[eunhyuk/donghae] i would catch bullets with my bare hands (if they were flying towards you)

[catskilt.livejournal.com]

i would catch bullets with my bare hands (if they were flying towards you) by catskilt
eunhyuk/donghae
r, 4303 words, au
hyukjae gets shot at donghae's mafia meeting, and it is terribly, terribly wrong.
in the same gangster!verse as run mad as often as you choose but do not faint and of all the gin joints in all the world; kind of a late addition, i know, but i blame warmboys for this.



I would catch bullets with my bare hands (if they were flying towards you)

After hours is a very precious time of the day to Hyukjae. Being a detective is by no means a relaxing job. Sometimes, after his shift has long ended, he gets called back to work because some gangster put a bullet into the head of another gangster who happened to look at him for longer than five seconds. Hyukjae doesn't like going back to work after his shift hours are over. It's only in movies and dramas where the police work their days and nights away and emerge with their make-up and passion for catching criminals intact. The real detective, i.e. Lee Hyukjae, wants his time off.

He has a lot of things to do, really. He has his kitchen floor to clean. His bedsheets to wash. His fridge to clear of all expired processed food. Most of all, he has that hot guy in the accounting department to seduce – things had been going along swimmingly in the first couple of weeks but recently he's been too busy and he's beginning to sense that the soulful-eyed Junho-ssi is losing interest.

So, it is with great pleasure that he stumbles home on a Saturday night after nine hours of paperwork and interrogation to shower and change for his upcoming date with Junho-ssi – he has it all planned out already, they're going to have dinner at a fabulously chic Italian restaurant and then have a couple of drinks – martinis, perhaps – and hopefully, if all goes well, proceed to a place where a bed would be very welcome. Hyukjae has grand plans. It takes one phone call to shatter them all.

"No," he yells into the phone. "I'm off work. I'm done. I don't want to go look at a gang meeting."

"Hyukjae," says his supervisor, Jungsu, in a if-you-do-not-come-you-will-be-fired tone of voice, "we have reliable information that 919 and the SM Family have scheduled a major meeting at 0100 hours at The Scarlet Room. We cannot pass up on this chance to raid The Scarlet Room and capture their ringleaders."

"SM Family?" Hyukjae repeats.

"Yes," says Jungsu. "Your pet assignment."

Hyukjae cancels his date with Junho, who tells him very belligerently that this is it, they're over, and leaves the processed food to rot in his fridge for one more night. He does shower, but he puts on nondescript clothes, not the dashing suit that he'd hired for the motive of seeing it plucked from his body by Junho's clever fingers, and takes a cab down to the meeting place.

Only then does he manage to decide on his punishment for Donghae - no blow jobs, either giving or receiving, for the next one month - and curses himself for being unable to punish Donghae even more severely by simply not showing up at his 0100-hours gang meetings.

… …

Donghae is having the time of his life. The meeting had been scheduled at 0100 hours, yes, and he'd sent a coded message to Hyukjae's inbox saying as much – IF I ASKED U TO DANCE WITH ME AT 1 A.M. TONITE, WLD U CHOOSE HIP HOP OR TANGO?? - and one of his men had faithfully disseminated information to the police force that they would be meeting at The Scarlet Room. He has helped the police force to the best of his ability, has satisfied his public conscience.

But they are not meeting at The Scarlet Room. They are meeting at Tao. Aha! Ahahaha!

Thanks to that little piece of deception, his men get approximately an hour of crucial negotiation with the representatives of 919 – mostly high school dropouts who have turned into mean-looking, tattooed men – and they've wrapped up the most important details before the police very predictably breaks in, shouting and pointing guns.

Hyukjae's among them, his gun held in the suave way that only Hyukjae can perfect, and Donghae takes a moment to admire how good he looks. He looks fantastic, actually. Pissed off, very pissed off, and very dangerous as a result. He has wrestled two of the 919 members onto the ground and snapped handcuffs on them even before any of the gangsters can react, and Donghae's diving for the rear exit along with four of his members even while fantasising about persuading Hyukjae to spend three days in his apartment dressed in a bulletproof vest. The multitude of ways in which he could remove that vest – and put it back on – and leave it half-on while he does unspeakable things to Hyukjae's body. Three days. Three full days. It might not be enough.

But then Hyukjae gets shot.

