“…I’ll leave you two to it,” says Ming Tang as he leaves, a few minutes later, when the two older but less mature men start holding a strange… argument of sorts. The bickering is more one-sided, but Yang Rong is intent on fully capitalizing his goodwill.

“I’d taken such meticulous care of you while you were asleep, little kitten, and to have my efforts go unappreciated is a hit to my morale.” Yang Rong starts counting with his fingers, holding up one long digit for each item he checks off his mental list. “Checked your temperature twenty times, redressed you five times, wiped you down five more times, handled you so delicately I have a seizure rethinking it. Not to mention how you’re so high-maintenance that I had to triple-check to see if I managed to scrub every speck of dust off your fair maiden body and—"

“I was unconscious,” Noah refutes. “I never asked for you to do it.”

“Would you rather be soaked in three inches deep of blood?” Yang Rong leans over the table, purposefully hovering over him so he’s in a more solid position of dominance. “And it is within my knowledge that you were the one who fell on top of me, so I had no choice but to carry you here as you were staining my shirt red. A high-quality combat suit, by the way, made of tough fiber and designed to withstand rough scratches – I don’t have to mention the cost, do I? And then, if this weren’t enough, you ended up in a coma for a whole week – is your body really delicate to this extent? How about you thank me, hm? And maybe—"

“Appreciated, thank you,” Noah deadpans. “Now ramble louder so you’ll wake everyone up.”

Yang Rong groans and messes up his obsidian-black hair in irritation, but he still lowers his volume out of common decency. Almost four in the morning and they’re making too much noise than appropriate – it’d be unfortunate if Unit 1 lost sleep over such a petty thing.

Noah unexpectedly speaks up again.

“I do mean thank you, and…” He glances at Yang Rong’s right hand. The two small marks are still reddened on the junction of his index finger. Noah hesitates, gives a rare look of fluster and stammers over his words. “Your finger. I’m sorry, I don’t know if any complications will occur—ngh, I couldn’t control—what I mean is, I was not in the right state of mind and…”

“And?”

“…And I won’t do it again.” He lowers his gaze and looks at the hypodermic needle on the table. “I know you are skeptical of me, but it isn’t my intention to do harm. If… you could do me a favor, help me administer this?”

Yang Rong picks up the flimsy syringe and examines it so intently that it makes Noah feel complicated – sure it isn’t the most elegant thing in the world, but he likes to think Ming Tang had made it look notches better than it was before. The colonel rotates it around his hand. “Hmm? This?”

“Mn,” he hums an affirmative. “I have little practical knowledge of intravenous injections outside of medical books and I figure you’d be more skilled.”

“Skilled?” Yang Rong raises a brow. “I don’t shoot up drugs.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Perchance I do know how to,” the man says with an unknown glint in his eyes, “but why would I enable your cocaine addiction?”

“…” Noah rubs his neck. “It’s not cocaine. It’s a benzodiazepine, a more…concentrated one. Different from the usual—ugh, the specifics don’t matter. Colonel Yang, it is something to help my condition.”

“It is very daring of you to commit a bank heist,” Yang Rong muses. “An anomaly like yourself… the radiation sensors would have been trigged instantly. So I do have a question – how would you have been able to get inside without my assistance?”

“Then I have a question for you as well,” Noah says, looking him in the eye. “Why were the sensors not activated when we entered?”

Yang Rong gives him a smirk. “Naturally, as a colonel, I do have a special ID permit.”

“Then naturally…” Noah says, “I also had a special permit.”

At that, Yang Rong shows an expression of intrigue. “Oh? Interesting connections and very illegal activities… Noah, who are you, really?”

“My childhood wasn’t very ordinary.”

A light chuckle. “I can figure.”

Noah sighs. “Colonel Yang, you may stop inquiring me now and help administer the injection.”

“The injection that could hypothetically help your condition?”

He replies, “I have no way of knowing besides—”

“Besides blindly testing it on yourself?” Yang Rong fixes his gaze toward him. “What about the side effects?”

“I will deal with them if they come, but they won’t necessarily be severe.” Noah lifts up his shirt sleeve, cuffing it past his elbow. “Well? Are you going to assist or not?”

