Chapter Text
“You are thinking about him, aren’t you?” Moo-shin dares to ask, after exchanging what little they each know about this huge mess: Kang-woo telling him about Lee Mi-ran having still been alive after all before Ko Jin-cheol killed her, and Moo-shin telling him about how he found Shin Ji-woong.
After establishing that the man’s alcoholism was covered up and Moo-shin knew nothing about it at the time of the testimony.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Kang-woo drains his glass of soju before setting it down on the table again, watching a droplet slide down the inner glass wall and seeing only skin. Amber drops on pale, sweat-slick skin. A teardrop rolling down a smooth, neon-lit cheek.
He hates how even soju makes him think of Min-joon now. The promise he made to take him drinking one day.
“You’ve been distracted the whole time we’ve been here,” Moo-shin says, cutting straight through his bullshit. Staring at him with flat eyes. The stare that many a suspect of an insurance scam has been subject to.
Kang-woo finally lets out a sigh. “That obvious, am I?” There’s a wry, slightly bitter smile on his lips. “That punk Min-joon was already gone when I woke up.”
“You are worried about him.”
Kang-woo doesn’t say anything, jaw clenching and staring into the bottom of his glass while rolling it restlessly between his fingers, and it’s his silence more than anything that seems to darken his friend’s already grim mood.
“I’ve been meaning to ask… but what is going on between you and Jan Gebauer-ssi?”
“Not Jan Gebauer,” Kang-woo automatically corrects.
“What?”
“It’s Kim Min-joon.”
His fingers tighten around the hand-warmed glass, feeling the edges dig into his palm. Min-joon would resent being called by the name his adoptive parents gave him. The ones who kicked him out and don’t deserve that title.
The ones who don't deserve to own any part of him.
Moo-shin stares at him for a long moment.
“Alright. What’s going on between you and Kim Min-joon-ssi then?”
“Nothing is going on.” After a moment: “It’s just sex.”
“Don’t give me that.” Moo-shin sounds angry. But then, when is he not when it comes to Kang-woo and his team of law-breakers? “I saw the way you looked at him. The way you treated him, like…” Whatever he is about to say, he shakes his head and seems to think better of it. “That’s not how you treat someone who’s just an easy lay.”
Then, again, doggedly, he insists: “And you are clearly worried about him.”
“Okay. Fine. So maybe he grew on me a bit. It’ll pass.”
This is nothing more than an extremely intense infatuation. A fleeting fancy… a childish crush.
It’ll fade, like so many other things in Kang-woo’s life, whatever little joys and pleasures he managed to guiltily steal for himself—they never failed to lose their shine after only a short while, after Mi-sook and Joo-won’s loss. His whole life becoming drab and gray without them.
“Aside from a quick fling here and there, this is the first time you’ve really seen anyone after Mi-sook… Honestly, I thought you would never see anyone again. You loved her so much. Both her and Joo-won.”
I’m not seeing him, Kang-woo wants to protest, wants to snarl, standing up from the table and hurling the glass in his hand across the restaurant in his mad rage, in his mad grief, only a madman after all, a mad, rabid dog, but he finds his throat closing instead. His mouth both feels and tastes ashen.
He’s not. He’s not betraying Mi-sook and Joo-won.
Is he?
“Min-joon is the little brother of the man who you thought was the murderer of your family for the past two years. He’s a remorseless scammer. Everything you hate the most. Are you sure you know what you are doing?”
The truth is, Kang-woo isn’t sure about anything when it comes to Min-joon. Has never been from the start, the other coming into his life like a bright flash of light. Impossible to turn his eyes away from.
“What is he to you?”
This, Kang-woo has no answer to.
“And more than that… what are you to him? Why is he doing this? What does he want from you?”
This, too, he has no answer to.
*
When he woke up and Min-joon wasn’t there, part of him was relieved.
He didn’t know what he would have done, if he had opened his eyes to the sight of a gently curved spine, clothed but no less lonely or unreachable, or untouchable, for it.
He still needed time to digest it too, not ready yet to accept it as the truth. To accept that he accused an innocent man of murder and let his own family down for so long.
