#sabrepunch

It happens like this.

He’s running with the others around the track, body abuzz and mind overflowing with the shocking realization that yes, he’s here. He’s an Olympian, he’s representing his country at the greatest competition in the world, and he is so proud—proud and grateful and full to bursting with joy, and—

And then he sees him. Short black hair and a straight nose and a jawline you could cut diamonds on, and Dongju damn near trips and falls flat on his face because holy shit. The guy isn’t even doing anything special, just sitting on a bench frowning down at his phone, but he’s wearing the Korean uniform and he is gorgeous. And Dongju stares and stares and something deep in his heart just flips over and opens right up, like a long-forgotten tome finally revealing the endless swirling universes it contains, and he can’t breathe. Can’t move, can’t think, because he just cannot comprehend how this man has just entered his life and suddenly it’s fuller and more colorful than he ever could have imagined and—

And then the soccer ball slams into his face.

Bright light bursts across his vision. The world flips, and suddenly he’s on his back, staring up at the bright blue Sao Paolo sky. And his head hurts and his nose bleeds and his teammates gather in a worried circle over him, and also he doesn’t give a shit, because all he feels is drunk. Drunk, and dazed, and so very very warm after a lifetime of cold.

His name is Kim Jonghyun, he is a fencer, and he moves like a falcon, swift and precise and unerringly deadly.

Dongju would know, because he has attended every one of Jonghyun’s fencing matches. Most of the time he sits in the back with a ball cap pulled over his head—Coach would skin him alive if he found out his star pupil was missing sparring sessions to go ogle another athlete. But Dongju can’t stop, doesn’t want to stop. He is mesmerized by Jonghyun: the quickness of his movements, his graceful footwork, how he becomes lightning out there on the mat. He’s good, cunning and fast and so goddamned competent it makes want shiver hot down Dongju’s spine.

And he is also taken.

The woman Jonghyun is dating, Ji Hanna, is also an athlete: a shooter, and she’s beautiful too, though in a different way, cold and unattainable like a marble statue carved by the masters now placed on display behind glass and velvet ropes. Perhaps Dongju might have spent the rest of his days admiring such a masterpiece in a different lifetime—but as it stands, Hanna is just the woman who holds all of Kim Jonghyun’s attention, who gets to bask in the light of his smiles and soft touches and low, gentle voice. 

Until she isn’t anymore. Until he hears the rumors that Ji Hanna and Kim Jonghyun have broken up, and Dongju has just made up his mind to shoot his shot, has just convinced himself that if he could at least talk to Jonghyun, to see if maybe, just maybe…

And then Jonghyun gets stabbed.

For the rest of his days Dongju will remember the sound the older man makes when his opponent’s broken blade pierces the mask. It’s a shocked, shivering noise, torn from him entirely without his consent. It is a sound of reckoning, of breaking, and Dongju can only stare, breath caught in his throat as the entire stadium watches Jonghyun fall to one knee, shaking.

Blood drips slowly onto the mat, tip tip like a countdown clock.

In the ensuing hushed silence, Dongju breathes and thinks sharply, desperately: Get up. Get up because you’re okay. Get up because that is the man you are. Get up because I love you.

And, eventually, Jonghyun does. He staggers to his feet and waves off the worried medic, then puts his mask back on and falls once more into his starting stance. Because that is just the man he is: stubborn and strong and unbeatable. That is Kim Jonghyun, even bleeding and scared. That is the man Dongju loves, even after he loses the gold.

He waits outside the locker room after the match, shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet as the audience files out, still gossiping about what happened. Dongju hears one low sneer of He probably did it on purpose, knew he couldn’t win so he had to find some excuse, and the anger is sharp and sudden and comforting in its familiarity, because he couldn’t protect Jonghyun out there on the mat, but he sure as shit can now.

