like some sort of beacon. Every other unit in the complex is black, silent, asleep or dead, and then there’s this guy, racking up on electricity like it’s not expensive. “I still can’t believe Tae assigned me on this fuckin’ one.”
“Pretty sure it’s payback for all the times you say you don’t have feelings, just sarcasm,” Jimin says with a small smirk. For years now, Taehyung and Yoongi have bickered in the underground, Taehyung constantly pestering the bounty hunter about how he can mow down people and appear unaffected and Yoongi getting fed up with him every damn time and snapping that his emotions died a long time ago. Of course, Taehyung never let up on it, even if Yoongi clearly didn’t want to discuss the matter. It’s old habit now whenever Yoongi gets back from another assassination: he and Taehyung bicker when the reports are handed over for filing. “Taehyung is just going by what you told him.”
“How the fuck is pretending to be a love robot in line with ‘I don’t fuckin’ have feelings,’ Jimin?”
“Ask Taehyung, not me,” Jimin says, trying hard to keep the amusement out of his voice. It had come down to the wire between the two of them. They’re the best in the business, he and Yoongi, making a living off of taking jobs to kill people or bring them in black-bagged for whatever it is the resistance has planned for them. It’s been years of smuggling, false identity cards, and working for the highest bidder, but Jimin is still alive and still taking apart the Glorious Community piece by piece.
That’s gotta be worth something.
“So what is it about this curtain dude that you’re killing him for?” Yoongi asks, some of the sleep finally fading from his voice.
“No clue,” Jimin says. The sun is just beginning to fully rise, the sky graduating from the dismal gray into a color spectrum of early fire. “Doesn’t really matter to me. Kill the fucker, get paid.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Yoongi mumbles. Jimin doesn’t take the bait, knowing better than to get into a conversation about the ‘good of the future’ with Yoongi, which usually ends in some sort of deeply emotional monologue about how someone has to fuckin’ care about this shit hole of a planet, so they might as well give a damn.
Once, Jimin had believed that, had fallen hook, line, and sinker when Jaebum had pitched it to him. Back then, he’d been scared, raw from disillusionment, and desperate for some hope. Life in the killing profession has made him harder, realistic, faithless in the ‘good of mankind’ - well, the good of people who aren’t Yoongi, who actually want to save the world even if they won’t admit it.
“A bed is good enough for me,” Jimin answers instead.
“Of course it is,” Yoongi sighs. “Good luck today. I guess I’ll see you at the end.”
“Unless I get bored,” Jimin replies.
“Fuck,” Yoongi drags the word out, as if it’s taking his resolve to live with it.
In the apartment on the fifth floor, Namjoon has managed to stumble himself into a shirt, hair combed back. He’s not in the usual business attire, suit and tie, slacks to match and blend into the general public appropriate attire and conformity. The guy instead is wearing some sort of sweater, reminding Jimin of the fishermen on the East Sea who weathered harsh winds and wore thick wool. It makes him look soft, and Jimin frowns as Namjoon vanishes through the apartment door and the lights turn the unit black.
In two hours, Jimin is supposed to meet Taehyung in one of the cafes downtown, tucked away in a back corner under too much noise to give a report about his progress and get a few more pieces of information about Namjoon and what he’s dealing with. So far this morning, Jimin has done what he’s supposed to: lain low and kept the lights off, mindful that the apartment he’s in is technically ‘unoccupied’ until Jeongguk Jeon gets back from Sicily. Time is money, and the sooner he figures out how to off Namjoon the sooner he can get back to collect his payment and fly back under the radar, maybe head out to the Neutral Zones until things calm down and the blood is bleached from the carpets.
First thing’s first though, and that means breaking into Namjoon’s unit and setting up surveillance systems or tapping into the ones already there. The ones in Jeongguk’s apartment had been easy enough to tamper with and set on a looping film so Jimin isn’t bothered. Namjoon’s are the next and they probably won’t be easy, especially if this guy managed to get himself on a hit list for a half million for his head.