Quite unlike him, Min-joon had gotten up bright and early, an annoyingly early riser, cooking breakfast for him as if everything was back to normal again; as though what happened last night hadn’t been earth-shattering. As though he hadn’t cried his heart and guts out.
Kang-woo was grateful for it.
And yet without Min-joon for him to be strong for, to be a distraction, he also could no longer avoid thinking about it.
The violent force of what he’d suppressed since last night made him stagger, catching himself with a hand on the table until the dizziness and nausea and urge to throw up, the impossible weight of his guilt, of his failure, faded. Until he could breathe again.
The blurry blob of yellow next to his thumb came back into focus… a sticky note with the usual overfamiliar words scrawled on it in Min-joon’s neat, elegant handwriting:
Eat at least some of the food before throwing it away this time. And don’t just drink alcohol again. If you feel the urge to drink, you should just suck on that lolly and think of me instead. I promise it’ll instantly make you feel better! :D <3
That was when he saw the lollipop on the lower edge of the sticky note, weighing it down.
Knowing Min-joon, the innuendo was probably intentional.
Kang-woo scoffed and opted for the fridge instead, annoyed when he saw there were no more packages of expired frozen food to press to his pounding head.
Forgoing the beer bottles, he closed the door again and grudgingly took the lolly, crushing the garishly bright plastic wrapper in his fist before popping it in his mouth.
He grimaced when the horribly sweet, artificial cherry flavor hit his tongue.
Even so, he didn’t spit it out again, keeping it in his mouth, wedged between his cheek and teeth, as he looked at the numerous family portraits hanging on the walls that he never took down, never had the heart to, trailing his hands over the furniture and stirring up dust. Morning light fell between the curtains and he sat down in the pale strip it cast on the wooden floor.
He bit down on the sphere-shaped candy, cracking it between his teeth, crunching it into smaller and smaller bits, the sound of it breaking loud in his ears as he felt a quiet, intense hunger he hadn’t felt in years.
Closing his eyes, he turned his face up to the sun, feeling its burning warmth.
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t know if he was apologizing for his failure to bring Mi-sook and Joo-won’s real murderers to justice, or for the fact that he could only taste the strong, overpowering aroma of cherries. That all he could see was bright red.
The red of a beautiful, cat-curved smile.
*
“Did you like the lolly I left for you?”
“It was too sweet.”
“Ah, well,” Min-joon says with an indifferent smile and shrug, “we can’t all have taste.”
Unlike what Moo-shin said, Kang-woo isn’t worried about the punk.
He really is not.
“Your eyes don’t look red and puffy, even after crying like a little kid last night.”
“Concealer and setting powder,” Min-joon says proudly, winking and lightly tapping the skin just under his eye.
It turns into a frown when he notices the intent look on Kang-woo’s face.
“Don’t you dare rub it off again,” he threatens. “Do you know how long it took to apply it and hide the redness?”
Fine. Kang-woo will be good then.
When questioned about his whereabouts, Kang-woo remarking that he thought Min-joon would be sitting around crying, the other only mockingly retorts that he’s not like Kang-woo, that he didn’t sit at home crying two years ago; that he partied instead and splurged the 3,4 billion won.
Kang-woo knows.
It’s why he didn’t just go moping around again this morning. He thought about what Min-joon would do instead and did exactly that. Even Ha-ri was surprised, coming to check on him, worried that he’d be depressed again, only to see him already dressed and on his feet, determined to get to the bottom of this big conspiracy. If he’s honest, it surprises him too.
Min-joon makes him feel alive again, makes him want to live again, in a way he hasn’t in years.
It’s as scary as it’s exhilarating. Thrilling.
Like a rollercoaster ride or jumping from a helicopter, trying to go as long as possible without opening the parachute. The adrenaline high you can only get from that.
There’s nothing and no one quite like Min-joon.
As usual, he deflects Kang-woo’s questions and brushes off any concerns over him doing this alone again, dismissing the mere notion of joining Kang-woo’s team. Becoming part of his pack.
To be truthful, it’s not an idea Kang-woo entirely hates.
“Mr. Choi, do you trust me? Because I don’t trust you.”