Donghae's five steps away from the rear exit when it happens. One of the men following him is shooting erratically at the detectives – Donghae doesn't bother about him because he has never ever, in the whole of his gangster career, managed to shoot anything of worth, but then he gets lucky, because that's what happens, that's the shit that happens when you're complacent enough to not be keeping an eye on your valuables, and he shoots in Hyukjae's direction and somehow the bullet flies at an angle and manages to hit Hyukjae's forearm.

The amount of blood is ridiculous. Of course it would be.

Donghae remembers shouting, "NO", and rushing forward in a moment of complete, forgetful madness. He shouldn't be so panicked, really, after all the bullet is in Hyukjae's arm, not in his chest, but at that second all that registers is the devastating thought that Hyukjae has been shot, and Hyukjae is bleeding, and Hyukjae might actually be dying because he, Lee Donghae, had been stupid enough to allow one of his men to shoot at him.

It is, in fact, a very devastating thought, one that sends quicksand pulling his world from under his feet. He's aware that Hyukjae has fallen to the ground, gripping his arm and staring at the blood oozing through his fingers, and Hyukjae's supervisor is beside him – that old guy called Jungsu – pulling him up. But after that he loses track of everything else, because his men are dragging him out of the rear exit, shouting things at him that he can't quite make out. He might be shouting back at them to let him go, but they don't, and they put him in a car and speed him away from the place where Hyukjae is bleeding, and possibly dying, and none of them understand that Donghae needs to be where Hyukjae is.

He puts his head in his hands and feels his tears wet his palms, and he says, "Hyukjae", as yet without a clear realisation of what could have gone so wrong in this routine cop and gangster thing that he and Hyukjae had fallen into.

That is what happens on a Saturday night at 0213 hours.

Except, except, it really happens.

… …

He's very lucky, the doctor says. The bullet had simply grazed his skin. No major damage. He will have to keep his arm in a sling for the next two weeks, but to make up for it he'll get five days of medical leave to nurse that arm of his, and isn't that great?

Hyukjae thinks so. Five days of medical leave is almost enough to make up for a ruined Saturday night and a bleeding arm. He goes back home after one night's stay in the hospital with his bag on his left shoulder instead of his right and his spirits at an all-time high.

Which is why, when he arrives home to find Donghae sitting on his couch looking as though he hasn't slept in a month, he's too happy to remember calling Donghae all the creatively nasty names that he'd concocted while going through the whole painful process of preparing his body for work on a Saturday night.

"Hey," says Donghae, standing up stiffly. "How's the arm?"

"It's fine," says Hyukjae. "The more important question is, how did you get in?"

"You put your spare key in my wallet the last time I was here," Donghae says, but there is no uplift in his voice.

"Oh, right," Hyukjae says, remembering. They'd been pretty drunk that night. "So that's where it was."

He puts down his bag and sits down on the couch, arranging his arm comfortably beside him. Donghae remains standing, all sort of stiff and awkward, and Hyukjae blinks at him. "What's wrong with you?"

"Hyukjae," says Donghae, his voice really tight, "I was so worried."

He sinks down onto the couch beside Hyukjae and quite literally bursts into tears.

"Hey," says Hyukjae, startled. "It's okay. I'm not mad or anything. I'm not dying, either. Your man's aim wasn't that good, you know."

But Donghae just keeps crying, and crying, and crying, in such a hopeless, despairing way that Hyukjae inches towards him and puts his hand tentatively on the nape of Donghae's neck. And half-regrets it a second later, because Donghae scrabbles at him blindly and pulls him so near that his tears soak through Hyukjae's shirt. Hyukjae's Armani shirt, to be precise, the one that he'd bought in Italy from the original Armani store because Donghae had wheedled him into doing it.

Come to think of it, Donghae has wheedled him into a great many things over the years, including giving up his Saturday night to get shouted at by a very disgruntled The Scarlet Room boss and rushing over to Tao to get shot at.

"I'm so sorry," Donghae mumbles through his sobs. "I never meant for you to get hurt, Hyuk, I really never, never never, if I'd known I wouldn't have had that meeting, I wouldn't have told the police. This thing should never never get you hurt."

His nose gets stuffy so he blows it on Hyukjae's shirt, and the only reason why Hyukjae isn't throwing a fit at him for doing that is partly because nothing comes out of Donghae's nose and mostly because it's really quite startling to see Donghae falling apart like that because of him. They've been enacting roles for many years, Donghae the tough gangster and Hyukjae the henpecked cop, and though he knows it's mostly been an enactment he realises now that it has subconsciously become real to him; Donghae is the gangster, not his high school sweetheart, nor the ex-lover whom he's emotionally attached to in more ways than he can count. Donghae doesn't like the police, runs rings around the authorities, and orders Hyukjae back and forth simply for the thrill of seeing one of his enemies falter so completely under his thumb.

