Nowhere is Safe | Pt. 16 Unravelled

[owned_by_a_cat]

Title: Nowhere is Safe
Pairing: JaeMin / MinJae
Rating: NC-17
Genre: AU, Suspense, Romance, Army!fic
Summary: Invisible up close, able to kill from a long way away… when an elite sniper operates in your neighbourhood nowhere is safe. To Major Kim Jaejoong, being a sniper is more than a job. It's a mindset he needs when the people around him fall prey to a shooter with a high-powered rifle and his new partner, Captain Shim Changmin from Army Intelligence, turns out to be as much a distraction as he is a help. Undeniably both smart and gorgeous, the man has issues. And an attitude. And he's about as subtle as mortar fire in showing his dislike of Jaejoong.
Thrown together by the crisis, both Jaejoong and Changmin struggle to reconcile mutual dislike and mutual attraction. But when events escalate and the stakes get higher, they must put their attraction and differences aside and work together.

Under Attack || Return to Base || Pissed and Pissed Off || Do Over || Attempts at Apologies || Discoveries || Close to Home || Backfoot || Traps || Confession || Plans and Pleasure || Reasonable Doubt || Desired Outcomes || Old Foes, New Allies || Triangle

A/N: I've been itching to write, but between our holiday, coming back to a teetering stack of work and then House Hunt edits, I couldn't find enough hours in the day. Until now.

Unravelled

Greasy whorls of black smoke roiled through the trees. The death throes of the doomed helo echoed across the clearing as the screech of abused metal met the hiss of severed coolant lines in a last, desperate kiss.

"Fuck! Get off me!"

The yell was loud, a panicked shout that brought both Changmin and Jaejoong's heads whipping around. The answering voice was quieter, the words half-muffled but growing clearer as they strained to listen.

"Try that again and I'll castrate you with your belt buckle, you asshat! — Fucking cut that out!"

A scuffle. The tell-tale wet thud of a fist striking flesh. Another thud, harsher this time, followed by a grunt and the sound of a heavy object hitting the ground.

"For that stupid stunt, you get to carry him," said a voice that Changmin hadn't heard in three years, but couldn't ever mistake as anyone else's. The familiar tone sent goosebumps down his spine. Goosebumps and shivers that soon grew into hot anger.

Ran Joon really was here.

And that was just fifteen shades of fucked up.

He stalked towards the sound, not surprised to find the other two of his captors and the helicrew tied up and spitting sparks, with Ran Joon pushing them around.

"Bring them this way," he said gruffly as soon as he was in earshot. "We have the other two."

"Do you have transport?"

Changmin had already turned his back and didn't bother to reply. All of a sudden he felt cold to his marrow in a way he hadn't when he'd been trapped in a jeep, on the way to be handed to the North Koreans. Dread congealed in his stomach like ice when he thought of what could, should or would happen next. Or what might not occur at all.

He had sent one message before he'd left the base with Jaejoong. A message he had written three years ago. A message that had grown longer and longer as the months had passed. Every time he'd come close to sending it, prudence had held him back. Because while his evidence was compelling, it was also circumstantial, deniable. Delivered into the wrong hands, the message was more than just career suicide.

So Changmin had waited and watched and compiled more evidence. And when he couldn't find it in himself to wait and watch any longer he'd carefully set and baited a trap and had made a plan that allowed him to spring it. And then, only then, had he sent his message. And in doing so, Captain Shim Changmin from the Army Intelligence Corps had put his life on the line.

Now all he could do was wait.

And hope.

Distraction was useful at that point and he found it when he joined Jaejoong and their captives and found him squared off with a muddy, stubble-jawed Ran Joon. Both men glared at each other and the air in the clearing crackled with tension.

"If I'd known you get my brother kidnapped, I'd have put a bullet in your forehead, not Jong Ki's."

Jaejoong held him with a level gaze. "You've had your chance," he pointed out. "You chose not to take it."

Changmin pushed between the two without so much as a by-your-leave and wrapped his brother in a tight hug. For a moment or two he clung, memories vivid in his face. Then he stepped back and slugged the man square in the jaw.

"That's for being an ass and throwing in with that lot," he snarled. "I would have bet money that you're not that stupid. But no. You had to come back and prove me wrong."

"Min-ah—" Ran Joon climbed to his feet, one hand wrapped protectively around his aching jaw.

"Shut up! Don't speak to me. For three years I had to watch people die around me. I had to sit tight and keep quiet and it almost killed me! And now I find that you were part of that… I just… Don't. Just… don't."

"Shim!"

The voice, edgy and harsh like gravel hiding a cut-throat razor, spun Changmin around. While he'd confronted first his demons and then Ran Joon, a small, heavily armed troop had entered the clearing. They'd fanned out, forming a half-circle around them. None of them looked in the mood to ask questions first and the butterflies in Changmin's guts turned into bona fide dragons.

A dozen steps away, at the centre of the formation of silent, stone-faced warriors, stood a man he'd only met once before. Even if he could have somehow forgotten the forbidding face and eyes that promised pain, the man's uniform would have reminded him. Heavy with scarlet and gold braid, it stood out like a flash of glitter against the sea of muted woodland camouflage worn by the members of the solo squad and the man's protection detail.