It’s fortunate for everyone that the runner catches him right then, to tell him his press conference has been moved up and can he please head over to the briefing room immediately? So Dongju unclenches his fist and does, because it will be quick. It will be easy, he’ll just answer a few questions and pose for some photos with his medal and then maybe he’ll even make it back in time to catch Jonghyun on his way out, to maybe brush his fingers over the fresh bandage on the older man’s forehead and smile and tell him it doesn’t matter, that he will always be a champion in Dongju’s eyes. 

Punching Jonghyun sucks, but it’s better than letting him die of anaphylactic shock.

Dongju hovers just outside the living room, watching the other man flip quietly through a case file on the couch. In his sleeping clothes he looks younger than Dongju has ever seen him, softer somehow and more relaxed, a version Dongju knows only a select few people ever get to witness. He doesn’t quite know what to do with it, the knowledge that now he, too, gets to have this privilege.

He intends to hold on to it for as long as he can, as long as Jonghyun will let him. If this image, Kim Jonghyun quiet and thoughtful and magnificent, is the last thing his failing brain gives him, the final flicker of a synapse before everything goes dark…he’s happy with that.

He’s happy, so long as Jonghyun is here.

But of course he’s not about to tell the other man that. Jonghyun has already been generous enough, first in letting Dongju stay with him, then in not murdering him the instant he woke up outside the hospital tent. There is a bruise just starting to blossom across his left cheek, shaped exactly the size of Dongju’s middle knuckle. Dongju bites his lip and steps forward.

Jonghyun fights him, of course, the instant Dongju goes for his face with the Q-tip dipped in ointment. But no one ever accused Yoon Dongju of giving up easy. In the next breath they’re rolling around on the couch, and Dongju pins Jonghyun beneath him even as he struggles and spews threats, and the thought comes to him unbidden because here he is all of a sudden, helpless and vulnerable and ripe for the taking, and he grins and Jonghyun’s eyes widen. “Oh no, don’t you fucking dare—”

Dongju digs his fingers into Jonghyun’s ribs. It’s like electrocuting a rabbit: Jonghyun’s whole body spasms and the sound he makes is high-pitched and girly and fucking beautiful, so Dongju does it again—and again. The older man swears and tries to buck him off but it’s no use, Dongju hasn’t spent half his life jumping weight classes for nothing and he is merciless, unstoppable, and Jonghyun—

Jonghyun laughs. It bursts from him sudden and sharp on a punched-out breath as his eyes squinch up and his whole face softens, everything about him just opening right up, and Dongju stares. Stares because he can’t not, because he needs to remember this, to burn this image into his memory for the rest of his days because it is glorious. Jonghyun is glorious—he is strong and perfect and so fucking beautiful, and Dongju just. Loses his mind for a moment, because he blinks and suddenly they’re kissing.

Well. He’s kissing, one hand pinning Jonghyun to the couch as the other cups the older man’s chin to slot their mouths together, and beneath him Jonghyun stiffens and all the alarm bells go off in Dongju’s head because oh. Fuck. 

He makes to scramble back, and in another universe Jonghyun lets him, shoves Dongju off him in fury and kicks him out of the house and maybe reports him for sexual harassment. In many universes, the vast majority even, Dongju is certain this is what Jonghyun does.

But in this one, he doesn’t. In this one, a strong hand curls around the back of Dongju’s head and pulls him back down, and then Jonghyun kisses him back. And just—wow. Fucking wow.

They kiss for seconds, minutes, hours, days—and even then it’s not enough, because when Jonghyun pulls back to gasp on a breath Dongju follows him immediately, smashes their lips together once more and everything inside him just lights up at how Jonghyun lets him, goes pliant and soft as his arms circle Dongju’s back to pull him closer, and this. This is the end. This is where Yoon Dongju’s journey finally comes to a close, where the road he has been walking his entire life delivers him at last to the shining city on the faraway hill, a place vast and beautiful and thrumming with the light of the smile Jonghyun gives him when they finally pull apart.

“Well,” the older man says, a little breathless. “Consider that hypothesis confirmed.”