“…Alright,” Yang Rong says after a bit of internal debate. Noah catches the resignation in his voice – not that he understands why, because he’s only asking for a small favor. The colonel goes off elsewhere and returns not even half a minute later with a small kit in his hands. He sits down on the seat next to him, occupying the spot where Ming Tang had been in previously. With fluid movements, Yang Rong takes out an alcohol wipe, cleanly peels off the packaging and instructs, “Arm on the table, body toward me.”

It’s not a hard command, but Noah acquiesces anyway, extending his forearm out to receive the injection. He shivers slightly as the cold isopropyl sweeps through his skin. Yang Rong, for all that he seems gruff and uncouth, is surprisingly meticulous as he disinfects the veiny area. When the hypodermic is close to his skin, Noah looks away. The tip of the paperclip is more blunt than the standard needle and he’s already starting to panic.

“Scared of needles?” Yang Rong asks with a low chuckle.

“Not needles in particular,” he murmurs, feeling more uncomfortable by the second. “It’s an irrational fear of being… Colonel Yang, have you been inside the center Nexus lab?”

“Not often.”

Noah has been inside many times. There was a time a few years back when he’d seen an infected human locked up inside a cage. The young woman was being monitored for symptoms and she was said to be a rare case – one week after exposure and she still hadn’t mutated. Hooked up with drugs and drips, the woman was thought to have antibodies and some resistance to the radiation. Noah saw her right before she turned, her long hair sagged to the floor, her body limp and chained on isolated ward. Her irises were a crazed brown-red as she muttered, continuously, sermons of death and dole.

Her vitals fluctuated wildly but no one seemed to care about her specifically, but about her demise and what it means for forsaken humanity. Noah had stared too long until his friend dragged him out of the room – and then what happened afterwards was two hours of emotional support.

“Anyway,” Noah changes the topic simply, “if you’re done staring at my arm like an idiot, you should hurry and—!”

Yang Rong pricks through his skin right at that moment. He isn’t gentle, either, that goddamned brute, and Noah jolts in shock, thinking that his vein is ruptured through. The colonel, in all his sadistic glory, ignores the soft whines coming out of the young man as he pumps the drug into him. Yang Rong might’ve smirked a little too, to Noah’s utter dismay, and holds his arm tightly so he can’t move – not that he’d want to move, considering there’s a needle up his cubital vein.

“…Colonel Yang,” he groans out, “I don’t think it’s supposed to hurt this much.”

“If you relax and stay still, it might not hurt?” Yang Rong replies as he leisurely empties the syringe, giving it a few extra squeezes and watching the colorless liquid ooze out. “Aren’t I treating you quite nicely, even?”

Noah sighs. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

“Consider it retaliation for putting up with your sharp tongue,” the colonel smirks at him as he finally takes the needle out. He dabs a clean cotton ball on the puncture hole and soaks up the residue blood that has dribbled onto fair skin. “And I do like watching you squirm.”

“You are petty,” Noah mutters as he relaxes his hands – unknowingly, he had tensed up so much he had formed a fist.

The colonel throws a band-aid at him and asks teasingly, “Should I put it on you and give you a kiss for the pain to go away?”

“Not necessary,” Noah replies as he neatly tapes himself up. “But you can certainly go away.”

“…And that I will.” Yang Rong grumbles under his breath, says something about him being impossible to deal with, a menace in his ‘home,’ but there isn’t much bite in his words. The man doesn’t clean up the table or pack up the med kit before standing up, intending to head back into his room.

Unexpectedly, Noah reaches out to tug on his sleeve. He puts little force behind it, but the colonel pauses in surprise, his neat brows quirking up in unspoken question.

“…Wait a bit.” Noah’s voice is strangely low and soft. His head is bowed, obscuring his eyes but not his cheeks. He’s naturally pale, but not this pale – abnormally so, like a specter in the night, devoid of color. Even the flickering candle beside him doesn’t mask this. If anything, it seems to highlight how his ashen face can practically glow in the dark. He continues, weakly, “Umm… wait here a bit?”

“…”

Yang Rong reaches over and brushes back his silver-colored bangs. He’d already had an inkling of what’s wrong and if the cold sweat on Noah’s forehead doesn’t confirm it, then Noah’s shuddering exhales definitely do.

