Chapter Text
It starts the same way that it always does--he's looking at himself from behind, as though he is a different person, or perhaps a ghost. He watches himself look both ways before crossing the road in a neighborhood that looks achingly familiar, though he can't place where or why he knows it. There are crowds grouped along the edges of the bright yellow police tape encircling the entire front of a house, stretching out past the sidewalk and onto the ground directly next to it. Even as he watches himself approach, he realizes that he should be able to hear the low roar of chatter and the constant shuttering of camera lenses from both the media and the crime scene investigators, but there is none. There isn't even the rush of the wind in his ears, and the police tape snaps silently as he ducks under it. He feels it brush against his back even as he watches it happen. It, too, makes no sound: it feels distinctly like watching the television with the sound off.
The dream changes, as if on cue: he is no longer watching himself but is in his own body again. Even in this dream he feels himself trying to tamp down on the discomfort that the utter silence is pressing into him like two hands on his windpipe. He swallows, looking down at the blood splattered in massive, random arcs along the sidewalk leading up to the porch steps. The discomfort grows, his throat closing. It feels too real, too familiar, to be just a dream. He feels as though he's seen this place before in his waking world, been to this house--but that's impossible. It has to be, and he tries to reassure himself even as he begins to mount the steps. Cautiously he avoids the blood pooled in various places on the old, cracking wood. Suddenly, an image of the porch flashes across his mind--there's the small swing on the left, near the corner, potted plants lined up against the railing on the right. And sitting right by the door is the statue of a dog--small, black and white, like a border collie of some sort. He tells himself that this can't be right; he's never been to this place before. His eyes close as he reaches the porch, and when he opens them, his eyes fall immediately upon the dog statue sitting upright with its forepaws bent against its small, ceramic chest. Begging. The painted black eyes stare back at him. Cold horror drips its way down his back like sweat, and the longer he stares into the bottomless black eyes of the dog, the more terrified he becomes. They seem to be holding him there at the top of the stairs, his right hand on the railing and the other tucked into the pocket of his tweed suit pants. He feels as though the dog is trying to tell him something with its pure black eyes, something terrible, something that he needs to know, an unspoken evil--
He is torn from the hypnosis when an officer stumbles out of the house and past him, knocking into his shoulder as she passes. Her face is paper white, hand to her mouth to keep her from vomiting, or screaming, or both. It's not an unusual sight: he's seen plenty of rookie cops lose their lunch on their first crime scene. But the silence of her distress disturbs him, and he looks into a blackness exposed part way by the open door. The same kind of horrible dread curls around his insides as he stares into it; the same bottomless black as the dog statue's eyes. Almost of their own accord, his legs move him toward the open front door. As soon as he crosses the threshold and is enveloped in the near pitch-blackness, he realizes that there's finally sound: a low, constant static noise. It's faint, like listening to a television from another room, but the noise is finally there. It unsettles him in the same way that the darkness of the house and the eyes of the dog unsettled him: it feels...alive.
His footsteps make no sound as he wanders through the maze of hallways in the house, going deeper and deeper inside it until he realizes that this should be architecturally impossible: there's too many hallways, too many turns. He has lost himself deep in the heart of a place that does not really exist. The static in his ears grows louder with every turn, as though he's approaching some end, but the thought of it only sends the fear chasing distress down his back again. Cold sweat sticks his black shirt to his back underneath his jacket, and then, all at once, he finds himself at the beginning of a hallway that ends in a door.
Fear has him frozen in his tracks. Like the dog's eyes, it, too, feels alive. Sinister. The static noise in his ears is almost deafening. After a few moments of hesitation, he steps forward. Another. Another. Another, until he's halfway down the hallway and is close enough to make out the design of a brass human skull for the doorknob. He feels his mouth drop open in a terrified moan, but even if it makes a sound, it's drowned beneath the static. Another few steps closer to the door and suddenly a BANG cuts through the static and shatters against his ears like glass. It's painfully loud, and he claps his hands over his ears as it comes a second time. BANG. He steps closer to the door, teeth gritted against the agonizing loudness of the static and watches in horror as the door rattles in its frame with each bang on the other side of the dark wood. When he's within arms reach of it, suddenly the banging changes: it begins to quicken, coming quicker and quicker until it's the steady beat of someone's fist against the door. It sounds like drums, it sounds like chanting, it sounds like a thousand discordant voices all screaming directly into his brain. He feels dizzy with the intensity, and his eyes roll in his head until they come to rest on the doorknob. The skull seems to be grinning at him, the black sockets for eyes holding onto him. There's something like a horrible laugh underneath the noise in his head, and he watches in pure, unadulterated terror as blood begins to gush from the empty eyes of the skull. Despite its smallness, the blood pours out of it like two faucets on high blast, and the hallway underneath his feet begins to flood. The banging continues, rhythmic and horrible, and he drops to his knees. The blood gushing from the terrible laughing skull seeps into the legs of his pants, hot and slick like its fresh--
Jaebum rockets into a sitting position in bed, his heart hammering painfully fast in his chest. He can feel the sweat soaking the sheets underneath him even as he feels it drip down his neck and where it's plastered his hair to his temples. He drags a shaking hand across his forehead, coming away damp. The room is still dark, only a sliver of light from the street outside peeking in through the curtains. It takes him a moment to register the steady BANGBANGBANG of someone pounding on his front door, and for a terrified moment he thinks he's still dreaming, but underneath it he can hear a familiar voice calling for him.
Sighing, he throws the mostly damp blanket off of him and pulls on the pajama pants he'd discarded on the floor earlier that night. He doesn't bother with a shirt, but he snatches his robe off the back of his desk chair as he passes through the living room, pulling it on as he shouts, "alright! Alright!" and throws open the door.
On the other side, Choi Youngjae freezes with one hand halfway to the door and his mouth open on another shout. Sheepishly, he drops drops his hand, and then nervously lifts it back up to readjust the policeman's hat on his head. "Finally," he says, still looking mildly embarrassed. "We've been trying to reach you for two hours."
"Oh. Well," Jaebum looks down at the watch on his right wrist, sighing internally when the analog display reads 03:13 AM. "It's 3 AM, so I was sleeping."
"If by sleeping you mean running a marathon in a sauna, then sure."
Jaebum throws him a look, which Youngjae just ignores. "How's that?"
"You're sweating," Youngjae kindly points out, nodding at Jaebum's hair with his chin. "Profusely. Were you having that nightmare again?"
Dammit . "No."
"You know, you're a great detective because you're a terrible liar."
As much as he cares and respects Youngjae as a police officer (and, more recently, his unofficial partner), he's starting to lose his patience. He leans one shoulder against the door frame. "I don't follow your logic. I lie to criminals all the time."
"I think that's more acting than it is lying."
He rolls his eyes. Youngjae is young, much younger than himself--Jaebum's been on the police force for ten years already, and a detective for the last 6. At 24, he was the youngest detective their precinct had ever seen. Now, at nearly 30, he thinks that Youngjae might beat that record. "Cut to the chase, Choi. Why are you banging on my apartment door this late?"
Any joking demeanor suddenly vanishes from Youngjae's posture, and he clears his throat before straightening up. "They...they found a body."
Jaebum has heard this statement so many times as head homicide detective that, at this point, he is relatively immune to it. "This couldn't have waited until the morning?"
He feels bad for being so abrasive when Youngjae turns a little green. It's hard for him to remember that Youngjae is still, by his standards, a rookie: he's only been on the force for two years, and the (sometimes disturbingly brutal) murders that they've investigated thus far still affect him in a way that they don't really affect himself anymore. Softening, he tries again. "I'm sorry. But have they even officially ruled it a murder yet?"
Youngjae, still a little green around the edges, shifts nervously. "Yeah. Stabbing in the park about 4 or 5 miles from here. Looks like a pretty cut and dry mugging, but..." he trails off, looking anxious.
Jaebum prompts him with a rolling motion of his hand. "But...?"
"But he still had everything on him. The only thing missing was any sort of identification."
"He still had his credit cards? Money? Cell phone?"
Nodding, Youngjae reaches up and removes his policeman's cap, nervously flattening down his dark hair. "Yeah. If he had a backpack or anything, that's gone, but we're pretty sure that he didn't. His credit cards are still there, and there's over 600,000 won in his wallet, the crazy thing. But it's still there. Nothing was taken except any hint of his identity. It's a little bizarre."
"Not the most bizarre thing I've ever seen," Jaebum mumbles, and he notices Youngjae's eyes widen but declines to elaborate. "But definitely strange." He opens the door a little more to invite his partner inside. "C'mon. Wait out here while I get dressed."
He leaves Youngjae to have a staring contest with his cat while he pulls on some real clothes. When he pulls out a black button-up shirt from his closet, it hits him how tired he is. This isn't the first time he's been woken up at some ungodly hour of the morning--being in law enforcement for the last ten years, he could probably count on his fingers the amount of times he's gotten real, uninterrupted sleep. Jaebum has been tired for so long that he's surprised he can even recognize the feeling of it. With a sigh, he finishes buttoning the shirt all the way up to the neck before tugging on a nicer pair of dark jeans.
When he emerges ten minutes later, he's surprised to see the cat curled up and sleeping on Youngjae's feet, who is still standing by the door. With a look of panic, Youngjae stage whispers, "Please help me."
It startles a small laugh out of him. Jaebum walks over and leans down to gently pluck Nora from the tops of Youngjae's boots. She meows pitifully, and he hugs her to him for a moment before setting her down on the middle tier of her cat tree. He's had her for years now, and she's really the only thing that keeps him grounded: all the relationships he's tried to have over the years have withered and died after a while, but Nora has always been consistent. In a line of work as dangerous and unpredictable as his, every day is a gamble. He appreciates the consistency of Nora's behavior.
After depositing Nora on her cat tree, he leaves the apartment with Youngjae in tow. He watches as Youngjae tries to take in the lavishness of the hallways at once: the lush carpet, almost silent beneath their feet; the beautiful glass candelabras lighting their way with a soft glow; the almost royal looking wallpaper decorating the lower half of the walls. It's a little "old money" looking, and Jaebum made sure to make the inside of his apartment the complete opposite. On the few occasions he lets someone in, they've joked that it looks like it's straight out of an interior design magazine from 2030: extremely streamlined and modern; a little sparse, but organized and impeccably clean.
Youngjae's low whistle when they get in the elevator surprises him. "I'm always surprised when I remember you live here."
"Why? Don't think I can afford it?"
He laughs, pushing the button for the lobby. "No, not that. It's just so...fancy. You're a man of simple pleasures. It seems, I dunno, opulent. Too much so, for you."
Jaebum pretends to be offended but Youngjae is actually correct: he didn't choose to live in the tallest and most influential apartment complex in the city because it's the biggest and most influential, but just because he can, and it's clean, and best of all, it's quiet. That's what really got him about the place when he was looking at it—the silence. It's far up enough that the noise of the city below is barely a whisper, and the apartments on his floor are so spaced out that he can't even hear his neighbors when they're in the hallways. It's wonderfully isolated, a little distant. It's perfect.
By the time they make it down to the lobby, Jaebum knows something is up. Youngjae fidgets the entire elevator ride, looking at his own reflection in the steel of the door in front of him and not at Jaebum. When they pass by the doorman's desk, normally polite and kind Youngjae hurries right by him without a word. He hovers by the glass front doors while Jaebum talks to the doorman for a moment, nervously taking his policeman's cap off only to put it back on a few seconds later, repeating this a few times before realizing that it looks suspicious. After Jaebum leaves the doorman and ushers Youngjae outside, the younger's nervous chatter fills up the air between them as they head down the steps to the cruiser. Jaebum doesn't ask him what's wrong—he knows that any answer he gets won't be a straight one, and if he doesn't get a straight answer, he knows what'll happen. As easy as it would be, he would never interrogate Youngjae like he would a suspect. Youngjae will either tell him what's going on, or he'll figure it out himself.
They set out in Youngjae's cruiser, and it's only after Jaebum's been staring out the window for twenty minutes that he registers the familiar scenery and where they're headed.
"Oh, come on."
From the corner of his eye he notices Youngjae wince like he'd been found out.
"We're not seriously going to the station, are we?"
Youngjae just sighs, his fingers tightening on the wheel. He doesn't say anything for a moment, studiously avoiding looking over at him. The silence stretches on, and it's a tactic that Jaebum employs on a daily basis: wait 'em out. He just sits quietly in the passenger seat watching the side of the younger's face until finally the silence is too much for Youngjae, and he sighs again. "Sorry. Commissioner's orders."
Jaebum rolls his eyes. "Take me to the scene."
"Jaebum, I really can't. Commissioner Tuan really wants you down at the station first."
He scoffs and crosses his arms. It looks like he's pouting, and he is. As an almost thirty year old man he thinks he maybe should try and break that habit, but some things just won't die.
Including his constant butting of heads with their police commissioner.
"I know that he wants me to, but whether or not I actually show up is a different story."
"Why can't you just do what he says? Just this once." Youngjae's voice is strained like he's trying not to raise it. It sort of sounds like he's a kid stuck in between two divorced parents, and the thought makes him snort derivatively.
"If I always did what Mark wants me to, we'd never solve any murders."
"That's not true, and you shouldn't say things like that." Youngjae, his junior by a chunk of years, griping on him like the kid's his mother. Jaebum mumbles under his breath but doesn't answer, turning away to look out the window while Youngjae pulls into the station's parking lot. He stays buckled in the passenger seat even as his partner parks and gets out of the car. In the side mirror Jaebum watches Youngjae hesitate by the back of the cruiser, waiting for him to get out, and rolling his eyes dramatically when he realizes Jaebum hasn't even unbuckled his seatbelt yet.
Youngjae leans against the closed window. "Get out."
His voice is muffled by the glass, but the parking lot is quiet and he says it loudly enough to be understood. Jaebum just looks at him wiltingly before sighing heavily and unbuckling. He'd rather do anything than be at the station right now, especially when there's still a fresh scene he should be at. With a murder starting off as strange as this one, being at the station to listen Commissioner Mark Tuan talk his ear off about what he shouldn't be doing is the last thing he should be doing.
"I don't like this," he says to Youngjae as they step through the glass doors of the precinct.
One hand reaching up to remove his uniform cap as they make their way down the hallway, Youngjae sighs. "I know."
The carpeted hallway opens up into a large space crowded with desks spaced evenly from each other. At the very back of the room is the Commissioner's office and, like always, the door is wide open. Next to that is his own office, much smaller and more private with the door closed and the shades drawn. From where they're standing, Jaebum can clearly see Commissioner Tuan hunched over his desk with the phone to his ear.
From somewhere in the room, Jaebum hears his name being called. He looks out into the mass of desks, most of them littered with stacks of paper and empty coffee cups. The person calling to him is standing up, uniform slightly disheveled like he's been here for a long time. Glancing around at the other employees, he thinks they have been, too: there's a sluggish quality to the way everyone's speaking on the phones or to each other; a sort of exhausted delirium making the smiles too wide and the laughs too loud. He wonders, then, a little guiltily, how long everyone has been here.
He departs toward the officer calling to him with an elbow in Youngjae's ribs. The blonde patrolman has sat back down, pulling anxiously at the collar of his uniform and barely waiting until Jaebum is within earshot to start talking. "Detective, have they told you anything yet?"
Jaebum looks at his watch, trying to hold back a sigh. Almost 5am now. "No, Officer Choi only came to get me about an hour and a half ago. Brought me straight here."
He waits for a moment, like he's waiting for Jaebum to say something else. When he doesn't, the officer clears his throat and continues. "It's a weird one."
"How so?"
The officer, who Jaebum recognizes as being named Jackson, shuffles through some papers before finding what he's looking for. It's just a notepad with frantically scribbled words on it, and it's crumpled like it had been in someone's pocket for a while.
"First, it wasn't reported until an hour or so later, when an anonymous tip came in over one of the phone booths two blocks from the park. Which is weird enough. But when they went to check, the phone booth was completely wiped down. No fingerprints on it anywhere, inside or out."
"None? How is that possible?"
Jackson leans back in his chair. "Realistically, it shouldn't be. But if the perp wiped it down right before we showed up, it's more possible. But, yeah, no prints anywhere on it. When we got to the scene, it was a nightmare: blood still mostly wet on the grass. Horrible." Jackson shudders, and his eyes flick up to Jaebum's anxiously like he's waiting for something. The staff has been increasingly weird today, and it's starting to grind on his nerves. Jackson says this next part slowly; almost like he's tip toeing around it."Sorry. But, there were stab wounds. Multiple. The Commissioner wants to say it's just a random mugging but...the rest of us aren't so sure."
Jaebum looks around for a chair and pulls up the closet empty one. He doesn't understand what everyone's deal is, or why they're acting more nervous than usual around him, but it's not nearly as important as getting some more information. "How's that?"
"Well, for one, the stab wounds didn't seem that random. Maybe we're just projecting or looking for a pattern where there isn't one, but they seem placed. Deliberate. Second, he still had everything on him. We can't rule out the possibility of a backpack that's been stolen but no one thinks he had one. All of his personal stuff was still with him: wallet, keys, cell phone. Almost 600,000 won in his wallet. The only thing missing was any form of identification."
It's weird, but it's not the weirdest thing he's ever come across. He decides to spare Jackson the emotional scarring and asks, "has he been identified yet?"
Jackson shakes his head, blonde hair flopping back and forth, not meeting Jaebum's eyes. "Ummm..." He hesitates, and Jaebum notices the officer look at something over his shoulder. Suspicious, Jaebum narrows his eyes at him. "Not yet, but I think they're still working on it."
"Hmm." He's about to say something else when he hears the Commissioner's voice come from behind him.
"Detective! Nice of you to join us. Come on in here."
Jaebum thanks Jackson with a short nod and makes his way into the Commissioner's office, sitting down in one of the plush armchairs across from the fancy, oversized desk. He wonders if Commissioner Tuan realizes how much of a waste of time this is but doesn't vocalize it. When the older man sits down across from him, Jaebum just studies his face while he tidies his desk nervously before looking up.
"Glad you followed directions this time, Jaebum."
"Not that I had a choice. Choi brought me here in his cruiser and didn't tell me where we were going."
The Commissioner smiles at him, which he doesn't return. "But I'm sure you did realize where you were going before you got here."
"Of course I did." He says this with enough attitude that he sees the first flicker of annoyance cross the Commissioner's face. Jaebum realizes he should really tone it down a little, but there's something so inherently frustrating about Police Commissioner Mark Tuan that makes him want to scream. They don't even hate each other; in fact, Jaebum likes and respects Mark more than any other person he knows, professionally and personally (with the exception of Youngjae). It's just that they disagree on their methods.
"I know you're frustrated. But there's a lot to catch you up on."
"They could have done that at the scene."
"You were sleeping. The squad who got called down to investigate it didn't want to wake you."
This sounds like bullshit, which it is. He rolls his eyes. "Like that's ever stopped anyone. They all look like they've been awake for days. They could have called me."
Mark just smiles at him, but it looks...forced. Like he's trying to keep up a good show and keep Jaebum from asking more questions directly about the case. "It wasn't even ruled a homicide at that point. They didn't need to call you yet."
"Oh, give me a break."
"Well? You are a homicide detective."
Jaebum clicks his tongue in dismissal. "It was a stabbing ten feet away from a playground in a public park, Tuan. It was a murder."
Mark shrugs. "You know the rules. Not a murder until coroner says it's a murder."
He narrows his eyes. He's caught the Commissioner in the middle of a lie, or a least just a really bad mixup of a timeline. "Choi told me when he came to get me that it was ruled a murder."
"It was," Mark says, leaning back in his chair and playing absentmindedly with a pen. "After the scene had been searched, and after we brought the body here. That's why he came to get you, because the coroner ruled it a homicide."
Jaebum immediately notices the inconsistency in their timeline and latches onto it. "That was fast. How long did the autopsy take? Plus, when Choi came to get me he said you've been trying to get a hold of me for two hours at that point."
Mark rolls his eyes. "Don't be like this."
