ISS 2014: for chanrae

[comebackmods]

Title: Velocity Over Time
Rating: PG
Pairing: Dongwoo/Hoya
Length: 6,803
Summary: Dongwoo is searching for Howon.
Warning: Character Death
Notes: Hey, I wasn't sure what genre you would like to read, so I hope this is okay, and that it doesn't stray too far from your prompt (it kind of does oh man sorry,,) and expectations! Merry Christmas :) Also, thanks to my stunning beta whom I'll mention in the comments after reveals!

To: chanrae
From: Your Secret Santa



Velocity Over Time-

Jang Dongwoo had always figured the world would collapse and fall apart at the feet of ever-advancing computer technology (either that, or a zombie apocalypse) but he'd never thought he would be the cause of it all.

Dongwoo had been the captain of the high school dance team in his final year, and Lee Howon was the good-looking transfer student. Just like a television drama, Dongwoo should have known it was only a matter of time before he'd fall head over heels in love.

Howon was the only person whose passion for dance could rival, could better, Dongwoo's, and if Dongwoo hadn't known before, he'd be a complete airhead to not know by now, that a situation like this would only draw him closer.

On the day Howon had joined the dance team, Dongwoo lost his breath watching their newest member gliding across the stage in a pantomime of fluid movements and defined limbs.

Dongwoo had asked Howon if he'd like to hang out after the team meeting had ended, and Howon smiled shyly, nodding. They went to the noodle shop on the same block as their campus, where Howon talked about himself and his previous school over steaming bowls of hot ramen and udon, and warm cups of tea, and Dongwoo had felt his heart beat just a little faster.

Dongwoo watches the buildings dwindle past in a haze of glass and metal. Every traffic light is green at the intersection and the cars are in chaos. There are policemen yelling and redirecting traffic in a fluster, and Dongwoo isn't certain, but as he lifts his foot from the gas, he thinks he sees Howon in it all.

Not only had Howon been interested in dance, but also in computer technology. A lot of their classmates were weirded out by that, but Dongwoo found it endearing.

After classes, Howon and Dongwoo would dance and dance until their limbs gave out and their skin would be coated in a sheen of sweat. Then they'd go either to Dongwoo's or Howon's (typically Howon's, because his parents tended to work late into the night), and after having something to eat, Dongwoo would start revising and rewriting his class notes while Howon either further practised choreography or messed around on his computer, both chatting loudly about whatever came to mind, and Dongwoo would have to wipe his hands on the thighs of his dress pants when they became too clammy, after he'd been looking at Howon's defined side profile instead of his textbook for a little too long.

And they'd do it all over again the very next day.

The buildings are thinning out now and the sky seems a little bit clearer, a little bluer and a little more quiet. Dongwoo can see skyscrapers and telecom towers and tall traffic lights, all falling away and fading from sight in his rear view mirror.

"Hey Howon, have you ever had a girlfriend before?"

Howon had looked up from his smartphone, sitting with crossed legs in the middle of the practise room, but hadn't answered Dongwoo.

"Or a boyfriend?" Dongwoo had added timidly (hopefully), after failing to receive a reply.

"Once. A while ago. You?" Howon had said, and Dongwoo had felt a little giddy.

"Yeah," he'd breathed, "me too."

But he hadn't known why he'd said that, because he hadn't ever had a boyfriend before.

But he wanted one.

The city has diminished entirely from the view behind him, and there isn't too much to see up ahead either. There are crops and trees and two houses with tiled roofs. There's dust and dirt below his tires, but mostly it's being whipped up into the air around him.

Dongwoo hadn't realised, but he'd never asked Howon what he did on his computers all the time. He'd grown curious over time though - about why he'd never seen Howon really do any work when they hung out after dance practise, while he himself slaved away with textbooks and spiral bound notes splayed in front of him.

Dongwoo had sat next to Howon on the bed one night, watching the lit screen of the laptop on Howon's lap. He'd had two windows open, one filled with seemingly endless computer code, and the other, someone else's already completed copy of the assignment just given to them by their commerce teacher, which had been downloaded from a resources site Howon had saved in his bookmarks. Dongwoo had to laugh when Howon scrolled through the word document, editing small sections and replacing a few words with synonyms from a thesaurus. Howon had laughed too, and asked Dongwoo to keep his little secret to himself, and Dongwoo wouldn't have been able to say no to Howon's impudent smiles even if he had wanted to.