Without conscious thought, Changmin snapped ramrod straight and saluted. "General."

The man's coffee-coloured gaze raked the clearing, took in the smoking ruin that had once been a chopper and the small huddle of restrained prisoners, clearly unimpressed by what he found. "Is that your fucking mess here, Shim? I hope you have a damn good explanation for almost starting a war!"

"I do, sir." The dragons ravaging Changmin's guts were breeding. They grew teeth, then wings and when they encountered the stress of the preceding hours, unwise levels of medication and the relief at finally having spoken and been listened to, they took flight.

Changmin just managed to stagger to the nearest tree and grab the rough bark for support before he started heaving up his guts. He never felt the hands supporting him, never realised that he was being wrapped in blankets to ward off the shivers that wracked his frame or that he was lifted and carried from the clearing to the general's waiting helo.

***

"You planned all this?"

Three days had passed. Changmin had been released from medical after a day of saline drips and having his blood chemistry checked every hour. He'd been fed and hydrated. He'd been ordered to sleep and lectured on the idiocy of indiscriminately mixing his poisons before the doc had declared him fit for duty again. Fit for duty of course meant fit to spend the next day in the general's office answering question after question until late into the night, meant explaining every decision he'd taken in the last three years, meant justifying nineteen deaths.

The ceaseless interrogation had left him so exhausted, he'd barely made it to his quarters once he'd been dismissed. And he'd woken that morning still fully dressed, with even his boots still on, lying diagonally across his bed.

Now he was facing the colonel and Jaejoong across the coffee table in Colonel Seong's office. There were just the three of them. Wanting everything out in the open, Changmin had requested the meeting and the moment the colonel asked he came straight to the point.

"Yes, sir. I did plan the whole," he admitted, grateful that he'd had the chance to unburden his soul. The previous day's interrogation hadn't left a single stone unturned, had left nothing but silence in his mind for the first time in three years. And it finally allowed him the space and patience he needed to explain his actions. "About three years ago I realised that we had a mole. Small things at first, information turning up in odd places, plans that were virtually bulletproof going awry, missions that should have run smoothly being compromised. Individually, each event could be explained, but all together?" He took a sip of his coffee, remembering the confusion that had first alerted him. "The deeper I dug, the more I realised that the mole had to be very highly placed. Some of the information just wasn't that easily available. At first, I tried to gather negative proof, rule out certain high-ranking officers so I could report to them, but…"

"It's a high-risk strategy," Jaejoong said softly.

"That too," Changmin nodded. "But round about the time Ran Joon was discharged, one of our intelligence gathering missions was compromised and after that I just knew who the mole was."

"Then why didn't you report it? If you knew who it was?"

"Knowing who the mole was didn't do me much good. Not when I couldn't prove it without wiggle room. If I couldn't manage that…," Changmin shrugged, "I might as well have eaten my gun right there."

"So you waited?"

"And watched, yes. And collected more and more data. I knew that whatever I did to catch him had to be more than bulletproof. If I left him even a single escape route, I wouldn't be the only one who'd end up dead. And then, eventually, I had an idea."

"You made yourself the target."

"Yes. I dropped hints, left little trails of data where they could be found… generally made myself suspicious until they started to come after me."

"And bringing in Ran Joon?" the colonel's voice was grave as he posed the question and Changmin's neck and ears grew hot under the man's unrelenting gaze.

"Ran Joon was a complication. I knew there'd be someone. I had no idea it would be Ran. Or that he would have his own agenda," Changmin replied, voice bleak. "They'd taken my bait and they panicked. Bringing in Ran took the game to the next level. Ran Joon's dislike of Jaejoong was well known and they decided to make use of him. It's a game, after all. To win, you try to predict the other player's response, manipulate it if you can. The first attack on the base had two possible desired outcomes: It could bring Jaejoong into play, giving Ran Joon what he wanted. Or it could lure me out into the open, making me an easier target. Unfortunately for us, you'd already called Jae when I got here, so we gave them both the things they desired. Which made it difficult to determine who was pulling the strings. Fortunately for us, though, they never knew that Ran is my brother. Or that he would object to me being killed or taken."

"You can't excuse what he's done, captain," Colonel Seong reminded softly.

"I'm not excusing anything, sir. I'm merely explaining it."

"And you're that calm about it."

Changmin flushed a deep crimson. He wasn't calm. Not at all. But shame held him silent and motionless. Shame that he'd not gotten to know his own brother better than he had. Well enough, at any rate, to guess that he'd be the ideal target for the traitor to call on and maybe preempt that. Instead, he'd not even known the true reasons for his discharge from the solo squad. Some intelligence officer he was.

"The attacks on the base and the resultant casualties are the direct results of decisions I've taken and mistakes I've made, sir," he said formally. "I put the base and your squad in the line of fire, when I had hoped that they'd come just after me. I understand that. I asked for this meeting, so I could explain my actions, not to justify them. I take full responsibility for everything I've done."

