They reached the site around noon, and Mingi took one look at the fake ID Wooyoung handed him and sighed. "You know, I actually have a doctorate in geology."

Wooyoung rolled his eyes. "It's just fifty years old."

"Why am I a meteorology bachelor student intern when you two get doctorates?" Changbin asked, but his soul wasn't in the argument. "Shit," he continued as he lay eyes on the sign declaring the place an active research site. "I'm going to die."

"It's going to be okay," Wooyoung wrapped an arm around Changbin's shoulders and walked with him towards the whole set up – there were vans transporting expensive state of the arts equipment, there was police for security, a big No Cameras Allowed sign, tents and containers and people with clipboards running around. "Now, my contact should be around here somewhere..."

Wooyoung took his invitation from the fancy briefcase he bought for this exact event, and showed it to the guy asking for the invitation. They flashed their fake IDs and were waved past the barrier, with a vague direction of where they'd be most likely to find 'Professor Lee' and a reminder to take no pictures and touch nothing.

"Oh, that's cool," Mingi said, eyes fixed on a whiteboard with scribbles and notes on... the dirt? Wooyoung had no idea, but he shoved Mingi toward it and dragged Changbin by the wrist.

"I'm going to die, sweetpea," Changbin whispered. "Those terrible poems... no. Oh, god."

"You'll be fine," Wooyoung told him absentmindedly. He needed to plant the extra love poetry he had with him, and Lee Jieun, the legend, had asked to meet with him in their emails. There was sneaking to do.

Everyone seemed busy – speed walking around, carrying all kinds of modern technology or shovels or brooms. Many people were dressed in casual wear, others from head to toe in white sanitary outfits – those were the ones to follow. Wooyoung followed a duo carrying a large box of shiny metal things and brushes, as they were carrying it toward the center of the excavation site. Changbin followed, looking slightly sick when they first passed a whiteboard with pictures of mummified corpses. He'd never been good with that kind of thing. Wooyoung, however, would definitely snoop around just for the fun of it if there weren't more pressing matters to be tended to.

It was a lot bigger than Wooyoung had expected, but he hadn't paid any attention to things that weren't Changbin related. But, the more the merrier, and better chances of success.

A woman with her head in a high ponytail, dressed in an elegant suit, dismissed a whole class of what looked like students when she spotted Wooyoung. Her fringe fell into her eyes, and she smiled the kindest smile he'd ever seen. There was a lilac pinned to her breast pocket, above the ID card that proclaimed her to be Lee Jieun, the one in charge.

"Professor Lee," he greeted with a respectful bow, "it is an honour to be here."

"Professor Jung," she bowed back politely, "I look forward to working with you."

Wooyoung smiled. "This is my intern, Seo Changbin. Changbin, I trust you know Professor Lee."

"Of course," Changbin greeted her politely, sticking with their cover story.

"Let's walk," Jieun offered, "I'll show you what we have managed to uncover so far."

On the way towards one of the tents, she filled him in on discoveries made, only some of which Wooyoung had read already – but since he'd read about them in hacked emails, he couldn't really admit to that. So he listened, and gave his opinions that he'd rehearsed just for this conversation.

At last, they reached the tent, where Jieun found her personal assistant – one of her students. She introduced her to Changbin, and Wooyoung, seeing this for the opportunity it was, made a comment about the weather, at which Jieun sent her assistant off to fetch coffee and water. Wooyoung sent Changbin along, who even nodded gratefully, glad to escape Jieun's talk of sarcophages and vases and decomposed bodies.

Alone with the professor, Wooyoung followed her into the tent, where the tables and shelves were lined with labelled boxes and handwritten notes.

"You know, the reason I am so happy to meet you is not only your doctorate in history," Jieun began conversationally.

"Oh?" Wooyoung smiled politely. This could be sticky, his cover was good but it wasn't that good.

"It's the master's degree in gender studies you did abroad," Jieun said, and Wooyoung suppressed a relieved sigh. "I especially liked the paper you co-wrote with Kim Hongjoong, about queer love in the Joseon era."

Wooyoung made a mental note to send Hongjoong a fruit basket – it had been before he and Seonghwa had gotten together, and Hongjoong was pining. He'd bribed Wooyoung to be his roommate in university, and Wooyoung, because he was the bestest friend ever, had decided to join Hongjoong in class as well. It marked the beginning of the most frustrating years yet, when Wooyoung was so close but still hadn't managed to get Hongjoong to confess. Thus, Las Vegas, and the faked marriage certificate...

