[VIXXO] the heart is just a bloody motor (never meant to drive) [2/5]

[gollumpanties]

<-- part 1

When he wakes up again, daylight is peeking through the boards nailed across the windows. They block out most of the light, but it's enough to make out a lump lying draped halfway across Minseok's stomach. The lump is snoring loudly. Minseok responds to the situation in the way he usually does, namely by wriggling his way further up the bed until he has good leverage to get his feet planted on the lump's side and kick it right off the edge. He listens for the thud and the pained shriek, frowning when it sounds wrong, the pitch ever so slightly off.

"Lu Han?" he climbs over to look over the edge and nearly joins his victim on the floor when he sees what is clearly his own face pouting up at him. "Fuck."

"That hurt," Lu Han complains. "You always do that and- what?"

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" Minseok is doubled over on the bed, clutching his hair in frustration. Or rather, Sehun's hair. It hadn't been a dream.

The bed dips slightly when Lu Han joins him on the mattress again. He doesn't say anything, and Minseok doesn't have to look at him to know that he's staring at the ceiling as if he'll magically find the right thing to say written up there in big, red letters.

"At least you're the tall one now?" Lu Han ventures, which is not the right thing to say of course, but it drags a laugh out of Minseok anyway. "Oh, wait no," Lu Han continues with a lilt, encouraged by the sound. "That just means now I'll be asking you to get stuff off the shelves all the time."

"You're an asshole," Minseok tells him. "And also rude. I never asked you to get anything off shelves for me."

"No," Lu Han agrees cheerfully, "I did it anyway because you're so cute. And now I'm the cute one, so you better be nice to me. I think you bruised your own tailbone just then."

Minseok stops. Much as he would like to pretend like everything is the same as before, he actually has to think through their current situation. "How do you know who I am?" he asks carefully.

"How do you know who I am?" counters Lu Han. "The same way I know who you are. I know you. You figured it out last night, didn't you? That's why you didn't kick me out of the room or try to shank me. Which would be a spectacularly bad move, by the way, because I'm in your body here, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Trust me, I'd noticed," says Minseok dryly. He shrugs. "I don't have anything to shank you with anyway. And I couldn't see anything, but there's only one person who would run screaming into my bed in the middle of the night because a giant bird tried to kill them. Even Zitao would claim ghosts as an excuse."

"How dare you put the death bird on the same level as Zitao's ghosts," Lu Han frowns. "It was a legitimate fear. When you see it, you won't be laughing. The thing tried to kill me. And what do you mean you don't have a shiv or something? You're slipping."

"Where would I get a shiv?" Minseok gestures around at the room's bare contents. "There's barely even a matchbox in here."

Lu Han stands up to poke around the room, pulling the closet door open and peering under covering sheets at the room's admittedly sparse furnishings.

"Ah-ha!" he crows triumphantly, pulling one of the sheets to the floor. "Glass shards will do the trick."

"There are no glass shards here and- don't you dare break that mirror!" Minseok manages to catch Lu Han's hand, wrapped in a balled-up wad of the sheet, before he smashes the vanity mirror with his fist.

"What?" Lu Han stares up at him. "I know you're not superstitious."

"No, but I don't want sixteen other people piling into this room to find out why they heard something smash." Minseok looks around for something to hand Lu Han that's not broken glass. "Here, how about this?" He picks up one of his shoes off the floor where he'd kicked it the night before and tries to use it to pry one of the boards off of the window. Lu Han snatches the shoe out of his hand.

"What are you doing?" he demands. "One, like that's going to work. Two, how are you going to keep the death bird out if you unblock the window? Learn from my mistake! I need somewhere to hide now that it's turned my room into its lair."

"If it's got your room as its lair then why would it come into mine?" Minseok raises an eyebrow. "One board less isn't going to make much of a difference anyway, and it'll work as a club for me to chase the pigeon out of your room with."

"Death pigeon," Lu Han insists, but he hands Minseok back his shoe anyway.

He's right about it not working well as a crowbar, but luckily for them the wood around the nails has weakened enough that after about fifteen minutes of work the board finally creaks and comes free. The rusty nails are a nice touch, Minseok thinks. They certainly go a long way to make up for how awkward it feels to be holding what is essentially a two-by-four and tiptoeing across the hall to the beast's lair, right in plain sight of anyone who might come out of their room at that moment. The house is still silent, however, with no signs that anyone else is stirring. Minseok shifts the club so that he can grab the doorknob. Lu Han is pressed almost flat against his back, standing on his toes to see over Minseok's shoulder, but since he's in Minseok's body the height difference is enough to make that difficult so he ends up nearly piggybacked on Minseok in his eagerness to find a safe vantage point.

"No wonder the thing flew into your room," Minseok snaps in a half-whisper. "You're practically a bird of prey yourself. Stop trying to perch on my shoulder, you're hurting me."

"Let it be a lesson to you to trim your nails properly," Lu Han whispers back. It seems almost perfunctory, though, since all his attention is focused on the tiny sliver between door and doorframe as Minseok turns the knob and pushes.

The door swings open noiselessly to show a room very much like the one Minseok spent the night in. It's much lighter, which might have something to do with the piles of splintered boards piled underneath the windows. Minseok is not sure how he slept through what must have been a huge racket going on right across the hall. There is no fluttering of massive wings when he steps further into the room, no raptor swooping down silently on him like prey, so he lowers the club just a bit.

"I don't see anything," he says. "Are you sure it's in here? Maybe it was your imagination."

Lu Han just gives him a look. Minseok is pleased with the effect and makes a note to stare at people like they're idiots more often in the future. His face is quite good at the expression, and it's not like he won't have ample opportunity for it. "If you suggest one more time that I was making it up," Lu Han says, "I will kick your ass all the way to HQ and back and then let Sehun take it out on you when he gets a bruised body back. I may not be sure it's here now, but I'm sure it was here." He edges around the room to pick up a splintered piece of wood, much smaller than Minseok's own, before edging towards the bed and the rumpled pile of blankets there.

"Are you vampire hunting?" Minseok asks. "What are you going to do, stake it?"

"Either shut up or make yourself useful," says Lu Han tersely. He doesn't take his eyes off the bed. Minseok rolls his eyes, but starts to approach the bed from the other side.

