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By the time he went to pick him up, it was already late. Dongjae was waiting outside the venue, his face lit up by the glow of his phone. He was still in his work clothes - a crisp navy suit - but his tie was slightly loosened, and his coat had slipped off his right shoulder.
“You took your time,” he said. “I was about to leave on my own.” He slid the phone in his pocket.
Simok picked up the bag lying on the ground nearby. Dongjae had been messaging him nonstop for the past hour, asking where he was.
“Can you walk straight?” he said. Dongjae gave him a look.
“Where’s the car?”
“Just out there. Fix your coat.”
It was freezing outside. The pavement had a thin film of snow over it, just enough to be slippery, reflecting the streetlights. The parking lot was whipped by cold gusts of wind, and as Simok fumbled in his jacket pocket for the car keys, he let Dongjae hook onto his arm for balance - more out of instinct than intention, given Dongjae’s state of mind. His hair was stiff with gel and messy now. Up close he smelled like soju and cigarette smoke. Probably had one while waiting. It wasn’t a bad smell, but not exactly pleasant either.
“I feel gross.” Dongjae muttered, “My head hurts.”
Simok clicked the key fob. The headlights flashed once. “You should shower and change later,” he said, opening the door.
Dongjae nodded faintly and dropped into the passenger seat.
The car filled with the sound of the heating system. The smell of alcohol was warmer now, almost sweet. Simok glanced over.
“Seatbelt,” he said.
Dongjae complied quietly, then folded his legs up on the seat so he could rest his chin on his knees while gazing out the window. After reversing out, Simok placed a hand on his leg.
“You're not very good at cheering me up,” Dongjae said, pressing his fingers against Simok’s as if trying to shrink or flatten them. He didn’t move the hand away.
“That's because I don’t know why you’re sad,” Simok said. The flickering light from the convenience stores passed over his face. He wasn’t looking at him and he seemed distant, so Dongjae simply let go of his thumb. He waited a few seconds, then said, tiredly, “It’s not like you’d understand, is it?”
Simok turned his head to face him, one degree at a time. “Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t say sorry,”
“Okay.”
“Don’t say okay either.”
Simok’s hand left his leg and returned to the steering wheel.
*
Going back to Cheongju had been Kang Woncheol’s idea. He sent him there before resigning to open his own law firm. Said it would be better to go somewhere quiet after his time on the police-prosecution council. There were still articles about him in the Sungmoon Daily coming out. He was always caught up in bribery cases. It made people nervous, not just his colleagues but also bored tabloid readers with too much time on their hands.
“They’re going to crucify you,” Mr. Kang had said. “And that tiny social life of yours is going straight in the bin. So treat it like a break.”
Dongjae kept up with the tabloids, too. Sometimes, lying in bed, twisting his legs, he’d read aloud the parts where Simok was mentioned. "Look at this," he’d say. "They think you and Inspector Han are hooking up. Did you actually go out for fun?” He had showed him a grainy picture of the two of them outside some red-light night-club. Inspector Han was writing something down on her notebook and Simok was watching her intently.
“We were working,” he’d replied.
Dongjae had scrolled down to the comments section without lifting his eyes from the screen.
“It would be fun if you got yourself a girlfriend like her.”
The other reason Kang Woncheol had wanted him in Cheongju, obviously, was Seo Dongjae. Not because he was worried he’d get involved in something shady, but because, after the kidnapping, he said Dongjae seemed... off. Demoralized, was the word he used. He’d come by the law firm once for a meeting and Mr Kang told Simok afterwards that he looked exhausted. Depressed, even. He subtly signaled him to keep an eye on him there.
Simok hadn’t planned on sleeping with him. It just happened, after the reassignment, at the welcome party in a dinner spot near the office. They’d both been drinking. There wasn’t much more to say about it - just that the next morning, in Simok’s bed, they both had headaches and a strange taste in their mouths.
“This isn’t happening again,” Dongjae had said, pulling on his shirt, his hair a complete mess.
