Ship/Member: Jihoon/Soonyoung Major Tags: mcd (implied? past?) Additional Tags: inception-y au Permission to remix: Please ask
*** the ghosts of past inception aus would not leave me alone...just...soonyoung and limbo y'know... The job puts them on the back foot right from the start.
The mark’s mental defenses are stronger than they should be, a little too wary for them to get to him and his things alone, so they fall back to the secure room Wonwoo had hidden behind an innocuous bookshelf—one that only they would know to enter in the first place. It’s a smaller mirror of their set-up in reality, with chairs and IVs already arranged in anticipation of their entrance.
“You were right,” Jihoon sighs once the door has clicked flush, already claiming a seat for himself. Just as uncomfortable as its twin in reality is to sit on, too. “He’s way too defensive when we haven’t even done anything suspicious.”
Junhui doesn’t look happy about being proven right, but they’d already discussed a contingency for this type of scenario before they began. IV bags are primed and needles go in arms, a free arm hovering over the timer attached to the tubes’ clamps. They had agreed on twenty minutes in the main dream to be safe, which with the time dilation deeper down should be more than enough for them to get the job done.
A quick refresher of the plan, and then Jihoon’s eyes droop shut, and he drops.
“I’ll have a backup layout for the next layer down, but we’ll have to be even more careful there,” Wonwoo warns, underlining the notes he had jotted down for himself.
“Won’t it be easier for us to be undetected, once we’re deeper in the dream?” Junhui asks. Jihoon bites down a sigh and spins his pen around his fingers.
“It will be, but it’ll also be much more dangerous if we are.” Wonwoo has far more patience than Jihoon. “If we don’t wake up at the right time to then synchronise our return to the main dream, we might get pushed even further down. And...”
“That’ll make it a pain in the ass for us to get you out, so let’s not have to worry about it in the first place,” Jihoon cuts in.
He doesn’t know the exact kinds of calculations Soonyoung had been working on, but he knows that the further down you went, the exponentially greater the time dilation became between the layers. They had experimented with the first three enough times to be relatively certain of the difference, but any deeper and things got a bit—stranger. Three layers were already pushing it, really.
Soonyoung had had a theory that the level of dilation varied between individual dream instances, but they hadn’t been able to try it together enough times to be sure.
They had split up as soon as they landed in the newest dream, so Jihoon is already half-expecting the teasing brush against his back as he quickly rifles through desk drawers.
“I missed seeing you this far down.” A proprietary hand gently cups his side, right under the crease of his arm, and Jihoon can feel his nerves jump at the touch. He doesn’t turn around.
“I didn’t come here for you,” he says, eyes still scanning mechanically over the dream-records for anything of interest.
“You wound me.” The words come in a static-laced whine.
He’d shrug off the hand if he could. Instead, he does his best to ignore its persistent heat against his skin as he continues his rote movements. But even as he looks, he knows that this study wasn’t where their mark had chosen to store the information they were after. His sigh is more of exasperation than disappointment.
“You figured it out, then? You’re barking up the wrong tree here.”
Jihoon finally turns around—his clothing has changed since the last time he saw him, but Soonyoung otherwise is unchanged. Of course he is.
“I’m not here for your commentary either—if you aren’t going to be helpful then stay quiet,” he hisses. Then, reluctantly, “—please.”
“But I know where it is!” Soonyoung says, eyes round and wide. “I can show you the way.”
Jihoon doesn’t ask how Soonyoung knows what he’s after—there’s not much that he doesn’t know, now.
“Why?” He asks instead.
Soonyoung rocks back on his heels, cocks his head innocently.
“Why not?”
“And you just—didn’t see any reason to mention how guarded it might be, still?” Jihoon asks in a harsh whisper, peering down at the safe room. The mark’s mental protections came in the form of security guards, which were pretty standard—the constructs were lightly chatting to each other, so they certainly weren’t on high alert, but the fact that they were there at all was troubling. At least they hadn’t noticed Junhui, who was slowly sneaking closer to their positions.
“Why? Don’t you trust the team to handle it?” It’s a tone of voice he’s more used to hearing from Soonyoung, nowadays. He doesn’t even shiver when he feels a wisp of his presence brush against the back of his neck.
He does tense when another guard walks into view, from where he’s observing from his vantage point. Junhui wouldn’t be able to see him yet, but it certainly looked like their paths would intersect—with Junhui at the disadvantage.
