[fic] in peace, closing.
in peace, closing.
r - blohyuk au
summary: the city is dangerous, it can eat you alive. daniel wonders if he can ever find peace. [requested by dirty_cinema.]
lee hyukjae is a tiny boy in an oversized city that could, and would, eat him alive. daniel realizes this as he stares at the scrawny boy in his baggy worn jeans and a loose sweater.
"Are you sure you know that you're doing?"
hyukjae jumps a little at the sound of daniel's voice in the cold of the office, and it further cements daniel's not-so-impressed impression of him.
hyukjae, all of twenty-three and wide-eyed, nods and swallows almost painfully. "I'm sure."
daniel shrugs off the urge to make sure. "Alright then. Welcome to the city."
---
jungshik pats hyukjae's back at the kid heaves against the alley wall and throws up. he's got an almost genuinely amused look on his face that daniel can see right through. "Rice cakes for lunch, huh? You're gonna have to learn that it’s just better to starve til dinner."
daniel takes a last drag of his cigarette. "Come on kid, we don't have all day. We've got a crime scene to investigate."
hyukjae blinks up at him, blurry-eyed, and daniel looks because his stomach does a jump that's got nothing to do with nerves. "Y-yes sir." he pushes himself off the wall, wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket and looks green as he follows daniel and jungshik into the yellow-taped apartment.
daniel frowns down at the mangled corpse of the girl laying half on the bed, half slumped on the floor. "The window was broken?" he crouches down next to the body, uses gloved fingers to push back blood-matted hair. she would've been pretty alive.
"Y-Yes sir." hyukjae keeps his eyes glued to the little notebook in his hand. "The window in the bathroom. They're calling it a robbery gone bad, but only some jewelry seems to've been taken. Her purse and everything else was left."
jungshik pushes buttons on a lightly dusted-over sound system. "Good model. This is a little old, but you could hock it for a pretty good price. Even petty thieves would know that."
daniel's barely listening, he's staring at the bruises he can just make out on the insides of the body's thighs. "Hyukjae, come here and hold the legs open for me."
hyukjae makes a choked sound, but it's followed by a shaky "Yes s-sir" and gangly legs move very painstakingly around the body's splayed limbs. daniel could laugh at the way hyukjae stares at a spot on the floor not covered by blood as his trembling hands hold the legs apart for daniel to see the bruises.
he can't remember ever being that innocent.
---
daniel realizes he’s forgotten the way normal people get drunk. he’s used to him and jungshik’s silent drinking, each holding tight to a brown colored bottle or passing a clear bottle back and forth and listening to the life around them that’s stopped touching them.
he’s needlessly surprised as he watches hyukjae's cheeks get redder and redder and the boy's nerves just seem to disappear. the boy that usually walks on tightropes around them is laughing and giggling with one had clenched around the neck of his bottle, the other moves up frequently to touch daniel's arm, his shoulder, his hip, his hair.
there are stories and illustrations falling from his lips at breakneck speeds; daniel watches him wide-eyed because everything about hyukjae is still so untouched and whole that daniel can't blame himself from wanting to hold hyukjae close and melt into him.
jungshik catches his eyes from across the table and there's a similar look on his face as he moves his glance to hyukjae. daniel can't blame him either.
---
the case is over- daniel's forgotten the high it can cause someone who hasn't closed millions of cases.
hyukjae throws his arms around jungshik, who looks slightly terrified and raises his hands, unsure. hyukjae never notices; just lets go and laughs and turns to daniel.
daniel doesn't quite know what he's doing either (it's been ages and years and minutes and seconds since he's last touched someone that wasn't dead), but he closes his arms around hyukjae's lanky body and breathes in the scent of soap.
---
"You'd think you'd be used to this by now."
daniel rubs a hand over hyukjae's back and tries to act like he isn't.
"S-sorry s-" hyukjae heaves again. did daniel ever throw up like that? he thinks he never did, but if he did, he wonders when he stopped.
hyukjae's face is sickly pale, tinged with green. he looks at daniel with eyes full of apology. "I'm sorry sir, really, just that body-" and he's slumped over again, and daniel rubs his back.