At work, he kept ignoring him. If they crossed paths in the stairwell, he would roll his eyes like Simok had done something wrong. Which wasn’t that different from how Dongjae usually behaved - like he was holding a grudge.
And still, a few nights later, he had came to his door again.
“I can’t sleep,” he explained.
That was all it took to get into his pants. After that, he kept showing up. No matter how many times he said it would be the last time, it never really was.
There were nights when he would come over unannounced, or call at completely unreasonable hours, waiting for Simok to pick him up from somewhere downtown. A bar, a club, a diner. It wasn’t clear what he needed. But being in the car seemed to calm him down, like it was some sort of coping strategy.
*
Outside the car, Simok tapped his knuckle against Dongjae’s window a couple of times. They were parked at a gas station, the closest one he’d found. Dongjae slowly opened his eyes, his forehead still leaning against the glass, furrowed from the headache.
“Oh,” he said, sitting up and letting Simok open the door. The streetlight by the fuel containers gave off a blindingly cold light, so he kept his eyes squinted.
Simok raised the water bottle he had just bought at the station’s minimarket, and Dongjae pressed it against his forehead, tilting his head forward. The plastic was wonderfully cold, and he let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks,” he said, without looking up.
Simok gave a brief nod. “Next time, don’t drink so much if you can’t handle it.”
“Ah… why did you have ruin it? I thought we were getting along pretty well.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“I know that. You’re not exactly the jokester type - and you seem to have something against my free will.”
“You don’t take what I say seriously,” Simok said.
“Don’t act all offended now. I’m the one who's angry the most. I’m about to get fired.”
Dongjae put the bottle down in the door’s storage compartment. Condensation had wet his forehead, and a lock of hair had come loose and stuck to it. He didn’t seem to notice, so Simok moved the strand away with his hand. Dongjae didn’t pull back. He just gave a sly smile.
It wasn’t that being fired was certain, but it was a possibility. His past misconduct had caught the attention of the current chief, and the matter had grown serious enough to involve upper administration. The fact that Simok had decided to dig through Dongjae’s past cases looking for clues during his disappearance-that might have been what triggered the whole mess.
Dongjae’s attitude toward that decision tended to shift dramatically, and it usually mirrored the state of their relationship. When things were going well between them, he framed it as inevitable, even something he might’ve done himself out of dedication to the job. But when they hit a rough patch, or when work wasn’t going well, he’d bring it up as proof of Simok’s disloyalty and complete lack of empathy.
“Hey, how would you like it if I died?” Dongjae said, tapping him on the tip of the nose.
Simok pushed his hand down. “Drink your water, Mr. Seo.”
Dongjae swallowed dutifully. “I wonder why you never visited me in the hospital,” he said.
“You’re drunk.”
Dongjae made a face. “You always make everything I say sound stupid. I don’t think it would matter to you if I died. You’d probably just sleep with your secretary.”
“I wouldn’t,” Simok said.
“Why not? Because you only like me?”
Simok shot him a careful look, and Dongjae smiled in return. Of course, he was joking. But it made Simok think about how he had kissed him against the door after last year’s department Christmas party.
"That would be unprofessional."
*
They spent the rest of the drive partly in silence, partly with Dongjae complaining about the curves in the road and how he felt like throwing up.
“Don’t,” Simok warned.
Dongjae shrugged and said something about how he’d actually like to see his reaction if he did. “You never care about anything anyway. You could just leave me on the side of the road to freeze to death for all I know.”
“I doubt you’d freeze to death right now.” Simok replied flatly.
Later, in the dorm room, Simok slid Dongjae’s shirt off his shoulders and Dongjae laughed from the ticklishness. He said Simok’s hands were cold, and Simok raised an eyebrow.
“Should I stop?”
“I didn’t mean that, idiot.”
They started kissing until Dongjae lay down on the bed, resting his head on the edge of the mattress. He looked up at Simok, eyes dazed, breath unsteady.
