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Kim Dojka wakes up very, very warm. Eyes opening slowly, he stares up at the clean, white ceiling of the room he shares with the person he loves most. An arm pins him down at the waist, the sleepy grip of its owner keeping him in place.
He shifts slightly to stare at the slumbering- and somehow perfect, even through a full night's sleep- face of Yoo Joonghyuk. He reaches out a hand to brush lightly at the hair swooping softly over his gorgeous features. How did I get so lucky? He thinks, absentmindedly carding fingers through his lover's hair. Joonghyuk’s chest rises and falls slowly, the only sound in the still morning air. It almost feels like time's stopped. In the early morning light, particles of dust sparkle, rotating slowly. Dokja pokes his index finger into the taller man's cheek, marveling at the way his eyebrows are tense despite his obvious slumber. His skin's soft, almost unnervingly so, and Dokja holds his breath, lost in thought as he begins to count his perfect eyelashes, ghosting his fingertips over the familiar planes of Yoo Joonghyuk's face.
Before he can even get into the double digits, a hand catches him by the wrist and pulls him with a heavy tug into a chest, all solid and warm, steady planes of muscle. Kim Dokja sighs contentedly into the embrace. "Good morning, Joonghyuk."
Joonghyuk only rumbles in response. It's a low, sweet sound- not unfamiliar to those of a comfortable cat. His eyes are still closed, and in this position, the two of them are nearly nose to nose. Dokja stares at Joonghuk some more, mentally remapping the angles and curves of the face he knows so well.
Dokja really thinks that Joonghyuk was sculpted by the gods. His face is much too perfect. He’s strong, dependable, someone everyone can fall back on-
As Joonghyuk sleeps (or, pretends to), Dokja falls back into a train of thought that he seems to revisit often, lately. It starts with Joonghyuk, and spirals outwards into the rest of the company.
Am I good enough? For you, Joonghyuk? For everyone else? Dokja feels something ugly bubble up faintly in his stomach as he thinks about the people around him. Strong Jung Heewon. Steadfast Lee Hyunsung. Beautiful- and intelligent Yoo Sangah. Han Sooyoung ... he doesn't quite think he can describe her in any way that'll really matter. She's everything. Compared to them, he’s just Kim Dokja. Plain old Kim Dokja. What did he have to offer ..?
As if sensing his anxiety, Joonghuk pulls Dokja even closer (he didn't think there was any more space between them) and presses a tender kiss to Dokja's eye. "Good morning." His voice is unbelievably soft, gravelly with disuse after sleep. Dokja melts against his lover's chest; revels in the steady sound of his heartbeat. It's comforting, a reminder that they are undeniably alive.
"Yoo Joonghyuk?"
"Hm..?" It's like Joonghyuk is incapable of speech in the morning- he just rumbles in agreement or dissent. It's quite cute, actually. Not that he'll ever voice this opinion, though, unless he feels like having a sword through his stomach again.
"No- I- it's nothing." Dokja blinks at him innocently and smiles, pushing the ugly bubbles of something deeper down into his flesh, settling it tightly under his diaphragm. It feels like a bone in the wrong place. "It's okay."
As if sensing his lie, Joonghyuk's eyes open, an unreadable look in his eyes. He sits up, stretching in place with a yawn, then grabs Dokja by his shoulders and pushes him back onto the pillows, caging Dokja in with his arms. He leans forward, hair hanging over like a curtain and brushing Dokja's forehead ticklishly. His breath feathers across Dokja's face, warming his cheeks and nose. Stupid protagonist - he doesn't even have any morning breath. In a silly part of his brain, Dokja's just a little bit jealous.
"I like this about you," Joonghuk breathes, voice soft as a spring breeze. He presses a feathery kiss to Dokja's eye.
"And this," a kiss to his nose, "this," his cheek, "this" his chin, "and this." a kiss to his lips, barely there. It feels like a seal's been burned into his skin wherever he's been touched, and he squirms between Yoo Joonghyuk's arms, scratching playfully at his thick arms with blunt nails. It's not enough to do any damage, but Yoo Joonghyuk backs off anyway, rising just enough to meet Dokja's eyes with his own.