When Lu Han gets right up to the bedside, he hesitates. Minseok is the one to reach out instead. He takes hold of one of the folds and looks up to meet Lu Han's eyes, waiting for him to nod before flinging back the covers in one swift motion. Lu Han sucks in a breath through his teeth, and even Minseok finds himself bracing for whatever vicious creature springs out from underneath.

There's nothing there.

At least, nothing jumps out at them. It doesn't take much inspection to notice the small holes poked into the bottom layer of sheets and the tiny smears of what can only be blood on the off-white fabric. Minseok leans in closer to get a good look, while Lu Han twitches the covers further back. Shoved under one of the bottom-most folds they find a mangled ball of fur that was probably once something skittery and squeaky, but which is now sad and damp.

"See?" Lu Han points. "I knew there was something in here! That could have been me!"

Minseok stares at him for a moment, trying to figure out if he's making another short joke, but Lu Han just looks back at him with a smug expression. "I don't think it could have done this to you," Minseok says finally. "It was probably an owl or something. Its shadow probably made it look bigger than it was. Just get rid of this thing and find some new blankets and you'll be fine."

Lu Han looks like he'd like to argue further, but Minseok is already dropping the makeshift club into a corner before going to look out the window. The house was certainly not what they had all been expecting, but Junmyeon hadn't been lying when he called it a lake house. Off some way from the house, glittering between the trees, Minseok can see the sunlight reflecting off the water's surface. There's a path leading away from the house and into the woods that looks like it was well-traveled once, but the bushes on either side have overgrown it a little too much to make it look welcoming. Still, it's something to explore, he thinks.

"I'm hungry." Minseok turns around to see Lu Han standing in the middle of the floor with his (Minseok's) hands on his (also Minseok's) hips. Lu Han stares back at him. "I'm going to go see if anyone thought to bring any food," he says.

"I highly doubt it," Minseok begins, but breaks off almost spluttering when Lu Han turns on his heel and marches towards the door. "Hey, wait! You can't just walk down there!"

"Yes, I can," Lu Han says, and makes to illustrate his point.

"You can't just walk down there looking like that," Minseok corrects himself. "You're only wearing my boxers."

"If I'm you right now, doesn't that make them my boxers?" Lu Han muses. "Just because I'm not a heathen who sleeps in their clothes-" he looks pointedly at Minseok, eyes sweeping up and down Sehun's fully-clothed body "-doesn't mean I have to be kept from my breakfast. And why's it matter anyway? After all, nobody here but us chickens. And... owl-gutted corpse."

"You just can't," Minseok repeats. "My body, my rules."

Lu Han heaves a sigh. "Spoilsport," he mutters, but at least he scoops up the clothes off the floor and shakes them out. He wrinkles his nose at the tshirt, still stained with sweat and dust from the warehouse floor, but puts it on anyway. "Good enough?" he asks. Minseok grudgingly nods. "Great, let's go."

A quick inspection of the kitchen downstairs turns up nothing but empty cabinets and an unplugged refrigerator. Minseok lies down, wiggling himself behind the appliance to find the outlet, while Lu Han stands in the corner and bangs his head repeatedly against a cabinet door.

"Stop that," Minseok tells him. "You'll bruise my forehead."

"Who's bruising what?" a new voice says from the doorway, and Minseok slides quickly out from behind the refrigerator to see who it is. Hakyeon stands in the doorway, eyes still half-closed and hand scratching at his stomach while he looks back and forth between them. "Minseok? Sehun? What is it?" he asks.

"Who are you?" Lu Han asks cautiously.

"What?" All they get is a confused look.

"Have you looked in a mirror this morning?" Minseok asks. Hakyeon shakes his head, so Minseok reaches over to tilt the toaster's mirrored steel surface up towards his face. "Here."

Hakyeon's eyebrows crease, but he leans forward to get a good look anyway and almost immediately jerks back. His eyes are no longer sleepy-looking. He clutches his chest and looks distraught. "You mean that wasn't a dream?" he moans.

"No such luck," Minseok says. "Trust me, I was hoping the same thing."

"That doesn't answer our question though," says Lu Han. "Who are you?"

"Hakyeon's" frown deepens. "I seem to recall that question being a problem last night," he says. "Even if I told you, would you believe me?"

"Depends," shrugs Minseok. "Would you believe us if we told you who we are?"

"We have ideas about most of the others already," Lu Han adds, "so I don't think it's going to stay a secret for long. Too many of us know each other too well. If it helps, I'm pretty sure you're on our side."

"And which side is that?" asks "Hakyeon," though he sounds like he's coming to the same conclusion already.

Lu Han grins then. "The side of Right, of course."

Minseok has to resist the urge to facepalm. Now is not the time for provoking evasions, but since when has Lu Han ever cared about that? "We're EXO, of course," he says, stepping in. "You are too, right?"

"Hakyeon's" face finally relaxes the rest of the way, like hearing it aloud is enough to confirm whatever he'd already half-decided. "Yeah," he agrees.

Minseok decides to go the whole nine yards. "I'm Minseok," he says. "And that's Lu Han." He ignores Lu Han's pursed lips. They'll all have to relax enough to reveal their identities eventually, and with the warm sunlight trickling in through the faded kitchen curtains it seems hard to keep up the same level of suspicion as last night. "I know you're not Sehun, Junmyeon, or Zitao."

"Or Kyungsoo, Baekhyun, or Jongin," adds Lu Han. "That leaves what? Three more possibilities?"

"I'm Yifan," says not-Hakyeon carefully.

Lu Han nods, satisfied. "I didn't really think you were Chanyeol," he says.

"And Yixing?" asks probably-Yifan. "You could probably rule him out too."

"I wouldn't put anything past Yixing," Lu Han waves a hand. "I practically grew up with him and I still bet I couldn't pick him out of this group if he didn't want me to. You could just as easily have been him."

"But you believe me?"

"Yixing would be trying to mess with our heads more," shrugs Lu Han. "He's a right bastard, that one."

Almost-certainly-Yifan looks at Minseok questioningly, but Minseok just shakes his head with a little 'don't look at me' shrug so he doesn't say anything. Minseok leans back against the fridge, which reminds him of their most recent problem.

"I don't suppose you know where any food is?" he asks. Lu Han stops grinning, also remembering the problem of the empty kitchen.

Yifan looks at the cabinets. "That's what I came down to check on. There's nothing here?"

Lu Han opens the cabinet at his elbow. "I can get you... a crumbling box of baking soda?" He closes it again and resumes banging his head against it.