---
the office is humid.
jungshik's taken over the faulty air conditioner, his overlong hair drifting off and on his shoulder. hyukjae is limp across his desk, his hands hang over the edge as he presses his cheek against the wood. "It's too hot." his dark hair sticks to his temples.
daniel's used to it, used to the air that swirls through buildings and alleys and rises up and back down but never leaves the city and brings back fresh wind. he pushes the sleeves of his shirt up his arms, loosens his tie. "Don't complain. Even the shitheads are gonna be too damned hot to do anything, we're gonna have free days for the rest of the month, at least." jungshik rolls his eyes, fans his hands in front of his face, but hyukjae lifts his head just slightly off his desk and his face is serious, even though he's sweating.
"Yes sir."
daniel knows he should look away but there's a tiny bead of sweat falling down from hyukjae's temple and he must've finally been on too many cases with too many perverts because all he wants to do it lick if off hyukjae's skin and- he looks away, stares up at the ceiling.
---
"S-sir, I-"
daniel cuts hyukjae off with a look. "First of all, I told you to stop calling me sir. It's okay for the first six months, after that, I’m Daniel, got it?" hyukjae nods. "Second, you're going to lead this one. Jungshik and I aren't going to be around forever, that's why you're here. You know all the shit that we do, you've seen more shit in your first month then cops in other cities do in years." hyukjae opens his mouth and daniel reaches out and closes his hands on his face. "You're ready, okay?" hyukjae seems to have stopped breathing, he looks at daniel with the most annoyingly unreadable look on his face and he finally nods, reaches up with one hand and presses his fingertips to the back of daniel's hand. daniel smiles and pulls away.
"How long is your vacation going to be?" hyukjae is breathing right again.
daniel turns away casually, goes back to fixing papers on his desk. "No more than a couple of days."
"Hyukjae's very angry at you." jungshik sounds all too amused.
daniel grins, holds the phone up on his ear with his shoulder and goes through the papers in his hands. "Really?"
"Hell yeah. I never knew the kid that that much of a temper in his skinny little body. Just about broke every damn piece of furniture in the office when he found out you weren't coming back."
daniel feels his chest warm up, grins wider, surprises himself that he's grinning. it's another sign that proves he did the right thing, resigning. meeting hyukjae had only sped up something he'd been thinking about while sitting in his apartment and listening to sirens wail, that daniel was wasting away and becoming less than human as he dreamt of all the monsters he'd come across.
"But hey- You're okay?" jungshik's not the type of person for emotions. his question says a lot that he'd never admit to.
daniel looks out the window of his new office. the tiny town he's in now is green, there's trees and bushes and flowers and vines and all the houses have painted doors and painted wooden fence and families that've known each other for years and really no use for a lawyer. he thinks it's beautiful. "I'm fine."
"Okay. Well, I've gotta go, another fucking case and Hyukjae'll kill me if I'm not there to check out the scene so he doesn't have to do it. Anything you want me-?"
daniel's secretary, the doctor's teenage daughter with dreams of leaving the country behind, comes in with a tray probably taken right out of her mother's pantry, filled with a cup of tea and cookies that daniel's knows has been made fresh from the baker on the floor below theirs. she smiles at daniel and sets the tray down and daniel notices for the first time that she's skinny and thin and all legs and arms.
"Tell Hyukjae I'll call him soon."
jungshik laughs. "Will do." and daniel laughs with him.
daniel works late on things that don't need to be finished. the town is slow and sleepy and he's working all of two cases, but he can't break the habit of sitting in his office with just the light of the computer screen and working steadily. if he leaves the cases for later, he feels useless.
he likes the room dark and quiet because it's not the city, and at night here, things seem peaceful and asleep, not awake and barely alive. when the door of his office opens, daniel doesn't jump, and he doesn't reach for a gun he doesn't have to begin with.
mia slides into the room with a shirt a size too small and a skirt that feels like it's missing half it's length. daniel thinks she might be able too pull off the look if she weighed more than a hundred pounds, then realizes she shouldn't be pulling off anything at all because it's midnight and mia's still in school and needs to be sleeping because tomorrow's a school day.
"Is something wrong?" daniel should probably ask her why she isn't in bed but years of minding his own business in the city isn’t going to wear off in a month.
mia bites her lip and her expression reminds him of hyukjae before she's in daniel's lap, crushing her mouth against his in a way that's sloppy and sexy all at once. daniel loses his head for a moment, he holds her thin thighs and kisses her back and strokes his fingers against her hip and then realizes that this girl is bony but not hyukjae and he pulls away.