“Am I the idiot or are you?” Yang Rong quotes him sarcastically, “’Side effects not necessarily severe?’ How high is the dosage? Why don’t you know anything about your own body? Do you usually blindly take any random drugs you get off the streets? I’m really starting to doubt your intelligence and you are just about the most reckless person I’ve ever—"

“A miscalculation,” Noah murmurs faintly, clutching onto the other’s shirt for balance, “—hn, I don’t feel very…”

“I can see that!” the colonel replies angrily, supporting him despite all the chastising. He smushes Noah’s cheek with both hands – a strange way to check his temperature, but Noah can’t bring himself to care about the disrespect when he’s a breath away from passing out. “If you die right now, I’d be an accomplice. Tell me what you need. Food? Water? Is your blood sugar low again? Do you think you can vomit the drug back out or something? Fucking Christ, you’re a pain to take care of – first biting and pushing me away and now clinging onto me like I’m—"

“Shh…” Noah closes his eyes and tilts forward, his forehead touching the colonel’s navel. “Don’t yell… I’ll apologize...later, so…”

Yang Rong, stuck in a predicament with the younger man refusing to let go, that pretty face dangerously close to his groin, is at a loss of what to do.

“…Are you serious? Do you know how hard you’re making this right now—” Yang Rong stops when he catches sight of Noah’s dejected expression as he looks up – brows furrowed, lashes wispy and noticeably long, mouth parted to fret. With an exasperated groan, the colonel strokes his hair, intending to coax. “Alright, alright. I’m not yelling—fuck, I’m not yelling at you, so stop looking at me like that and tell me what you need me to do.”

“…Don’t know, just—" Noah struggles to speak and his words come out in low gasps, “make sure I don’t...die…?”

With that, he closes his eyes once again and assumes the posture of the dead, his body falling limply onto the colonel. The last he hears is a lovely spew of curses coming from the man’s mouth and the last he feels is a warm hand cradling the back of his head.

---

The sound of someone speaking is picked up through the walls a few rooms away. Muffled male voices followed by a bonk of something hitting the table, then something else dropping onto the floor, more talking and borderline yelling… Jae wakes up extremely disoriented. He yawns, rubs his eyes and concentrates on the commotion outside.

No one else is awake yet. Yoo Seok is lying on the other side of the bed, perished, and Li Jiayun is likely sleeping in the adjacent room. Jae normally wouldn’t care about such small scuffles, but he’s currently a little antsy with the need to relieve his bladder. In order to reach the restroom, he’d have to pass the dining room and while he really doesn’t want to get caught up into whatever Colonel Yang – he assumes – is doing, his options are limited.

He hypes himself up and trudges out of the room. The floorboard creaks with each step, and he walks as slowly as he can, cautious to not be noticed. It may be that he’s still half-asleep, but when he reaches the dining room, the scene almost shocks him into an aneurysm.

The contents on the table are secondary. Through the romantic lit-up candle, suspicious rectangular wrappers and more miscellaneous, the colonel is towering over a smaller man – Noah, by the unique shade of his hair – and committing the most indecent act of the century. With his hands pulling onto Noah’s hair, he leans down and murmurs something intelligible, only to get a low, scratchy whine in response.

Noah, seated on the chair, is blocked by the colonel’s broad back but it’s easy to tell how far he’s leaning forward, his body straining to match Yang Rong’s rhythm. Such a lewd position passing Jae’s lens filter brings his imagination through the roof.

“Fuck…” Colonel Yang growls out huskily, unaware they’re being watched. “Little kitten, you’re so—"

Jae immediately turns around and sprints back to his room, going with a speed so fast he might’ve broken a world record, slams the door shut and flops onto his bed in one fluid movement. He buries his reddened face into his pillow and cuts off his breathing for a whole minute. A part of his soul has been lost.

“…?” His heavy respirations wake up a groggy Yoo Seok, who shoots him an extremely dirty, bordering murderous look. The handsome young man isn’t exactly known to be a very amicable person when awake, let alone tired. He asks croakily, “What are you doing?”

Jae wails.

“Hyung, I’ve seen things.”