"I told you to stop that," Minseok frowns.

"I guess we have to get some food," says Yifan helplessly. "Someone's going to have to go to the store, but I don't have a key to either of the cars anymore. My spare got put in the safe, I think."

"Was anyone else showing signs of waking up when you came down?" Minseok asks.

"Not as far as I know," Yifan says apologetically.

Lu Han groans piteously. "We're going to die."

"We're not going to die," Minseok tells him. Lu Han bangs his head against the cabinet one more time for good measure before sliding down to sit slumped on the tiled floor.

Since Lu Han seems intent on moping until he gets food, Minseok shoves a glass of water into his hands -- at least a search of the upper cabinets produced some dishes -- and drags him out to lie on one of the sheet-covered sofas until they can find someone to go get food. Minseok drops into an armchair next to him, while Yifan  takes one across the room. They sit there, staring at each other in a silence that's only broken when one of their stomachs growls.

The dust stirred up when they moved in hangs drifting in a beam of light. Minseok can see the individual motes drifting lazily, so he watches them like fish or like raindrops on a window to distract himself from his growing hunger. He could check his watch (Sehun wears a watch, right?) but it would only irritate him. A watched pot never boils. Instead, he watches the dust swirl in the air currents, following one particular particle as it drifts in close to the window and then further away again, swirling down in a crooked spiral before landing on Lu Han's cheek. Or Minseok's cheek, as it happens to be at the moment. Minseok could think about that too, but it's possibly an even less appealing thought than how hungry he is. It feels like hours that they spend like that, watching the dust move and Lu Han finish his huge glass of water, but slowly the sounds of people waking up filter through the ceiling. Someone starts singing loudly and off key, which would be Baekhyun, even if the voice is unfamiliar, and then that's followed by the sound of someone protesting grumpily in a voice that is clearly Lu Han's, even if the tone is rougher. Lu Han's head turns over from where he's laid it against the back of the sofa.

"That's weird as hell," he says to himself.

You're telling me, Minseok thinks, watching him.

The sounds from upstairs get louder as more and more voices join in. None of them sound particularly happy, and there are more than one loud outbursts, which the three downstairs completely ignore.

"Do you think Junmyeon has a hidden stash of money somewhere in the house?" Lu Han thinks out loud. "I could eat the contents of an entire grocery aisle right now."

"I'm sure he does," Yifan nods.

Someone comes stomping down the stairs just then, and the door to the living room swings open to reveal a furious-looking Baekhyun. He glares around at all of them before stalking through the room in the direction of the kitchen.

"There's nothing there!" Lu Han calls after him. They hear strangled yelling followed by cabinet doors opening and slamming shut. More muffled curses and then not-Baekhyun storms through again, kicking open the door to the entrance hall before disappearing again. They hear the front door slam and then everything is quiet again.

"That was definitely Kyungsoo," says Lu Han sagely.

"How can you tell?" Yifan asks.

"Barely-contained rage, purposeful stride, mental breakdown at waking up to find no food or coffee?" Lu Han looks out at the door. "Definitely Kyungsoo. Probably even angrier after realizing that he really is stuck in that body."

"You think?" Yifan muses.

"I know." Lu Han sounds confident. Neither of them argue with him. There's a reason Lu Han's always been in charge of intelligence in their group and Minseok's not about to doubt him now.

The next person to come down the stairs stops in the doorway and blinks at them for a moment. Minseok looks up to meet his eyes and recognizes the occupant of the room next to his, staring right back at him with Junmyeon's eyes. He doesn't say anything. Minseok watches him shuffle across the room, following Kyungsoo's earlier path into the kitchen until he turns the corner into the other room. There's another long silence that stretches out longer than any of them expect it to.

"Do you think he's alright?" Yifan asks.

"Who cares?" Lu Han yawns. "He's not one of ours, that much is sure."

Minseok stands up, shaking his head at the still-unfamiliar height. "He's still in one of our bodies," he points out. "We should make sure he's okay."

No one has an answer to that. Lu Han shrugs and rolls over on the sofa again and Yifan slouches in his chair, staring at his hands, so Minseok wanders back into the kitchen to investigate. He finds the current resident of Junmyeon's body standing next to the counter with a mug in his hands, standing perfectly still and staring at the empty coffee machine. He looks up at Minseok's approach, but still doesn't say anything.

"We're all out," says Minseok unnecessarily. Not-Junmyeon nods silently, still holding the mug. "I mean, we're out of everything," Minseok continues. "There's no food in the house."

The other man's eyes flicker around at the cabinets. Minseok isn't sure, but he thinks he looks disappointed. If he is, he doesn't show it in any other way. He turns away from the coffee machine and fills the mug with water from the sink, leaning against the counter to drink it like he's forgotten about Minseok's presence. It should probably be insulting that this rival gang member doesn't even rate Minseok as enough of a danger to keep an eye on, but honestly it only feels relaxing. It's as if an unspoken truce exists here in the empty kitchen, a no man's land extending at least as far as the tile floor stretches. Minseok hears more people coming downstairs, hears more voices conversing out in the living room, but here he just watches the clock tick next to the sink. Somewhere in his periphery he sees "Junmyeon" take a step forward to look out the window, still drinking his mug of water. When he's finished, he reaches out a hand to place it on the counter without looking away from the window, but he miscalculates the distance. The mug doesn't make it to the counter before his fingers loosen. Instead it turns over a few times in midair before it hits the floor and shatters into pieces around his bare feet with a crash. Neither of them move. "Junmyeon" looks back and forth between his outstretched hand and the broken mug, like he's trying to figure out how that happened. There's a break in the voices outside just before Yixing's face appears in the doorway.

"What's going on?" he starts to ask, then notices the broken shards on the floor. "Oh no, that looks... and of course, you're not wearing shoes. No, don't try to clean it up, you'll only cut yourself. Hold still, I know there's a vacuum somewhere around here. Just don't move, either of you."

He looks sternly at both of them in turn, then disappears into one of the other rooms where Minseok can hear him rummaging around in search of the vacuum cleaner. The reaction is very much Junmyeon, even if their leader is walking around in Yixing's body. When he comes back, Minseok watches Junmyeon's body and his mind split between two different people and it's like he's seeing double because the one who looks like Junmyeon definitely doesn't feel like him and the one who looks like Yixing moves and speaks just like Junmyeon. Not-Junmyeon still hasn't said anything and he hasn't met Minseok's eyes either. If he were to jump to conclusions, Minseok would think that he's embarrassed about the situation, but his face is so still that it's hard to tell. As soon as Junmyeon, in Yixing's body, gives him the go-ahead, he immediately slips past Minseok without a word. Junmyeon finishes wrapping the cord back up, shrugging at Minseok.

