Chapter Text
In the end, everything is Joonghyuk’s fault really.
He brought that damned manuscript home, brought it into their lives. Apparently, flew it across the universe, so really…he brought this on himself.
Knowing that only makes it worse.
It’s a normal day in the office when Joonghyuk finds the thing that is going to irrevocably alter his life. Again.
He’s working the same long hours at his parents’ publishing firm, has had less breaks in the day than he likes, has his sleeves rolled up because it got too hot when he was sitting by the window in the afternoon sun, and now he’s eating the same lukewarm rice with kimchi that he hadn’t finished at lunch because he didn’t have the time between meetings to leave his office except for bathroom breaks.
So when his secretary drops off the stack of soon-to-be-scrapped manuscripts, Joonghyuk doesn’t think much of it.
Rejected manuscripts like these don’t normally make it his desk as an editorial director, but a few years ago, some faceless employee he can’t remember had proposed a ‘rescue’ program for manuscripts, where every few months, a select handful of rejects would get a last look to be reconsidered for publishing.
Joonghyuk hadn’t been in favor of the idea (it’s inefficient in his mind at best, fruitless and aggravating re-work at worst), but his parents liked the boost in employee morale numbers they saw when employees got the chance to save a story they liked, so it stayed.
So far, this time around, none of the manuscripts impress him. It doesn’t help that 90% of what’s submitted to the company is already shit, so looking over a pile of stories that have already been rejected once…well, probability said these were all likely shit too.
And that expectation is confirmed over and over again as the hours pass while he flips through each of the last ditch offerings—until one of the titles catches his eye.
Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint.
Reader.
Like the meaning of Dokja’s name.
Dokja who is his…friend? …partner? …frequent lover…and the broodmare for his heirs? An omega who is currently very, very pregnant with Joonghyuk’s pups? Dokja who is probably bored to tears today because he’s been texting Joonghyuk all afternoon from where he currently resides at the breeding center across the river, who Joonghyuk could be visiting instead of being holed up in his office reading terrible manuscripts.
But unfortunately, Joonghyuk has a job to do.
Joonghyuk picks up the nondescript offering and peruses the cover sheet where the summary sits. At first glance, there’s nothing special about it. Nothing that makes it stand out.
The summary sounds like every unoriginal web novel he’s ever heard of: an ordinary, down-on-his-luck salaryman has his world turned upside down when the webnovel he’s been reading for the better part of his life suddenly becomes a reality—and then the salaryman becomes a sort of all-knowing type of character that tries to make it out of the apocalypse (a series of “scenarios” in a destroyed Seoul) alive.
It’s the usual power fantasy. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Joonghyuk tries not to yawn as he considers it, and then turns the page over to see a bright yellow sticky note over the top of the first page.
A message is scrawled there in inelegant, hurried handwriting.
It reads simply: Try reading it again from the beginning.
It’s innocuous, really.
It’s just seven littles words…but they’re frightening and threatening enough to send a tremor through his heart. He stares at the words, stares in the hope that the text will change a little bit, will look a little less familiar.
Joonghyuk flips the page and there’s another thing that catches his attention—something that makes his stomach drop, the main character’s name.
He flips back to the summary page with the neon yellow note.
…
…
…
Try reading it again from the beginning.
…
…
…
And yeah, that’s kind of the whole point of this ‘rescue’ program. To have someone look a story over again. That, in itself, isn’t strange.
But all of it when put together, however, is.
The main character’s name emblazoned on the second page: Kim Dokja. Kim Dokja. Kim Dokja. An entirely uncommon name. A name that no one should know.
And even stranger…somehow, the message on the sticky note looks all too familiar.
Because it’s written in his handwriting...
…with his full and perfectly legible signature at the bottom…
…and he’s never seen nor read this story in his life, so how could he possibly read it ‘again?’