Howon, as it had happened to be, never did any work after dance practise because he'd been able to infiltrate into the school system to rewrite his semester reports.

The clouds are white and airy in the wide open sky. There are whispers in the wind and Dongwoo can see mountains in the horizon, if he squints. The road pans out further up with a gas station to one side and a diner to the other, but Dongwoo can't stop at either. The air is calm but he is not.

Dongwoo had picked up debating in his second semester, and Howon had taken up programming.

Dance meets were cut down to once a week to avoid clashing with after school electives, but Howon and Dongwoo still met up afterwards to spend time together.

Some days, Howon would stay back in his programming class and cancel his plans with Dongwoo, who had found, unhelpfully, that the less he saw of Howon, the more he'd wanted to be with him.

Nearing the end of third term, it had been announced that there would be a big debate competition with the neighbouring girls' school. Debate meets went on for longer after that, and Dongwoo hardly saw any of Howon, except for at their dance meets, but Howon had said it'd be fine and that Dongwoo was lucky he loved him enough to still be his friend, to which Dongwoo had scoffed and whacked him over the head with a notebook from his bag, with fluttery feelings pooled in the pit of his stomach.

When they did meet up, Dongwoo would be working on his speech structure and speaking skills, and Howon would be coding website layouts and application interfaces, and they would be sitting in silence, not once glancing up at each other until their goodbyes for the night, but Howon had once mentioned that he'd simply enjoyed Dongwoo's presence near him, and Dongwoo had agreed with stutters and flushed cheeks.

The night before the debate, Dongwoo's team had met up for much longer than typical, and spent hours criticising each other's fumbles and blank moments, and giving advice to improve argument points until their cue cards had been rewritten entirely, and although they'd all felt much better and more prepared by the end of the meet, Dongwoo had still felt jittery and nervous. He hadn't doubt expressing his worries to Howon when they sat on the front stoop of Dongwoo's house- he hadn't been able to sleep and had called Howon over to calm his nerves, but in the end he'd only ended up feeling jittery and nervous for completely different reasons after Howon had pulled Dongwoo into his arms and given him the rest of his can of convenience store beer.

The next day, at the girls' school auditorium, Dongwoo had ended up messing up his rebuttal, and although his teammates had pulled him through for the win, their school's other teams had made a few too many mistakes and weak arguments, and they'd ended up walking back to their own school grounds with disheartened spectators in tow, and no trophies in their arms, but Howon had ended up filling Dongwoo's discouraged arms anyway, and that had been enough.

The day after, there'd been rumors going around about the girls' school's debate club members, and their phones that had been ringing all day with an endless amount of private number calls, so many that they'd had to block all incoming calls and turn off their cellphones. Howon had been beaming all day.

So, the programming club wasn't full of good-for-nothings after all (not that Dongwoo had ever thought so, not since Howon had joined the club, but other students had developed a respectable fear for their electronic devices now).

It's as if he should be able to hear the chirping of birds and the cawing of crows drifting in the air around him, but he can't. All he can hear is Howon's voice in his ears, calling his name, begging him, please don't go. But Dongwoo did leave, and Howon's fingers clasped around his wrist really are just in his head now. Dongwoo's hands close tight not around another's warm fingers, but around a cold, leather steering wheel that seems to scream at him, run, run while you can.

The next big extracurricular event for Dongwoo had been the dance competition. There had been five state schools competing in this event, inclusive of the country's top arts school. Much of the team had been disheartened already by this.

Dongwoo, as the team captain, tried arduously to motivate and raise the team's spirits, and although many members worked hard and strained themselves to perfect choreography and synchronisation, they'd all, even Dongwoo himself, expected nothing short of a loss.

Dongwoo had told Howon so, and Howon had shook his head, telling him that with someone as hardworking as Dongwoo leading their team, they would have every chance to take home the title for this competition. Dongwoo had smiled tiredly, leaning into Howon's side as the underground took them home.

