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“—and, last but not least, the brothers will partner up and keep an eye out from the roof.”
It’s not a surprise to Jongho that he’s going to be working with Yunho. He almost always gets partnered up with his older brother, and on the rare occasions he isn’t, something usually goes wrong and Yunho goes berserk as a result. No one wants a berserk Yunho on their hands, so Hongjoong just partners him with Jongho and all is well.
No, the surprise lies in that they’re going to be on the roof. That’s more of San’s forte, and Yeosang’s; Jongho feels a little queasy thinking about it, but Hongjoong needs Yeosang and San on the ground and, unfortunately, doesn’t need the brothers’ talents of destruction.
“Alright then.” Hongjoong claps his hands together. “Let’s get going, shall we?”
Jongho and Yunho have been laying on their stomachs, weapons beside them on the roof, for probably an hour when Yunho speaks up.
“So…”
“So?”
“I may or may not have seen you talking to Mingi yesterday.” There’s mischief in Yunho’s voice, and Jongho doesn’t trust that one bit.
“What about it?” The words come out sounding a lot more snappy and defensive than Jongho had intended. Beside him, Yunho snorts.
“You were blushing.”
“I wasn’t blushing.”
“You were blushing.” Naturally, Yunho refuses to back down. “So did you ask him out? Tell him you like him?”
“I don’t like Mingi!”
“Uh-huh.” Yunho leans over and flicks Jongho’s cheek. “You forget I know you better than literally anyone.”
“Well, clearly you don’t know me well enough, I don’t like like Mingi.” The words come out sulky and Jongho has the sudden urge to just roll off the roof and escape his brother’s teasing.
“You sound like a child,” Yunho snickers. Then he adds, “And most people don’t pine after people they don’t like.”
“What the—I’m not pining!” Jongho can feel the heat rushing to his cheeks at his brother’s accusation and prays Yunho doesn’t look at him. It’s the middle of the night, yes, but there are streetlights everywhere; it’s light enough for Yunho to see if his cheeks are as red as they feel.
“Totally not,” Yunho agrees gravely, but bursts into giggles a few seconds later. “Come on, just admit it already.”
Jongho scowls. “I don’t like Mingi like that, I’m not pining after him, I’m—”
“—blushing again,” Yunho finishes for him, and Jongho stares at the edge of the roof as though it’s the answer to all of his problems. “Come on, Jongho, I’m not dumb, I know you like him.”
Rolling off of the roof is getting more and more tempting, but Jongho settles for just scowling at his brother with anger that’s half-hearted at best. “I don’t. Stop saying that.”
Yunho reaches over and ruffles his hair, shifting over to wrap his arm around Jongho and constrict him when he attempts to shove his hand away. The younger brother hisses, spits and wriggles around like an angry cat but Yunho uses his superior size to his advantage and half-lies on top of him until he stops squirming, petting his hair all the while.
“Geddoffme,” Jongho orders, but Yunho just squeezes him. “You’re heavy, Yunho.”
His brother laughs but sits up, crossing his legs under him and pulling at Jongho’s arm until the youngest decides to sit up as well before he hits Yunho in the face and it starts an all-out brawl on the rooftop.
“I never pegged Mingi as your type.”
Jongho groans. “Would you shut up about Mingi, already!”
Yunho just cackles.
They sit in silence for a while, and Jongho appreciates it while it lasts because he knows Yunho undoubtedly has more teasing up his sleeve. If there’s one thing he doesn’t do, it’s underestimate Yunho’s ability to needle him over absolutely anything. Then again, that’s really what brothers are for.
Oh, and for beating up anyone who steps to you. There’s that too.
Yunho picks up his binoculars and Jongho goes still, thinking that Yunho sees something serious. Of course, he should have known from the way the corner of Yunho’s mouth was twitching it wasn’t so.
“I see your crush.”
“What? Where?”
Sadly, it takes Jongho’s brain a minute to catch up and Yunho’s laughing into his sleeve by the time he realizes what his brother had said. Jongho lets out a growl of frustration and punches Yunho hard enough in the shoulder to make him hiccup and choke on air.
“He’s not my crush!”
“You said where,” Yunho wheezes. “You really do like him, don’t you.”
“I don’t,” Jongho protests, but his face is red again and there’s no chance of Yunho ever believing him. Especially when his voice just came out as a squeak and his cheeks are, once again, aflame.
“Right,” snorts Yunho. “So I guess I need to give Mingi a talking-to now, right?”
“Yunho, don’t you fucking dare,” Jongho hisses. “If you breathe a damn word—”
His brother cuts him off by giving him an affectionate pat on the head and starts giggling again, and really Jongho is tempted to kick him off of the roof. But he can’t do that, because kicking Yunho off the roof would mean being scolded by Hongjoong and Seonghwa and while he could probably survive a scolding from Hongjoong… Seonghwa is a different story.
