Silence.
It was silent for a good minute or so before either of the two spoke up. Donghae had shifted his gym bag from one shoulder to the other. He had gathered all his thoughts together beforehand, but when it came down to it, he couldn’t really remember what he wanted to say. He looked at Joongmyeon, but he looked fine. He didn’t look desperate like how his texts sounded like, nor did he look pissed off. When Donghae couldn’t read him, that made him feel on edge.

“I’m surprised you even agreed to meet up,” Joongmyeon finally said. His voice dead-panned.

“I had a lot I wanted to say,” Donghae said, meeting his boyfriend’s eyes.

“What? That your sorry?”

“Shouldn’t I be expecting an apology from you? I haven’t done anything.”

Donghae didn’t usually speak this way to Joongmyeon, he was usually passive. But being away and having time to think, made Donghae realize he didn’t need to just take it anymore. Why should he?

“Getting bold I see. Did Hyukjae convince you to do that?” Joongmyeon asked as he raised an eyebrow.
Donghae couldn’t tell if he was amused or…

“Hyukjae has nothing to do with this, Joon.”

Joongmyeon gave a slight shaky breath, “Will you be okay without me?”

Donghae leaned against the wall of the outside of the gym before responding, “I’m sure you can live without me.”

“Is it Hyukjae?”

“Why do you keep bringing him up?” Donghae was getting annoyed now. Why does Hyukjae keep appearing?

“I’m not stupid Donghae. I see the way he ing looks at you. And the way you look at him,”

Joongmyeon exclaimed as he took a step towards Donghae, “But what about me? I love you. Why can’t you look at me like that?”

Donghae scoffed a bit before boldly taking a step forward, “What’s your definition of love, Joon? You have hit and abused me, degraded me, verbally abused me…how can that be love?”

Donghae tried to mask his voice with anger, but saying it out loud HURT. He was also stupid to put up with it for almost a year. He sighed before speaking again, “Honestly, I was going to give you another chance, but you wouldn’t give me space. And you coming to my apartment and trashing it was the last straw. This won’t work…,” he lowered his voice at the last part.

Joongmyeon scowled, “That’s not my fault. You wouldn’t talk to me.”

Without warning, Joongmyeon pushed Donghae further into the wall and forced his mouth on him.

“St-stop,” Donghae’s protests were muffled. He tried to push Joongmyeon off but Joongmyeon used one of his hands to grab one Donghae’s wrist while the other gripped the back of his neck so he was forced to keep still. Fortunately, Donghae’s other hand was free and he used that to his advantage. He clenched his hand into a fist and er punched Joongmyeon. Hard.

“ you! You don’t have any right to do that. This is why this won’t work. We’re done,” Donghae yelled angrily. “Selfish prick,” was muttered under his breath before he pushed passed Joongmyeon and went inside his gym. He’d stay here till Joongmyeon left.
 

Donghae quickly signed into the gym and made his way to the men’s lockers. His hand was aching a bit since he landed a pretty hard hit on Joongmyeon. Donghae placed his gym bag down and just stared at the locker he usually used, trying to organize his thoughts and--
Before Donghae could react, Joongmyeon had grabbed him by the collar and slammed him sideways into the lockers.

“You think I was just going to let you go after you ing punch me in the face?” Joongmyeon growled.

Donghae groaned from the impact. He tried to rack his brain to see how he could escape this situation. Joongmyeon forced his forearm against Donghae’s throat and pushed him against the lockers again. Donghae locked eyes with him and panic set in. He’s never seen the older’s eyes blank out like that.

“J-Joongmyeon st-stop, I can’t breathe,” Donghae started to say. His vision slowly blurred, but he refused to pass out now.

He could feel Joongmyeon put more pressure and raise his forearm a bit.

“Donghae? What the do you think your doing?” a voice yelled.

Joongmyeon had turned to look in the direction of where the voice was coming from and got tackled to the ground.
As soon as the pressure was released from Donghae’s throat, he fell to the ground and started coughing.

“Donghae, are you okay?” he heard another voice. Once Donghae opened his eyes and his vision refocused, he saw Siwon kneeling beside him with a concerned look on his face.
Donghae’s eyes went from Siwon to the two people struggling on the ground. Hyukjae had pinned Joongmyeon’s hands down, but he still kept thrashing.

“Don’t worry, with all this noise, I’m sure we’ll be getting someone who works here to check it out,” Siwon told Donghae.
As soon as Siwon had said that, there were another pair of sneaker’s walking fast into the locker room.

“What’s going on he—oh my gosh what are you doing?”

Siwon stood up to reassure the employer that Hyukjae saved their friend from being attacked and asked how they could go about the situation without causing too much trouble. The employee asked Donghae if he was hurt before calling someone on a walkie to come into the Men’s locker room ASAP. Siwon offered to help the employee detain Joongmyeon who was slowly coming down from his anger high, but still trying to resist Hyukjae. Siwon told Hyukjae he got this and gestured him to Donghae. Hyukjae quickly got off Joongmyeon and ran to Donghae, kneeling beside him.

“Hae! I’m sorry we were a little late, are you okay?”

Donghae locked eyes with Hyukjae and he nodded before reaching to grab his friend’s shirt. He needed to confirm Hyukjae was actually in front of him and he actually was saved by his friends. Hyukjae quickly took Donghae’s arm and helped him up.
While Siwon was talking to the two other employees who still had Joongmyeon detained, they had called their manager who called police. They weren’t going to just let this go, especially since they weren’t sure if Joongmyeon intended to kill Donghae or not.
Hyukjae ended up getting Donghae to sit on one of the benches far away from Joongmyeon and sat beside him. He was checking to make sure Donghae wasn’t badly hurt. Before Donghae had time to ask how Hyukjae and Siwon knew he’d be there, the manager of the gym approached them. He gave a deep apologetic bow to Donghae. The manager’s name was Leeteuk and he apologized again and told Donghae he’d have to stay till police came so he could give a statement. Donghae knew the manager so tried to reassure him that no one but the perpetrator was at fault. But Leeteuk felt bad because he knew that Joongmyeon was trouble (from what Donghae rarely shared) and he should’ve told his employees to be