Archive of Our Own

“I don’t get it.”

Hoseok’s head snaps up at the voice at his door, eyes narrowing into the dim light, flickering up, down, taking Hyunwoo in before he sighs and slumps back into his chair in obvious relief. He laughs a little and the sound is overwhelmingly dark. The office is small, built into what seems little more than a closet, just as drafty as the rest of the base. To Hoseok’s credit, he’s tried to personalize it, make it warm, a few scattered photographs tacked to the walls. He has even, somehow, managed to bring a small plant with him from back home, one Hyunwoo recognizes from his college apartment, and it sits perilously on an old antique shelf by the door.

“I could have shot you,” Hoseok chuckles in disbelief as he rubs his eyes. He takes a second before he plants his elbows on his desk and buries his face into his palms. It isn’t until that moment Hyunwoo sees the gun that glints in the low light on the desktop, gleaming softly in the light of Hoseok’s laptop, stark against the documents that litter the surface like leaves. It’s easy to see how stressed he is, the way his nerves are frayed. Hyunwoo gets it, sympathizes, but it just makes him not understand things more.

“But you didn’t,” Hyunwoo responds simply glancing around before looking back over his shoulder at the empty hallway. It’s a minor miracle Hoseok hadn’t shot him, given how on edge the man clearly is. The base is now quiet, a literal grave, smothered under the hush that has settled over it in the wake of the raid from earlier in the day.

Hyunwoo hesitates, judging Hoseok’s potential reaction. He weighs them and decides to take the risk. He crosses the small room, picks up the pistol, tilts it questioningly in the glow of the desk lamp. He slides the magazine out and bites back a laugh.

“This isn’t even loaded.”

Hoseok looks up from his hands, eyebrows raised, eyes widening, and when Hyunwoo’s words (and their implication) sink in, he just chuckles lowly again, shaking his head. His hands fall, pause, then start cleaning up the mess of papers on his desk. Even in the darkness, Hyunwoo can see the way his fingers twitch, the way they move awkwardly over the pages, and it just makes his heart plumet even more.

“Well that would have been… useless,” Hoseok manages to mutter, that laugh back as he forms the pages into a pile, pauses, rearranges them anxiously. His eyes occasionally dart to the small window at the corner of the room despite the blackness that lurks beyond. His eyes hesitate on the glass as if expecting something, anything. An explosion. Gunfire. The world shattering just beyond.

Nothing happens. The insurgent forces have been dealt with, neutralized and even though Hoseok knows this, logic and fear are two very distinct things.

Hyunwoo awkwardly sets the useless weapon back down near Hoseok, in easy reach of the physician, clearly realizing it brings him some kind of comfort. He rationalizes he’s unlikely to accidentally wound a bypasser with an unloaded gun. His fingers pause on the metal, move to mindlessly run over a few pens he has on the desk’s small built-in shelf, stops at a small framed photo he keeps there of his family.

He doesn’t look back at Hoseok.

It’s easier not to look, not to give into the ache in his chest.

“...How are your patients?”

“Alive,” Hoseok murmurs, clearly doesn’t mean to, but there’s a distinct bitterness in his tone, an edge to his words that Hyunwoo knows better than to take at face value. The moment hangs heavily in the air as Hoseok’s eyes stare into the emptiness before him, avoiding the other man, and the captain catches the near imperceivable shake of his shoulders. Hoseok nods, bites at his lower lip, then nods again.

“The ones that are left are all still alive,” he manages to choke out quietly and Hyunwoo is reminded of the first moment he himself saw violence, his first deployment, the way it stuck with him like a tattoo on his soul. Hoseok’s eyes hold the same haunted look, echoing with ghosts of the day’s explosions, of gunshots that echoed at sunrise that still ricochet in his head hours after the sun has set. His head ducks down.

There had been fatalities, men that fell and never had the hope of getting to Hoseok’s medical unit, men they’d lost immediately, who they hadn’t truly had the chance to fight for. The attack had come in the minutes before the sun pierced the horizon, the sky muted pinks and purples but the ground black as night. There had been no warning, no intelligence. They’d been caught off guard and even though their numbers and training had been better, their base had still suffered before their bittersweet victory.

“You worked hard,” Hyunwoo says quietly before he invites himself to sit in the chair across from him, trying not to look too closely or move too quickly. It’s as if he feels like anything too fast or too strong will break him. Hoseok might look physically as strong as any of his recruits, but he knows the truth. They’ve been friends since childhood even if their lives had pulled them apart, onto different paths, before inadvertently bringing them back together. Hoseok has always been a softer soul, warmer, following a path in favor of life while Hyunwoo’s had pointed him towards death. An army captain and a doctor. It was almost funny how the universe worked.

But as much as he wants to think of Hoseok as the warm boy he had known all those years ago, he’s definitely aware of how time had changed them both.

For the first time he realizes Hoseok’s sweater is flecked with blood, the stain dark brown on the dark gray of his sweater. It’s stark and sends Hyunwoo back to the morning, to the briefest glances he had caught of Hoseok in passing, of him crouched over soldiers, yelling at his team over the din of battle, hands and coat stained scarlet. He had apparently washed that blood off, disposed of the ruined coat, but had missed the smallest flecks of proof of what they had both survived.

“What do you not get?” the words are abrupt, catch Hyunwoo off guard, and his eyes go from Hoseok’s knit sweater to his face.

“What?”

"When you got here, you said-”

“Oh.”

