Second Weekends

by wyv777

Summary:

Yoo Joonghyuk is an escort/hotel chef with a mountain of debt that isn’t his.
Kim Dokja, a VVIP in Eden hotel, has bought him for the weekend.
That should’ve been the end of it.
But neither of them are very good at letting go.

*** Switch on chapter 18 only

Notes:

I love stories with financial abuse. It's cliché but it's good. Especially with Kim Dokja being the rich one. I was just chilling and writing smut on company time, when the plot broke down the door without a warrant. And Ta-da! This fic is born.

Chapter 1: One Star Escort

 

Kim Dokja shut his laptop with a quiet snap.

Friday night. Second of the month. That means it was time for a fuck.

It wasn’t for the sake of indulgence or even pleasure.

It was just a routine.

He packed his things and stepped out of the lobby, where his car was already waiting. The staff offered polite goodbyes, and he waved them off without meeting anyone’s eyes.

The car moved. It already knew his destination without being told.

Kim Dokja pulled out his phone and scrolled through that day's catalogue.

Men, women, neither, or both. It didn’t matter.

So long as they fit the mood.

Lately, the noise in his head had been louder than usual.

And he needed something, or rather someone, to drown it out.

Then, he saw it.

A new face.

Dark hair, sharp eyes, a scowl that didn’t belong on an escort’s face. One star rating with a total of five reviews.

Kim Dokja tapped on the profile.

No previous experience. Tall. Too many boundaries. Too many restrictions.

A total newbie.

He read the reviews. Two different clients were punched for touching him. One kicked out of the room for saying the wrong things. One complained that he was too rude. One just said “too muscular”.

He almost laughed.

Absolutely the wrong fit for this kind of job.

Kim Dokja smiled in amusement. 

He sent out the request.

Kim Dokja looked out the window.

The city skyline passed by in a blur.

He leaned his head against the cool glass of the window, eyes tracking the blur of lights.

He didn’t care if the guy was difficult. Maybe even preferred it that way.

Anything was better than the noises.

Anyone would do.

 

---

 

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at the incoming request in disbelief.

“That’s a VVIP,” Bihyung said, staring at the incoming request like it might explode.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s arms were crossed, silent.

They stared at each other.

“No,” was all Yoo Joonghyuk said.

Bihyung whirled on him. “No?! Do you think this is a damn voting booth, ya brat?”

Yoo Joonghyuk clicked his tongue. “Find someone else.”

“There is no one else,” Bihyung snapped. “And if you want to get paid at all, you better do everything he says. Even if you get tied to the goddamn ceiling or chug ten vodkas while standing on your head.”

He jabbed a finger at the screen. “You’re doing this.”

Yoo Joonghyuk turned away.

Bihyung caught his arm. Just enough to make him pause.

“Listen,” Bihyung said, voice lower now. “I know you hate this. You think I don’t see it?”

For a moment, the room was quiet.

“You weren’t meant for this job,” he went on. “But you’re already here. And the debts aren’t going to pay themselves.”

He let go of Joonghyuk’s arm.

“Just this once. All right? You screw this up and I can’t cover for you again. Not with the agency. Not with the creditors.”

Yoo Joonghyuk wasn't supposed to work as an escort. He was a cook for the establishment.

But a cook's salary can't pay the debts. Couldn't even touch the interest.

And he was desperate.

Yoo Joonghyuk groaned into his fist.

Bihyung sighed and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “If you get another 1 star, I'd have to take you off the roster.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave Bihyung his signature glare and got up.

If there was anything that his shitty parents had given him, besides a mountain of gambling debt, it was a face good enough to sway the heavens.

“Try to enjoy it,” Bihyung muttered, already turning away. “And for fuck’s sake, don’t punch this one.”

 

---

 

Kim Dokja's car pulled up in front of the hotel.

Staffs ran up to him to lead him the way.

A drink was already prepared at his arrival. He took it wordlessly as they walked him past the opulent lobby.

A man with silver hair went on about boundaries and consent, and some minor warnings about what was to be expected.

Kim Dokja wasn't really listening.

It was all the same to him anyway.

Eventually, they stopped in front of a door without a number.

One reserved exclusively for him.

He dismissed the staff and tapped the key card.

When he stepped inside, a man was already waiting for him.

Shirtless, tall, chiseled muscles, hair parted and slightly damp. 

But it was the expression that struck him first. Tense, guarded, and defiant.

The photos hadn't done him justice.

“How do you want to do this?” the man asked, with a very apparent restraint behind the question.

Kim Dokja raised a brow.

“Let's not be hasty.” He stepped inside, loosened his tie, and sank into the couch like a man settling into a familiar ritual.

He was still standing by the entrance. His whole body language screamed that he didn't want to be in this situation.

“What's your name?” Kim Dokja asked.

“Yoo Joonghyuk.”

There was no follow up.

No attempt at seduction. No flirtation.

Kim Dokja smiled faintly. This one wasn’t going to be easy. Like a stubborn leather that refused to wear.

He sighed. “You can call me Dokja.” He motioned Yoo Joonghyuk to approach.

There was a slight hesitation at first, but he listened.

They sat across from each other in silence, like strangers pretending to play a game neither of them had chosen.

Yoo Joonghyuk had his arms crossed. His jaw was tight, eyes sharp with disdain.

He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.

Kim Dokja watched him for a moment, and poured himself a drink. It was going to be a long night. “You don’t want to be here.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer.

“That’s fine,” Kim Dokja continued. “But this will end the same, either way.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes narrowed. “What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything,” Kim Dokja said. “I’m stating a fact. I came here to fuck. So we’ll fuck.”

It wasn’t lewd or aggressive. Just cold and transactional, like reciting a scheduled meeting.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw ticked.

“We have the whole weekend to ourselves. And I'm a patient man.” Kim Dokja took a swig of his drink.

“...Weekend?” Yoo Joonghyuk blinked.

Kim Dokja smiled. He tapped his glass. One. Two. Then he settled it down.

“You didn't read the fine prints, did you?”

A flash of guilt crossed Yoo Joonghyuk’s face. He had skimmed it. Thought it was boilerplate. Thought he wouldn’t need to stay the whole time.

Kim Dokja said nothing else. He just watched. Waiting for the moment when anger would settle into reluctant surrender.

