Taehyung focus

The rickshaw's trunk was rather small for two grown men, but they had to cope with it for the sake of the job. The suit Taehyung was wearing was stretching over his shoulders and revealed his lower back to the cold, and his bum felt numb from sitting on the cold floor of the vehicle. Even though the plastic raincoats they used to protect their clothes from dirt were another barrier against the chill, being squeezed into a small space in a suit was anything but pleasant.

But when they had found out that they could use the palette stacks in the unloading area as a hiding place, he had decided that he would go in with a suit and only switch to the waiter dress-up for leaving the building through the front door. That spared him one change of robes and caused less trouble in case they were discovered, because kitchen staff sure would be sent to the kitchen and he could not risk being seen there, much less to get engaged with preparations.

"I feel like I'm suffocating," Hoseok groaned next to him.

"Think about the money," Taehyung tried to moderate the stuffy and stinky experience while hugging the briefcase with the safe cracking tools and the waiter clothes for later against his chest.

"What money?" the little Suga in his ear asked. "I never heard of any sum that was promised to us. Until now we do this for free." His boyfriend sounded pissed. Well, technically he was right, but Taehyung was sure that, should they succeed, the payment would not be too bad. After all, they were saving the country.

"We sure won't make a loss," he replied and felt Hoseok twitching at his side.

They were squeezed into the little car shoulder to shoulder, squatting like hens on a rod, while it was hobbling over the sidewalk towards their destination. He wanted to scratch himself under the itchy wig of brown hair but did not want to risk deranging it, so he willed his body to endure the circumstances with Buddhistic calmness. His scalp was not itching, that was a trick of the mind, not itching, it would dissolve any second, not itching, Buddha would have endured it, his mind was calm, it was not itching. It was itching; he scratched his head.

"The wig is awful," he whined into the dark.

"You could've died your hair black, but you wanted to keep it like that, so stop whining," Yoongi retorted. "Think about the money," his lover mocked him before the line went silent again.

"I'm about to reach the backstreet of the delivery entrance," Namjoon, their rickshaw driver, said over the earpiece. This time they had decided to make everyone listen to everyone because that would make the interaction of Taehyung and Hoseok within the tower easier.

"The delivery isn't here, yet," Jungkook provided his intel from across the street of the back entrance. They had watched the gate over the last days to make sure that the delivery they had seen the first time was not an exception, and it had turned out that the time window for the arrival was varying from two p.m. to half past two.

Namjoon halted the rickshaw and Taehyung wished he could stretch his legs just once to make his blood circulate again. Now they would have to wait.

"Namjoon?" he asked bored.

"Hm," the agent hummed through the earpiece.

"Humor me. How did you become one of the Men in Black?" he wanted to know. He had wanted to ask that for quite some time, but always had forgotten about it.

After a silence that lasted some seconds, the man unexpectedly began to talk. "They found me by coincidence," he started. "It so happened that I was privately investigating on a suspect-"

"You were a private investigator?" Taehyung asked amused. "How befitting for an ex-cop." He almost wanted to chuckle, but he forced it back when he remembered who had caused the man to become an ex-cop.

Namjoon huffed. "Well, however. I had been following the guy to a bar, but once he was there my target was only drinking. But a table with some gamblers suddenly became louder and they were about to drag away the woman that had been gambling with them, so I posed as her boyfriend and got her out of the situation."

"That's all?" Yoongi wanted to know, sounding derogative. "Saving a woman is enough to become an agent of the KFC?"

"Of course not," Namjoon retorted. "She insisted on following the men and when I told her that I once was a KNP officer, she let me tag along."

"Oh, this is starting to sound interesting," Taehyung cued, and forgotten was the stuffy place he was squeezed in. He loved to hear spicy personal stories.

"If you say so... Well, the men went into a club that was guarded by two bumpers who asked everyone who wanted to enter for a password. And she even had a dress under her normal clothes. She was totally prepared for everything and wanted to march in there. So, I thought 'what would Taehyung do' and came up with an idea."

"Oh, what would I do?" Taehyung asked completely indulged in Namjoon's story.

"I used her phone as a microphone," the agent explained, and Taehyung understood instantly. That trick was not new to him. "I called myself from her phone, put it on speaker and slipped it into one of the bumper's jacket pockets by pretending to be a drunkard. Even got a black eye." The agent chuckled. That black eye seemed to have been worth it. "Then we waited for another guest to arrive and got the password, so she could go in."

