CRIMINAL // minsung

chapter 25

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I love you! Please feel free to refresh your memory by reading the last few chapters again if you've forgotten what's happening in the story, I know I had to lol

Minho broke the eggs on the pan and watched them sizzle loudly as they spread on the hot surface. His eyes were empty as he stared at the whites cook and turn white slowly.

He thought he might have just now gone somewhere with the detective where he shouldn't have gone.

Might have.
Maybe it didn't really matter.

It's just that he kept replaying it all in his head, every little breath Han took, every little sound he let out, every touch of his lips against Minho's. The way his voice turned all whiny and high-pitched when he begged.

Minho had felt how the boy completely surrendered himself and gave up control.
The high he felt from disarming someone so completely was addicting; the sight of tears glistening in Han's eyes had added onto Minho's pleasure, in some sick and twisted way, and even though he knew he should feel bad, he didn't.

If even possible, he felt that his need to corrupt the other had grown even more intense.

"Hyung."

"Huh?" It took a while for Minho to register that someone was speaking to him. More particularly I.N.

"You're burning the eggs." The maknae raised his eyebrows.

"Well fuck." Minho blurted out and diverted his gaze to the indeed burnt mess on the pan.

Changbin looked at Minho with a slightly confused yet unrecognizable expression on his face.
I.N chuckled and just seemed to be amused by his hyung's unusual behavior.

Minho sighed.
"There's kimchi and leftover rice in the fridge," he said and started scraping the burnt eggs into the bin.
"Grab those while I-"

Changbin and I.N, alerted by Minho's unfinished sentence, followed his stare up to the upper end of the stairs.

Han was coming down slowly, looking almost as tense as a wild animal that knows it's being hunted, averting all three pairs of eyes that were now on him. The borrowed hoodie was too big on him.

Minho blinked rapidly.
"...While I try cooking the eggs again." He said it so quietly that no one probably heard him.

There was a visible wrinkle forming in between Changbin's eyebrows.

Minho was terribly out of character.

Even I.N had wiped off the smile on his lips staring at Han like everyone else, even though he wasn't quite sure why they were staring. Why Minho was staring.

Han eventually took the empty seat next to Changbin, who was looking at him with a sense of something as unfathomable as pity in his gaze.
As Han glanced at the other, he could feel it, Changbin looked almost apologetic, and he found it strange.

But really Changbin's pity wasn't out of place at all.

Minho's back was facing the others as he cracked more eggs on the edge of the pan. He was gathering himself.
And he did have something planned for today.

"Eat up, detective." Minho smirked and set a fried egg on top of the rice in Han's bowl.

Han stared at it.

"Aren't you going serve us too?" I.N teased the elder who was setting the pan down from his hands.

"I figured you could do it yourself," Minho raised his eyebrows.
"But apparently I've overestimated your independence, baby bread." He cooed mockingly.

I.N rolled his eyes.
"How come you serve the police then?"

"It's called hospitality." Minho joked but couldn't push away the feeling he got when he actually tried to think about it. It wasn't something he had had to manually carry out, it was just what felt natural.
Yeah, why did I serve him?

"It's called favouritism." I.N joked back, but the words were so close to the truth that Minho couldn't even bring himself to deny it.

Changbin grabbed two eggs into his bowl.
"You're starting to discriminate against us, Minho."

"Would you like me to hand-feed you or something?" Minho tilted his head at Changbin.

"I volunteer as tribute!" I.N raised his hand.

"Shut up." Minho laughed.

The sound of his laughter reached Han's ears, and it felt like liquid gold was being poured into them. He smiled to himself softly.

The moment was strangely normal. Natural. Comfortable.

Minho sat down.
"All of you, eat up. We're not resting again anytime soon."

"What now?" I.N asked with his mouth full of rice.

"We always have work to do. I've got a good one today." Minho smirked.
"And since Hyunjin has decided to, well, not be here, we'll need the detective too." He added.

Then he looked at Han, who met his eyes;
"You'll come, right detective?"

Han was looking for something on his face, even the smallest change in the way Minho looked at him, but if there even was something to find, the other had veiled it completely. He held back his disappointment.

"Do I have a choice?"

"No." Minho smiled and placed a piece of kimchi in his mouth.

_______________________________________

"Chan hyung."

"Hm?"

"Go home. it's late."

Felix and Chan were sitting outside the lab, where Hyunjin had fallen asleep despite his efforts against it.

Really, he would've rather done anything else, fallen asleep anywhere else but here, especially when he saw how deep Chan had his claws buried into Felix's flesh.
But there was no more fighting his exhaustion.

"No, I told you. I'll stay with you,"
Chan grabbed Felix's hand that he was resting on his thigh.

Felix's heart jumped to his throat when he squeezed Chan's warm hand in his.

"And you have no say in it."
Chan smiled at him, and everything was so warm. His hand, his eyes, his smile that brought out his little dimples.

But then Felix accidentally looked to his left, through the halfway closed blinds into the lab where a boy was leaning his head against the counter Felix usually worked on, his eyes closed and his lips innocently parted as he slept.

And suddenly everything was a little less warm and he didn't feel like pressing his head into the nook of Chan's neck anymore.

Chan's phone rang in his front pocket making his dimples disappear. He pulled it out with his other hand, not letting go of Felix's, and pressed the green button on his screen under the caller's name:
M.

Felix wasn't one to pry, really. But he saw the screen by accident, and as Chan lifted the phone to his ear, his curiosity was about to burst out of his mouth as questions he could barely hold back.

"Not now." Chan said into the phone with no emotion whatsoever.

"Yes now, you need to know. It's just a little problem, but one of us left, and I don't know what he's doing. He's out of it, just so you know."
Minho said casually. Han was staring at him over the kitchen table trying to analyze who he could possibly be talking to about Hyunjin leaving.

Chan's nostrils flared as he felt Felix's grip on his hand tighten. He spit his next word out like poison.
"I said not now."

The call ended, but the damage was done.

Felix let go of Chan's hand, his eyes staring right past the older into nothingness. His breathing was becoming increasingly more rapid as the caller's voice replayed in his head.

"...Chan, wh- who was that?"