“Come here,” he said, tugging him by the sleeve.
“Take your clothes off first,” Simok replied, but then lay beside him anyway.
They stayed like that for a while, until Simok, with his face pressed to Dongjae’s chest, pointed out that they were still dressed and that he hadn’t even had time to shower after leaving the office.
“I like your office smell,” Dongjae said, slipping a hand under his shirt.
“You’re drunk,” Simok scolded him, pushing his hand back down. “Last time, you said it would be the last time.”
Dongjae wasn’t looking at him. His hands were now politely resting on his knees. For a moment, Simok thought he might be upset, but then Dongjae said, seriously: “But you like fucking me when I’m drunk. That’s why you came to get me.”
*
For Dongjae, sex was simply a way to “blow off steam after work.” It wasn’t entirely without complications, but it was, unexpectedly, more straightforward and practical than a normal interaction with him. At first, Simok had even wondered if it wasn’t the first time Dongjae had a setup like this with someone. Rumours that he was the department’s slut had always gone around the office. People said he booked cheap hotel rooms and invited higher-ups in exchange for bribes. He had a nice face, and even the most by-the-book colleagues tended to view him less as a rival and more as someone they were supposed to indulge. Though that good-looking face, combined with his bad reputation, was probably the reason those rumours existed in the first place.
“Do you do this often?” Simok asked one night. He was about to take a shower, while Dongjae smoked a cigarette with his elbows on the windowsill. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and didn’t look at him.
“Sure,” he said. “And when do you think I’d find time to work?”
“I don’t know.”
Dongjae stubbed the cigarette out on the frame. "You’re such a fucking asshole."
Then he’d left the apartment, slamming the door behind him. He came back a few days later, holding a box of beer, which he shoved hard into Simok’s chest when he opened the door.
“Don’t you know when to apologize?” he said.
Even though he’d been insulted, it wasn’t the same Seo Dongjae he’d once known as a mentor - the one who’d demand handwritten apologies for minor infractions - so they left it at that.
That weekend, after sex, they had sat watching television in the living room. When it got late, Dongjae ordered more food than either of them could eat.
“You can’t say things like that to a woman,” he said, mouth full of crisps. “She won’t come back.”
Simok nodded, though he wanted to correct him. You’re not a woman.
He never thought of what they were doing as a rehearsal for something else, the way Dongjae seemed to. At one point, Dongjae had even told him a girl in the office had said he was “cute,” making quotation marks with his fingers. “Why don’t you try with her? You could fuck her.”
He said things like that often, things that later forced Simok to quietly search the internet for guidance on questions far outside his emotional vocabulary. The person I’m sleeping with wants me to sleep with other people.
At work, it was Simok who forgot their rule about not speaking. He’d hold the elevator door for him, stare a little too long, dip his head politely when they crossed paths. Once, he even gave up his place in line at the coffee machine. He couldn’t help it. It came naturally. Despite what people assumed, he was terrible at separating his personal and professional life - surely, he’d never needed to. Seo Dongjae couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand having to cover his neck with concealer because of him. He’d told Simok several times how irresponsible he was. And it was true - he had become like that. Surprisingly irrational, like a dog in heat always following a trace of scent.
*
In bed, Simok got in between his legs and started to undo his belt. Dongjae let him undress him passively, watching his hands unbutton his trousers and roll down his underwear to his ankles. His skin was hot like boiling oil under the clothes - soft around the stomach, where he never found time to exercise, and which, Simok knew, he sometimes pinched in front of the mirror.
At the beginning of the year, he had been dangerously thin, to the point where his spine visibly protruded from behind. Back then, when Simok touched him, he often let his fingers glide along those ridges. You lost weight, he had whispered against his mouth one night while they were fucking, the words slipping out of his mouth in a daze, overwhelmed by the desire that seemed to pierce through him at those moments. Dongjae had replied, Why, do you like that?