"Did he look upset to you?" he asks. "It was just a mug."

"I think it was more that he forgot he was a different size," says Minseok thoughtfully. "I don't think he even thought about it before it was too late to catch it. It's frustrating."

"It's weird," says Junmyeon fervently, looking at the doorway as if he can still see his own retreating back in it.

"You're telling me," Minseok agrees.

By the time Kyungsoo returns, his arms full of grocery bags, everyone is awake and most of them are gathered in the living room after having inspected the kitchen for themselves. Kyungsoo's delivery is greeted with great enthusiasm which, combined with the fact that several people point out that he didn't have any car keys, seems to improve his earlier foul mood.

"Good to know that whenever we're stranded somewhere without vital supplies, we can at least count on Kyungsoo to hotwire a car and save us from our own incompetence," Lu Han tells Minseok, cheerful once again with food in his stomach.

While the animosity isn't as thick as it was the night before, they still all go their separate ways after the first wave of food production. "Hongbin" and "Sanghyuk" head back down to the basement under Kyungsoo's watchful eye, most of the others retreat back into their rooms or explore the house further, and Minseok uses the opportunity to take the path down to the lake that he'd spotted earlier. Lu Han, predictably, tags along and they're joined at the last minute by Jongin. While Minseok has no objection to his presence under normal circumstances, right now it gives him a slight headache since Jongin is currently in Lu Han's body. It's disconcerting to hear Lu Han's speech patterns coming from one side and to turn the wrong way to where Lu Han's body is busy kicking a log off the path. It's eerily reminiscent of this morning's interactions with "Junmyeon." He avoids thinking about it too deeply by kicking Jongin off the pier as soon as they arrive and laughing at his startled yelp. When he turns around, Lu Han is doubled over laughing himself sick in that exaggerated way of his.

"Stop unhinging my jaw," Minseok cringes. "It's gross enough when it's on your face, but at least you always look weird." When Lu Han shows no signs of stopping, Minseok kicks him into the lake too.

"It's not my body! I can't feel it!" Lu Han yells through chattering teeth when he surfaces again.

"Trust me, you're feeling it," says Jongin when he hauls himself back onto the warm wooden boards. "That water is freezing. How would you like it if I pushed you in?" He shakes Lu Han's hair out of his eyes.

"Minseok doesn't feel cold," says Lu Han, treading water. "He laid down in a snowbank in his underwear once because I bet him he couldn't do it."

"That was before you showed up," Minseok tells a disbelieving Jongin. "I like warm better though."

He flops down backwards, spreading out in the sun next to Jongin and ignoring Lu Han's tugs on his ankle. Lu Han spends a long time trying to convince Minseok that the water isn't really that bad once you get used to it, which is impossible to believe when he's slowly turning blue and shivering. When that fails, he starts begging Jongin to join him, but since Jongin has already felt how cold the water is, his pleas fall on deaf ears, so he settles for swimming to the edge and climbing back up onto the pier so he can drip on them both. Even that gets less of a reaction than he'd probably hoped for. Jongin makes a quiet grumbling noise and Minseok just waves him out of the way of the sunbeam he's lying in. As expected, Lu Han gives up after a while. He hangs his clothes on the  wooden railing to dry and takes a spot next to Minseok's head.

"At least your shirt will probably smell better now," he says. Minseok just snorts. "And you say I never do laundry."

"I don't think falling in a lake counts as laundry," Minseok says.

"You don't think that foam is soap?" Lu Han asks. He laughs when Minseok wrinkles his nose. "I'm kidding, it's not actually that gross. Should still probably wash the clothes, though."

Minseok doesn't say anything. Lu Han slumps across Jongin's stomach, using him as a pillow, and Minseok hears a faint 'oof', but Jongin remains, to all outside appearances, dead to the world.

"I think he fell asleep," remarks Lu Han. He looks closely at his face. "I look cute when I sleep," he decides finally.

"If you do, it's the only time you look cute," Minseok says, and smirks when Lu Han smacks his arm.

Lu Han rests his chin on Jongin's shirt, and it's lucky that Jongin can sleep through just about anything because the patterns Lu Han is tracing on the inside of his elbow would drive Minseok mad. "I'd like to go back to being cute," says Lu Han quietly after several minutes.

Minseok looks for the right thing to say. "Are you saying I'm not cute?" he demands. Lu Han laughs and pours ice water on his neck.

When the sun just starts to touch the treetops, they stand up, cracking all their joints and poking Jongin with their toes to wake him up. Jongin, having fallen solidly asleep, has angry sunburn on one half of his body, which Lu Han finds hilarious up until the moment Minseok reminds him that it's his body that's sunburned. Lu Han spends the walk back up to the house complaining about uneven tan lines while Jongin pokes at the red skin sadly. When they get close to the back door, Minseok can see Kyungsoo draping huge white sheets over every available surface. The porch, which wraps from the front of the building all the way around the side, is already covered in cloth, and Kyungsoo has moved on to the stair railings and lantern hooks. As they approach, Minseok sees someone back out of the doorway, his arms occupied with another basket of sheets. It turns out to be whoever is currently in Sanghyuk's body, and Kyungsoo takes the basket from him with a far less dirty look than he's given most of the others so far. The sight is one that Minseok never expected to see in his life: Baekhyun moving with Kyungsoo's quick, purposeful movements, and working with someone who looks like a member of their most troublesome rival gang. Kyungsoo's own body can be found in the kitchen, pouring a bowl of the cereal the real Kyungsoo had bought that morning and looking unsettled.

"I came upstairs and walked into Sanghyuk voluntarily cleaning," he says, around a mouthful of more fake marshmallows than Minseok would ever consider eating at this hour of the day. "I think I'm scarred for life."

"Trust me, it's just as weird seeing Baekhyun clean," Jongin mutters. Not-Kyungsoo looks at him, opens his mouth like he's going to say something, but then thinks better of it and spoons more cereal into his mouth instead, staring at Jongin's odd sunburn instead.