It isn’t that there’s awkwardness between them, that’s not what the silence and lack of words boils down to. Hoseok has always been a good friend to him, always impossibly warm, always effortless. Or at least, that’s how it had been when they were younger, when they had seen less of the world, when it demanded less of them in return. They were men who had seen life and death, war and peace, and it had aged their souls impossibly far past the point their days actually numbered.

He had never understood from the moment Hoseok had arrived on base, but had never found the courage - or recklessness - to ask. He had never managed to find a point to talk to him that was not under the eyes of others or in some kind of official capacity.

“I hadn’t meant to say that aloud,” Hyunwoo admits with a small sigh, presses his fist to his lips thoughtfully. Hoseok continues to watch him with an expectant expression, but there’s a distance to his gaze despite the sharpness.

Hoseok has always been one contradiction wrapt in another. He can easily bench more than any of Hyunwoo’s newest recruits, but he knows he refuses to use - or even really show- his strength. He’s keeps a handgun on his desk in case of emergencies, but forgets to even load it.

He’s afraid of violence, yet he’s shipped himself to the middle of an active war zone.

Hyunwoo would be lying if he said he couldn’t see the way it was beginning to effect Hoseok, even before today’s events. He seems paler, more high strung, like his smile isn’t even as authentic and absolute as it had been the day he had arrived.

Distant explosions rip the air, countless miles away, and Hoseok is on his feet so fast that he knocks his desk, sending a few pens skittering to the floor. He pays them no attention, rather walking to a small cabinet behind his desk. Hyunwoo quickly leans down to pick them up, keeping a careful eye on the other man as he stands, rearranges them. Hoseok reaches around a few things inside the cabinet and pulls out what Hyunwoo immediately recognizes to be a bottle of scotch (and a good one at that). Hoseok shoots Hyunwoo an unreadable expression, but it isn’t hard for the older man to decipher. Their base is dry, forbids alcohol, and it’s clear Hoseok had snuck the bottle all the way from Korea and is now looking at him almost daringly. Hyunwoo almost laughs at the show of the Hoseok he’s always known and love-

Hyunwoo stops his thought process there, feels his cheeks flare warm. He walks back to the door to the small office, peers down the empty hall, and closes it, all while he can feel Hoseok’s eyes boring into his back.

“I’m not going to confiscate it, if that’s what you think,” He says as he turns back, watching the other man nod as he pulls out a glass, then hesitates. He looks at Hyunwoo again, for confirmation, and the captain sighs and nods as well. A small smile lights Hoseok’s face as he pulls out a second glass, setting them on his desk, beginning to pour a glass for himself and then Hyunwoo as well.

“I want to know what you were thinking,” Hoseok says as he does, eyes on the task at hand, “You said you hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but you did. If you said it, some part of you wanted to.”

Hyunwoo hates the logic. What he hates more is that the logic’s right. He wants to argue, protest, but rather, he reaches out and takes the small glass when it’s offered. He hesitates, and tosses it back. It is an old scotch, the kind his father would have kept hidden in his home office, the kind he and Hoseok would sneak in and steal from in their teens-

Hyunwoo’s eyes go wide, on the glass, before he looks at the bottle still grasped in Hoseok’s hand. He’s recognizes the fading label, sees it is the same brand from their childhood, and smiles softly down at his lap. It’s very much like Hoseok to remember details others would have long forgotten.

Standing before him, twirling his scotch shakily in his own glass, Hoseok looks so different than just months ago, when he had landed in the war-torn Urk region. His hair has grown out, the blue faded and shorn away weeks ago, his current cut shorter, the lightest bit ombre as the final gleam of silver erodes into a dull bleached blond. He has a cut above his eye from earlier in the day, held together with a couple of sutures, probably the result of some flying debris. He doesn’t look like a city doctor fresh off a jet just months ago. Soon he’ll probably opt to buzz it completely; it’s easier that way.

“You’re probably right,” he admits when the burn of the scotch fades away, nodding thoughtfully before he smiles a little bit. Hoseok is sharp, has always been, always effortlessly caught his every tic and tell, “I’m just... I’m curious.”

Hoseok waits, finally drinks from his own scotch. He seems to have poured himself a bit more in an attempt to soothe his frazzled nerves.

“...It doesn’t make sense to me why you’re here,” Hyunwoo finally confides, voice quiet as he stares at his empty glass. The scotch, after so long of not drinking, makes his head the slightest bit fuzzy, allows him to dial back from the intensity of the world and focus on Hoseok. Hoseok is all he wants to focus on.

It’s all he’s ever wanted.

The other man doesn’t respond, can sense there’s more on Hyunwoo’s tongue. He continues.

“I know you, Hoseok. It’s been years, but I know you. A war zone? I know you can’t stand violence.”

Hoseok wets his lips before taking a sip of his scotch, frowning at its bite. They don’t have the luxury of icing it down.

“I can’t,” he agrees amicably, but there’s something in his tone that makes it clear he’s avoiding Hyunwoo’s questions, dancing around truly addressing the matter at hand.

“I remember you got in a fight in school, or, well, a kid swung at you and-”

“Yeah, yeah. I cried. I remember,” Hoseok says bitterly, but there’s the faintest glimmer of humor there, a bare spark of amusement to be reminiscing the past.

“So why are you here? Why Urk? Why my base?”

But Hyunwoo doesn’t smile. This isn’t a grade school fight where a poorly executed punch can be dodged and teachers come rushing in to break it up. This is war. This is bombs and shrapnel and guns and chaos. This is everything that Hoseok himself seems to know he can’t handle, yet here he is, sitting in his makeshift office in their little makeshift bunker in the middle of Urk, a small nation defined solely by war.