The next day, however, after a few too many avoidable slip ups and mistakes by the entire team, Nam Woohyun, one of the team's best dancers (although in Dongwoo's own personal opinion, compared to Howon, Woohyun would never be anything more than second best), had thrown his hands up in fustration and was prepared to call it quits. The other team members had begun to fold and falter when their possibly most resilient member had cracked under the pressure. Dongwoo had felt like he was falling apart.

Howon, however, stepped forward and, raising his voice above Woohyun's, begun reassuring everyone that they still had a chance. Pacing at the front of the room, he reminded the team that they'd been working all year for this, and that if they could pull it off, the rewards and self-worth would be amazing. Even Woohyun, who had reached his breaking point, eventually caved and had gotten back to work (after allegedly being threatened with computer viruses). Dongwoo had felt infinitesimal as the group's leader, but was grateful beyond words that Howon had stepped in before everything had fallen apart and broken away.

With that, everyone begun to work harder than they ever had before, scheduling more practises and meetings, practising in their bedrooms, on the subway back home, in the quad amid free periods, in the gym during lunch and at the park on weekends, reviewing recordings under the desks in study hall and running choreography through their heads before they fell asleep at night, with invigorated passion and motivation.

On the day of the nationals, boarding the bus to the performance hall, everyone had been chattering in nervousness, and Dongwoo had linked his shaking hands with Howon's, receiving in return comforting squeezes and fingers running lightly over his knuckles.

In the wings, before making their way on to stage, they'd all huddled together, shoulder to shoulder, with their hands in a stack at the middle of their circle. Each person had whispered a statement of motivation. Most had said little things like "good luck!", "let's have fun.", "let's take home the title.", "we can do it!", et cetera. Woohyun had told everyone they had worked hard enough and that they would win, which Dongwoo had appreciated greatly, because even if his words had not been anything specifically special, the younger dancers had been relieved that one of their best seniors had felt so assured and confident. Howon had jokingly threatened to hack everyone's snapchat accounts and change their passwords if they didn't win first place (at least Dongwoo had hoped he was joking- but he'd known anyway that he wouldn't be able to hate Howon even if he hadn't been), which had calmed a lot of nerves with laughter. Dongwoo, in the end, had simply given a loud shout of "fighting!" as they raised their hands with a deafening cheer. After this, they'd all truthfully believed that, if they put all their heart and efforts into today's performance, they really could win.

And they did. They'd accepted their trophy with wild cheers and group hugs and bows and handshakes, and Dongwoo had suffocated himself in Howon's arms.

When they'd been preparing to head back, Howon and Dongwoo stood in the dressing room checking the bus timetable together, Woohyun had walked over and thanked Dongwoo for all his hard work, giving him a long, bone-crushing hug.

The next day, as it had turned out, Woohyun's laptop had been attacked by a virus, and Dongwoo didn't even have it in himself to chastise Howon. In fact, he could only laugh when Howon had offered to fix Woohyun's computer for ten dollars, "Mate's rates." Howon had said, and Woohyun had thanked him gratefully.

For miles ahead, all Dongwoo can see is desert, dirt and dust. The border between the land and the darkening horizon blur together in the humidity. He doesn't know if he'll find Howon by nightfall, but he presses his foot down harder onto the gas pedal, he's going to try.

A week after graduation, Dongwoo and Howon had gone to a café on one of the warmer days of summer. They'd ordered the weirdest drinks available on the menu and sampled sips of each other's (Dongwoo had thought his was better, and Howon had enjoyed his own much more, so it had worked out anyway).

They giggled like children over the cute barrister, the froth on Dongwoo's lips and the toddler sitting in the booth across from them who kept lifting forkfuls of cake to his mouth, only to have them constantly fall off and back onto the plate before reaching their destination.

When the child had adorably resulted to using his hands as a means of bringing the cake to his mouth, Dongwoo hadn't been able to stifle his laughter, and had laughed by himself for a while before realising he had been doing so alone.

Howon had an amiable smile on his lips, eyes fixed on Dongwoo's as he calmly placed a hand over Dongwoo's own that had been resting on the smooth table top.

Dongwoo had stopped laughing at that, and simply returned Howon's gesture with his own soft smile.

Howon had then leaned over and pressed his lips gently against Dongwoo's, kissing him lightly until the child across from them had shrieked in disgust, to which they'd pulled apart quickly, giggling all over again.