Lu Han wanders over to the toaster to examine his reflection the way Yifan had that morning. "You, know," he says. "The more I think about it, the more I think I got the better end of the deal here. You have really nice skin, you know."

"Stop poking at my face," says Minseok, just quietly enough that "Kyungsoo" can't hear. "You're being weird."

"I'm appreciating your excellent skin," Lu Han insists. "Look, all it's done is get a little golden. It's sunkissed." He makes little jazz hands around the word.

"It's not," Minseok says firmly. "Stop stroking my face. It's weird enough when you do it normally. You look actually demented feeling yourself up in my body."

"'Stop appreciating my gorgeous features, Lu Han,'" imitates Lu Han. "'I resent compliments about my physical appearance.' Anyway, I'm not feeling myself up. Feeling myself up would be if I grabbed my butt like this." He illustrates, and then stops. "Oh wow, that's really weird." He flexes his fingers. "I know I've said this before, but like. Now I can say with absolute certainty that you have a really excellent butt."

"Stop it!" Minseok goes to punch him, but can't bring himself to land a blow on his own body. He almost thinks he would end up feeling it anyway.

Lu Han gives him a disbelieving look. "You are the only person I know of who actively hates being appreciated."

"That's not appreciating," says Minseok. "That's groping. And seriously, stop it."

"Okay, okay," Lu Han holds up his hands. "But did you know I can actually feel your thigh muscles move when I walk? Out of curiosity, how many squats can you do?"

"No, that's it," Minseok shakes his head, backing away. "This conversation is too weird. Stop talking about my legs, stop poking my butt, stop... doing Lu Han things while you're in my body."

"Should I do Minseok things instead?" Lu Han calls after him. "I can make some coffee!"

Minseok steadfastly ignores him. He doesn't want to encourage Lu Han's twisted sense of humor. When he leaves the kitchen, he bumps into "Hongbin" next who is retreating out from the living room where Lu Han had had his hungry fit of despair that morning.

"Oh, sorry, I-" "Hongbin" starts but then breaks off, confused. "Sorry, I don't know who you- Anyway, someone who looks like Jaehwan is in there and I think he's trying to try out magic tricks on whoever he can corner. He's really bad at it too. So not all that different from Jaehwan, actually."

"I'll be careful," Minseok tells him.

Sure enough, he's confronted right away with a grin and a deck of cards as soon as he steps through the door.

"Hey, pick a card," "Jaehwan" nudges him. "Any card."

"An iTunes card," says Minseok and "Jaehwan" frowns.

"You don't have to be like that," he says with a pout. "I'm just trying to do a trick."

"It's up your sleeve," Minseok says. "I can see it. You're really terrible at this. That's not even how you do that trick."

"You don't even know what trick I was going to do," says "Jaehwan" archly. "I just asked you to pick a card. Who knows what I was going to do next?"

"Something ridiculous probably," says Minseok. "Sorry, I'm not-"

He would explain that he's not interested, but just then Lu Han pushes into the room, clearly in pursuit of Minseok. His eyes, or more properly Minseok's eyes, light up when he sees what's going on. "Oh, magic tricks!" He rubs his hands together gleefully. "I love magic tricks."

Minseok uses this opportunity to escape. "Jaehwan" calls out from behind him as he crosses into the hallway.

"Junmyeon is going to call a meeting later," he says. "I think the guys downstairs want to announce something."

Minseok stops. "How do you know which one is Junmyeon?" he asks.

"Jaehwan's" eyes go very wide. "Who's Junmyeon?" he asks. He turns to Lu Han, suddenly looking innocently confused. "Who are you?"

Minseok sighs. "Never mind." Behind him he can hear "Jaehwan" asking 'who am I?' in that same tone of voice. When he reaches the top of the stairs, he encounters "Chanyeol" hurrying the other direction with a balled-up sheet clutched to his ear.

"Don't go up in the attic!" he warns Minseok, looking shaken. "There's a huge bird up there and it attacked me when I opened the trapdoor!"

And then he's gone again, taking the stairs two at a time. Minseok thinks he can hear Yixing's voice as somewhere down below Junmyeon starts scolding him. That's fine, he thinks. A giant angry bird is exactly what he needs to occupy his time. It sounds like whatever landed on Lu Han last night has now taken up residence in the attic. Minseok takes a side trip into Lu Han's room to grab the board he'd pulled off his own window earlier, tearing off a strip of one of the sheets to wrap around the end to protect his hands, and then he sets off down the hallway to find the trapdoor. It turns out to be in the closet of the last door on the left, which Minseok assumes must be "Chanyeol's". He's ready to fend off any number of killer birds when he climbs the ladder, but the attic proves to be completely empty. There's a window at each end of the slanted roof, one of which is smashed and where the bird must have gotten in and out. Underneath it Minseok finds a single brown feather. A quick inspection of the place turns up a lot of owl pellets, meaning the creature has been living up here for a while, but he doesn't find any other sign of the owl itself. By the time he finishes, the sun has almost completely set, leaving the room lit with a dim golden glow from the westernmost window. Minseok drops the makeshift club down the trapdoor before following it. At least he can tell Lu Han that someone else has been terrorized by his death bird now, so it looks like Lu Han wasn't the only one to be freaked out by it.

The news will have to wait, however, because when Minseok goes downstairs again, Junmyeon has already called a housewide meeting. Every seat in the living room is occupied, with those who weren't quick enough to get a chair lining the walls. Minseok finds a spot on the arm of the sofa, right next to "Jongin" (which would be Zitao, if his hunch is correct). Junmyeon is standing in the center of the room, and now that he sees everyone assembled, he clears his throat.

"We've spent the day going through the materials we took from the warehouse and that... got us mixed up like this," he says, "and we've come to some conclusions."

"Who is 'we'?" Sehun asks. He's leaning against Kyungsoo, and Yifan's body is about as much bigger than Baekhyun's as Sehun's is bigger than Kyungsoo's, so it takes Minseok a minute to figure out what's different.

"'We' is me, uh..." Junmyeon stops for a moment, remembering that for the most part everyone is still in the dark as to the others' identities. "... It's me, Baekhyun over there-" he points to Kyungsoo "-and those two." He points to "Hongbin" and "Sanghyuk", who are sharing one armchair. "As I said, we spent most of the day looking through the boxes we brought here and examining the documentation we could find."