"I was thinking you would be the best person to write about what we've found here," Jieun continued, "as some of what we've found is unmistakably queer love poetry. The verses are beautiful, and it sounds terribly like unrequited love and heartbreak, though I admit that there is little yet to go on..."

The bad news: Wooyoung would have to keep his cover a little longer. The good news: Hyunbin.

"Yes," Wooyoung agreed, fast. This was it. "And there might be little now, but I'm sure more can be discovered. There is still excavation to be done, and records compared to other sites. May I see some of what you've managed to uncover so far?"

"Of course," the professor replied. "We haven't had time to look over everything. As you can imagine, our work at this stage focuses on making sure nothing falls apart and we can preserve it for later study and digitalisation, which we can't do on site – we haven't got that much funding. We're packing it into boxes for now, but I'll show you the letter we found..."

"Fascinating," Wooyoung murmured.

Jieun's walkie talkie beeped, and she excused herself to deal with whatever issue that had come up – and for once Wooyoung didn't have anything to do with it.

He quickly walked towards the table Jieun had indicated with a small gesture to contain Changbin's sad gay love letters. There were two big boxes, one helpfully labelled as "letters - catalogued" and one as "poetry - ???" with a bright yellow post-it note saying "to be catalogued" and Wooyoung did his best not to whoop in victory. He had to work fast. He carefully opened the box and found there were only a couple of thin pieces of paper, carefully separated by pristine plastic and archiving paper.

Out of his briefcase, he took the stack of Changbin's poetry that he had preserved over the centuries, carefully selected to be from the same period as what was found here. It wasn't much, but this poetry mentioned Hyunjin by name, while Wooyoung wasn't sure if the letters and poetry from the grave did the same. No matter now. He smiled, and closed the box and his briefcase, now empty except his fake ID and invitation papers.

He took this chance to snoop a little, on the other side of the tent, away from Changbin's stuff. There was a shelf with pretty vases, and in another of the boxes he found a pretty tapestry. Then he heard footsteps approach, and composed himself to look politely around, hands folded behind his back. All professional and shit.

Changbin and Professor Lee's assistant returned, Changbin carrying a cup of coffee for Wooyoung, who took it and thanked him – not that he was going to drink it. Ew. He preferred blood. But of appearance's sake, he smelled it and sighed happily.

"Let's step outside, shall we?" Wooyoung said and led the way out of the tent.

Professor Lee's assistant checked her papers, took a look around, sighed, and excused herself to find Professor Lee and deliver the coffee to her. Wooyoung watched her go with a smile and told her to also deliver his regrets and well wishes. When she was gone, he turned to Changbin and did what he did best.

"Your stuff isn't inside. I searched everywhere. Either they haven't found it yet, in which case we'll have to come back another time, or they've already transported it to some university." He shrugged apologetically. "I'm sorry."

Changbin sighed. "We can come at night and check the grave?"

"If I thought that was so easily done, we wouldn't have bothered with the entire fake ID thing," Wooyoung said, and it wasn't even a lie. "The best course of action would be..."

"Arson?" Changbin asked hopefully.

"No!" Wooyoung cringed. What a disaster. "You have to tell Hyunjin you're in love with him."

Changbin paled.

Wooyoung gripped his shoulder. "It's the right thing to do," he said, in his best imitation of Kim Hongjoong and Bang Chan and Kim Namjoon and Obi-Wan Kenobi and Gandalf.

... it didn't work.

Changbin just blushed and awkwardly wrung his hands.

Mingi found them, hiding from security in his sneaky vampire ways – he'd caused the commotion. ("This is a very nice rock," Mingi justified, showing the jewel set in gold, "Yunho will like it.") (And damn, Wooyoung loved the way Mingi and Yunho were so soft for each other. Tragically, this meant that they really needed to disappear now, lest someone connect the dots of Wooyoung and Mingi coming together. Fortunately, Wooyoung had accomplished his mission, watched Changbin squirm, and this diversion played into his hands beautifully.) ("Yunho will love it, you're so right," Wooyoung agreed.)

Before Changbin could actually try to set something on fire, Wooyoung decided that they'd best go home. Changbin looked a little bit more terrified than Wooyoung wanted him to be. He'd have to go on more archeology field trips, maybe fuck with history a litte... maybe his current fake degree would be a good place to start sowing chaos.

And Wooyoung's plan was still intact, because he hadn't actually expected Changbin to crack so easily.

Otherwise he would have confessed five hundred years ago.