Later on, when Howon had walked Dongwoo back home under the humid night sky, he'd timidly asked Dongwoo what this made them, and Dongwoo had asked Howon to be his boyfriend.

It isn't really a road that Dongwoo is driving on; there's no black bitumen or painted white lane dividers, and no reflective traffic signs standing tall, just a wide dirt path that's a little more worn down than the rest of the sand that hasn't yet been pressed down with thick tire tracks. He'll follow it anyway.

Halfway through summer break, Dongwoo and Howon ended up renting a loft apartment together close to the uni they'd both been accepted into.

It wasn't much, but they'd been elated to have a place all of their own.

They'd fit together well, Dongwoo preparing coffee for Howon before he left for his morning class, and Howon bringing home dinner after his late afternoon lectures. They didn't see much of each other during the day though, except for Wednesdays when their lectures were at the same time, and on weekends when classes were sparse.

Dongwoo was grateful, but still couldn't help but wish for classes less stressful and time more spent with Howon.

"It everything okay?" Howon had asked one night, when they'd matched up their schedules and had been able to enjoy Chinese takeout together across the balcony table.

"Yeah, of course. Why do you ask?" Dongwoo had smiled, picking at his fried noodles.

"What's wrong?" Howon frowned, stoic as he reached for his glass of water.

Dongwoo kept picking at his own empty bowl, until Howon had stood to take his own dish to the kitchen sink.

"I miss us." Dongwoo had finally mumbled, under his breath, "Being together, I mean. All the time like we used to."

Howon had hummed a sound of confirmation, and Dongwoo smiled sheepishly.

"Let's just clean up, yeah?" Dongwoo murmured, taking his own plate to the sink, and Howon had nodded.

The next day - a Sunday, Dongwoo had woken up to all the furniture in their lounge room pushed up against the walls, and Howon waiting for him in sweatpants, a wifebeater and a smile, and they'd spent the day dancing in the reflection of their windows.

Dongwoo doesn't know if he'll have enough gas to get back. He hopes he will, but he's been driving for a while already and he doesn't know how much further he has to go. His surroundings are pitch black by now and the only device lighting the way are the dim headlights on the front of his car.

But that had been the lull before the storm. Soon enough, they'd just become two undergrads tugging at strings already pulled taught.

"I think," Dongwoo said, rent and monthly bills compiled in his tired hands, "I think we have to move back home. Back to our own houses."

Howon sat up at that, "No," he said, "no, we don't have to. I'll get money, we'll have enough by the end of the month. We just have to keep working hard."

"Even then, I don't think we can make it work-..."

"We will. We'll make it work, but you just have to stay with me."

Dongwoo had found himself suffocating under Howon's pleading gaze, and wordlessly nodded his head.

He'd been hoping to find Howon by following the landmarks they'd driven past last time, but really, in this lighting, all Dongwoo can see is the road up ahead. He can't hear anything but gravel being compressed under tires, can't feel anything but the seatbelt pressing into his hip and clavicles, can't think of anything but Howon.

It'd all been going fine. Dongwoo sacrificed sleep for longer shifts at the supermarket, and Howon had found a job at the local café.

Except that he hadn't - something Dongwoo never knew until Howon had slammed their apartment door open, breathless and exhausted,

"We have to go, Dongwoo." He'd said, and there was no explanation, but Dongwoo hadn't needed one - Howon's shattered voice had been enough to set him into motion.

They were halfway out of the state with only their bags on their backs, by the time Dongwoo had found it in himself to ask, "What happened, Howon?"

"I messed up." Howon had said with finality, and Dongwoo had wanted to sob.

When Dongwoo and Howon first met, they were carefree and truant and happy, they knew where they wanted to be; under the bright lights of a competition stage. Now, Dongwoo has left all of that behind. He wants to reach the end of the road, wants to escape from the dusty tire tracks and into warm arms. Dongwoo wants to be beside Howon, and that in itself would be enough.

"So what happened?" Dongwoo asked.

They'd stopped by the side of the road when the sun was beginning to set. They weren't all that distanced from the nearest big city, only a little further out at most, but Dongwoo's silence had demanded an explanation in itself, and Howon had eventually pulled over after swerving dangerously a few too many times in his distracted mind state.