Hoseok’s attempt at humor makes him a bit angry and he sets his glass with a loud thunk on Hoseok’s desk, eyes blazing through him.

“Answer me,” he says simply and it’s less a request and more a command. That clearly catches Hoseok off guard and he blinks, pausing before he downs the rest of the drink, swallowing hard. He begins to pour another but Hyunwoo reaches out, catches the bottle, and takes it.

A pause.

“Please,” Hyunwoo adds and it’s softer, because if there’s one thing he can’t be with Hoseok, it’s angry. Even after all of these years, after all of the things he’s done, even after disappearing, he’s never found it in himself to be mad. Never anger. Never hate.

Mostly just blinding, intoxicating frustration and just… desperation, desperation for something clear in the weblike maze that makes up Lee Hoseok. Something he can read, can understand. Something that makes sense. Because thinking back at their life together: their childhood, adolescence, the years shared as young adults, Hyunwoo realizes now Hoseok has never truly made sense to him.

Yet somehow has been the one thing he’s always known best.

Hoseok lowers his head, almost looks a bit ashamed, which sends Hyunwoo’s heart racing.

“I wanted to know what it was like,” he admits, “ Before I was here full time.”

That stops Hyunwoo in his tracks and it’s as if time completely stops as well. His eyes widen, staring Hoseok down, and after a moment, he actually laughs. The reaction seems to confuse Hoseok nearly as much as it confuses Hyunwoo himself.

“I’m serious,” Hoseok says indignantly and for a moment, Hyunwoo is reminded of a very determined child, complete with one hand bunched into a fist at his side.

Hoseok? A full time military physician? Working in war zones? Living the very life that is defined by everything he hates and is against?

“W-Why?” Hyunwoo finally manages, mind spinning. He takes a step closer to Hoseok, goes to put his hands on his shoulders and falters the moment it comes to actually touch the other man. But they’re close now, roughly an arm’s length away, but the small room and low ceilings makes it feel even closer.

“Why would you do this to yourself, Hoseok?” he asks, voice coming out a little hoarse as newfound panic starts setting in. Hoseok in a war zone. Hoseok in danger. Hoseok could have died today and that was just one unlucky raid. But over the course of a career with the military, always sent to the most dangerous corners of the globe?

The job would kill him-

“What do I mean to you, Hyunwoo?” Hoseok suddenly says, voice stronger, tone sharp, and there’s a demand there, a weight to the question that, while Hyunwoo might not understand, it clearly means something to Hoseok.

And it echoes something familiar, so, so familiar.

The past is the past, but it weighs heavily on Hyunwoo’s heart.

“What do I mean to you?”

It feels so fresh, like yesterday. If he closes his eyes, takes a moment, he can transport himself back to The Day, the small apartment Minhyuk and Hoseok shared in college, the afternoon Hoseok was swamped with exams and Hyunwoo was struggling to finish an essay but Minhyuk had texted and it seemed urgent. The afternoon he had packed up his books and when he had arrived, Minhyuk was alone and smiling but there was something in his eyes that bit at him.

Hyunwoo frowns at the memory.

“What is Hoseok to you?”

Six years ago, Hyunwoo frowns as well at the question, feels the way his nose wrinkles at the effort, and looks up at Minhyuk from the top of his laptop. Minhyuk is still laying on his back on the couch, peering at the magazine he has raised in the air above his head, but Hyunwoo quickly realizes his eyes are no longer moving, pupils no longer following the print. He can clearly feel eyes on him and lets the magazine fall to his chest, looking over at his friend expectantly.

“Hoseok?” Hyunwoo finally manages when Minhyuk’s eyes start to unnerve him. He glances back at his laptop screen, stares at the essay he has typed there, allows his gaze to unfocus and focus and unfocus agan.

“He’s my best friend,” he says simply, concisely, not really understanding where this is going or why, “And your roomate. A med student. A-”

Hyunwoo is surprised when he’s cut off by a snort from Minhyuk. The other man pulls the magazine up, covering the lower half of his face with the pages and Hyunwoo watches the way his shoulders shake with a small bout of laughter. After a minute it subsides, Minhyuk is shaking his head and reaching up to wipe at one of his eyes.

“You’re so literal,” he remarks, not even looking at Hyunwoo. He closes the magazine with a snap and turns on his side, propping his head up on his hand. His eyes are narrowed a bit, scrutinizing him.

“But that’s not what I asked.”

Silence. Hyunwoo can hear the faucet dripping from the nearby kitchenette and suddenly he feels very compelled to fix it. He snaps his laptop shut, shoving it into his open backpack before he’s crossing the small living room, very much aware of the way Minhyuk’s eyes follow him as he walks. Suddenly it feels far too heavy for just being a gaze.

“It’s not a loaded question,” Minhyuk says pointedly and Hyunwoo feels very much like that’s a lie, but he can’t even begin to explain why. It’s a simple question, right? Hoseok. What does Hoseok mean to him?

The question sits like a gun to his head.

Hyunwoo reaches the sink and shoves at the handle. He feels resistance and the drip shuts off-

For a moment. He bites at his lip another drop rains down to the sink below.

His eyes close and he feels the way his lashes rest, takes a breath, grounds himself.