Jaejoong opened his mouth… and closed it again when Colonel Seong shook his head at him.

"You spent three years and went to all these lengths to expose a mole," the colonel said slowly. "Did you succeed?"

"Yes, sir. But—"

"Who is the mole?"

Changmin closed his eyes and breathed. He'd found it difficult to speak about this the previous day, under the hard stare of the highest ranking officer in the Korean Army. It was no easier now. There was a marked difference between having a suspicion and having sure knowledge. A suspicion could poison your mind. Knowledge could tear your soul to pieces.

"The head of army intelligence," he whispered finally, not surprised to hear the sharp breath Colonel Seong took, nor Jaejoong's low whistle.

For a time after his revelation, the office was silent. So silent that the drill-instructor's voice could be heard from the other side of the courtyard. So silent that a fly buzzing somewhere sounded like the scout of an impending armoured attack.

"You don't do things by halves, do you?" the colonel said, finishing the last of his coffee. "That's not a bad thing. I'd previously considered requesting you be assigned to the solo squad, based purely on your results. Now that I have seen the level of dedication you bring to the job, I'm even more interested in having you join us."

The colonel ignored Changmin's wide-eyed stare, opting instead to communicate silently with Jaejoong. What agreement the two men reached, Changmin couldn't have said, but when the colonel turned back to him, there was a twinkle in his eye.

"I'm not going to ask you to make a decision right now. There's going to be an investigation. All the data you've collected will be analysed. And we have prisoners to interrogate. Obviously, you can't be part of that. I suggest that for the next week, you'll accompany Major Kim on patrol. Get a feeling for how the solo squad operates in the field, so you can make an informed decision the next time I ask you."

Colonel Seong rose and his voice was brisk. "You leave this afternoon. Major Kim will tell you what you need. Dismissed."

***

"Where are we going?" Changmin asked when it dawned on him that he didn't recognise any of their surroundings.

"One of my favourite places," Jae said simply. He shifted the pack on his back a little higher and continued further into the trees. It was day four of their patrol and Changmin had started to feel a healthy respect for the work Jaejoong did on a daily basis. He loved silence and solitude, but as Jaejoong had tried to explain to him previously… liking solitude on his terms didn't prepare him for being in the field by himself.

"Shouldn't we return to base?"

"We will. Tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the day after that."

"Why wait? If we've done what we were sent out to do?"

Jae moved as unexpectedly and explosively as he had the first night out and this time Changmin found himself pinned to a tree. They'd not really touched since the day they left to trap the mole. Jae had been busy assessing all he'd learned, while Changmin's guilt hung between them like sheer fabric. Transparent enough to make out vague shapes, too dense to let desires seep through. After all he'd done he'd not expected to feel Jae's hands on him ever again, so when Jae's thigh pushed between his and Jae's fingers pinched both his nipples in a vice-like grip he couldn't help but arch into the hold and groan.

The fingers eased off then, but the torture simply changed. Instead of the tight grip, Jae ran his thumbnail over the tip of each trapped bud, back and forth until Changmin's gut clenched and heat washed over him in a wave so strong it threatened to choke him.

"Because you offered me your lush ass, Captain Shim," Jaejoong purred in response to a question Changmin had already forgotten he'd asked. His voice was so low it was more vibration than sound and it played over Changmin's riled nerves like a nail across a chalk board. "Did you think I was passing that up? I am taking you somewhere you can scream as loud as you want and nobody will hear you. And I'll keep you there until you know exactly what it feels like to be fucked into oblivion."

Gods! The images Jae's words raised in Changmin's mind threatened to make him pass out. He could see himself on his knees, naked, with Jaejoong fully dressed behind him. He had an arm curled around Changmin's throat to hold him up and his hips rocked hard and fast as he was burying himself over and over in Changmin's body. He could see himself on his back, long legs wrapped around Jaejoong as the bastard teased him over and over and never let him come… just as he had threatened to do back at the base. He could see himself being taken in any conceivable position and he shuddered at the thought.

"How—" his voice came out rough and he swallowed and licked his dry lips before trying again. "How far is it?"

"An hour, maybe. Bit over," Jae said and then his fingers twisted on Changmin's nipples. "Eager much?"

"I don't think I can fucking walk," Changmin complained. He was so hard it hurt and Jaejoong wasn't letting up on his pleasurable assault. His thigh ground into Changmin's crotch, rubbing the painfully hard bulge. His thumbnails strummed over trapped nipples until Changmin's body thrummed with need. And then he suddenly let go and stepped back, turned around and started walking again.

"What the fuck…? Jaejoong!" Changmin stared wholly perplexed after the sniper.

"Don't dawdle," Jaejoong's voice floated back. "I don't wanna wait all day."

Part 17: Patrol

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A/N: Yes, yes, I know. The evil gene struck again. The next chapter is bound to be pure, unadulterated smut, so maybe we should give this a miss, eh? Especially since the postman just brought me a treat: CHANGMIN'S SOLO ALBUM!!!! It couldn't have arrived at a better time. So I'm just going to post this and then I'm settling down to work, which should go epically fast with my new music to keep me company. I might even be inspired to write some more!