#san is wearing that cowboy get up in the hala hala dance practice vid

[hozukitofu]

james bond can piss right off

okay, fine.

maybe wooyoung has too much pride in espionage. maybe thinking that he is the best won’t help him in the long run.

fine. 

that doesn’t explain any of this though. it doesn’t explain the unsuspecting traps, the literal net and poison combo deal that nabbed him the moment he rigged into the warehouse.

wooyoung is good at his job. it’s how he can demand a ridiculous sum of payment up front and collect even more after the job with guarantee that he will do well. but right now? he can kiss that diamond encrusted knife collection goodbye as he slumps sideways and hit the floor.

vaguely he can hear soft footsteps and a small chain of giggles as his vision tunnels and shutters off.

he wakes in a really undignified lump - flailing and rocking on a bound chair, legs coming off the ground. he’s inside a warehouse - surroundings are unclear to determine if it’s the one he’s meant to break into - tightly knotted to a chair. just a simple kitchen chair, wooden, can easily topple if he decides to rock a little too hard and fall over, breaking his nose on impact.

he received training to get out of chairs in these very specific situations, yes, but wooyoung’s fatal flaw is that when a situation hasn’t arrived in more than two years he tends to be slack on the details of how to deal with it specifically.

his mortal undoing will be his carelessness with a side of pride

“you’re up!” a soft voice cheers. “i thought we had to resort to a cold bucket of water to the face if you didn’t wake up and leave the party.”

“that wasn’t a very fun party,” he grouses, peeking open an eye. tall, his capturer is tall. male, so that makes fighting his way out probably a little bit harder. “where are all the music and terrible alcohol?”

“didn’t have that, but you did take in a healthy dose of chloroform,” the culprit bends down, lower, until he reaches eye level with wooyoung, goggles and a face mask obscuring all signs of possible identifiable features.

yeosang is going to cut him open and eat his liver if he returns without either the intel needed or some form of identification on the one who managed to usurp his unshakable post as Master Spy.

“no wonder my mouth still tastes sweet,” he laments, though not bitterly. everything is still too woozy and baffling that he can’t exactly put a finger on it. 

“i try my best,” the man in the shadow, the thing with the sweet voice - seriously, is that a real voice? is he just hallucinating? can he tell how many fingers are there in front of him if someone does try to test his sight? “apologies for the ambush. i can’t have others jeopardising my objective.”

“i can understand that,” wooyoung grunts, working a wrist free as he wobbles and pretends to have terrible balance on a bound, shaky chair. uneven legs, ha ha, he can claim. “emphatically.”

“i’m so glad we have something in common,” he can hear the smile and the genuine pleasantry, dripping from his culprit’s drawling tone. why does he speak Like That?

“yeah…” he inches away, shaking loose and sweaty hair from flopping even further into his eyes and eyelashes. “so glad…”

“your sarcasm wounds me. i thought we had a connection,” the person laments, hand clasping the front of his long sweeping coat - can people genuinely move in that, wooyoung just want to talk. 

“we would, if you would show me your face,” he coughs, hoping that it’s loud enough to mask the rip of fabric that just went on in the back of his tightly bound hand. he thinks it’s the handcuff, hybridised with something that hitches on top of holding him in. unlike the chair situation, he actually paid attention when the knots lectures came about. his long lost dream was to be a sea pirate, so he obsessed over knots and ship diagrams when he was younger, and then that dream had to be adapted to becoming an internationally hunted espionage agent, occasionally boarding ships to dig through people’s loots and information before escaping through the steam room’s window and swimming to a canoe waiting nearby.

but pirate childhood dream aside, he still can’t get out. the problem is that while he is great at tying people up, he can’t get his brain to do the reverse of untying himself from difficult knots that he can do himself fast enough to avoid a rapid round of gunfire or a hostage situation, which, he is unfortunately in one at the moment. 