Time to get to work.
φβκ
It is in human nature to desire freedom of movement. Humans, unlike livestock and canines, are not pack animals. They do not necessarily require a herd or group to feel secure, though they are one of the few species on the earth that does seek out and establish a community. However, neither are they solitary animals, like bears or the some of the avian predators, spending their time in isolation. Yet one thing is true of almost all life: existence in total isolation is unnatural, and being confined to small spaces is a cause of heightened anxiety, stress, and, eventually, fear.
It is perhaps in this way where, even those who do not possess claustrophobia, have the ability to develop discomfort with small spaces when confined to them for too long. It can drive a man mad really, being trapped in a small space for too long. Man is, after all, animal. It can be argued as much as one would be invested in, but the end result is that man is still largely animal and therefore uncomfortable in small spaces.
The small confined areas of one room, a cage, a cell, or, in Yoongi’s specific case, a cardboard box that Juhyun’s particle decompressor arrived in and which he was shipped off in for delivery. When he was screened for action, Yoongi had never thought about a context in which he would ever feel claustrophobic, but being wrapped in plastic and strapped into a storage container has him discovering a part of himself he never really wanted to explore.
If he stays in here much longer, he’s going to have an unintentional panic attack. There has only been one other time in his life that he had one of those, and the experience was not pleasant.
Taking in another controlled breath, Yoongi closes his eyes, reminding himself he’s doing this for a reason. Being trapped in a fuckin’ box with a still-healing tattoo at the back of his neck is all for a reason. If there hadn’t been a damn good reason, Yoongi would have shot Taehyung for suggesting this mission for him even before Taehyung got the chance to end his delivery with “… and so just kind of think of it like honeypotting, except you’re pretending to be a robot and this Kim Jim didn’t actually buy you for sexual favors.”
All things considered, Yoongi still kind of wishes he had shot Taehyung. Not a fatal wound, but just something for Taehyung to remember him by as confirmation to never do shit like this again.
Really, Yoongi’s mission is simple: gain access to Seokjin Kim’s home and inner life, coerce him into trusting him, locate the weapon research, and then, depending on the situation, either get out or kill Seokjin. Simple in theory, difficult when the method of extraction is Yoongi being sent in as a ‘ROBOTIC COMPANION’ delivered as a ‘free trial’ to be programmed for ‘love and romance’ for a guy who apparently is the biggest closet fetishist on the planet (according to Taehyung).
The prospect of living with a guy who might do something like buy a robotic boyfriend instead of actually invest in human contact does not sit well with Yoongi, but a mission is a mission, and he needs the money. The world needs him to not fuck this up, considering whatever it is Seokjin Kim is working on is projected to wipe out half the human race somehow.
How exactly, Yoongi doesn’t know. Not important. What is important is that Yoongi has to pretend to be a romantic robot and he’s going to murder Taehyung when he’s completed the mission out of sheer vengeance for his dignity.
Juhyun and Yugyeom had dropped him off about an hour ago outside of Seokjin’s apartment with the thought that the scientist would be home shortly. It’s been almost an hour though, and Yoongi is beginning to desperately hope Seokjin gets home soon and gets him the fuck out of this box. He’ll have to pretend he’s a robot then, but anything is better than standing in shrink wrap plastic in a cardboard box.
A sudden sound, the scrape of footsteps, and then a muffled soft “oh” catch Yoongi’s awareness, and he stiffens, straightening to perfect posture (fuck you, too, Taehyung) and schooling his face into pleasant blandness. Seokjin, or Yoongi assumes it’s Seokjin, mutters from just outside the box, reading the label that is clearly addressed to him. Yoongi can make out “didn’t order anything” and “what the Hell is it? A fridge? I don’t need a fridge, what’s the Glorious Community on about? Did mine break?” and “what are BPB Scouts Industries?” before the box shifts. Seokjin evidently attempted to move it and realized it was extremely heavy.