"Be like what?" Jaebum asks hotly, getting angrier now. "I know for a fact that autopsy was short because it was clearly a murder. Waiting for the coroner to officially declare it is just an excuse. You all knew it was a murder as soon as it was called in, but I didn't get called. Why?"
It goes quiet for a minute, Mark just watching him, and that's when Jaebum picks up on it: Mark is nervous about something. The pen between his fingers is deliberately keeping his hands busy, and Mark has been trying to stall him. There's something huge at play, something that everyone has been increasingly reluctant to tell him.
"Jaebum..."
Now he's angry. At first he was just irritated, but being their best and only homicide detective, there's no way they're going to keep vital information from him, and especially not when the first few hours are crucial to finding something to go on. "Just tell me, Commissioner. I still have to do my job."
Jaebum watches as Mark glances over his shoulder into the bullpen and looks almost afraid. When Mark looks back at him, Jaebum is a little surprised to see that he suddenly, somehow, seems ten years older. With a sigh, the commissioner puts the pen down on his desk and folds his hands, looking at Jaebum with a seriousness that actually makes him a little worried. "Jaebum, the victim is your ex-partner."
He's so caught off guard that the words don't make any sense to him. "What?"
Mark sighs again, and his face falls into worry. "Jaebum. The victim..." he swallows and starts over, clearing his throat quietly to rid it of the tremor. "The victim is Yoojin."
His whole body feels cold, too hot, then cold again, like someone is switching him maniacally between ice water and a hot spring. Mark's face is ashy, stricken; he looks the way everyone else in the station probably feels. There's a numbness spreading through him from the center of his chest as he slowly absorbs the news.
Yoojin...
He hasn't really thought about Yoojin in years. Not in a positive way, anyway: Kim Yoojin was his partner on the beat when they were both still rookies: freshly 20, the two of them, and not really any good at being cops yet. But they had each other, and for a while Jaebum was convinced that the two of them would be the type of officers who would stay partners until one or both of them died. They had been friends since they were ten years old: Jaebum and Yoojin had been inseparable since the day they had met. They'd gone through everything together: school, first girlfriends, Jaebum's first boyfriend, the accident, the police academy. There seemed to be no travesty or change that would be able to pull them apart. It'd only been about a year after their official first patrol together that Yoojin had...left them.
He remembers the way he had walked up behind Yoojin where the taller of the two had his back turned to the rest of the bullpen. It was surprising, how early he was there: their 5am patrols always started at 5:30 when Yoojin was inevitably late with one excuse or another. Jaebum had come in almost 2 hours early for some reason that he can no longer recall, but Yoojin had already been there. The Commissioner, the older man before Mark came and replaced him, wasn't even there yet, so Jaebum had felt a little suspicious.
"Yoojin-ah," he had called, a smile already on his face when he pushed his police man's hat back on his head. "Early day or late night?"
Yoojin didn't answer him. His back had still been turned, and the smile had slipped from Jaebum's young face when he noticed the tightness in his partner's shoulders. They were attuned to each other to the point that Jaebum knew the strain in his partner's back was from fear, and not from stress or anxiety about the job. When Jaebum got closer he could see that there was a folder in Yoojin's hands, a picture on top of rumpled paper. The photo was grainy, dark, but it looked like a crime scene photo. Jaebum could make out the shape of a body, and an anxiety immediately started to rush it's way through him at the thought that Yoojin might be in some kind of trouble.
He had put his hand on Yoojin's arm then. "Yoojin—"
Yoojin's response was fast and violent. He turned immediately, his usually handsome face drained of color and contorted into a look of barely controlled anger mixed with some sort of unbridled horror. Jaebum saw Yoojin's hand at the same time he felt it hit his chest and shove him backward violently. The force of it had sent Jaebum sprawling into a desk, one hand desperately scrabbling for purchase but only swiping papers onto the floor. The few other officers in the building had pushed out of their chairs immediately, shouts of confusion and protest raising up and drowning out the noise of pain Jaebum made when his head slammed into the carpeted floor. Before he knew it, Yoojin was on top of him, one hand fisted in the shirt of his uniform and the other coming down repeatedly into his face. The beating felt senseless, violent; spurred by some other terror in Yoojin that blinded him to the one person who might have understood whatever was in that folder. The rest is hazy—Jaebum remembers barely being able to see out of either of his eyes, his head swimming as the world narrowed down to a scarlet-tinged tunnel as he could only stare up at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling while both his eyes slowly swelled shut. There were shouts as the officers tried to grab Yoojin as he threw himself off Jaebum and bolted, grabbing the folder from the desk as he fled. Commissioner Park had appeared then, seeming to materialize before his eyes.
The rest is a blurry mess that's hard to sort through: the way they found Yoojin in the street, desperately trying to get himself hit by a moving vehicle. Whatever he had seen in that file had been destroyed: luck had been on his side and the city's well-known homeless already had a fire going a few blocks down from the station, which is as far as he made it before he was tackled in the street. Then there was the hospital, the trial, the therapy. After he was fired from the force and sentenced to a couple years in prison, none of them had ever heard from Yoojin again. Jaebum only thought of him sparingly, and when he did, it only brought him pain, so he tried not to think of Kim Yoojin at all.
Jaebum blinks a few times, pulling himself away from the memory when he realizes that Commissioner Tuan had been speaking to him. The blood still roars in his ears, his heart drumming. "I'm sorry, what were you saying?"
He registers the look of total horror on Mark's face and feels a little guilty. "I asked if you were alright. You went completely white, and had a look in your eyes like you were a thousand miles away. I've been calling your name for five minutes. Aish, Jaebum, you were practically comatose . Are you alright?"
Shaking his head as if to clear it, he nods. There's still a tightening in his chest, and the feeling confuses him. He can't decide how he feels; part of him feels like it's going to collapse on itself: Yoojin was his partner, after all, and after their time together as children, then teenagers, then adults, and then their first year as partners, a bond between them was created that Jaebum had never expected to break so suddenly. The other half, though, is angry. Why should he be upset? He hasn't spoken to Yoojin or even really thought of him in 8 years. It was Yoojin who turned his back on everyone.
"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"
Mark just stares at him for a moment. "Besides the fact that you just looked like you'd fallen into a coma? Because he was your partner, Jaebum, and your best friend. I understand if you're upset—"
Anger flashes through him, hot and quick, and it makes the blood pound louder in his ears. "I'm not upset that he's dead. I'm upset that I was prevented from doing my job." The unsteady beat of his heart makes him wonder if that's true or not.
Across from him, Mark just pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment. Without looking up, he says, "Jaebum, it's alright to be upset that he's dead, he was your partner— "
It's enough. "He's been dead to me for eight years, Mark. Let it go. I have. Let me do my job."
There's a heavy silence that follows, the sharpness of Jaebum's words hanging between them. He meant it, but at the same time it still feels like a lie. Before Mark can say anything else, there's a shout from the bullpen behind them and then a sudden rising clamor as multiple officers start to talk over each other. Turning in surprise, Jaebum looks out the open door of Mark's office to see multiple reporters tangled in the hallway, held back by Jackson at the forefront. They're all talking over each other, mics out with cameras at shoulder level or phones held up to record everything. Jackson turns his head, looking panicked. Jaebum sighs.
"What the hell is this? It's barely been 4 hours."
Mark scoffs from behind him, and Jaebum shoots him a scalding look. "What did you expect? Yoojin's case was no small ordeal. You remember. It was plastered all over the papers, Jaebum. You didn't think this was going to happen quietly, did you?"
It's true, and this combined with the Commissioner's flippancy irritates him. "Are they even supposed to know about this yet? There hasn't even been a statement released, or a press conference."
"No," Mark says, and he sighs again. "Not technically. But some homeless guy came up and discovered him probably right after the person who did it called the cops from the phone booth, and you know how that goes. Homeless people talk and reporters pay for that kinda talk. They'll say anything for the money."
Jaebum huffs under his breath. "Great."
They share a look for a moment, the silence between them offering them a small listen to the clamor still happening inside the station. Then, after seeming to decide something, Mark nods at him. He stands, grabbing his jacket and sliding it on, fixing the collar before looking at Jaebum still seated apprehensively in his chair. "Well. Time to feed the dogs."
The clamor only rises to near incoherence as Jaebum approaches the throng, Mark a few steps behind him. There's a solid 15 to 20 people shoved in the hallway directly outside the bullpen, and Jaebum squints at how many camera lights are being shined in their direction. They're all shouting over each other, microphones and cellphones stuck straight out like weapons. The officers are nervous, confused; Jaebum hears a few of them whispering to each other hurriedly about what they're supposed to be doing. Rolling his eyes, Jaebum pushes through the middle of the gathered officers to the front of small crowd, his eyes locking with the first reporter he sees. He looks like a kid barely old enough to be out of school, much less a salaried reporter.
"First of all," Jaebum shouts, the loudness of his voice cutting through the noise like an axe. The voices around him all go quiet, with only low uttering here and there. He waits a moment, willing someone to interrupt him, and continues when no one does. "First of all," he says again, addressing the sandy-haired reporter in front of him. "How did you even get all the way back here with this many people?"
Someone in the back of the tangle of reporters says, "is that really what's important—"
"Shut up," Jaebum barks, and the chatter stops completely. There's an almost unsettling silence, then: he can hear Mark yelling at their receptionist. Now that he knows that Mark had slipped up front and wasn't in the room with them, he turns on the reporter in front again. "What's important is that you don't share any information, because all the information you have is likely false."
The sandy-haired reporter in front of him just cracks a smile, his round cheeks making him look young. Jaebum wants to slap the smile off his face. The reporter holds his microphone up a few inches away from Jaebum's chest, and it feels like a challenge when he says, "so why don't you give us the real facts?"
He's been doing this for too many years and dealt with too many punk ass young reporters who think they know everything to really feel affected by this. But there's still a lingering sense of imbalance inside of him, two sides yanking him back and forth in two directions, grief or anger? The anxiety of indecision snaps at him like teeth at his heels. Without really thinking, he angrily slaps the microphone away from his chest and feels a brief flash of satisfaction when the reporter loses his grip and it goes rolling across the floor. Shouts of protest and defense rise up, the other journalists gathered barraging him with empty threats. The sandy haired reported straightens up, face red with anger. "I could take you to court for that, you asshole."
Jaebum's gaze flickers through the crowd, and he's about to open his mouth to reply when a reporter standing at the side has him doing a double take. He's just watching the two of them with a small smile on his face, like he's amused at watching two children squabble. The dark eyes behind the thick, black frames on his face are sharp, intelligent; they're already on him when he looks over and the intensity of the gaze makes him feel suddenly nervous. Jaebum feels a tickle in his mind, the curve of the man's mouth and the lines that radiate from his eyes as he smiles registers as vaguely familiar, but Jaebum can't place where or why. The reporter just smiles at him a little wider, cheek dimpling, and Jaebum has to swallow hard and look away before he gets lost in the swaths of dark peacoat tucked under the man's chin.
Back to himself, Jaebum just sneers at the snotty reporter in front of him. "I'd like to see you try. Get out of my police station."
The blond reporter looks like he's going to say something else, but then the man with the glasses steps forward and lays a hand on his arm. "Yugyeom-ssi," he murmurs quietly, and Jaebum is surprised to hear the deepness of the man's voice when he looks so delicate. "It's not worth it. Let it go."
The reporter, Yugyeom, turns to look at his colleague. "He hit the mic out of my hand and is refusing to answer questions. I'm not going to let him get away with that."
The man with the glasses glances at him, and yet again the look makes his insides churn. It's not like he's never seen anyone attractive before—hell, his past relationships were with some of the hottest men and women he'd ever seen, but there's something about the reporter in the glasses that makes him feel...uneasy. He's almost too handsome, and he's watching Jaebum with an intelligence in his dark eyes that makes Jaebum feel like he's missed something vital. Suddenly, a small smile pulls up the corner of his mouth again and he raises his eyebrows like he's waiting for something. "Well?"
Jaebum blinks rapidly, realizing that he'd been focusing so hard on looking at the man in front of him that he hasn't heard anyone say anything. He looks around sternly, hoping that the practiced scowl masks the embarrassment he feels even as his face gets warm. Gruffly, he asks,"well, what?"
The man's small smirk grows into a full blown smile. "Are you sorry?"
Ah, so that's what he missed. All the reporters and the rest of the officers standing behind him are quiet, waiting for Detective Im Jaebum to lose it. Mark still hasn't come back yet, and Jaebum feels the discomfort tugging at his chest, but he only rolls his eyes. There's no use in getting angry at them now, especially when it's still so early in the case and it's going to get messier from here. Better to let it get messy on its own than to make it that way.
He sighs.
"Yes, I'm sorry." The shutter of cameras and clicking buttons fills his ears. "If your microphone is damaged I'll pay for it. Now, can you get out of my police station? We'll have a press conference when we have more information, and you can wave as many microphones in my face as you want."
The young reporter, Yugyeom, looks at his companion for a moment before nodding quickly. With just barely a glance in his direction, the reporters all head off back down the hallway chattering loudly amongst themselves. The handsome reporter that had spoken to him turns back, throwing him another unsettlingly charming smile before disappearing around the corner.
Mark comes back down the hallway, turning his head to look at them before stepping back out in front of all the gathered officers behind Jaebum. "What's this I hear about you assaulting one of those journalists?"
A groan escapes Jaebum. "I didn't assault him. I knocked his mic out of his hand on accident."
A few officers titter when Mark just makes a yeah, alright, face at him. Jaebum continues with, "I'm serious! I apologized anyway. Kid got what he wanted."
One of the officers says, "You were too busy staring at that reporter who stood up for him to hear what he actually said."
Jaebum whips around, anger already rising and turning his face a familiar shade of red. He likes their officers, he really does: he's not exactly the friendliest guy on the earth, but all of their officers are nice enough people and Jaebum genuinely enjoys being around them. They're the type of group that is constantly throwing out harmless jab or cracking jokes, and Jaebum has been in this business for so long that his skin is incredibly thick. So while usually a joke like this would just skate off his back, today it makes him angry. Even as he turns he knows that whatever is making him feel this way is irrational but he can't stop it. Ever since Mark said the words it's been pounding through his head like a headache he can't shake. Yoojin is dead. Yoojin is dead. Yoojin is dead. Whose fault is it? Yoojin is dead.
The wake up call, the news, the familiar handsome reporter with the knowing eyes. It's all so much, too much, and for the first time in nearly 8 years he feels his nerves really unraveling. "Bullshit. Shut your goddamn mouth." He doesn't even realize he has his first already pulled back until Mark is getting a long arm around his waist and forcefully turning him away, dragging him back into his office. The officer watches him, looking pale with shock and tinged with what seems like a little bit of worry.
His eyes close when he hears Mark shut his office door a little harder than necessary. That terrible sense of imbalance still lingers in him, and he takes a deep breath.
"What's wrong with you?"
The anger in Mark's voice shocks his eyes open. Jaebum blinks a few times, looking at the way Mark is standing behind his desk and leaning on it with both hands like he's about to launch himself across the top of it. He and Mark have never had any real issues—Jaebum has broken protocol God only knows how many times, and while he complains and gripes at him the entire time, Mark always picks up the pieces. Being so close in age, they understand each other a little better than they do the younger officers, which is both good and bad. But they've never really been angry with each other. Annoyed? Sure. But angry? Jaebum is confused and a little hurt by Mark's sudden animosity.
"What do you mean?" Jaebum tries to keep his voice level. It wavers a little at the end, and he hopes Mark doesn't notice.
If he does, he doesn't say anything. "I mean what's wrong with you, Jaebum? First I tell you your ex-partner, the only one you've ever had as a police officer, is dead, your best friend, and you tell me 'he's been dead to me for years'. But then you assault a reporter and almost assault one of our own officers for making a stupid comment."
"I didn't assault that reporter. Kid was being an asshole."
Mark continues like Jaebum hadn't even spoken. "I'm worried about you. I mean it, Jaebum. You've broken more rules than someone in your position should break in 10 lifetimes but I've never flinched because you have always been rock-solid and accountable. But you can't even be honest with me about how it makes you feel that Yoojin is dead, and take it out on reporters and our officers? Who were defending you?" Mark's chest is rising up and down quickly, his breath coming short. Jaebum feels stunned: Mark never says this many words to him in a week, so hearing an entire tirade from him makes Jaebum feel that much more thrown off. "If you can't be honest with me, Jaebum, I'll bring someone in. You won't work the Yoojin case."
His hands tighten to fists in his lap. "I have to work Yoojin's case."
You can't even be honest with me about how it makes you feel that Yoojin is dead?
It plays over and over in his head like a loop. Beats against his ears like ocean waves and threatens to drag him under. Panic washes up to join the uncertainty of anger or guilt or misery.
"Technically, you don't. I'm well within my rights to keep you off this case and place you on leave for the duration because of your proximity to and history with the victim. Just be honest with me," Mark says, and there must be something in his look because Mark softens a little. He sits down in his chair, folding his hands on the table. "Just be honest."
Jaebum takes a deep breath. "I don't know."
Mark sighs, clearly dissatisfied. "Jaebum-ah—"
"No," Jaebum interrupts, looking at a spot over Mark's head on the wall instead of directly at him. "I don't know . I want to be angry. He beat the shit out of me and then left me. Tried to get himself killed so he wouldn't have to face me or whatever was in that folder. I want to feel grief, because I loved him like my own brother. My first and last partner. Responsible for my life as much as I was his. And then he left. Hurt me as much as he could and then left me to do this on my own." His chest hurts. It hurts. It hurts. "But mostly I'm confused, Mark. Yoojin was someone I trusted with my life but he kept this whole side of himself secret from me when I told him everything. I feel like..." he swallows, feeling unsteady. "I feel like I don't know him at all."
Even as he says the words, he realizes that they're exactly what he's been tearing himself in half over: the uncertainty of feeling anger or grief, because which one are you supposed to feel for someone that you don't know? The revelation that maybe he never knew Kim Yoojin as well as he thought he did hits him like a ton of bricks. Over 10 years of friendship that Yoojin threw away in the span of a few minutes because of something he got in the mail, something he couldn't tell his best friend about. He watches Mark's face as he grits his teeth, wondering how hard he has to do it before they'll shatter in his mouth.
"Alright," Mark finally says, and Jaebum feels relieved. "You can work Yoojin's case. But the moment it becomes like it was just a few minutes ago, you're gone."
Jaebum nods. It's not comfort, and it's not an answer, but it's a start.
After all the dust settles, Mark sends Jaebum home. Jaebum complains loudly, naturally, but Mark insisted.
"There's nothing else you can do today," he had said, giving Jaebum a firm look from behind his desk. "Go home, get some rest, and be back early tomorrow. Tomorrow is when the hard stuff really begins."
Jaebum had sighed and leaned against the doorframe. "Is it really appropriate for a homicide detective to leave when there's a fresh case to go over?"
Mark just rolled his eyes. "With how close you are to this case? Yes. I need you to collect yourself before we start digging into the evidence. This isn't going to be easy on you."
"Do you know that I'm also your lead homicide detective?"
"Yes, but you're not the only lead homicide detective. I could have someone here from Busan or Daegu by tomorrow and you know that." It was a dismissal if he had ever heard one, and he had turned away from Mark's office without giving the older man the chance to finish his sentence.
Uncertainty still warred with itself in his gut as he returned to his own office and grabbed some files from his desk that he wants to look at. Mark might be sending him home, but that doesn't mean he's not going to work. Rummaging through the chaos of the top drawer of his filing cabinet, he's about to give up when his fingers brush the thick envelope he'd been looking for. With a quiet noise of relief, he yanks it out from under a few more heavy envelopes and looks at it. He runs a thumb over the sloppy letters indenting the paper of the envelope in faded blue ink:
Kim Yoojin vs. Im Jaebum and the Seoul District Police Department (2008)
And underneath that, stamped in red:
CASE CLOSED, DEC. 2008
Jaebum closes his eyes for a moment. He remembers the day that the jury came back and convicted Yoojin. They had deliberated for less than 5 hours on the case, and they completely turned down his insanity plea. But they still gave him a chance by only giving him 4 years and removing him from Seoul entirely when his time was served. Jaebum remembers sitting stone faced on the defendant's side of the room when they read out the guilty verdict, and the way Yoojin screamed in agony. JAEBUM! he had screamed frantically, trying to kick away from the officers grabbing onto both his arms. JAEBUM-AH, Jaebum! I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I'm sorry I didn't tell you! And then before he could say anything else he was dragged away, eyes locked on Jaebum's. That's the last time Jaebum had seen Kim Yoojin.