“What are you looking for, Minhyuk?” He manages, the words sound strangled and he hates that. Being blunt and concise and direct have always been traits he was raised to be instilled with. Being frank was a strength. Hesitance was a lethal weakness.

“The truth” Minhyuk responds smoothly, honestly, and those eyes still burn into Hyunwoo’s back, “I don’t need a definition. I know what Hoseok is. But what is he to you?"

Hyunwoo can’t explain the spike of anger in him, his hands clawing tensely at the kitchen counter before he whirls around.

“I don’t know.” Hyunwoo abruptly says and it’s final, voice echoing the quiet room, a boom that seems to slowly fade off, leaving a wide-eyed Minhyuk staring at him in shock.

“Why? Why do we have to define anything? Why?”

Hyunwoo can’t explain why he’s getting angry, it’s as if something inside him has snapped after being kept forced down too far for too long. He rounds on Minhyuk, shoulders broad, lips almost pulled into a snarl.

“Because you know what you feel for him. You know what he feels for you.” Minhyuk’s on his feet, voice desperate as he approaches Hyunwoo. He lowers his voice.

“He’s moving, Hyunwoo. To study abroad. You have to tell him. You have to tell him what he means to you-”

“Nothing! He means nothing to me.” he explodes, and realizes the room is suddenly deathly quiet save for one sound, the front door swinging shut. Minhyuk’s face goes pale and the magazine clasped in his hand falls to the floor. Hyunwoo feels himself go numb, like sparks tickling the back of his head, and he hesitates, closes his eyes, wishes he could be anywhere else, anywhere but here.

He turns and sees Hoseok, arms heavy with books, a lost expression on his face. But there’s something else there, something… something Hyunwoo had hoped to never see on the other man’s face. Devastation.

“I guess… that answers that,” Hoseok says quietly and there’s something about his voice that just sounds utterly… shattered.

It’s like he’s been hit with a sudden deluge of ice water, all anger and frustration and heat suddenly gone, “That’s not… Hoseok, that’s not what I meant. I just- I can’t-”

Hoseok shakes his head, that pain still there, but something else, something stronger. Hoseok has always been too strong for his own good, too adept at accepting pain, adjusting, and immediately carrying on.

Hyunwoo takes a step closer.

Hoseok takes one away, eyes on the floor. He shakes his head, sighs, and then, amazingly, laughs under his breath.

“I think it would be best if you leave. My last final is tomorrow. I have to study,” he says slowly, side-stepping away from the door to allow Hyunwoo his way through.

Hyunwoo panics. This feels very much like the end of them and he doesn’t want it to be, doesn’t want things to end like this, doesn’t want them to die off. Minhyuk is looking between the two of them, distraught, and maybe close to tears, looking for something, anything he can do to patch up what just happened for the two men that won’t even look at one another.

Hyunwoo hesitates, feels dizzy. He crosses the room and zips his bag, hoists it over his shoulder, bites his lip. He looks at Hoseok who is looking away, looking at nothing in particular.

“Congratulations on studying abroad,” he says quietly, hoarsely, and Hoseok nods. Hyunwoo isn’t sure if he’s imagining it or not, but he almost sees a glisten of moisture on his lower lash. A second later he wipes it away.

“Hyunwoo-” Minhyuk starts but Hyunwoo shakes his head, sending his friend a small smile to try and reassure him. He adjusts the straps of his bag on his shoulder, nods to Hoseok, and walks out of the small apartment.

He doesn’t even make it home before he starts sobbing, the sobs racking his body so violently he steps into an alley, collapses in the shadows, and cries himself to exhaustion.

It’s funny. The first time he realizes how much he loves Lee Hoseok is the moment he loses him.

Hyunwoo tries to forget Hoseok, but the man is etched into his skin like scars.

He throws himself into his work, tries to bandage the wounds left behind with his studies, his friends, his future, but it’s as if every time he finds himself falling into something beyond the memories, the pain wells to the surface and pulls him back in.

He relapses.

He studies languages, history, military theory, finds himself spending more and more time locked in his father’s office pouring over maps and whatever briefings he can get his hands on. He asks questions, delves deeper, throws himself into the world he’s always been expected to join, a world he now welcomes as a distraction. His father smiles at him, proudly, and maybe that’s one of the things he hates the most: it’s his actions in the wake of impossible pain that gain him the most approval.

Hyunwoo graduates.

His family smiles.

He doesn’t.

He finds himself looking into the stands as graduation caps rain down around him, the world seeming to inch to slow motion. Sometimes he feels as if he’ll look, find the eyes he’s looking for, and everything will fall into place.

He never finds them.

That somehow hurts more.

Every picture taken of him that day seems empty, even when the frame is full of loved ones.

He shoves them into the dresser at the corner of his bedroom the morning of his enlistment and never digs them back out.

He is 23 and finally enlisting, having followed his parents’ wishes of getting his degree before he does. What he has before him isn’t just a 2 year stint: it’s life. The Son family and the military elite have always been impossibly intertwined. There was never any other future for him.

He reminds himself of that and somehow it all hurts less, knowing this is what the world has had planned for him all along.

He is 27 and home, the grit of sand still biting through his boots, staring at his phone as it lights up on his desk.

I’m in Seoul.

He stares at the text and wills it away, but it flashes again minutes later. Hyunwoo picks up his phone, stares at the screen as a once familiar name swirls like an unfamiliar haze on his mind. The screen flashes once more, a last warning, and he slams it facedown on his desk, rubbing at his face. It doesn’t buzz again.

