After washing up and calming from their heated encounter, Wooyoung and San left the airlock together. Wooyoung had hooked his pinky around San's, swinging their hands between them with a merry hum. The mindless act of affection brought a smile to San's lips, and he indulged Wooyoung on their way back. Now that the moray was tended to and nobody was on their heels for their relationship, they could tuck away in the dim light of the evening and be with each other.

"Jongho and Splish Splash taught me some phrases today. I know how to say that I'm hungry, sleepy, thank you, and goodbye." Proud, Wooyoung echoed them in his mutilated Atlantean pronunciation. San beamed at him.

"You also know how to say I'm scared," he replied with a teasing smirk and Wooyoung glowered at him. He was not scared.

"Not that I will ever need to say that." Wooyoung flicked his hair back with an arrogant hand. "But if you want to hide behind me, my broad shoulders are always ready for you to sob on." With a pat of his own shoulder, he boasted, while San rolled his eyes. From time to time, his thumb brushed Wooyoung's ring as if in awe to see the other man bear it on his hand.

San asked him something but Wooyoung couldn't understand much of it. When he tilted his head, San repeated himself, slower, so Wooyoung might pick up on the words he had missed.

"Hongjoong? Oh, you're asking if Hongjoong talked to me? How do I say this? He did, in a way. He seemed quite indignant about your high social ranking and about me not understanding what was at stake. Seonghwa made it better and calmed him down. I didn't know those two were married. I must have looked like a fool." Wooyoung chuckled to himself, dropping his hands that underlined his every word with a gesture.

San hummed. It seemed Hongjoong had talked to him as well, but they had given almost the same response. They did things their way, and they wanted to relish in their moment.

San made a sacrifice Seungyoun would never have been able to make and Wooyoung couldn't believe his luck. Not only was the Atlantean medium a hundred times hotter than his ex, but he also knew chivalry.

While San answered to as much as he understood and soothed Wooyoung about their current situation, Wooyoung marvelled at him with shiny eyes. San's carved features and gorgeous tattoos were so different from any man Wooyoung could meet on the surface. Who would have known the one he would adore so much waited at the bottom of the sea?

Though their relationship was born under a bad star and not blessed by eternity, it helped Wooyoung heal. And it helped him understand he was worth more than Seungyoun's dismissal.

He was about to convey to San that he adored him enough to stand with him through thick and thin and not to submit, even if the social expectations of Atlantis restricted their bond, when a sudden tug on his hand had him halt in his tracks. San stood frozen, his head tilted as he listened, and Wooyoung held his breath so he wouldn't disturb him.

Was it the moray again? Was trouble coming their way?

Wooyoung strained to hear it, too. He didn't know what he was listening for, whether the scurrying of crab legs across the rocks mattered, or if the rushing of the ocean at the shore lured them back to their place of secret rendezvous.

Wooyoung was about to give it up and leave it to San to figure out what kept him, when a distant sound reached his ears. It was a muffled groan, and the scraping of a body across rocks.

At the same time, Wooyoung's and San's eyes widened.

"Someone is in pain," Wooyoung whispered. His mind stumbled over all the things that might have led up to this. Did someone go rogue and set out on a killing spree in the confined city? Or did an old person fall while collecting sea shells?

Whichever it was, it sent San into a hurry. His long steps took him towards the source of the noise, and Wooyoung scurried along. If someone needed their help, San could talk to them while Wooyoung fetched a doctor.

They found an assortment of rocks, tumbled over each other in an abandoned corner of the bare sea floor that covered the spread between the city and the shell. The whimpering was louder here, and Wooyoung was about to march straight ahead to see who had got their foot stuck in a gap between rocks, but San slowed him. He held his finger to his lips with a frown.

With a confused nod, Wooyoung sneaked behind him as they peered over the rocks just far enough to make out who was hiding on the other side.

Perhaps San feared a criminal was still at the scene and wanted to catch him in the act. And catch someone in the act, they did, but not in the way they anticipated.

Three people had tucked away in the secrecy of the rocks, in a manner most similar to Wooyoung and San earlier. Their limbs were all tangled up, but Wooyoung saw enough naked skin to make out they hadn't stumbled in on a crime.

Or had they?

The first person he recognised was Yunho. He loomed over a smaller male with his fingers buried in his hair. While his broad back shielded the trio from view, he rolled his hips against the other's face. His rippling muscles and jagged tattoos distracted Wooyoung for a second, then he figured out the fiery spot of colour seated in the shadows was Mingi's hair. He sat with his chest pressed to the back of their shared lover, entering them deep while he stifled his groans in a pale neck littered with kiss marks.

The body between them was dwarfed by the two giants and it trembled with the added sensation of both bearing down on him from two ends. Breathless gasps from an abused throat stifled in Yunho's groin, and pale, veiny hands clutched to his thighs with weak twitches.

Wooyoung was about to retreat politely and leave them to their business, but something peculiar kept him.

The mussed-up head of blond locks was shadowed far enough by Yunho's hips that no association came to mind. However, the suspicious lack of colour on his skin alerted Wooyoung's head.

