Gravity
Hooker!fic after an unintentional two-month hiatus. I'm determined, at the very least, to finish out the plotlines I've started. And it certainly helps that I enjoy writing this 'verse more than anything else. ;D

Gravity
focus: Sunday/Changmin/Jaejoong, Yesung/Kibum

So this is Jaejoong, Bora thinks, and proceeds to fight and narrowly win a battle with gravity over her jaw, because Jaejoong has come to the door wearing nothing but a pair of designer briefs. It is clear that he has just woken up—she can tell from his droopy eyelids and his sleep-toussled mane of black hair and the scowl plastered across his face. It is equally clear that Changmin's description had not even begun to do him justice, but, she thinks as he yawns, lean muscles rippling over his ribs, she can hardly blame him for that. Jaejoong defies description; he is both handsome and beautiful, powerful and delicate, masculine and feminine, hard eyes and soft lips and sleek, strong lines from top to bottom. The thought that he is sleeping with both her fiancé and her favorite pupil feels threatening in a way that their relationship with each other never has.

"Well?" he says crossly, and raises an eyebrow.

Well, indeed, she thinks, and smiles pleasantly. "I'm terribly sorry—my name is Jin Bora and I'm here to see Changmin, but if I've come at an inconvenient time," and with this she glances pointedly at Jaejoong's morning wood, "I can always come back..."

Jaejoong smirks. "We're not in the middle of fucking, if that's what you mean," he drawls, and if he is trying to shock her he will have to try much harder than that. "Morning sex is more Yunho's thing—but you're his fiancée, I'm sure you'll learn these things soon enough."

"Something tells me his morning habits may vary depending on what he wakes up next to," Bora returns, trying to hide her mirth, and then continues on, unable to stop herself, "and if I were to wake up to this I'd imagine morning sex might be my 'thing,' too."

Jaejoong's eyes narrow and his smirk slowly widens into a lazy grin. "Come in," he says, and turns back inside. She follows him in and watches as he performs a feline stretches (shaved pits, she notices with amusement when his arms reach over his head) and then makes his way over to the kitchenette. "Coffee?" he asks over his shoulder, and she shakes her head, barely keeping from laughing at the way he casually scratches his butt while waiting for her answer. "Feel free to change your mind later, because I've made a hell of a big pot."

She looks around the sitting room as he pours himself a mug. It looks the same as she remembers it, right down to the blankets and pillows on the couch...

"Lovers' quarrel?" she asks, gesturing towards the makeshift bed.

"No, this prevents the lovers' quarrel. Changmin is a big boy, and there is not room for him, me and his flailing arms in a double bed. I keep telling him we need to get a bigger one if I'm going to be moving in."

"Oh," Bora says, and she can hear the surprise in her own voice, "he hadn't mentioned that."

"It's a new development," he says, and the scowl is back, though this time not directed at her. "There's been a change of management at the club."

He doesn't elaborate, but she thinks she can fill in the details. "I see," she says, feeling strangely threatened again. Jaejoong is moving in.

Some of her ambivalence must have made its way into her voice, because Jaejoong furrows his eyebrows severely and says, "Listen, lady, I'm the one he's fucking here, so you don't get to have feelings about this, or whatever. Besides, you're engaged to his boyfriend."

She furrows her eyebrows back. "I don't see what that has to do with anything. You're both fucking him too."

"Fine then, but the fact remains that Changmin and I are fucking. Are you and Changmin fucking?"

"Well..." She has become distinctly aware of how ridiculous this conversation is and feels her lips turn up ever so slightly. "Not yet."

Jaejoong's eyes widen momentarily, and then he smiles his first real smile at her. "Jin Bora, once we get this all sorted out, I think we are going to get along just fine." She can't help but grin back at him. "Why don't you wake up your student—he's in the bedroom."

Bora and gravity fight their second battle over her jaw when she opens the door to Changmin's bedroom; her student is sprawled across the bed on his back, quite naked, with a twisted, wrinkled sheet wrapped around one leg and barely covering his crotch. It occurs to her, once she has defeated gravity again, that Changmin is just as much of a paradox as Jaejoong—his body is tanned, large, powerful, but his face is calm and guileless, almost cherubic in sleep.

She sits down gingerly on the bed and runs a hand softly over his cheek. He stirs and kicks the sheet onto the floor and Bora keeps her eyes determinedly on his face. "Jaejoong?" he mumbles, eyes still closed.

"No, it's me," she says softly, and his eyes fly open.

"Sensei?" he says, face going bright red when he looks down the bed. "Could you, uh, turn away for just a second?" he chokes out, and she resists the urge to laugh and does as he asks. There is the sound of cotton against skin, and then he says, "Ok," and she turns back to find him sitting on the edge of the bed in low slung grey sweatpants (the ones you wore when you stayed the night, a voice in her mind supplies helpfully). She sits down next to him.