But now Donghae's crying on his shoulder because a bullet had grazed his skin, and it feels like Donghae's heart is breaking. He doesn't know what to do. It is quite awkward, if he's to be honest.

"It's okay," he says, patting Donghae's head. "Your man got lucky, I got in the way, it's all good. The doctor says I'll be okay if I take it easy for a while. The only thing for you to do now is to stop organising all those meetings at 0100 hours."

"I'll never let anyone hurt you again," Donghae says, his voice suddenly clear.

Hyukjae smiles at him. "The only way for that to happen is for me to quit your case, and you know you won't stand for it."

"No, I want you to quit my case," Donghae says, and Hyukjae's too surprised to blink. "I don't want you to come chasing after my gang anymore – they all know you now, they'll get to you eventually, and they'll do all sorts of things to you and they'll kill you and I won't know how to live."

"God, have some faith in my abilities, will you?" Hyukjae says with a little indignation, but Donghae's gripping on to his good arm now, looking hard into his eyes.

"Promise me, okay? When you're back in office, ask to be taken off my case."

"Well," says Hyukjae. "That means that you and I won't be seeing each other anymore. That could be a welcome change, actually. You'll be negotiating your shady deals with the world's mafia without any fuss, and I'll be chasing some other guy down highways."

Donghae says, "Yes", but his hand drops from Hyukjae's arm.

Hyukjae looks thoughtfully at Donghae's face, wondering if he's supposed to be feeling as bad as he is right now. He's quite sure it's written in their rule book that they should never feel bad about not seeing each other, but it's Donghae after all, and Donghae makes things topsy turvy. "On the bright side, I have five days of medical leave starting today. If you'd like, you can stay all five days. Or one, or two, whichever."

"Is that okay?" Donghae asks.

"Sure," Hyukjae says, his eyes crinkling. "And if we're careful about my arm, we can do whatever we want."

… …

It's a murky mid-summer afternoon halfway through the five days – possibly the second and a half day, or maybe the third, but Donghae lost count of time what feels like years ago. Hyukjae is lying beneath him, his arm carefully propped on a pillow, and he's smiling, his fingers feathering across Donghae's hips.

The air is stifling; cool and sticky on his damp body. His sweat isn't evaporating. Donghae pants, and perspires, and pants a little more. But Hyukjae's smiling, and that's all that matters.

He traces Hyukjae's jawline with his fingers, thinks of the times they spent in Italy and Macau and Hong Kong, of Hyukjae appearing before him at the club that fateful night that started it all, of the note that Hyukjae left him, of car chases down highways, of the look on Hyukjae's face when he'd gotten shot. It might be that his heart rumbles in his chest, but Donghae's never been much of the poetic type, doesn't know about flowery phrases and words longer than four syllables – he'd almost failed high school, after all – all he knows is that the thought of never seeing Hyukjae again causes a sense of loss so deep and cutting that he doesn't dare to face it.

"Hey," says Hyukjae, "I spy you being distracted."

Donghae blinks himself back into the here and now. "Sorry I – was thinking of…"

"Someone else?" Hyukjae questions, his voice light.

"No," says Donghae, almost angrily. "Don't be such an asshole, I would never think of somebody else when – when – I was thinking of not seeing you again, and it made me – oh, what the fuck, you're an asshole, that's all, I don't know why I do this to myself."

Hyukjae presses his thighs lightly and Donghae stops rocking his hips, turns his head away from Hyukjae's penetrating gaze. God, he feels like shit, and there's no reason why he should; the gang is secure, the afternoon is quiet and summery, he's having sex with the guy he lusts after most in the world. He should be feeling invincible, like Bae fucking Yong Joon during the Winter Sonata era, or something.

But when Hyukjae just keeps looking and doesn't say anything, the shitty feeling grows worse and worse until he feels tears prickling at the back of his eyelids. Anything is bearable when a guy says something. What do you do when all he does is stare straight into you?