“C’mon, Jongho, you know I have to threaten to beat Mingi within an inch of his life if he ever hurts you!”
Yunho sounds far too cheerful when he says that and Jongho shoves him, but he doesn’t anticipate Yunho losing his balance and Jongho toppling after him (why he was leaning on Yunho in the first place, the younger doesn’t know). They’re lucky they don’t roll over Yunho’s mace, but they’re less lucky because they end up rolling off of the roof and—
—and the ground is hard. Jongho groans at about the same time Yunho does and pushes himself up.
“That was dumb of us,” Yunho snickers.
Jongho hears scraping and looks up, blinks, and throws his arm out, slapping Yunho in the shoulder. “Uh, Yunho.”
“Huh? What is it?”
“Look up.”
The words Yunho utters would probably get his mouth washed out if Seonghwa was there. But Seonghwa isn’t there. There’s just them, on the ground, and an irritated, possibly angry elf on the rooftop above.
“How the fuck did he even get up there?!”
Jongho pulls himself to his feet and grabs his brother’s arm. “I don’t even care right now,” he informs him, “just get up.”
Yunho does, and stares at the elf staring back at them. “So… what’s the plan?”
“Distract the elf?”
“That’s your plan?”
“We left our weapons on the roof when we fell, Yunho!” Jongho points out, crossing his arms.
“You mean when you pushed me?!”
“You were being annoying!”
“So you push me off a roof?”
“I fell too!”
Yunho’s mace thuds to the ground at their feet and Jongho yelps. Both brothers look up and Jongho realizes that the elf looks much more irritated now, crouching at the edge of the roof and tossing down both of Jongho’s knives.
“Stop arguing,” he orders, and they’ve barely gathered their weapons when he leaps off of the roof and lands with an elegant grace that reminds Jongho a little too much of Yeosang. Which makes sense, because they’re both elves. But he’s shorter than Yeosang, and thicker in some areas of his body. His thighs, for one.
He studies them, head cocked to the side, and then he snorts. “You’re babies.”
“Hey! I’m eighteen!” Jongho snaps, irritated.
The elf pauses. “A baby,” he reaffirms, and then looks at Yunho. When he turns his head, the many piercings dotting his ears catch what light there is in the alley. “Brothers, I’d assume?”
The silence is enough answer for them.
The elf huffs out an exhale, studies how they stand with weapons at the ready, and snorts. “Relax, I’m not here to cause Hongjoong’s boys any trouble.”
“You know Hongjoong?” Jongho asks.
“Not well, but I know of him. Taeyong would have my hide if I caused Hongjoong any trouble.” The elf shrugs. “The name’s Ten, by the way.”
“Ten. Like—”
“Yes, Ten like the number.” Ten rolls his eyes. “Also, in case the two of you were wondering, that wyvern you’ve been waiting for is dead. Someone poisoned her a few nights ago.”
Jongho feels sick.
“Who would do that?” Yunho inquires.
Ten dusts off the sleeves of his jacket, even though they look immaculate. “In a human-controlled city, what do you think?”
There’s a tense silence until Hongjoong comes to retrieve them; he pauses at the mouth of the alley as though trying to discern if Ten is a threat or not, but then seems to recognize him, because he gives him a nod and beckons for the brothers to follow him.
“Bye-bye, kiddos!”
The ride back to their house is half-chaos and half-peace. Jongho sits in the back and leans on Seonghwa and feels Yeosang’s fingers playing with his hair. In front of them Mingi and San are arguing around Yunho, who’s sandwiched between them. Wooyoung’s in time-out in the front seat, and Hongjoong is driving while lecturing him about something he did. Honestly, that lecture could have gone to Jongho and Yunho, if Hongjoong had known they were bickering and not paying attention to what they should have been.
It feels warm, but Jongho can’t stop thinking about Ten’s words and the reminder that humans were often bigger monsters than they seemed to think the inhuman were.
“You smell upset.” It’s a soft rumble, the boys in front of them probably can’t hear Seonghwa over the racket of Mingi and San fighting and Yunho trying to placate them before he gets hit in the face. “Is everything okay?”
“Just tired.”
“You don’t want to talk about it,” Seonghwa surmises, as Yeosang goes from hair-petting to draping over Jongho like a living blanket. It’s very warm, and Jongho likes warmth.
“I don’t,” Jongho agrees. Seonghwa seems to take that as answer enough, because he lets his eyes slide shut and wraps his arms around Jongho and Yeosang and pulls them both closer. Seonghwa was always a wonderful snuggle partner, in part because he was half-dragon and radiated heat like a furnace and also because he was half-dragon and loved sleeping wrapped around things. Hongjoong and Yunho would often joke it was because he didn’t have eggs and had adopted them as his hatchlings.
So long as Seonghwa never tries to feed him regurgitated raw meat, Jongho’s okay with that.