"What were you going to tell me?" he whispers, running his fingers over the letters again. His heart thumps painfully in his chest and he turns, looking for his briefcase before remembering he didn't grab it when Youngjae picked him up earlier. Jaebum doesn't think anyone will say anything to him about it when he leaves, mostly because they know it's a sore subject and so the other officers generally leave it alone. But he's not going to take his chances today, so he tucks it into his jacket with the writing against his shirt.
The sun has been up for hours now, and 11am has the sun streaming in through the massive glass windows and striping the station in bars of light. Jaebum nods to the few officers who get distracted enough to look up as he passes by before they look back down at whatever is on their desk. If their timeline is correct, Yoojin's been dead for about a full 12 hours now. The thought feels alien to him, like it's happening to someone else. And in a way it feels like it is, because what he had said to Mark earlier was true: did he even know Kim Yoojin at all? There seems to be so much that he doesn't know about the man he considered his brother. That feels like a betrayal in of itself, and he can feel his teeth grind together in anger or anxiety, or both. He's so lost in his thoughts that he doesn't see the person standing at the top of the stairs outside the station, and he slams right into them.
"Yah," the man says, slightly irritated but not overtly angry, when Jaebum bumps into his back. The notebook he'd been holding and Jaebum's folder both hit the sidewalk at the same time, the two of them abandoning their grip on their items to keep each other from falling. Jaebum grips both of the man's biceps with his hands, and the man reaches back to hang on to Jaebum's forearm. When they've steadied a little, the man huffs out an apologetic laugh.
"I'm sorry," Jaebum says, embarrassed. "I was daydreaming and wasn't paying attention."
The man turns, and Jaebum feels his heart take a dive when he recognizes the handsome reporter from earlier. His hair is a little more disheveled, and the dark circles under his eyes make Jaebum think he's been awake longer even than some of the officers. But when he looks into Jaebum's face and recognizes it, he breaks out in a soft smile that crinkles up the corners of his eyes. Jaebum pretends not to notice.
"Ah, Detective Im. Do you remember me?"
That deep voice surprises him again. Wrapped in a black peacoat that's cinched at the waist, the man looks smaller and more delicate than Jaebum would imagine he really is. Not that he's imagining how small or delicate the reporter from earlier might be, obviously.
He nods quickly. "Yes, I do."
The man's smile seems to widen, and Jaebum feels his heart do something weird at the lines radiating from the corners of his dark eyes. He notices the dimple again and tries to act like he doesn't. The man nods a little, still smiling. "That's good. You were very focused on not trying to kill Yugyeom, I think, so I thought you may have forgotten me."
He laughs quietly, making it obvious that he's just kidding. Jaebum smiles tentatively at him. "Ah, yes. I'm sorry about that." He sighs. "It's been a long morning. I lost my temper."
"I hear you lose your temper quite easily."
Jaebum snorts. He doesn't answer right away, instead bending down to retrieve the folders they both had dropped when they bumped into each other. Jaebum reads the front of the folder that the other man had dropped—the only thing on it was (2008) written in red pen. He furrows his brows but doesn't question it, straightening and handing it to the man in front of him. "You heard correctly. Unfortunately."
The reporter's slim fingers brush his knuckles when he takes the folder, and Jaebum pulls his hand back quickly. He notices a quick flash of hurt across his face, but then the smile comes back and his eyes crinkle again. Jaebum feels his heart stutter uncertainly and tries to force it from his thoughts. Suddenly, as if surprised, the reporter gasps. "I'm sorry! How rude of me. I didn't even introduce myself." He puts his hand out and Jaebum can't help but glance at it apprehensively. "I'm Park Jinyoung. I'm a writer for the Seoul Crime Report."
His heart squeezes a little at the name, the sound of it dragging up memories from years ago. "Ah, a good friend of mine had a brother with the same name." Mentally, he chastises himself: he definitely hadn't meant to say that, but the anxiety humming in his blood at trying to have a conversation with someone so distractingly handsome is making him just say whatever comes first.
Jaebum takes Jinyoung's hand nervously, hoping that it'll come off as natural. His slightly larger hand wraps around the other man's smaller one, and Jaebum feels a little shocked again at how small he seems. He feels a little distressed by the softness of his palms and the feather light touch of his fingers against the back of his hand again, so he breaks the handshake early. If Jinyoung is hurt by this, he doesn't show it.
"Oh, really?" His brows furrow. "Had?"
"He..." Jaebum swallows, not really sure if he's ready to share something like this with a stranger when it's something he rarely thinks about himself. But he brought it up, and he would feel rude not answering. "He died. My friend, I mean, not his brother."
Jinyoung softens, giving him a look of sympathy that he doesn't know what to do with. "I'm sorry. It's a common name, I suppose, but I apologize for bringing up a bad memory by asking."
"It's alright," Jaebum says, but he doesn't know how to continue. Suddenly uncomfortable, he stiffens a little, and the atmosphere grows awkward. His body is screaming at him to just walk away, but for some reason, he feels compelled to keep talking to the handsome reporter. He tucks the files in his jacket before shoving both hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. "Seoul Crime Report, you said? I've never heard of it."
Jinyoung smiles at him, and it feels a little forced, but his reply is earnest. "It's a start-up thing, mostly print, but they do a lot of online articles as well." A car honks loudly behind him, and Jinyoung turns to look at it, waving to the driver. When he turns back to Jaebum, his smile is a little tighter and it doesn't reach his eyes. His voice when he says, "it was nice to meet you, Detective Im. I look forward to the press conference," is a little too loud; too brisk. It's obvious without being obvious that he feels like Jaebum had written him off. Jaebum sighs, nodding a weak farewell when Jinyoung looks back at him before getting into the car and slamming the door.
It's weird to him that he feels a little guilty about it--he doesn't even know the guy, but the look that Jinyoung had thrown over his shoulder before getting in the car struck him in a way that he hasn't felt for a very long time. The air of familiarity still clings to him, but Jaebum can't place why or even how he would know him, especially since Jinyoung says he's from Changwon—he doesn't even know anyone from Changwon. After a few minutes of deliberating to himself, the cab he'd called earlier pulls up to the curb and honks the horn at him, which abruptly startles him from the rabbit hole he'd been chasing his thoughts into. Sighing quietly to himself, he tries to shake off the weirdness. It's been a long day already, and the coming days are going to get longer and longer.
The next morning is the press conference, and Mark ushers him to the side of the ballroom as soon as he steps through the door.
"Jaebum-ah," Mark says, and the strained tone of his voice has a few people looking over at them where Mark is trying to lead him toward the wall, away from the crowd of people. In an uncharacteristic display of malice, Mark bares his teeth at them and not-so-kindly tells them to fuck off in his distinctly and obviously American way. Jaebum is surprised--Commissioner Tuan, generally laconic and reserved, is aggravated and antsy today in a way that makes him nervous. When he finally gets Jaebum away from the bulk of the people crammed into the room, he runs a hand through his blonde hair and blows out a lungful of air. The strong scent of coffee hangs between them as Mark searches his face, as though he can't decide what to say.
"Mark, whatever you have to tell me, tell me. The press conference is going to start soon and if there's information you have that I don't, I'm going to need it. I don't need to look like an idiot up there."
"You don't need any help looking like an idiot," Mark tries to tease, but it's lackluster and he seems to visibly deflate when he realizes it.
Jaebum glances around the room for a moment--the ballroom isn't massive; in fact, it's quite small, and Jaebum is a little surprised that they would choose this place for something as high profile as this press conference. There's reporters packed wall to wall almost, all of the folding chairs filled with journalists and camera crews standing wherever there's a free spot. A small stage has been erected in the front, and the only thing on it is a long table draped with a cloth bearing the official Seoul Police Department seal on the front of it. Someone had the good sense to hang a backdrop behind it, hiding the (frankly) quite ugly paintings that are hung on the rest of the walls, situated perfectly in between the windows on both sides. The backdrop, like the rest of the last-minute decor, is gray: it lends the sense of a dreary atmosphere, and the room is already tense as it is. He frowns.
"There's nothing new yet," Mark says suddenly, voice quiet. Jaebum turns back to him with the frown still settled firmly in place. "But we need to make sure our timelines match up. I know you didn't get a chance to investigate the scene--"
Jaebum bristles a little. "They're going to love that."
"--but just stick to what you know," Mark finishes, rolling his eyes a little. "I know there's not a lot to go on, but they're going to ask a million questions like there is."
"Mark, this isn't my first press conference. I know how it goes."
Suddenly, Mark's face drops into a look of sympathy so sincere that Jaebum feels his stomach twist. Someone at the front of the room announces that the press conference will be starting in five minutes, and that everyone needs to take their places. Mark lays a hand on his shoulder gently, and the reassuring nature of the touch seems to have the opposite effect on him. "I know," he says, and squeezes. "But this is the first press conference where they're going to make it about you."
Without saying anything else, Mark wanders away and heads toward the steps on the side of the stage. Frozen, Jaebum realizes that Mark is right--the only questions that anyone is going to be interested in are the ones that have to do with his involvement with Yoojin, and whether or not Jaebum had anything to do with it, or knows anything about it. He's hardly even thought about Yoojin in the past eight years, much less talked about him: the only times he's ever even brought Yoojin up is when he was starting to get serious with someone and his trust issues became more and more apparent. Even then, Yoojin was barely a passing thought in his mind as he attempted to explain away his reluctance to trust someone. Can he really sit up there in front of hundreds of prying reporters and answer questions about Yoojin without losing it?
"Detective Im!" Mark calls to him, and Jaebum starts a little. He grits his teeth--the press conference hasn't even started yet and he's already on edge. "It's time to start. Join us, please."
Well, he thinks to himself, guess we'll find out.
As he makes his way to the steps and up them, he can already hear the light-speed shutters of the cameras going off all throughout the room. The sound digs at him, like bugs under his skin, and he nervously undoes the button of his grey suit jacket when he takes his seat next to Mark. Looking out into the room from his seat, his stomach rolls again as the sea of faces all blur together with the sheer number of them packed into the one room, all eyes on him. He gives a short nod to the moderator off stage, who then turns on his own microphone. Sweat begins to gather at his hairline and on his back, sticking his shirt to the skin. The moderator drones on about what is acceptable and what isn't, and that the only time questions will be allowed is when the reporters have the floor--but for the most part, the police department is in control of the press conference and will decide when questions begin and when they end. This, at least, Jaebum feels good about. He has faith that Mark knows what his limit is and will see it long before it approaches.
Clearing his throat, Mark leans in to his microphone that's placed on the table in front of him. "Good morning. As you may know, I am Police Commissioner Mark Tuan. With me today are Officers Wang Jackson, Choi Youngjae, Song Junhoe, Kim Seungwoon, and head Detective Im Jaebum. Officers Wang, Choi, Song, and Kim were the first responding officers to the scene, and Detective Im was put on the case as soon as it was ruled a homicide by the coroner."
A question rings through the air already from the back of the room out of turn. "Why wasn't Detective Im called to the scene?"
The moderator scolds the offending reporter immediately, and turns to let Mark know that he doesn't have to answer right away and can instead proceed with what they had prepared. However, glancing over, Jaebum can see the tightness in Mark's jaw that alerts him to the fact that Mark doesn't feel like messing around today. There's a dangerous flash to his dark eyes as he leans in closer, and the next words out of his mouth fall heavily on the quiet room like a gavel. "As most of you already think, the victim was, in fact, Kim Yoojin, an ex-member of the Seoul District Police Department. This is now a confirmed fact, and I will give you a moment to write it down in your notebooks."
Jaebum notices some of the reporters glancing around uneasily even as they jot down notes, and the room is rife with tension now.
"As most of you may also know, Kim Yoojin is the ex-partner of Detective Im. Ten years ago, Kim Yoojin and Im Jaebum were sworn into the Seoul District Police Department as partners with routine patrols that included traffic stops, neighborhood watches, traffic control, and emergency response. Two years after being sworn in, Officer Kim Yoojin brutally assualted his partner, current Detective Im Jaebum, in the very police station where he still works to this day."
Jaebum doesn't know what he was expecting Mark to say, but for some reason, it wasn't this. Each word strikes him in the chest like a blow, and he feels short of breath as Mark continues, venom dripping off the end of every word.
"The fact is, that because of Detective Im's proximity to the victim, he was not called in right away. Officers Wang, Choi, Song, and Kim were given direct instructions by me to immediately search the scene and to secure it so that backup units could be called, as well as the crime scene unit. Detective Im was not notified of the crime until after the body had been identified by medical examiner Lee Jinhae. Even then, Detective Im was brought immediately to the station by Officer Choi and received the news from me. Press arrived shortly after, and after the situation was diffused, the decision was made to keep Detective Im on the case with the expectation that he will remain impartial and follow procedure. Detective Im was then sent home for the night by myself, again with the expectation that he would remain impartial to the case and show up to this press conference ready to face the press and the potential shit-storm this will bring him."
The whole room, including himself, is shocked into silence. Even the moderator is balking at him, microphone dangling limply in one hand. Glancing over, Jaebum can see that Mark completely abandoned the statement he had prepared on a notecard in favor of the lecture he just gave. After seeming to survey the room for a challenge and receiving only silence, Mark cocks an eyebrow.
"Any questions?"
And the room explodes.
Reporters and camera crews are practically crawling over each other, shouting at the top of their lungs in order to be heard. Multiple people stand up on their chairs, and the sudden clamor of voices layering over each other brings the room to a head-splitting roar that Jaebum can barely make heads or tails of. Mark just leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and laughing slightly--is this what he wanted? The journalists in the room are screaming so loud over each other that he can't even distinguish one question from another enough to give an answer. Flashbulbs burst over and over, imprinting themselves on the backs of his eyelids every time he blinks until he's sure he's going to go blind. It is chaos, utter chaos, and Jaebum has never seen anything like it in his entire ten years of being a cop. Just when he thinks that the press can't surprise him anymore, something like this happens. The tension built up in every fiber of his being feels like it's going to burst at any moment.
Just when he can't take it anymore, Mark stands up calmly out of his chair. With two fingers in his mouth, he emits an ear-splitting whistle that has an equally deafening silence falling over the room in the expanse of a heartbeat. Every pair of eyes in the room is one him, his lean frame surprisingly relaxed despite the absolute oppressive air around them. The four other officers that are in attendance are struck dumb--Jaebum realizes with a stroke of pity that this is their first press conference, and he hopes, for their sake, that it's their last. It's wishful thinking, but the matching shocked O shapes of their mouths has him hoping that the rest of their careers aren't this difficult.
Once he's confident that he has the attention of the whole room again, Mark sits back down. "Now, we're only going to answer a few questions. My officers have a lot of work to do, and since we barely know more than you do, it's a waste of time for us--and you--to be here." Mark squints, scanning the room for a moment. He lifts a hand, pointing in the center of the room. "You. What's your question?"
Jaebum is so caught off guard by Mark's sudden tenacity that he almost misses the question: "Detective Im, do you have any comments on the theory that you may have been involved in Kim Yoojin's death?"
He should have expected it--and in a way, he does. Jaebum woke up that morning knowing that at least someone was going to ask, but when the question is finally directed at him, all his prepared answers go out the window. A steady rage seeps into every corner of him, holding him taut where the tension was only moments before. It's not surprise that the first question he gets asked is if he has something to do with murdering Yoojin--who else, if not him? But what most reporters don't know is that Jaebum has known Yoojin for close to twenty years--or, did. What nobody really knows is that in the twenty years that he's known Kim Yoojin, Yoojin had made a lot of enemies.
Including, it seems, himself.
Leaning in toward the mic, Jaebum curls both hands in his lap. "It's ridiculous, and frankly I'm disgusted that you'd ask. Next question," he says briskly, and feels a bolt of satisfaction at the obvious dejection of the reporter when he takes his seat.
Someone in the front stands up, despite not being called on. "How deep was the relationship between you and Kim Yoojin, exactly?"
It's not the question that offends him, but the double meaning behind it--as though somehow a hidden deepness in his relationship with Yoojin somehow made him more guilty. Anger sends blood rushing to his face, and he feels the heat in his cheeks even as he opens his mouth to say something ugly. Before he can say anything, though, his eyes fall on the reporter who asked the question: dark hair swept to the side, thick glasses pushed up the bridge of his nose by a soft, steady hand. Jaebum can just make out the collar of a pastel button up shirt underneath the same black peacoat cinched at the waist.
"I--oh," he says, visibly starting. The rest of the room erupts into confused chattering, but Jinyoung just smiles at him where he's standing near the front of the stage. The smile isn't malicious--in fact, it's quite friendly (and alarmingly handsome, and the sweat collecting under Jaebum's shirt trails down his back now). Clearing his throat, Jaebum tries again. "I don't see the relevance of the question. He was my partner, and we were quite close."
Jinyoung just watches him, and again Jaebum is struck by the familiarity in his features. There's something about the way he's standing, the curve of his jaw that fades into a long neck that fades into his shoulders... Jaebum looks up quickly, and there's a look on Jinyoung's face as though he knows what Jaebum's thinking. "Let me rephrase," he says, shifting from one foot to the other. "How long had you and Kim Yoojin known each other before becoming partners?"
"A long time," Jaebum says, and he's relieved at how naturally and unpainfully this part comes to him. "Since we were ten years old. We met in the schoolyard when he first moved to Seoul with his mom and brother. We had another friend--Taeyoung. It was just the three of us for a long time."
A look flashes across Jinyoung's features, and it's so sharp that Jaebum sees it from where he's sitting but he doesn't have time to process it before Jinyoung's face clears again, smoothing itself into a look of professionalism. "Did Taeyoung not want to become a police officer?"
This question seems oddly out of place, but he answers it anyway. "A little irrelevant, but for sake of transparency, I'll answer it. Yoojin and I met first, and we were fast friends. We met Taeyoung a few months later, and for a long time it was just the three of us. But when we were seventeen, Taeyoung died." Jaebum pauses and notices that the room has fallen into silence, every pair of eyes on him, in curiosity this time instead of the shock that was directed at Mark a few minutes ago. "After Taeyoung died, Yoojin and I... we were devastated. But we moved on, and we decided to become cops together. In short, Yoojin and I were very close for a long time."
When Jaebum looks back at Jinyoung, there's a tightness to the other man's features that wasn't there before. The answer seemed to upset him, for some reason--it's a sad story, sure, but it was years ago. And as much as he misses Taeyoung, he's had plenty of time to heal. Jinyoung's seemingly strong reaction to the reveal that there was a third person in his and Yoojin's relationship confuses him, and then Jinyoung looks him dead in the eye and asks, with a voice as cold as steel, "So you didn't have anything to do with Yoojin's murder?"
Anger flashes through his blood, quick and hot. "No." He half stands, buttoning his suit jacket with one hand as he leans closer to the mic, looking away from Jinyoung and into the crowd of reporters who still seem to be waiting for a bomb to drop with bated breath. "I did not murder Kim Yoojin, but I will find out who did. We're done here."
The room breaks out into a clamor again as Jaebum storms off stage, the four silent officers staring after him as Mark tries to do some damage control.
The noise of flashing cameras and reporters shouting over each other to be heard assaults the side of his head as he makes a quick exit, eyes forward and jaw tight as he pushes his way out one of the side doors. The hallway outside the ballroom is mercifully quiet, with only the muffled sound of chaos on the other side of the massive wooden doors a few feet down from him. The deep breath he inhales is unsteady, and it only makes him feel marginally more calm as he weaves his way through empty corridors and out the back door of the community center.