The text stays unread on his phone, the blue dot at its side like a beacon that always draws him back. There’s always a ‘1’ gleaming up at him in a red circle every time he unlocks his phone. He stares at it as if willing it away. Acknowledging it somehow weighs more heavily on his mind than actually reading it.

Years inch by.

Hyunwoo is 30 and watching emergency flares ignite behind helicopter blades when, yet again, he remembers someone better left forgotten. He watches his team without him and for the first time in his life, he wonders if he’s going to die. He shifts his rifle uncomfortably over his shoulder, peering up as the helicopter reaches its altitude, hovers, then flies into the war torn night. He has until sunrise to survive, when the next convoy will be back for him. 8 hours in a war-torn, hostile hellscape.

As the lights of the helicopter vanish into the distance, he finds himself thinking not of practical things, of his training, of finding a place to bunker down. He stands there in the dark, lit by the moon, stars, and distant explosions, and simply thinks of the phone that sits on his desk back home, of the 3 year-old unread message that still lives there.

Suddenly he hates himself for wasting that opportunity, hates himself for allowing his anger and sense of abandonment get in the way of actually reconnecting. As he lowers himself into a copse of trees to hide, wait out the rest of the night, he promises himself that if he survives until dawn, he’ll finally respond.

He survives.

But he never replies.

Then he’s 32 and on his fourth tour at the edge of the war-torn Caucasus. People are whispering about the legendary Son clan again, of an apparent military prodigy, and maybe, maybe, that’s when he begins to forget.

The scars of Hoseok don’t seem to bleed as much anymore, still tattooed into his flesh but no longer as fresh, no longer a constant sting. He hadn’t expected the wounds to last so long, hadn’t expected to close his eyes past his twenties and still hear the ghost of a laugh of someone who had, whether intentionally or not, walked out of his life.

Time hurts more than life ever could.

Changkyun laughs at him as he pitches a bundle across the tarmac. Hyunwoo catches it, stares at the younger man, and can’t fight the playful smile that tugs at his lips. The jet’s passengers are beginning to disembark and he peers up at them, looks away as a spark of silver catches his eye the wrong way. The second foreign feet hit the pavement, the bag is at his side, hand raised in salute, and it’s as if the pavement rushes away from beneath his feet. He’d recognize that smile anywhere, the way it plays at his eyes, the way Hoseok smiles and it burns to his very soul. He’s older, larger, the contours of his face sharper and infinitely more intense. But his eyes are still just as soft, gleaming with a warmth that Hyunwoo can never truly put into words.

“Captain?” Changkyun asks quietly from his side, hand faltering mere millimeters from its trained salute. He follows Hyunwoo’s gaze, finds a man he doesn’t know, and looks back immediately.

It hurts, to stare into a face he knows so well and find it’s a mystery to those around him. Hoseok is so deep into his DNA that some days he wonders if he was ever even real to begin with or some just some kind of cosmic hallucination. Once he had seemed so seeped into everything, so absolute, that it is almost unthinkable that everyone around him isn’t also shocked by the brightness Hyunwoo sees.

They’re in the mountains and the chill of fall is beginning to creep in. Hoseok stands at the jet’s doors, arching to pull the flaps of his leather jacket closer. He’s still a civilian, straddling a line of actual enlistment and truly being free, so his hair still hangs long, dyed an unnatural silver tipped in blue. It’s typical Hoseok, to be bright, a little flashy, someone that draws all eyes regardless of the situation. He adjusts his sunglasses as he descends the steps, immediately met by an enthusiastic Jooheon, Hyunwoo’s second in command. As he introduces himself, shaking the man’s hand repeatedly, his eyes glance at Hyunwoo, just a brief flash from the sides of his sunglasses, and he looks away. For a brief second, Hyunwoo feels unsteady on his feet. He reaches out, grabbing Changkyun’s arm in a vice grip, and the private immediately falls from attention, grabbing ahold of his captain’s other arm.

“Hyung?” he asks quietly, only because they can’t be overheard, but is quickly shaken away. Hyunwoo straightens, cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders as if trying to force himself to stand taller, be the picture perfect image of a Special Forces Captain.

He steps towards the arriving company, all civilians, doctors and nurses from prestigious Seoul hospitals there as humanitarians and to oversee the creation of a westernized clinic, and it’s Hoseok leading them. Suddenly his minds go back to the documents he had received - skimmed- that morning, back to a single line: Dr. H. Lee.

He should have known.

It is two weeks before the raid and Hyunwoo glances at Hoseok where he bounces around in the back of the Humvee. He’s squashed behind Changkyun and Hyungwon, the younger man cheerfully bantering back and forth with him. He’s smiling in that way of his, the way that causes his eyes to all but disappear, smile radiating out to his cheeks. He has his bag clasped on his lap, a stark contrast to the guns the soldiers hold in theirs. Hoseok’s laughing at something Changkyun is saying, reaches over and playfully shoves him, and Hyunwoo feels a spike of pride at how well both have started acclimating to a place as stressful as a war zone.

But there’s something else he feels and it’s something darker, something that makes his lip turn down slightly.

And for a moment he wonders what that feeling might be.