"You should leave, Mia,"
her eyes are too bright and sure. "Why? You liked it." her fingers fall to his lap but daniel doesn't even blink because she's not hyukjae, but he can't deny the feeling curling up his spine. he tries hard to will his fingers to move away from the skin of her thighs, but they don't. he's a hypocrite, he realizes. he's doing something he arrests others for.
mia's fingers press down harder, daniel closes his eyes as if not seeing her will remove the temptation. "I know about you. You're a fag. There's a picture of a guy on your computer I've seen you jack off to when you thought I'd gone home. But you know, I don't care. You're hot and I'm horny, so just... shush and let me do this."
now, daniel thinks, now is the time to push her to the floor and run. his fingers tighten on her thighs and mia's grin looks like hyukjae's in the dark.
-----
daniel is nervous, and he likes and hates the feeling at the same time.
he stands in front of the door that opens up to what used to be his life, his mind and body and limbs for five years straight. inside is a boy that's no longer a boy, not now. inside is a boy that made daniel human again, and daniel is scared for the first time in years.
he reaches out to touch the doorknob but the door flies open before he can do anything more.
"That damned woman called again, isn't she so scary, we should eat ramen for-"
a mess of arms and legs and red hair runs into daniel and daniel blinks and blinks because it's hyukjae, dressed in almost the exact same shirt he was wearing the first time daniel ever saw him.
"I'm sorry, I didn't see... you..." hyukjae's tumble of embarrassed words falls into stunned silence and his eyes sweep from daniel's cut short hair and his dirty sneakers and back up and he's taller than daniel now.
"Daniel."
-----
"You lied to me." hyukjae holds his cups of coffee close to his face but his eyes never leave daniel's face.
"I know." daniel pulls his knees close to his chest and leans back against the ratted chair in what used to be his kitchen, but is hyukjae's now. hyukjae's face had flushed slightly, but he'd lifted his chin in defiance as he let daniel into his old apartment. hyukjae moved in when daniel didn't come back.
the apartment seems brighter. the walls are still slightly off-white, the wooden floors are still stained with age around the edges. the kitchen is filled with food and mismatches dishes of bright colors. the wall in the living room with the only window is covered with pictures of people and places that daniel doesn't know. it's definitely not daniel's apartment anymore.
"You lied to me." daniel looks at hyukjae, really looks, and even though hyukjae's glare isn't intimidating at all, the confusion and worry in his eyes is.
"I know... I'm sorry." daniel thinks there should be excuses, but he doesn't have any. "I had to- I had to see if I could do it on my own. I wanted to leave the city and come back human." daniel grins softly. "I wanted to come back and be daniel, the guy you used to work with, not sir, your boss." he leans forward and touches hyukjae's hair. the red suits him in a way he can't explain. daniel runs his fingers through the strands again and again and the thing he wants most at that time is to see hyukjae's new red hair against a white pillow with hyukjae's eyes falling closed and his lips drawing daniel's name.
hyukjae is very very still, and in his stillness, he's not awkward and lanky. his eyes are wide and soft and he's pressing his lips close together while a smile tries to fight its way out through the corners.
"I worked hard for you. I wanted to be strong when you came back." hyukjae's confession leaves daniel breathless. he looks down at his coffee, stirs the spoon, then looks up. he glances at daniel from underneath his lashes and daniel doesn't remember how he gets across the table because it's not important. what's important is hyukjae's tongue in his mouth and daniel grabbing fistfuls of hyukjae's hair and the soft sound hyukjae's back makes as they fall to the floor.
daniel's never imagined this, never thought about it because it made his head spin, took his breath away, but he's glad, because nothing he could've imagined could be as good as the truth. hyukjae surprises him with the slide of his hands inside daniel's jeans, amuses him when he stops and his cheeks flush red. daniel doesn't know what he's doing but he can feel it in his stomach as he memorizes hyukjae's hair on the stained white of the tile floor that could almost be a pillow if he lets his eyes blur.
daniel can hear the cars rush by outside the cracked window, can hear the sirens go off. he hears someone scream, laugh, and hyukjae moans daniel's name into his mouth as his fingernails dig into the skin of daniel's waist.
daniel thinks of all the dead bodies he's ever seen, all the blood spilled on walls and windows and holds hyukjae tight as he shudders, because hyukjae makes him forget.
r - blohyuk au
summary: the city is dangerous, it can eat you alive. daniel wonders if he can ever find peace. [requested by dirty_cinema.]
lee hyukjae is a tiny boy in an oversized city that could, and would, eat him alive. daniel realizes this as he stares at the scrawny boy in his baggy worn jeans and a loose sweater.
