Ship/Member: jihoon/soonyoung Major Tags: mcd (past character death), wound description Additional Tags: inception inspired universe, dreamscapes, memory Permission to remix: Please ask
*****
Time is linear, Memory is a stranger, History is for fools.... — Roger Waters, Perfect Sense, Part I
Jihoon jolts awake to the feeling of falling once again, sweat cooling on his chest and heart racing in his throat. He clenches his fingers into the worn out material of his sheets and waits until he can no longer taste blood in the back of his mouth, doing the slow breathing he read about online when researching panic attacks at 3am.
The shabby white walls tilt slightly as he stands. One hand shoots out to steady himself, knocks at the edge of a framed picture on his bedside table, thick with dust. “Sorry,” he croaks, although the room remains empty.
His mouth feels full of chalk as he moves through to the bathroom, wipes a hand across the mess that is a mirror and inspects his too-long hair and the heavy bags under his eyes. The tube of toothpaste is twisted and mangled in his palm, spitting out just enough for Jihoon to feel like his teeth are clean, and he grips the edge of the sink as he brushes to keep himself steady.
From the bedroom, his phone buzzes, which is odd because it’s rarely got enough charge these days to receive messages. It makes Jihoon frown, but he tramps through to investigate. It’s from Junhui, asking if he’s ready for today.
He isn’t, but he composes a lie that sounds almost trustworthy when read off a screen.
The clothes on the floor are clean enough for him to wear again, if a little wrinkled. Not that that matters in his line of work exactly. His cupboards are bare, but he knows that Wonwoo will bring enough food for the three of them to the cramped warehouse they use as an office.
Junhui refers to them as spies, but Jihoon prefers to think of them more as archaeologists: diving into the muck and dirt of other people’s minds to dredge up whatever it is they think their buyers might be interested in. Sure, it might not be the only part of the job, but it is the part he foregrounds in his own mind.
The first time he entered someone else’s dreamspace he was so violently sick when he emerged that he thought he’d never have the guts to go back in. It had been Soonyoung who had convinced him to try again, had been Soonyoung who’d held him close until he’d stopped shaking.
The pastry is dry but the coffee Wonwoo supplies is hot and dark and strong, so Jihoon doesn’t complain. He scowls as Junhui fiddles with a pistol, familiarising himself again with the springs and locks in a way that screams of compulsion more than necessity. He doesn’t remember anything about weapons in the brief. Maybe he needs to be reading his emails more carefully.
“Should be relatively easy. In and out job,” Wonwoo is saying, checking a floor plan again. “It’s taken me three weeks to build the layout of his childhood home exactly down to his daddy’s dirty magazines under the bed.” He glances over to see if Jihoon is listening, which he mostly is. “The plans should be here, in the study. There’s a safe behind the ugly painting of the lady with a weird dog, code is written down here. Memorise it.”
The slip of paper glides into Jihoon’s line of vision, the numbers already pressed deep into his brain. They’ve been over this before, but it’s always better safe than sorry.
“He’s hired some extra protection so, Junhui, you’ll need to take care of them. Jihoon, try to get up through the house without the kid seeing you. If he does, don’t freak out. Just make sure you’re wearing a mask.”
Jihoon nods. He hates wearing anything that covers his face when he works, finds that it makes him claustrophobic. But he understands the necessity of the request. If their target sees him in the dream as a child, he’ll remember him when he wakes up as an adult. And that will cause a whole sea of problems for them and their client going forwards. Problems they could do without.
He remembers when Soonyoung first tried to talk him through the idea of non-linear time, of the way dreams and memories warp and contort the forwards flow of something that Jihoon had always thought was ever so simple and straightforward.
“If you can visit it in a dream,” Soonyoung’s mouth had been curled up at the edges, the sheets wrapped loosely around his waist, “if you can picture it in a memory, then surely someone else would be able to be able to see it too. And surely that someone would be able to take what they saw in that dream back into the real world, just like you can.”
“Yes, but what would be the point?” It had been far too early for Jihoon to be pondering such questions, even as his stomach had churned in excitement at the idea. “So you can visit your best friend’s spank bank? No thank you.”
Soonyoung had laid down, laughter billowing out in front of him like a balloon. “No, silly.” A hand, careful against Jihoon’s face. “There are far more exciting things that we could do.”