"Sanghyuk" takes this moment to speak up. "There wasn't a lot to it," he says. "I'm afraid some, if not most, of the research paperwork was left in some of the boxes we left behind, if it was even in the warehouse to begin with. What we did find was enough to tell us some things about the crates and their contents, though."

"We knew going in that it was some kind of biomedical research," says Yifan, "and we know now that whatever the stuff is is some kind of gas."

"Yeah, a gas that switches people's bodies around," mutters Zitao next to Minseok's ear.

"Right, we already knew that much," "Sanghyuk" agrees. "Even without the detailed experiment notes or anything that would explain why anyone would need this kind of chemical, there's enough of the technical information in each of the boxes to figure out the chemical composition and many of its properties." He gives a sort of half-smile, looking down at his lap. "If I could get my hands on the full notes, I could spend days doing nothing but studying this material."

Next to him, "Hongbin" looks fondly exasperated before taking up the speech himself. "Basically what we found is that, yeah, it throws you out of your body and into someone else's when you breathe it. But that's pretty obvious and it's not actually the bad news." He looks around at the assembled group, now all completely focused on him, and takes a deep breath before going on. "The bad news is that, as far as H- er, as far as we can tell, the longer we stay like this, the harder it will be to get us back to normal."

The room goes quiet while they all digest this news. Minseok feels the dread building in his chest and clawing at his throat now. While up until now he'd found the situation annoying and uncomfortable, the thought that there's a clock ticking down to the moment when this could become potentially irreversible makes him feel sick to his stomach. Judging from the looks on everyone's faces, they feel largely the same way.

"So," says Yifan slowly, "we need to figure out how to reverse this. And we need to do it fast." He looks up at Junmyeon. "Right?"

Junmyeon shrugs helplessly. "If we don't, we might be stuck like this forever," he sighs. Yifan's mouth tightens.

"Kyungsoo" nods once, sharply. "If that's the case," he says, "then we'll all need to work together." He looks around, meeting several glares defiantly. "I know we don't trust each other, but if we refuse to work with each other, we can kiss any chance of getting our bodies back goodbye. And if that happens, both of our groups will fall apart. We operate as a team, the same way you do, and either we set aside our fight and work as one team now or we never work with our teams again. It's not what we want to hear, but that's all there is to it."

Minseok has to agree, though he has his doubts about their ability to interact calmly. Then again, calm cooperation has never been guaranteed even within EXO, so it's hardly the first time they've had to overcome clashing tempers and old dislikes to accomplish a goal. Minseok only notices Lu Han next to him when he hears -- or rather, feels -- a whisper right in his ear that makes him jump.

"What?" he whispers back, trying to calm his racing heart.

"I said what do you think?" Lu Han nods towards the middle of the room where "Kyungsoo" is discussing their next move with Junmyeon. "About him?"

Minseok considers this. "Hakyeon?" he suggests. "He's definitely VIXX and he sounds like he's used to speaking for his gang."

Lu Han nods with a satisfied smile. "That's what I was thinking too. Nice to know we're on the same page." He cracks his neck, rolling his shoulders forward. "At this rate we'll have them all figured out by dinnertime tomorrow."

"Doesn't do us a whole lot of good if we're the only ones who know because they won't trust each other enough to put their cards on the table," Minseok shoots back.

"It's something at least," Lu Han shrugs. "Do you think we''ll be done soon? I'm hungry again."

"This group?" Minseok looks around. "Not likely." Junmyeon has his arms crossed, standing in front of "Jaehwan" who is slouched in his chair wearing a pair of glasses with wide, obviously fake, eyes painted on them. In the seat next to him, "Taekwoon" is audibly giggling. "Hongbin" and "Sanghyuk" are staring in open horror.

"You may have a point," Lu Han concedes. He stands up, which interrupts Junmyeon's mostly ineffective lecture. Very few people were paying attention anyway, least of all "Jaehwan", at whom it was aimed to begin with.  "I'm declaring myself done this this meeting," he declares. "Anyone who cares to join my rebellion is welcome. I guarantee you chicken in every pot and a car in every garage, once the revolution comes!"

"Can you guarantee me a one way trip out of this body?" Kyungsoo says, deadpan, but he stands up from his seat anyway. No one is paying any attention to Junmyeon at this point, so he throws up his hands in defeat. Lu Han slings an arm over Kyungsoo's shoulders. "If that is what you desire, my friend," he says, "and if that is what will get me into a position of power that I will not at all abuse, then yes. I will guarantee that."

"And like any good politician, he'll conveniently forget about that promise as soon as he gets what he wants," says Minseok.

Kyungsoo's expression clearly says 'I would kill him in his sleep', but Lu Han waves a hand. "Would that really be so bad?"

"Yes," say Kyungsoo and Minseok immediately, which Lu Han also ignores.

"I mean, I could get used to this," Lu Han continues. "Granted, this way I don't have my alluring doe eyes to bat through my luscious eyelashes to get what I want, but that's hardly seemed to hold Minseok back before." He smiles winningly when Minseok glares at him. "I mean, who can be mad at this face?"

"It's my face," Minseok says under his breath, though no one is really in danger of overhearing. "It's not gonna work on me."

"That's because you're special, dear," says Lu Han kindly. "It works on literally everyone else. Watch." He sidles up to Yifan. "Duizhang~" he practically purrs. "Would you, out of sheer friendship and love, go get me a cup of coffee?"

Yifan looks taken aback, while across the room Hakyeon looks concerned at the almost predatory look his body is being subjected to.

"I... guess so?" Yifan ventures, and his retreat into the kitchen seems almost more out of desire to escape Lu Han than to do him a favor.

"See?" Lu Han says smugly.

"That was the most disturbing thing I've ever seen," Minseok tells him. "Don't ever do that again."

"You're right," Lu Han says. "Yifan is a bit of a pushover. I can understand why you're not convinced. I should try someone a little bit harder to persuade."

"Lu Han-" Minseok tries to sound stern rather than panicked, which is a losing battle.

Several people have left the room after Yifan, presumably in search of food, though Minseok thought he saw "Junmyeon" heading back towards the bedroom on his own. All this means is that Lu Han's next target is Zitao, who is currently occupied trying to catch Sehun's attention without getting up off the sofa. Sehun is in the middle of a conversation with Jongin and "Wonshik" where they're in the middle of laughing at Jongin's terrible sunburn. Zitao pouts at being ignored, looking even grumpier when Lu Han drops into the seat next to him.