"Are you sure you know that you're doing?"
hyukjae jumps a little at the sound of daniel's voice in the cold of the office, and it further cements daniel's not-so-impressed impression of him.
hyukjae, all of twenty-three and wide-eyed, nods and swallows almost painfully. "I'm sure."
daniel shrugs off the urge to make sure. "Alright then. Welcome to the city."
---
jungshik pats hyukjae's back at the kid heaves against the alley wall and throws up. he's got an almost genuinely amused look on his face that daniel can see right through. "Rice cakes for lunch, huh? You're gonna have to learn that it’s just better to starve til dinner."
daniel takes a last drag of his cigarette. "Come on kid, we don't have all day. We've got a crime scene to investigate."
hyukjae blinks up at him, blurry-eyed, and daniel looks because his stomach does a jump that's got nothing to do with nerves. "Y-yes sir." he pushes himself off the wall, wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket and looks green as he follows daniel and jungshik into the yellow-taped apartment.
daniel frowns down at the mangled corpse of the girl laying half on the bed, half slumped on the floor. "The window was broken?" he crouches down next to the body, uses gloved fingers to push back blood-matted hair. she would've been pretty alive.
"Y-Yes sir." hyukjae keeps his eyes glued to the little notebook in his hand. "The window in the bathroom. They're calling it a robbery gone bad, but only some jewelry seems to've been taken. Her purse and everything else was left."
jungshik pushes buttons on a lightly dusted-over sound system. "Good model. This is a little old, but you could hock it for a pretty good price. Even petty thieves would know that."
daniel's barely listening, he's staring at the bruises he can just make out on the insides of the body's thighs. "Hyukjae, come here and hold the legs open for me."
hyukjae makes a choked sound, but it's followed by a shaky "Yes s-sir" and gangly legs move very painstakingly around the body's splayed limbs. daniel could laugh at the way hyukjae stares at a spot on the floor not covered by blood as his trembling hands hold the legs apart for daniel to see the bruises.
he can't remember ever being that innocent.
---
daniel realizes he’s forgotten the way normal people get drunk. he’s used to him and jungshik’s silent drinking, each holding tight to a brown colored bottle or passing a clear bottle back and forth and listening to the life around them that’s stopped touching them.
he’s needlessly surprised as he watches hyukjae's cheeks get redder and redder and the boy's nerves just seem to disappear. the boy that usually walks on tightropes around them is laughing and giggling with one had clenched around the neck of his bottle, the other moves up frequently to touch daniel's arm, his shoulder, his hip, his hair.
there are stories and illustrations falling from his lips at breakneck speeds; daniel watches him wide-eyed because everything about hyukjae is still so untouched and whole that daniel can't blame himself from wanting to hold hyukjae close and melt into him.
jungshik catches his eyes from across the table and there's a similar look on his face as he moves his glance to hyukjae. daniel can't blame him either.
---
the case is over- daniel's forgotten the high it can cause someone who hasn't closed millions of cases.
hyukjae throws his arms around jungshik, who looks slightly terrified and raises his hands, unsure. hyukjae never notices; just lets go and laughs and turns to daniel.
daniel doesn't quite know what he's doing either (it's been ages and years and minutes and seconds since he's last touched someone that wasn't dead), but he closes his arms around hyukjae's lanky body and breathes in the scent of soap.
---
"You'd think you'd be used to this by now."
daniel rubs a hand over hyukjae's back and tries to act like he isn't.
"S-sorry s-" hyukjae heaves again. did daniel ever throw up like that? he thinks he never did, but if he did, he wonders when he stopped.
hyukjae's face is sickly pale, tinged with green. he looks at daniel with eyes full of apology. "I'm sorry sir, really, just that body-" and he's slumped over again, and daniel rubs his back.