Dokja stares up at him, an uncomfortable twist across his lips that Joonghyuk knows all too well. "I didn't ask you for that."
Joonghyuk puts his forehead against Dokja's forehead. "I didn't need you to."
Dokja stills beneath him, muscles tensing under Joonghyuk's warm skin. Joonghyuk drops his full weight down onto Dokja, and buries his nose into the junction between his neck and shoulder as the smaller man protests.
Voice muffled by Dokja’s shoulder, Joonghyuk says something that Dokja doesn’t quite catch.
“What? Speak up, sunfish bastard.” Dokja scratches at him again. He considers biting him, since his neck is just right there, all tan skin and nicely-healed scars for him to start chewing at. Joonghyuk grunts, but otherwise ignores him. His weight is starting to suffocate Dokja, so he brings a knee up the best he can and attempts to leverage the solid seventy-three kilograms of man off of his chest before he turns into a pancake.
Joonghyuk grumbles almost indignantly as he's hoisted off, and glares at Dokja through slitted eyes and opens his mouth. Before whatever scathing remark he had readies dies in his throat as someone bangs sharply on the door of their bedroom.
“Are you fucking?” There’s a muffled scuffle outside their door, then the sound of Yoo Sangah’s scolding tone. Han Sooyoung’s’s voice rings out again, undeterred, but slightly further from the door, as if she's being pulled away from it. “You two'd better not be fucking, because I’m coming in. You have five seconds to get your clothes back on!” She starts counting down at the top of her voice.
“Five!”
“Four!”
“Three!”
Joonghyuk just rolls his eyes, and moves to get up. As he extracts himself from the bed, his bare chest ripples, and Dokja secretly gives it an appreciative glance before burrowing into the warmth that he'd left behind. The bed smells nice, like skin and fabric softener. Dokja imagines that this is how people feel when they shove their noses into their pets' stomachs to relax. His eyes begin to flutter shut.
“Two! One! No cocks out or I kill both of you!”
The door slams open, and there’s a loud, premature exclamation of “EW!” from Sooyoung before she jumps onto the bed. She lands directly on top of Dokja's curled-up frame, and he yelps, exhaling heavily as the air's punched out of his lungs. Next to the bed, Yoo Joonghyuk shrugs on a t-shirt, giving Han Sooyoung a dirty glare before he leaves. The short-haired girl sticks her tongue out at his retreating back before turning to Dokja, who looks up at her wearily.
“Good morning, you silly idiot!” Sooyoung chirps, giving him a peck on the cheek and a hug around the waist, resting her cheek on his stomach. Dokja bites back a laugh at the sensation. Every morning, the rest of them come in to check that he’s “still alive” and "not off somewhere dying by himself. They say it like a joke, but the look in their eyes whenever they give this excuse to him has Dokja believing otherwise. It makes his ribs ache, and he still hasn't decided if it's the good kind or the bad kind.
A minute later, the kids come bounding in with twin shouts of “Good morning hyung/ahjussi!” before they leap onto the bed. Both land directly on top of Sooyoung, who lets out a pained oof before wriggling out from underneath them. She ruffles their hair then waves to Dokja, who’s buried under two very solid children. If he wasn't flattened before, he's sure that he's paper-thin now. He gives Gilyoung and Yoosoung a kiss each to their foreheads, and they lay their heads on his chest, as if listening to his heartbeat. He doesn't say anything, and lets them lay in the comfortable silence. After a minute, they both get up and pull each other off of him, scrabbling to push each other out of the way.
Yoosung, holding Gilyoung by the chin as he struggles to swipe at her, looks at her guardian seriously. "Have a good day, ahjussi. I'll see you later." She pats him on the arm once, then squeezes as if she believes he's not really there before slipping off the bed and letting Gilyoung fall into the bed. The boy yelps, and he pushes himself up into a sitting position before giving Dokja a hug. "What the idiot said. See you later, hyung."Gilyoung does the same as Yoosung- a pat on his arm, then a squeeze, before he runs out of the room calling the brunette's name angrily. Dokja chuckles fondly.