Weeks later after the initial panic settles—
(after the security cameras are reviewed, after the attorneys are consulted, after the management inquiry is concluded and no one is able to determine where the manuscript originated beyond an obscure reference to the author using an anonymous pseudonym: TLS123, after Joonghyuk called the breeding center and in a fit of paralyzing fear had Dokja involuntarily confined to his room—no one allowed in or out— with as much security around him as the center could provide until Joonghyuk could get there)
— Joonghyuk finally sits down and reads the beginning of the manuscript now that he’s finally able to process more than seeing his name (he hadn’t noticed that the first time around) right next to Dokja’s and perceiving it only as threat, threat, threat.
And then he brings the manuscript to Kim Dokja himself, and it all goes to hell from there.
The pups arrive, thankfully, without much difficulty or fanfare.
In late October, Joonghyuk and Dokja welcome three tiny pups barely larger than Joonghyuk’s hand, and it’s all delightfully uneventful.
The center calls Joonghyuk on a Thursday evening to let him know that Dokja has been experiencing contractions, and Joonghyuk, having known him long enough now, is not surprised in the slightest that Dokja hadn’t said anything or even texted him.
Joonghyuk can hear Dokja yelling in the background.
“Who said you could call him! Tell him to stay at work. They’re still 15 minutes apart. Joonghyuk, don’t listen to them. Nothing’s even happening yet!”
The attendant on the phone ignores Dokja (which only seems to incense him further because the yelling gets a touch louder and more venomous). Between Dokja’s loud and incensed berating, the attendant on the phone politely inquires as to whether Joonghyuk-ssi would like to meet his omega at the hospital or ‘will sir be joining Kim-ssi at the center presently to accompany him to the delivery facility?’
Joonghyuk, throwing everything in his satchel as quickly as humanly possible, lets them know he’s on his way and to let Dokja know that once they’re off the phone (otherwise he’ll continue protesting). When Joonghyuk gets to the center, Dokja insistently declines the emergency transport and then bullies Joonghyuk into driving them in his own car.
(“The transport would be a waste! I’m fine.”)
Dokja is quiet throughout the whole ride, which Joonghyuk initially assumes is Dokja being angry at him for even showing up—which frankly is typical Dokja. It doesn’t take long before Joonghyuk realizes his error, however, once he hears Dokja’s angry hiss of pain and tremulous exhalation. At a stoplight, Joonghyuk looks over at him. Although he makes a valiant effort at schooling his expression, Dokja’s clearly in pain. Dokja snaps, “Keep your eyes on the road,” and they continue on their way.
By the time they arrive at the delivery facility, Joonghyuk’s hand is numb from how tightly Dokja had been squeezing it with every contraction. Every five minutes or so by Joonghyuk’s count, so things are progressing along quickly, more so than he had anticipated. Dokja was a little liar.
Once they arrive, Dokja is whisked into a room, apparently much further along than he had let on based what Joonghyuk relays to the front desk. Dokja’s water breaks in the middle of the hallway and even though he’s white-faced, sweating and hunched over with pain, he sends the most fearsome look in Joonghyuk’s direction daring him to say anything, anything at all.
Joonghyuk wisely says nothing, barely breathing because that mind offend the omega, but offers his arm for Dokja to clutch and help him hobble his way to the delivery room because he vociferously declines a gurney for a 15 meter walk.
They take Dokja into a surgery suite, and Joonghyuk follows along numbly, sending off a text to his parents and sister to let them know he’s at the hospital and well, that’s it.
When the smells start to get too intense (Dokja in pain has all his alpha instincts ratcheting up exponentially), a kind beta nurse hands him a menthol scent blocker with a no-nonsense, “if you want to stay with him, you need to put this on.” It’s awful and it dulls his senses almost entirely, but it does the trick. He’s able to rein himself in and come down to a much more manageable level.
Another hour passes and then suddenly Joonghyuk is a parent.
In the space between heartbeats, he goes from: Yoo Joonghyuk. Single, eligible, wealthy, alpha bachelor.
To: Yoo Joonghyuk [comma] father of three. Single [question mark].
And the sword that has been hanging over his and Dokja’s head ever since this began starts to fall.
His parents and his friends send him congratulatory messages. His sister visits twice in one day. Before and after work. She coos over the pups and Joonghyuk tries to hold them without breaking them (they’re so, so tiny).