“What is in this thing? Bricks?”
Yoongi doesn’t smile. He’s supposed to be a robot, a not yet activated robot. He closes his eyes. Once Seokjin ‘turns him on’ he can open his eyes and act mechanical. The only thing he hopes is that Seokjin doesn’t drop the box backwards or forwards, because that would absolutely injure him.
Injuries are something robots don’t get: a massive flaw in this plan by Taehyung that the R&D Director refused to listen to when Seunghwan and Yugyeom pointed it out.
Somehow, with a lot of scraping and jostling, the box Yoongi is in is dragged an impressive distance, Seokjin muttering the entire time amid huffs and puffs of exertion. The recognizable sound of an exact-o-knife reaches Yoongi’s ears, and then the box is being opened, the light casting the inside of Yoongi’s eyes violent red.
Show time.
“Holy shit.”
“L A N G U A G E . U S A G E . M O N I T O R E D,” a mechanized voice sounds from one of the walls and Yoongi barely catches himself from reacting. He didn’t realize that the GC had begun to monitor and restrict language usage. Perhaps it wouldn’t be that bad if Seokjin’s terrible weapon did take out half the planet.
Provided it was the bad half.
Of course, as soon as Yoongi thinks this, he knows it’s wrong. That sort of thought is what got them here in the first place, where people began to take control with the intention to ‘make the world better’ by eradicating those they believed weren’t worthy of living, of being anything more than objects, less than humans. Less than anything.
No, Yoongi needs to get that research and make sure no one else ever has access to it.
Yoongi remains still as he senses Seokjin’s hands carefully reaching into the box, pulling the paper manual from beside him and the tip of his finger tracing over the ‘unit specs’ that are taped to Yoongi’s chest. “Suga Sweet 309,” Seokjin murmurs to himself, and Yoongi makes a mental note to murder Taehyung a second time. “From” - a pause - “BPB Scouts industries. For all of your companion needs and desires, catering to all tastes and inclinations. What the-”
“L A N G U -“
“Goodness,” Seokjin says firmly, and the wall monitor changes its mind about scolding him. Yoongi will have to figure out how to disable the thing without it being obvious to Seokjin.
“To turn on,” Seokjin reads, his finger tracing over Yoongi’s left pectoral through the plastic shrink wrap. “Gently press finger to the switch behind Suga Sweet’s right ear after unpacking, and enjoy your model.”
Yoongi tries to remain even more still. Not breathing while Seokjin had been so close, finger to chest, was hard enough, but the thermal suit Juhyun had given him to retain body heat until he turned it off appears to be working. He may be a bit warm, but clearly his body heat isn’t radiating through to Seokjin’s detection. Still, not breathing gets hard after a while, and Yoongi needs to do that again.
“But why do I even -“ Seokjin breaks off, papers rustling. Yoongi breathes as quietly and subtly as he can. “A test model? But I didn’t - I visited that site one time, how did they even get my information?”
Yoongi doesn’t know, or want to know for that matter. There are so many things Yoongi doesn’t want to know about how Taehyung and the rest of that division get their information. There are many things Yoongi never wants to know about Taehyung in general, but that doesn’t mean he’s spared (no one is, really).
“I don’t even - I shouldn’t even have this. I don’t want this. I don’t - what do I even do with this? I’m not, am I that lonely that the Glorious Community thought that they needed to send me one of these? Because I’m not - because I can’t -“
“L A N G U A G E . A N -“
“Because I have chosen a life dedicated to the Glorious Community instead of my own small collective unit,” Seokjin says, voice becoming slightly desperate and slightly frustrated. It makes Yoongi’s stomach twist just a bit, to hear that even these rich and pampered fuckers can’t be allowed to talk about being gay in the safety of their own home. It almost makes him pity this guy.
