Chapter Text
He was looking for wire cutters when his hand found the gun.
It lay at the bottom of the toolbox beneath a tangle of old nets and screws, the metal cold even through the heat of the afternoon. At first he didn’t see it, only felt the unmistakable shape pressing against his fingers, the way a familiar voice can be recognized in a crowded room.
Lee Do froze, his body remembering before his mind did. Then he lifted it from the box, and the light slid over the black steel, quick and cruel, like the edge of a memory.
There was no mistaking it.
He’d held this gun before.
The same model. The same textured grip. The same weight.
Moon Baek's gift. Not just a weapon, but a dare in a box. And now it was here, resting in Do’s palm, heavy as a forgotten promise.
He set it down carefully, as though it could still go off on its own. For a long time, he simply stood there, listening to the sea beyond the shed—the rhythmic crash of waves against rocks, the distant cry of gulls.
Confusion came first, sudden and wordless.
How could it be here? This gun should have been in an evidence locker in Seoul, sealed and catalogued under some forgotten case number. He had seen to it himself, back when he was still wearing a badge.
Then, the question melted into something darker, slower: realization. There was only one person who could have brought it to this place. Only one person capable of moving something so dangerous with such stealth and audacity.
Moon Baek.
The thought tightened his jaw. He could almost see him—barefoot on the porch, face turned to the sun, pretending at normalcy while harboring mischief like a secret pulse beneath the skin.
When had he stolen it back? Had it been here all along, traveling with them through border towns, across ferries and rented rooms, an invisible companion Do never thought to suspect?
He closed the toolbox again, a little too firmly, and stepped out into the air.
The shed smelled of oil and salt and wood rot. Outside, the afternoon was clear and mercilessly bright. The sea spread wide before the house, its surface restless under the wind. Baek’s laughter floated faintly from somewhere beyond the porch, light as driftwood, the sound of a man who had forgotten danger.
Lee Do felt something all too familiar twist beneath his ribs—a blend of anger, disbelief, and a bitterness so deep it left no trace on his face.
He had thought, perhaps foolishly, that peace was a matter of will. That if they both wanted it enough, it might take root. But Baek had brought the gun here—that gun—as if to remind him that some ghosts refused to stay buried.
***
For a while, he said nothing.
He told himself it was because there were no words that wouldn’t sound foolish. Because anger, spoken aloud, would only invite Moon Baek to play with it—to turn it over, examine it, find its weakness. Baek always had a way of turning confrontation into performance, of transforming guilt into charm.
So Lee Do stayed silent instead, watching him from a distance: Baek pruning herbs on the porch, standing with his hands in his pockets at the edge of the waves, or lying on the couch reading until sleep pulled the book from his fingers. He looked harmless like that, a man made new. And yet, sometimes, when the light slipped a certain way across his face, something colder showed through—a flicker of calculation, or memory.
Those moments were rare, but Do caught them—he always did—and he found himself wondering whether this life, this soft, patient rhythm, was something Baek could ever truly want.
The thought was a quiet wound.
Because Do wanted it. He wanted the lazy mornings and the peaceful evenings, the honest laughter in between, the certainty of Baek's warmth beside him at night. He wanted to believe that love could make them ordinary. But Moon Baek had never been ordinary, and there was no point in trying to cage him with rules and reasons that meant nothing to a man who’d already looked into the heart of chaos and found beauty there.
Besides, hadn’t Do promised himself not to change him?
Baek moved through the days as if he had never belonged anywhere else. He rose early, padded through the house, boiled water for coffee, hummed half-remembered tunes. He looked healthy now. His skin no longer paper-thin, his breath steady, his body filling out again after the illness that had nearly ended him.
Sometimes Do caught himself staring at that proof of life and remembered the things he'd done to preserve it: erase files, bend laws, vanish from the grid. He had saved Baek. But in saving him, he had also exiled them both, and now here they were, living in the half-light of the world like it was enough.
Maybe it wasn't, and maybe the gun in the shed was a testament to that. Maybe Moon Baek had brought it because some part of him still longed for the language of power, of danger—the language that had once made him who he was. Or perhaps, Lee Do thought bitterly, he had brought it for him. A reminder. You can’t save me from what I am.
***
One night, while Moon Baek slept, Lee Do sat up and watched him breathe. The sea pressed softly against the rocks below the house. He closed his eyes and thought about the pistol waiting in the shed, silent as an animal in hibernation.
He thought about choices. About the line he’d drawn and crossed and redrawn a hundred times. About how easy it would be to throw the gun into the sea and tell Baek nothing—bury the past, lock them both in this fragile yet blissful calm.
But the thought came and went, insignificant. Happiness built on silence was just another lie, and he’d promised himself he’d never lie to Baek, not even to keep him safe, or his.
Beside him, Baek stirred in his sleep, murmuring something indistinct. Do’s throat tightened. He realized what frightened him most now: not the gun, not the long arm of the law, not even death. It was the possibility that Baek might have already become restless. That he might be smiling through the same calculated patience that used to precede disaster.
But Do had loved him through betrayal, through the smell of blood and smoke, through unspeakable pain. He would love him through this, too, even if loving meant letting go.
If Baek still needed the weight of that weapon near him—if he still dreamed of the world that had made him dangerous—then Lee Do would not cage him in gentleness. He would not play warden to a man he’d once hunted and failed to hate.
Tomorrow, he decided. He would talk to him tomorrow.
He would ask him what the gun meant—whether it was memory, or defiance, or a promise he had forgotten to keep.
He would listen, even if he didn’t like the answer.
Because they couldn't expect to find peace while the past rusted quietly between them.
And because, for all his discipline, Do knew he couldn’t live beside that gun without knowing whether Baek still needed it—or if, like him, he just couldn’t throw it away.