"We needed money." Howon said simply, and Dongwoo had felt his stomach pitch, "I couldn't find a job in time to pay the renewal, and there's really only one thing I'm good at..." He had trailed off, but by then Dongwoo had heard enough to construct a vague idea of what he'd imagined had happened.

Howon continued anyway, "People hardly pay a glance to their savings accounts, I didn't think they'd notice if a couple dollars here and there were gone. They hardly need it all anyway."

Dongwoo's head had felt heavy when he'd placed it in his palms, the weight of Howon's arm draping itself wearily across his slumped shoulders.

But, Dongwoo had thought to himself, he still wouldn't be able to bring himself to resent Howon even after this was over.

Dongwoo leaves the gas on and jogs into the motel's lobby. There's a television opposite two woven couches. The program currently airing shows live footage of the capital. There's widespread power outages and the phone lines are apparently down, a state of utter disarray. The concierge informs him that it's the only show on right now, and Dongwoo asks if Howon is still in. She shakes her head and points out the door, to the long, dusty road.

Howon and Dongwoo had driven further out from the capital in the matter of a single day. Dongwoo had been struggling to keep his hopes and morals high, but far away from their home and their jobs, their studies and everything familiar, it was not long before Howon had been forced to retrieve his laptop from the bag he'd brought with him, to transfer money from hopefully inconspicuous accounts under one of Seoul's leading online banks to his own, where he would quickly withdraw the money in crumpled paper notes and tarnished silver coins.

But it had been shut down within a day, and from there Howon only had the bills in his pockets.

So he'd made a new bank account under the name Hoya Lee, a 28 year old business man of Busan who'd take out loans as large as the banks would afford him, and constantly reap hefty payments from people of all sorts, particularly those who tended to check their accounts less than others.

And then he'd lifted his hands from the worn keyboard and entwined them with Dongwoo's.

The moon seems to follow Dongwoo as a companion in the reflection of his bonnet. The wind fleets between the gaps of the partially opened side windows, and the accelerator emits a whirring that rings quietly in his ears. His left tire feels a little flat after its travels across such unstable roads, but Dongwoo is numb to it all.

The box TV in the corner of their motel room was old and viewed of static, but there was no extra fee for putting it into use, and so Dongwoo had been playing the free to air news program since morning.

Howon remained at the desk with his laptop propped open, where he'd been stationed since before Dongwoo went to sleep the night before.

And then two faces had appeared on the television screen, weary eyes spotted with black and grey fidgeting pixels of static. Two faces Dongwoo had come to be quite familiar with.

"Howon," Dongwoo whispered, hushed in terror, "Howon, it's us."

And when Howon looked up, the news anchor had begun disclosing their height and approximate age, where they'd last been seen and what they'd last been wearing.

Howon stood up and snatched the remote from Dongwoo's slackening grasp. He shut off the television and pulled Dongwoo into his arms, pressed his lips to the roots of his hair, rubbed his back with gentle palms.

Dongwoo could vaguely hear the yelling of the couple in the next room over, and the crying of a baby across the hall, but if he tried hard enough, he might've be able to block it, along with all the other unnerving sounds fleeting the dingy motel room doorways, entirely from his mind.

But it'd been getting harder, recently, to ignore and disregard everything around himself, and to trust fully in Howon like he'd always used to.

His eyelids are coming together, contravening as Dongwoo tries to stay awake. His head lulls, his foot rests a little heavier on the gas pedal. There's a yell and when he looks up, he's got to swerve out of the way of an incoming vehicle - the first he's seen in a while, but nevertheless, Howon's pretty smile and charming intonations continue to dance fluidly on the insides of his eyelids, continue to hum softy into the shells of his ears. His eyelids continue to droop.

Dongwoo heard footsteps and kept his head low. It was getting tiring. He'd been sitting on the curb behind a local shopping strip, waiting for Howon.

"Don't move! Put your hands up!" A voice behind Dongwoo had ordered harshly, "Where's your accomplice!"

Just as Dongwoo begun to comply, another voice had sounded before his own.

"I don't have an accomplice. It's just me."