Wonwoo had been the first to join after that, then Junhui a short time later. Although no one outside of the four of them knew their names, there were lots of very important people in the world who knew about them and were very keen to meet them — either to shake their hands or to put a bullet in their brain. Either way, Jihoon was keen to keep his face off the front pages and keep his pockets lined with cash made by what some were calling ‘the greatest threat to personal privacy of this century’.
“The main trick,” Soonyoung had explained shortly before their first mission, “is to make sure you make it out before they’ve even cottoned on you’re there.” He’d hesitated, pulling on a black balaclava made out of an old pair of tights. “Well, that and don’t get shot, I guess.”
The falling asleep is always the easiest part for Jihoon, especially with the agent they pump directly into their bloodstreams. If he thinks about it too hard, it feels like dying. So he tries not to think about it too hard.
Wonwoo was right, the job was almost pitifully easy. Jihoon hears the muffled shots as Junhui dispatches the guards — his fussing with the gun earlier clearly having paid off — and enters the study shortly after. The painting, the safe, the code are all exactly as Wonwoo said they would be, and Jihoon almost feels a sense of comfort falling over him as he pulls out the plans and lays them down on the floor.
He likes to tell himself that he wasn’t just drawn into this scheme because of his eidetic memory, that he has other qualities which make him a valuable part of the team. It’s just, if you asked him to name them, he might come up short compared to the others.
But he also tells himself that he doesn’t need to be anything other than a cog of the right size and shape in this well oiled machine that they’ve built. They all have their place and he’s long since come to accept his.
“It’s tricky, this one.” Soonyoung’s voice is hazy, more static than sound. Jihoon clamps his lips together and forces himself to focus. “You’re out of practice, old friend.”
“Shut up.” Jihoon breathes through his nose and turns the page, ignoring the way his hand shakes and rustles the paper a little.
Soonyoung eases himself to the floor, the leather of his shoes creaking against their laces as he goes. He hovers in Jihoon’s periphery, clearly trying to get a look at what is in front of Jihoon. “Did you miss me?” The whisper tickles against Jihoon’s ear. “Do you miss me?”
Of course, Jihoon thinks, but he doesn’t have time to get back into that now. “Shut up,” he repeats, with less force this time. “Please.”
“Shh. He’ll hear you.” Soonyoung giggles. “If he sees you it’s curtains. You’re not wearing your mask.” And, just like that, Jihoon isn’t. Breathing is a little easier for a moment until Soonyoung leans forwards and smiles directly at him. “Can’t have you getting caught.”
A bead of sweat drops down onto the paper below Jihoon and he shuffles the pages again, tries to focus on the information Wonwoo had highlighted. “I won’t get caught.”
“That’s what I thought.” Soonyoung adjusts his posture, splays out more on the thin rug. “That’s what we all thought.” His voice is only vaguely cruel this time. Jihoon has certainly heard worse.
He remembers toying with the tech when they first got their hands on it, him and Soonyoung carving out the rules for this new, dangerous they had decided to play with.
“You can take nothing in except whatever you can imagine,” Soonyoung had explained to Junhui on their first trip as a three. He’d always been much better with words than Jihoon. “And you can bring nothing out except what you remember.” “Is it true?” Junhui had asked, looking somewhere between bored and engrossed in the way only he can. “What happens if you die in a dream?”
Soonyoung and Jihoon had exchanged a glance then, the argument already well worn between them. “I think it’s better we try not to find out,” Soonyoung had said slowly. “Dying in someone else’s dream could only lead to…complications. Besides,” he’d grinned, recovering himself quickly, “we’ll only have to find out if one of us gets caught. And that isn’t going to happen.”
Footsteps outside and Jihoon feels his heart miss a beat. There is a light knock at the door, then Junhui’s voice. “You good to go? We’ve got about two minutes left on this dose.”
Soonyoung sits up, alert and watching Jihoon. There is a glint in his eyes that seems almost like a dare.
“You go now.” Jihoon keeps his voice low. “I need one more minute here. I have one more page.” He has more than that, but he’ll have to hope that what he already has will be enough. He rifles through the pages again, then shoves them back in the safe, carefully moving the painting back to its place.
“You’re leaving.” Soonyoung’s voice is full of pout, the way it always gets when he’s sulking. “Already?”