And—what? Dongju’s two remaining brain cells that haven’t been fried by the kiss manage to scrape together, and he blinks. “You…you knew?”

Jonghyun smirks. His body is a warm, hard line against Dongju’s, solid and strong, and there is a promise in his voice as he says, “I’m not blind, Yoon Dongju.”

And, well. Dongju should probably feel indignant, right, that Kim Jonghyun has been one step ahead of him this whole time, as usual. But all he feels is triumphant, because here he is with the man he’s been in love with for years, who apparently likes him back enough to kiss the breath from him, and had Dongju been having a bad week? He can’t really remember, now.

It doesn’t matter anyway. He grins down at Jonghyun, warm and solid and everything he never allowed himself to want until now. “Well, I guess I should stop being subtle then.”

The older man snorts. “If this was you being subtle then I don’t even want to know what it looks like when you’re being obvious.”

“You sure about that?” And god, it feels like Dongju’s smile could split his face because he has just never been so fucking happy. “Because sonnets from balconies might be involved. Whole truckloads of fine chocolate. So many flowers on your desk you won’t know what to—”

Thirteen years is a long time.

Jonghyun would know. His body reminds him of it every damned day, with aches in his knees and tightness in his shoulders now that he’s on the wrong side of forty. No more sprinting after bad guys and leaping off walls to crack them in the face with a baton. He doesn’t miss that as much as he thought he would, thankfully.

He does miss the missions, though. And the team. SCIT these days consists of three separate units, and they occupy half of the Investigations building. But even though the hallways buzz with conversation about cases and informants, and young cops are always dropping by Captain Kim’s office under the pretense of making reports but really just to stare at him in awe, Jonghyun does feel…lonely.

He misses Go Mansik, who retired over a decade ago and now spends his days yelling (lovingly) at his teenaged daughter who is just as fiery as her mom. 

He misses Shin Jaehong, who took his pension at twenty years and now writes children’s books while managing a truly impressive vegetable garden on his balcony.

He misses Ji Hanna, who will be promoted to Superintendent at the SMPA today.

And Yoon Dongju…well.

“Hyung, have you seen my blue tie?” 

A familiar head pokes out from the bedroom: the tousled hair now has thin streaks of gray and there are crow’s feet starting to form at the corners of his eyes, but still the sight of him is enough to make Jonghyun’s breath catch for a moment. He clears his throat. “Next to mine, above the dresser.”

Dongju flashes him a grin, boyish and bright and achingly beautiful, before retreating. “Thanks!”

As he listens to his partner puttering in the bedroom, Jonghyun looks out the window and smiles. Thirteen years: that’s how long it’s been since SCIT was formed from a ragtag group of ex-Olympians all equally lost and purposeless. Thirteen years since they caught on to Min Ju-yeong’s trail, and brought down the biggest criminal empire in the history of the region. Thirteen years since, somewhere along the way, Jonghyun unexpectedly and wonderfully stumbled upon what turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Some days he still has trouble believing it: that, after more than a decade, he and Dongju are still going strong. The younger man couldn’t stay in police work, of course; he retired the year after Min Ju-yeong’s downfall, and complained about it endlessly at first but then eventually found his way. Now he coaches young students at the boxing gym around the corner from their house, while also working as an advocate and speaker for a global nonprofit focused on concussions and head trauma. 

And Jonghyun is so damned proud of him. Dongju has come so far, has survived so much, and every day Jonghyun is able to enjoy the warmth of his partner’s smile and the wonder of his touch is a day he is grateful for.

It’s not perfect, of course. Dongju has bad days: mornings when he wakes up inexplicably irritable and subsequently everything Jonghyun does is infuriating and wrong. Whole days when he has to stay curled up in bed with the blackout curtains drawn, unable to tolerate even a sliver of light. He forgets words sometimes too, places and people’s names, and more than once he’s had instances where he doesn’t recognize Jonghyun at all. Those are the worst.