Cold wind blasts across his face when the doors open, and he realizes belatedly that he left his coat inside. Sighing, he moves away from the double doors to stand a few feet away against the brick wall, finding the one spot of sunshine that isn't obstructed by the taller buildings around them. The bricks are cold when he leans back against them, arms folded, but he lets his gaze wander across the street at some of the bodegas packed side by side. They're not terribly busy this time of the week, and Jaebum can see the chaotic insides of the ones that keep their doors propped open, and he wills himself to calm down a little as his eyes focus on the sporadic bursts of color lining the walls.
In all his years of being a cop, and the 6 that he's been a detective, he's never walked out on a press conference before. Anger tightens his chest again. It's barely been over 24 hours since Yoojin was murdered, and already the press are trying to goad him into giving away what he doesn't have: answers. Jaebum wants the answers just as bad as they do, and their unabashed inquiries of whether or not he's involved makes his stomach hurt. He realizes that there's no precedent for this, as far as he knows: is what they're doing really right? What's he going to do when he finds Yoojin's murderer? His body suddenly feels like its been dunked in ice water--he hadn't even thought that far, to catching Yoojin's killer. Can he really trust himself not to do something terrible?
"Detective Im?"
The soft voice from a few feet away makes him jump, left hand going to the gun on his hip before remembering that he didn't bring it. He turns his head to see the reporter, Jinyoung, halfway out of the heavy metal door. A confusing mixture of anger and anxiety flushes through him, and he turns away to look back at the colorful displays of the bodegas.
"Detective Im," he says again, deep voice soft in a way that he thinks is trying to be soothing and apologetic all at once. He doesn't look over, instead focusing on the brightly patterned shirt of an older woman talking animatedly to the bodega owner. He hears Jinyoung sigh. "Detective--"
He looks over quickly, arms still folded across his chest. Jaebum has to squint a little, the late morning sun bright and offering only a small amount of heat in the cold air. "What?" he snaps, his tone clipped.
"I just wanted to apologize."
Jaebum barks a laugh that doesn't hold much humor in it and looks straight, away from Jinyoung.
Jinyoung comes all the way out of the door now, letting it fall shut behind him before stepping closer to Jaebum. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the way Jinyoung nervously fiddles with the ends of a deep red scarf tied tightly around his throat. "I'm serious, Detective. I'd like to apologize."
Jaebum looks over again. "For what? For doing your job?"
The other man flinches a little, shying away from the animosity in Jaebum's voice. "No--well, yes, I suppose." Jaebum watches him carefully as one of his hands goes to nervously push his glasses higher up his nose. "My question was out of line."
Part of him just wants to scream--this is always the default excuse for a reporter who says something they shouldn't have. He's heard this excuse tens of thousands of times, and it holds as little weight as it always does. He scoffs. "Yeah, sure."
His immediately dismissal brings some color to Jinyoung's cheeks, and Jaebum feels a small spark of satisfaction when the reporter's face pulls up in a look of annoyance. "Don't be so dismissive. I'm trying to apologize."
Jaebum finally uncrosses his arms, letting his hands drop to rest on his hips. "Does it matter? Someone else is going to ask me the same question at least once a day until I find who really killed him. I've been a detective for six years already and a cop for almost ten. Your question doesn't faze me nearly as much as you're thinking it did."
"Is that why you stormed off in the middle of the press conference?" Jinyoung spits at him, his hands no longer messing with his scarf but balled up into fists at his sides. "Because the question didn't faze you?"
"I think I distinctly remember saying 'we're done here' before I left. Did you miss that part because you were too busy being sorry?"
Jinyoung's face really flushes red with anger, and Jaebum just feels a sort of hysterical laugh rise in his chest. He's dealt with reporters hundreds and hundreds of times, had hundreds and hundreds of fights with them in public. He doesn't even know this guy and yet here they are, arguing behind the community center to see who can get more pissed off. If the back to back tragedies in his life taught him anything, it's how to be hateful. He's played this game with reporters, before,nb too: he's good at it.
"Your temper is going to bite you in the ass one of these days, Detective."
Jaebum shrugs. "Maybe. But for the last six years it's been solving all kinds of murders, so I think I'll be good."
And then Jinyoung loses all sense of decorum. He spits, "You really are an asshole, aren't you?"
Jaebum actually laughs this time, crossing his arms over his chest again. Jinyoung is just looking at him with distaste, dark eyes shuttered. He can't help but notice the hard line of the reporter's jaw where it's clenched tight in anger. "Are you surprised?"
"A little bit," Jinyoung says honestly, but the anger covers up any surprise that Jaebum feels at the confession. "But no, I'm really not. I should have known."
"You're still new to Seoul," Jaebum says offhandedly, reaching into his pocket to get his phone. "You'll learn."
"I was just trying to apologize for making you upset, Detective," Jinyoung says, and most of the anger has faded out of the younger man's voice. Jaebum looks at him warily, thumb hovering over the screen of his cellphone. "So, I'm sorry."
Hitting the answer button on the screen, Jaebum just looks at him and says, "it's best if you don't apologize, because I'm not going to. See you around," he says, and then he's turning away to jog through the mess of junk in the back of the community center to the sidewalk on the other side. He puts the phone up to his ear when he's finally back on the street. "Hello?"
It's Mark. "Where the hell are you?"
"I went outside."
"That didn't go half as well as I wanted it to, but only went half as bad as I expected. Did you really need to storm off, though?"
Jaebum sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Not really. But it was either that or the press conference really go to hell, so I figured that was a better option."
"Catch a cab back to the station," Mark says, and there's nothing in his voice this time to give away how he's feeling. For all he knows, Mark might actually kick him off the case now. "We've got a lot of work to do."
When he gets to the station 45 minutes later, it is, understandably, in chaos. He finds out almost as soon as he steps in the door that Mark had finished the press conference out by giving them some actual details, such as where the murder took place and what kind of thing citizens should be looking out for in the area. Almost all of the phones in the building are ringing like crazy with tips (those money-searching and anonymous alike) from people who are probably just watching the news, and multiple officers are running back and forth between computers and fax machines and printers getting every single piece of information in order. Jaebum can see Mark sitting at his desk through his open door, ear to his shoulder cradling the phone. He weaves his way in between the officers, nodding here and there to a few and waving to Youngjae, who barely has time to look up from his computer.
With a soft knock, Jaebum enters Mark's office and sits down across from him. Jaebum absentmindedly scrolls through his phone while he waits, reading some of the articles that have already been posted since the press conference. He mostly just skims them: no one really knows anything, at this point, and there's a restlessness in him that makes it hard to focus on the words anyway.
Finally, after a few minutes of nodding and hmm- ing and uh-huh- ing , Mark hangs up. He sighs heavily. "Sorry."
Not looking up from his phone, he asks, "who was it?"
"Some reporter from a place called The Seoul Crime Report." Jaebum's head whips up at this, alarmed, and there's a knowing look on Mark's face. "He mentioned you."
"Look--"
Mark just holds up a hand, but he doesn't seem angry. "He just explained to me that he felt like his question was out of line and for me to extend his apologies to you."
Jaebum locks his phone and drops it in his lap, sighing in exasperation. "He tried to apologize to me after I stormed out, but I wouldn't let him."
Leaning back in his chair a little, Mark snorts. "Of course you didn't."
Jaebum tenses, getting defensive. "Should I have? An apology isn't going to make this any better. He was just doing his job. I've had reporters piss me off more for less shitty things."
"I just think you didn't want him to be nice to you."
"Aish..." Jaebum sucks his teeth dismissively and tosses his head. "Don't make it about that. It's not about that."
Sighing, Mark drops it and just shakes his head. "Regardless, I told him to come in for an interview tomorrow."
Jerking in surprise, Jaebum's phone slips from his lap and hits the floor with a soft thud. "Why?" He hopes that he packs as much disbelief into the word as much as he feels it.
"Out of the other reporters, he seemed to be coming from a much less malevolent angle with his questions about Yoojin. He was calm after the conference and even came to find me to personally apologize for what he said."
Anger spreads hot across Jaebum's chest, and he feels the burn of it in his face. "Are you sure? At there end there, he asked if I had anything to do with Yoojin's murder, point blank. Less malevolent, my ass."
"Don't be so antagonistic at press conferences and maybe the press won't want to goad you into exploding on them."
"Me?" Jaebum practically shouts, disbelief raising his voice a few octaves. "Me, antagonistic? Unbelievable," he scoffs, slumping back in the chair. "Who's side are you on, Mark?"
If he's offended that Jaebum asked, he doesn't mention it. "I'm on Yoojin's side. This is about him, Jaebum, not you."
He curls his hands into fists into his lap. "You don't know him like I did, Mark. You shouldn't defend him, not after what he did."
This seems to hit a nerve, and Mark's jaw tightens. "What, that he got murdered?" his words are clipped with barely controlled aggravation. "I know that I don't know him, Jaebum, and that you don't feel the same way about this case as I do, but to me, he's a victim. And as the police commissioner, I am first and foremost on the victim's side. You know better."
The chastisement feels like a slap, and Jaebum lapses into angry silence.
"But that doesn't mean that I won't side with you when I need to," he says a moment later, and his voice has softened. "You've been doing this for six years, Jaebum-ah. I know that there's no precedent for this, but remember that you've been my head detective for the last six years because I can count on you. Don't go off the rails now."
He doesn't know what to say--he's not use to this, to being...comforted. Usually when someone says something that upsets him, he doesn't give them the opportunity to take it back: he lashes out, and he lashes out fast, which just leads to him ending a lot of relationships. The people who do stick around long enough know better than to try and comfort him: Jaebum rarely accepts the niceties even when they're offered to him. Jaebum has the reputation of being the hardest detective in Seoul because of his unapologetic near-cruelty when it suits him. Comfort, when afforded to him, makes him feel displaced.
"It's fine," he says stiffly, unsure of what to say. "I'll be fine."
"You'd better be," Mark says, and most of the tense atmosphere dissipates. "You're going to be a part of that interview tomorrow."
Jaebum breathes out heavily, deflating into the chair. He looks down at where his shoe is touching the edge of his phone under Mark's desk, but doesn't pick it up. "What are we even going to tell him? Right now, we're just trying to get information together. Do we even have anything to go on?"
"Not really," Mark says honestly, leaning back in his chair. "Most of the CSI unit are still waiting on results from toxicology, or lab reports from the soil and other shit they picked up while they were there. Choi is working on drafting an unofficial timeline, including what may have happened before the stabbing."
"I'll start looking into his time in prison," Jaebum says, cutting himself off with a yawn. He's pretty tired--it's barely three in the afternoon, but he's ready to be laid up on the couch with his computer instead of in a suit in his office. "See if there's anyone there that's notable, any trouble he got into while he was there."
Mark nods in affirmation, and Jaebum stands up out of the chair to grab his phone before stretching. He's getting ready to leave the office when Mark stops him. "Wait."
"What?" He asks, watching Mark carefully as he puts his suit jacket back on.
"Did you ever go see Yoojin in prison?"
His chest constricts a little. He's thought about this to himself thousands of times, but he's never had anyone else ask him with the expectation of a real answer. Girlfriends and boyfriends have asked him, sure, but one pained look and a dismissal of Let's not talk about it anymore, I'm sorry, would you like another glass of wine? got him out of answering. But the way Mark is looking at him makes him itch, like Mark is more aware of Jaebum's emotions than he realizes.
"No. I didn't."
"Why?"
Jaebum sighs, leaning a shoulder on the doorframe. "I didn't want to."
"You didn't think you'd give him the chance to explain? To apologize?"
"I didn't want him to. He had already done to me what he set out to do."
Mark hmms quietly. "Maybe you didn't think you were going to like the answer?"
Jaebum shakes his head sadly. "No. I just didn't think that he deserved it."
"But what about you, then?" Mark asks, and there's a look on his face that holds more sympathy in it than Jaebum can process. It makes him uncomfortable, and he shifts on his feet with his shoulder still against the doorframe. "Didn't you deserve an explanation for what happened?"
A million and one things pass before him, then, in the span of a moment. Voices from the past,
("How could you do that to him? You know how I feel about him!"
"I’m sorry, Jaebum--")
he closes his eyes against the echo of fists landing on skin, the crack of a broken jaw, the seemingly endless flow of tears. When he opens his eyes again, Mark is looking at him with the same sympathy and he steels himself against it.
"No," he says, and with a finality that signals that the line of questioning is over. "I didn't."
He doesn't leave right away, instead going to his office for a while to look into getting some insight into Yoojin's time at the prison. After two hours he starts to feel antsy, and he emails himself what little information was sent to him so that he can look at it at home. As he passes through the rows of desks, he notices that most of the officers that were here earlier are gone now: the station is, for once, mostly quiet. He can still hear Mark in his office, but Youngjae and Jackson are nowhere to be found, and he hopes that it's because they're gone for the day.
Jaebum waits outside for the cab, arms across his chest to keep the cold at bay. The sun's going down now, the sky a rich shade of orange mixed with purple, and the lack of sunshine and still no coat has him shivering a little. He's absentmindedly wondering if he should stop somewhere for coffee when he hears the horn honk impatiently a few moments later. The taxi driver is surprisingly pleasant--usually, drivers that pick him up from the station either know him or know of him, and they keep to themselves. Whether it's because his reputation precedes him or just because they don't want to associate with him, he doesn't know, but he's fine with it either way. The less talking he has to do, the better.
Once he finally arrives home, the sun has gone almost completely down and the street lamps lined up outside the buildings have come on, basking everything in an orange-ish glow. He turns away from the cab as it departs, moving to head up the stairs and into the lobby of his apartment building, but there's a person sitting in the middle of the staircase and watching him.
His yawn is cut short when he realizes and startles. "What are you doing?"
Jinyoung plays with the scarf around his neck again, the same one from earlier that day. "I was waiting for you."
Jaebum bristles. "That's weird."
Unexpectedly, Jinyoung laughs at this. It makes him a little wary, and he tenses. "I know. I should have thought about that."
"What are you doing?" Jaebum asks again, a little more abrupt this time.
Jinyoung looks up at him, glasses missing from his face. He's just as good looking without them, and Jaebum is internally annoyed at himself for noticing something so minute. There's a trepidatious air to the way Jinyoung is watching him, like he's waiting for Jaebum to go off on him again.
"I know I tried to apologize earlier--"
Jaebum sucks his teeth, tipping his head back. "Not this again."
"I know, I know you said not to apologize--"
Jaebum cuts him off again, finding his eyes in the dim orange light of the street lamps and holding them. "So why are you still trying?"
"Because," Jinyoung says, getting up and hopping the last couple of steps to stand in front of him. "I feel bad."
"You're a reporter," he snaps, taking a small step back. "Reporters don't feel bad."
This seems to frustrate Jinyoung, which only grates on Jaebum's nerves even more. Why does he care so much? This case has been public for two days, and it's not like Jinyoung even knows him. He's had reporters much more mean than Jinyoung that never apologized, and he likes it that way. The fact that Jinyoung seems so determined to get on his good side has Jaebum wondering if there's an ulterior motive.
"Maybe some don't, but I do," he finally says, and Jinyoung looks away for a moment. When he looks back, there's an expression on his face that Jaebum has trouble reading, which makes him uneasy: he's always been good at reading people. It's how he solves cases. "Look, I get that you're a big bad detective, and that you don't care about who you piss off or hurt as long as it solves your cases, but that's not who I am."
"Clearly," Jaebum says, still wary but a little less angry. "You're a reporter."
Almost unwillingly, the corner of Jinyoung's mouth pulls up in a smile before he drops it again. "And if you don't want to apologize for how you do your job, then don't. But you can't ask me to not apologize for how I do mine, especially when I feel like I've done my job incorrectly."
"Are you apologizing for doing your job wrong, or for being a dick?"
"Both."
"I only care about one of those things," Jaebum says, crossing his arms over his chest. "Can you guess which one it is?"
Jinyoung rolls his eyes in a way that Jaebum is almost impressed by: it's practiced, like he's had to roll his eyes at Jaebum's attitude a million times. "Doing my job incorrectly, I assume?"
Jaebum nods. "Yes."
The other man's shoulders drop in defeat. Sighing, he looks at Jaebum and says, "then I'm sorry for doing my job incorrectly."
"Okay."
Jinyoung just watches him, as though he's waiting for something else. "Is that it?"
He pretends to think for a second. "Yes."
"Do you accept my apology?"
He can't take it anymore. Jaebum huffs out a breath in annoyance, pulling out his phone and dialing the number for a cab service. "Fine," he says sharply, but a wide smile breaks out on Jinyoung's face that crinkles the corners of his eyes in a pleasant way. He swallows, looking away. "Will you leave now?"
"Yes," Jinyoung says, and Jaebum interrupts him to rattle off his address to the cab driver. Hanging up, Jaebum puts his phone back in his pocket and squints at Jinyoung in the dim light.
"How did you know where I lived?"
The cab must have just been down the street, because it pulls up a moment later before Jinyoung answers. Grinning, Jinyoung reaches out to squeeze his bicep and Jaebum feels his heart jump at the touch. Heading toward the cab, Jinyoung looks over to answer him. "Nothing a few calls and some sweet-talking couldn't handle. I'm a reporter, remember?" and then he slams the cab door shut, disappearing back into the Seoul night.
Jaebum can't help it--he laughs a little. He shakes his head in disbelief as he mounts the stairs, wondering where in the hell Jinyoung came from and how, in such a short time, someone so frustrating could also be so alluring.
He wakes up the next morning to a phone call from the warden of the prison that Yoojin had been in, and it lasts much longer than he had expected. There's not a ton of new information, but it's more than he had, and he hopes that Mark finds it worth it when he jogs into the office almost twenty minutes late.
Mark sees him as soon as he steps out from the hallway, his lean frame hanging off the doorway of the conference room that's situated between their offices. "Yah! Get in here!"
Jaebum jogs over, pushing past Mark to get into the conference room and sit down. The cab driver had insisted that he keep his window down, and the cold wind assaulting his face for the duration of the thirty minute drive has his skin feeling painfully dry. Mark closes the door to the conference room, taking a seat across from him and watching him with a raised eyebrow as Jaebum buries the lower half of his face in his scarf. "Sorry," he finally says, looking up at Mark. "The warden called this morning and it took longer than I expected. He's got a lot to say."
Dragging a notepad closer to him, Mark nods in the direction of the other person sitting at the table with them. "Any regard for our guest?"
"Oh," Jaebum says, caught off guard. He had totally forgotten that Jinyoung was going to be here. Looking over, Jaebum offers him an awkward nod. "Hello, Jinyoung."
"Hello, Detective," Jinyoung says, and smiles at Jaebum over his coffee. "Thank you for calling me a cab yesterday."
Mark blanches, and Jaebum just sighs. "You're welcome. And just...call me Jaebum. It's fine."
"You called him a cab?" Mark sputters, and Jaebum thinks he's overreacting. "From the station?"
"No, from my house," Jaebum replies, and he shoots Mark a look that screams now is not the time or place, which Mark ignores.
"Are you shacking up with a reporter now?"
Now it's their turn to blanch—Jinyoung chokes on his coffee and Jaebum angrily throws his pen at Mark, satisfied when it bounces off his chest. "Yah, have some decorum, Commissioner. He came to my house to apologize."
"Relax, Im," Mark says, smiling at him in a way that makes him think of a child getting their way. "I was kidding. Did you accept his apology?"
"He did, actually," Jinyoung chimes in, and smiles at Jaebum from across the table. He wonders how many more times he's going to have to see that infuriatingly nice smile in the next couple of months, or however long the case takes. He hopes it's less.
Jaebum begrudgingly agrees and then promptly changes the subject. He leans down to pull out the folder of information he'd gotten out of his briefcase and spreads the papers across the table. "First, I think we should speculate on what we think happened. Come up with a timeline. Did Youngjae ever finish that?"
Mark narrows his eyes at him for a moment before seeming to drop it, and he nods. He pulls out a piece of paper from between the pages of his notebook and turns it toward him so he can look at it.
It's...not a lot. So much of Yoojin's murder is a mystery. The page is barely half filled, and is all speculation to boot. He sighs. "This is nothing."
"I know," Mark says, and Jaebum looks up at him.