Hoseok’s eyes flicker up, find his, and he smiles once more. Hyunwoo’s head immediately snaps back forward, breathing a heavy breath through his nose, trying to ignore the amused look Jooheon gives him from the driver’s seat. His cheeks burn a little and he busies himself peering out the window, watching the rocky scenery that flies by outside. The chatter behind him continues and the longer it does, the more it begins to grate on him for reasons he can’t begin to explain. He doesn’t have the time to think past that before Jooheon is suddenly slamming on the brakes of the car, sending them all violently forward. He hears Hoseok wheeze a bit as he’s caught by his seatbelt, but for the soldiers in the car, they find an immediate call to action. Before Hoseok even has time to ask what’s going on, the doors of the car are popped open, the soldiers leaning out, guns up, and it’s Hyunwoo who’s yelling at a civilian now intentionally blocking their path.

There’s a language gap. While Hyunwoo had begun lessons in the local Armenian-like  dialect when he arrived, that was only a few months ago and the woman standing before their humvee is in hysterics, speaking so quickly he cannot even begin to guess at the very basics of what she’s saying. All he knows is his training. This area is notorious for insurgent groups that intentionally target military convoys, sometimes via suicide bombers, others via diversions followed by full out raids.

The woman is older, in her 50s at least, swathed in enough cloth that Hyunwoo cannot say with any certainty whether or not she has an explosive device on her. That’s where things get particularly dangerous.

“Step aside or we’ll shoot!” he barks out, the words falling from his tongue awkwardly in the unfamiliar language and if anything, this just makes things worse. Whereas the woman had been crying before, this causes her to devolve into hysterics. She’s shaking her hands, unfamiliar words leaving her lips at a thousand miles an hour, but she doesn’t move.

“What’s going on?” Hyunwoo hears Hoseok ask from behind him. He glances back and finds Hoseok leaning out of the car as well, tucked by Changkyun. The boy shrugs, never lowers his gun.

“Dunno,” he says quietly, “Can’t understand her. But she won’t move.”

Hyunwoo sees Hoseok frown, sees the way he leans in and closes his eyes and tries to listen to what it is the woman is screaming in the first place.

But then Hyunwoo hears two words he does recognize, shaky English.

“Hurt! Help! Hurt!” the woman tries desperately, having understood no one in the convoy will be able to understand the local tongue.

Hurt.

There’s a gasp behind Hyunwoo -Hoseok- and the sound of feet hitting the hard ground and Changkyun desperately gasping ‘Hyung wait!’

Hyunwoo doesn’t have the chance to look back before he suddenly sees Hoseok ahead of him, running towards the woman, medical bag thrown haphazardly over his shoulder. His eyes widen and he immediately jumps down from the truck, pushing his rifle up onto his back before lunging forward, catching him under the arms with merciless strength.

“Are you an idiot?” it isn’t like Hyunwoo to get worked up, to get angry, but some deep part of him knows that the anger he’s experiencing has less to do with the issue at hand or insubordination and everything to do with who it is that is rushing headlong thoughtlessly into danger.

“She said she needed, help, Hyunwoo,” Hoseok’s pulls against his grasp, nearly pulls free, but Hyunwoo merely pulls him closer, eyes scanning the ground around them. They’re in an area that’s still fraught with landmines and one wrong step can mean the difference between life and death.

“She could be lying. It could be a trap,” Hyunwoo hisses and he’s got Hoseok pulled flush against him, hands locked behind his neck. The strap of his HK416 digs into his chest and neck and he’s just so desperate to hold on that-

He isn’t quite sure what to do when Hoseok manages to slam back against him, break free, and Hyunwoo finds himself doing his best not to trip and fall into the dirt. He reaches again, catches the edge of his jacket as it flutters by and watches in horror as he approaches the woman. He holds his hands up, showing he isn’t armed, showing he means no harm.

“Doctor,” he says slowly in awkward English, repeating the word several times with soft nods and an even softer smile. The woman is staring at him with tears running down her face, but when he pulls his bag from his shoulder and unzips it, showing the contents of gauze and IV bags and gleaming surgical equipment, she collapses on the spot, grabbing the leg of his fatigues and digging her face into the fabric as she wails. Hoseok runs his finger softly over her hair before glancing at the others, watching each soldier carefully before finding Hyunwoo. The captain shifts uncomfortably, gun raised again, eyes scanning the surroundings. That’s when he begins to notice the others (mostly children) poking their heads around corners of decrepit buildings and craggy boulders.

Hoseok crouches down, pulling her gently from his leg, trying to meet her eyes.

“Who is hurt? You?” he continues slowly, keeping his voice smooth. Hoseok has always had a way with people, a natural magnetism that Hyunwoo had found himself envying on more than one occasion. An effortlessness, as if connecting was simply a part of who he was.

Hyunwoo also realizes that while he speaks, he’s checking the woman over, looking for blood, for wounds, pressing here and there in search of broken bones or other maladies.

The woman is shaking her head, trying to form words through her hysterical sobbing, but Hoseok is patient, rubs her back, whispers soft, encouraging things in Korean even though he knows she won’t understand. But there’s something about his tone that has the smooth lull of a song, something that makes her cry a little less hysterically.

“Son,” she finally manages and the word is awkward on her tongue but she just keeps repeating it, “Son, Son, Son.”

Hoseok nods, thanks her quietly, runs a hand over her hair once more before looking back at Hyunwoo.

“...We need to check those buildings,” he says quietly, nodding towards the wreckage to their left. They don’t look fit for human occupancy, the roofs caved in and jagged pillars, but they both know that has very little bearing when it comes to places like war zones.

Hyunwoo nods, motioning for the others to go - carefully - and it only takes a moment for Jooheon to poke his head from the building and call “Captain! There’s a kid in here! He’s- He’s in bad shape-”

That’s all Hoseok needs to hear, he looks at the woman, moves his eyes between her and the building a few times and asks “Son?”