But they’re also few and far between; even with the hanging cloud of CTE Dongju still shines bright as the sun, and Jonghyun loves his light. He loves his smile and his laugh and his joyous heart, and that will never change. Nothing will ever dim Yoon Dongju, not if Kim Jonghyun has anything to say about it.

“Okay. How do I look?”

Jonghyun already knows the answer even before he turns to the younger man standing in the hallway. In his well-tailored three piece suit, with his hair done up and his eyes bright with excitement, he is absolutely— “Stunning.” Jonghyun smiles. “But I’m biased.”

“Sweet talker.” Dongju ducks in for a kiss, just a brief brush of lips before reaching down to straighten the lapels of Jonghyun’s uniform. “You don’t clean up too bad yourself, Captain. Hanna’s husband is going to be so jealous.”

“With three young kids I highly doubt he has the capacity.” Dongju’s eyebrows lift, so Jonghyun chuckles. “Okay, maybe a little.”

“Mmhm.” Dongju hands him his glasses; he needs them for real now, a fact he’s more comfortable with than he’d expected. “You ready?”

Jonghyun nods. “Did you take your meds?”

“Yes, Mom,” the younger man huffs with not a hint of annoyance. “Come on.” He reaches down to take Jonghyun’s hand, his touch warm and solid as always, and as he’s been doing for the past several months, Jonghyun glances down at his ring finger, bare.

Because Dongju doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that, a few months back, Jonghyun stumbled upon the envelope rolled carefully into one of Dongju’s socks at the back of his drawer, that contained two plane tickets to Taiwan on their anniversary. He doesn’t know that Jonghyun stared at them and cried. He doesn’t know that he subsequently went to An Dae-yong, who works in imports these days, and asked where he could get two rings custom-made, discreetly.

He doesn’t know now, but he will.

Dongju tugs him toward the door, and Jonghyun follows him as he always does, as he always will. Because that’s the way it’s been since the very beginning, when he glanced up into the stands during a pause in his match and spotted a mop of dark hair and a bright grin, and his heart skipped a beat. Dongju told him once that he fell in love with him the first time he saw him, while Jonghyun was apparently reading an email from his brother at the running track. So as always, he went first. But also as always, Jonghyun followed.

And he will never stop. Till the day he dies he will follow Yoon Dongju wherever life dictates, in whatever direction the brightness of his partner’s heart pulls them, because there is no other place he would rather be. It’s a beautiful thing, to have found completion. It’s a beautiful thing, to have discovered the bright, burning center of everything that he is. 

Dongju doesn’t want Jonghyun to join SCIT. Not when the first time they run into each other again in the halls of Insung Station, the other man wears a tie and a loose button-up shirt like he’s trying to hide in it, and a pair of thick-framed black glasses that he clearly didn’t need back in 2018.

But the captain is insistent, to the point where Dongju finally agrees to a spar, a final desperate bid to keep Jonghyun away, to keep him safe in the face of this terrible brewing maelstrom they are just beginning to uncover, that Dongju somehow just knows has the power to burn them all, Kim Jonghyun especially.

He loses. He loses spectacularly, and just like that, they’re working side by side every day. It’s simultaneously the most wonderful and most frustrating experience of Dongju’s life, because Jonghyun is a fucking good cop: he’s intuitive, tactical and whip-smart, and the thrumming energy of his focus is like sitting next to a star: close enough to light your world, far enough not to sear. 

It’s also terrifying, because the better Jonghyun is, the closer they get to unraveling this tangled web of conspiracy and murder infecting Insung like a cancer—and the closer Dongju comes to something awful happening to the man that to this day he still looks at with an ache in his heart, a deep echoing well of yearning and want opening up inside him every time Jonghyun nods at him or claps him on the shoulder or steps close enough to feel.

It’s why he pursues Min Ju-yeong with such singleminded fervor. If he keeps Jonghyun out of it, if he takes care of business himself then maybe it’ll all go away, no harm, no foul. Mansik curses him and all his ancestors while Hanna looks annoyed and Jaehong vaguely worried, but Dongju doesn’t care. He can’t care, because every moment Min Ju-yeong is focused on him is a moment he forgets Kim Jonghyun exists.