"Taozi," Lu Han starts, which gets him a suspicious look.

"Who says I'm him?" Zitao demands.

"You're not very subtle, my little peach fuzz," says Lu Han. Zitao's jaw clenches. "Anyway, how would you feel about helping your favorite hyung scrounge up some food?"

"You sound very confident you're my favorite hyung," says Zitao coldly.

"Of course I am," says Lu Han. "Look at me. Everyone loves this face. Strangers on the street love this face. This face is a national treasure. You cannot tell me you do not love this face."

Zitao crosses his arms across his chest and slumps further. "Maybe not, but who says I love the person wearing it right now."

"Taozi, you wound me to the quick," says Lu Han, but he's still smiling. It's starting to put Minseok on edge. "But I distinctly heard you say you love this face, didn't I?" He looks at the people sitting nearest for backup, which happens to be "Taekwoon" and "Jaehwan", both of whom nod in agreement. "See? They heard me. I should take a poll."

"Lu Han, no," Minseok hisses, trying to shut him up by drilling a hole through his skull with nothing but the power of his glare. "Stop it."

"A show of hands, everyone!" Lu Han calls out over Minseok's protests. "Who here wishes they were in my place right now? We all know I won the body lottery!"

Minseok would throttle him if he could. There's really nothing he wants so much right now as to choke Lu Han until he stops being so fucking embarrassing, but all he can do is clench his fists until he can feel his fingernails digging into his palms, his face heating up. He thinks several people raise their hands, and off in the corner "Taekwoon" and "Jaehwan" are giggling again and even Zitao might be smiling and Minseok needs to leave right now before he ends up killing his own body in a fit of aggressive mortification. He holds his breath and counts to ten, his voice in his head sounding a lot more calm than the door turning on its hinges at something near the speed of sound.

Minseok finds himself seeking out Junmyeon's room without even thinking, ignoring the surprised eyes that look up from a book in favor of throwing himself on the bed with a shriek that's mostly muffled by the pillows. The impact is more satisfying when coming from Sehun's height and Minseok thinks that maybe this is why the maknaes have so many loud emotional outbursts. It's because they're all so tall.

"He's driving me insane!" Minseok fumes through a mouth full of blanket. "He's only doing it because I told him not to! He makes faces at himself in the mirror with my face and talks to himself and says stupid things in my voice and he does it because he knows it pisses me off! He's going around and asking how many people wish they had ended up in my body instead. It's bad enough even having him in there and I know him better than almost anyone else and- argh!" He punches a pillow, unable to articulate his thoughts further.

It's the silence that nudges him out of autopilot. The situation should have smacked him in the face the instant he started complaining in Sehun's voice, but it's almost funny the way having a Junmyeon who doesn't fuss is more of a reality check than a whole new set of vocal cords. Minseok pushes himself up until his face is no longer buried.

"Sorry," he mumbles, eyes still on the now-creased sheets. "You look like- ... he has this kind of open-door policy and I got used to bursting in to vent whenever I felt like it and I guess I followed you without thinking." It's true that Junmyeon encourages everyone in their group to come to him with their problems, but most of the others seem to feel that this is below their dignity as gangsters, so as far as Minseok knows only he, Yifan, and occasionally Zitao take advantage of his listening ear.

"Junmyeon" only shrugs in response to his outburst though, turning back to his book as if to indicate that Minseok's rant hadn't done more than initially startle him. Minseok should leave. He doesn't even know who this person is, and if he's not even on a real name basis with him, let alone a first name basis, then he definitely should not be using him as a sounding board for all the gripes he has with his own teammates. Minseok doesn't leave. The sound of the pages turning is soothing, as is the presence of another person, even if they don't talk. Or maybe because they don't talk. When there's no communication, there's no pressure for Minseok to pretend to be Sehun or to worry about who knows who he really is or who even cares enough to wonder who he is. When "Junmyeon" actually speaks, Minseok tenses up at the sound before he realizes what is being said.

"If someone is being tiresome," not-Junmyeon is saying, "you can always stare at them until they stop. Words often encourage them, but... I've found that simply staring can be enough to discomfit them."

Minseok tries not to look visibly surprised, but he's caught off-balance. Is an unknown member of their rival gang not only listening to his complaints but giving him actual advice? The idea seems absurd.

"What?" he says.

"Junmyeon" huffs quietly. "It was just a suggestion," he says, staring intently at one spot on the page.

Minseok shakes his head. "Sorry, I just... I wasn't expecting you to be actually listening."

"Well, you were quite loud when you kicked my door open," points out "Junmyeon" dryly. "Again."

Minseok has to laugh. "I'll try not to make a habit of it, I guess," he says, and "Junmyeon" shrugs.

Minseok's stomach surprises them both by growling, and Minseok remembers that he left the room all in a snit before getting anything to eat. "Junmyeon" surprises him even more a second later by reaching down beside his chair to pull out a bag of what turns out to be pretzels, which he tosses over to Minseok without a word. As Minseok crunches the snacks, he wonders exactly what kind of relationship this is turning out to be, where they seem to share food and advice freely, but guard their names like state secrets.

The very next day, Minseok finds himself in the back of one of the vans with "Junmyeon", as well as "Chanyeol" and Jongdae, who pulls back onto the main road, retracing the route they'd taken to get to the lake house in the first place. They're on their way back to the shipyard where they'd stolen the canisters of gas to see what information they can gather about the chemicals' manufacturer. It's almost certainly too soon to go back to an area where they'd stolen such valuable and high-profile goods, but the general consensus was that danger of being trapped in each other's bodies outweighs any danger of being identified as the culprits and arrested.

"We'll have to get cleaned up first," Jongdae is saying, "and since none of us can go back to HQ, that means buying laundry. They'll be expecting us to look pulled-together too. We have a reputation, you know. So we'll have to be really lucky to get suits off the rack that fit anywhere near properly, but I don't know if I can get to a tailor that'll be able to handle this much of a rush job."

"You want to get four suits tailored in an afternoon?" "Chanyeol" scoffs. "I mean I suspected you were crazy, but now I know it for a fact."

Jongdae is about to say something but Minseok cuts him off. "You're fussing, Jongdae. He's right, we don't have time. We have to get whatever information we can find back to the others as soon as possible."

