Obviously, Hongbin is not in love with Taekwoon. Not at all in the way that Hakyeon had said he would fall; a desperate, foul kind of love that would take him over and make him just as rotten as the commanding officer. Taekwoon slouches over him, chest bare and silver ink tattooed over every dip and curve of his body. It nearly mirrors the markings on Hongbin’s own skin, but there’s more; more for all the years longer that Taekwoon has been in the infantry. He takes Hongbin’s hand into his, fingers instinctively lacing together and he kisses him like that, pinned to the wall of his private office.

Hongbin had only come in to complain, to take the place of all his comrades who had had enough of commanding officer Jung’s spartan like training, but didn’t have the balls to do it themselves. Truly a sacrificial lamb in the den of the lion.

Taekwoon is rough with his mouth, as he is with everything, teeth scraping and biting and knocking uncomfortably with Hongbin’s. He can’t complain like this, not with his commanding officer’s tongue down his throat and the air escaping his lungs at an alarming rate. If he were Wonshik or even Sanghyuk, he’d probably have the strength to push Taekwoon away, to yell and curse at him and wish him a cruel death under the weight of everything he loves (“He loves you,” Hakyeon says later that night, but Hongbin will have suppressed that memory away by morning).

His hands, not much to Hongbin’s surprise, are rough too. There’s a softness to them that sticks out like a sore thumb, but it’s nearly absent as Taekwoon slides his hands along the muscles of Hongbin’s bare arms, stopping in an almost upset manner when his fingers make contact with the cotton of Hongbin’s t-shirt. He pulls it off almost immediately, impatient with the fact that Hongbin isn’t half in the middle of the day too. He flushes (and internally curses at himself for that) when Taekwoon has him shirtless, pants dropped to his thighs and hanging out half hard under the harsh yellow lighting of the room. It happens in a flash and Hongbin hates himself for not having more control.

He’s ed like that, over Taekwoon’s hardwood desk and it wouldn’t be the first time. Taekwoon isn’t gentle, he isn’t kind or careful or that much talkative aside from giving harsh commands at Hongbin as if they were in the middle of a drill. Hongbin hates it; hates the way he burns under his touch, how he keens and feels dirty from every single whine and moan and cry of moremoremore . Jaehwan had called him greedy once and Hongbin hates that especially because it’s more truthful than Jaehwan will ever know.

Hakyeon will go on and on about how much Taekwoon loves him, about how much Hongbin loves Taekwoon, but Hongbin can at least fool himself into knowing better. Taekwoon isn’t expressive, hasn’t ever talked about his past or even his hobbies with Hongbin (they don’t actually talk much at all if Hongbin is honest) and he knows that Taekwoon is hard to read and a wild card at best if he even has a best.

“Could you go a little easy on us during training?” Hongbin finally manages to croak out, throat raw from their previous activity. Taekwoon blinks lazily at him, always tried afterwards.

“You’ll never learn if I go easy,” he answers plainly, as if Hongbin is a fool for even bringing it up. He lights a cigarette, smoke immediately being blown in Hongbin’s face and he scrunches his nose in distaste.

“Is the yelling really all that necessary though,” Hongbin says placidly, wiping away the leftover from his navel with an old blanket Taekwoon keeps in his office for nights that he spends asleep at his desk.

(Hongbin has passed by many times before, the same scene of a messy haired commanding officer snoring lightly at his desk, coffee gone cold and paperwork sticking to his cheek.)

Taekwoon leans against Hongbin, their arms touching and his warmth reassuring in a way that makes Hongbin wish his stupid heart would simply just stop beating. Hongbin lets his eyes wander over, tracing the taut lines of Taekwoon’s body; a body that has spent years upon years improving itself through rigorous training only to be stopped from a disease that will eventually turn everything cold. “It wouldn’t be fun if I don’t yell,” says Taekwoon, taking a drag from the cigarette in between pale lips. They used to be full of color, Hongbin recalls. All of Taekwoon used to be full of color, the only thing left indicating life still breathing within were the silver tattoos glinting under the fluorescent light.

Hongbin leans back against him, feeling himself weigh down on Taekwoon. He used to be so big too, never that much taller than Hongbin, but his shoulders seemed broader back then, legs longer and hands bigger. Taekwoon feels much smaller now, not in any sense weaker, but smaller under Hongbin who can still put together fragments of a soldier he once looked up to (still looks up to).

It ends in an almost bittersweet way (but full of so many regrets), with Hongbin never getting to say those three accursed words, but Taekwoon simply beating him to the punch by shoving him over the safety line, a volley of arrows raining down in a storm.

Everything that Hongbin can keep as a memory of Taekwoon remains that way.

A memory.