"What have you told him?" He asks, nodding in Jinyoung's direction.
"Whatever's on there. We've been waiting on you to show up with more information."
"Okay," Jaebum says, and he takes a deep breath before starting. His eyes flick to Jinyoung, who has a voice recorder set out on the table between them. He's surprised to find Jinyoung already looking at him, and Jaebum looks at his papers again quickly. "He was in relatively low security, so he was more or less independent in whatever way prisoners can be. The warden told me that, though Yoojin became very well known after the inmates found out about what happened, he kept a relatively low profile throughout his time there. He got In a few fights the first couple of months, but nothing serious." The room is silent when he pauses, Mark and Jinyoung seeming to hang on to his every word. The late morning sun filters into the conference room through the half open blinds, and Jaebum looks up to sene Jinyoung squinting into the brightness. He surprises himself by saying, "I can close the blinds, if you want."
Jinyoung seems startled. "Are you talking to me?"
He's embarrassed, and he tries to cover it up by saying offhandedly, "yeah. That side of the table catches all the light."
"That's okay," Jinyoung says, and he shifts in his chair so that the sunlight still illuminates his face but isn't shining directly into his eyes anymore. "Thank you, though."
He just nods, not looking at Mark, whom he can feel is burning a hole through the top of his head. "Anyway, there's only one incident that's really notable." Jaebum pulls out an incident report that the warden had faxed him while they were on the phone. On the front of it is a picture of Yoojin, face bloodied from a fight and looking defiantly into the camera in a way so inherently Yoojin it makes his stomach hurt a little bit. Clearing his throat, he continues: "The way some of the witnesses describe it is that one of the other inmates provoked Yoojin by...talking about me. Apparently it's someone who knew me in high school, which is unsurprising I guess. I don't recognize the name— Bae Junhong—but he apparently riled Yoojin up enough that Yoojin started a fight. It got pretty ugly—" Jaebum pulls out a page from the report that has photocopied pictures of the other inmate's injuries and hands slides it across the table in between Mark and Jinyoung. "Yoojin broke his nose and two places in his cheek, but after a week in solitary there wasn't really any more incidents. Some insubordination, not listening to the officers, getting out of bed and pacing after lights out. Stuff like that."
"So you do you think this Bae Junhong might have something to do with it?"
Jaebum sits back in his chair heavily, carding a hand through his hair. "I don't think so. Based on his priors and what he went in for, he doesn't sound like the type to really get revenge."
"You'd be surprised," Jinyoung says quietly, and Jaebum looks over. There's a seriousness to his tone that momentarily makes him wonder if he's underestimating the tenacious reporter. "People are crazy."
Mark nods. "That's true. Is he still locked up?"
Jaebum looks at Jinyoung for a moment longer, their eyes locked, before he shakes off the strange feeling creeping up his throat and looks away. "No, he got out a year after Yoojin did. Looks like he still lives in Seoul."
"Should we have someone talk to him?"
"Yeah," Jaebum says, and he sighs. "I guess. I don't think he'll know anything but might as well. Send Choi. We can have someone dig up the guy's information and he can take Jackson with him."
Mark gets up, leaving the room and shutting the door behind him to go find either of the officers. In the silence, Jaebum fiddles with the papers in front of him to keep from having a conversation, but a few minutes pass and he hears Jinyoung lean forward to turn off his tape recorder. "Are you alright?"
The question catches him off guard, and he looks up. "I'm fine. Why?"
"I'm sure this isn't easy."
He knows where this is going, so he looks away. Dismissively, he says, "I'm a homicide detective. My job isn't ever easy."
"That's not what I meant."
Jaebum resists the urge to crumble up the paper in his left hand in frustration. He looks up, shooting daggers. "Do you care?"
There's an almost tangible tension to the room now that wasn't there before, and Jaebum hopes that it won't always be like this, or, better yet, he won't always have to be alone with Jinyoung at all. Not that you'd mind, he says to himself, and immediately tries to backpedal and shove the thought far, far out of reach. He tells himself the only reason he thinks that is because he hasn't had sex in forever, and his brain is starting to get desperate.
Which would explain why he can't stop noticing how good-looking Jinyoung is, but it certainly doesn't explain why Jinyoung seems so concerned about him.
"Should I not care about you?"
Jaebum actually laughs, sharply and without humor. "You don't even know me."
The man across from him folds his arms across his chest in what is seemingly a childish act of you can't tell me what to do, and then he says, "Do I have to know you to care about your feelings as a human being?"
Jaebum just stares at him. The other man's eyebrows are stitched together in defiance, like he's challenging Jaebum to keep arguing, or to accept that someone actually gives a shit how he feels. After a tense moment of them making extremely pointed eye contact, Jaebum angrily crumples up a piece of paper from the top of his notepad and tries not to throw it. "God, you're infuriating." He doesn't really mean to say it, but now that it's out, he doesn't regret it and he doesn't take it back.
Jinyoung smiles at him, which just seems to irritate him further. "Thank you."
He's about to say something else when Mark comes back in the room, and Jaebum flushes red in frustration and looks away. He can feel Mark looking between the two of them like he's trying to figure out if anything happened while he's gone, and he sits down after seeming to decide it didn't. "I want to know what you think happened."
He's grateful for the distraction from the flustered irritation building up in his chest. Jaebum has been thinking about this almost non-stop since he found out that Yoojin is dead: what happened? In the four years between going to prison and getting out, what sort of thing could he have done or tried to do that would have gotten him killed? What sort of things had he done in prison that would make him enemies even on the outside? Or, worse yet, was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? The possibilities are endless, and he feels frustrated at his lack of answers. Suddenly and horribly, he feels guilty that he never tried to talk to Yoojin in prison. Maybe if he had, he would have gotten a better insight into what he was doing that might have caused him trouble or would have, hopefully, avoided this entirely. Could it really be his fault that Yoojin is dead, even if he's not the one who killed him? His heart feels like it's on the verge of shattering at the thought of being responsible for another tragedy at the hands of someone he loved.
"Maybe..." Jaebum starts uncertainty, and he's frustrated at trying to explain how he feels. He's not used to it, and it makes him uncomfortable like feeling a rock in his shoe. "Maybe he came back because he had something to tell me. Something to finish. When he was sentenced...when he was sentenced, he told me he was 'sorry he didn't tell me'."
(Freshly twenty-two, and already tragedy has found him more times that it had reason to: first Taeyoung, and now this. He sits in the courtroom in a suit that the police department had paid for, stitched up and drugged on painkillers that they'd also paid for. The left side of his face still throbs, his nervous heartbeat beating against the bruised and put-together skin. His right eye, at least, has faded from its swollen state into a disgustingly purple and yellow black eye, but he can see out of it enough to avoid eye contact with anyone and everyone who looks his way. To his side mere feet away, Yoojin is sitting at an identical table decked from head to toe in the hospital-white of inmate's clothing, shackled at the wrist with his head down. His long black hair has gotten longer, and it hangs a little lankily around his face. Jaebum only looked at him once when he came in, and even that look had cost him weeks of healing—something in him felt so broken, so betrayed, by the one person he loved more than anyone else. Yoojin won't even look at him, won't look anywhere but the gleaming surface of the oak table until the judge calls the courtroom to order.
They all thought the trial might last a few days—they usually do, nothing is ever so cut and dry. But theirs doesn't. It lasts 8 grueling hours, because what and how much is there to be said about an officer who beats his partner to near death, and on purpose? For seemingly no reason? Even the defense makes it clear that they don't know, and don't want to know, and they only fight meekly for an insanity plea.
"Why did you beat up your partner?" Jaebum's lawyer had asked, and Jaebum could only stare blankly ahead from his one good eye as Yoojin shook and near-cried through every answer.
"I had to."
"Why?"
Jaebum wanted to know, too. He wondered if Yoojin was going to give a straight answer.
"Something bad would happen to him if I didn't."
Of course not. Jaebum closed his eye.
"What did you throw into the fire, Yoojin?"
"A picture."
"Of what?"
"I can't say. Jaebummie doesn't know."
After that, it was over. He had been on the stand for another maybe twenty minutes before they wrapped, and the jury went back. Then he could feel Yoojin finally looking at him, burning a hole into the side of his head, waiting for him to look over because he had something say, like he knew what was coming for him. But Jaebum wouldn't. He couldn't. There was nothing to be said that could make it better, nothing to be said that could change or make it go away. Yoojin had almost killed him for reasons unfathomable and after what happened to Taeyoung, he could not afford to break his heart again.
When the jury came back barely five hours later, the guilty verdict fell on the air heavily. It was only 4 years—he didn't kill Jaebum, although he could have, but he was stripped immediately of his badge and title and was ostracized. If he was ever caught in the city limits of Seoul again, anywhere near Jaebum, he would go back to jail, and for even longer. Jaebum had closed his one good eye as the courtroom erupted in hushed chatter. And when the bailiffs came to take Yoojin away, his shackles rattling, Jaebum finally opened his eyes.
All at once, Yoojin had exploded into life. "JAEBUM!" he screamed, so loudly that Jaebum jumped like he'd been shot. His good eye found Yoojin in a heartbeat, looking at his friend's panicked face. "JAEBUM, I'M SORRY!" he was screaming, positively howling, and Jaebum felt his heart seize in terror—what were they doing? Was this right? Should he have tried to defend Yoojin instead? Jaebum shot up out of his chair but was unsure what to do. He could only watch in disbelief as his friend bucked and kicked at the officers trying to take him back, a sudden wildness in him that hadn't been there before. "Jaebum, I'm sorry! I'm sorry I didn't tell you! Jaebum!"
Then the doors had closed behind him, taking his terrified voice with him, and the possibility of ever finding out what happened, too.)
Blinking, Jaebum returns to the present. Jinyoung and Mark are both watching him with comically matching looks of concern. He laughs a little shakily, that unsteadiness he felt the first day rising in his chest. "But I never found out what. That day—the day was convicted—was the last time I ever saw him."
Mark's voice when he replies is gentle. "Do you think he came back to finally tell you?"
Jaebum just looks at the tabletop, watching the motes of dust dance and swirl in the bars of sunlight. He tries to tell himself that it's okay that he never questioned it, and that the way that Yoojin's betrayal taught Jaebum to turn his heartbreak or discomfort into anger is, if anything, a blessing. He thinks for a moment, wondering for himself. What does he believe? After a moment, he sighs and closes his eyes. "Maybe. Either that or he came back because he wanted me to forgive him."
"Do you forgive him?" Jinyoung asks.
He doesn't mean to answer him: the questions is deep, too personal, too complicated; he hasn't even really asked himself that question yet. The only questions that he could have answered with any certainty before all this were Do you hate him for what he did? Yes. Do you feel like you know Kim Yoojin as well as you'd know your own brother? Yes.
Now, though, he can't even answer those. The world feels like it's crumbling, everything that he knows to be true or based in fact uprooting itself like a tree in a storm.
The uncertainty in his chest has the room feeling like its tilting, pulling the rug out from under his feet over and over, and his mouth answers before his brain can catch up. "I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever forgive him." Jaebum swallows, unable to look at either of them.
"Okay, we're done for now," he says, and Jaebum feels relieved. "Mr. Park, thank you for coming in today." He sees Mark stand up and shake Jinyoung's hand out of his peripheral vision. "I'm sure this was quite the experience."
"You could say that," Jinyoung says, and laughs in a voice like thick honey. "Detective?"
Jaebum looks up. "Yes?"
"Would you care to walk me outside? You look like you could use some fresh air."
"Sure," Jaebum says, and nods quickly. He stands, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair and pulling it on. Mark and Jinyoung exchange a few more pleasantries while they wait on him, but his head is buzzing so loud that he can't really focus on it. Finally back in his coat, he nods to Jinyoung again and follows the other man out of the room.
Side by side they walk through the bullpen, a few officers looking up at them absentmindedly before going back to their work. The station is mostly empty, with most people on patrol or looking into different aspects of Yoojin's case. Jaebum feels uneasy, his arm brushing Jinyoung's as he reaches past him to open the glass door of the police station when they reach it a moment later.
Jinyoung looks like he wants to say something when they step out onto the stoop, both of them hesitating at the top of the stairs. Jaebum just watches him, unsure if he should say something, or do something, like reassure him that he's fine and that the case will continue on like normal. He wants to know what Jinyoung's going to write about, or what his article will say, and he wants to ask about it to fill the awkward silence that steadily builds between them. He opens his mouth to ask, but instead he blurts out an apology. "I'm sorry."
Jinyoung, for good reason, looks utterly shocked. "What?"
It's a testament to how much Yoojin's death is really affecting him when he sighs and actually follows up with, "about Mark. The comment he made. He just likes to rile me up."
"Oh, I didn't mind," Jinyoung replies easily, and then seems to realize what that might imply. A dark red blush creeps up his neck to the tops of his ears. Jaebum doesn't want it to be cute but it really, really is.
Yeah. He's going crazy.
"I just mean that it didn't bother me," Jinyoung says, still blushing madly. "Worse things have happened."
Another few moments of a stiff silence pass between them, with Jinyoung looking at him and then away, toward his watch. Jaebum feels so off-balance, like he's been dropped into some alternate universe or has turned into some bizarro world version of himself. The past couple of days have gone by in such a dream-like sequence of events that he's starting to wonder if any of it has even been real.
Finally, out of nowhere, Jinyoung looks at him. "Do you want to get a drink sometime?"
Jaebum startles. His eyes find Jinyoung's, and the seriousness in them makes him a little uneasy. He doesn't seem like he's joking in the least, and it makes Jaebum laugh a little nervously. "Are you being serious?"
A little hurt, Jinyoung's face reddens. "Yes, I am, actually."
He doesn't hate the idea as much as he wants to, but every interaction with Jinyoung so far has ended in an argument or just general exasperation, so he tamps down on it and pretends it didn't occur to him. "I don't know if that's a good idea."
"Oh? Afraid you might like me?"
"No," Jaebum grumbles, annoyed. "You're a reporter working on writing about the murder case I'm currently investigating. Adding dating into the mix would be bad news."
There's a mischievous twinkle in Jinyoung's eye that Jaebum really doesn't like. This feeling is validated when Jinyoung says, "who said it was a date?"
"Oh—come on," Jaebum rolls his eyes, sucking his teeth dismissively.
"Look," Jinyoung says, reaching into his coat pocket for his phone. He pulls it out and dials a number before putting it up to his ear and continuing, "it's not a date. But the offer is on the table, if you want to take it." He interrupts himself to give an address, presumably to a cab company. When he hangs up, he looks at Jaebum with an expression that, again, is nerve-wrackingly hard for him to read. "I'm new to the city, and it would just be nice to make some friends."
"Reporters and detectives rarely make good friends," Jaebum says, but with a surprising lack of malice. The idea of sitting across from Jinyoung at a small table in a dimly lit bar while they drink whiskey out of poorly-cleaned glasses appeals to him more than it should. It bothers him.
"In your experience, maybe." Jinyoung tears off a piece of scrap paper from a notebook in his messenger bag and scribbles on it before handing it over. When Jaebum looks at it, there's a row of numbers lined up in impeccably neat handwriting, Jinyoung's name placed underneath. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize it's a phone number.
"Is this—"
"Yes," he interrupts, a small smile dimpling one of his cheeks. "That's my phone number. Like I said, the offer is on the table if you want it, and now you can call me if you do." The cab pulls up to the curb and honks for him. He nods and then goes down the stairs, only turning once when he gets to the cab to throw a brilliant smile over his shoulder. It's distressingly like the one from the previous night, and Jaebum thinks fleetingly that he's already tired of watching Jinyoung get into cabs.
When it pulls away, Jaebum stares down in disbelief at the phone number in his hand. It's not that he's never gotten phone numbers before—with the way he looks, he's gotten plenty, and has had the one night stands to prove it. Part of him wants to throw the scrap paper away, an excuse of we don't really know each other that well running through his mind, but he knows what a cop-out that is, and that someone as scarily intelligent as Jinyoung would see through that in a heartbeat. He wonders if Yoojin's death has, maybe, fundamentally changed him in some way already: Jinyoung is infuriating, unnecessarily apologetic and careful to mind his feelings, which is annoying. But whenever he talks, Jaebum can't help but watch the curve of his mouth and be overly aware of their proximity to each other, and it's barely been two days. If it's this bad already, it might only get worse. Maybe, and, he hopes this is true, he's just desperate for sex. He wonders if his reluctant acceptance of Jinyoung's abrupt and constantly annoying presence in his life is because he's actually starting to change, or because he just really, really needs to get laid.
In any case, he folds Jinyoung's number carefully and puts it in his shirt pocket, where it proceeds to burn a hole for the rest of the day.
When he gets home later that night, he takes off his jacket and digs Jinyoung's phone number out of the pocket. He tosses the small scrap of paper into the bowl filled with keys and loose change on his entry table and tries to forget about it. Nora comes up to him almost immediately, big blue eyes begging him to pet her. As he leans down to run his hand over her soft head, he realizes how tired he is--being a homicide detective for so long, that's not exactly a new feeling, but this exhaustion feels different; there's a destructive quality to it that makes his whole body feel like it's going to fall apart. Satisfied, Nora trots away from him, leaving him to stand blankly in the living room until he decides he should probably do something. Sighing quietly to himself, Jaebum pulls up his computer chair and opens his laptop, almost falling asleep while he waits for it to boot up. When it turns on, he decides to try and look into where Yoojin may have gone after he was released.
The prison system doesn't keep track of their prisoners once they're released, and the files that the warden had sent him earlier in the morning didn't help much: he was released later in the day, around 6pm, and there wasn't anyone to pick him up. The thought makes Jaebum's heart drop a little bit-- should I have been there? --before he shakes off the feeling and continues. The prison supplied him with street clothes; the outfit he'd been arrested in was his police uniform, and besides it being covered in blood, he was no longer going to be wearing it. The last record the prison has of him is when the prison van dropped him off at a bus station 20 miles away, with strict instructions to go in the opposite direction of Seoul. From there, he's harder to track.
He calls the bus station, hoping that they keep certain things on file for long periods of time, especially when it comes to freshly released criminals. But it was four years ago, and when an old-sounding woman answers the phone, he loses hope. "Seoul Express Bus Terminal."
"Hello, this is Detective Im Jaebum with the Seoul District Police Department. Could I bother to ask you a few questions?"
He loses hope further when she says, "how do I know you're really a detective?"
"I guess you'll just have to take my word for it--"
"Wait!" she exclaims. "You're that detective that is investigating that ex-cop's murder, aren't you?"
Hope, just a tiny spark of it, leaps into his chest. "Yes, do you think you can help me?"
"Maybe," she says, and he hears the clicking of computer keys. "What do you need?"
"I'm looking to see what destination a certain passenger went to. It was four years ago, and the passenger was named Kim Yoojin. Do your files go back that far?"
"Generally, no, but when the prisons drop off newly released prisoners to us, we're required to keep a history of where they go and if they come back," she says, and Jaebum nearly cries in relief. "Kim Yoojin..." she trails off, and he can faintly hear the furious clicking of the keys as she types. For someone who sounds so old, she can find information in a computer pretty damn fast. "Seems like the first day he was released, he went to Andomg. There's no history of him after that, except when he came back through the station to depart to Changwon about a year ago, and then a few months ago to Dangjin. That's the last record we have of him."
Changwon? Jaebum only feels more confused. Who would he know that lives in Changwon? "Thank you," he says, and hangs up.
Nothing makes sense. Andong doesn’t make sense, but if he was trying to just get off the map he might have picked somewhere random. Dangjin, at least, makes a little bit of sense--Dangjin is where Yoojin's grandparents lived, and it seems reasonable that he would go there and see them, if they're still alive. But for him to come back so closely to Seoul only to go to Changwon, where they don't know anyone ... why? He puts both of his hands in his dark hair and pulls, frustrated to the point of tears. This case wasn't going to be easy, he knew, but he never could have imagined it would be this confusing. Yoojin, it seems, was not the person that Jaebum remembered him to be, and the feeling he had that first day comes back: should he be grieving, or should he be angry? The feeling threatens to tear him in half, and it dissolves his usually cool demeanor like acid. Who knew that the death of someone that he hasn't thought about in eight years could turn his world upside so easily.