Jihoon turns, takes a deep breath and looks Soonyoung steady in the face. He takes in the mess of his missing eye, the cavernous wound where the bullet tore its path through his skull. He hates that this is how he remembers Soonyoung. Then again, he doubts he could every forget seeing what he did. “I can’t take you with me.”
“You could try.” Soonyoung’s fingers grip Jihoon’s wrist, tips clawing in. “You’ve never tried before.”
He’s wrong, of course. It’s the only thing Jihoon has ever really tried to do.
“Nothing in, nothing out.” Jihoon is parroting Soonyoung’s own words back at him. “You have to let me go.” That’s rich, he thinks to himself. Coming from him.
Soonyoung grips tighter, his breath heavy. Fury and betrayal and hurt swirl in the pits of his eyes, cheeks flushing as he digs into Jihoon’s skin. Footsteps again from beyond the door, lighter this time, a child’s. Jihoon’s sign to leave.
The drug works fast as it wrenches him awake, the feeling of Soonyoung’s thumb tight against his pulse point. Before he plummets, he sees Soonyoung’s mouth twist. “See you tonight.”
He slams awake as the door to the study opens, knows the boy doesn’t have enough time to see his face.
Wonwoo is stood there with a bottle of water and a frown. “You good?” he asks. “Took you longer than normal.”
Jihoon is already reaching for the paper and pencil, sketching out the drafts he saw before they can fade. His hand moves fast, the shapes deliberate and practiced. “Fine,” he grunts. “Just rusty.”
“Junhui says he thought he heard you talking to someone.” Wonwoo doesn’t sit, doesn’t hover like he used to. He’s eager to send off the drafts to their buyer, keen to get things moving again. “That can’t be right, can it?”
The plans aren’t as detailed as they might be, but they’ll do. Jihoon pushes the paper towards Wonwoo and stands, rolling his wrists. “Kid’s off his rocker,” he scoffs. “It all went super smooth in there. Same as it always does.”
Beneath the sleeve of his jacket, the semicircular grooves sting as they seep wet blood into the soft cotton of his shirt.
[FILL]: history is for fools
Major Tags: mcd (past character death), wound description
Additional Tags: inception inspired universe, dreamscapes, memory
Permission to remix: Please ask
*****
Time is linear,
Memory is a stranger,
History is for fools....
— Roger Waters, Perfect Sense, Part I
Jihoon jolts awake to the feeling of falling once again, sweat cooling on his chest and heart racing in his throat. He clenches his fingers into the worn out material of his sheets and waits until he can no longer taste blood in the back of his mouth, doing the slow breathing he read about online when researching panic attacks at 3am.
The shabby white walls tilt slightly as he stands. One hand shoots out to steady himself, knocks at the edge of a framed picture on his bedside table, thick with dust. “Sorry,” he croaks, although the room remains empty.
His mouth feels full of chalk as he moves through to the bathroom, wipes a hand across the mess that is a mirror and inspects his too-long hair and the heavy bags under his eyes. The tube of toothpaste is twisted and mangled in his palm, spitting out just enough for Jihoon to feel like his teeth are clean, and he grips the edge of the sink as he brushes to keep himself steady.
From the bedroom, his phone buzzes, which is odd because it’s rarely got enough charge these days to receive messages. It makes Jihoon frown, but he tramps through to investigate. It’s from Junhui, asking if he’s ready for today.
He isn’t, but he composes a lie that sounds almost trustworthy when read off a screen.
The clothes on the floor are clean enough for him to wear again, if a little wrinkled. Not that that matters in his line of work exactly. His cupboards are bare, but he knows that Wonwoo will bring enough food for the three of them to the cramped warehouse they use as an office.
Junhui refers to them as spies, but Jihoon prefers to think of them more as archaeologists: diving into the muck and dirt of other people’s minds to dredge up whatever it is they think their buyers might be interested in. Sure, it might not be the only part of the job, but it is the part he foregrounds in his own mind.
The first time he entered someone else’s dreamspace he was so violently sick when he emerged that he thought he’d never have the guts to go back in. It had been Soonyoung who had convinced him to try again, had been Soonyoung who’d held him close until he’d stopped shaking.