“Fuck this.” Yoo Joonghyuk snapped.

He turned sharply, storming to the door.

His hand reached for the knob. But he didn’t open it.

He stood there, back stiff, shoulders tight.

Seconds passed. Then a minute. Then longer.

He didn’t move.

Kim Dokja didn’t speak. He simply watched, unhurried, pouring himself another drink. The clink of glass was the only sound in the room.

Another sip. He leaned back into the couch with practiced ease.

“You’re not leaving.” He said softly. He didn't need to raise his voice.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers curled into a fist around the door handle.

Still, he didn’t move.

“You remember it now, don't you?” Kim Dokja continued. “Two nights. Three days. No early release unless I send the request.”

Silence.

No denial.

“I won’t make you do anything,” Kim Dokja said after a beat. “Come back. Sit down.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t turn around, but his hand dropped away from the handle. He stood there for another long stretch, unmoving, like he was debating whether his pride or his survival was worth more.

Finally, without a word, he turned and walked back.

His steps were slow. Reluctant.

Kim Dokja motioned toward the bed with a casual flick of his hand. “There.”

Yoo Joonghyuk hesitated.

Then, stiffly, he sat at the edge of the mattress. Tense and upright, like the bed was rigged to collapse under him. His fists clenched on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor.

Kim Dokja didn’t move. Didn’t follow. He remained on the couch, legs crossed, swirling the liquid in his glass.

He was watching.

Not with lust, but with a detached interest of a man studying a particularly proud animal caught in a trap.

Yoo Joonghyuk sat there, spine rigid. Like he expected humiliation to come at any moment.

It didn’t.

Kim Dokja just sipped his drink, observing him in silence.

“You’re not very good at this,” he said finally.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t reply.

Kim Dokja’s smile was faint. Amused, not mocking.

“You know, this is more interesting than fucking.”

Yoo Joonghyuk finally looked up, eyes full of fire and loathing.

Kim Dokja raised his glass slightly, like a toast. “Don’t worry. I’ll still get around to it. But watching you spiral like this? Watching that pride of yours wrestle with itself?” He let out a small exhale, almost a laugh. “It’s fascinating.”

Yoo Joonghyuk said nothing. But the shame in his eyes burned brighter than any insult.

Kim Dokja finished his drink and set the glass down with a soft click.

“Get comfortable,” he said lightly, leaning back again. “We’ve got time.”

“Is this some sort of sick joke to you?” Yoo Joonghyuk barked.

His voice was sharp. Loud in the quiet room. The fury in it was real. But underneath it, there was something else. Resentment. Humiliation. Something more fragile.

Kim Dokja tilted his head, calm as ever.

“No,” he said. “I’m not laughing.”

He studied Yoo Joonghyuk, who was now standing again, tense like a caged dog pacing its perimeter. His fists were clenched. His eyes darted from the door to the couch to the floor.

A man out of place in his own skin.

Kim Dokja poured himself another drink, slow and methodical. His voice was cool, musing.

“Someone like you...don’t end up in a place like this unless you’re out of options.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t reply, but his glare sharpened.

Kim Dokja went on anyway. “Not because you want to. You’re too proud for that. You're not even good at pretending.”

He swirled the liquid in his glass. “So, what is it? Gambling debt? No…doesn’t feel like yours. Probably someone else’s. A parent, maybe. Medical debt? Something terminal?”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw tensed, but he said nothing.

“Did they ask you directly? Or did they just leave it on your shoulders by default?”

Kim Dokja took a sip. “You look like the type who’d shoulder it without being asked.”

That hit something. Yoo Joonghyuk flinched. Just barely, but enough for Kim Dokja to see it.

He smiled faintly. “Figured.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice came out low and brittle. “Shut up.”

Kim Dokja ignored it. “What did you do before this?”

Silence.

“You’re not trained for this job. You don’t have the temperament for it. Too many rules, too many boundaries. You can’t fake a smile to save your life.”

Still no answer.

“So what was it?” Kim Dokja pressed. “Some salaryman job? A trade? Let me guess…honest work. Hard work. But it's not enough.”

Yoo Joonghyuk snapped.

“Easy for you to say,” he spat, voice rising with each word. “Sitting there with your tailored suit and expensive glassware, watching from your ivory tower. How easy it must be to pick people apart when you’ve never had to crawl through the filth just to breathe.”

Kim Dokja didn’t flinch. He let the words hang in the air, letting the venom soak.

Then, he spoke.

“I never said it was easy.”

Yoo Joonghyuk sneered. “Oh, please.”

“I just won. Plain and simple.”

That shut him up.

Kim Dokja’s eyes were unreadable. “Everyone has their ghosts. I buried mine. That’s the only difference.”

The room went still.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s breathing was shallow now, as if the anger had burned so hot it started to hollow him out. His shoulders dropped slightly, like something inside him had cracked.

Kim Dokja leaned forward a little, resting his elbows on his knees.

“You think I don’t know what desperation looks like? I do. But desperation has flavors. Yours reeks of borrowed guilt. Someone else’s mess, isn’t it?” He narrowed his eyes. “You think I can't recognise that smell on someone’s skin?”

He stared at Yoo Joonghyuk. Not with pity. With recognition.

“Let me guess. You told yourself this would be the last time. Just this once, and then you’ll be done.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t respond.

Because he was right.

Yoo Joonghyuk stood by the bed like he didn’t know whether to sit again or bolt. His chest rose and fell with ragged breaths, eyes fixed on the floor, the carpet, anything but Kim Dokja.

And Kim Dokja just kept watching him.

He leaned back slowly in his seat, the drink in his hand untouched. His posture was no longer indulgent or amused.

“You’re angry,” Kim Dokja said, voice softer now. “You should be.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer. His hands were still balled into fists at his sides.

Kim Dokja set his glass down with care. Then he leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers laced loosely together.

“I used to think the same things,” he said. “That rich people said whatever they wanted. Took what they wanted. Lived above consequences.”

His gaze dropped to the floor for the first time, as if seeing something far away.

“I was twelve when the first creditor came to the door,” he said. “My mother hadn’t told me we were drowning in my father's debt. She thought she could figure it out. But they didn’t wait that long.”

He let out a slow breath. “We sold everything we had that was worth anything. And when that wasn’t enough...”

Kim Dokja then looked at Yoo Joonghyuk. He didn't need to say it explicitly.