Afterwards, when they were sleeping in bed, Simok measured the circumference of his wrist with his thumb and index finger, listening to his breath and beat. Seo Dongjae, half-asleep, had asked what the hell he was doing. Simok hadn’t replied. He didn’t know.
Eventually Simok leaned over and took a box of condoms from the drawer. When he came back, he murmured “Sorry,” like the brief seconds he left him waiting constituted some minor betrayal on his part. Dongjae laughed. “You say sorry a lot right before you fuck me.” He said. “Is that supposed to be a warning?”
Simok touched his back. With his thumb he could feel the uneven texture of a scar at the base of his spine. “No,” he said. Their eyes only met briefly then.
Dongjae winced slightly, then impulsively grabbed his hand and pressed it against his throat.
Simok held it still for a few seconds before asking, “What do you want me to do?”
Dongjae just shrugged and nudged him closer with his heel.
They fucked like that for a while, hand on his neck, tears on the edges of his eyelids, until Dongjae came. Afterward, he slid onto the bed, face down, exhausted. His chest was slowly swelling and deflating, tremors running down his spine to his pelvis. Simok, still out of breath, leaned down to kiss his neck, the places that were still throbbing smelled of soju, and he couldn't resist the urge to lick them. “Ah,” Dongjae moaned, reaching into Simok’s hair, fingers roaming over the top of his neck. Simok nudged closer, leaving a trail of kisses down his neck, his hands wandering to the scar-lined inner thigh, touching it without any real purpose.
“Put it back in,” Dongjae whispered, ass pushing against him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes... do it..”
Simok exhaled haphazardly behind him, then reached across the nightstand for another condom.
“Ah, no..” Dongjae whimpered. “Fuck me without- just do it hard.”
His voice sounded so desperate, that Simok simply lowered his arm and lay on top of him again, the tip of his cock barely touching him, pressing, opening him a little, and more until he was fucking him with his lips pressed together and his waist held tightly, not saying anything. Dongjae’s back was shaking, and he was biting his hand to keep from screaming until blood started to well up at his thumb from the pressure. His face was wet.
When Simok looked down, he moved his hand away, bringing it to his lips to kiss it. "You’re hurting yourself.” he said.
At that gesture, calibrated by an implicit and impulsive anxiety, Dongjae pushed him away aggressively. He quickly brought his hand closer and covered it with the other, hiding the marks around it.
“Sorry.” Simok said. His tone dry and unemotional as per usual.
Dongjae didn’t respond for a while, and the headboard stopped banging against the wall. “Stop apologizing all the time, it's not like you.” he said finally. “I don’t need a robot’s pity.”
His hair had fallen in front of his eyes. His shoulders were hunched forward now, like he was shielding himself, which was ironic, considering how easily their bodies had just given in to each other.
Simok brushed his hair back. It had grown a lot since the jaunty cut he had when he first met him, but he liked this softer one better. He felt him clench around his erection, then slowly, Simok leaned in and brought his lips to his. Dongjae looked at him for a few seconds, his eyes sad and feverish. Then kissed him back, murmuring a pleased “Mm,”. After all these years, this was the only language they seemed to have in common.
*
When they were done, they lay back, breathing slowly. Dongjae was turned toward the wall, staring at his hand. The spot he’d bitten was raw and red but had stopped bleeding.
“You know, it doesn’t make much sense if you keep holding back,” he said.
Earlier, he’d been so absurdly loud and theatrical that this sudden performance of indifference now struck Simok as almost ridiculous.
“I’m not holding back,” Simok said.
Dongjae clicked his tongue and sat up, leaning against the headboard. He lit himself a cigarette. “Okay, well, you’re not going to ask me to suck you off later, are you?”
“No.”
“But if you want to be rougher with me, you can say it. I won’t get offended.”
“I know you won't,” Simok said. “I just don’t think you really want me to be rough with you.”