“i don’t do interrogation until the third date,” there is a wink in there, wooyoung can tell. damn, his brain is bad with memorising voices. he is a visual learner, and right now the entire assemble this guy has got going for him is really bloody effective. he can’t ascertain a definitive height, body shape, face shape, eye - nothing. nada. zilch. Zero.

argh yeosang and hongjoong-hyung are both going to gang up and dangle him on the top of a telecommunication tower somewhere, for failing this mission. there is no winning if he isn’t in the specified location that he was meant to target and rob the intel of, there is no winning if he had been gassed and bound and definitely no victory in not being able to pinpoint who captured him and jeopardise his mission.

“damn,” he sighs, dramatic and dejected. wait. date. 

maybe -

perhaps…

he’s good at what he does because all his skills and arsenals are trained towards efficiency at spying and getting himself out of compromising situations. he himself had never been a. been in a seduction mission before or b. been on the receiving end of an odd proposition in the middle of a mission gone sideways. 

there is a first for everything. there are always ways out, you’re not looking hard enough, hongjoong’s voice nags at him in his coconut numbskull. 

okay. okay. he can do this. play this game, and see if he can do anything about it.

“what do you normally do on your first dates?” he throws himself forward, dragging his chair with his lurch frontward. 

his kidnapped in black only laughs, catching him across the shoulder and righting him. he doesn’t smell like anything, deceptively free of cologne or aftershave or a brand of detergent. nothing. zero signs given to him. damn. not even a crumb.

“well, we’d tell each other what we would go by, but i can see that you’re at a slight disadvantage - i did a bit of a facebook stalking round, don’t feel bad if you haven’t done the same yet. the woes of blind dating,” the voice is charming, and it’s nice to listen to, but the fake cheeriness is slowly bleeding out to genuine cheek. okay so wooyoung is mostly an obstacle to be removed, but he also garnered enough interest to prompt this chat and the subtle veneer of maybe mockery in his cheery voice.

he can tell that much, but he’s not an idiot. he knows he’s been researched inside out to be rendered into a chair and bound, and that’s the kind of research he’d like to have insight to, because wooyoung is a ghost story among the spying world. people don’t think he exists, and have to go through a chain of convoluted communication lines to reach out to him and request his service, with money always at the ready. he is famous, but literally only ten people know his face, because his face is similar to many others - a curse, but now a blessing. he had pretended to be park jimin too many times for him to count, an apology to the politician himself, but, if the shoe fits, he’ll take that shoe and running off with it.

so maybe this is just an opportunity to gloat - look at me, i one upped the great wooyoung, got him tied up in a chair, as i skip away with the intel he was meant to collect for his mission. 

that is deeply uncomfortable to think about. wooyoung has to one up him back, return the favour. he’s playing this game with literally no arms, no sight, just his ears and his brain working overtime. he thinks he might scrape a crumb from this situation yet.

“wouldn’t it be common courtesy to let your date know something to call you by? i’ve been so kind as to show up to the date. you wouldn’t break a poor man’s heart by leaving him in the dark like this?” he thinks this is a good attempt of a breathy, seductive voice, from the vague corners of his memory of how ‘seduction’ is supposed to work. 

“ah,” there is careful consideration in that one sound. wooyoung hopes it’s an hmm i might indulge in your silly requests and give you a fake name, and not now i have to kill you because you’re getting more annoying by the minute and my gloating moment is over. “i thought you don’t play the seduction game.”

wooyoung nods until his brain catches up with the words and he’s nodding as his brain plays W H A T  to the accompaniment of a cambodian gong as everything goes off in flames .  

“you’re special,” wooyoung winks, greasy and disgusting, and lets the playful expression slides off his face completely. “also you one upped me and i have to play you right back.”

“that’s not very gentlemanly of you,” the stranger chides. “now how can i give you a name or a hint?”