“You’re not the only one who ended up on this side because someone else couldn’t pay their dues.”

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Kim Dokja stood, and for the first time that night, he looked smaller. The steel and polish dulled for just a moment.

He crossed the room slowly.

Yoo Joonghyuk tensed instinctively, but Kim Dokja didn’t reach for him.

Instead, he walked past him and plopped down onto the bed with a low exhale. His coat was off. Tie loosened. Sleeves rolled up.

He lay on his back, arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.

“I’m not going to touch you,” he said.

Yoo Joonghyuk turned his head sharply.

Kim Dokja looked at him. “Not tonight. Not unless you want me to.”

“…Why?” The question slipped out before Yoo Joonghyuk could stop it.

Kim Dokja didn’t answer right away. His eyes followed something invisible across the ceiling. A memory, maybe. A ghost.

Then, quietly he said. “Because I know what it’s like to be bought and still feel like the one in debt.”

Kim Dokja’s eyes were closed now. Not sleeping. Just still.

“Just stay here. Maybe your face will scare away the ghosts in mine.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t laugh. But he didn’t leave either.

Eventually, he moved.

He climbed onto bed and lay next to Kim Dokja. Observing him in return. Measuring, trying to decide if whatever was revealed had any weight to them.

Neither of them spoke.

The city lights spilled across the floor through the open curtain, casting long, soft shadows across their bodies. Somewhere, far below, traffic hummed like white noise.

And in that quiet room, rich and distant from the world, they lay. 

Two men who had sold themselves to survive.

 

Chapter 2: The Fine Prints

 

Yoo Joonghyuk woke several times throughout the night.

The first time, the bed beside him was still empty.

The second time, he heard the soft clink of glass. Again and again. The sound of someone drinking in silence.

The third time, it was birdsong that stirred him. That pale hour before the sun rises. When the city hadn’t fully stirred yet.

And only then did he feel the weight of another body slip into the mattress beside him.

Kim Dokja.

He hadn’t slept at all.

Now it was just past five a.m., and Yoo Joonghyuk lay awake, staring at the figure next to him.

Kim Dokja was on his back, one arm draped across his chest, the other resting over his eyes. His breathing was slow but shallow. Like someone pretending to sleep out of habit. Out of necessity.

Joonghyuk watched him, quiet and still.

He’d expected a lot of things from a VVIP client. Arrogance. Entitlement. Maybe even cruelty.

But he hadn’t expected…this.

That blank stare into the skyline. The slow, mechanical drinking. The long minutes of stillness.

The uncomfortable silence, like something coiling inside was trying to keep from breaking apart.

He’d looked haunted.

Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t been able to stop watching. Half because he didn’t trust him, half because he couldn’t explain the weight that settled in his chest each time he saw Kim Dokja just sitting there. As motionless as a marble statue, as if waiting for the dark to end.

He didn’t look like a man who paid for sex. He looked like a man who paid for silence.

The kind of silence that could, apparently, be bought.

Yoo Joonghyuk sat up slowly, the movement careful, controlled. The bedsheets rustled, and Kim Dokja stirred, shifting under the covers.

A moment later, a voice, rough with disuse, broke the hush.

“Where are you going?”

Yoo Joonghyuk hesitated. “Breakfast duty.”

A pause. 

“Ah…you work here.”

Kim Dokja sat up, rubbing one eye. His hair was rumpled from sleep, or whatever passed for it. The soft cotton of his black T-shirt clung loosely to his frame, and his eyes squinted against the morning light peeking through the curtains.

“You’re the hotel chef,” he said. “That explains…everything.”

Yoo Joonghyuk glanced over, brows drawn. “What do you mean?”

Kim Dokja gave a faint, humorless smile. “The hands. The lack of customer service. The fact that you looked one twitch away from stabbing me.”

Yoo Joonghyuk clicked his tongue and grabbed his shirt from the chair.

Kim Dokja shifted, stretching out over the bed with the slow, indulgent movements of someone who’d decided not to pretend anymore.

“You’re not supposed to be working double jobs.”

“I’m not breaking the contract.”

“Technically, you are,” Kim Dokja said, stifling a yawn. “I booked you for the whole weekend. That means I own your time. All of it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a sharp look. “Then what do you want me to do?”

Kim Dokja smirked faintly. “Make me breakfast.”

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Kim Dokja said. “Just for me.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him, long enough for the silence to become something heavy. Then he gave a stiff nod.

“Fine.”

He got dressed and headed for the door.

Kim Dokja’s voice stopped him again, lighter this time.

“Joonghyuk.”

He turned, half-expecting something smug or cruel.

Instead, Kim Dokja just looked at him from the bed, eyes half-lidded.

“And coffee,” he said. “Real coffee. Not that machine-pressed office crap.”

Yoo Joonghyuk rolled his eyes and left.

Behind him, the suite fell quiet again. But this time, it didn’t feel so hollow.

 

---

 

Bihyung was already leaning against the wall near the staff elevators, pacing nervously like an abandoned rabbit. He straightened when he saw Joonghyuk approach.

“Are you okay?”

Bihyung fell into step beside him, eyes flicking over his figure like a scanner. 

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t slow his pace.

“He didn’t rough you up, did he? Let me see your face. Wait, did he leave any marks? Bite you? Tie you up?”

Yoo Joonghyuk stopped walking. He turned his head slowly, expression flat.

He said nothing, and kept walking.

Bihyung narrowed his eyes. “You’re not gonna talk about it?”

Still nothing.

Bihyung rolled his eyes. “Actually, last night was soooo amazing~! I had a sexual awakening~!” He said mockingly.

Yoo Joonghyuk shot him a glare and rolled up his sleeves. “You wanna die?”

“Heh. At least I know you’re fine.” Bihyung muttered, stepping back. “Go on then. You still have two days to go.”

With that, Bihyung took his chance to run.

 

---

 

The kitchen was already alive with the sharp rhythm of morning prep when Yoo Joonghyuk entered.

Pots clattered. Blenders roared. Someone cursed over a half-burnt croissant. The stainless-steel counters gleamed under harsh fluorescent lights, and the air smelled like butter, onions, and panic.

Yoo Joonghyuk tied on his apron with a practiced tug. His presence barely caused a ripple in the chaos…except for one.