Without thinking, he pushes away from his desk and grabs the scrap of paper with Jinyoung's phone number on it out of the dish by the door. He stands there and stares at it in his palm for a minute, wondering if what he's about to do is really a good idea, or if he should do it at all. But the desperation that roars in his ears drowns out all the indecision, the uncertainty; he grabs his cellphone out of his pocket and dials the number. His heart slams against his ribs for reasons he can't put a finger on as the line rings.
Doubt washes over him when it keeps ringing. How terrible of an idea is this? They've known each other for barely a couple of days and already they've called each other names; fought like they've known each other for years instead of hours. It unsettles him in the way that he can't decide if Jinyoung giving him his phone number makes him feel good or just makes him feel angry—what possible ulterior motive could he have for wanting to get close to Jaebum outside the case, if not to get answers he won't get otherwise? Jaebum couldn't even trust his best friend of over ten years, who's he to think he's going to trust a reporter he's met and talked to for two days? The line clicks like it's being answered, and the resolve in his gut not to get involved has him hanging up and throwing his phone angrily onto the table.
A couple of days pass with nothing new—the frustration only builds as they hit dead end after dead end on Yoojin's case. Jaebum had decided to go with Youngjae to talk to Bae Junhong after all, which was just another hopeless shot in the dark. All he could tell them was what they already knew: that Yoojin had, inexplicably, temporarily lost his mind.
The visit hadn't lasted very long, either: Junhong live more or less in an okay neighborhood, which was to be expected. When he and Youngjae had parked Youngjae's cruiser outside the front of his house, Jaebum couldn't help but notice all the neighborhood kids scatter like mice. He wondered if it's because they had all been conditioned to be afraid of the police instead of expect help from them, and it had made him sad. He'd tried to let go of the thought once they were on the porch, and he had been nervous—as far as he knew, this was one of the last people that had directly talked to Yoojin before he died. It may have been five or six years ago, but it was still a step toward maybe finding out what happened, and he had dabbed at the sweat gathering at his temples despite the frigidity of the air. Youngjae had touched his arm, then, ready to say something to comfort him when Junhong opened the door.
He'd recognized Jaebum immediately somehow, and there was a sneer firmly in place before they'd even introduced themselves. "Im Jaebum," he'd said, leaning on the door frame with one hand still on the doorknob. "Never thought I'd see your face again."
Unsure of what to say to that, Jaebum had just pulled out his badge and shown it to him. "We have some questions about Kim Yoojin."
Junhong had lead them inside and to his living room, where he sat across from them on a recliner. It was a pretty standard line of questioning—how he knew Yoojin, what had happened in prison when they knew each other. But Jaebum had been surprised when he finally asked what happened with their fight, and Junhong had only sighed heavily. His hand had come up to absently touch the scar that Yoojin's hand had left on him, and Jaebum could relate—sometimes, when the lighting is right, he'll catch the scar between his eyes where the skin never really pulled back together after Yoojin hit him. It was, in a distant way, strange and comforting to see the mark of Yoojin's anger on someone else.
When Junhong was finally ready to answer, he looked down at his hands, his voice quiet. "I knew you in high school. Both of you. And I knew Taeyoung, but mostly just because of the two of you. I remember the way the three of you were always making a scene in the hallways, falling over each other and shoving one another and yelling, all that. I think back then I was just jealous—you were so handsome, got all the girls that you wanted but never seemed like you wanted them back." The man's dark eyes had flicked between Jaebum and Youngjae, like he was calculating his next sentence. Finally, he looked at Jaebum. "It was Yoojin who told everyone about you and Taeyoung, you know."
Jaebum had swallowed, feeling Youngjae's eyes on him in surprise. He didn't, and still doesn't, know if he'd ever be ready to relive this. "I know."
Junhong had sighed. "You had so many girls chasing after you that you didn't even want, and I couldn't even get one. So it was just jealousy, you know? And then I ended up in prison, which didn't surprise anyone. But the day Yoojin showed up on the yard, I couldn't believe it. He was cruel, when we were all younger. I hated you because you got what I wanted, I hated Yoojin because he was cruel, and I hated Taeyoung because he was friends with you. So when Yoojin showed up, looking almost the same but skittish and afraid, I still hadn't changed yet. I tormented him. I felt like I could finally get revenge on him, for all the things he did." Junhong hadn't looked up, voice thin. “I’m sorry.”
Jaebum didn't want his apology because he didn't need it; didn't feel it was necessary. If anyone knew the extent of Yoojin's cruelty, it's him, and he'd been half tempted to apologize himself. Instead, he'd nodded and said, "I understand. Go on."
"We had TV in prison, so of course I saw all over the news what he'd done, so I gave him hell about it. And he mostly ignored it, for a while. Kept to himself. The other inmates didn't like him either—they called him creepy. Didn't like the way he was always staring off into space, or pacing and muttering under his breath. His cell mate hated being anywhere near him—said at night Yoojin would get up and pace or would talk in his sleep. Muttering about 'Jaebum doesn't know', and 'I have to tell Jaebum about Taeyoung' and 'I'm sorry' over and over. Stuff like that. And I think that finally it just got to him. I said something about you—it's been so long that I don't remember now, I'm sorry. But it had been particularly awful. And the next thing I know I'm waking up in the infirmary because he's beaten my face in."
His heart had started to slam against his ribs, his notepad completely forgotten in his lap. He hoped Youngjae was writing it all down. "Did he ever say what he was apologizing for? The cell mate?"
Junhong shook his head. "No. Just always saying 'i'm sorry' over and over. Crying sometimes. After the fight, the doctors diagnosed him with some mental disorder. I don't know what, they wouldn't tell us. But they put him on meds, and he was...better after that. Not fine, because he still would talk in his sleep. But better." Junhong had looked up then. "I feel awful about what I did to him in there. The guy had mental problems, and I was just rubbing salt in a wound no one knew was there."
Mentally ill. The possibility had Jaebum's knees shaking, and they'd left shortly after, the thought too much for him to bear. The thought is so encompassing that he hadn’t even noticed the way that Junhong had started to sweat–Jaebum, usually so attuned to even the smallest reactions, had missed this when he’d pushed himself up off the couch and out the front door. Youngjae had tried to get him to talk on the ride back to the station, but there wasn't anything to say: Jaebum wasn't any closer to the answers that he needed, and it had just brought up more and more unpleasant memories. Junhong hadn't been able to tell them anything else, and Jaebum doesn’t even consider that he had anything to do with Yoojin's death.
Now, a few days after their meeting with Junhong, Jaebum wonders if he's thinking too hard about this and if maybe, just maybe, Yoojin was just mentally ill.
The thought comes to him in his office a few days later. Ever since Junhong had mentioned him getting puts on meds at the prison, Jaebum had chalked it up to mismanagement and that drugs would just make Yoojin complacent. But with each day that passes, more and more things drag themselves up from their past that seem to lend some sort of evidence to the theory that Yoojin might have been sick: the realization slams into him as though he'd been hit, and he has to shove himself violently away from his desk and stand up like the chair's on fire. His chest feels tight, and he has to lean a hand against the wall to keep himself from falling. If that's really what it had been—how could he not have seen it? Even when they were younger, all the incidents that he'd just glazed over because Yoojin was his best friend, all the fights and the late nights and the awful things that Yoojin had said or done. The incident with Taeyoung when they were fifteen; his death two years later, and Yoojin had seen it all. Could it have really been just because Yoojin was sick and no one knew? Did Yoojin know and tried to tell him but he wouldn't listen?
Yoojin is dead. Whose fault is it?
He's got his eyes closed when he hears a quiet knock on his office door, and he doesn't move to answer it. Doesn't know if he can. A few silent moments pass and then the door to his office opens, and then suddenly there's someone standing next to him with a warm hand on his arm. "Jaebum? Are you alright?"
Jaebum's eyes squeeze shut tighter when he recognizes Jinyoung's voice. With the revelation that maybe Yoojin had been mentally ill and was just back in Seoul to try and talk to him again and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, dealing with his complicated emotions about reporter Park Jinyoung is the last thing he wants to be doing. There's an awful sort of feeling in his stomach when Jinyoung squeezes his arm and drops his voice impossibly lower, asking again, "Jaebum. Are you alright?"
He can feel the sweat where it's gathered at his temples and plastered his dark hair to the skin. Jaebum opens his eyes but stays leaned against the wall, looking to see Jinyoung standing dangerously close and looking unfairly concerned. As if realizing he might be standing too close, Jinyoung removes his hand and backs away a little, but the concerned look in his eyes stays securely in place. Jaebum hopes his voice isn't shaky when he asks, "What are you doing here?"
Jinyoung puts his hands in his coat pockets. "I just came by to see how it was going."
Through the haze of his sudden realization about the possibility of Yoojin's mental state, he feels both amused and annoyed by this. "To see how what was going?"
"The investigation."
Jaebum, still sweating a little but more or less starting to come back to himself, leans up off his hand and turns to rest his back against the wall, folding his arms over his stomach to keep his hands from visibly shaking. "I don't have anything new for you to write about."
There's an expression on Jinyoung's face that reads as slightly offended and maybe a little put-off, and Jaebum thinks they're finally headed in the right direction. "That's fine," he says, and the expression clears. "I didn’t come by looking for information."
"You said you came by to see how the investigation was going," Jaebum says, eyeing the other man suspiciously. He hadn't noticed when he'd first opened his eyes to see Jinyoung in his office, but looking at him now he can tell that Jinyoung is dressed more casually than he usually is when he shows up for business—he's wearing a slightly too big pale t-shirt tucked into dark jeans cuffed to show off slim ankles. The black peacoat is the same, though today he's got it unbuttoned and unobstructed by his usual messenger bag. "And I told you. I don't have anything new for you."
Sighing, Jinyoung slumps a little. "Fine. I lied. I came by to see how you were doing."
Jaebum swallows. He's not used to people being so tenacious about making sure he knows they care about him—maybe from Mark and Youngjae, but still, the two of them know him well enough to only show their concern for him in ways so subtle that he may not catch it. Jinyoung has been shamelessly open about caring about his wellbeing, and on top of making him uncomfortable, it makes him a little suspicious. "Why?"
This earns him an eye roll which he distantly finds himself approving of. "This again?"
Jaebum shifts, irritated. "Yes."
"I don't know why you're so adamant about questioning me every time I ask if you're doing okay. You're a person. It's not illegal for me to ask if you're doing alright."
"First, that's because you don't know me," Jaebum says, and he's a little amazed about how clear headed he feels now with Jinyoung in the room, standing a few feet away from him with his hands in his pockets and a defiant eyebrow raised. The realization shakes him a little—he falters, feeling himself redden when Jinyoung notices and the corner of his mouth pulls up handsomely. He continues anyway, trying to keep his uncertainty off his face. "Second, I'm a detective. I question people for a living."
It wasn't really a joke, but it has Jinyoung bursting out into laughter. It sounds...genuine, rich and deep and musical, and Jaebum feels his stomach do something interesting when Jinyoung's hand comes out of his pocket to sweetly cover his mouth as he laughs. His eyes crinkle at the corners, nose scrunched up in a way that he finds himself admiring, and he really feels like he's been on a week long roller coaster. Jaebum, after experiencing so much heartbreak so early in his life, made rules for himself so that he would never be as vulnerable as he was when he was young. He made rules after his mother, so that he would become unbreakable; he made rules after Taeyoung, so that he would become unlovable; he made rules after Yoojin, so that he would become untouchable. All of the things that had stacked up against him to turn him into steel had given him the ability to be alone but never lonely. It made him smart about the company he keeps, which is, because of his own making, almost none.
And so, because of the dreamlike and unreal week and a half he's been having, he does something stupid for the first time in twenty years.
"Let's go get a drink."
His voice when he says it is brusque, almost aggressive. Jinyoung stops laughing, the hand covering his mouth falling to around his chest area and hovering like he's not sure what to do with it. The look on his face is surprised, like he's afraid that Jaebum is going to say just kidding or start shouting at him. Silence presses between them as they just stare at each other, Jaebum's words hanging for so long that he starts to sweat a little. The door to his office is still open, and he glances at it nervously like he thinks someone's going to walk in on them and think that something major happened with the way they're just looking at each other in muted shock. But the bullpen is mostly empty, the only noise the soft sounds of keys being pressed as the officers that are there type up reports.
A full minute passes, and Jaebum feels the dread turn his stomach to a rock. He opens to mouth to say sorry, or to take it back; he isn't sure which. But then Jinyoung is letting his hand fall all the way down to his hip, a tentative smile pulling up one side of his mouth. "Are you messing with me?"
Weirdly relieved, Jaebum lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He slumps back a little against the wall, crossing his arms. "No."
Jinyoung looks surprised again. "You really... you're really asking me to get a drink?"
"Yes." Laconic. To the point, as always.
Jinyoung smiles then, so wide it seems to split his face in half. It radiates happiness, and it's so genuine and self-satisfied that it almost hurts him to look at. He wonders off-handedly if his hesitance to call Jinyoung the other night was based in a gut feeling that this was going to end terribly, and that Jinyoung is going to get hurt.
Because he will, inevitably, get hurt. By fate or by his own cruel design, Jinyoung will get hurt.
They always do.
Jinyoung seems to pick up on a change in his expression, because his smile drops and he looks worried. "Are you sure?"
Jaebum ignores the twist in his stomach and just nods, looking away. "What time is it?"
They look at their watches in unison, Jaebum's heavy Rolex on his right wrist and a simple black one on Jinyoung's left. Jinyoung answers first, shaking his sleeve back down. "Almost 5:30."
Without looking at him, Jaebum grabs his coat and shoves it on. Before he can take it back, he starts to head out the door and beckons to Jinyoung to follow him. "Let's go, then. It's happy hour."
If any of the other officers in the building think anything of them leaving together, they don't mention it. None of them even look up from their desks, and Jaebum feels a little relieved that he doesn't have to awkwardly explain why he's taking a reporter to his car. When they get into the parking lot, Jinyoung lets out a low whistle in appreciation as he walks around to the passenger side of Jaebum's car. It's nothing terribly special, as far as he's concerned: it's an older model, one that had been his father's in the 80's. His father rarely ever driving it but keeping it in pristine condition made it last, and now Jaebum only drives it to and from work to keep it in good shape. It's a dark, sleek looking car with a huge backseat and a bench-style front seat, the chrome embellishments on the inside reflecting both of their faces as they get in. "Wow," Jinyoung says, buckling his seatbelt and looking around the interior. He whistles again. "This is a car."
Jaebum laughs a little. "It was my dad's. From the 80's."
"It's immaculate," Jinyoung says, and Jaebum pretends like he doesn't watch as the other man runs a delicate hand across the dashboard. Jaebum swallows, inexplicably nervous about their proximity like he always seems to be.
He feels Jinyoung looking at him looking at his hands, and he quickly focuses back on the road. He heads into the downtown area, slowing down when he hits traffic. "Do you know any good bars?"
Jinyoung laughs. "I'm not from here. Why would I know any good bars?"
A little embarrassed, Jaebum feels himself redden. "I don't drink much."
“Really? Isn’t it a given that being a detective means you have a bottle of whiskey in your desk that you drink late at night?”
Jaebum makes a face. “Ha, ha,” he says sarcastically, but the corner of his mouth lifts in a smile and Jinyoung laughs again. There’s a bar that Jackson had mentioned to him once before, a sort of hole-in-the-wall kind of place with low lights and is quieter and more intimate than other places. He doesn’t know if intimate is really the setting they should be aiming for, but anywhere quiet enough to talk to each other and where he might not get recognized is a plus. It’s a few lights down, and Jaebum gets into the turn lane. “You shouldn’t perpetuate stereotypes.”
He can almost feel Jinyoung roll his eyes in the passenger seat, and he glances over to see Jinyoung already looking at him. “Says you, who is practically the walking definition of a stereotypical detective. Minus the drinking, I suppose.”
Jaebum looks away, and he pulls into the parking lot of the bar before he answers. “How so?”
“Oh, you know,” Jinyoung says, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Surly, kind of mean, obsessed--”
Jaebum barks a laugh. “Obsessed? How would you know I’m obsessed?”
“Please--it’s written all over you. Can I finish?”
They get to the front door of the bar, and just based on the outside Jaebum already thinks they made a good choice: the light outside is faint, throwing a yellowish glow over Jinyoung’s face when he looks up after Jaebum opens the door for him. He smiles, heading inside and disappearing into almost darkness. On the inside, practically the only lights in the place are behind the glass shelves lined with multicolored bottles of alcohol and in the terribly constructed lamps hanging over all the booths lining the walls. There’s a few more of the hanging lamps scattered through the center of the room and over some pool tables toward the back, but other than that the place is dim and quiet. Jaebum thinks that if he was an avid drinker, he’d never go anywhere but here.
Once they’re both seated at a booth toward the back and have ordered drinks (some citrus drink and a beer for Jinyoung and, stereotypically, whiskey and Coke for Jaebum), he puts his elbows on the table and sighs. “Anyways, continue.”
“What have I said already? Surly, mean, obsessed. You’re drinking a whiskey--”
“Only because you’re making me a stereotype.”
Jinyoung rolls his eyes and continues like he hadn’t interrupted. “You’re stressed, have a tragic past, and you’re working your best friend’s murder case. Sound about right?”
It’s not funny, per se, because it’s accurate-- he does have a tragic past and he is working his best friend’s murder. But when Jinyoung puts it that way, it does seem a little funny and he finds himself chuckling. The waitress comes by and sets their drinks down, asking Jaebum if he needs anything else and winking at him before leaving. “Yes, you’re correct.”
“Was she flirting with you?”
Jaebum shrugs, picking up his whiskey and downing it with a neat flick of his wrist. Catching the girl’s eye, he signals for another one and a beer as well. “Maybe. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Sure, you weren’t,” Jinyoung says, but his tone is teasing, and he smiles at Jaebum around the straw of his drink. He can’t help but notice again the dimple in his cheek, and he looks away.
“So--” Jaebum starts, and he can’t believe how awkward he sounds. It’s not a date, but the awkward way he coughs and shifts in his seat has him feeling like it’s his first date all over again. “So. Changwon?”
Jinyoung finishes his drink fast, also motioning for another. “What about it?”
“Tell me about it.”
Jinyoung smiles, obviously happy that Jaebum is asking him a personal question, and Jaebum feels his stomach twist a little uneasily. Whatever is happening, it’s almost too comfortable; too easy. Their conversation starts naturally and something about it just feels... normal, and he absentmindedly wonders if maybe he’s already feeling the alcohol and if getting drinks wasn’t a good idea after all.
“I was born there, and grew up there. I didn’t leave it much, though I’ve been to Seoul a few times. I went to college in Busan and then after I graduated, I went back to Changwon and helped my parents for a while before the Seoul Crime Report started. When I found out they needed people for unpaid internships, I jumped on the chance.”
He knows he shouldn’t, but Jaebum finishes his second shot of whiskey and asks for a third, picking up the beer he’d ordered and sipping it. “How old are you?”
“26.”
“Ahh, you’re younger than me.”
Jinyoung smirks at him, and Jaebum really doesn’t like the pleasant sensation it sends shooting into his stomach. “I think I could have guessed that, ahjussi.”
Mid-sip, Jaebum laughs and spits out some of his drink onto the table. Jinyoung squeals loudly, laughing as he starts to turn red and grab napkins to clean it up. Face hot, he says, “ahjussi? I’m barely 30.”
Jinyoung’s voice, when he answers, is silky smooth. “Do you prefer hyung?”
He stops wiping up the mess he made and looks at Jinyoung across the table, their eyes meeting. The atmosphere feels a little more charged than it did a few minutes ago, and Jaebum wonders if Jinyoung is purposefully looking at him with bedroom eyes or if it’s just because they’re both nervously downing their alcohol and blinding asking for more to ease the pressure. Either way, he swallows hard and pretends that he doesn’t notice Jinyoung watching the line of his throat when he does.