Almost. Pity is bad though. Yoongi is known for never getting attached, for not caring when he has to wipe out an entire unit when they pose a threat. Of course, he picks and chooses, and some nights…
Then there is the sound of the exact-o-knife, ripping plastic, and Yoongi stops breathing as the light shifts, and he feels fingers fumbling to reach behind his ear. There is a switch there which has been there for a long time. Of course, it’d been deactivated since Yoongi joined the Buffer, but it still is wired into his body. It’s not hard to tell when Seokjin gently flips it, the familiar dull ache spreading through his skull, and Yoongi opens his eyes slowly, staring blankly ahead for four seconds exactly.
Then he looks at Seokjin, blinks once, and smiles. “Darling,” he says, softening his voice and tilting his head to the side ever so slightly. Seokjin is taller than he is, dark hair combed back in the same perfect style everyone in the GC wears. He’s got on glasses, big brown eyes wide with surprise behind them and his mouth hanging open in shock so he looks like an idiot. Broad shoulders, nice figure, and the kind of face Yoongi is used to seeing on promotional boards for the elite bred people who are above the lowly imperfections of the Grounders and those from the Dark Past.
Yoongi, smiling sweetly as he steps from the box and his Unit Stand so he’s chest to chest with Seokjin, looking up into his face, hates him. Seokjin with his big eyes and increasing blush as Yoongi moves close to him and follows his training, hands rising to gently touch at Seokjin’s elbows - soft, gentle, intimate - represents everything that is fucked up in this world.
“D - darling?” Seokjin stammers, trying to step back and not doing a good job of it. Yoongi lets him go, stepping away and putting distance between them. He’s been programmed for some sort romance mode called ‘tsundere,’ which Juhyun explained meant “you act like you don’t love him at first, but you are madly in love with him deep down inside” and which Seunghwan had added to “what you’re actually like under that murderous facade.”
In short, Yoongi is supposed to do a push and pull: pine and make it obvious and romance Seokjin while also refusing to say he’s in love with him. That’s his programming.
Yoongi will murder Taehyung three times, he’s decided. This would be so much fuckin’ easier if Yoongi actually was just honeypotting. Son of a fuck.
“Well, what would you rather be called?” Yoongi asks, eyes trained on Seokjin as he stands motionlessly.
“I’m -“ Seokjin pauses. “What’s your name?”
“Suga Sweet 309,” Yoongi answers immediately.
“I am not calling you Suga Sweet 309,” Seokjin says, though Yoongi suspects it’s to himself.
“Then what do you want to call me?” Yoongi asks him, interpreting it as a question for him anyway. Robots do that, right?
“I -“ Seokjin is blushing furiously, and looks torn between wanting to explore this new robot and play with him and reject him out of social brainwashing doctrine that has taught him indulging in homosexual behavior is disgraceful. It is, at least here. Fucked up world, like Yoongi said.
“I,” Yoongi repeats. “My name is I.”
“No!” Seokjin yelps, appearing frustrated as he flexes his fingers. “No! I - um. Suga. I’ll call you Suga.”
“Suga,” Yoongi repeats. This man has no imagination. For some genius scientist, Yoongi is genuinely disappointed even as he smiles shyly at Seokjin. “I see. It’s nice to meet you -“
“Seokjin,” Seokjin answers softly, staring at Yoongi like he wants to reach out and touch, to examine him, to explore, and is terrified to do so. Whether ‘Suga Sweet 309’ is what scares Seokjin or his own urges to explore a love robot intimately, Yoongi doesn’t know. He is pretty sure he’ll find out sooner or later, though.
Occupational hazard.
“It’s nice to meet you, Suga,” Seokjin says, the blush fading somewhat.
“Introduction confirmed,” Yoongi says, voice lowering for a moment. He blinks three times. “Do you want to hear my terms of service and use?”
“I - no,” Seokjin says quickly. “I mean yes. I -” He struggles visibly, and Yoongi opens his mouth. “No! Another time!”
