Hyukjae carefully removes the lid and see the clutter of differing color wires littered throughout the small compartment in the car's engine and surrounding the digital clock that said: 06:49. 

"Cut the wires in this order: green, purple, brown, yellow, and finally white," Kyuhyun tells him through the cellphone's speaker.

He takes the pliers and cautiously cuts all the green wires first, then purple, brown and moving down in that order specified by Kyuhyun. Each cut wire feels like a punch to his lungs, airing out the breath he was tightly holding onto and finally, finally he can breathe again because he can do this.  

Sweat starts to bead from his forehead and he quickly swipes it away as the timer ticks down. He hastily picks up on the cutting till he clips the last of the white wire. Hyukjae leans back from when he stands, feeling the crack of his spine from being hunched over the engine bay for so long and his shoulders become loose and creaks as he straightens up, darting a quick glance at the timer: 04:24.

“I’m done,” he says to the cellphone on the car’s battery.

The speaker crackles and he can hear Kyuhyun’s audible sigh of relief. "Now there should be only one black wire left, cut that one and that should stop the timer," Kyuhyun says and Hyukjae can hear the shuffling of papers in the background.

Hyukjae stares at down at the jumble mess of cut wires and finds—“There isn't a black wire," he says, keeping his voice even as his heart rattles against his chest and the air from his lungs deflate. "I see two wires left, red and blue."

A stifles silent from Kyuhyun's end and then, "Get out now, you can't--"

Hyukjae grabs his phone and hangs up before Kyuhyun could finish his sentence. He throws his cellphone to the ground, hearing the glass screen cracks against the cement surface of the empty parking lot. He knows Kyuhyun won’t leave this alone, he’ll try to call again and again in hope of Hyukjae answering but—Hyukjae clutches the pliers in his right hand and he heaves a shuddering sigh. If he get out of this alive, he'll buy a new cellphone as a reward, but he isn’t leaving this place no matter what Kyuhyun say.

He steps away from the engine bay and goes to find Donghae. The door to the driver’s side is wide open and as he walks toward it, he stops dead in his track. Donghae is in the driver's seat, tapping rhythmically with his fingers on the steering wheel and humming a familiar tune.

Hyukjae stares at Donghae in disbelief. "Are you seriously humming the theme song of Jaws, right now?" he asks incredulously.

Donghae scoffs and fold his arms across his chest, looking defiant. "I'm about to die, Hyukjae," he says, as if that wasn't obvious enough and Hyukjae hadn't spent the last two minutes trying to disarm a time bomb in the car's engine bay with Kyuhyun's help. "Let me have my moment."

"You're not going to die," he snaps, the words had to be forcibly dragged out of his lips because any thought of Donghae and dying even sharing the same sentence made him physically sick.  

Donghae immediately perks up. "Wait, does that mean you managed to stop the timer?" he asks, looking hopeful.

Hyukjae swallows, his mouth going dry and his tongue are heavy in his mouth, all twisted into to knots. He looks away for a moment to compose himself, shutting his eyes and counting to three before he walks around the open driver’s door to stands in front of the driver’s seat, pressing his back up against the interior of the car’s door and he looks at Donghae, sitting in his seat as he waits for Hyukjae’s words.

"There are two wires left," he says quietly. "I don't know which one to cut." Because his life is some kind of tragic comedy made for the cinema so of course there two wires left instead of one and it doesn't take much for him to know that one is the denominator and the other would stop the timer, but which one is the problem.

"Oh," Donghae say blankly and then abruptly, enough to startle Hyukjae, he throws his head back and laughs, loud and so painfully alive. "Oh my god, this could only happen to you. It's like a scene right out of movie. I can't believe this is our life right now." He covers his face with his hands, trying his muffled his laughter as hysteria takes over him because really what was there to say.

Hyukjae's lips twitch. "Yea, that what I thought so too,” he says amused despite the terrifying situation that they currently found themselves in and imminent death looming over them.