“Very funny,” he mumbles, and finishes wiping up the table.
When he leans back and wraps a hand around his beer, Jinyoung is looking at him a little too seriously for his liking, and it makes him miss the joking mood from just a moment ago. “What?” he asks warily, hoping that, whatever it is, it doesn’t have to do with the two of them.
Jinyoung sighs quietly, looking down into his half empty beer before seeming to decide the alcohol’s given him enough courage. “The day we met, do you remember?”
His stomach turns, and he hopes it doesn’t show on his face. Jaebum, surprisingly, doesn’t really want this to end--being in the bar with Jinyoung is refreshing. But if he’s going to ask a question about the two of them, he’s not sure Jinyoung will like the answer. “Yes. I do.”
“The day we met, you told me something, and I really want to ask you about it.”
Jaebum nods, sipping his beer. He notices the movement of Jinyoung’s eyes on his mouth when he licks his lips, and he tries to keep a neutral expression even though it sends little pinpricks down his arms. “Sure. Go ahead.”
“You said that you had a friend who died. What happened?”
Even though he’s a little shocked, he’s mostly relieved--talking about Taeyoung in any capacity is beyond painful for him, even though it’s been almost thirteen years. There’s a lot of things about his past with Taeyoung that not even Mark or Youngjae know--and they’re his two closest confidants. Jaebum puts his drink down, sighing heavily. The alcohol makes his vision swim a little bit, and he grips the edge of the table with one hand. Whether to keep himself upright or just to make himself feel grounded as he decides on whether or not he can answer that question, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, chasing his thoughts further and further down the rabbit hole until he finally decides on an answer.
“It’s a long story.”
“We have time,” Jinyoung says softly, and when Jaebum looks up at him, there’s an unfairly sympathetic look on his face. Jaebum almost wishes that he was looking at him with those bedroom eyes instead. “But only if you want to.”
“Not a lot of people know,” he says, and once he starts he doesn’t stop. “About what happened to Taeyoung, I mean. I met Yoojin when I was ten, when his family moved into the neighborhood from Dangjin. My mom had just passed away about a year before that, and I was living with my grandparents in an older neighborhood that didn’t have a lot of kids.”
Jinyoung’s face looks sad, and Jaebum finds himself wishing that they weren’t having this conversation and that he could say something to make it disappear, and to make that eye-crinkling smile come back. “I’m sorry. Where was your dad?”
“He died when I was a year old.” Seeing the look on Jinyoung’s face, he brazenly reaches across the table to pat his hand and pulls it back sharply. “It’s alright. So when Yoojin moved to the neighborhood, there was finally a kid my age I could hang out with outside of school. We got close really, really fast. Then a couple months later, another family moved in a couple of streets over from us. Yoojin and I saw him and his little brother walking one day, and we started talking to them. We met Taeyoung mostly by chance, but he integrated himself into our group pretty seamlessly.”
He tries not to think about it, but this is a very dangerous road for him to be on. Jaebum doesn’t forget that Jinyoung is a reporter, and that he could quote anything that Jaebum is saying or take it and publish it in the papers, but it’s a testament to his willingness to do something dumb for once in his life that he lets the story out to a stubborn reporter on blind faith. He can feel Jinyoung’s eyes on him, but he keeps his gaze directed at the table or on the line of Jinyoung’s knuckles where his hands are folded around his beer glass when he continues.
“Taeyoung and I...we were close. Not closer than Yoojin and I, but close in a different way. When we were thirteen, three years after we’d met, Taeyoung was at my house studying when he came out to me. At first, I was a little worried. I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time, and I was terrified of what everyone else would say. So I told him not to tell anyone but me, and that we couldn’t ever tell Yoojin.
“And he didn’t. Not for a long time, at least, and I was the only one who knew. Yoojin and Taeyoung fought a lot. Some of it was brotherly, but sometimes it was awful. Real. They’d get in shouting matches at my house or at the park or during soccer practice. They fist fought a few times, but they always made up after. When it was just the two of us, me and Yoojin or me and Taeyoung, I’d ask them about it. If they hated each other, for some reason, but they both always said no. So they loved each other, in their way. But most of the time it was ugly, and for no real reason. Just different people, I guess.
“Taeyoung still hadn’t told anyone he was gay. When I...” Jaebum stops, swallowing hard. It’s always so easy to talk about his memories of Taeyoung before he died; how seamlessly they were as a group and how well-fitting he and Jaebum were, as a unit separate from that of the three of them or him and Yoojin. But when it gets to this part, he always falters. He pushes himself to continue. “When I started to realize that I had feelings for guys as well as girls around fourteen, maybe a year or so after Taeyoung came out to me, he was the first person I told. At first, the relief on his face confused me--I didn’t know why he’d want that to happen to me; I’d cleaned him up after someone kicked his ass more times than I could count. But then he told me that he’d had a crush on me. Since we’d met, even. And I... I was still a little confused. Being fourteen and liking girls and boys was still so weird that I didn’t know what to do. But Taeyoung kissed me, and it just felt right.” He smiles awkwardly. “That probably sounds stupid.”
There’s an almost pained tint to Jinyoung’s expression, and Jaebum’s heart squeezes. “No, it doesn’t,” Jinyoung reassures him, voice softer than it has reason to be. He swallows.
“When Taeyoung and I started to spend more time alone together, Yoojin got jealous. More jealous than when we’d spent time together in the past, and I think it’s because he knew. About both of us, even though we swore to never tell him unless we felt like he was ready. But I don’t think he would have ever been ready. He was angry a lot--he fought more with Taeyoung, and tried to pick fights with me, but I was always so steadfast and calm that he would give up when I wouldn’t fight back. But then he told everyone about Taeyoung and I.”
He closes his eyes as he remembers it. The way everyone had whispered as he and Taeyoung had walked down the halls, looking at each other in confusion, with Yoojin nowhere to be found. He remembers the names they’d been called, the people who’d thrown things at them; he remembers the fight with Yoojin on his porch that night.
“That’s when we were fifteen, and Taeyoung and I had been dating for almost a year. Secretly. Even though we were young, we were utterly convinced we were in love with each other. Kids are kids. They whispered about us, called us names, threw shit at us. Yoojin hadn’t showed up to school that day. Taeyoung was devastated--the kids we went to school with had younger brothers around his own brother’s age, and he knew that it would get back to his brother, and to his family. I’d never seen Taeyoung cry before, but he cried so hard that day. He was wrecked. Convinced his family was going to throw him out.
“I was angry. I knew it had been Yoojin, because that’s just how he was--he could be funny and caring, but he knew how to be awful and vindictive as well. Even though he’d only known me a couple of months more than Taeyoung, he felt like I belonged to him, I guess. Either way, I called him to my house that night.”
Jinyoung watches him as he tells the rest of the story, his heart thudding painfully in his chest as he relives it even as he says the words.
“It was late evening, and I couldn’t really see his face as he came up the porch steps. But just by the line of his shoulders, I could tell he was angry. Angry, maybe a little afraid. But mostly angry. And I remember closing the door and asking him, ‘Why did you do that?’ before he even had the chance to say anything to me. And in his usual fashion, he had leaned against the one of the pillars on my front porch and stared at me, his black hair tucked behind his ears and his dark eyes on fire.”
“Do what?” He’d asked, arms crossed angrily over his chest, but Jaebum knew him too well to fall for it--he knew that underneath his arms, his hands were shaking.
“Why did you tell everyone?”
“So it’s true, then?”
Jaebum had felt the anger rise in his chest, so fast and so hot it felt like acid. “Does it matter if it’s true or not? We’re your best friends,” he spat, so viciously that Yoojin had looked surprised. “ He’s your best friend.”
Yoojin wiped the surprise from his face. “If you were really my best friends, wouldn’t you have told me?”
It hurt, undoubtedly it hurt. But Jaebum had just looked back at him fiercely. “Would you have gotten it any more than you do now?”
Yoojin had opened his mouth to reply, but seemed to realize that Jaebum was right. They’re barely fifteen. Jaebum hadn’t expected him to understand. But the fact that he didn’t, and still didn’t at that moment, was agonizing. “He doesn’t deserve you.”
“What?”
“Taeyoung doesn’t deserve you, Jaebum.”
“Oh, what, but you do?”
“No, I’m not a queer,” Yoojin had spat at him, and Jaebum felt it as though he’d been hit. “But you deserve better.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
Yoojin had looked away, dark hair coming untucked. Without looking back, he’d said, “I did tell everyone. You’re right. And I’d do it again.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Yoojin said, and when he finally looked back at him after looking away for a few moments, Jaebum had was horrified to realize that he barely recognize the person in front of him. Five years and here was a side of Yoojin that he’d never experienced himself--dark, anxious, picking a fight. The word Jaebum used to describe the look in his eyes to his grandmother had been “evil”. And the next words that came from his mouth had only served as evidence that he may have been right: “It was fun.”
Anger had taken him by the throat then. Jaebum had launched himself at his best friend, not realizing that he was screaming until he’d had Yoojin underneath him struggling to push him off. “Why would you do that?” he’d screamed again, grabbing Yoojin’s shirt collar and nearly falling when it ripped.
Yoojin had looked afraid, then. “Jaebum, I’m sorry--”
“You know how I feel about him!” And then, before he could stop himself, Jaebum punched him so hard in the face he felt the bone crack underneath his fist. Yoojin had screamed so loud that his grandmother had woken up, and she’d had to pull a crying Jaebum off of a crying Yoojin and call emergency services. Jaebum had only watched the ambulance as it took Yoojin away, standing on his porch until it got too cold to be outside.
Jaebum slumps against the back of the seat of the booth, already exhausted from talking. He can’t bring himself to look at Jinyoung’s face--it’s not a moment that he’s proud of, and it’s part of the reason that he never tells anyone about Taeyoung. He goes quiet for a moment, vision blurry. The alcohol really hits him, then, and he realizes that he’s just told almost half of his life story to someone who’s barely a step above a stranger. But he can’t stop there, and he knows he’s drunk when he just sighs and continues without bravado.
“It was a while before we all talked to each other again. Two years later, when we were seventeen and two years after that whole episode, Yoojin and Taeyoung were in an accident. I wasn’t there, and Yoojin would never talk about it, so I still don’t know what happened. But Yoojin had showed up at my house dazed and covered in Taeyoung’s blood, just mumbling over and over that it was an accident. Turns out he’d been driving too fast and hit something in the road--Taeyoung hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and he’d gone through the windshield. The glass cut his face open, but the impact had broken his neck. He’s lucky he didn’t go to jail, but Taeyoung’s family knew that Yoojin hadn’t meant to do it. And...” he hesitates for a moment before realizing that, after Taeyoung died, there had been nothing else. “That’s it.”
Jaebum hasn’t looked at Jinyoung’s face in what feels like hours, but was probably only about thirty minutes. He’s staring at the table, expecting Jinyoung to realize that his past is really tragic and to get up and never speak to him again, so he’s surprised when he feels Jinyoung’s warm hand gently touch his wrist.
“Jaebum,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that Jaebum can’t identify, something like horror and grief and anger mixed with the soft desperation of offered comfort. It almost makes his chest hurt. “I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t look up. Jaebum is just staring at where Jinyoung’s hand is on his wrist, the younger man’s fingers slightly curled and just barely brushing against his pulse point. But he can feel it, and every featherlight touch of Jinyoung’s fingers on his wrist sends heat coursing through his veins until he feels like the booth’s on fire. When he finally looks up into Jinyoung’s eyes, the look in them sends the heat pouring into his gut: he’s never seen anyone look so pitifully, desperately beautiful. The bedroom eyes are back, but there’s lines of tension in the younger man’s face that tell Jaebum he’s trying very hard not to show it.
“We should go,” he finally says, and he hates the way his stomach feels empty when he moves his wrist out from under Jinyoung’s fingers.
Both of them are too drunk to drive, so they lean against each other outside as they wait for a cab. The mood is a little brighter, thankfully--Jaebum thinks that if maybe he drank a little more, he wouldn’t be such an asshole all the time.
“I’m sorry about all that,” he says after hanging up, and Jinyoung looks up at him. There’s still a hint of tension: Jaebum can feel the heat of Jinyoung’s shoulder pressed against his own, and the way Jinyoung’s eyes flick from his eyes to his mouth is less than subtle. But he doesn’t address it, instead trying to smile. “That was a lot of personal information that you didn’t need to know right away.”
Jinyoung shrugs, dark eyes lingering on Jaebum’s mouth for longer than they should when he finally realizes he’s caught and looks away, turning a little red. “It’s alright. I feel like you won’t hate being in the same room as me as much anymore now that we know each other.”
He’s not entirely wrong, but he doesn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that. “Who says I hated being in the same room as you?”
Jinyoung rolls his eyes, but the smile comes back, and Jaebum hastily pushes away the thought of how badly he wants to kiss the dimple that appears in his cheek. “Your body language.”
“You’re very observant,” Jaebum says, holding open the door of the cab to let Jinyoung in as when it arrives.
As they settle in, Jaebum can’t help but notice that the back seat of the cab is much smaller than the front seat of his car, and they’re sitting very close. Jinyoung leans forward to hang over the barrier to talk to the driver, and Jaebum glances down at the strip of exposed skin at Jinyoung’s back. He closes his eyes, trying to remind himself that the only reason he’s noticing is because he’s drunk and hasn’t had sex in a very long time. But then Jinyoung is leaning back, turning his head to say something to him and stopping when he realizes how close they are. A smirk widens across his face.
They look at each other for a moment, until Jaebum finally can’t help it: he cracks a smile, scoffing when Jinyoung crows in triumph.
They chat for a bit as the cab winds through the heavy traffic, giving Jinyoung plenty of time to talk Jaebum’s ear off for a change. He’s vaguely aware of their proximity the entire time: he doesn’t know if Jinyoung is paying attention or not, but his skin grows more and more sensitive every time he feels Jinyoung’s thigh press against his own when he moves, or when their arms brush as Jinyoung talks with his hands. They’re down the street from Jaebum’s apartment, Jinyoung in the middle of a story from when he was in high school about some art project gone awry or another, when the cab driver curses loudly and slams on his brakes. He swerves violently to avoid a car pulling away from a parking spot, and neither of them are wearing a seatbelt in the cramped back seat. Jinyoung yelps in surprise as he’s thrown against Jaebum, one hand going out to catch himself and gripping Jaebum’s thigh to support himself as the cab driver rights the car and leans out the window to shout at the other driver. His thighs have always been a little sensitive, and he can’t help the groan that escapes his mouth when he feels Jinyoung’s fingertips digging into the inside of his thigh.
Jinyoung looks at him, and Jaebum looks back, Jinyoung’s hand still firmly in place even as the cab driver pulls up to the curb outside the front of Jaebum’s apartment building. The backseat of the cab is rife with tension now: Jinyoung slides his hand up a little bit, and the sensation of the younger’s fingertips traveling up his thigh has him biting down on his lower lip against another groan. Jaebum looks up at him, and Jinyoung’s eyes are hooded and heavy with a desire that, based on how he’s looking at him, is rival to Jaebum’s own.
“Do you--”
“Can I--”
“Yeah,” they breathe at the same time, and Jaebum is hastily passing money to the cab driver before the both of them are spilling out of the cab and into the lobby of his apartment building.
They’re both still drunk, and Jinyoung laughs when he stumbles and almost falls into the massive glass door of Jaebum’s apartment building. Jaebum’s mouth dries up when he feels Jinyoung standing behind him as they wait for the elevator, his hands hovering around Jaebum’s hips but not quite touching yet. It’s still a little awkward--they both tumble into the elevator, Jinyoung asking him what floor and bending over to press the button in a way that has Jaebum wondering both if he did it on purpose and how much he could get away with doing to him in an elevator. Jinyoung turns to him as the elevator goes up, eyes on his mouth again, and Jaebum reaches out to put a finger in Jinyoung’s belt loop and pull him closer so that their hips are almost touching. This close, he can see the movement of Jinyoung’s shoulders as he breathes unevenly, and Jaebum can’t help but think of how unfair it is that Park Jinyoung could waltz into his life and completely turn it more upside down than it already was.
By the time the elevator stops on Jaebum’s floor, they’re both getting handsy. Jaebum leads Jinyoung down the hallway briskly with a hand on his lower back, and Jinyoung leans into the touch with an arm around Jaebum’s waist and already trying to untuck his dress shirt. He pulls Jinyoung’s hand away to unlock the door, immensely enjoying the pathetic little whine he lets out when his hand is removed from Jaebum’s hip.
They’re all hands once they’re inside Jaebum’s apartment with their shoes kicked off. Jaebum pushes Jinyoung up against the door, caging him in with one hand on either side of his head. Jinyoung’s hands are on his waist, pulling at the dress shirt tucked into his dark slacks and breathing unevenly. Jinyoung’s eyes flick up to his, pupils wide, and in the dim light from the kitchen Jaebum watches as the younger man licks his lips. Jinyoung looks like he’s going to say something, but then Jaebum is angling his head down and pressing his mouth against Jinyoung’s.
The give is immediate, and Jinyoung willingly gives up control when he parts his lips beneath Jaebum’s and whines when he licks into his mouth. The kiss is wet and sloppy, but the heat of it sends sharp strokes of pleasure through Jaebum’s stomach, and it picks up in intensity when Jaebum pushes against Jinyoung’s body with his own. The hard lines of their erections touch when Jaebum presses closer, and the both of them let out soft noises of pleasure that has Jinyoung’s hands coming up to tug on Jaebum’s hair. He growls into his mouth when Jinyoung pulls teasingly, one hand coming up off the dark wood of the door to grab a handful of Jinyoung’s ass. The shudder that goes through Jinyoung’s body when he does it has their hips bumping together, and the friction from Jinyoung’s jeans against the soft material of his slacks pulls a groan out of him. Jinyoung’s hands move from his hair and starts working on unbuttoning his shirt, gasping quietly when Jaebum kisses a line from his mouth to his jawline. Once Jinyoung gets the buttons undone, he’s tilting his head to give Jaebum better access to his neck and urgently pushing at Jaebum’s shoulders.
Jaebum ignores it in favor of sucking a mark into the spot underneath Jinyoung’s jaw where the skin of his neck meets his ear. Jinyoung moans, his hips grinding into Jaebum’s impatiently, both his hands fisted in the collar of Jaebum’s unbuttoned dress shirt. Jinyoung’s hips buck into his when Jaebum uses his teeth, other hand pulling at the loose neck of Jinyoung’s t-shirt to give Jaebum more access to his shoulder. Whining, Jinyoung rolls his hips again, both of them hard and straining against their pants.
“Jaebum-ah,” Jinyoung pants, voice wavering in desperation. “C’mon, let’s go--”
Without saying anything, Jaebum pulls Jinyoung forward by the collar of his shirt, sealing their mouths together again as he blindly pulls Jinyoung into his bedroom. Still using the collar of Jinyoung’s shirt as a lead, he turns them and pushes Jinyoung roughly onto the bed, smirking in satisfaction when Jinyoung’s eyes widen. Jinyoung reaches up as Jaebum positions himself over Jinyoung’s hips, using one knee to spread the younger’s legs apart. He pushes at the shoulder’s of Jaebum’s dress shirt, nearly ripping it trying to take it off. Jaebum leans up to let it slide off his shoulders slowly, grinning when Jinyoung whines and thrusts his hips up.
“C’mon, you asshole,” Jinyoung breathes, running a hand down Jaebum’s bare chest and settling on his belt, where he deftly starts to undo the buckle one-handed. “Fuck me or I’m leaving.”