That is, until Lee Gyeong-il dies, and a bullet tears its way through his adoptive mother’s chest.

Grief, as it turns out, isn’t a weight, or an idea, or a mindset. It’s a sickness, a gray mass of guilt and blackness that festers inside him like a poison, stealing his breath, infecting his dreams, turning the world into a place he will never find joy in again. Even after he lets Oh Jung-gu beat the shit out of him as penance, still the grief hangs on, like the ghosts of the people he couldn’t save.

Jonghyun finds him at the gym, curled up shaking in his thin sleeping bag. Dongju is too ashamed to even look at him, but the older man doesn’t seem to mind, just sits down in the middle of the ring next to him and peers around at the quiet space, dusty and old and empty.

“You know,” he murmurs after another moment, “I always wanted to try boxing.”

Dongju huffs. “Bullshit, Mr. Tae Kwon Do Champion.”

“Reserve,” Jonghyun answers, but Dongju can hear the smile in his voice. “And I mean it. I always found your matches fascinating to watch.”

That gets Dongju to blink up at him, at least. “You were at my matches?”

“Sure, just like you were at mine.” He probably deserves the withered look Jonghyun gives him. “I’m not blind, Yoon Dongju.”

Dongju snorts at that, resists the urge to crack a joke about glasses. He sits up, picking at the fraying seams of his sleeping bag. “Why? I mean, why boxing?”

The older man shrugs. “It’s different,” he says, and his tone is both light and not light at all. “In fencing you win by touches. All I have to do is make contact, and that’s enough. But you?” 

He shakes his head, and there is something in his eyes now, something heavy, something that seeps into the deepest parts of Dongju’s heart that have cracked and frozen over in grief, and lights just the first flicker of a spark.

“It doesn’t matter how many hits you land,” Jonghyun says then, slowly. “You don’t win until you punch hard enough to make your opponent decide it’s not worth getting up again.”

He’s watching Dongju now, soft yet with a firm underpinning of steel like a sabre’s gleaming edge, and god. Dongju can’t…he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve a man like this in his life but it doesn’t matter. Because Jonghyun is right. Min Ju-yeong with his ruthless cold gaze has dealt him blow after blow, has swept through Dongju’s life like an awful hurricane wiping out everything in its path…except for one single survivor. A tall, glorious mountain whom Dongju has surrounded with the warmth of his love like a rolling green valley, who looks at him now and cocks his head and says, with a challenge in his voice, “So are you getting up again, Yoon Dongju?”

And, well. There have been many, many times in Dongju’s life when he’s been knocked down, and thought about staying there. When the person he’s fighting has been too fast, too strong, when he’s been tired and hurting and ready to give up, and it would be so easy, wouldn’t it, to just let it all go. To put his head down, close his eyes, and let the countdown start. To get stabbed through a metal mask with the sharp tip of a blade, and turn around and go home because of it.

Yeah. Fuck that shit.

It hurts to smile, but he manages it anyway. “I guess I have no choice, huh? Sorry to disappoint, Sergeant.”

Jonghyun huffs a half-laugh at that, and god, the way Dongju’s heart turns over in his chest at the sight. He can’t believe he almost gave up on this—and his resolve only strengthens when the older man gets to his feet and offers a hand.

“Then come home with me,” he says, and immediately adds, “I’ll clear out the guest room,” promptly throwing a bucket of water on the traitorous warmth erupting in Dongju’s chest, but that’s okay. Because he gets to have this, he gets to keep this, and having Kim Jonghyun believe in him feels like a greater victory than any Olympic medal.

It’s over.

Dongju sits on the seawall, watching as paramedics load Min Ju-yeong into the ambulance, handcuffs snapped neatly to the handrail of the stretcher. He hopes they take their time. He hopes the ride is bumpy.