The pastry is dry but the coffee Wonwoo supplies is hot and dark and strong, so Jihoon doesn’t complain. He scowls as Junhui fiddles with a pistol, familiarising himself again with the springs and locks in a way that screams of compulsion more than necessity. He doesn’t remember anything about weapons in the brief. Maybe he needs to be reading his emails more carefully.
“Should be relatively easy. In and out job,” Wonwoo is saying, checking a floor plan again. “It’s taken me three weeks to build the layout of his childhood home exactly down to his daddy’s dirty magazines under the bed.” He glances over to see if Jihoon is listening, which he mostly is. “The plans should be here, in the study. There’s a safe behind the ugly painting of the lady with a weird dog, code is written down here. Memorise it.”
The slip of paper glides into Jihoon’s line of vision, the numbers already pressed deep into his brain. They’ve been over this before, but it’s always better safe than sorry.
“He’s hired some extra protection so, Junhui, you’ll need to take care of them. Jihoon, try to get up through the house without the kid seeing you. If he does, don’t freak out. Just make sure you’re wearing a mask.”
Jihoon nods. He hates wearing anything that covers his face when he works, finds that it makes him claustrophobic. But he understands the necessity of the request. If their target sees him in the dream as a child, he’ll remember him when he wakes up as an adult. And that will cause a whole sea of problems for them and their client going forwards. Problems they could do without.
He remembers when Soonyoung first tried to talk him through the idea of non-linear time, of the way dreams and memories warp and contort the forwards flow of something that Jihoon had always thought was ever so simple and straightforward.
“If you can visit it in a dream,” Soonyoung’s mouth had been curled up at the edges, the sheets wrapped loosely around his waist, “if you can picture it in a memory, then surely someone else would be able to be able to see it too. And surely that someone would be able to take what they saw in that dream back into the real world, just like you can.”
“Yes, but what would be the point?” It had been far too early for Jihoon to be pondering such questions, even as his stomach had churned in excitement at the idea. “So you can visit your best friend’s spank bank? No thank you.”
Soonyoung had laid down, laughter billowing out in front of him like a balloon. “No, silly.” A hand, careful against Jihoon’s face. “There are far more exciting things that we could do.”
Wonwoo had been the first to join after that, then Junhui a short time later. Although no one outside of the four of them knew their names, there were lots of very important people in the world who knew about them and were very keen to meet them — either to shake their hands or to put a bullet in their brain. Either way, Jihoon was keen to keep his face off the front pages and keep his pockets lined with cash made by what some were calling ‘the greatest threat to personal privacy of this century’.
“The main trick,” Soonyoung had explained shortly before their first mission, “is to make sure you make it out before they’ve even cottoned on you’re there.” He’d hesitated, pulling on a black balaclava made out of an old pair of tights. “Well, that and don’t get shot, I guess.”
The falling asleep is always the easiest part for Jihoon, especially with the agent they pump directly into their bloodstreams. If he thinks about it too hard, it feels like dying. So he tries not to think about it too hard.
Wonwoo was right, the job was almost pitifully easy. Jihoon hears the muffled shots as Junhui dispatches the guards — his fussing with the gun earlier clearly having paid off — and enters the study shortly after. The painting, the safe, the code are all exactly as Wonwoo said they would be, and Jihoon almost feels a sense of comfort falling over him as he pulls out the plans and lays them down on the floor.
He likes to tell himself that he wasn’t just drawn into this scheme because of his eidetic memory, that he has other qualities which make him a valuable part of the team. It’s just, if you asked him to name them, he might come up short compared to the others.
But he also tells himself that he doesn’t need to be anything other than a cog of the right size and shape in this well oiled machine that they’ve built. They all have their place and he’s long since come to accept his.
“It’s tricky, this one.” Soonyoung’s voice is hazy, more static than sound. Jihoon clamps his lips together and forces himself to focus. “You’re out of practice, old friend.”
“Shut up.” Jihoon breathes through his nose and turns the page, ignoring the way his hand shakes and rustles the paper a little.
Soonyoung eases himself to the floor, the leather of his shoes creaking against their laces as he goes. He hovers in Jihoon’s periphery, clearly trying to get a look at what is in front of Jihoon. “Did you miss me?” The whisper tickles against Jihoon’s ear. “Do you miss me?”