Stifling a yawn, Dokja unplugs his battered phone, then stalks to the en-suite bathroom he shares with Joonghuk. When he opens the door, Joonghyuk's piercing gaze greets him. There's a towel in his hand, and he folds it over the rack before walking over to his partner. He rubs rubs Dokja’s back once, straightening his terrible posture, then pulls his hand away.
“Breakfast in ten,” he says, back to “daytime Yoo Joonghyuk”. No more of “Kim Dokja’s Yoo Joonghyuk”. Dokja just waves at him, hand over his face as he's overtaken by another huge yawn. He walks up to the sink as Yoo Joonghyuk slinks smoothly out into the hallway, and gropes blindly for his toothbrush as he pulls up a new webnovel on his phone. It's nothing special, just your typical power fantasy- and then he realizes that his toothbrush isn't where he'd left it the evening before. Looking away from his phone, he spots it balanced on the edge of the sink indeed. There's already toothpaste, meticulously squeezed onto the head, and Dokja's lips go up just a tiny bit. Yoo Joonghyuk's such a sappy bastard.
Less than five minutes later, Dokja’s dressed in comfortable lounge clothes and 100% free of morning breath. He walks down the stairs to the first floor, only to be knocked a little askance by Jung Heewon, who has toast in her hand as she rushes towards the door. “Ah! Sorry, Dokja-ssi! I have something I’d like to do today, but I’ll be back by lunch.” She squeezes his hand affectionately, then is out the door in a second without waiting for a reply. Her keys jingle cheerfully as she rushes down the steps of the porch and down the walkway, leaving a trail of her comforting scent behind her. Dokja smiles after her, sure that she'll return later with some kind of treat in her hand to share or a story to tell him over drinks.
Lee Hyunsung, with a smart-looking leather bag slung over his arm, sidles up next to him with a smile and presses a kiss to his hand, princelike, in lieu of a morning greeting before jogging off to catch up with Heewon. He shuts the door almost noiselessly behind him, and a minute later, he can hear their car start and the sound of wheels pulling out of the driveway.
This is how Dokja starts his days, showered with affection. (And yet, he can’t seem to get rid of that murky anxiety that sits deep in his abdomen and eats him up from the inside out like a parasite.)
He stands in the hall for a second, squeezing the familiar weight of his phone in his hands before pattering into the kitchen. His footsteps are muffled by his socks, but the three people in the kitchen all throw him glances (one cool, and two warm and excited) as he sits down at the kitchen island. Not a minute later is a plate stacked with breakfast slid in front of him, eggs done the way he likes them and pancakes the fluffiest he's seen them. He smiles gratefully up to Joonghyuk, who barely throws him a nod of acknowledgement before going back to his spot at the stove.
He digs a fork into his fluffy pancakes, watching absentmindedly as the syrup runs down the tines of his fork and pools at the egde of the plate. He takes a bite- it's tasty, as expected- and ignores the faint protesting of his stomach. He's still not used to anything other than cheap coffee and day-old convenience store leftovers quite yet. As he pokes at his food, a sweet-smelling blur whirs into the kitchen, picking up a plate and loading it up with pancakes and freshly-cooked bacon. It stops for a minute to pull a bottle of juice out of the fridge before pulling the chair next to him out and sitting down. Casually, Yoo Sangah drops a kiss to his cheek before taking a sip out of her glass delicately. She's dressed as meticulously as ever, and Dokja can't help but admire the way she puts herself together.
"Good morning, Dokja-ssi," she beams at him over a bite of pancake on her fork, "did you sleep well? You look well."
He echoes her bright smile the best he can, and swallows thickly around his mouthful before answering. "I did, thank you."