---
the office is humid.
jungshik's taken over the faulty air conditioner, his overlong hair drifting off and on his shoulder. hyukjae is limp across his desk, his hands hang over the edge as he presses his cheek against the wood. "It's too hot." his dark hair sticks to his temples.
daniel's used to it, used to the air that swirls through buildings and alleys and rises up and back down but never leaves the city and brings back fresh wind. he pushes the sleeves of his shirt up his arms, loosens his tie. "Don't complain. Even the shitheads are gonna be too damned hot to do anything, we're gonna have free days for the rest of the month, at least." jungshik rolls his eyes, fans his hands in front of his face, but hyukjae lifts his head just slightly off his desk and his face is serious, even though he's sweating.
"Yes sir."
daniel knows he should look away but there's a tiny bead of sweat falling down from hyukjae's temple and he must've finally been on too many cases with too many perverts because all he wants to do it lick if off hyukjae's skin and- he looks away, stares up at the ceiling.
---
"S-sir, I-"
daniel cuts hyukjae off with a look. "First of all, I told you to stop calling me sir. It's okay for the first six months, after that, I’m Daniel, got it?" hyukjae nods. "Second, you're going to lead this one. Jungshik and I aren't going to be around forever, that's why you're here. You know all the shit that we do, you've seen more shit in your first month then cops in other cities do in years." hyukjae opens his mouth and daniel reaches out and closes his hands on his face. "You're ready, okay?" hyukjae seems to have stopped breathing, he looks at daniel with the most annoyingly unreadable look on his face and he finally nods, reaches up with one hand and presses his fingertips to the back of daniel's hand. daniel smiles and pulls away.
"How long is your vacation going to be?" hyukjae is breathing right again.
daniel turns away casually, goes back to fixing papers on his desk. "No more than a couple of days."
"Hyukjae's very angry at you." jungshik sounds all too amused.
daniel grins, holds the phone up on his ear with his shoulder and goes through the papers in his hands. "Really?"
"Hell yeah. I never knew the kid that that much of a temper in his skinny little body. Just about broke every damn piece of furniture in the office when he found out you weren't coming back."
daniel feels his chest warm up, grins wider, surprises himself that he's grinning. it's another sign that proves he did the right thing, resigning. meeting hyukjae had only sped up something he'd been thinking about while sitting in his apartment and listening to sirens wail, that daniel was wasting away and becoming less than human as he dreamt of all the monsters he'd come across.
"But hey- You're okay?" jungshik's not the type of person for emotions. his question says a lot that he'd never admit to.
daniel looks out the window of his new office. the tiny town he's in now is green, there's trees and bushes and flowers and vines and all the houses have painted doors and painted wooden fence and families that've known each other for years and really no use for a lawyer. he thinks it's beautiful. "I'm fine."
"Okay. Well, I've gotta go, another fucking case and Hyukjae'll kill me if I'm not there to check out the scene so he doesn't have to do it. Anything you want me-?"
daniel's secretary, the doctor's teenage daughter with dreams of leaving the country behind, comes in with a tray probably taken right out of her mother's pantry, filled with a cup of tea and cookies that daniel's knows has been made fresh from the baker on the floor below theirs. she smiles at daniel and sets the tray down and daniel notices for the first time that she's skinny and thin and all legs and arms.
"Tell Hyukjae I'll call him soon."
jungshik laughs. "Will do." and daniel laughs with him.
daniel works late on things that don't need to be finished. the town is slow and sleepy and he's working all of two cases, but he can't break the habit of sitting in his office with just the light of the computer screen and working steadily. if he leaves the cases for later, he feels useless.
he likes the room dark and quiet because it's not the city, and at night here, things seem peaceful and asleep, not awake and barely alive. when the door of his office opens, daniel doesn't jump, and he doesn't reach for a gun he doesn't have to begin with.
mia slides into the room with a shirt a size too small and a skirt that feels like it's missing half it's length. daniel thinks she might be able too pull off the look if she weighed more than a hundred pounds, then realizes she shouldn't be pulling off anything at all because it's midnight and mia's still in school and needs to be sleeping because tomorrow's a school day.
"Is something wrong?" daniel should probably ask her why she isn't in bed but years of minding his own business in the city isn’t going to wear off in a month.
mia bites her lip and her expression reminds him of hyukjae before she's in daniel's lap, crushing her mouth against his in a way that's sloppy and sexy all at once. daniel loses his head for a moment, he holds her thin thighs and kisses her back and strokes his fingers against her hip and then realizes that this girl is bony but not hyukjae and he pulls away.