The doctors tell him (and not Dokja) that they checked out the pups—“All ten fingers and ten toes,” they joke—and everything looks healthy. They recommend giving the pups a day in the hospital to be monitored for anything unusual, but say that he can take them home after that.
They make no mention of Dokja beyond a reference in passing that their billing for his care will be forwarded to the breeding center once he’s discharged from the facility.
So Joonghyuk makes a decision.
Without asking or telling anyone, Joonghyuk simply takes Dokja and his pups home to their home. The delivery facility staff are more professional and nod as they make their way out of the facility, but the doctors are less circumspect, looking overtly surprised and murmuring together when they see Joonghyuk’s escorting everyone home.
Somehow the world doesn’t fall apart like he’d expects.
Dokja doesn’t say anything about it when they go up the elevator from the parking garage below his high-rise, and says nothing when he walks into Joonghyuk’s posh apartment. He just sniffs at the air, looking around the flat, and then looks directly at the alpha with a frankly terrifyingly blank expression and proceeds to make Joonghyuk promise to wake him up if the pups need anything (‘Anything at all, Joonghyuk.’). Once he’s assured that the pups are safe in the nursery, he makes his way to Joonghyuk’s bed without needing directions and promptly passes out.
Joonghyuk feels antsy, but doesn’t know what to do with a space that went from being solely his to now being occupied by four other bodies. So he goes to make himself some tea, and turns on some old episodes of Running Man on low volume just so there’s noise in the apartment, but not enough that he can’t hear the pups if they need him.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing. No one had prepared him for this or ever told him that being a parent was a lesson in flying blind. It’s terrifying. During commercial breaks, he checks on the pups and just listens to them breathing. 1-2-3-in. 1-2-3-out. Three little heartbeats. It’s all right. They’re all just fine.
He can do this.
A few days later when Joonghyuk’s parents drop by to meet the pups for the first time, Joonghyuk doesn’t ask Dokja to hide in the back room. They’re going to find out eventually. Might as well rip the bandage off all at once.
Like he’d guessed, his parents are not happy. His father is silent and angry where he stands stiffly alongside the bookcase in Joonghyuk’s office, lips pursed in a familiar expression. His mother chastises him in the way that only the well-bred elite can—with indirect insults intended to burrow under his skin and mentions of vaguely implied consequences of social fallout that will affect his pups’ future.
He hears a litany of complaints and bears them silently, but they all boil down to this: he should have hired help, should have been a dutiful son and waited patiently to match with an appropriate mate (and not brought home his paid broodmare) and then they demanded to know when Joonghyuk was going to send him away.
He simply responds that Dokja is free to go whenever he wants (even though it feels forced from his throat).
His parents look so shockingly confused that were he possessed of a lighter temperament, Joonghyuk would have laughed. But he means it. He won’t trap Dokja any longer (once at the breeding center was one time too many).
His parents are, to say the least, unimpressed with that response.
They want a firm date for Dokja’s ejection from their lives. He responds with ‘there is none.’
They threaten to disown him. He says ‘if you feel you must, go ahead.’
They’re not sure what to do after that. The well-bred echelon of society from which his parents hail expect money above all other things to be the final deciding factor in any argument. When that doesn’t move him, his parents look quizzically between each other as if prompting the other to volley the next attempt to knock sense into their son.
They continue at him for an hour, repeating the same arguments from different angles and at different volumes, and had Joonghyuk been raised with an iota of less respect, he would have laughed at their feeble attempts.
They lack creativity, he thinks a little meanly. Dokja would have known how to make him fold within five minutes.
After his final refusal, once they’ve run out of steam, they leave in a huff, and Joonghyuk doesn’t hear from them for weeks…
…but surprisingly, they don’t cut him off. He still walks into work unencumbered, still receives a paycheck every other week, and his trust fund sends the account of his quarterly earnings. His sister texts updates periodically, with the most recent one stating that his parents are still delightfully confounded as to how to proceed (they can’t ask friends—the scandal!) and also to let him know that she is enjoying every second of being the unchallenged favorite of the siblings at the moment.