Jongdae's face in the rearview mirror looks unsatisfied with the idea, but he turns his attention to "Junmyeon" instead. "You're our leader while we're in there, right?" he says. "They'll be expecting Junmyeon to be in charge, so like it or not, you're stuck with the job. Do you have a plan for how we're going to convince them to give up the manufacturer's identity and the name of someone we can talk around to our side?"

Not-Junmyeon just stares back at him. Jongdae makes a frustrated noise.

"I can point out the guy on our payroll to you," he says, "but he's going to expect you to take control of the conversation, so you better know what you're going to say to him. We can't threaten to shoot him in the middle of a crime scene. It'll draw too much attention and he'll know we're not going to go through with it with that many cops in the area. It's going to be hard enough to get in there to talk to anyone without appearing openly violent."

"Chanyeol" nudges "Junmyeon" with a foot, giving him an inquiring look, but "Junmyeon" gives his head a barely-visible shake, eyes still fixed on the rearview mirror. When he still fails to get a response, Jongdae throws back his head against the headrest, giving the steering wheel a particularly vicious twist and merging between two eighteen-wheelers without even slowing.

"Fine!" he says. "Fine, you just stand there and look angry and I'll do all the talking. I'm sure I can come up with something. You just better look scary as fuck, or I swear to god this is going to go to shit."

"Not a problem," snorts "Chanyeol". "Junmyeon's" mouth quirks so slightly that Minseok wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been looking for it.

The suits don't fit nearly as badly as Jongdae had feared, and Jongdae has to admit that the pair of expensive sunglasses "Junmyeon" picks out make him look even more intimidating than before. Combined with the posture he adopts as soon as he steps out of the dressing room, "Junmyeon" looks more threatening than Minseok thinks their leader has ever looked in his life. Minseok tries to remember the same man curled up in an armchair with a book munching pretzels the night before, and the two images are hard to reconcile in his head. When he puts on this new personality as easily as he put on the suit, it becomes much easier to remember that "Junmyeon" is a criminal, and one usually working against Minseok and his group. For the first time since the day's plan had been explained to them, Minseok thinks they might really have a chance at pulling this off.

If "Junmyeon's" stony stare and rigidly crossed arms are enough to make Minseok feel skittish, they certainly do wonders on the poor shipyard supervisor who they'd bribed to engineer the relaxed security on the shipment. He stutters and prattles, and when Jongdae lays down their demands in a voice like ice he gladly hands over the information they want.

"I don't know what you want with them," he says, sweating slightly, "but they've been really testy with everyone who tries to contact them ever since- well. For the last day or two at least. I mean, I know this guy here and if anyone in the company can get you whatever else you want, it's him. For the right price, that is."

When they walk out of the shipyard gates towards the van, names and contact details securely tucked into "Junmyeon's" breast pocket, "Chanyeol" has to stifle a whoop and even Jongdae looks pleased. When Minseok looks over at Junmyeon, all he can see is Sehun's face and his own grin reflected in the sunglasses.

This is only the first step of their plan though, as the real Junmyeon is emphatic about reminding him when they get back to the house. They've been given the name of an employee whom their shipyard contact assures them is quite amenable to the idea of selling company secrets, so the next step is to actually get in contact with this employee and somehow get as much information as they can about the gas and any possible way to reverse its effects. If they can actually get their hands on a physical "cure", then so much the better, but if not then Junmyeon will pull in every spare bit of cash he can get his hands on to "make them an offer they can't refuse." The only problem is, once again, their contact will be expecting to meet with EXO's leaders. When the VIXX members protest this (to no one's surprise), Yifan calmly points out that the information was given to them by an EXO contact and any sign of the two groups working together is bound to arouse suspicion. And suspicion is the one thing they cannot afford to attract more of right now. This means that, given the distribution of bodies at the moment, the candidates for the meeting are down to "Junmyeon", who seems uninclined to engage in verbal negotiations, and Sehun, who is complete shit at it.

"You can't just go saying whatever pops into your head," Junmyeon stresses. "You have to think about what they want to hear and then try to phrase your arguments so it sounds like you're giving them that when you're really getting what you want."

"This sounds worse than chess," Sehun groans. "Do I really have to do this?"

"You were complaining just this morning about Yifan's hangnails," Jongdae points out. "So yes. Yes, you have to do it."

Meanwhile, "Junmyeon" retreats back to his room, where only Minseok follows him. Once again, "Junmyeon" settles into the armchair near the window while Minseok settles onto the bed. The previous night's comfortable silence covers them again, but Minseok knows he'll have to be the one to break it this time.

"Not that I want to put more pressure on you," he says, "but... everyone is pretty desperate to get their bodies back." He gets a glare for that. "Okay, so that wasn't exactly 'no pressure' but do you get what I mean?" He sighs and flops backwards onto the bed. "It's just that. Looking impressive and glaring worked today, but I don't think it'll work again. Not this time. We have to convince one of this company's employees to sell even more top secret research materials to people who stole from them already."

He's mostly thinking out loud to himself at this point, but it still gets a reaction from not-Junmyeon: another annoyed huff that makes Minseok sit up to look at him. His eyebrows are furrowed and he stares at his hands in his lap.

"I am not good at talking," he says quietly. "And yet in this body it seems that that is all I can do."

"You don't need to say a lot," Minseok says. "You just need to think through what you say first. Sehun never thinks before he speaks and he goes ahead with whatever smart remark he happens to come up with and pisses off everyone. He comes up with great arguments but he's still a brat and he forgets. You just... need to keep his mouth from running away with him."

"Junmyeon" is no longer staring at his hands, instead looking at Minseok strangely. "Sehun..." he says softly, and Minseok realizes he had called their youngest by his real name without even thinking. Well, no way to take it back now. "Junmyeon" doesn't comment on it further. He nods a little, still looking at Minseok. "Keep his temper in check," he says. "I will... try."

It feels strange realizing that someone he was pointing a gun at not two days ago is now effectively promising to watch after Minseok's youngest teammate, but it also feels strange being in said teammate's body. Minseok is so far away from every benchmark of normalcy at this point that he might as well give up trying to make sense of any of it.

Just a few more days, he tells himself. Once they get through this mission and we get hold of the antidote, then everything can go back to the way it was.

He watches "Junmyeon" pull out a book, eyes downcast once again at the page, and tries not to think about coming face to face with those eyes in a few days, back in their proper body once again, on the wrong side of a gun barrel. He tries not to think about whether he'd be able to pull the trigger quite as fast as he would have before.

<-- part 1 | part 3 -->