Kang-woo only smiles. It’s like trying to get a stray, feral cat to trust you.
You need bait. To lure it in.
Min-joon perks up when Kang-woo throws the investigation report the former is looking for on the table, eyes instantly lighting up. If he was a cat, Kang-woo is sure his pupils would expand too. So transparent.
Min-joon licks his lips. Like the smart boy he is, he knows nothing is ever for free.
“What do you want me to give you?”
That’s how Kang-woo tricks him into answering two questions and learns that Lee Mi-ran’s last words were to look for the original insurance policy from Taeyang Life Insurance, whatever that might mean, Min-joon pouting and whining about how it’s not fair all the while.
But he plays along anyway and listens. He listens to Kang-woo and no one else.
So good for him.
When Min-joon reaches for the files again, Kang-woo catches Min-joon’s slim, pale wrist this time. “Not so fast.”
“What? I already answered two of your questions even though you only offered me one thing. What else do you want?”
“We got interrupted last night… I’m sure you can guess what the third thing I want is, can't you?”
Min-joon can. He very much can.
They continue right where they left off.
Min-joon doesn’t have to take off his long blazer coat as Kang-woo simply untucks his shirt from his trousers and pulls it up to his neck, pinning his hands above his head while his own head hungrily dips down to where he’s laid out on the table like a beautiful tableau, like something that should hang in a gallery somewhere, admired by the world, licking and biting at his chest and nipples that taste as good as they look, better than any of the horrifyingly sugary treats Min-joon likes to consume, before switching to hold his wrists with only one hand to grip his hip and still it with the other, not allowing him to get any friction on his cock, even as Min-joon whines and squirms and moans, pink-faced and teary-eyed, cursing him up and down like a kid throwing a tantrum, calling him a big meanie and saying that he hates him, but without any real heat behind it. Not when he’s enjoying it as much as Kang-woo is, if not more so.
Turns out Kang-woo was right after all: the punk can really come from only this.
*
They figure out that Lee Young-ho, the lawyer of Juhan Air, must have been the one to kill Ko Jin-cheol. He doesn’t tell Min-joon, driving him away by stubbornly insisting to only investigate Juhan Air without suspecting Taeyang Life Insurance despite all the clues saying otherwise much to Min-joon’s frustration and telling him to stay put and get out, which he does, angry and slightly hurt, perhaps. Maybe even betrayed.
It’s only to protect him. Lee Young-ho surely already knows about Min-joon, and it’s for the best that Min-joon doesn’t know and stays far away from the dangerous man. He tells Ha-ri as much, when she asks.
Except Min-joon is never one to stay put, especially not when someone tells him to.
Just like them, he seems to be tailing Cha Hong-joo and Lee Young-ho as they disappear into a building together. Kang-woo tells Ha-ri to stay back in the car before surreptitiously following Min-joon up to the seventeenth floor where the restaurant is.
“You have to get out. Now,” he says, standing in front of where Min-joon is sitting at one of the tables. Min-joon leisurely takes another sip before casually getting up and following him, but then he stops, demanding to know why he should leave with him. Before Kang-woo can answer, he sees Lee Young-ho and Cha Hong-joo walking and talking not too far from them. He drags Min-joon behind the wall to hide him. It’s only when they are gone that he notices they are standing close. Too close.
Min-joon watches him through hooded eyes, smiling when Kang-woo can’t help the way his eyes linger on those too-red lips for a little too long. “So?” An elegantly arched brow. “What is this about?”
Kang-woo sighs and tells him the truth after all. That Lee Young-ho killed Ko Jin-cheol and Min-joon could get killed too if he goes against him.
He deliberately calls Hong-joo to ask her if she knows anything in front of Min-joon so he’ll see and hear.
When the phone call ends, Min-joon is smiling. “So you do trust me and are starting to doubt Taeyang Life Insurance after all, Mr. Choi.” He puts his elbows on Kang-woo’s shoulders, arms looping behind his neck, bringing them even closer together.
“As if I’d ever trust a swindler.” But he sways closer too.
A laugh. “Wise of you not to. You really shouldn’t.”
He leans in then, tone low and secretive: “What if I stole your heart?”
“You think too highly of yourself, punk.”