Dongwoo slowly turned his head, to see a uniformed officer pointing a gun in the direction of Howon, who'd just walked out of a takeaway restaurant.

"I've got one of them," the cop said, one hand on his pistol and the other on his radio microphone.

Distracted, the officer hadn't payed Howon any mind, and a glance first at Dongwoo, and then to a wooden panel from a food crate lying beside him, had Dongwoo thinking on his feet.

"Bring back up and a car." The officer said, and then Dongwoo had slammed the wood panel into the back of the officer's head with a resounding crack.

Dongwoo dropped the panel beside the officer's fallen body with shaking hands. Howon instantaneously bent down to snatch the gun from the cop's fingertips, and a loaded magazine from the belt around his waist. With his other hand, he'd grasped for Dongwoo's trembling fingertips, and together they ran.

They sat on a park bench, facing a city-bound road, and Howon pulled out his laptop, fiddled with the mouse and keyboard, and then all the traffic lights around them flashed green.

The were yells and screams, horns blaring and the loud squeal of tires and crunching of metal, and amidst it all, Dongwoo, hands still shaking, had begun to question, for the first time in his life, if he'd still be able to forgive Howon even if this ever ended.

The stars are shining when Dongwoo pulls over to rest his strained limbs. The night wraps around him and, he thinks, if someone were to place his chin between their palms right now and look at him, they might graze his cheeks with calloused thumbs, tell him to close his disheartened eyes, to rest, to take a break and start dancing again tomorrow. They might run a hand through his hair and place their lips upon his, but alas...

"We can't do this anymore." Dongwoo whispered under thin sheets he'd pulled over himself and the covers of night.

They'd ended up at another motel, this time in the outskirts of the country.

With all the time isolated in fear from anyone other than himself and Howon, Dongwoo had time to think, and the more he thought, the worse he felt and the more he'd wanted to face the consequences for both himself and Howon, whether that meant spending time locked up or partaking in community service, if only to escape the guilt that loomed over him with every breath he took.

Howon looked up from the glowing screen of his laptop, and turned to face Dongwoo, "What are you saying?"

"We can't live our lives running away forever. We've done bad things and we have to face the consequences." Dongwoo sat up, the sheets sliding off his thinly clothed torso to pool around his waist.

"If we do that, if we turn ourselves in, what if they split us up? What if they take you away from me? I don't know what I'd do then." Howon stood, walking over to where Dongwoo had been seated.

"We have to. It's getting tiring, hiding all the time," Dongwoo dropped his gaze to the floor, eyes tracing the patterned carpet, "I don't think I can keep this up, Howon."

Howon's body was rigid, a frown pulled taught across his lips, "Dongwoo, not long after we started dating, I told you that if I had nothing else, if I couldn't have anything else, I'd be fine with just you by my side." He paused, eyes growing dark as they met with Dongwoo's, "Are those feelings not mutual?"

Dongwoo hesitated, opening his mouth slowly, only to close it moments after.

"I'm not going." Howon said.

Dongwoo paused for a moment, before stating in a voice with more finality than he'd thought himself capable, "Well, I am."

He stood, briskly snatching the car keys from the bedside table as he made for the door.

"Wait- Dongwoo." Howon had called to deaf ears.

Dongwoo grabbed his backpack from beside the exit to the hallway.

"Dongwoo." Howon had pleaded, desperately hushed, to a man who did not once look back, "Stop." he'd whispered, voice trembling as much as his shaking hands.

Dongwoo paused. He tightened his fists and walked out the door.

He could hear footsteps shadowing his every stride down the carpeted hallway, and then there were fingers clasping around his wrist, tugging him back.

"Please." Howon whispered.

But Dongwoo pulled away, and, lengthening his strides, it was not long before he'd left Howon behind and had walked into the open air, feeling instantaneously calm, relaxed, and free .

The sun is just beginning to rise by the time Dongwoo hits the road yet again. He's getting nearer to the shore; the air is chilly and the wind becomes strong. His fingertips curl around the steering wheel and he breathes in deeply. He doesn't know what he'll do if Howon is not waiting for him at the end of the road. The path cuts off at a field.

It didn't last long; it never really does.