“Not if they’re going to get caught,” Jihoon hisses. They’re both moving slow enough that he’ll have the time to spare to try to take down the guard before he discovers Junhui, if he hurries down to the ground level. He whirls away from the railing to begin his descent, but a sudden tight grip on his wrist jars him to a stop.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I last saw you?” Soonyoung asks pleasantly, tugging Jihoon back to face him.
“What—Wednesday night, in my dreams?” He scoffs, tugging harshly back. There’s a little bit of anxiety stirring in his stomach when Soonyoung refuses to loosen his grip.
“We used to talk about it all the time, don’t you remember?” Soonyoung shakes his head with a click of his tongue.
“A week, a month, a year—I lose track so easily without you around.”
In a blink Soonyoung disappears, his wrist released—but Jihoon feels his hands resettle on his shoulders from behind.
“Look, Hoonie. You won’t make it down in time anyway.” Soonyoung’s chin drops onto his shoulder as he whispers, and Jihoon hates himself as he obediently steps back to the railing.
Soonyoung is right—he’d only just make it to the ground by the time the guard catches sight of Junhui’s back, and by then it’d all be over. Of course, if Soonyoung hadn’t interrupted in the first place, would he have been able to make it in time?
“You’ll need a distraction, and it’s been so long since we’ve spent some quality time together. So, so long.”
He’s quick enough to put the pieces together, but too slow to react before Soonyoung is already pushing him over the edge.
They were high enough that he can see one of the guards happen to notice the masked figure falling down above him, and the other two look up in unison. He hopes Junhui doesn’t.
“If it’s not the real dream, then it’ll just kick you out of it, and you’ll wake up in the main one,” Soonyoung says with a shrug—speaking with the easy confidence of someone who tried it once. Jihoon is a little more sceptical.
“So, what—we can just make a bunch of dreams inside dreams, and all you need to do is kill yourself and end them?”
“It'd be more complicated than that, but—yeah, in theory?” Soonyoung crosses his arms defensively. “It’s not like it’s easy to test it out with just the two of us—to be safe we should just be setting really short timers on the nested dreams, and wake up normally from each one.”
Soonyoung never did get to tell him whether it worked in practice—at least, not in any way he could trust. And that was answer enough, right?
[REMIX] Limbo
Major Tags: mcd (implied? past?)
Additional Tags: inception-y au
Permission to remix: Please ask
***
the ghosts of past inception aus would not leave me alone...just...soonyoung and limbo y'know...
The job puts them on the back foot right from the start.
The mark’s mental defenses are stronger than they should be, a little too wary for them to get to him and his things alone, so they fall back to the secure room Wonwoo had hidden behind an innocuous bookshelf—one that only they would know to enter in the first place. It’s a smaller mirror of their set-up in reality, with chairs and IVs already arranged in anticipation of their entrance.
“You were right,” Jihoon sighs once the door has clicked flush, already claiming a seat for himself. Just as uncomfortable as its twin in reality is to sit on, too. “He’s way too defensive when we haven’t even done anything suspicious.”
Junhui doesn’t look happy about being proven right, but they’d already discussed a contingency for this type of scenario before they began. IV bags are primed and needles go in arms, a free arm hovering over the timer attached to the tubes’ clamps. They had agreed on twenty minutes in the main dream to be safe, which with the time dilation deeper down should be more than enough for them to get the job done.
A quick refresher of the plan, and then Jihoon’s eyes droop shut, and he drops.
“I’ll have a backup layout for the next layer down, but we’ll have to be even more careful there,” Wonwoo warns, underlining the notes he had jotted down for himself.
“Won’t it be easier for us to be undetected, once we’re deeper in the dream?” Junhui asks. Jihoon bites down a sigh and spins his pen around his fingers.
“It will be, but it’ll also be much more dangerous if we are.” Wonwoo has far more patience than Jihoon. “If we don’t wake up at the right time to then synchronise our return to the main dream, we might get pushed even further down. And...”
“That’ll make it a pain in the ass for us to get you out, so let’s not have to worry about it in the first place,” Jihoon cuts in.
He doesn’t know the exact kinds of calculations Soonyoung had been working on, but he knows that the further down you went, the exponentially greater the time dilation became between the layers. They had experimented with the first three enough times to be relatively certain of the difference, but any deeper and things got a bit—stranger. Three layers were already pushing it, really.
Soonyoung had had a theory that the level of dilation varied between individual dream instances, but they hadn’t been able to try it together enough times to be sure.