Min-joon grins, a beautiful expression. Then he’s pouting again. “But did you really have to act like you didn’t believe me at all and didn’t want me there? You are so mean.”
“I thought you liked it when I was mean.”
A small, soft smile. “I guess I do.”
When Min-joon goes on his tip-toes, fingers carding gently through Kang-woo’s hair at the base of his head, glossy pink lips pressing to his, he doesn’t resist or pull away. His palm presses to the small of Min-joon’s back, the nimble curve of it, and he kisses back.
*
If he relishes in Min-joon’s shocked face when the latter barges into his office at Taeyang Life Insurance, who could blame him?
It’s not often he can get the drop on the punk like this.
Repressing a smile, he smoothly gets up from behind the desk and introduces himself as the manager of the Claims Examination Team before extending his hand. Min-joon takes it, palm sliding against warm palm, though he still seems confused, tilting his head to the side like a kitten. It’s cute. Awfully cute.
It makes Kang-woo want to bite him, like the too-sweet lollipop the other day. Crack him between his teeth and strong jaws. Break him into smaller and smaller itty-bitty bits until there’s nothing left.
Until he’s nothing but Kang-woo’s.
He knows he’s gripping too tight. Forcing himself to let go, he tells Min-joon that they still need to find the original insurance policy. Min-joon doesn’t remark on the bruising grip, doesn’t let on that he even felt it. And that bothers Kang-woo too. The nonchalance.
Min-joon steps into his space, his cloying, headache-inducing scent filling Kang-woo’s nose and mouth. He can’t stand it. He can’t get enough of it.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you in a suit before… you look sharp. Powerful. A big man in a big company. Signing papers and bending secretaries over the table. Getting things done. It’s sexy.”
It startles a laugh out of Kang-woo, rusty and scratching up his throat. Almost painful. It’s been a long time since he laughed like this. “I don’t bend secretaries over the table.”
“No, but there’s someone else you want to bend over the table, isn’t there?”
Min-joon is close enough that he thinks he is going to kiss him, soft lips pressing to his, but he doesn’t. The hands that had been on his chest, smoothing out the fabric of his dress shirt, fall away just as Min-joon slinks away and past him.
Kang-woo’s jaw ticks, having to resist the urge to chase him, hunt him down, as Min-joon plops down in his chair, sprawling luxuriously and imperiously in it like he’s a long-haired Persian cat and owns it.
It’s… strongly reminiscent of how Kang-woo was sitting in his chair in his secret room too, earlier in the day.
A clear provocation.
“Are you sure you can handle it, being back at Taeyang Life Insurance again?”
“Why wouldn’t I be able to handle it? I worked here for years before Mad Dog.”
“Hm,” Min-joon says, unconvinced. “I don’t like how you look here.”
“How?”
“Sad.”
Kang-woo is struck speechless for a moment.
“All of this?” Min-joon continues, gesturing around him with a careless hand. “This big office and the panorama windows and the sharp suits? It’s not you. You don’t belong here. You are a mad dog, and mad dogs shouldn’t be trapped in a cage or dog house. They shouldn’t be collared or chained by anyone.”
“Not by anyone but you, you mean.” But Kang-woo is smiling, only stopping when he’s right in front of Min-joon. “Are you worried about me?”
“As if,” Min-joon scoffs, but he’s smiling too.
He says since Taeyang Life Insurance trusts Kang-woo enough to take him back again, he should place his trust in Taeyang Life Insurance too. When Kang-woo tells him to lie low and not pull any attention to himself, exasperated, Min-joon only mockingly returns the question like the cheeky little thing he is: “Are you concerned about me?”
“Why would I be concerned about a fraud?”
Kang-woo leans forward, hands curling around his thighs. Min-joon lets him uncross his legs, lets him gently squeeze and part them, thumbs on the inside of his knees, digging into them. They don’t break eye contact.
He’s very warm, under Kang-woo’s hands.
Min-joon has long, slim legs that go on and on. Supermodel legs. Victoria’s Secret legs. Kang-woo wants to kiss and lick them, so he does, taking one of them into his hands, pressing his mouth to the spot just above his ankle, just above the hem of his pants, and slowly kissing up the gentle curve of his calf.