“Look who finally rolled back in from his night of debauchery.”

Han Sooyoung, sleeves rolled up, a smear of flour on her cheek, leaned her hip against the prep station like she’d been waiting for him.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t even glance at her. “Get back to your station.”

“So boring.” She stepped aside dramatically, bowing like a game show hostess. “Did the VVIP wear you out that bad?”

“I’m not answering that.”

She grinned like she won anyway. “Oh-hooo. That means something happened.”

“It means shut up.”

Han Sooyoung didn’t. Of course she wouldn’t. She followed him around, arms crossed. Her ears already perked up for the drama she was about to dig up.

“So? What was he like? Does money taste different? Is rich dick infused with caviar or something?”

Yoo Joonghyuk started chopping scallions with violent precision.

“Was he one of those quiet freaks? Or, wait! Did he make you wear a maid dress? Tell me he made you wear cat ears.”

He gave her a look that could have curdled milk.

“You know I’ll find out eventually,” she sang, leaning close. “The walls in this place are paper thin. You moan loud enough, and even the dishwashers will know your star sign.”

“I didn’t moan.”

“Oooh,” she smirked. “So you admit there was something to moan about ?”

Yoo Joonghyuk flicked a slice of scallion at her face.

She caught it midair between her teeth, chewed once, and grinned wider. “You’re so easy to tease.”

He sighed through his nose and went back to his prep. The kitchen was heating up around them, but Han Sooyoung stayed at his elbow like a fruit fly that refused to die.

Then she noticed what he was actually making.

“…Hold up,” she said. “That’s not for the buffet.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer.

“Hand cut apple bunnies?” she pointed out, scandalized. “And that’s...wait. Are you poaching those eggs?”

He moved around her to pull a small ceramic teapot from the top shelf.

She gawked. “Chamomile?!”

He dropped in a tea bag with deliberate care.

“You’re making him a custom breakfast?!” She cried in disbelief. “Holy shit.”

“Shut up.”

“YOU’RE MAKING HIM TEA?” She sounded genuinely offended now. “Was his dick that good?”

He plated a toast, added a dusting of cinnamon to the apple slices, and poured hot water over the tea bag. His movements were precise. Tender in a way that made Han Sooyoung stare at him like he’d grown a second head.

“You like him,” she whispered.

“I don’t .”

“Deadass, you dooo!”

“Go chop the damn mushrooms.”

She cackled all the way back to her station.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t say anything else. He simply picked up the tray and walked out of the kitchen.

He told himself it was just breakfast service. Nothing more.

But with the steam rising off the teapot, he could already imagine Kim Dokja’s tired eyes and the dry little smile he might give when he saw it.

 

---

 

The knock at the door came just before 7 a.m.

Kim Dokja had just came out of the showers.

He hadn’t slept at all after Yoo Joonghyuk left the room.

He’d even set the little side table by the window in anticipation, brushing away the stray coasters and hotel brochures. There was a strange thrill in the certainty that someone like Yoo Joonghyuk, all bristling with pride and violent glares, would come back without being told.

When the door opened, Yoo Joonghyuk was holding a tray with both hands, apron lines still faint on his shirt.

Kim Dokja blinked once.

Then he smiled, dryly. “You actually followed instructions.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stepped inside without commenting, as if he belonged there. He set the tray down with quiet precision.

Kim Dokja approached the table, eyeing the spread with a raised brow. 

The first thing he noticed was the apples carved into perfect little bunny shapes. Ears sharp, eyes dotted with black sesame.

“You didn’t have to go this far.”

“I didn’t.”

Kim Dokja gave him a long look. “This isn’t on the menu.”

Yoo Joonghyuk said nothing, arms crossed.

Kim Dokja pulled out a chair and sat with casual ease.

“Hmm…” He lifted the mug and sniffed it. “Chamomile?”

“It helps with insomnia.”

Kim Dokja paused, then tilted his head up just enough to meet Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze. “You think I have insomnia?”

“You looked like shit last night.”

“I always look like that.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t even blink. “Exactly.”

Kim Dokja sipped the tea, hiding his smile behind the rim.

He set the cup down, then tapped a finger against the side of the tray. “Why go this far?”

“What?”

“I’m not new here,” Kim Dokja said. “Escorts don’t usually do…this. Especially not for someone like me. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“So,” Kim Dokja continued. “Why carve me apple bunnies and brew sleepy tea for a client you don’t even like?”

A pause.

Then Yoo Joonghyuk shrugged. “I never said I don’t like you.”

Kim Dokja blinked.

That was…interesting.

He reached for the toast, bit off a corner, then leaned back in his chair. “So, what’s the best thing on the menu here?”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s brows pinched, wary. “Why?”

Kim Dokja pulled out his phone and dialed the room service line.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t.”

Kim Dokja raised a brow. “What, aren’t you hungry?”

The other man crossed his arms more tightly. “Everything else here is crap.”

“Excuse me?”

“I only eat what I cook myself,” Yoo Joonghyuk said plainly. “The rest isn’t worth touching.”

The room service staff picked up with a chipper voice on the other end of the line. Kim Dokja didn’t even glance away. “Coffee. Black. No sugar.”

Then he hung up before they could ask anything else.

He set the phone down and turned back to Yoo Joonghyuk. “Well, I can’t have you starving.”

“I’m not.”

“Come sit.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t move.

Kim Dokja gestured at the second chair across the table. “You made enough toast for two.”

“That wasn’t for—”

“I’m offering to share,” Kim Dokja said coolly. “Technically, I’m paying for your time, aren’t I?”

Yoo Joonghyuk stiffened.

“You should really read the fine prints, Joonghyuk-ah.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw clenched. He muttered curses about the goddamn fine prints under his breath.

Kim Dokja’s tone was smooth, almost indulgent. “It says you’re obligated to stay, accompany me, and perform…duties as requested. Within reasonable boundaries, of course.”

“Fuck me…” he grumbled.

Kim Dokja picked up another bunny slice and held it up between two fingers. “If that’s what you want.” He licked the sesame off of the head.

There was a pause. Yoo Joonghyuk glared.

“We didn’t do anything last night.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him.

Kim Dokja popped the apple into his mouth, chewing slowly as he maintained eye contact.

Yoo Joonghyuk looked at the food like it had personally betrayed him.

His jaw tensed.