“Confirmed,” Yoongi says, keeping his voice low. “Do you -”
The wall rings. It sounds like some sort of siren, and Seokjin nearly trips over himself in alarm, racing to the wall to answer the alarm. “Doctor Kim reporting return to living unit,” he says hastily into a microphone. “Apologies for the delay.”
“That is okay, Doctor Kim,” says a cold female voice. “Did you complete your task?”
“I - um,” Seokjin clears his throat, glancing back at Yoongi. Yoongi hasn’t moved from his spot. He swallows. “I’m almost done,” he says.
“Confirmed,” the wall says in the same cold voice. “We expect you back in approximately thirty minutes, Doctor.”
“You have my allegiance,” the doctor says, eyes still fixed on Yoongi. Something in them hardens. Resolution, perhaps?
“And we are grateful,” the voice says, a little less cold.
Yoongi watches as Seokjin steps back, hastily moving about his apartment in search of something. Yoongi doesn’t say anything, just watches him in silence. “Stop staring,” Seokjin says. Yoongi turns and stares at the wall. Seokjin pauses, Yoongi watching him from his peripheral vision, turning to stare at him, examining him as if curious and wary. “What are you?”
“I’m Suga,” Yoongi answered. “You forgot my name already?”
“No, I -” Seokjin pauses. “How do I turn you off?”
Yoongi would so badly like to say that Seokjin just breathing is enough to turn him off but figures that doing so would definitely compromise his mission. Instead, he says, “You may command me to go to sleep.”
“Command - but,” Seokjin bites his lip. Then he sighs. “Go to sleep.” Yoongi closes his eyes and assumes a formal standing posture. He can hear Seokjin moving around him through the apartment, rustling papers and items and occasionally poking at him, muttering to himself in fascination. “Wake up?” Seokjin tries, and Yoongi opens his eyes immediately.
“Good morning,” Yoongi says.
“Oh my G -“
“L A N G U -“
”Gums!” Seokjin says loudly. The wall goes silent. “Wow, okay. Um. Look, I have to go back to -” He struggles, frowning and blushing as he looks at Yoongi, the tips of his ears going red. “But I’ll come back soon so just, I dunno, make yourself comfortable?”
“I will try,” Yoongi answers. He smiles, still maintaining the slightly shy composure. He’d read the manual that accompanies him, and he’d read the reports on Seokjin about who he was and his apparent preferences: his type.
“Okay,” Seokjin says, swallowing and stepping back. He runs his fingers through his hair, pushing it back into perfection. “Um. Don’t touch anything? Just - stay there.”
He leaves, hastily rushing from his living unit after telling the wall computer to maintain security.
Yoongi looks around the room from his position, trying to remain as still as he can to avoid alerting the computer systems.
Time to get to work.
φβκ
The easiest system to cut off was the audio. It took barely ten minutes to get that system to give under tampering, and once Yoongi managed to figure out the surveillance cameras and how to navigate them to get to the comm system, it had been easy. At first, this had made him wary, suspicious that Seokjin, who is an important biologist for the Glorious Community, would have such shitty security.
That was before Yoongi had lived with him as his ‘robot boyfriend/companion’ for a few days and realized that Seokjin was, quite possibly, the least threatening person on the planet. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but small things, like Seokjin’s obsessive care taking of the things he had, his fussing over Yoongi who was supposed to just be a test-run robot companion/lover, and how Seokjin appeared to truly and wholeheartedly care about everything made that clear. That, and he startled at literally everything, closely resembling a very scared small forest creature.
Seokjin was the kind of person who felt bad about taking out the trash because perhaps it might be sentient and feel rejected by him. That’s the kind of person Seokjin Kim was and Yoongi for the life of him could not figure out why he was so high on the hit list.
“You know,” says over Yoongi’s comm. There is crunching from the other end. “From the first bite, you can tell that celery doesn’t want to be eaten.”
