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Many of the top hunters had gathered together in a meeting reminiscent of the Awakened Management Bureau’s General Assembly and some poor office worker had been wrangled into presenting the information the Bureau had scraped together about Prometheus. Whoever had decided to put a low rank office drone in front of the top ranked hunters in South Korea to talk about Prometheus’s various experiments should probably be fired, Lee Sa-young concluded, watching the poor man shake under the pressure. It was a topic he despised listening to, doing his best to keep his mind from straying to memories that were sometimes a little fuzzy around the edges. He kept a cold gaze on the presenter, trying his best to keep the pressure that came from high tier hunters’ strong emotions in check.
It helped that when he’d dropped his hand down to rest on the thigh of the hunter next to him the man hadn’t pushed him away. Idly drawing random figures and swirls helped keep him anchored in the moment, tuning out the more personally disturbing details by focusing on the warmth from J’s leg. Maybe that was how he heard the soft pit-pat of water hitting the back of his leather glove, a noise that was so unexpected in the moment that his head snapped around to look at the man who occupied the seat to his left.
His sudden movement had drawn the attention of a few other hunters in the room; to his right he felt Jung Bin freeze after he’d leaned forward to see what was happening on Lee Sa-young’s other side, and Honeybee on J’s left had also turned towards them, her eyes going wide as she also saw the tears. He only had eyes for the pale haired man at his side, though, and the tears that silently slipped from under the black mask, trembling as they clung to his skin before they were heavy enough to fall.
Sa-young ignored the exclamations he received from standing suddenly and dragging J to his feet as well. He may have been a bit hasty in pushing the other hunter back and away from the table, but his concerns when it came to J were more important to him than the opinions of their fellow hunters.
He corralled J into a corner, letting his head drop forward to murmur in his ear. “Are you hurt?” It was the only present thought he had that could justify the tears in his mind at that moment. Even more concerning was how sluggish J was in lifting his head, their eyes meeting behind their respective masks.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“Are you two going to fight?”
A chorus of concerned voices echoed around the room, entirely from those in the room who hadn’t been around J and Lee Sa-young enough to have picked up on some of the hints the pair had been unintentionally dropping for months at that point.
Lee Sa-young stuffed one hand into the inner pocket of his trench coat, using it as a shield from the rest of the hunters in the room as he reached up and rested his hand over J’s mask, slow enough that if the other man were going to protest, he’d have time to do so. When no complaint was forthcoming, he removed it with a click, not bothering to hide J’s mask from the onlookers as he shoved it into his inventory.
This brought another eruption of confusion, and a clatter as someone swiftly stood up from their chair. Sa-young threw a glare over his shoulder long enough to see that it had been Honeybee who stood, and he saw as she slammed her hands down on the table they were all seated around hard enough to snap it.
“So Gyu-Gyu and I infiltrated a few Prometheus labs…” she loudly proclaimed, moving swiftly to the other end of the room in an attempt to draw attention to herself and away from the spectacle in the corner of the room. Those who knew Lee Sa-young and J better than the others kept shooting them glances now and again, but were attempting to keep attention off the pair as much as possible.
When he turned his attention to the hunter he had pressed against the wall, his eyes narrowed behind the mask as he took in the tear stained face. Cha Eui-jae looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes, lashes heavy and wet with tears.
“Are you hurt?” Sa-young restated his question, his tone sharper than before, making it plain that he needed an answer, yet his words were still heavy with concern for Eui-jae.
His response was slow, but eventually Cha Eui-jae shook his head. “What they did to you…” Sa-young looked into black eyes and saw what Eui-jae must have seen in the presentation. Himself, as a boy wrapped in bandages and at the mercy of their experiments. Sa-young was realizing that in his own attempt to escape his thoughts surrounding Prometheus, he hadn’t considered how it may affect the man whose disappearance had led to him falling into the organization’s hands.
“Don’t overthink it, Hyung.” It was a sorry attempt to brush it off, one Eui-jae quickly shook off, his eyebrows pulling together as he opened his mouth for a retort even as the tears still flowed down his cheeks. Someone cleared their throat behind them, and Sa-young cut off whatever the older man was going to say when he hastily pulled his head against his chest, his tears quickly soaking through the material of his shirt.
Throwing another look over his shoulder he found Director Ham Seok-jeong behind him, seemingly waiting for a status report.
“Get everyone out.”
His request was met with a quick nod and while everyone had probably heard it on their own, she relayed the request, “Alright, everyone, let’s take an early lunch break.” She waited by the door for everyone to file out, Honeybee stopping by on her way out to pat Sa-young on the shoulder despite his persistent glare at anyone who came, what he deemed, too close. When the Bureau office worker who had started shaking after Honeybee took over his presentation finally slunk out on wobbly legs, he left Eui-jae’s side long enough to lock the door to the now empty room, but was back a moment later.
Sa-young leaned in again as he felt wandering hands outside of his field of view brush against his ears, followed shortly by the click of the buckle that held his mask on. He looked into Eui-jae’s puffy eyes before rocking forward, brushing his cheek against the older man’s, feeling the tears against his own skin, pulling back to look him in the eye.
“I don’t remember the last time someone cried for me.” He took a deep breath, trying to gather his thoughts into some snarky response but it quickly died in his throat. Some of the images from Prometheus’s labs flashed unbidden through his mind, his gaze unfocused as he was momentarily somewhere far from the room.
With some effort he dragged his attention back to Cha Eui-jae, who was still watching him. Sighing, Sa-young leaned in and pressed their foreheads together, letting his eyes close. “Thank you.” Neither were the type to shed tears for themselves, and yet Sa-young found it oddly comforting that there was someone who could cry for the past Sa-young when he couldn’t.
Starting at his jaw, Sa-young pressed a series of kisses up the tracks the tears had made, the last left at the corner of Eui-jae’s eye before he switched sides and repeated the kisses on his other cheek. He licked the salty tears off his lips before leaning in for a slow, lingering kiss. The lips parting expectantly beneath his own pulled an amused hum from the black haired hunter, who instead took Eui-jae’s lower lip between his teeth, being mindful of his fangs. With one last quick kiss, he pulled away, reaching into his inventory and producing J’s mask, holding it between them.
“How’re you feeling?”
Cha Eui-jae took a moment to scrub his eyes before taking the proffered mask and affixing it back to his face. “Bad,” he admitted, rubbing his chin and throat to try to rid himself of the sensation of dry tears on his skin. “I just want to get out of here. I’ve seen enough.”
Lee Sa-young agreed. While he desperately wanted to capture Cha Eui-jae in his arms or curl up against him and forget about the day, the Awakened Management Bureau was not the place. Despite all that, as Sa-young unlocked and opened the door, he couldn’t help but feel lighter as they left, failing to give a reason for their early departure.
Even when he wouldn’t spare tears for himself, his Hyung had cried for him. It was a testament to how he had taken up residence in his heart and that thought alone was enough to soothe his pain for today.