Chapter Text
It started slowly...So slow that even for the ever observant and aware Han Juwon it was difficult to catch, until it was too late.
He now had a busy schedule due to his work with Women and Juvenile Affairs, leaving Dongsik to his own devices for most of the day, though it rarely appeared that way.
At dinner Dongsik would drone on and on like a broken record about his day and whatever misfortunes befell him throughout the course of it. Somedays it was about how he'd helped clean out Jaeyi's shop from the ceiling to the floor, scrubbing away at grease clinging annoyingly to the walls from years of late night grilling sessions, other times it was a play by play of how he'd gone fishing and returned home sore and empty handed.
But Juwon never shut out the words being spoken to him, never turned off from the constant hum of sound and just floated in his own bubble until it was time to call it a night. He listened to every word spilling out of his partner's mouth, even if the day had been long and he secretly wanted nothing more than to fall asleep for a thousand years and never wake up. Why? At times he found himself wondering that too, but after much internal debate and vague descriptions to a befuddled Kwon Hyuk, he'd reached a verdict. It was love.
Of course, that's what would be expected, given the fact that him and Dongsik had been in a relationship for how many years now?... Juwon can't remember even if he tried, the only memory that snags in his mind is one he holds close to his heart. Lee Dongsik's lips against his, warm and gentle while his were rough and cold. It was a few weeks after Dongsik's release from prison and their initial meeting, where his former partner had completely ruined the moment by yelling some incorrigible nonsense about eating and pooping properly. Juwon grimaces every time he is unfortunate enough to have it pop up in the fog of his mind... some things never change.
But recently, things had started to change. At dinner, the background noise of his lover's monologue had started to get shorter and shorter by the day, as though his script was being trimmed down by a movie director burning out and losing their spark. Was he the movie director? That was Juwon's only thought as he sat opposite a completely silent Lee Dongsik, his silver fork glinting in the light as it slid around a carrot for what must've been the hundredth time, before the angle of it was changed in his calloused, deft hand, causing it to squash the soft orange stick onto his plate.
Juwon bit back whatever words were on his tongue to look up at Dongsik's face instead, only to find his lover already staring at him. But the look in his eyes wasn't love...or even another relatively mellow emotion. It wasn't something Juwon had seen before in all his years of knowing Dongsik. In those gold flecked irises of his, trained on Juwon's own and showing no sign of backing down, he saw it clearly, and it made his heart sink down to his feet and through the aged wooden panels of the floor, slipping through the gaps until it landed in the cold concrete basement below them.
It was an emotion Juwon himself had displayed as his default setting when he first arrived in the small town from Seoul...and seeing it mirrored on Dongsik's face made him feel sick to his stomach.
Hate.