Donghae eventually sobers up and he catch Hyukjae’s eyes. "You should go though," he says, smiling softly and Hyukjae freezes up.

"What," he demands, surging forward and wanting to throttle Donghae in the process because what the actual .

"Go, like go away because you are going to die if you don't," Donghae says, gesturing madly and sounding vaguely annoyed as if he hadn’t just told Hyukjae to go without him so he can die. “You know I can’t leave,” he darts a quick glance at the brake pedal—the dead’s man switch that would be immediately triggered the other bomb beneath the car as soon as he lift his right leg from it—and looks back up at Hyukjae, giving him a tight smile, “without something going boom.”

"Don't be stupid," Hyukjae says, holding Donghae's gaze and glares, "you know that's not going to happen. I’m not leaving you."

Donghae's smile is strain and small. "Yea, I know," he mumbles, tangling his hands together--a nervous habit that he can't never seem to break. "I just thought I give you the chance to escape if you like."

“Never,” Hyukjae insists, his heart roaring in his ears because it isn’t that that Hyukjae isn’t afraid to die—he thinks of his family and the friends that he’s leaving behind—but the thought of leaving Donghae alone to wait out of his fate, to go on living without Donghae—terrifies him even more. Death seems to be an easier choice when it comes to Donghae for him, and that says a lot more about his own feelings toward Donghae than any word the languages of the worlds can hope to convey.

And when he thinks of Donghae’s baring the consequence of Hyukjae’s action, he can’t stand Donghae suffering quietly for his sake. Even though Donghae is stuck in a car that is about to explode any seconds now, he appears annoyingly calm and easy-going but Hyukjae sees through the pretense. The tense line of Donghae’s shoulders and how haggard and wary he looks, the nervousness energy coming off of him in waves, crashing onto Hyukjae’s shores and he wants to desperately smooth over the rough waters for Donghae.

He always been better at reading Donghae then anyone else—it’s something that he takes great pride in because Donghae’s smiles and laughs are his greatest defense and offense that he present and mislead the world but Hyukjae sees right through it and that is something he carries like heavy weigh in his chest, like everything that belongs to Donghae’s Hyukjae is wary of it.

Donghae lets Hyukjae have his affection, his loyalty, and boundless friendship and Hyukjae is equally humble and afraid of it.

Hyukjae rarely knows what to do when he is handed something so freely, not when he is so use to fighting for what he wants, his place in the police’s force that he had carved out of his own hands instead of relying on his family’s help, and he had never been given something so easily and without a fight that he doesn’t know what to do with it now that he has it—especially when it’s something as important and fragile as Donghae’s heart.

Even though he doesn’t know or tried to understand what passes between them, this relationship that he is hesitant to put a label on, he is sure of one thing:

"I'm with you to the end," Hyukjae says, reaching his free hand out to clasp one of Donghae's hand in his, lacing their fingers together and squeezes.

Donghae returns that squeeze with his own, like Hyukjae is the one that needs the comfort all along. "Did you evacuate everyone, then?”

"Yea." The parking lot had been empty out as quickly as their legs could carried them once he had yelled, “bomb,” and raised up his detective badge from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

"So it's just you and me then?" Donghae asks, dragging Hyukjae closer and forcing Hyukjae’s to bend down to see him.

He nods rigidly.

"I always knew you were going to be the death of me," Donghae teases, eyes twinkling and even when death is staring at him in the face, Donghae is still Donghae throughout.

"Yea, sorry," he mumbles, looking down at the ground guiltily. If he knew they were going to end up in this ed up situation years ago, he would rather not have met Donghae and dragged him out of the medical lab and into the field. He should have never involve Donghae in his cases and getting severely attached to him in the process, Hyukjae is bad luck and attracts all sort of danger and though he thrives on this sort of thing, Donghae could have a normal life and Hyukjae had ripped out of his hands.