He stared at the plate again, as if willing it to disappear.

He could walk away. Punch his way out like how he handled everything else.

But after a long silence, he pulled out the second chair.

He picked up a piece of toast, and ate it like it had offended him.

Kim Dokja leaned his chin on his hand. “The bunnies are cute.”

Yoo Joonghyuk froze mid-bite.

“You’re blushing.”

“I’m not.”

“You cut apples into rabbits, Joonghyuk-ah.”

“…It’s basic knife work.”

“Sure. Next time you can do flowers.”

“I will walk out of this room.”

Kim Dokja laughed.

“Fine prints, Yoo Joonghyuk. Now drink your tea and suffer.”

Chapter 3: Ghosts

 

The tea had gone cold. Kim Dokja hadn’t touched it at all since the first cup, and had instead opted for the shitty black coffee.

Yoo Joonghyuk had finished his half of toast with the grim dedication of someone eating a military ration, and was now leaning back slightly in the chair, arms crossed, gaze distant.

The strange morning almost felt pleasant. Quaint, if Yoo Joonghyuk was being honest.

It might have stayed that way, if not for the buzz of Kim Dokja’s phone, sharp and insistent, cutting through the hush like a scalpel.

Kim Dokja reached for it automatically.

Something in his expression shifted.

His thumb lingered over the screen, then he locked it again.

His smile dropped like a stone. The warmth in his expression flattened into something that resembled neither anger nor concern. It was the kind that settled over warzones and funeral parlors.

Yoo Joonghyuk stilled.

It was the same expression he wore drinking alone that night.

Then Kim Dokja stood up.

He walked across the suite with unhurried steps, drew the blackout curtains shut, and turned back, voice low but unmistakably firm.

“Go clean up,” he said.

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked. “What?”

“Bathroom’s stocked. You know what to do.”

There was no flirtation. No leer or provocation. Just a tired, direct instruction.

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him for a long second, but he could clearly see that Kim Dokja wasn’t joking. Not anymore. 

“Get ready. You have ten minutes.”

“…You’re serious.”

Kim Dokja didn’t raise his voice. He just repeated, with that same unnerving steadiness.

“This will be the last time I repeat myself. Go get ready.”

The way he said it…It was quiet. The kind of voice you were forced to lean in to catch. Not because it was soft, but because it didn’t allow interruption. Commanding in the way that made you feel stupid for not already be listening.

Yoo Joonghyuk stood. Slowly and reluctantly, and walked to the bathroom without another word.

The tiles were cold. The mirror didn’t blink.

Yoo Joonghyuk washed his hands twice and stared at himself while the steam faded from the corners of the glass. The bathroom was spotless, too clean. Like a place that didn't allow people to feel anything real inside it.

Just a while ago, they were throwing jokes around. Idle conversations that meant nothing.

But the second that phone buzzed, the atmosphere had flipped on itself.

Yoo Joonghyuk toweled off and returned to the bedroom, barefoot and braced, there was still a low ache curving up his spine. Dread, perhaps. But there was something else. Something he couldn’t quite put a name on yet.

Kim Dokja was sitting at the edge of the bed, half-naked, and back straight. There was no softness in the lines of his body. Only the posture of someone who knew exactly what he wanted, and didn’t expect to enjoy it.

“Sit,” Kim Dokja said.

Yoo Joonghyuk did as he was told.

The sheets were too cool against his thighs. He didn’t like the way Kim Dokja had looked at him. Like he was a problem to be solved, not touched.

“Lie back.”

He hesitated only for a breath.

And then Kim Dokja’s hand was on his leg, guiding him down.

Everything moved slowly after that.

Fingers opening him up, checking without asking if he’d done it right. There was no mocking, no commentary. Only fingers slick with lube, testing, probing his insides.

Yoo Joonghyuk exhaled through gritted teeth.

Kim Dokja didn’t look at his face.

He didn’t want his body, Yoo Joonghyuk had come to realise. He just wanted something else gone.

The man above him moved like a surgeon. Cold and methodical. Each action felt practiced but not passionate. Even the sounds. The breath, the quiet glide of skin, was buried beneath something that had nothing to do with either of them.

Pain sparked as Kim Dokja pushed in.

Yoo Joonghyuk flinched, but didn’t stop him. He could take this. If this could make him understand…then he was determined to figure it out.

It wasn’t the stretch or the sting that caught him off guard. It was the realization that none of this had anything to do with the sex.

While he was physically present, touching him, his mind was across the horizon, digging itself into a coffin.

Yoo Joonghyuk stared up at Kim Dokja through the subtle lighting.

He didn’t ask who the ghost was.

Instead, he watched.

The pain dulled eventually, turning into a kind of numbness. 

Kim Dokja moved without rhythm, like he was trying to erase himself. His grip tightened occasionally, not out of lust, but to ground himself.

Yoo Joonghyuk clenched his fists into the sheets.

It wasn’t pleasure. It wasn’t connection.

It was exile.

The kind that people chose when the noises in their head got too loud.

So Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t fight it. He let Kim Dokja use his body like a space to forget.

Because somewhere between the stretch of skin and the absence of arousal, he finally understood.

It was all about proving something. To himself. To whatever message that came in and flipped the script in his head. To prove that he had control over something.

Then, Kim Dokja positioned his length to his entrance. There were no theatrics to his movements.

The moment he pushed all the way in, Yoo Joonghyuk’s breath caught like it had snagged on wire.

It hurt.

It wasn’t the same as his fingers. 

This was deeper, thicker, blooming up into the soft places of his body he hadn’t even known could ache like this. 

The sensation of being filled was overwhelming, more than he expected, and it knocked the wind out of him. He’d cleaned himself out like instructed. He’d prepared himself. He could take the pain.

But it wasn’t pain alone.

It was stretch and burn and pressure, yes, but also the heat coiling, low and bright. A kind of guilt hot enough to embarrass him. 

His nails dug into the mattress before he could stop them. His back arched as his body tried to adjust around the foreign shape being pushed inside him. And the worst part was that it didn’t stop hurting. But it didn’t stop feeling good, either.

He hated that.

He hated that he could feel anything at all in a situation like this.

Kim Dokja didn’t notice. Or if he did, he said nothing. He was already moving with shallow, precise thrusts. As if his body had become a tool to fight the whispers.