“a hint cannot be any more misleading than a name, so,” he hangs his head, aware that there are hands still planted on his shoulder. he shrugs them off, hopping back on his chair, brain thinking hard. a wrist of his is loose enough to twist around and smack this one across the face, but then he has to let that distance be regained. gain back the weird tantalising space that hostage and kidnapper allow between them, prey and predator, moments before disaster strikes.

“well,” and the first step is taken. wooyoung watches, narrowing his eyes, as the distance between them is lessened, as the shadowy figure kneels in front of him, hand pressing into his vest. “if you interest me enough, i promise to give you a useful hint.”

he doesn’t know jackshit about being interesting or anything pertaining to that, but he knows an opportunity when it presents itself to him, and he rips an arm socket nearly loose from his shoulder joint, swinging it across the face of his kidnapper, the reaction going exactly to plan, dislodging the ugly pair of glasses away, revealing the temple and mellow skin, sweet golden baked pastries.

damn wooyoung needs to eat something. he keeps thinking of people and things in terms of edibility. he half wanted to munch on his handkerchief just hours before. snack, whenever he gets back, and a lot of it.

“ah,” hard pressed eyes, really deep brown - almost black, squeeze into a pleasant line of smile at him - can a person smile with their eyes? he’s not sure, but this one is doing it, and doing it brilliantly.

he has some eyes. he’s literally never seen anyone with those eyes before. surely yeosang can do something, like scan security footages with matching eyes or something.

eyes are really not much to go on for, but look, he scraped himself a crumb, at the cost of nearly dislocating his arm. he should get some brownie points for that.

“i guess you already ripped the hint away from me,” the eyes, animated and lively, squeeze themselves into two crescents of pleased surprise. wooyoung can take comfort in not being sniped in the chest by this guy, but, once again, he still thinks there are guns hidden somewhere in that ridiculous billowing coat and the stupid cowboy hat. he himself had hidden twenty guns and fifteen knives in his suit before, and it was a semi-casual suit. it’s not that hard with weapons nowadays. 

“what a damn shame,” he drawls right back, vicious and petty, just like who he is, deep down, when he loses at a game. “i was going to beg, but,” he shrugs, half checking on his shoulder, half flexing on this guy. one all, bastard. your move.

“but you are above that, i am aware,” the eyes mirror the amused tone the voice puts out, flashing brief caramel under wooyoung’s chloroform gassed up head. “it wouldn’t be a fun game if one of us has the upper hand perpetually.”

those are really pretty eyes, and under different circumstances, outside of his job, when he’s just jung wooyoung, international politics graduate, dance enthusiast, not WY, elite spy master, then maybe he could’ve gone for it. 

not now, not here. they’ve started on a bad foot already. he doesn’t know what he might do if they do encounter each other, mask completely stripped off from each other. 

“yeah, gotta keep my standards high, my guys lower,” he winks, trying to wriggle his way out of his hold. “what are you going to do with that intel?”

a gloved hand taps the inner lining of his coat, an eye blinking into a wink. 

“sell it.”

wooyoung breathes out harshly. of course he would. 

“of course you would,” he rolls his eyes. “and i was just a little bit later and less experienced in coming up against you.”

“i wouldn’t say you’re less experienced,” the man twirls a long finger, gloved, completely black. “just a little unprepared. i had the element of surprise on my end this time. next time, well,” he leaves that hanging, stopping right in front of wooyoung. “it’s fair game.”

“i don’t know how long you’ve been playing on this field for, but there is no such thing as fair game,” he hooks a finger into his stun gun, drawing it out, pointing point blank, between the nice eyebrows and expressive eyes. “it would only hurt a little.”

“you never cease to surprise me, wooyoung,” is all he gets, before the mask is tugged down, a line of a hooked nose ridge, before a shower of smoke, and the complete disappearance of a master ghost spy.

okay. okay hongjoong and yeosang would not be happy with this. 

nobody should know wooyoung’s name. how did this one know?

part 2!