Donghae's left leg comes flying and kicks Hyukjae in the chest, hard, yanking his hand out of Hyukjae’s grip andjerking Hyukjae out of his reverie. It knocks the air out of Hyukjae’s lung and sends him a stumbling back to the dusty floor. Sometimes, Hyukjae forgets that Donghae is trained in Taekwondo for years before they even met and though just because Donghae often take a pacifist stand on many things, he can and will not hesitate to defend and attack if necessary and somehow Hyukjae tends to be at the end of his kicks and punches a lot.

“What the hell, Donghae,” he bites out, feeling his chest constricts and his body thrumming with pain. Hyukjae has the nagging suspicion if he lift up his shirt up, he’ll get the impression of Donghae’s shoe on chest. Donghae’s kicks should be registered at a lethal weapon just by the fact that Hyukjae’s lungs feel like it been puncture and battered. 

Donghae roll his eyes. "It's not actually your fault, you know," he huffs. "Goddamn your martyr-complex, just stop looking so guilty. I mean unless you knocked me out, dragged my unconscious body to a car and then plant a bomb in it, I don’t see how this is your fault.”

“Sook Minyu,” he says, spitting out the name as he gets up from the floor and clenching his hand around the pliers. “If you didn’t associate with me then he wouldn’t have gotten to you.”

“I’ll destroy you completely,” Minyu had declared to Hyukjae at the trial of his murder convictions. “I’ll show you what it’ll be like to lose everything that you love and care for, what it’s like to be defeated and the most precious thing to you ripped out of your hands.”

At that time, Hyukjae had thought about his friends and family and the job that he had dedicated his entire life to and how that fear had kept him up at night and he was afraid to lose any of them but now the circumstance right in front of him gives him an entire new meaning to fear. It feels like his heart would give out any second at the thought of continuing his life without Donghae, because as he starts to realize his life is Donghae. If Donghae is gone, it won’t even feel like living anymore.

It just takes a bomb to finally get him to admit that at least.   

Donghae shakes his head. “He’s a psychopath on a revenge streak,” he says firmly. “If he didn’t go after me then he would have went after someone else as part of some mad plan that he conjured up and even if you hadn’t stopped him all those years ago, he would have continue to do what he does best: kill innocent people. What you did was right and you are not responsible for his actions back then nor right now either. So don’t be stupid, Hyukjae.”

He kicks Hyukjae’s knees some more as if to emphasize his point and Hyukjae has to move back to avoid getting hit again. 

“Okay, I get it,” he grumbles, rubbing his stinging knees profusely. He just can’t win against Donghae, sometimes.

Hyukjae had face all kind of lowlife in society, some don’t deserve to see the light of day, and being that he came from a family of cops, he been pre-exposed into the harshness of the world at an early age so very little things surprise him or scare him anymore but to go up against Donghae is something else entirely.

Donghae always been able to keep Hyukjae on his toes, he’s random and hyper and a soft touch, wrapped up in pretty package that it’s so easily to dismiss him as harmless and all too strange to get involve with but that’s the first mistake. There’s nothing harmless about Donghae, though he’s a pacifist by choice but he won’t hesitate to use force to prove a point and Hyukjae had seen him take down a grown man down with just those deadly kicks of his. His manic personality hides a keen intelligence and the fact that he’s one of the top medical examiners in the field right now, seeing the small details that many of his colleagues often overlook. Donghae is kind and gentle, but defiant to the core and particularly fierce when comes to protecting those he loves.

The more Hyukjae unwraps him, the more Donghae puzzles him and entraps him. Their entire relationship has been some kind of weird dance that pushes and pulls at Hyukjae’s defense—Donghae invading every crevices and corners of his life and refusing to leave—and if the crumbling of his walls are any indication of how Donghae is completely winning that campaign, but though Hyukjae continues to fight it, somehow Hyukjae has the feeling that losing to Donghae may not mean total defeat at all. 

“You have to cut the wire now, right?” Donghae asks, glancing through the windshield where the hood of the car is blocking the view. “We probably don’t have a lot of time left.”

He nods, thinking about the timer that is still ticking away and knowing he can’t hold it off forever. He has to make a decision and it be might as be this one--“Your favorite color is red, right?” he asks, tilting to his head toward the engine bay of the car.