She immediately nods, about to descend into hysterics again, but Hoseok helps her to her feet and walks her to a nearby boulder by the roadside, helping her to sit. He then digs through his bag, finds a bottle of water, uncaps it, and holds it up to her. She hesitates, watching him, but when he smiles again, she takes it, drinking at it ravenously.

Hoseok finally looks at Hyunwoo, “Can you have someone sit with her while I check out the kid?”

Hyunwoo nods, motioning Changkyun over, and once he’s at her side, he begins making his way to the building Jooheon indicated. Hyunwoo follows like a shadow and Hoseok sends him a look over his shoulder but says nothing. As they step into the wreckage, Hoseok peers around in the darkness before he finds the figure, curled on a dirty blanket, bloody and-

Missing one of his legs.

“Must have stepped on a landmine,” Jooheon whispers, something about his voice sounding a bit faint. Even as a soldier, he’s not the best with blood and gore, “...Poor kid can’t be more than 7.”

Hoseok nods thoughtfully, taking a deep breath to ground himself before he slowly steps forward. The child is barely conscious, but the bleeding has slowed. At least his mother knew well enough to tie off the wound. Pieces of skin, muscle, and bone still hold on, though, the last remaining pieces of what used to be his left foot. When Hyunwoo approaches and sees, he simply sighs.

“We see it a lot. Especially in kids. They play in areas they think are safe but… nowhere here really is-” Hyunwoo mutters sadly, kneeling down to get a better look.

“I have to amputate the rest of this,” Hoseok sighs, shaking his head, then glances around, “But the risk of infection here-”

“We’ll do our best,” Hyunwoo encourages and Hoseok nods, biting at his lip. He’s used to clean, white, sterile operating rooms fully stocked and fully staffed. Right now he has everything he has in his go bag and whatever help Hyunwoo can provide him with with his basic first aid training.

“Get Jooheon to try and get a medivac out here. He’ll need a hospital after this or he’ll die of infection. I’ll cut away as much as I can,” Hoseok directs as he pulls his materials from his bag, breaking open large packages of sterile gauze to attempt to make some semblance of a place to operate. Hyunwoo has to look away when Hoseok begins trying to sanitize the wound with alcohol found in his pack, the way the child weakly cries out, small, choking sobs. Hyunwoo stands, goes to Jooheon and relays Hoseok’s order, hesitating at the doorway of the decrypt building. When he glances back, he sees Hoseok beginning to measure a medication (an antibiotic? A painkiller) into a syringe and looks away once more.

“We’re damn lucky he was with us today,” Jooheon remarks as he finishes the call, “Who knows what could have happened to the kid…”

“...Yeah… Damn lucky,” Hyunwoo mutters, looking back again and Hoseok has set up a light, is preparing a scalpel, and is waving Hyunwoo over. When he arrives, it becomes clear Hoseok expects him to hold the boy down.

“I.. I’m not sure I can,” he says slowly, shivering, but the sharpness in Hoseok’s eyes immediately changes his mind. Muttering an apology the child can’t even understand, before bracing his legs in place. He looks away for the entirety of the procedure, knowing the child’s cries will haunt him until the day he dies.

After an eternity, when Hoseok’s make-shift surgery is almost complete, the medevac crew arrive, get vitals and information from Hoseok before pulling the boy onto a stretcher, he and his mother disappearing into a helicopter headed to the capitol city.

Hoseok slumps into the back of the Humvee, exhausted, covered with drying blood and fighting to keep his eyes open. Hyunwoo watches him for a moment, studies him, then asks Hyungwon to take his spot up front, settling in beside the physician.

It’s silence as the car starts and they turn back to base, the sun beginning to set, setting the sky alight with fiery oranges and reds.

Hoseok’s eyes are closed, but Hyunwoo can tell he isn’t asleep.

“You shouldn’t have- You shouldn’t have run out like that. What if-” he starts slowly, not really wanting to scold him, but what he had done had been reckless, potentially deadly.

“I knew you had my back. I knew I’d be okay,” Hoseok mumbles back sleepily and leans a little closer to Hyunwoo, letting out a contented sigh. Hyunwoo wonders if he’s eveb conscious enough to realize what he’s doing. He flushes.

“But I can’t protect you from everything, Hoseok. Some things are beyond my control.”

“That’s a risk I was willing to take. I’ll always trust you, Hyung.”

For the second time in his life, he realizes he loves Lee Hoseok, but this time he’s sitting right beside him, the man’s head on his shoulder as he dozes on the way back to the base.


“Earth to Hyunwoo!”

Hyunwoo’s head snaps back up and he finds himself back in Hoseok’s office, a decade of memories bursting from his vision, leaving him back in reality. Hoseok is watching him, hand on his waist, frowning faintly. He leans it, reaches up and gently touches Hyunwoo’s head with the back of his hand.

“You sure you didn’t get hurt today?” he ask and his voice is soft, warm.

Hyunwoo merely nods and Hoseok’s hand falls away, though he wishes it wouldn't.

“So? Are you going to answer my question?” Hoseok asks, tilting his head to the side as he watches him.

Right.

What do I mean to you?

A question he couldn’t answer back then. A question he had answered so incorrectly that he had lost Hoseok for nearly a decade. But this time… this time Hyunwoo knows what he feels. And he knows it’s okay to feel what he feels.

“Everything,” Hyunwoo says quietly and it clearly catches Hoseok off guard, his eyes going wide.