When Dongwoo made it back to Seoul, the city was in havoc; street lamps were out and shop fronts remained unlit deep into the night.

When he returned to his old apartment building; the one he'd shared with Howon, he slowly climbed the staircase in the hallway until he reached his floor. There were policemen milling around and yellow tape had been pulled across the doorframe of their apartment. From there, he spun on his heel, keeping his head low when he bumped shoulders with a uniformed officer hastily mounting the crumbling stairway, an industrial torch in hand.

When Dongwoo came back down to the sidewalk, his old neighbour walked right past him and into the building, tapping furiously at the keypad of his phone, grumbling fustratedly under his breath. The florist across the road was hauling armfuls of wilting flowers to the sidewalk, her refrigerator out of action. Dongwoo saw a girl he recognised from his twice weekly poli-sci lectures at the uni. She typically had her hair up in a bun and her nose buried in her ebooks, but today her skin was tired, and there were shadows under her eyes. She'd been heaving grey plastic bagfuls of canned meals behind her.

Dongwoo thought of waving to her, but stopped his arm mid-motion when he remembered who he was, and what he'd done to this city.

He turned, heading back towards the side street where he'd left the car, and when he found it, he'd hurriedly clambered in.

He looped the neighbourhood several times over, pace slow and laborious as the traffic around him held his pace back.

He was passing the convenience store by the subway station for the third time, when the passenger side door was pulled open and a man slipped quietly in.

Dongwoo turned quickly in his seat, his fight or flight instincts beginning to recklessly kick in, but he was halted.

"Don't. You need to act natural. Don't call attention to yourself."

Dongwoo wasn't really sure what other options he'd been left with. He turned to face the windshield and slowly placed one hand on the steering wheel, and the other on the gearshift.

"They're after you, Dongwoo. They know you're with Howon and that this is all his doing." The man murmured, eyes darting over the various shortcomings of their city at its lowest.

"Woohyun." Dongwoo whispered under trembling breaths.

"Yeah. Nice to see you again. Anyway, I don't know why Howon's doing this, or why you're still with him, but people are mad- no. People were mad, when Howon started taking money from their bank accounts. Now they're furious that he's messing with the city's power supply and with everything else that little technology freak can hack into from his laptop."

Dongwoo ran his tongue across the backs of his teeth. He hadn't known what to say.

"Where is that bastard you call your boyfriend anyway." Woohyun groaned, and then, beginning to mumble to his reflection in the side view mirror, "He must have prepared for this, the moron. He would've hooked up all the system controllers to his computer in case he got caught stealing money and had to leave.

"I don't know why you're back." He said, raising his voice back to normalcy and glancing over to address Dongwoo, "but you have to get out of here quickly, before they find you."

With that, Woohyun had opened the passenger side door and stepped out into the compaction of blaring horns and cursing drivers.

There were a pair of dancing flats on the floor of the passenger side. Woohyun must have left them behind. Dongwoo wanted to call out to him, but he couldn't.

Dongwoo felt hopeless. He saw a generator by the front of the police office, a young child crying on the cement sidewalk, a debauched businessman on the stilled bus beside him. He was in the middle of it all.

Amid a wide open sea of thick fuel exhaust and stationary motor vehicles, Dongwoo was drowning.

He's going back.

He needs Howon.

When Dongwoo finally turns off the engine, releasing the key from the ignition, he jerks open the car door and slides out with limbs that feel like cold flesh stretched over liquid gelatine. He stumbles blunderously forward, and his surrounding seem to fade and blur as Howon comes into focus.

Howon turns to face him, spreads his arms and smiles. And all at once it's as if Dongwoo is meeting Howon again for the first time. They're dancing in the reflection of the mirrors in their high school practise room, they're slurping udon in the noodle bar down the road, laughing carefree on Howon's carpeted bedroom floor, Howon is pulling Dongwoo into his arms and telling him everything will be fine, he's holding Dongwoo's hand before they mount the nationals' stage for the first time, he's pressing his lips against Dongwoo's and Dongwoo is smiling.

Broad arms pull Dongwoo in and his head rests in the crook of Howon's neck. His pulse is steady and he thinks he feels their heartbeats align in the silence. Howon's warm breath flits across Dongwoo's tired skin and Dongwoo lets his eyes fall shut, allows his body to become limp in Howon's embrace. He's safe now, he's happy, everything is fine.