“A big man on his knees… can’t say I don’t enjoy the sight.”
Min-joon tries to act so distant, aloof, but his breath has gone deeper. His eyes have gone darker, pupils dilating cat-like.
Kang-woo has reached his knee by now, licking and mouthing at it. The leg twitches in his grip, ticklish.
He drags his mouth up Min-joon’s inner thigh where he’s sensitive, but stops just before reaching the bulge in his pants, breathing over it, teasing him, as Min-joon trembles, trying not to let on how much it affects him. But his white-knuckled grip on the arm of the chair gives him away.
Smiling, Kang-woo switches to the other leg, starting at the bottom and lavishing it with just as much attention as the first leg, one hand around his delicate ankle, curled around it and kneading it, while the other is wrapped around his calf, possessive.
When he reaches the apex of Min-joon’s thighs again, he stays there for long seconds, just breathing against him, waiting patiently until Min-joon finally breaks and calls him an “Arschloch—”
Then, without warning, he uses his strength to forcefully pull the other forward to the edge of the seat. Min-joon gets off on it, on being manhandled like this, too; Kang-woo can tell from his hitched breath, the way his hips jerk needily under his palms.
“You’ll ruin the fabric,” Min-joon whines when Kang-woo starts to lick at him through his pants, red pinstripes on black to match his blazer, before nosing lower, long legs hooked over his shoulders.
But Kang-woo doesn’t care. He wants Min-joon to leave his office wet and smelling like him.
He makes Min-joon come twice, the first time just from licking his hole and cock through fabric (“Just like a dog,” Min-joon laughed, before Kang-woo jabbed his tongue shallowly into him, accompanied by the scrape of teeth, his laugh turning into a strangled moan instead), the second time from eating him out, after pulling his pants down his thighs just enough to, bringing him close before hungrily swallowing down his cock, fingers slipping into the wet, twitching heat of him where Kang-woo’s tongue had been before, filling and fucking Min-joon with them.
Kang-woo massages his swollen prostate and licks his soft, spent cock for a long time, getting every last spurt and dribble out of him.
“Mm, good boy,” Min-joon says, once he has regained his breath, fingers gently running through his hair. They had gripped and tugged the strands while Kang-woo licked and sucked him to orgasm.
There’s a lazy and sated smile on his lips, in the afterglow. He isn’t about to come again anytime soon.
“Come here,” he still says. “You can, you know. Fuck me.”
“Are you sure?”
A finger hooks in the knot of Kang-woo’s tie, pulling him up until lips touch his ear. “I want you inside me… to come inside me. Leave me with something to remember you by.”
Well. Kang-woo can’t argue with that.
After fully divesting Min-joon of his pants, the other helpfully raising and shimmying his hips as Kang-woo tugs them down and off him, followed by his shoes and socks, leaving his lower body completely exposed, Kang-woo carries him on top of the table, one leg over his shoulder, the other around his waist, spreading him as much as possible. It’s hot, how flexible he is. How easily and beautifully he bends for Kang-woo. Min-joon welcomes him inside with sweet, warm suction, a long, decadent sigh falling from his lips as his hands slide up his shoulders, down his back, caressing and groping the muscles there.
“Anyone could just walk in any moment,” comes the low purr; a sweet-faced devil whispering in his ear. “Maybe Mr. Park who’s still just outside the door, unpacking his things due to his demotion and your promotion. Or maybe even Executive Director Cha. She’s got a crush on you, you know? It’s cute. But if she saw you fucking me right over the table… it would surely break her heart. Poor thing.”
“Why do I get the feeling you want her to walk in on us?”
Min-joon raises his brows high, making an exaggerated ‘Who, me?’ expression that Kang-woo only snorts at, but abandons his innocent act soon enough, growing bored of it as he usually does all things. Fickle as a feline.
“Or,” he continues, “people could just peer over the frosted glass too. It’s not that high…”
He’s craning his head back, stretching his neck appealingly, in a way that makes Kang-woo’s mouth water, to see better. To critically make out the humanoid shapes and colors moving beyond the frosted glass.