"I guess you forgot you said you would come with me for my final fitting."

"Yeah," he says, running a hand nervously through his hair. "I've just been busy with Jaejoong lately and I guess it must've slipped my—Jaejoong! Did you...did he..."

"He let me in and we had a very nice chat," she says, smiling. "I hear he's moving in."

"I'm sorry," Changmin says, blushing again, "I hope it didn't startle you. It's just, you know, with the new management and everything, and I guess this Yesung guy who bought the place is a total—are you ok?"

Yesung. In the third battle over her jaw, gravity wins handily.

***

It occurs to her only as she is wending her way through uncomfortably familiar alleyways that the dressmaker will be expecting her, but the thought vanishes as quickly as it had appeared. She is consumed by thoughts of her brother, her mind too full to accommodate anything else, anything except for the anger quickly bubbling up to take the place of shock. After enough terse questions to Changmin and Jaejoong to confirm her suspicions, she had bolted out the apartment without thinking and worked things out on the excruciating slow subway ride to the red light district. He had lied to her. He had lied to her and used her and there was nothing surprising about that, really, except that she had fallen for it. She would go and she would see with her own eyes before considering what to do about it, she had decided, and so here she is walking down the back alley and quietly slipping through the rear entrance Changmin had sneaked her in through what seems like ages ago.

The inside of the club looks no different during the day than it had at night—the lights are muted and the hallways deserted. She quickly makes her way past rows of closed doors, slowing when she hears the sound of a voice. It is coming out of the one open door at the end of the hall, deep and measured and—she knows that voice.

Before she realizes what she is doing she has stepped into the doorway, and there he is, older and more serious-looking, with worry lines faintly visible in the corners of his eyes, but undeniably Kibum.

"Oppa?"

He looks up and his eyes go wide and he says distractedly into the phone, "I'll call you back," before replacing the receiver and standing up. "Bora?"

She crosses the room in a flurry of quick steps and throws her arms around him; he tenses, but then his muscles go slack and he too brings his arms up to hold her, and they stay like that until she can bring herself to speak.

"I wrote you a letter, after, to apologize for what he did. Did you get my letter?"

"Yeah," he responds softly after a while.

"Good," she says, and with a sigh pulls away from him. "I'm here because of him. I just found out that he bought this place and—well, it's complicated."

Kibum smiles bitterly. "It always is, with him. Do you—what is it, Sungmin?"

Bora turns and sees a boy standing in the doorway, eyeing her shrewdly.

"I thought you might want to know that Yesung is on his way to talk to you," the boy says, eyes flitting from Kibum to Bora and back again.

Bora feels the breath stop in her chest and sees Kibum's jaw clench. "Thank you, Sungmin. Close the door on your way out." When the door clicks shut, Kibum looks at her questioningly.

"Hide me," she says, urgently, and he leads her over to a door in the wall and opens it to reveal a closet with a safe in it.

"In here," he says, and when she steps inside he closes the door to leave only a sliver open, from which she can see out towards his desk. She sits on the safe and listens to her heart pounding in her breast.

After a few minutes she hears the door opening and Kibum, without looking up from whatever he's writing at his desk, says flatly, "I'm busy. What do you want?"

She hears familiar, cold laughter and then her brother's husky voice. "I'll get right down to business then. I want to get rid of Eeteuk."

Kibum looks up sharply. "You what?"

"He's old and he doesn't push the more expensive services hard enough. I want to replace him with Rella."

"That's the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard. Rella is one of our highest earners and Eeteuk does a whole lot more than just sell the boys—"

"This place isn't turning the profit it should and I'm going to change that." Yesung's voice is infuriatingly calm. "Rella is emotional and unstable and I'm surprised he hasn't attacked a client yet; when it comes to the others, though, I think he'll be quite objective about the money, particularly if I make it worth his while."

"You can't just—"

"Kibum, you're busy." Bora can hear his smirk. "I'm busy. We don't have time for this. If you want to discuss this further, meet me for dinner tonight."

"But—"

"The Grotto, 7 o'clock," Yesung says, and Bora hears the door close.

When she emerges from the closet, Kibum's head is down on his desk and his hands are clenched in his hair. "Fuck," he says viciously, then bangs a fist down on the desk. "Fuck!"

"Kibum," Bora says quietly. He looks up, and she almost turns away at the anguish in his eyes. "I want to help you get rid of him. I need you to tell me where I can find Choi Siwon."

***

Later, on the subway on the way to one of Seoul's ritzier residential districts, Bora finalizes her plan. What goes up must come down, she thinks, and she will be her brother's gravity.