"And you?" Taehyung wanted to know.

"I went home," Namjoon said nonchalantly. "There was only so much I could do since I already revealed my face to the bumpers."

"Oh." Now that was a little disappointing. "I suppose she was a KFC agent and called you some time later to ask you if you want to join?"

"Delivery is coming," Jungkook interrupted the storytelling time.

In the next second their little car started to move again, and Taehyung's mind switched into mission mode. They only had very little time and the choreography needed to be perfect to ensure they would not be seen by the driver or any pedestrian.

When the door opened, Taehyung focused on nothing but to reach the point underneath the side mirror of the transporter, crouching down there and begging that Hoseok would make it into the space behind him. Namjoon had parked in the perfect spot. The little vehicle in combination with the low hedge was blocking off the sight of any pedestrian that was curious enough to look their way. A hand on his back proved that Hoseok had made it as well and when the transporter started to move into the gaping entrance of the gate, they slowly followed inside, almost crawling.

Taehyung decided that it was time for the switch when the gate began to close again and they were still in the shadow of the drive-in wall, so he simply stopped following the car and pushed against Hoseok's knee to signal their turn-around. They had trained this move innumerable times with the help of the hotel bed and had tested how far down they had to crouch not to be seen by someone sitting inside.

It had turned out that they basically had to make the way on their knees, pressed against the bumper and grill of the vehicle in order to hide their heads from poking out. But their advantage was that the driver probably was too busy checking his side mirrors instead of watching the uninteresting engine hood. But what they had not been able to train was how to cope with the movement of the car that was denying them its support by driving further backwards.

Still, they made it to the other side and could calm their labored breaths behind the stacks of palettes.

"Jacket and gloves," Taehyung wheezed and pulled at the cheap plastic raincoat that still hung over Hoseok's frame and had done a good job in protecting the white waiter dress shirt from being dirtied by the car's bumper. Once his friend had handed his over together with the gloves that had protected their hands from becoming dirty, Taehyung got rid of his own plastic protection skin and stuffed everything into his briefcase. "We made it," he said for the rest of the team over the noise of the employees who lightened the transporter. "Now we have to wait."

A glance at his Rolex showed him that there were three hours left until the law firm would officially end their work to start the party.

"You didn't finish your story, Namjoon," he began again.

The gray-haired snorted. "Do me the favor and shut up while you're hiding. Like you said, I was called briefly after that incident and they asked me to join. They even knew of the case when I was tricked by you, but somehow that did not bother them much. And when I was able to pass their tests and prove my smarts to them, I was able to climb the ladder of ranks rather quickly."

"What smarts?" Yoongi mocked the agent.

Taehyung could hear Namjoon breathe heavily. "You know, in a way I'm grateful for what you did to me. It gave me a chance to think outside the box, and once I was no longer restricted by police procedure, I was able to use that potential," the agent growled. "And apparently I was better than everyone else, or I would not have made it that far." Now the ex-cop sounded huffy, but who could blame him when Yoongi wanted to play the patronizing asshole.

"We know, Joonie," Taehyung tried to calm their friend. "Yoongi is just being mean."

"I told you to shut up!" the agent hissed. "This is our only chance, so don't ruin it so carelessly."

"Dude," Yoongi's voice interrupted the angry ramble, "Who're the ones with the record of break-ins and thefts?"

Namjoon was silenced.

"Good," Yoongi murmured. "Kook, come back. You'll freeze your ass out there. Namjoon, drive that thing back to the car rental," the hacker instructed. "Tae and Hope, hit us up when something happens. I'll be watching cctv."

Taehyung prepared himself for some cold hours and finally stuffed some heat pads into his dress shoes.

"You've got heat pads?" Hoseok whisper-screamed.

"Of course," Taehyung replied as if that was a basic item for a job. "Want some?" And he pulled more out of the pockets of his suit jacket. Hoseok was delighted.

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Baka is idiot. Sukebe is pervert. Jiji is old geezer. You're welcome.

About half an hour before the buffet should start, their chilly waiting found a sudden end when the gate opened again and another transporter drove in.