“Mr. Park,” he calls out, all of a sudden, making Kang-woo nearly jump out of his skin. “Mr. Pa—”
A heavy hand claps over his mouth. Kang-woo presses him back against the table, fucks him harder, hard and punishing, in an effort to shut him up. To make him focus. To make him think of nothing but Kang-woo above him, inside him; the fat dick stretching him open over and over again.
When Min-joon pulls down the collar of Kang-woo’s dress shirt to suck a hickey right into his skin, he latches onto him like a particularly vicious leech, refusing to let go until Kang-woo grabs his hair and forcefully yanks his head back.
It leaves a ring of teeth, peeking out just past the edge and barely visible. But still visible.
“You aren’t the only one who knows how to bite,” the little beast says, salaciously licking the blood from his very red lips, painting them like lipstick—and isn’t that a thought—even as Kang-woo curses and kisses him, angrily sharing the metallic taste between them.
It should be disgusting, but somehow it tastes sweet, sweeter than anything he’s ever tasted before.
Retaliating in kind, he leaves his own marks all over Min-joon’s supine, arching body, feeling his bright, bubbling laughter and breathy moans under his mouth, wanting to catch and crunch them between his teeth, wanting to bite and swallow every single one of those sounds, bottle them up and hide them away so no one will ever hear them.
But Kang-woo knows he can’t last long. He’s too wound-up, ready to burst. Has been ever since he ate Min-joon out and watched him fall apart under his lips and tongue.
He tries to stave it off anyway.
He wants to stay like this, inside Min-joon, in his wet and open body, a bit longer. Wants to stay in his skin forever.
But then those succubus lips brush his ear: “It’s alright. Come. Come for me.”
Kang-woo comes. He comes with a choked noise, with his teeth clamped around the base of a pale throat.
He comes and comes, gyrating and grinding his hips over and over into Min-joon as soothing fingers comb his hair, petting his neck and shoulders and back as though he truly is a dog. And he is. He’s a dog for Min-joon, and no one else. He’d go on his knees for him and slobber and pant all over him, and no one else. Eat him, eat in his kitchen, at his table, and still be hungry for him, and no one else. As Min-joon hums and croons and moans softly, praising him for coming so much inside him, for filling him up so nicely with his big cock and hot come, so much of it that it’s almost too much, that he’s overflowing with it and it pushes out of him again, stuffed to the brim with it. That he will still be feeling him and dripping his come for days because Kang-woo fucked it so good and deep inside him that Min-joon will never be able to get it out again, ruined for anyone else. Praising him for being good, so, so good for him.
After they both get dressed again and look halfway decent, he runs his fingers through Kang-woo’s gelled-back hair, messing it up one last time so it doesn’t look quite so neat anymore.
“You look more like yourself now, like the Mr. Choi I know,” he grins, nodding to himself, self-satisfied. “Happier too.”
A saucy wink. “Don’t take too long. Come home soon, okay? I'll be waiting for you, yeobo.”
The punk leaves before Kang-woo can sputter and protest, saying that they don’t share a home, that they don’t share anything.
It’s also then he notices, with a bit of a sinking feeling, that he’s going to smell like Min-joon all day.
He finds he doesn’t mind, strangely enough.
*
Moo-shin isn’t able to look him in the eye afterwards, clearly having noticed them having sex, angrily complaining about them stinking up his office right after he cleared it. It used to be his office up until today, you know? I know the two of you can’t keep your hands off each other, but you should show at least some restraint and respect.
Baptizing it, Kang-woo only thinks warmly, affectionately.
His friend immediately rips the windows open to air out the room, sucking in large gulps of oxygen as he sticks his head out like a man dying of suffocation.
He’s being a little dramatic, in Kang-woo’s opinion.
As the other man continues to pace about and lecture him, darkly muttering under his breath about them desecrating a holy place, Kang-woo’s eyes catch on the fingerprint smudges Min-joon left on the formerly pristine glass of the name plate sitting on his desk. Knowing the other, it was likely deliberate.
A soft, amused huff through his nose.
That punk.
Kang-woo can’t wait to get his hands on him again. To leave smudges on him too. Finger paint.