When he succumbs to conciousness, his head is spinning, there's a high pitch ringing in his ears and static pricking his eyelids. Everything is dark. He blinks once, twice. There is a click below his feet and he sees Howon.

Dongwoo is lying on the backseat of their car, the leather is cool against his clothed skin. One of the plastic seatbelt buckles is digging into his back.

"Hey, get up sleepyhead. I wanna show you something." Howon reaches out a hand, and Dongwoo stretches up to pull into his grasp.

Howon helps him sit up and gently tugs him out of the car, shutting the door behind him when he's on his feet.

Howon presses him forward, his chest against Dongwoo's back and their hands linked between them. They're on a cliff, low road barriers protecting them from the abyss of shingling lights below.

"You turned the lights back on." Dongwoo thinks all the flickering street lamps, the glowing high-rise windows, the dimly lit bus stop signs, all look like tiny fireflies in the distance.

Howon nods. Dongwoo feels the movement against his back.

"Howon, I'm really sorry about what I said, before."

Howon makes no indication that he'd at all heard Dongwoo, "Look at the lights Dongwoo," he says instead, "they're all yours, all mine."

"I don't want the lights Howon, I just want you, and I know that for certain now."

"How did someone as sweet as you end up with a guy as selfish and undeserving as I."
It's as if Howon can't hear a word of what Dongwoo says to him; as if Dongwoo's words are swept away by the wind before they reach Howon's ears.

"You're neither of those things, Howon. You're certainly not unworthy, nor are you selfish." Dongwoo is almost pleading as he says this; he's not sure where Howon is going with his words, even less certain he likes the direction they're headed.

Howon glances away from the lights for the first time since he'd begun speaking. His eyes meet Dongwoo's and he holds this gaze, "That's really what you think?"

Dongwoo nods wordlessly, linking his cold hands with Howon's, turning him until they're facing each other directly.

"Well, I suppose I shouldn't let you down, then." Howon's lips curve up slightly at the edges, his eyes are calm.

Dongwoo releases his grasp on Howon's palms to wrap his arms around his waist, to rest his head against Howon's, to hold him tight and never let go.

"That's why you have to go, Dongwoo." Howon murmurs, wrapping his own arms around Dongwoo, "The city is out for my blood. Yours, too. But I can't let a sweet guy like you rot in a jail cell just because I didn't want to live without you; you'd hate it there."

"Howon, what are you saying?"

Howon's embrace tightens around him, suffocating almost, and then Dongwoo feels cool metal press against the back of his head. He hears a trigger clack, and his heart plummets, falls from his chest to skid across the dusty floor.

"No no no, Howon no, stop!" He balls his hands into weak fists and thumps them against Howon's broad chest, tries to stuggle out of Howon's arms, but they only pull him in tighter.

All he receives in reply is the distant click of a pistol reverberating through his skull, dizziness flushing through his senses, broad arms holding him steady as his legs give way, the press of warm lips against his rapidly cooling own.

"Even with the power back on, we still have to catch them in case they strike again. We know the minimum of their capabilities now, but they could come back worse. Now that we have our database and resources back, we have to act quickly before an attack larger yet is composed.

"How have they managed to go incognito for such a sustained period of time? When was the last sighting?" The chief investigator stops pacing, removes the whiteboard marker from between his teeth and looks to his team.

"Four days ago, in Daegu by an officer who was later found unconscious at the scene." An assistant offers, fingers nimbly skimming his keyboard.

"Bring up the CCTV footage from that event again. Call up the motel we found with their names in the bookings and-..."

"Sir," the station receptionist stumbles into the conference room, pale lips and widened eyes interrupting the chief investigator, "sir, there's someone here to see you that I think you should meet."

"Can it wait?" The investigator groans exasperatedly, "we're in a critical situation right now."

"Sir," a new voice interjects, pushing the door open wider, slipping into the room, "I think you've been looking for me?"

No one utters a word. An officer drops a pen and it clatters off the polished table and across the carpeted floor. The chief investigator closes his gaping mouth, lips coming together and then apart silently a few more times before he finally finds his voice,

"Lee Howon."