"We could've gone in with this one," Hoseok mumbled quietly, hands tugged under his arms to keep them warm.

Taehyung just furrowed his brows. There should not have been another delivery unless this was a special one for the anniversary party, what was not impossible but still doubtable. But when minute by minute the stacks of palettes that had been their hideout became less and the wall of their fortress was torn down, it was clear that this was not a delivery but a pick-up service.

"Fuck," he heard Hoseok cursing and in the next second Yoongi's voice was in his ear.

"What's happening?" his boyfriend asked, voice constricted by concern.

Taehyung's brain was running on highspeed. Normally it was Yoongi who came up with a quick and clever idea to avoid being seen, but there was no way they would not be seen once all the palettes would be gone.

"They're getting rid of the palettes," Taehyung murmured over the noise of the forklift.

"Shit," was Yoongi's response. "No other place to hide?"

"No, nothing."

The line was silent. Then suddenly Jungkook spoke up. "Kiss!"

Taehyung needed a second to understand that he had not misheard that just now. "What?" he asked confused.

"You two have to kiss," his student repeated. "The only reason an office worker and a waiter could be found behind a stack of palettes is because of a drug deal or because they wanted privacy."

That honestly did not sound too bad. Public indecency also caused people not to look too closely, so it was the best way to get out of the situation.

He turned towards Hoseok.

"No, Tae. I'll not kiss you. I'm-"

The palette stack that was hiding them started moving.

"Shut up and hug me!" Taehyung growled and pressed his body against his colleague's, burying his nose in the crook of the brunette's neck while tangling a hand in the brown curls to pull at them in a way that definitely would hurt. Hoseok made the indecent sound he had hoped he would make and suddenly there was a middle-aged man in a white muscle shirt shouting at them.

"Baka! What are you doing down here messing around!? They need every hand they can get at the buffet and you're having fun down here?" the man scolded Hoseok, throwing his hands in the air. "Move your ass up there!" He gestured at the goods elevator with a nasty frown on his bony face.

Hoseok's head was as red as a buoy when he struggled out of Taehyung's grip and ran over to the elevator. Taehyung, however, had to hold back his laughter. This was just too funny.

"And you..." the guy, who was so scrawny that he looked like he could cut steel with his hands, growled towards Taehyung, "Don't you dare touch my staff with your dirty hands... Sukebe."

"Jiji," Taehyung mumbled under his breath when he reached for the briefcase, but, apparently, he was heard by the old geezer.

"Fuck off!" the man shouted and gestured to kick him if he did not move his ass right now.

What was up with the Japanese way of keeping up a face? Why was he treated like a dog?

"Yoongi," he whined while he left to where he expected the elevators to be to find a storage room where he could wait for Hoseok to bring him the ID card. "What happened to me? I'm not taken seriously. When did I lose my Seme vibe?"

Jungkook chuckled and his boyfriend snorted. "Did you look into the mirror after your transformation? You look like a shy pushover with that wig and glasses."

Taehyung was flabbergasted. Did he really look like easy prey?

With a sigh he slipped into the broom cabinet that he had cracked the lock of just now and turned a bucket around to sit on it. "My pride is crushed," he sighed before Hoseok's end of the line made some noise.

There was the busy rattle of kitchen ware and some voices shouting. "You're the substitute for Suzuki?" someone asked.

"Yes, Sir," Hoseok answered curtly.

"Good, go help with carrying the liquor into the cold storage," the same voice instructed, and they could hear Hoseok breathing in.

"Guys, this was too easy to be real," their dancer said quietly. "Do I look Japanese?"

"I think they don't care," Yoongi replied. "They sound like they're far too busy to give a shit and that's perfect for us."

"Is the law firm that big?" Jungkook asked.

Namjoon answered. "Yes, a whole floor is theirs. They have specialists for many topics, so they have different departments. Yamamoto is in fiscal fraud if he's not busy with some high society son who got himself into trouble."

Taehyung snorted. "How befitting." But then he realized. "Wait, they've got a whole floor? How am I supposed to find Yamamoto's office?"

"You'll have to search," the agent answered nonchalantly like he had not just told him that he had to check for over thirty rooms.

"Well, I hope Mr. Yamamoto likes parties," Taehyung murmured before he checked his watch again. Fifteen more minutes until the party was supposed to start.

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