He thinks his parents are playing the long game, hoping that they’ll wear him down and that one day Dokja will just disappear from their lives, but until then, he still has a job, but there won’t be any more bi-weekly family dinners.
Which is actually an improvement in Joonghyuk’s book.
After the birth, Dokja is laid up in bed for a few days. He’s allowed to be mobile as long as he minds the doctor’s suggested level of activity until he’s fully recovered. It gives the omega a lot of downtime in a new and unfamiliar apartment.
Downtime with which to get up to trouble. And he does. It has the benefit of being so distracting that Joonghyuk forgets temporarily that there’s any other familial strife in his life.
Dokja redecorates with frenzied aplomb, shifting furniture and paintings to different rooms (even continues to do so when Joonghyuk harasses him about all of that being over the weight limit he’s allowed to carry per doctor’s orders). He vandalizes some of Joonghyuk’s favorite books, dog-earing the corners and even writing little notes in a couple of the poetry collections (Joonghyuk finds ‘pretentious and boring!’ and ‘actually this one’s quite nice.’ Joonghyuk is surprised to find he actually agrees with Dokja but is still sullen over the graffiti). Dokja moves other things around the apartment, so that Joonghyuk cannot find them—his daily newspapers, vitamins, paper weights, his cell phone, even the manuscripts Joonghyuk brings home to review. Dokja is a nuisance.
Worse still, Dokja’s scent is now ever-present in the apartment, and it has Joonghyuk’s hackles raising for the first weeks. Dokja isn’t unfamiliar, but this is Joonghyuk’s den, and despite Joonghyuk wanting Dokja there, he still feels like Dokja is invading it, taking it over—making it his. Rooms that used to be sterile and aesthetically empty, only occupied by dust and stale air now have the smell of Dokja in them, his scent hovering like a ghost even when he’s not there.
He creates a disaster in the kitchen when he tries to make a simple meal. The only thing he’s seemingly able to whip up are microwaved meals, and even those look…crunchy and undercooked— but, well, Joonghyuk doesn’t have any room to judge. He still has the personal chef on call.
The biggest change is that there are suddenly baby-related things everywhere. Within a week of the pups coming home, there’s a truck’s worth of infant supplies and toys hauled in by his friends who stare wide-eyed at Dokja, a stranger to them who is casually feeding one of the pups on the couch with his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, looking at them entirely unbothered. A couple of the alpha friends look away, more than a little red around the ears.).
Joonghyuk is not embarrassed that he finds himself standing between his friends and their line of sight to Dokja, who they are unabashedly curious about. He also totally does not bristle when he has to leave Dokja alone with them because the omega had requested that Joonghyuk fetch a burp rag because the pup was done feeding.
When he gets back, Dokja is already burping the pup on his shoulder with a different rag, one he conveniently forgot he was already holding, and his friends are looking so effervescently happy at seeing someone bossing Joonghyuk around with such little effort or reproach.
He’s not sure who looks more pleased: Dokja or his friends.
Dokja, savvy as ever and seeming to sense Joonghyuk an impending sulk, appeases Joonghyuk by sneakily pulling him down for a kiss (Joonghyuk does not flare bright red at the obvious affection, thank you— or from the more than clear confirmation to Joonghyuk’s friends that this is his lover and not simply a caretaker to the pups). Joonghyuk can sense how his friends are practically vibrating with the new knowledge.
From the corner of his eye, Joonghyuk catches one of his friends trying to stop another friend from actually clapping. ‘Whipped,’ another mouths, as if all the fear and respect Joonghyuk had cultivated within his friends over the years had vanished into the ether the moment they came within Dokja’s orbit.
It’s mortifying.
Later, after his friends had left, Joonghyuk had found a half-constructed toy mobile lying on the ground next to a play mat for the pups, which was…such a Dokja thing to do. Clearly he had started out with a half-cocked idea to finish this before bed, but then it had quickly devolved into failure because Dokja a.) doesn’t like reading directions and b.) why finish a toy that the pups weren’t going to use yet because they weren’t doing anything beyond sleeping at this point?
Something which both Dokja and Joonghyuk were surprised to learn that infants supposedly do in the early months: they sleep all the time.
