Work Text:
“Sorry, it’s an emergency.”
“Sure. Go, Inspector Han.”
“I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
“I know. Just…try not to get stabbed. Or shot. Oh, and drive safely.”
Juwon’s glassy eyes searched Dongsik’s face, like he was checking for permission to go even now when he was just following his duty, as if Dongsik was the only person who could and would stop him.
But Dongsik didn’t say 'Don’t go, you can't go, don’t leave me alone.' He only looked at Juwon, proudly and with confidence, masking his creeping fear with precision behind a profound smirk. At the front door, he even clapped his detective on the shoulder in a solid and reassuring pat, just the same way he used to do with Oh Jihun back when he still wore a badge himself at Manyang Substation which felt ages ago.
Because what Juwon needed now was reassurance and relief when he followed his duty - even though Dongsik would’ve rather told him otherwise by making a pathetic confession about his abandonment issues and get to his knees into the mud, begging for him to stay.
In the doorway, they looked at each other. Dongsik in his long, white pyjama shirt, dark, wavy hair ruffled from earlier sleep - and Juwon in his black wool coat, scarf almost pulled up to his cute nose. Carefully closing their distance, he leaned forward to press his cool lips gently against Dongsik’s cheek, kissing his stubbled mouth corner in the door lamp shadow. And then he, Inspector Han, was gone, his precise footsteps retreating down the old backyard garden porch steps, swallowed by the freezing, foggy January night.
An hour later Dongsik lay on the bed, alone, the mattress space next to him cold and abandoned, face buried in the clutched pillow that still smelled like him, and the well-known fear caught up in an instant like an old friend visiting him around 1am.
The drama he caused inside himself was stupid in some way. He knew exactly what police work was and which risks came with it, because he had lived it himself for almost 20 years. Dongsik had made sacrifices, had literally bled for it and buried beloved people because of it. If there was someone who would understand what it meant when a phone rang after hours, it was he alone.
But his family house felt so incredibly empty when he got back into the sheets, because, even as a former cop, he understood exactly where Juwon was right now; on his way into the city, chasing a dangerous male suspect who had kidnapped a woman, bulletproof vest strapped tight, mind razor-sharp, heart of a little boy fragile, yet fighting against injustice, all at once; a place Dongsik no longer had the right to follow or interfere.
“Idiot.”, he whispered, more to himself and about himself, rather than about Juwon. He had lost his badge, the routine and the structure that once told him where he belonged, what time had made out of him. And now the person he needed most in the world kept stepping back into a place that ate people alive, while Dongsik was left behind with nothing but waiting…and waiting. And hoping.
It was unbearable, that waiting and hoping, and the constant fear of loss and forced farewells.
He didn’t want that. At all.
The pillow smelled like Juwon’s pricey soap, clean and understated, like the warmth he had left behind when he took that cursed phone call that would take him away, standing up too fast, apologizing, already half gone from this peaceful world they had built up in their little cocoon of secret, tender love and fragile domestic wonder.
Dongsik pressed his face into it, deeper, wetting the fabric with snot and tears that spilled out in unfiltered sobs.
Losing Juwon to a damn bullet or a knife or some other pointless, faceless cruelty, losing him to duty that preserved the safety of others, to obligation, to a world Dongsik no longer belonged to...he couldn't stand any of that.
“I know…”, he whispered into the cushion, arms tightening around it in a firm hug, hoping Juwon could hear and feel him even there.
“I know you have to go.”
Loving a cop meant accepting that he, Dongsik, will always come second to important calls; that every quick goodbye, or ‘I’ll text’ or ‘See you later’, could be the very last and a promise like ‘I’ll be back’ would forever be unfulfilled.
Dongsik curled tighter around his pillow, breathing in the scent of the man he loved like no one else until his lungs ached from the stretch, until his tears soaked into the place where Juwon’s head had rested minutes ago, despising himself for being so scared while the most humiliating sound escaped his throat.
As a former policeman and murder-framed son of Manyang, he had survived worse than just a few hours of loneliness and longing for justice and tranquility. But tonight he couldn’t survive this particular absence without any dignity at all.
But the clock on the nightstand ticked on and his phone stayed stubbornly silent, maybe until later, maybe until the morning.
Maybe forever.
“No. It’s fine…”
And he laid there in the darkness of the bedroom, clinging pathetically to the fleeting scent of his man who careened into danger without hesitation and fear, while he stayed behind once again.