“Are you even listening to me?!”
*
“You told me to live my life, Choi Kang-woo’s life.”
“You said there was no such thing.”
“There is. I found it in an unexpected place.”
He can only think of Min-joon, can only see and taste him when he closes his eyes, bright as the morning sun against his lids. Impossible to ignore. But he of course doesn’t mention that in front of Hong-joo, claiming he found it here at Taeyang Life Insurance instead.
It’s a lie. A bald lie. One that Hong-joo seems to swallow, after some skepticism.
Min-joon said he looked sad here, that he didn’t belong here, in a prison of cold glass and steel and corporate greed.
He was right.
When Hong-joo finally dares to remark on the angry bite mark on his neck, Kang-woo only smiles and says, “It was my house cat.”
Hong-joo seems stunned. “I didn’t know you had a cat, Kang-woo-sunbae.”
“It’s a stray I picked up from the street. A wild beast, that thing, clawing at me and biting me, not knowing that I was only trying to help it. Not knowing how to trust anyone.” Perhaps, also, not knowing any better. “I don’t know if I'll ever get it to trust me. Maybe I should just give up and abandon it somewhere or wring its scrawny neck once and for all.”
With how utterly smitten he sounds, it’s no wonder Hong-joo looks at him like she doesn’t believe him at all.
*
Though he and Min-joon still sometimes meet at night, work—namely cracking down on insurance scammers and raising the detection rate for Hong-joo as part of his plan to get her, and by extension her father, to trust him—keeps him busy. Sometimes he comes home late enough that he finds Min-joon already asleep and curled up on his bed, possessively hugging a pillow to his chest like he wants to hug something or rather someone else instead.
One time, Kang-woo lets himself stroke his hair, cupping his head with a gentle palm before leaning down to press a soft, adoring kiss to it.
Then he starts, realizing that this is what he used to do with Mi-sook and Joo-won too, after late days at work.
And now he’s doing it with Min-joon.
It scares him, and he hurriedly lets go, getting up and out of the room as though burned. As though ashamed. With his hand still on the doorknob, he looks back inside: at the shaft of light that slants over Min-joon’s slumbering form, the faint S-curve of his spine as he lies on his side, ribs gently rising and falling.
Then he closes the door.
He doesn’t do it again.
*
They mostly communicate via email.
Kang-woo tells Min-joon not to move or do anything, that he’ll handle everything right here at Taeyang Life Insurance, sending him an attachment with the tampered voice recording of the airplane crash in the (somewhat desperate) hope it’ll satisfy Min-joon for now and make him stay put. Min-joon only cheekily replies that he’s not sure he can do that. He asks him if he is alright. He also says that he misses him, the way he does in every email.
He flirts with him too and sends him texts, trying to initiate phone sex by slyly asking him what he’s wearing, though Kang-woo quickly puts a stop to that. As it is, he’s already distracted enough by the punk.
Other than that, Min-joon gives him daily, or rather hourly, updates about himself and his team.
He complains about it when Mad Dog pretty much moves into his apartment, all because he advised them to close their office to keep up the ruse of Kang-woo coming back to Taeyang Life Insurance.
Come back soon and don’t just leave me with your brats! I’m not ready to be a single mother yet. They’ll eat me out of house and home at this rate.
Followed by a string of pitiful emojis.
It makes Kang-woo smile. He only smiles wider when Ha-ri texts him too, telling him about how Min-joon treated Joo Hyeon-gi’s secretary to a free meal without asking any questions or getting anything in return.
There’s that warm feeling of pride again, making his chest swell.
Min-joon is so, so good.
*
But Kang-woo should have known that Min-joon wouldn’t stay put or nice for long. He is still sugar. He is still spice.
The crazy bastard shows it before the whole world too, ever the showman, cockily staring down Lee Young-ho, the JH lawyer who could very well kill him and looks like he very much wants to too: a beautiful, fearless figure wearing sunglasses and a black cap and a denim jacket, hands firmly clasped behind him as he shouts at the top of his lungs and demands justice for his brother, in the video Ha-ri sent Kang-woo.
If anyone could fight against the world and win, Kang-woo thinks, it would be him.