“Then don’t fuckin’ eat it,” Yoongi retorts. He doesn’t have time for Taehyung this morning. Yoongi never really has time for Taehyung in the morning, or afternoon for that matter. Evenings are the time for Taehyung, but that’s complicated. “I can’t believe you put me on this case.”
“Because you’re dealing with a dude with a cyborg fetish?”
“Robot. I am a robot, you fuck head.”
“No, you’re pretending to be a robot, though I admire your commitment to the job. I’m impressed.” Taehyung is smiling. Yoongi can hear it. That son of a fuck. “What’s wrong? Is he trying to put vegetables up your asshole?”
“I regret every day that I know you,” Yoongi tells him casually. “Every single one.” Taehyung makes a kissy sound and Yoongi pulverizes a cracker in his hand. It’s left over from lunch, which Seokjin ate in front of him because Yoongi is a robot and cannot eat. Of course, Yoongi has the rations sent with him from the Buffer, but still. He eats a cracker, chewing loudly so Taehyung suffers. “So, what’s new?”
“You tell me,” Taehyung retorts.
“There’s nothing on this guy,” Yoongi sighs, walking back to the bedroom. “He’s nice, too nice, and not in the suspicious way but in the ‘sheltered his whole life and somehow managed not to be the scum of the planet’ sort of way.”
“Impossible, he’s engineering a biological weapon to kill half the human population.”
Yoongi closes his eyes, leaning against the headboard. He sprawls in bed. Seokjin’s bed. The bed Seokjin had insisted he sleep on, despite how he’s a robot, while Seokjin took the couch. Yoongi wanted to argue, to shake Seokjin by the head and tell him he’s treating a robot with more decency than he treats the Grounders (probably) and that this is fuckin’ stupid. But, of course, if he did that, he wouldn’t be acting like a tsundere robot and his cover and the entire mission would be blown.
So he’d argued pretending to be tsundere, Seokjin had demanded chivalry, and Yoongi had curled up on the bed, making sure to begrudgingly thank Seokjin and then smile to himself so Seokjin saw it. It’s all an act, but the problem is that Seokjin is falling so easily into it to the point that Yoongi is almost worried about Seokjin.
He’s not, for the record.
“That’s the thing,” Yoongi says with another sigh. The bed is comfortable at least, even if he can’t really sleep. Sleep is an hourly sort of thing; being vigilant is far more important on a mission like this. “I don’t think he realizes he’s creating a biological weapon to kill millions of people. He - he’s just a scientist doing his work.”
“Yoongi,” Taehyung says, crunching through the comm. “Whether he’s aware of it or not, he’s doing something that will kill millions of people. Whether he intends to or not, he’s enabling genocide, and that’s why you’re there.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Yoongi sighs.
There is a pause where Yoongi frowns at the sheets.
“You have to take him out,” Taehyung says, his tone suggesting he knows Yoongi is thinking exactly that.
“What am I good for?” Yoongi says, voice hardening over the line. “I go in, get the job done, and walk away. Remember?”
“Yeah, I know,” Taehyung chirps. “You’re my favorite rock, remember?”
“Fuck you.”
“You know,” Taehyung says. “Rocks can’t swim.”
“I’m killing you when I get back,” Yoongi tells him, getting ready to hang up. He checks in with Taehyung on jobs because it’s protocol. If it were up to Yoongi, he’d never have contact on missions. It’s risky and he hates dealing with Taehyung when he’s bored.
“I know, I’m excited,” Taehyung says, smiling through his celery crunching. “I miss having you around. It’s so boring without you here to threaten me affectionately in every conversation.”
“Fuck you,” Yoongi retorts beautifully.
“So hurry up, close the mission, kill the dude, and come back to me so you can get out of your good versus evil moral conflict.”
“It’s not -“
“There is no black and white, Yoongi, only the gray area where millions of people die. I don’t need to remind you that -”
“No,” Yoongi snaps, fist clenching in the sheets and his tone turning hard. “You don’t.”
“That’s my rock,” Taehyung coos.