The image of Jinyoung underneath him and expertly undoing his belt one-handed has heat coursing through Jaebum’s stomach, and he bites down on his bottom lip. The thought of Jinyoung walking out in the middle of them about to get it on has Jaebum dipping down and rolling his body into Jinyoung’s, who reaches up to grab his hair with one hand and pulling his belt through the loops with the other. Jaebum impatiently motions for Jinyoung to sit up, and he yanks his shirt over his head and drops it unceremoniously to the floor next to his belt. Jaebum keeps kissing him as they shed the rest of their clothes, almost unwilling to move away from his mouth like he’s never going to get to kiss him like this again. The hard line of Jinyoung’s dick presses against the bone of Jaebum’s hip, and he reaches down with one hand to wrap his fingers around it and pull gently. The touch is electric--Jinyoung’s hips come off the bed, rolling up into his hand and whining. Jaebum jerks him off slowly, sucking another mark into the almost sinfully perfect line of Jinyoung’s collar bone. He feels his own dick slide against the inside of Jinyoung’s thigh, and the wetness at the tip has Jinyoung shaking with anticipation.
“Fuck--” Jinyoung says, and eyes squeezing shut. “I want you to--”
Jaebum wouldn’t call himself a nun, but he’s not reckless with sex, either, so it’s a testament to his drunken state when he reaches into the beside table to grab lube but completely bypasses the condoms. Jinyoung doesn’t seem to mind, his breath coming in uneven pants punctuated by soft moans and curses when Jaebum does something particularly pleasing with his mouth. Jaebum is almost painfully hard when he slowly starts to finger Jinyoung open, watching as Jinyoung practically falls apart underneath him from just his hands. By the time he finally lines up and pushes in, Jinyoung is begging. Both of his hands come up to Jaebum’s shoulders, his blunt nails digging in and sending sharp lines of pleasure down Jaebum’s spine as he starts to pick up the pace.
It’s a little uneven because he’s drunk, but the way Jinyoung rolls his hips down to meet Jaebum’s thrusts on the upstroke has the both of them panting and pawing at each other; Jinyoung drags his nails down Jaebum’s back when he starts to thrust into him harder, the headboard above them every so often hitting the light wall of Jaebum’s bedroom. The harder he fucks into him the more noise he makes, each breath punching out of him intermingled with broken off swears or pleas of yes, like this or harder, fuck, harder and even some awful-sounding English curse words. Jaebum reaches down and runs a hand down Jinyoung’s stomach, the sweat from both of them gathering near his navel.
“Christ, you’re noisey,” Jaebum finally breathes out, grinning when he wraps a hand around Jinyoung’s cock again and Jinyoung almost screams. He pumps his hand a few times, his hips snapping up into Jinyoung almost violently now, and Jinyoung barely has time to warn him when he comes across his stomach, hips lifted off the bed and filth spilling from his mouth. The sight of Jinyoung absolutely losing it beneath him sends heat pooling in his gut, sweat plastering his hair to his temples and running down his neck into his collarbones. Jinyoung reaches up, grabbing a fistful of Jaebum’s hair and using it to pull himself up so that their mouths meet, teeth clicking and tongues sliding together. It’s sloppy, hot and messy and wet, but Jinyoung biting down on his lower lip has his orgasm finally tearing through him and he shudders out a moan so deep he can feel it in his chest.
He pulls out, leaning over to the other nightstand and grabbing a clean towel folded up in the bottom drawer. Still drunk, he haphazardly cleans himself off and then hands the towel to Jinyoung. Now drunk and exhausted, he collapses on his side next to Jinyoung, who’s already looking at him. There’s a strange expression on his face, and again Jaebum has the strange feeling of not being able to read someone like he usually can. He’s about to ask when Jinyoung’s expression clears, turning into one that’s soft and fond.
“You’re not going to make me leave, are you?” Jinyoung asks, and although his voice sounds playful, Jaebum knows that there’s a hint of seriousness behind the question. His heart contracts when he realizes that it’s his reality--he told Jinyoung this wasn’t a date, but then he ended up getting drunk and spilling half his life story and bringing Jinyoung back to his apartment to fuck him without really thinking of the aftermath. But something in him whispers that he doesn’t want Jinyoung to leave, anyway.
“I probably should,” he says, honest as always. When Jinyoung’s eyes widen, he puts a hand on Jinyoung’s hip in reassurance. “But no. I’m not.”
Despite being drunk and sated, the look of happiness on Jinyoung’s face is almost too good to be true. He falls asleep a few minutes later, and Jaebum pretends that he doesn’t feel satisfied when Jinyoung’s peaceful face is the last thing he sees when he closes his eyes.
When the dream starts again, something about it feels different: instead of the usual eerie silence, there’s a whispering sound, like thousands of hushed voices overlapping as it rushes by his ears like wind. It’s too jumbled and distorted for him to make anything out, and as he approaches the still familiar house, dread builds up in his chest. It’s almost scarier than the silence, and as he ducks under the crime scene tape like he’s done a hundred times over, he finds himself wishing for it.
Blood still stains the ground in massive, arcing fans, as though someone had filled a power-washer full of blood and sprayed it on the sidewalk. Here, for the first time in months, the dream changes: instead of looking away from it, Jaebum looks directly at it. The stark red against the dirty, off-white of the concrete sidewalk is bright, and it gleams in the muted sunshine of his dream like it’s fresh. He feels himself bend down, crouching at the edge of one of the slowly moving puddles. The whispering gets louder, more discordant, and the sweat gathered at his temples starts to trail down the sides of his face. Reaching out, he skirts his fingers along the mess of blood, and his heart takes a dive in his chest when it’s hot against his fingertips. That same, indescribable horror creeps up his back as he watches the way small drops of the blood leak from his fingers and ripple in the pool of it at his feet as though it were water. Tearing his eyes away, Jaebum looks back up at the house: still the same, familiar to the point of frustrated tears, with blood on the steps and the plants on the railing. The steps, all four of them, with a crack in the wood of the second one from the top. Something shifts in the back of his mind, and there’s the flash of an image across his vision of how the crack got there but then it’s gone again. The plants, too, tickle the back of his mind: lined up by color order of their pots, largest to smallest. He knows that’s why they’re in that order. But why? And the dog--he turns to look at the dog, to see if it does the same thing, but it’s missing from its usual place by the door.
For the first time, Jaebum speaks in the dream. Where is the dog?
No one answers him.
Where is the dog?
His eyes go to the spot on the porch where the ceramic dog should be, knowing inherently that it is missing. Somehow the nightmare gets worse, and the horror spreads from his back into his chest. Paralyzed by the pool of blood with his eyes fixated on the spot by the door where he knows the dog should be, the whispering gets louder and louder until it’s incoherent, like screaming, and Jaebum goes to stand.
Where is the dog? He screams, but still no one answers him. He stands rooted to the spot with his hand held away from him as endless blood still drips from his fingers though it should have dried by now. His heart slams fearfully against his ribcage as his mind works faster and faster--there should be dog there, a border collie, with black eyes, black as night, why do I know this place, everything else is here, the plants, the blood, where is the dog--
Suddenly, the discordant voices stop, utterly and completely, dropping him into that horrible and yet familiar silence. There’s not even a faint static sound when they go--only the tight feeling like all the air had been sucked from the room. As he stares at the place where the dog should be, a sudden voice, one he’s heard a million times over, whispers in his ear.
Jaebum.
He jerks awake, crying out when his wrist slams painfully against the bedside table. Sweat plasters his hair to his face and to the back of his neck, and he can feel it where it drips down his bare back. The blanket pools around his waist, and he frantically looks around the dark room as though he’s never seen it before. His chest expands and contracts in great heaving gasps, the dream replaying itself against his eyelids when he squeezes them shut, forward and backward. The headache comes next, pounding against both temples and against the backs of his eyes like his head is stuffed with cotton. He doesn’t even remember that there’s someone else in the bed with him until he feels a hand on his back.
“Jaebum?”
Still caught up in the undertow of the dream, he jumps and twists away, terrified. His heart slams against his ribs much like it had been in the dream, and though he realizes he’s awake now, the barrage of thoughts won’t stop, and his mind is working fast, so fast--he has to get up, get out of the room, turn the light on, something. He throws the blanket off, distantly realizing he’s still naked but still too confused and shaken up to think anything of it. There’s a pair of cotton shorts draped across the back of a chair by the window, and he tugs them on before throwing open the curtains and pacing back and forth. He doesn’t even realize that it’s morning until he turns his head toward the window and has to squint into the harsh light of the sun.
The dream being different this time, after months and months of always being the exact same, has to mean something. He starts to come down a little, still sweating and shaking but less wild and terrified than he had been when he’d first woken up. Jaebum doesn’t even seem to remember that Jinyoung is in the room until he tries speaking again.
“Jaebum?”
He stops pacing, the sun warming him and slowly starting to dry the sweat on his back. Jinyoung is sitting up in the bed, shirtless with the blanket pulled up and tucked around his hips. One of his eyes is squinted shut against the light coming in through the window, and Jinyoung lifts a hand from the bed to shield his eyes against it. “What’s wrong?”
“The dog was missing.”
Jinyoung puts his hand down when Jaebum shifts to block the sun with his back, the younger man’s dark eyes wide and confused now. “What?”
“The dog was missing. The little ceramic dog by the door. It was gone.”
There’s a spark in his mind, now; it’s small, but it’s there. He grasps at it blindly.
“Jaebum, I don’t know what that means. Are you okay?”
Something important is coming to him, he can feel it, and he doesn’t have time to explain. “The dog that was always by the door, it was gone this time. And the blood on the ground was wet when I touched it--”
“Blood?” Jinyoung’s voice cracks as it raises a few octaves in alarm. “Jaebum, what are you talking about?”
He had started pacing again, but he stops when he remembers crouching down in the dream and looking up at the stairs. The third one, second from the top, was cracked on the left side. The wood was strong, but it was old, and when Yoojin had just barely made it over them on his skateboard, the wheel had caught and cracked the wood. The memory powers through him, almost physically rocking him back on his heels. They had been, what, eleven that year? Barely friends for a year when Yoojin had asked him to go on vacation with his family. All they did was skateboard and stay out until the sun went down, and he remembers the way that Yoojin had broken his arm that night, when he tried to do a skateboard trick on the stairs in the dark but had cracked the wood instead and had fallen.
“Yoojin,” Jaebum whispers, eyes wide and fixed on Jinyoung’s confused and frightened face when the realization strikes him like lightening.
The voice, at the end of the dream, had been Yoojin’s.
Jaebum runs from the room, ignoring Jinyoung’s confused shout after him. He digs for his phone in his coat pocket where it had been thrown over the back of the couch the night before, and he anxiously scrolls through it until he finds who he’s looking for. He dials Youngjae’s number, leaning against the couch as the line rings.
“Hullo?”
“Youngjae,” Jaebum breathes, feeling fifteen kinds of relieved. “Youngjae, I figured something out.”
Where it had been sleepy a moment ago, Youngjae’s voice is alert now. “What? What do you mean? About Yoojin?”
“Sort of,” he says, and with the revelation he feels the frantic terror finally leave him. Adrenaline still rushes through him, his heart beating too fast, and he goes to sit down on the couch to try and calm down a little bit. “The dream, remember the dream I’ve been having?”
“I don’t know that I’d call it a dream more than a nightmare,” Youngjae says, yawning. “But yes. What about it?”
“Remember how I told you the house was always so familiar to me, but I could never figure out why?”
“Yes.” Youngjae pauses for a moment. “Jaebum, is this really why you called me at 7 a.m?”
Startled, he pulls the phone away from his ear to look at the time when it lights up. The small clock at the top of the screen reads 7:24 a.m. Putting the phone back to his ear, he huffs apologetically. “Sorry. But, yes, it is, but there’s something more to it.”
“I’m listening.”
“The dream was different this time. I won’t go into it, but it was different. And when I woke up, so much came back to me, and I realized--Youngjae, I know why that house is familiar. It’s Yoojin’s grandparents’ house in Dangjin.”
“Oh,” Youngjae says, almost as though he’s let down, but then seems to realize what that might mean. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Jaebum says, looking up when Jinyoung appears at the doorway to his bedroom. “I think we need to go talk to them. Youngjae, they might know something.”
“Are they even still alive?”
“I don’t know,” he says, and deflates a little. He actually doesn’t--after Yoojin had gone to jail, Jaebum had said goodbye to Yoojin’s parents in the courtroom and had never seen them again. He knows that they both died in the past eight years, both of them to health issues, but never knew the details. The only time Jaebum had ever even met Yoojin’s grandparents was that summer when they visited and Yoojin broke his arm on the stairs. “But if they are, they might know something.”
“Do you want to go talk to them? Or do you want me to go and take Jackson?”
Jaebum stands up suddenly, eyes on Jinyoung’s face as the younger man leans against the wall, watching him while he talks on the phone. “No, I want to go. But I’m going to bring you and Jackson both.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
He hears Youngjae fidget on the other end of the line for a moment. “Okay, I’ll call Jackson. I think he might be at the station already. Should we call them and let them know we’re coming?”
Jaebum thinks for a moment, but shakes his head even though Youngjae can’t see it. “No, if they know something, I don’t want to give them time to find a way to lie about it. Better to catch them off guard.”
They hang up, and Jaebum tosses his phone on the couch before looking back at Jinyoung, who is still watching him a little warily. He’s still shirtless, though he’s pulled on a pair of Jaebum’s boxers that he’d probably found in the drawer. He tries to ignore what the sight of them on Jinyoung’s lean frame does to him, and his face warms when he looks back up and realizes Jinyoung has been watching him take inventory of all the bite marks and bruises Jaebum has left on his skin.
Clearing his throat, Jaebum looks at the wall to the right of Jinyoung’s face. “Sorry.”
“For?”
His tone is light, almost dangerously so, and Jaebum finally looks at him. There’s a pinched quality to his face, one that Jaebum has noticed suspects get when they’re innocent, but afraid. “For whatever happened in there, when I woke up. I’m sure that was a little terrifying.”
“‘A little’?” Jinyoung scoffs, but the laugh that follows it is a little shaky. Jaebum finds himself feeling...bad. Which makes him nervous--he’s never been one to be overly concerned with someone else’s feelings. “Do you care to explain, or should I just assume that you’re crazy on top of being a typical detective and get the hell out of here?”
Jaebum sighs. “Do you want coffee?”
Jinyoung nods, so Jaebum heads to the kitchen to make coffee for the both of them. He leans back against the counter as Jinyoung makes himself comfortable at the breakfast nook across from him, eyes watching him over the rim of his coffee mug as Jaebum talks. He doesn’t particularly enjoy reliving the nightmare that he’s been having for months on end, so he skimps on a lot of the details but outlines it enough so that Jinyoung is nodding in understanding every so often. He explains how real it always felt, and how it was always the exact same, except for this time.
“Which is why I’m sure I looked crazy this morning.” Jaebum says, watching the younger man across from him carefully. He feels a little awkward--he’s not really sure what this is, between the two of them. There was never any intention of bringing him home last night when he first threw caution out the window and invited Jinyoung to get a drink, but now that he’s here, shirtless at Jaebum’s breakfast counter and looking slightly afraid with sleep mussed hair, he’s not sure what to think. Jaebum knows he doesn’t hate it, but he doesn’t know what that means, and he feels like he’s got one foot on stable ground and the other on a slippery slope.
“You could say that,” Jinyoung says, and Jaebum can’t help but notice that, despite looking a little less confused, Jinyoung’s face is pale and his hands shake when he goes to set his coffee cup down.
Jaebum doesn’t really know what to say to comfort him--if he’s afraid, he should leave. Jaebum’s always been of relatively stable mind and body, so it’s a little shocking to him, too, but regardless of his temperament, he’s never been worried he’d hurt somebody. He opens his mouth to tell Jinyoung he’s not going to be mad if he leaves (even though, as he thinks it, a part of himself whispers that it’s not quite true) when Jinyoung looks up at him.
“I don’t think you should go.”
This startles him. “What?”
“I don’t think you should go to Dangjin,” Jinyoung says, and he still looks a little pale, but he holds Jaebum’s eyes defiantly.
Jaebum crosses his arms over his chest, immediately getting defensive. He misses the way Jinyoung says Dangjin confidently, though he hadn't been in the room when Jaebum said it. “Why?”
“What if it’s not safe? Whoever killed Yoojin might be there, knowing that’s where you’d turn your attention.”
He can’t help it--he laughs a little. “Unsafe? Why would it be unsafe for me?”
Jinyoung doesn’t seem to find it as funny, and his face reddens a little in anger. “Do you think you’re out of the line of fire just because you’re a cop? Because you aren’t.”
Jaebum stiffens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Seeming to realize what his words might imply, Jinyoung huffs and rolls his eyes. “Aish, you know what I meant. Just because you’re a cop doesn’t mean you’re automatically safe from getting murdered.”
His irritation grows: he had said it to himself, hadn’t he? That every conversation they have inevitably leads into an argument. Jaebum must have been really out of his mind if he thought that inviting Jinyoung out for a drink and subsequently getting him into bed was going to end up anywhere but this exact scenario. Some sort of ugly feeling snags at his heart when he realizes this, but he pushes it away in favor of biting back. “Yoojin had a lot of secrets that I don’t know about; things he did that I wasn’t involved in. For what reason would I even be a target?”
Jinyoung’s face is really angry now, his thin shoulders taut. “Do crazy people need a reason to hurt somebody?”
It’s mean, and he knows it’s mean, but the pure audacity of someone he barely knows to try and tell him how to do his job grates against his nerves like sandpaper. “You tell me, do you have a reason for why you’re being crazy?”
Jinyoung’s mouth drops open, looking shocked as though Jaebum had slapped him. Color rises violently to his face and spreads down his neck to his chest, covering him in a blood-red blush that, in any other circumstance, would have Jaebum appraising the way it makes his teeth marks stand out against Jinyoung’s skin. “Oh, I’m acting crazy?” he spits, putting his feet on the floor and pushing away from the chair he’d been sitting on. “You have a psychotic break this morning and want to potentially throw yourself right into the line of fire, but I’m acting crazy? Okay.”
His heart stirs unwelcomingly. Jinyoung looks upset, and Jaebum hates the way he hates that look on the younger man’s face, hates the way he wants to take back what he said. But he won’t, and he doesn’t. “Why are you so upset? It’s not like we’re dating.”
The color, so violently red only moments ago, drains from Jinyoung’s face. “So you’re saying that wasn’t a date?”
“Actually,” Jaebum says, and the hurt on Jinyoung’s face is too much for him to look at directly. He looks away, reaching forward to grab Jinyoung’s cup off the bar and turns on the sink to rinse it out. “I think you were the one who said it wasn’t a date.”
The silence that follows is stiff. Jinyoung is just looking at him, an unfairly disbelieving look on his face. Didn’t Jaebum try to warn him, that reporters and cops getting together was a bad idea? Didn’t Jinyoung himself even admit that Jaebum is an asshole? But Jinyoung wanted to make friends, and he picked Jaebum, out of anyone else in Seoul, and Jaebum had, for whatever reason, relented. Broken his own personal rule for this man who just waltzed into his life and sat himself down as though he belongs there. And, yet, here they are, in the exact same scenario it seems they always end up in. Jaebum wonders what it means that it bothers him this time.
After a few moments of tense silence, Jinyoung closes his eyes. When he opens them again, his face is shuttered; closed-off. The younger man doesn’t say anything else as he turns away, disappearing back into Jaebum’s bedroom. He’s surprised when the slamming of the door makes him jump and his stomach settle uncomfortably.
Jaebum doesn’t move from his spot against the counter in the kitchen, unsure of what to do: the door hadn’t been locked when Jinyoung slammed it, so it’s not like Jinyoung is trying to keep him out. Jaebum is about to go say something when his bedroom door opens again, Jinyoung coming out of it dressed in his clothes from the day before. He doesn’t look at Jaebum as he tucks his shirt into his jeans as he moves toward the entryway, one hand reaching for his coat. Jaebum finds himself wanting to say something, anything, to break the uncomfortable silence between them, with Jinyoung not looking once in his direction as he angrily shoves both arms into his coat. But whatever words he has catch in his throat like a fishhook, and then Jinyoung is barely sparing him a glance as he throws the lock on Jaebum’s front door and slams his way out of that one, too.
Immediately, the apartment is quieter, somehow. The slam of the door echoes, repeating over and over in his mind with the image of Jinyoung’s face as he’d went burned into the backs of his eyelids. Sighing, Jaebum pushes the heels of both hands into his eyes and tries to shake off the awful feeling in his chest.