Dongjae laughed and flicked his ash onto the nightstand. He shook his head like Simok was being ridiculous.
“What do you even know about what I want?”
There were things Simok liked about Seo Dongjae. His body, yes. The way he opened himself up so easily, so readily - and most of all, the honesty in his reactions, in contrast to whatever came out of his mouth. Part of Simok understood the impulsiveness, the almost masochistic tendency to throw himself at him, to provoke, and then suddenly recoil at the moment Simok actually responded - as if shocked to discover the reaction was real, that this wasn’t all happening in some hypothetical, detached fantasy. He kept playing the same scene over and over, nearly every night. The only difference was that now, his body was warm and breathing, not left somewhere to freeze at the edge of the highway in the middle of nowhere. Did he need protection? Or was it a way to keep his feelings of fear under control? Simok didn’t know. But at least his body was honest about needing him.
“Are you angry?” Simok asked, sitting up.
“Why?”
“You look like you’re about to cry.”
Dongjae let out a breath of smoke. “I’m not.”
He wasn’t looking at him, but Simok knew he was aware of being watched. Tiny tears had begun forming in the corners of his eyes, discreet just enough that they might have come from a cold or the cigarette smoke curling above his head.
It’s the alcohol, he would say in a few minutes. It’s always the alcohol. Even though he probably hadn’t had more than a glass - just enough to leave a faint scent on his clothes, enough for Simok to notice.
Simok pulled the blanket over his shoulders and rubbed his back gently. “Did it hurt?” he asked, scanning his body briefly.
Dongjae only leaned his head against the headboard. “No. It was incredibly boring.”
Simok knew there was no point trying to talk now. He asked if he wanted to sleep. Dongjae made a vague sound with his mouth, refusing to commit to an answer - but still, he pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders.
*
At the end of last year, Seo Dongjae had gone to the department Christmas party and ended up completely drunk. Simok hadn’t planned on going, but around midnight he got a call from the chief asking him to make sure Dongjae got home safe. “You live in the same dorm,” the chief said. He pretended to hear that notion for the first time.
They had walked back to the dorm together, Dongjae swaying on one side, leaning against Simok’s shoulder. He was laughing loudly, his knees scraped from slipping on the sidewalk.
“Put your foot here,” Simok said as they climbed the stairs.
Behind the door of his apartment, pressed against the wall near the coat hooks, Dongjae grabbed him by the collar and kissed him. “Mr. Seo, you’re drunk,” Simok said, pushing gently on his shoulders. This time, he really was. Dongjae’s hands kept fidgeting at the hem of Simok’s pants.
“What? You don’t want to?”
From the look on his face, he seemed genuinely offended - the kind of look that made Simok want to choose his words more carefully to avoid making him cry.
“You should sleep. It’s late.”
“Do you like other girls?”
They stared at each other for a moment. Then Dongjae pressed his forehead against his shoulder. He was burning up.
“You can’t.”
“I don’t.”
“You shouldn’t fuck anyone else but me.”
“I won’t. Go to bed now.”
That was it. He went to bed. They never spoke about it again. Dongjae even shrugged it off when Simok asked if he remembered anything from that night.
Are you worried? he said. That I’m untrustworthy? Dongjae made a face. He said no, that he didn’t know what the hell Simok was talking about, and that was the end of it.
*
That night, in bed, Dongjae whispered, “Just for your information, I won’t come here anymore after today.”
“Alright,” Simok said, adjusting the blanket again.
Dongjae made a sound, somewhere between scoffing and a sigh. Their faces were only inches apart. “I mean it this time. I have to focus on my career and this is a complete waste of energy.”
“Yes. You should rest now.”
Dongjae didn’t answer, he sighed and closed his eyes. In just a minute, his breathing had already slowed.
Simok stayed still for a while, eyes fixed on the curve of his shoulder, the line of his jaw. The room had gone quiet again. In the dark, he reached out and touched his hair, just lightly. He wouldn’t remember it anyway.