He should really disengage himself from Hyukjae's body and leave the room before anything more frightening happens, but Donghae can't seem to move, as though a strange energy from Hyukjae's eyes is rooting him down. It's not as though he truly wants to walk away from a naked Hyukjae, anyway, especially when he's all spread out on the bed in that beautiful, vulnerable way - god is he beautiful, as he has always been since their high school days, in that maddeningly finespun way that Donghae can't grab a hold of but sees lingering all the time at the corner of his eyes. Lee Hyukjae, who'd once held his hand under the table in the chemistry lab, and Donghae had thought that his heart was going to knock right out of his chest.

"I'm sorry," says Hyukjae, so softly that it seems as though they're the love of each other's lives, and Hyukjae's the only thing that keeps Donghae's world moving – though who is he kidding, really, Hyukjae has always been the prop and pivot of his world, even though said world might frequently spin out of axis. "Donghae – you're still Donghae, aren't you?"

Donghae's not sure how to answer that, seeing as he is Donghae, but he allows Hyukjae to pull his head down until his nose is lying against Hyukjae's cheek.

"It's okay," says Hyukjae. "I know what you mean – it's okay, darling – let's just stay like this for a while, okay?"

"Okay," says Donghae, wondering, trying to recall when was the last time Hyukjae had called him darling and whether he'd felt as stupidly, flutteringly happy as he does now – perhaps he did; his reactions don't seem to undergo much substantial change when it comes to Hyukjae. They lie like this for any amount of time, wound tightly around each other, and it could have been thirty seconds or five minutes or an hour. Whichever. When Donghae pushes himself back up and starts rolling his hips again, he's looking into Hyukjae's eyes, at his face, and they're still looking at each other when they come. And that's when he realises how closely connected pleasure is with pain; because in that first instant when they come tumbling over the edge, their mouths glued together, this starkly brilliant pleasure feels more like it's wrenching his heart out still raw and beating.

… …

It seems silly that after all the intensity of that murky afternoon lovemaking, things should fall into a maddeningly practical routine. There should have been more fireworks, more soul-baring, Donghae thinks disgruntledly – it should not lead into Hyukjae scratching his crotch while boiling water for tea the next morning, plopping down on the dining table chair with his breakfast of rice and leftover kimchi soup and farting while reading the newspapers.

There's a little bit of excitement when Donghae goes under the table after he has finished with the world news section – he's learned from experience that one should accomplish things with Hyukjae only after he has finished world news – and gives him a blow job that makes Hyukjae shudder and moan in no uncertain terms. But half an hour later, lying on the couch with his head on Hyukjae's lap and answering emails from the gang on his iPhone, he comes to an even more uncomfortable conclusion: he's actually okay with this, with Hyukjae waking up at nine a.m. and farting at the breakfast table and not showering until eleven, with his head in Hyukjae's lap, with this sort of – married-couple life.

"Hyukjae," he says, "did you sleep with anyone between…"

"Yes," says Hyukjae without missing a beat, his eyes glued to the TV.

"I mean, before you got shot and…"

"Yes."

"Asshole," says Donghae, a little angrily.

"I had needs and you weren't around," Hyukjae says defensively, but makes up for it later when he allows Donghae to fuck him so hard that the couch protests violently with a few broken springs.

Donghae buys him a new one off an online furniture store, but since the couch is already broken anyway and the new one is due to arrive a week later, there's no point in not making a bad job of it. They fall into a sort of routine; Hyukjae goes out to buy lunch, Donghae goes out to buy dinner, and the hours in between are filled with destroying the couch to the best of their abilities. He gets used to Hyukjae picking his nose in the toilet, learns to pick his hair out of the shower drain because Hyukjae has a horror of his shower being clogged up. He uses Hyukjae's shirts without asking for permission; digs into his underwear when it gets chilly walking around naked. He even learns how to operate the stove on the fourth day to cook breakfast as penance after Hyukjae's injured arm gave out during a particularly passionate night.

He isn't stupid. He knows, of course, that he's becoming too attached, learning too much about the way Hyukjae lives his life in this apartment. He also knows that when Hyukjae kicks him out after the five days are up, he'll miss this home that they've shared together, will probably revisit it frequently in his mind, might spend a few nights crying over it in fact, and he knows that the wise thing to do is to detach himself from it now and leave of his own accord, but his heart says otherwise and Donghae decides he should do some listening to his heart for once.

"Will you really quit my case?" he asks on the last evening when they're stuffed from dinner and lounging around the table like pigs.

"It's what you want, isn't it?" Hyukjae says, quirking an eyebrow, and Donghae nods. "Then I guess I shall."