Yoo Joonghyuk closed his eyes, jaw clenched tight.

It felt too hot.

Too full.

Every slide scraped against something new, and every time Kim Dokja’s hips connected with his thighs, his body tensed involuntarily. He didn’t know if he wanted to move away or closer. It made no sense. He didn’t want this. Not in any way he could name.

And yet.

And yet.

His cock twitched.

Fear mixed with heavy guilt clawed up his throat.

He wasn’t even aroused. Not really. There was no hunger in his blood. No pleasure on his tongue. But his body was reacting like it was being rewarded. Like the pain, the pressure, had some meaning behind it.

He grit his teeth harder, eyes opening to the ceiling.

“Fuck—!”

The sound left him before he meant to say it. Not a moan, but a rasp. Raw and torn and frustrated.

Kim Dokja didn’t slow down at all.

His hand slipped beneath Yoo Joonghyuk’s thigh, angling him differently, adjusting him like he was a puzzle to be solved rather than a person to be held.

When he thrust in again, Yoo Joonghyuk’s entire body jerked.

This time, it hit something.

His vision sparked white.

He didn’t mean to make a noise. He really didn’t. But a broken, strangled gasp cracked through his teeth before he could swallow it down.

“Ah—”

The intensity of pleasure bursted to every crevice of his body.

As if he was being cracked open and made to feel everything all at once.

He wanted to understand Kim Dokja. He really did. That was the whole fucking reason he’d even entertain this. To read whatever was written between Kim Dokja’s ribs and to make sense of that goddamn expression he wore like a second skin. 

But now his own body was betraying him. Distractions piling on top of distractions, pleasure bleeding into pain and then back again.

His cock was dripping now.

There was no denying it.

The friction of the sheets beneath him, the way Kim Dokja shifted him by the hips… 

None of it should’ve made his stomach curl. None of it should’ve made him arch his spine, hips rising before he could help it.

Shame settled under his ribs.

He wasn’t supposed to like any of it.

He wasn’t supposed to feel anything.

And yet everything was what he could feel.

Kim Dokja wasn’t even looking at him. Not really. Not once did he ask if Yoo Joonghyuk was okay. Not once did he touch his cock, or kiss him, or whisper anything close to intimacy.

And somehow, that made it worse.

Because the distance gave Yoo Joonghyuk space to drown in his own thoughts.

He hated being so fucking aware of everything.

Of how stretched he was. Of how it felt when Kim Dokja rammed his cock in and out. Of the slick sound it made. Of the trembling in his own thighs that he tried to keep still. 

He was trying so hard not to move, but every time he tensed, Kim Dokja would adjust him back, firm and efficient, as if any resistance was just part of the process.

“Stop thinking,” Kim Dokja muttered suddenly, almost under his breath.

It was the first thing he’d said since they started.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes snapped open.

He wasn’t even sure if that was meant for him or himself.

But he was thinking.

Too much.

Because if this was what sex was supposed to feel like…

If this was what being penetrated felt like…

Then what did that make him?

A shudder ran up his spine.

He was disgusted with himself. 

But he couldn’t stop his body from reacting. His breathing was getting faster. His cock rubbed against his stomach every time Kim Dokja moved, and each drag of friction sent little bolts of sensation up his guts. 

His hands were fisted so tightly he could barely feel his fingers anymore.

He wanted to hate this.

He did hate it.

But at the same time, he was learning.

Learning that pleasure didn’t ask for permission. That the body didn’t care about dignity. That the way Kim Dokja had withdrawn into himself, treating this act like a cage he built himself into, was like looking straight into a mirror. And Yoo Joonghyuk was staring right at it.

Kim Dokja kept moving, pace unchanging.

He never truly looked at him.

Never saw the tears threatening to sting at the corners of Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes.

Tears from everything that bubbled up in a fucked up mix of pain, humiliation, pleasure, and worst, the terrifying realisation that maybe, just maybe, this was the first time he’d wanted to be taken apart by someone’s hands.

Yoo Joonghyuk came first.

He didn’t mean to. He didn’t want to.

But his body gave out.

The tension had built up into something unbearable, pressure spreading through every inch of him until it finally broke. 

His cock twitched, spasmed, and then spilled across his own stomach in hot, shameful ropes. The release made him shudder, muscles locking up from the sheer intensity of the pleasure.

He didn’t even have the breath to cry out. Just a choked, airless sound as his spine arched, as his fingers went rigid in the sheets

Kim Dokja didn’t pause.

Even as Yoo Joonghyuk’s body clenched around him, pulsing tight and hot and wet with sweat and slick, he kept moving. Like the orgasm wasn’t a boundary, like it didn’t matter.

And then, with a barely audible grunt, Kim Dokja came.

Just a sharp inhale through the nose, a sudden tightening of his grip on Yoo Joonghyuk’s thigh, and the way his hips shuddered against his ass. His cock throbbed deep inside, spilling warmth into him. 

There was no tenderness to it. No relief. As if he’d just finished a transaction.

Like something had finally been exorcised from his chest.

Then he pulled out.

The emptiness hit almost immediately.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s body sagged back onto the bed, slick between his thighs, aching in ways that hadn’t fully registered until movement stopped. His pulse was pounding hard, he could hear it in his ears.

Even then, Kim Dokja still wasn’t speaking.

He reached for the phone on the nightstand without wiping himself down.

He lit up the screen.

And in that instant, his entire body language changed.

It was merely a second. Barely there. But Yoo Joonghyuk caught it. The shift in his shoulders. The way his gaze honed in on the display like it had opened the lid on something venomous. His brows didn’t move. His expression didn’t twist.

But something cracked under the surface.

Whatever he was looking at now…that was the real ghost.

“What is that?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked, voice hoarse. His throat felt scratched raw from silence. “What did it say?”

Kim Dokja didn’t answer.

He typed something. A reply, maybe. His fingers moved quickly, efficiently, as if the body he had just used hadn’t belonged to a person at all.

“Tell me.” Yoo Joonghyuk pressed, forcing himself to sit up despite the pain in his lower back. His stomach still felt sticky. His insides sore.

Kim Dokja set the phone down. He turned toward him then, but the look in his eyes wasn’t intimate. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t anything.

“Don’t bother washing up,” he said, voice quiet.

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him, unblinking.

“What?”