"You look good today," he adds, as an afterthought, and she brightens even more before turning back to her meal. There's a briefcase hanging on the corner of the chair she's perched on- Dokja assumes she's headed off to the government office again to finish getting their affairs in order. He feels a bit bad that he can't help her with any of it, being on house arrest for his health and all. On the other side of the counter, Gilyoung and Yoosung bicker over their own plates of breakfast. Gilyoung's is more whipped cream than it is pancake, and Yoosung's toast is piled up with an almost uncomfortable amount of eggs. Dokja smiles fondly at them as he tears another section off his pancakes. Breakfast feels especially excruciating today, for some reason. He coughs lightly.
As Yoo Sangah polishes off her plate and brushes herself off to leave, the doorbell rings in a familiar pattern. No one gets up to open it, and a second later, the door slams open, the doorstop screeching as it attempts to keep the doorknob from smashing a hole in the wall- a job that it's failed at before.
A loud voice echoes through the entryway alongside the sound of shoes bouncing on tile. “We’re here!” Kim Namwoon declares, and he and Lee Jihye bound in, holding heavy backpacks that they drop gratefully next to the couch as they take open seats at the counter. They come from their shared apartment nearby every morning before they head off to university, to grab breakfast and to bother its residents as part of their daily routine. Two plates of food are slid in front of them without missing a beat, which they gratefully dig into after yelling a hearty “Good morning!” to Dokja, who chuckles fondly and gives them a little wave.
Sooyoung materializes out of nowhere, pen tucked behind her ear and glasses slightly askew on her nose. Dokja beckons her over with a wave of his hand, and she walks over, wrinkling her nose at Jihye and Namwoon. “Why do you guys never ever wait for someone to open the door?” Dokja fixes Han Sooyoung's glasses, gets a pinch on the cheek for his troubles, and then offers her what's left on his plate. She takes Yoo Sangah's recently vacated seat and picks up his fork, still sticky with syrup.
Face full of food, Jihye scoffs. “It's not like you guys get up to open it for us, anyway."
"Plus, we have our own key." Namwoon chimes in helpfully, a small piece of scrambled egg hanging from his lip. Jihye grimaces at him, and taps the spot on her own lip to show him.
Sooyoung retorts pointedly, pointing her fork like a sword. “Then why bother knocking?” She chews once on her pancakes accusatorially.
“Courtesy.” Both Namwoon and Jihye respond at the same time, shrugging, and then return to their meals as Han Sooyoung groans in exasperation and returns to her food. Yoo Joonghyuk sidles over to give her a new pancake, fresh from the gridle, and she pats him gratefully on the ass as he walks away. He ignores her, but Dokja knows she's going to get the end of that little trick later.
Dokja laces his fingers together, then drops his chin onto them, balancing on top of the clean counter as he swings his feet and watches the familiar song and dance. It's comforting, being at home like this. The people he loves sweeping through the house every morning like a whirlwind of warmth, filling the house with idle chatter and fond bickering that's hard to really get mad of. He sits, observant as ever, as his family spins on an orbit around him, trading bites and blows, and somehow he feels a little bit lonely, despite being in the center of it all. He feels like there's a wall of glass around him. The world seems to slow down as he blinks, a strange feeling of discomforting weightlessness surrounding him as the dirty feeling from earlier seeps through his organs.
A bit a ways away, Yoo Joonghyuk watches as KIm Dokja focuses on a spot on the wall, eyes going a little empty as he spirals. In the living room, Jihye and Namwoon are looking at something on a phone and laughing. Gilyoung and Yoosung weave through the doorways of the house, bickering as usual, as Yoo Sangah attempts in futile to get them to settle down before they ruin their nice hardwood for the third time. Hyunsung and Heewon have left for the day, and he slowly meets Han Sooyoung's piercing, knowing gaze as his eyes slide back over to where Dokja's sitting. The slightly pale, hunched man chews absentmindedly on his cheek.