They also cry and pee in diapers and on one memorable occasion, the youngest pup pees on him. Dokja laughed himself sick at that and Joonghyuk makes it a point of pride to learn how to quickly and efficiently change a pup as fast as possible. They also eat and sometimes burp milk up on them because apparently that’s a thing. Mostly they’re breastfeeding from Dokja, but they decide to supplement early on with formula because three babies is a lot and Dokja cannot be awake at all hours of the day to feed three infants every two to three hours when all they’re doing in the first month is eating, peeing, crying, shitting and sleeping.
And then they sleep and pee and cry and shit and eat and do it all over again, but at longer intervals…
So maybe Joonghyuk’s parents were right. Maybe he should have hired help.
Neither Dokja or Joonghyuk remember much of those first few months. Dokja says that’s to be expected, that the brain is wired to forget. He says it’s because if parents actually remembered how traumatic birth and childrearing really was each time, they’d never procreate again. Joonghyuk vows never to forget and Dokja rolls his eyes and says “Write that down on the calendar for when your next rut comes.”
Eventually things settle down and they form little habits to make things easier. Joonghyuk starts going back into the office during the day once the pups are sleeping through the night. He takes the night shift and only has to get up infrequently to feed them and rock them back to sleep. Some nights are still sleepless, but it’s slowly getting better.
For the most part, Dokja is responsible for everything else throughout the day so that Joonghyuk can work unhindered—except for the rare occasion when Dokja reaches his limit and yells for Joonghyuk that he ‘needs a break and that if Joonghyuk doesn’t come out of the office this minute, Dokja is going to send pictures of tiny, shriveled alpha knots to all of Joonghyuk’s friends claiming that its his.’
Joonghyuk finds it oddly endearing that Dokja thinks this threat would actually work when Joonghyuk shared a locker room for a decade with most of his friends during school (and they had all checked each other’s knots out). It’s another small reminder that Dokja hadn’t had many friends growing up, something that Joonghyuk is coming to learn and understand more and more.
And then one day, once Joonghyuk has successfully rocked two of the three pups to sleep, Dokja brings up the manuscript again.
He wants to read it.
Joonghyuk mulls it over silently. He considers pretending he got rid of it, but after the first few dark thoughts he has of lying, finally caves and says that he’ll bring it home.
So he hands it over.
And Dokja digs into it.
Joonghyuk doesn’t think anything of it until he works from home on an odd day and notices that when Dokja isn’t playing with the pups or feeding them or catching a nap when the pups are also sleeping—he’s reading.
He’s always reading in any spare moment of downtime.
Dokja seems to want to absorb every part of the novel. He spends hours poring over the text, re-reading chapters, and at the dinner table, he finds ways to also talk about the novel, pointing out the differences between the two of them and their written counterparts living within the pages.
He talks and talks and talks about it until Joonghyuk is sick to death of that fucking manuscript. He does not want to hear Kim Dokja call him (or his novel counterpart) emotionally constipated one more time.
The new (or rather—remembered) knowledge kindles something within Dokja. Seems to make him more whole, fuller somehow…just more… so Joonghyuk lets him keep it—even if the sense of foreboding curdles in his stomach with a feeling similar to dread.
Because it makes Dokja happy—sort of.
And Joonghyuk…when he’s by himself can admit…he, too, has never been happier.
Not when Joonghyuk comes home at the end of a long day, and the first thing that hits him is a soft scent tickling his nose, a constant reminder of the change in his home that hadn’t been there before—omega, Dokja. It’s equally warm and thrilling as it is disconcerting. It’s different all at the same time and it makes Joonghyuk want to bury his nose in it and rumble happily.
Or when he finds Dokja laying on the floor with their pups, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, trying his damndest to teach them how to roll from their backs onto their stomachs, uttering words of encouragement that the pups can’t yet understand.
Joonghyuk’s chest feels hot when he looks at them, watching his pups growing and learning, watching Dokja whose own joy burns so fiercely on his face that it physically hurts Joonghyuk to see. It feels like too much joy for one person to hold in a lifetime.
That doesn’t make the knowledge that he brought this story into their lives any less painful for Joonghyuk.