“We’re doing it again. Soon.”

There was no hunger in his tone. Like this wasn’t the first time he’d said it to someone.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s gut twisted.

And for the first time since he laid down on that bed, he stopped thinking about his body. The ache in his thighs. The sting beneath his skin. The guilt curling around his ribs like barbed wire.

Instead, his thoughts narrowed to a single, burning point.

The phone.

The message.

Whatever the hell had been written there. Whatever had reached in and flipped something inside Kim Dokja like a switch. 

He wanted…No. He needed to know what it was.

What could make a man who laughed at bunny-eared apples turn into…this?

What ghost was Kim Dokja trying so hard to outrun?

If Kim Dokja wasn’t going to give him answers, then he’d find them himself.

Notes:

I took the tone inspiration from how Neil Newbon described his Elijah Kamski VA experience in that one Bafta interview. It’s chilling and perfectly fits how I want Kim Dokja to be portrayed here.

Chapter 4: You're Sensitive

 

The air in the suite smelled of sweat, lube, and something sharp he couldn’t name. 

Kim Dokja pulled his trousers on with practiced efficiency, ignoring the quiet rasp of fabric brushing against his sticky skin. 

His shirt was wrinkled from where it had been discarded hours ago, but he made no move to fix it. He rolled the sleeves up to his forearms, checked his phone for the time, and slipped it into his pocket.

He looked back once.

Yoo Joonghyuk was sprawled across the bed. 

The sheets were a mess around him. His dark hair damp with sweat, eyes half-open in a stubborn glare. His chest rose and fell, each breath ragged. He looked ready to speak. Maybe another protest, maybe another question he wouldn’t answer.

“Stay here,” Kim Dokja said simply.

“You’re leaving?” Yoo Joonghyuk rasped, shifting onto one elbow. His voice was hoarse, marked by the kind of roughness you only got from too many hours of trying not to scream.

He pulled on his coat and buttoned it with the kind of precision that had been trained into him. 

His phone vibrated once in his pocket, but he ignored it for now.

Yoo Joonghyuk tried again, frustration bleeding through. “You’re just going to leave me here?”

Kim Dokja turned slightly. “Be ready when I get back.”

There was no room for negotiation. His voice was soft, but it pressed down like a boot on the throat of any argument. 

The door shut with a quiet click, swallowing Yoo Joonghyuk’s unanswered questions.

The hallway outside was empty.

His steps carried him to the elevator, then the underground parking garage, where his car waited with the same glint that greeted him every morning.

The city streets were packed with traffic. He didn’t turn the radio on. The quiet suited him better. Every red light was another chance to feel the vibration of his phone in his pocket. He didn’t bother to check it again.

 

---

 

The port was blazing hot when he arrived.

The smell of seawater and diesel hung in the air, heavy and familiar. He stepped out of his car, shoes crunching on gravel, and walked along the docks.

A fishing boat was idling at the far end.

Kim Dokja stood on the edge of the pier, hands in his pockets, watching the boat rock gently against the waves. Men in waterproof jackets were moving crates, each marked with a symbol only he and a few others would recognize.

He could almost hear the bodies shifting inside. Wrapped tight. Destined for somewhere far out past the shipping lanes where no one would ever think to look.

It was all so monotonous.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, eyes fixed on the deck. 

The men didn’t look at him. They didn’t need to. As he was the one who’d made the mess they were cleaning. 

He waited until the last crate disappeared below deck. Then he checked his phone, confirming the timestamp.

The boat horn gave a low, mournful groan. 

Lines were untied. 

The boat slipped away from the dock, motor splitting the water as it headed toward the open sea. 

Kim Dokja watched until it became just another spec in the horizon.

“Dokja.”

He didn’t turn. The voice came from behind him.

Cho Youngran stepped out from between two stacked shipping containers. She was dressed in an unremarkable dark coat. She kept a careful distance, as if the blood clinging to his hands might still be visible to her.

“I have a message,” she said quietly. “From Sookyung.”

Kim Dokja exhaled, slow. He could feel the faint sting of drying sweat on his skin beneath his shirt. “What is it?”

Cho Youngran’s gaze flicked once to the horizon, then back to him. “She apologizes. For calling you out today. She knows this was supposed to be your day off.”

He let out a low laugh. Humorless. Soft and empty. “My mother doesn’t apologize.”

Cho Youngran hesitated. “I was told to—”

“Don’t lie to me.” His words were almost gentle. Almost. But they cut deeper than a scream.

Kim Dokja took a step forward, closing the space between them just enough to tower over her. “The job is done. Tell her that.”

Cho Youngran dipped her head quickly, as if grateful to be dismissed. But she lingered a moment longer, shifting her weight nervously. “Dokja… will you be going home?”

His gaze lingered to where the boat had vanished. “No.”

Cho Youngran swallowed. “Then—”

“I’ll be back Monday,” he cut in, voice flat. “As usual.”

She nodded, and stepped back without another word. The leather of her shoes squeaked faintly on the wet concrete.

Kim Dokja walked past her toward his car with the same calm pace he’d arrived with. 

The world around him felt unreal, as if he were moving through a memory someone else had left behind.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep when he returned.

But that was fine.

Because Yoo Joonghyuk would still be waiting.

 

---

 

Yoo Joonghyuk had been sitting on the edge of the bed for what felt like hours, wrapped in the hollow quiet of the suite. The silence had settled over him like gauze. Damp, suffocating, and hard to shake off.

The door clicked open.

Kim Dokja stepped inside like a shadow. His jacket was slung over one arm, his sleeves rolled down. The door shut soft, and the lock turned with a quiet snap.

Yoo Joonghyuk's gaze dropped immediately to the man’s hands.

They were clean. Too clean.

Then he smelt it.

Yoo Joonghyuk stiffened.

It wasn’t cologne. Not smoke. Not sweat or alcohol.

It was copper.

Blood.

The scent clung faintly to Kim Dokja like the memory of a nightmare. Just enough to catch on the back of Yoo Joonghyuk’s tongue. Just enough to twist something low in his gut.

Kim Dokja walked past him without a word. He didn’t even look his way. He crossed the suite with his usual precision, placing his shoes by the door, unbuttoning his shirt as he passed, one button at a time.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t ask. He didn’t even stand. He just turned his head to watch.