Han Sooyoung squints at Yoo Joonghyuk, her mouth full of toast as she gestures with her chin to the man sitting next to her. Go on, her eyes say, and Yoo Joonghyuk can't find it in himself to even try and deny it. Slowly, he unties his apron and hangs it in its spot on the rack near the kitchen door. He dusts off his hands, checks the stove, then moves over to Dokja, who barely registers the taller man pulling up next to him. Yoo Joonghyuk grabs his arm gently, and pulls him off the chair. Dokja makes a gentle noise of surprise as some of the fog in his eyes clears, and follows obediently.
He pulls Dokja along until they're out in the darkened hallway, away from the noise. The shorter man stares up blankly at Yoo Joonghyuk, staring past his eyes to something it seems like only he can see. Something aches in Yoo Joonghyuk's chest- something familiar, but painful all the same. He thinks about the train, about the thin man, tucked inside of a cabinet with only a phone for light, and an unlucky smile he's learned to love and hate. He steps forward, hesitating just for a second, before gathering Dokja's thin frame between his warm arms. Dokja's not as lean and strong as he was, anymore, not without the system to help him. Sometimes it feels like he could blow away any second.
"Come home, Dokja." His voice is barely above a whisper as he squeezes Dokja between his arms, thinking about his silly smile from a mere half-hour ago. He wants that back. He wants it here.
They stand like that, Dokja ensconced in Yoo Joonghyuk's arms like the precious treasure of a dragon. The noise of the other residents seems to melt away as Joonghyuk almost pleads with something in his heart- but it's not a real plea. Because Yoo Joonghyuk doesn't plea. He simply takes action.
Three beats pass.
A third,
then one more, to make four.
Soft, tentative arms snake their way around Yoo Joonghyuk's waist. There's a whisper of an exhale from a face buried in his chest, and then a light squeeze as Dokja pushes himself further into Yoo Joonghyuk's warm embrace.
"What," Dokja takes another breath, a little shaky, "you say that like I ever left in the first place."
Yoo Joonghyuk doesn't respond, only exhaling in a sort of- he's not sure what to call this feeling. Relief? He takes a step back, taking Dokja's hands in his, and observes his face. It's less pale, now, and his eyes have that mischievous sparkle he's so used to waking up to back where it belongs.
He opens his mouth to say something back, but before he can say anything, something barrels into his side as another grabs Dokja firmly around the waist, tearing him away from Yoo Joonghyuk.
Dokja makes a noise, startled by the sudden movement, then looks down and begins to laugh. Nestled against his arm is one glaring Lee Gilyoung. Across from him, Shin Yoosung faces off with an unamused Yoo Joonghyuk.
Lee Gilyoung suddenly screams, his loud voice ripping down the previously serene hall. "SOOYOUUUUNG-NOOOOONA, THE SUNFISH BASTARD IS BEING NASTY AGAIN!"
It comes grinding to a stop where Han Sooyoung leans against the wall, amused. "Yeah? Is that so, bastard?" She shoots a grin to where Yoo Joonghyuk stands helplessly.
Yoo Sangah comes through the doorway, a faint layer of sweat shining on her flawless forehead. "Gilyoung-ah- ouch," she doubles over from a cramp, "I told you not to disturb them."
Lee Gilyoung looks up at Kim Dokja, who's smiling a little sheepishly, and then looks over at Yoo Sangah apologetically. "I won't do it again, noona. I'm sorry." He seems to wilt after he apologizes, and Kim Dokja laughs out loud, a soft, tinkling chuckle that makes everyone turn to swivel. The fog across his face is gone, and he shines almost brilliantly to the others, a star at the center of their universe. Han Sooyoung smiles from where she leans against the wall, chewing on the stick of a lemon lollipop. Next to her, Kim Namwoon and Lee Jihye peek around the wall, phone abandoned for curiosity. They both grin at the mess of people in the corridor.
"Seems like we'll be okay, yeah?"
Yoo Joonghuk turns to look at her, but says nothing. He doesn't need to. She knows him well enough to know exactly what the little quirk of his cheek means.