Of course, Jihoon thinks, but he doesn’t have time to get back into that now. “Shut up,” he repeats, with less force this time. “Please.”
“Shh. He’ll hear you.” Soonyoung giggles. “If he sees you it’s curtains. You’re not wearing your mask.” And, just like that, Jihoon isn’t. Breathing is a little easier for a moment until Soonyoung leans forwards and smiles directly at him. “Can’t have you getting caught.”
A bead of sweat drops down onto the paper below Jihoon and he shuffles the pages again, tries to focus on the information Wonwoo had highlighted. “I won’t get caught.”
“That’s what I thought.” Soonyoung adjusts his posture, splays out more on the thin rug. “That’s what we all thought.” His voice is only vaguely cruel this time. Jihoon has certainly heard worse.
He remembers toying with the tech when they first got their hands on it, him and Soonyoung carving out the rules for this new, dangerous they had decided to play with.
“You can take nothing in except whatever you can imagine,” Soonyoung had explained to Junhui on their first trip as a three. He’d always been much better with words than Jihoon. “And you can bring nothing out except what you remember.”
“Is it true?” Junhui had asked, looking somewhere between bored and engrossed in the way only he can. “What happens if you die in a dream?”
Soonyoung and Jihoon had exchanged a glance then, the argument already well worn between them. “I think it’s better we try not to find out,” Soonyoung had said slowly. “Dying in someone else’s dream could only lead to…complications. Besides,” he’d grinned, recovering himself quickly, “we’ll only have to find out if one of us gets caught. And that isn’t going to happen.”
Footsteps outside and Jihoon feels his heart miss a beat. There is a light knock at the door, then Junhui’s voice. “You good to go? We’ve got about two minutes left on this dose.”
Soonyoung sits up, alert and watching Jihoon. There is a glint in his eyes that seems almost like a dare.
“You go now.” Jihoon keeps his voice low. “I need one more minute here. I have one more page.” He has more than that, but he’ll have to hope that what he already has will be enough. He rifles through the pages again, then shoves them back in the safe, carefully moving the painting back to its place.
“You’re leaving.” Soonyoung’s voice is full of pout, the way it always gets when he’s sulking. “Already?”
Jihoon turns, takes a deep breath and looks Soonyoung steady in the face. He takes in the mess of his missing eye, the cavernous wound where the bullet tore its path through his skull. He hates that this is how he remembers Soonyoung. Then again, he doubts he could every forget seeing what he did. “I can’t take you with me.”
“You could try.” Soonyoung’s fingers grip Jihoon’s wrist, tips clawing in. “You’ve never tried before.”
He’s wrong, of course. It’s the only thing Jihoon has ever really tried to do.
“Nothing in, nothing out.” Jihoon is parroting Soonyoung’s own words back at him. “You have to let me go.” That’s rich, he thinks to himself. Coming from him.
Soonyoung grips tighter, his breath heavy. Fury and betrayal and hurt swirl in the pits of his eyes, cheeks flushing as he digs into Jihoon’s skin. Footsteps again from beyond the door, lighter this time, a child’s. Jihoon’s sign to leave.
The drug works fast as it wrenches him awake, the feeling of Soonyoung’s thumb tight against his pulse point. Before he plummets, he sees Soonyoung’s mouth twist. “See you tonight.”
He slams awake as the door to the study opens, knows the boy doesn’t have enough time to see his face.
Wonwoo is stood there with a bottle of water and a frown. “You good?” he asks. “Took you longer than normal.”
Jihoon is already reaching for the paper and pencil, sketching out the drafts he saw before they can fade. His hand moves fast, the shapes deliberate and practiced. “Fine,” he grunts. “Just rusty.”
“Junhui says he thought he heard you talking to someone.” Wonwoo doesn’t sit, doesn’t hover like he used to. He’s eager to send off the drafts to their buyer, keen to get things moving again. “That can’t be right, can it?”
The plans aren’t as detailed as they might be, but they’ll do. Jihoon pushes the paper towards Wonwoo and stands, rolling his wrists. “Kid’s off his rocker,” he scoffs. “It all went super smooth in there. Same as it always does.”
Beneath the sleeve of his jacket, the semicircular grooves sting as they seep wet blood into the soft cotton of his shirt.
*****
ao3