#detcha

wild boys of the road.

-- he's more than halfway to saying good. he opts to blink, crisply, instead. not his fault he walks quieter than a shadow, and then some.

jaehwan's gotten jumpier, he's noticed. he doesn't need to ask why, but tucks it away, the way he does anything like that about someone he considers a friend, or thinks he could, with a little more time.

wild boys of the road.

mutt opens his mouth, on the way to saying something, then snaps it shut. he hears the click of his teeth together more than feels it. he should feel it. there should be a rattle and an ache. bone on enamel on flesh on bone. there’s nothing. 

he watches jaehwan, sort of in his periphery, going through the motions of looking around in his fridge, his cabinet. setting a pot of water on a stove eye. ramyeon. his stomach clenches just thinking about it, hungrier than he thought.

his inhale feels as mechanical as he expected it to.

wild boys of the road.

mutt's head tips. his eyes track the space between himself and jaehwan's face as though he could watch the words move. his tone sits somewhere dry and still and watchful.

in my experience, following my heart only ended up getting me into trouble. and i had had enough experience to back up the hypothesis. i wanted to smile at him, say something as optimistic and bright as he seemed to be, but it was hard.

i had probably spoken to him more consistently than anyone else since i had landed, which was, in all honesty, kind of sad. but every time i tried to distance myself from him, i felt like i was kicking a puppy in the face, and i wasn’t sure i’d ever met someone like him before. i’d spent most of my adult life around people more dangerous than i was, or too wealthy to know what was good for them. i understood the corrupt better than the honest, people with secrets, people who operated under their own rules, behind shrouds of secrecy - even cops were cruel. but not him.

“ you don’t know me. ” i said, before i could stop myself. it felt too familiar, too genuine and tender and i hated it. but i immediately regretted it, and let out a sigh, lifting a hand to rub at my eyes, using the action as an excuse not to have to look at him.

everyone was so desperate to put me into a box, to make me into something i wasn’t, and i hated not being able to control what it was they thought of me. it was a personal nightmare, tailored perfectly to create my own personal hell - he didn’t think i was a murderer, which made a pleasant change from his colleagues, who were doing their best to prove that i had something to do with the violence that had erupted, but having someone tell me that they understood why i was shutting down was just as painful.

he didn’t understand. how could he know what i felt, what i thought, what i had told myself in the long periods of isolation while cops a and b and c filtered in and out and tried to catch me telling a different story - they couldn’t, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been exhausting.

“ i’m sorry, ” i said, lowering my hand and looking up at him once more. “ look, i’m not… i’m not trying to do any of this on purpose, ” i wanted him to leave me alone, i wanted to disappear, i wanted everything to stop so i could remember what it felt like to breathe. “ i didn’t do anything, why can’t you all just accept that? ” i blinked, horrified to feel the hot pricking in my eyes that betrayed me, there was no way i was going to cry in front of him, whether he was on duty or not. i swallowed, hard. “ i’m not - i didn’t - ” why did that bother me so much? how did he know?

i wasn’t used to people like him, certainly not in law enforcement. my experience with cops, all over the world, always seemed to follow the same patterns; they were power hungry, single minded, quick to fall into cruelty and quicker to boast about it. but he was different - and perhaps that was because i had him fooled, but i couldn’t see that glint of steel in his gaze. it was unsettling.

“ i’m- ” i started to tell him i was okay, but i stopped, and took a breath, glancing away from him to focus on the mark on my arm, faint, where i had wiped the blood away, but visible, where i hadn’t yet har time to actually wash it off. i stared at it. it wasn’t as though i was repulsed by blood, it didn’t have the same physical effects on me as it did on others, but that didn’t mean i was completely fine with it splattering up onto me, or clinging to me as i became a witness to a violent crime.

ironic, that i would be questioned for the first time in this country as an innocent bystander. it wouldn’t take long, i knew that, before that changed. it wouldn’t be long before this sweet detective would change his tune, and i wanted more than anything to disappear before they found out who i was. i should have hidden better, i should have run the moment i realised what was happening, i should have -