"It doesn't mean that we don't have to see each other anymore," says Donghae. "I can still come here, or you can come to my place, or we can take holidays together, or…"

Hyukjae's looking at him with the side of his mouth arching. "Oh, Donghae," he says, "be real."

They don't make love that night, because Donghae says he's not in the mood and Hyukjae is good-humoured enough not to coerce anyone into having sex with him. He goes to sleep fairly quickly, and Donghae lies next to him and looks up at the ceiling and tries to think of ways in which to be real.

… …

He shows up at Hyukjae's doorstep two weeks later, carrying a suitcase, looking like there's someone after him. Hyukjae asks, with some inward quaking because hey, Donghae's in the mafia after all, if there are rival gang members out for Donghae's blood. Donghae says no, so Hyukjae lets him in.

"The thing is," says Donghae, sitting on the new couch with his hands tucked beneath his thighs, "the rival gang members aren't after me – won't be after me anymore."

"Um, why not?" Hyukjae asks. He tells himself that he's interested only in a professional sense, even though, strictly speaking, he'd gotten approval to be taken off the SM Family case one and a half weeks ago.

"My own gang members might be after me, though," Donghae says. "I've quit the gang."

"You've what?!" Hyukjae yells.

"I've quit the gang," Donghae repeats. "I thought – you said I had to be real, so that was the most real thing I could think of. To be clean, so that you and I…so that we can be together. For real. See, real?"

"You've what?!" Hyukjae yells again, and it takes him all his self-control not to toss Donghae out of his apartment right then, because he doesn't need this, he really, truly, from the bottom of his heart, doesn't need this. He doesn't need an ex-mafia member living with him, attracting all sorts of goons from the underworld who'll be putting bullets through his windows in hopes of killing the defector; doesn't need to protect himself when he goes out in case said goons might kidnap him and do terribly mean things to him in order to lure Donghae into their trap; doesn't need to share his toilet with someone who experiences so much hair loss, doesn't need another couch to break because they can't restrain themselves when they have sex, doesn't need to share his bed and closet and fucking underwear.

But then somehow he's kissing Donghae, and Donghae's kissing him back, and they're huddled in a corner of the gorgeous new couch that will see much darker days in future kissing, and kissing, as though they'll never stop. He kisses Donghae's eyes, nose, cheeks, lips, and says, "You idiot", and emphasises it with a few more kisses on his chin and neck. Donghae only laughs, and kisses him back, cupping his face with his hands, and Hyukjae thinks, shit now I've got to be monogamous, but even that doesn't seem so bad when Donghae's kissing him like this.

"How long do you think we can stay here before your gang finds us?" he asks.

"Six months, maybe," Donghae says. "I left on pretty good terms, you know, it's not like I ran away or anything. I told my boss that I wanted a new life with the person I loved, and he was very understanding – his underlings mayn't be as understanding, but I know how they work, and they won't find us for at least another six months."

"And you thought you could just show up here and inflict a six-month "move or get moved" warning in my happy, stable life?"

"I never said we had to move. I know we can rout them, if we do it together," says Donghae, "since you're pretty good with a gun, and I'm not too rusty either – and you cried when I said goodbye two weeks ago."

"I did not."

"You don't have to deny it or anything. You were crying, and you looked so miserable, I thought, goddamn I can't leave Hyukjae to fend for himself alone…"

"Yes, you can."

"You're so cute, darling – can I insist that you call me darling at least once a day now? I have a right to ask for that, don't I? I gave up everything for your boring stable life."

"I won't sleep with anyone else as long as you're with me," Hyukjae says, irrelevantly.

Donghae smiles and kisses him again. "Well," he says. "That's why I came back."

And adds mentally, I would catch bullets with my bare hands, as long as they were flying towards you.

end.

Comments

[luv-silverfish.livejournal.com]

Lol... One is supposed to be a gangster and the other, a detective but they r just so damn cute and adorable...
I was laughing at the part where hyuk seems so worried about hae soaking his armani shirt with tears and blowing his nose on that precious shirt of his...
And hae actually left his gang... I'm glad he was willing to give that all up for hyuk but i'm so gonna miss the police and thief game that they used to play...
And aww... I can't wait to read more of such sequels... Hopefully there'll be more...=D

[catskilt.livejournal.com]

Maybe, if inspiration for this verse hits me again :)

Thank you for reading!