Amongst the gaggle of police cars and emergency vehicles, Hanna and Jaehong consult with the RIU while Mansik shouts sharp orders to the other cops rushing about cleaning up the mess of Baek and the yakuza. A lot of people are going to jail today. If he has his way, none of them will ever come back out.

Breathing hurts, his chest aching with every expansion of his lungs. There’s salt crusted in his hair and the ocean wind blows biting cold over his wet clothes. But still, Dongju smiles, because he can’t not. Because after months of chaos and confusion, blood and tears, swinging fists and hospital lights and the tremulous awful fear of losing the only thing that has ever mattered…they emerged victorious. They faced down the greatest evil to ever infect Insung, and they triumphed.

“You look happy.”

Jonghyun plops down next to him. His hair is messy and he’s got dust all over his face, and also he is wondrous and beautiful and everything bright about Dongju’s world. His grin widens. “Of course I’m happy. We won.” In more ways than one, he thinks.

“You also look like a wet dog,” Jonghyun counters, handing him a towel. “And you don’t smell much better.”

Dongju laughs, obediently reaching up to scrub his hair. “We can’t all own a whole line of expensive colognes, hyung.” And he means it to be a joke, really he does, but then he just. Pauses, for a moment.

Because soon that won’t be true anymore. Soon, Jonghyun is going to move out of his lavish sixteenth-floor apartment and into one of the smaller one-bedrooms Dongju has caught him scrolling through on his phone after they go to bed. Because he signed away his company shares, his security and his future, for Dongju.

He swallows, staring at his partner. So many sacrifices Jonghyun has made, so many gifts he’s given: patiently nursing Dongju back to health for three weeks without a single sigh or complaint. Throwing himself without hesitation into the battle through Min Ju-yeong’s hideout simply because Dongju wanted him to. The trip to the hospital and all the follow-up appointments after that, holding Dongju’s hand quietly as the doctor said big terrifying words like cognitive decline and early-onset dementia. Opening his home and his heart without being asked, just because it’s where Dongju feels safest.

Jagged pink scars now decorate the backs of Jonghyun’s arms, barely covered by the bandages. A record of his devotion, of this love Dongju isn’t sure he deserves but nevertheless can’t stop reaching for.

And now, finally, he thinks he can repay Jonghyun for it.

In front of him, the older man blinks. “What is it?”

And he looks so guileless, like he really doesn’t know. Like he doesn’t realize just how breathlessly grateful Dongju is for him, how he’ll spend the rest of his life loving this man with everything he has, and still it won’t be enough. Because Kim Jonghyun is too bright, too magnificent to be contained by the confines of Yoon Dongju’s heart, but god damn it, he’s going to try anyway. He’s going to take this precious thing Jonghyun has gifted him, and make sure it shines brightly enough to light the universe itself.

He takes a deep breath, then drops the towel between them. “I was thinking,” he says, as he slides his hand beneath the linen to wrap his fingers around his partner’s, “that when you pick your new place, you should make sure two people can be on the lease.”

He sees it the instant the older man makes the connection: his eyes widen, fingers twitching. “Dongju. Are you—”

“Yeah.” Dongju squeezes his hand. “I am.”

Jonghyun stares at him. Dongju lets him, and for perhaps the first time in his life, he waits. He waits because it’s right, for this next step they’re about to take. He waits because Kim Jonghyun is worth it.

Then, at last, Jonghyun smiles. It’s small but genuine as he ducks his head, cheeks a little pink, and says, “Okay.”

And that’s that. Dongju’s probably smiling so wide he looks stupid, and he’s still cold and wet and his hair is crusty and he’s got salt and sand in places he doesn’t want to think about, but also he will never choose to be anywhere but here. Because this is where he belongs, basking in the warmth of Jonghyun’s smile and the soft caress of the older man’s fingers over his. This is where he will stay, because that is what it means to have found the center of his world. That is what it means to love.

I will walk the path that is given to me.