They had split up as soon as they landed in the newest dream, so Jihoon is already half-expecting the teasing brush against his back as he quickly rifles through desk drawers.
“I missed seeing you this far down.” A proprietary hand gently cups his side, right under the crease of his arm, and Jihoon can feel his nerves jump at the touch. He doesn’t turn around.
“I didn’t come here for you,” he says, eyes still scanning mechanically over the dream-records for anything of interest.
“You wound me.” The words come in a static-laced whine.
He’d shrug off the hand if he could. Instead, he does his best to ignore its persistent heat against his skin as he continues his rote movements. But even as he looks, he knows that this study wasn’t where their mark had chosen to store the information they were after. His sigh is more of exasperation than disappointment.
“You figured it out, then? You’re barking up the wrong tree here.”
Jihoon finally turns around—his clothing has changed since the last time he saw him, but Soonyoung otherwise is unchanged. Of course he is.
“I’m not here for your commentary either—if you aren’t going to be helpful then stay quiet,” he hisses. Then, reluctantly, “—please.”
“But I know where it is!” Soonyoung says, eyes round and wide. “I can show you the way.”
Jihoon doesn’t ask how Soonyoung knows what he’s after—there’s not much that he doesn’t know, now.
“Why?” He asks instead.
Soonyoung rocks back on his heels, cocks his head innocently.
“Why not?”
“And you just—didn’t see any reason to mention how guarded it might be, still?” Jihoon asks in a harsh whisper, peering down at the safe room. The mark’s mental protections came in the form of security guards, which were pretty standard—the constructs were lightly chatting to each other, so they certainly weren’t on high alert, but the fact that they were there at all was troubling. At least they hadn’t noticed Junhui, who was slowly sneaking closer to their positions.
“Why? Don’t you trust the team to handle it?” It’s a tone of voice he’s more used to hearing from Soonyoung, nowadays. He doesn’t even shiver when he feels a wisp of his presence brush against the back of his neck.
He does tense when another guard walks into view, from where he’s observing from his vantage point. Junhui wouldn’t be able to see him yet, but it certainly looked like their paths would intersect—with Junhui at the disadvantage.
“Not if they’re going to get caught,” Jihoon hisses. They’re both moving slow enough that he’ll have the time to spare to try to take down the guard before he discovers Junhui, if he hurries down to the ground level. He whirls away from the railing to begin his descent, but a sudden tight grip on his wrist jars him to a stop.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I last saw you?” Soonyoung asks pleasantly, tugging Jihoon back to face him.
“What—Wednesday night, in my dreams?” He scoffs, tugging harshly back. There’s a little bit of anxiety stirring in his stomach when Soonyoung refuses to loosen his grip.
“We used to talk about it all the time, don’t you remember?” Soonyoung shakes his head with a click of his tongue.
“A week, a month, a year—I lose track so easily without you around.”
In a blink Soonyoung disappears, his wrist released—but Jihoon feels his hands resettle on his shoulders from behind.
“Look, Hoonie. You won’t make it down in time anyway.” Soonyoung’s chin drops onto his shoulder as he whispers, and Jihoon hates himself as he obediently steps back to the railing.
Soonyoung is right—he’d only just make it to the ground by the time the guard catches sight of Junhui’s back, and by then it’d all be over. Of course, if Soonyoung hadn’t interrupted in the first place, would he have been able to make it in time?
“You’ll need a distraction, and it’s been so long since we’ve spent some quality time together. So, so long.”
He’s quick enough to put the pieces together, but too slow to react before Soonyoung is already pushing him over the edge.
They were high enough that he can see one of the guards happen to notice the masked figure falling down above him, and the other two look up in unison. He hopes Junhui doesn’t.
“If it’s not the real dream, then it’ll just kick you out of it, and you’ll wake up in the main one,” Soonyoung says with a shrug—speaking with the easy confidence of someone who tried it once. Jihoon is a little more sceptical.
“So, what—we can just make a bunch of dreams inside dreams, and all you need to do is kill yourself and end them?”
“It'd be more complicated than that, but—yeah, in theory?” Soonyoung crosses his arms defensively. “It’s not like it’s easy to test it out with just the two of us—to be safe we should just be setting really short timers on the nested dreams, and wake up normally from each one.”
Soonyoung never did get to tell him whether it worked in practice—at least, not in any way he could trust. And that was answer enough, right?