Guns and Roses || Taeyong (NCT) x Reader || Mafia AU || Gender Neutral

| Stress | Chapter 25 |

After somehow managing to calm you down enough to not feel the need to burst into tears at any given moment, he offered to take you out to food and then back with him so you wouldn't be alone for the night, but you asked if he could just take you with him. You didn't really want to spend too much time out in the public at the moment, for good reason. Since he knew you'd still need food, he said that he could just make you some once the two of you got back to the base. Just, he didn't refer to it as the base, for that would end up raising suspicion of him and the others.

By the time that you had actually reached the base, your stomach had let out a few noises, signaling even with everything going on you hadn't lost your appetite. Taeyong let out a small laugh as he let you into the building. As soon as the two of you made it inside you saw Johnny. Johnny looked like he was about to bombard Taeyong with questions until he realized that you were there too.

"I promise I'll talk to you later, Johnny. I'm gonna make (Y/N) some food."

"Screw talking to me, I want food. Can you make me some too? It's the Dreams turn to cook, and I'm not really trusting them in the kitchen at this point."

"Fine. Can you tell the Dreams they're relieved of duty then. I might as well make food for everyone so I don't get complaints later." Johnny nods his head and makes his way to find the Dreams. "If you want to go hang out with any of them, feel free. Business hours are technically over, so you don't have to worry about interrupting anyone. As far as I know, Lucas is the only one not here, and then Kun's taking a nap. We'll wake him up for dinner, so if you want to go do that now you can."

"I think I'll just stick with you if you don't mind. You already know exactly what happened, so I'm more at ease with you at the moment, I guess."

"Fair enough. I might not be super entertaining though since I'll be cooking, so if you need anything feel free to let me know and I'll see what I can do. Anyway, is there anything that you want?"

"Anything is fine, thank you though."

After your exchange, the two of you make your way towards the kitchen. You shouldn't have been surprised at it, since you were practically in a mansion of sorts anyway, but that led you to ask, "Now that I think about it, why do you work here instead of an office building or something?"

"We all pretty much live here, so if someone gets sick we're able to care for them and so on. Plus it just means they don't really have to pay for an apartment or anything. It's just easier for all of us," he responds as he begins cooking. Close to an hour later he finished cooking, so he told you to get your food while he went to go get everyone else. Slowly the boys make their way into the kitchen. You thought the last to appear would be Kun, but it ended up being Taeyong since he was making sure everyone made it in.

After everyone had gotten their food and sat down at various tables, Taeyong says, "I know you might not really want to talk about it, but you might have a special skill or something."

"Not that I'm aware of," you say. After that, Taeyong gets a frustrated look on his face while he's thinking, so Johnny drags him out of the room.

"Having problems, Taeyong?"

"They just look so stressed about everything, and I don't want to push them into answering my questions."

"You're a gang leader, getting information out of people is one of the many things you're good at."

"Johnny, I just don't feel in control. I can't control what's happening, I'm not even completely sure what's happening, let alone knowing how to stop it."

"If you didn't have at least some idea, (Y/N) might have been captured by now. I get that you don't want to stress them more, but something has to be done if we want to figure out how to stop whatever is happening. BTS may be a step ahead of us in the field of information at the moment, but we have (Y/N). They can't get more information for the time being. That means we have the chance to catch up and get ahead. Taeyong, as much as you may not want to, we have to take this chance to get what information we can." Johnny then sends a text, telling Taeil to come in and help talk some sense into Taeyong. Not too long later Taeil appeared from the other room.

"Taeyong, just ask about their past job. We don't know much about it, and that seems like it might be our biggest lead as of right now. Use the confidence and skills you've gained over these last few years, and ask them a few questions. If anything, they'll probably think you're just trying to get to know them. So just go at it," Taeil says.

"Alright, I'll see what I can do. Can someone check on Lucas though? I haven't heard from him since he left this morning," Taeyong responds.