“Everything?” he asks.

“Everything,” Hyunwoo confirms, voice more certain than before.

“So back then…?”

“I was scared.”

It seems a contradiction for a decorated special operations commander to utter the words ‘I was scared’, but the flow from Hyunwoo’s lips as effortlessly and smoothly as silk. Hoseok stares at him for a moment, takes stock of this, then steps back and pours himself another shaky glass of scotch. He quickly downs it in one go, grimacing at the strength, before finding Hyunwoo’s eyes again.

“Scared of what?” he confronts.

“Of a lot of things,” comes the candid response and Hyunwoo takes a small step forward, putting them at the same distance they had previously been at before Hoseok opted for another drink.

“But mostly of you not loving me the way I love you.”

It’s an massive weight off of his chest, saying the words he’s kept locked away for so long, words that he himself hadn’t even recognized for a majority of his life. It’s freeing, and as he watches Hoseok, he sees the man freeze, bite at his lip, and nod, perhaps a bit misty eyed.

“You were an idiot,” Hoseok says quietly and Hyunwoo doesn’t even take offense, just laughs. He has played a lot of parts in his life: A good son, a good soldier, a good student, a good captain, and all of those parts were somehow so absolutely at odds with what he truly wanted to be: good for Hoseok. Good for the person he had unquestionably loved since their youth, since the first moment Hoseok, bright eyed and messy haired, had invited the quiet Hyunwoo to come play with his friends in the late spring sun.

It was he himself that had kept himself from Hoseok, he himself who had fought, made excuses, kept himself from the one logical thing he knew would make him happy. It was he himself that had lost Hoseok and fate and fortune that had brought them together again.

“I was,” Hyunwoo admits easily and finds himself gravitating towards Hoseok, as second nature as breathing, pulled into his orbit. He stops just shy of touching him but can feel the warmth radiating off of him, the way Hoseok has to peer up just the smallest bit to look him in the eye.

“You love me?” Hoseok asks quietly, suddenly a bit shy and Hyunwoo would be lying if he said he didn’t find it beyond charming.

“I do. I do love you,” Hyunwoo confirms and he leans in, his nose brushing Hoseok’s. He can feel the other man’s breath fan across his face. And he knows the door behind them is unlocked. He knows someone could step in at any minute. He knows, given their position, the stances of the military on… who and what they are, Hyunwoo’s career would be dead in the water. But he doesn’t care. Because as much as he wanted his career, as much as he wanted the prestige and the title and the honor, there had always been one thing he has always wanted more.

Hoseok.

“Good,” Hoseok mumbles, words that would have been lost if not for their proximity, and Hyunwoo’s heart flutters when he can feel the faintest brush of the other man’s lips on his own, “Because I love you too.”

And it’s Hoseok that kisses him first, probably because his mind can’t seem to wrap itself around the confession coming from his mouth, and he tastes like scotch and warmth and everything Hyunwoo had ever dreamt of. It’s soft, careful, almost too careful and Hyunwoo feels his arms encircle Hoseok, find his hair, while Hoseok’s fist in the back of his jacket. A moment passes, energy builds, and suddenly Hoseok’s teeth are biting at Hyunwoo’s lower lip, drawing a moan from him that leaves Hoseok smirking. He shoves the older man back a little, shoving him against the door of the small office hard enough that the nearby succulent nearly flies off its table. Hyunwoo catches it without even a glance, replaces it, and refocuses on Hoseok, who is now beginning to unbutton his jacket, running his fingers slowly over the dogtags that lay on the undershirt beneath.

“You never answered my question,” Hyunwoo pants when they break apart. Hoseok tilts his head questioningly to the side and makes a noise of surprise when Hyunwoo hoists him up onto his desk, settling between his legs.

“But I-”

“Why be a military physician when you could be a real, proper physician in a hospital?” Hyunwoo asks breathlessly, meeting Hoseok’s gaze, face close. His chest is raising and falling quickly, dog tags gleaming where Hoseok had started to unbutton his jacket.

Hoseok simply smiles, still red, panting a bit, and Hyunwoo would be lying if he said the grin didn’t blind him just a little.

“I chose this so I could be there when you need me.”

That throws Hyunwoo off guard.

Suddenly he is twelve years old and in the living room of his family home, sending Hoseok a questionable look as they play video games.

“A doctor?” he demands incredulously, knowing his friend well enough that he could barely keep his grades above failing, let alone study hard enough to do something like go to medical school.

“Mmhm,” the eleven year old responds, not even looking his way as he mashes the buttons on the controller, “You know I can’t fight, so I doubt they’ll let me be a soldier. Not like you.”

“But why a doctor?” Hyunwoo demands, finally letting go of the controller to give Hoseok his full attention.

“Well soldiers get hurt. I want to be there when you need me,” Hoseok says sagely, mashing buttons like it’s a legitimate strategy and cheering when his character delivers a killing blow to Hyunwoo’s. He spins around, grinning, but his face becomes confused when he just sees Hyunwoo staring back.

“Huh? Hyung! What gives? Did you just let me win?! Why would you-”

Twenty years later, Hyunwoo laughs shakily and feels his eyes burn, bites at his lip and looks away to compose himself.


Full circle.

Hyunwoo can’t help but feel that no matter what happened, how they got here, how long they lost one another, everything had come full circle. The universe had brought them together again. Biting back a laugh, unable to hide his joy, he cups Hoseok’s face and leans in to kiss him again.