Only a handful of people in Atlantis had no tattoos and they either were a minor, or...

With his breath stuck in his throat, Wooyoung squinted harder. Through the shadows and the two men making the one between them whimper and whine, he could tell the fine line of a pair of glasses hanging on that unmarred face ever so crookedly.

Wooyoung panicked.

"Yeosang!" He yelled, scampering over the boulders and down into the hollow they had tucked into. The sudden noise startled them and the trio that had been so distracted from their surroundings ripped apart to find the source of the commotion.

San came after Wooyoung, ready to support the decision he made.

Yeosang doubled over as soon as Yunho pulled from him. He coughed, body seizing where it still engulfed Mingi. His arousal was red against his hip, but that didn't have to mean anything. Wooyoung only saw the tears in his eyes and the way the other two pinned him down and he saw red.

Drool clung to Yeosang's chin and big, teary eyes peered up behind his askew glasses. When he recognised Wooyoung through his haze, he screeched.

"Oh god, don't look!" He threw himself around, pulling off Mingi in the process and Wooyoung almost fell and cracked his skull open when he noted what Yeosang just had inside him. Instead, he skirted around the two giants with matching equipment and dashed to help his friend, who felt around the dark for his clothes to cover up.

"What the hell is going on here?! Did they force you?!" Uncaring how Yeosang twisted away from him, Wooyoung caught his blushing cheeks in his hands. He cradled them, searching Yeosang's fucked-out expression for a semblance of intelligence. When only tears and mindless babbles from swollen lips answered him, he pulled Yeosang's trembling frame into his arms to glare at the two warriors. Even when naked as day, they were scary and most unperturbed by Wooyoung's ire.

San's voice was hard when he demanded an explanation from them. Yeosang had been very vocal about not intending to bed anyone down here, and now they found him in the middle of nowhere, getting held down by two men.

This didn't look good for them.

In an impatient growl, Mingi answered. Distrustful of their testimony, Wooyoung brushed Yeosang's sweaty hair back and patted his overheated cheeks. Jerky hands still tried to tug his clothes around Yeosang's frame, but they did little to cover him up.

While San and the two warriors discussed back and forth, Wooyoung caught Yeosang's attention.

"Do you want us to bring you away from here? Should I tell Seonghwa?"

Yeosang was crying again and Wooyoung wanted nothing more than to rip out the throats of those two bastards with his teeth. How dare they prey on the most vulnerable of them, and on a guest in addition?

Appalled by the cruelty he didn't expect in Atlantis, Wooyoung helped Yeosang get dressed.

"Come on, let's get you out of here. San will make sure they will get punished," Wooyoung swore darkly as he stuffed Yeosang's arms into his top.

A mumbled whine answered him and Wooyoung huddled closer to hear him better.

"What?"

"I said I wanted this, you absolute moron!"

Wooyoung halted in his movement. Only now he saw it. Yeosang's tears were embarrassed and angry, and he glowered at Wooyoung, full of disgrace. When Wooyoung glanced at San, the man grimaced, nodding as he heard the same from Yunho and Mingi.

"O-Oh."

Dumbfounded, Wooyoung sat on the rocks. Yeosang picked himself up and shrugged his clothes back on. He tried to maintain his dignity and failed miserably.

"Forget it. Let's go back," Yeosang muttered as he tied his pants shut around his waist. Yunho and Mingi also got dressed, though they were slower to stay behind and leave some distance.

"I'm... I'm so sorry, I thought-"

"I know what you thought," Yeosang snapped. Then he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Listen, your worry came from a good place but you can trust me, alright? I know what I'm doing."

Wooyoung caught his elbow when Yeosang tumbled from the scene of the crime. San followed them, and they made sure to bring their newborn deer back home.

Still baffled by what he had seen and how Yeosang claimed to have caused this situation, Wooyoung stumbled over both his feet and his words.

"Both of them? How even... Did they also give you a pearl?"

"It just happened. They didn't give me a pearl, no. Sometimes people just share affections, you know?" His voice lost his bite and sounded exhausted. Yeosang rolled his shoulders, shrugging off Wooyoung's guiding hands.

"But you said not to start anything with San because we leave soon."

"It's not as if they are looking to uphold the relationship if they aren't courting me."

Wooyoung heard the nervosity in Yeosang's voice. Something must have happened beforehand, something that made him sure he was more to them. Now that he got no proof of their affection, he was insecure. Was he no more than a toy for them to pass time with, after all?

San spoke up, his smooth voice soothing in the twilight. When Yeosang smiled at his words, Wooyoung nudged at him to translate.

"He said promises take different shapes and not all need to be sealed with a pearl. Same as with you two, who took their own path."

"He's right! They might adore you in their way!" Proud, Wooyoung beamed at San.

Though the news of Yeosang fooling around with not one but two intimidating Atlantean warriors came out of nowhere, Wooyoung tried to be a supportive friend to make up for interrupting them.

Perhaps Yeosang had yelled at him to protect him.

Perhaps at the end of the day, both of them shared the same fate and would have to part from the people most precious in their lives.