Even that—knowing that Dokja is home, is his for now, is safe for awhile at least—isn’t enough to stifle the worry festering within him. That happiness is not enough to keep the fear at bay.
Not when Joonghyuk wakes up in the middle of the night, when he reaches for Dokja, when he wants to pull the omega closer to him, to make sure he’s real when he wakes from his own nightmares—and then can’t feel his warmth in their bed where he should be. Not when Joonghyuk pads along the corridors of their high-rise apartment, searching for him, and feels a cold breeze shiver across his sleep-warm skin. Not when he sees the door to their balcony flung wide open in their living room and hears the Seoul wind whipping through it—how it freezes his heart at the sight.
Not when he finds Dokja sitting on the balcony, pale and still under the dark night, bare arms wrapped around his knees, his back to the door, staring up into the sky at something Joonghyuk can’t see.
Dokja doesn’t notice him or turn around until Joonghyuk lays a hand softly over the back of his neck, more to ground himself than to be a comfort. To reassure himself that Dokja’s right there in front of him. When Dokja turns to look at him, it’s Joonghyuk who is caught off-guard, tensing as he feels the hair on his arms standing up, a chill running up his spine that has him standing rigidly because of what he sees.
Dokja’s eyes are black normally, dark just like Joonghyuk’s, but now—there’s no light to them, no reflection in them, only blackness in the depths that’s so, so unnerving. There’s a wet line of tears running down the curve of Dokja’s cheeks.
They stare at each other for several moments, Dokja crying and Joonghyuk just breathing. He’s never felt more powerless. There’s nothing more he can do for Dokja right now. There aren’t words to make anything better. There’s nothing to hold back the tide of the manuscript’s story sweeping over them both.
This is something for them to endure, not to fix.
Joonghyuk simply offers him a handkerchief from his pocket, ornately emblazoned with the characters of his name, a gift from his parents. Dokja just stares at the offered item, not realizing he’d been crying in the first place.
Once he’s wiped his face, Joonghyuk drags him inside. It’s too cold in February to be out on the balcony in just a robe and he doesn’t trust Dokja to be out there on his own. Who knows what the omega will do under the influence of that damned story?
What’s that saying? Once you open Pandora’s box, there’s no putting everything back in again. You live with the consequences, and they’d flung the lid wide open when they’d turned the first page of that manuscript.
They sit on the floor of their living room, Dokja barely holding it together with hiccups that are half laughter, half manic tears.
Joonghyuk wraps a blanket tightly around Dokja’s thin shoulders, and wracks his brain for ideas of how to comfort him. He comes up empty-handed.
Dokja’s scent is indiscernible, and Joonghyuk’s touch can’t seem to warm his frigid skin, like Dokja’s not fully inhabiting himself, half in and out of his body, a changeling caught between worlds.
Occurrences like this are becoming more and more common. For the both of them. Lately, however, it’s mostly Dokja, suffering during his waking hours when he reads that damned book or during his sleeping hours when he’s inflicted with more of his cursed dreams—he’s remembering.
“Sorry,” he gasps quietly with his face buried in Joonghyuk’s shoulder, fat tears slowly falling onto Joonghyuk’s bare skin. Dokja’s breathing is uneven and shaky. His hand, clutching at Joonghyuk’s arm is shaking violently. “There was a rooftop this time. I jumped.” His voice breaks. “I was just a kid.”
Another dream, then.
Joonghyuk listens, but doesn’t fully understand.
He could read the manuscript, know more, be better prepared to deal with this when it eventually happens again, but…
…he’s not sure he really wants to.
Isn’t one person’s suffering enough for the two of them? He can’t chance that both of them get sucked beneath the undertow of this story. One of them has to stay afloat for the pups. For each other.
But somehow, Dokja who is as strong-willed as anyone, cannot seem to help himself. He’s staring headlong down the road, seeing the headlights in the distance heading right for him, getting closer and closer and yet he won’t move. He’s already in too deep. Can’t seem to let this other life go. Wants to swallow every story and every word like it’s his lifeblood.
Joonghyuk would rather watch it burn.