"You should leave, Mia,"
her eyes are too bright and sure. "Why? You liked it." her fingers fall to his lap but daniel doesn't even blink because she's not hyukjae, but he can't deny the feeling curling up his spine. he tries hard to will his fingers to move away from the skin of her thighs, but they don't. he's a hypocrite, he realizes. he's doing something he arrests others for.
mia's fingers press down harder, daniel closes his eyes as if not seeing her will remove the temptation. "I know about you. You're a fag. There's a picture of a guy on your computer I've seen you jack off to when you thought I'd gone home. But you know, I don't care. You're hot and I'm horny, so just... shush and let me do this."
now, daniel thinks, now is the time to push her to the floor and run. his fingers tighten on her thighs and mia's grin looks like hyukjae's in the dark.
-----
daniel is nervous, and he likes and hates the feeling at the same time.
he stands in front of the door that opens up to what used to be his life, his mind and body and limbs for five years straight. inside is a boy that's no longer a boy, not now. inside is a boy that made daniel human again, and daniel is scared for the first time in years.
he reaches out to touch the doorknob but the door flies open before he can do anything more.
"That damned woman called again, isn't she so scary, we should eat ramen for-"
a mess of arms and legs and red hair runs into daniel and daniel blinks and blinks because it's hyukjae, dressed in almost the exact same shirt he was wearing the first time daniel ever saw him.
"I'm sorry, I didn't see... you..." hyukjae's tumble of embarrassed words falls into stunned silence and his eyes sweep from daniel's cut short hair and his dirty sneakers and back up and he's taller than daniel now.
"Daniel."
-----
"You lied to me." hyukjae holds his cups of coffee close to his face but his eyes never leave daniel's face.
"I know." daniel pulls his knees close to his chest and leans back against the ratted chair in what used to be his kitchen, but is hyukjae's now. hyukjae's face had flushed slightly, but he'd lifted his chin in defiance as he let daniel into his old apartment. hyukjae moved in when daniel didn't come back.
the apartment seems brighter. the walls are still slightly off-white, the wooden floors are still stained with age around the edges. the kitchen is filled with food and mismatches dishes of bright colors. the wall in the living room with the only window is covered with pictures of people and places that daniel doesn't know. it's definitely not daniel's apartment anymore.
"You lied to me." daniel looks at hyukjae, really looks, and even though hyukjae's glare isn't intimidating at all, the confusion and worry in his eyes is.
"I know... I'm sorry." daniel thinks there should be excuses, but he doesn't have any. "I had to- I had to see if I could do it on my own. I wanted to leave the city and come back human." daniel grins softly. "I wanted to come back and be daniel, the guy you used to work with, not sir, your boss." he leans forward and touches hyukjae's hair. the red suits him in a way he can't explain. daniel runs his fingers through the strands again and again and the thing he wants most at that time is to see hyukjae's new red hair against a white pillow with hyukjae's eyes falling closed and his lips drawing daniel's name.
hyukjae is very very still, and in his stillness, he's not awkward and lanky. his eyes are wide and soft and he's pressing his lips close together while a smile tries to fight its way out through the corners.
"I worked hard for you. I wanted to be strong when you came back." hyukjae's confession leaves daniel breathless. he looks down at his coffee, stirs the spoon, then looks up. he glances at daniel from underneath his lashes and daniel doesn't remember how he gets across the table because it's not important. what's important is hyukjae's tongue in his mouth and daniel grabbing fistfuls of hyukjae's hair and the soft sound hyukjae's back makes as they fall to the floor.
daniel's never imagined this, never thought about it because it made his head spin, took his breath away, but he's glad, because nothing he could've imagined could be as good as the truth. hyukjae surprises him with the slide of his hands inside daniel's jeans, amuses him when he stops and his cheeks flush red. daniel doesn't know what he's doing but he can feel it in his stomach as he memorizes hyukjae's hair on the stained white of the tile floor that could almost be a pillow if he lets his eyes blur.
daniel can hear the cars rush by outside the cracked window, can hear the sirens go off. he hears someone scream, laugh, and hyukjae moans daniel's name into his mouth as his fingernails dig into the skin of daniel's waist.
daniel thinks of all the dead bodies he's ever seen, all the blood spilled on walls and windows and holds hyukjae tight as he shudders, because hyukjae makes him forget.