"Yea," Donghae says, raising an eyebrow. "Is that the wire you're going to cut?"

At his nod, Donghae’s claps his hand and grins.  “Okay, go do your stuff, then,” he says, waving Hyukjae to go just like that.

As Hyukjae is about to move out—he hears a cheery, “Hey, Hyukjae!” Donghae calls out. “If we make it out of this alive, you owe me a dinner and letting picked what movie we’re watching for an entire a month.”

Hyukjae lets out a choked off laugh. “It’s a promise,” he says. If they both make it out alive he would have agreed to anything, even if it mean he has to rewatch Jaws or some cheesy melodramas with Donghae for the hundredth time again.

It doesn’t sound so bad now after all this to be honest.

With the pliers in his hand, he marches back to the front of the car, the hood is still up and the timer has ticked away to: 00:42.

He glances down at the blue and red wire and as he lines the pliers up toward the red one he stops abruptly and recalls a nagging memory:

"So what are we watching tonight?" he asked as Donghae gets back from the kitchen, bringing the Chinese takeout with him.

"You ever heard of the red string of fate?” he said, handing Hyukjae his bowl of lo mein and a chopstick. “That's the central of theme of this movie about two people who met each other when they were kids and all their chance encounters and the obstacles they have to face to be finally be together."

"You mean that thing where it's supposed to connect you to your soulmate?" He furrow his brows.

Donghae nods frantically. "Don't you think that's romantic?" He sighs wistfully as the movie started to filter through the speaker and appeared on screen. “To have a soulmate somewhere in this world waiting for you and no matter how much the red string tangled or stretched but it won’t ever break.”   

Hyukjae frowns. "No," he says, looking down at his noodle and blows on it lightly.

"Wait, what do you mean no?” Donghae turns to face Hyukjae and glares.

“I don’t see the point of soulmate or a red string, because I don’t need any kind of validation when it comes to the one I love,” he said evenly and directly looked at Donghae who lips stretched to a thin unhappy line. “The idea of the universe binding me to someone, thinking they know better than me when it comes to who is right one for me is plainly ridiculous.”

“You have no romantic bone in your body," Donghae hisses, pointing his chopsticks threateningly at Hyukjae. For a man of science Donghae believes in a lot of sketchy stuff like aliens and ghosts and oh, red string of fate too apparently.

"Whatever," Hyukjae says, rolling his eyes. "Can't we just watch something else?"

Donghae narrowed his eyes. "I stole a dead body for you, Lee Hyukjae, you owed me," he said and turned back to the TV, shutting down any further topic on that entirely.  

Hyukjae heaved a heavy sigh and too turned his focus back on onto the screen as the camera zoomed in a little boy and girl meeting at park. He pulled on the quilt pooling around his waist up slightly with his free hand because this was going to be long and terrible night, he might as well get comfortable.  

He doesn't know what brought that tripped down the memory lane, it had been three months since that night but Donghae’s words are ringing in his ears now. The red string of fate can’t be broken.   

He drags a hand down his face exasperatedly, this is no time to be stupid but—if this blow them up, Hyukjae would at least have Donghae entertaining him in the afterlife and somehow that makes it a bit alright in his world. How ed up is that.  

He leans into the engine bay and lines up the pliers again, and cuts the blue wire instead.

 --

a/n: I like dysfunctional ppl who are emotionally stunted and can’t confessed their feelings even in near death situation but is totally okay with throwing their lives on the line for each other  and died w/ each other like WTF guys. Idk I find this romantic though??? My idea of romantic is weird and terrible so, sorry guys, also, i literally wrote this entire thing listening to 1d's song "strong" stuck on repeat this is why it is like that /o\ and also where the title came from.

*Donghae and Hyukjae often watch movies together, it actually part of their friday night movie date routine. jaws is one of donghae's top fav movies and hilariously sharks are his favorite animal (it's also mine too but shh we don't talk about it), so they watched that movie more times than hyukjae can count lolol