The shirt fell to the floor by the bathroom entrance. A few minutes later, the sound of water hitting tile echoed out.

Then, a steady, punishing rhythm, as if Kim Dokja was trying to scrub something out of his skin.

Yoo Joonghyuk swallowed and blinked slowly. The blood wasn’t his, that much he knew. But it didn’t matter. The smell lingered anyway. He didn’t think Kim Dokja even noticed it. Or maybe he did, and just didn’t care.

The water kept running.

Steam coiled out from under the door. 

The sheets were rumpled beneath him. Yoo Joonghyuk’s lower back still ached. His thighs were sore. 

But his eyes drifted to the pile of clothes left behind.

Yoo Joonghyuk knew what tension looked like. What it felt like in the air. He could recognise a body that moved like a knife looking for a place to bury itself.

Yoo Joonghyuk clenched his jaw.

He didn’t like to pry, but he didn’t like being kept in the dark even more. 

He was angry. Frustrated. Restless in a way that had nothing to do with sex.

Something had happened.

Something in that fucking message.

He stood slowly, ignoring the soreness pulsing up the base of his spine, and stepped toward the bathroom. His knuckles tapped lightly on the door once, twice.

“Kim Dokja.”

No answer. The water kept running.

He waited.

The steam thickened.

“Talk to me.”

Still no answer.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers hovered over the doorknob, but he didn’t turn it.

So he lowered his hand.

Fine.

If Kim Dokja wasn’t going to talk, he’d find his own answers.

Even if it meant learning why someone who laughed at apple slices with bunny ears had come back reeking of death, and couldn’t even look him in the eye.

Yoo Joonghyuk turned away from the door and walked back toward the crumpled pile of clothes.

The shirt was still warm. The jacket heavier than it looked. He crouched beside the heap and slipped a hand into the inner pocket, moving by instinct, quiet and precise.

He found the phone within seconds.

Same model. Same casing. Default lock screen. PIN locked.

Yoo Joonghyuk narrowed his eyes.

There was only one message in the preview.

An unsaved number, saying:

    See you on Monday.

That was it.

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at it for a long time.

The timestamp indicated that it had come in minutes before the man came through the door.

The water was still running.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s lips tightened.

He placed it back in the jacket pocket exactly as he’d found it, and returned to the bed without a sound.

There was nothing amiss. But that was exactly what unsettled him.

Yoo Joonghyuk leaned back on the pillows, arms crossed loosely over his chest, and closed his eyes.

He would wait.

Not because Kim Dokja had told him to.

But because something about that message, and the man who received it, didn’t add up.

And Yoo Joonghyuk was going to figure out why.

Even if it meant tearing that calm, untouchable mask apart with his bare hands.

The water stopped.

Steam clung to the edges of the mirror and rolled along the floor as the door creaked open. Kim Dokja emerged with a towel around his waist, hair damp and plastered flat, trailing condensation with each step.

He looked like a ghost coming back from the sea.

Yoo Joonghyuk watched him without moving. 

He put on a plain black t-shirt and sweatpants. He looked composed. Unbothered. But his arms were folded over his chest with quiet intent.

Kim Dokja barely glanced at him before moving to the side table to pick up his phone.

“You’ve showered,” Kim Dokja noted.

“You told me to get ready,” Yoo Joonghyuk replied.

Kim Dokja nodded, and he unlocked the phone with his fingerprint.

Yoo Joonghyuk watched his eyes flick once, confirming something, before he turned away again.

That was when Yoo Joonghyuk moved.

He crossed the distance in two strides and grabbed Kim Dokja’s wrist. Not harshly, but firm enough to pull him. 

He threw Kim Dokja to the bed and pinned him down.

Kim Dokja’s eyes widened.

“I said talk to me,” Yoo Joonghyuk said.

Kim Dokja raised an eyebrow. “About what? I just ran an errand.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.” Kim Dokja’s expression didn’t change. “My mother needed help at the fish market. I went. Now I’m back.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him. The scent still clung to the air. Metallic, iron-heavy, cloying in a way that water couldn’t wash off.

“That wasn’t fish blood.”

“There was a problem with the shipment.”

“What kind of problem?”

Kim Dokja’s smile thinned. “The kind that got solved.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s grip didn’t tighten, but he didn’t release him either. “And the message?”

Kim Dokja tilted his head slightly, as if genuinely confused. “You mean the one that said ‘see you on Monday’?”

Yoo Joonghyuk exhaled sharply through his nose. “Don’t insult me.”

“I’m not. That’s all it was.”

He reached up, slowly. His hand slid down all the way to Yoo Joonghyuk’s waist. Slow, deliberate, and cold.

“I’m back,” Kim Dokja said. “That’s all that matters.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t move.

The light in Kim Dokja’s eyes returned. Just slightly. But the fatigue didn’t go unnoticed. Like the fight had already happened elsewhere, and this was only the aftermath.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t press further.

Not yet.

But he wasn't planning on letting go either.

Kim Dokja’s hand dipped lower, sending an involuntary shudder down his spine.

At least now he looked less like a dead man.

With a heavy sigh, Yoo Joonghyuk gave in. He wasn’t going to rush.

Not because he had succumbed. But because he knew that he had all night. And all of tomorrow to figure it out. He just hoped that would be enough.

 

---

 

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t expect the kiss.

Not like this.

It was a wet, warm press of a mouth that didn’t hesitate to claim. Fingers curled beneath his jaw, holding him in place, like he didn't want Yoo Joonghyuk to look away.

He wasn’t going to.

Kim Dokja’s hair was still damp from the shower. His skin smelled like soap and steam, but underneath it, faint and bitter, there was still the scent of metal. He moved like someone who knew exactly what he wanted. But this time, it was different.

He looked at him.

Really looked. Straight into Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes like he was trying to anchor himself there. To bind them together, one gaze at a time.

Yoo Joonghyuk let out a shaky breath as Kim Dokja’s teeth scraped down the line of his throat, then bit down. Hard. Deliberately marking him.

The sting made his nerves light up.

“Why?” he rasped, fingers tightening around Kim Dokja’s biceps. “Why are you—”

“I told you,” Kim Dokja said, breath brushing hot against his collarbone. “I’m back.”

“Ha—”

And that was the truth of it. Yoo Joonghyuk could feel it now. The presence that had been absent before. The force behind every movement. The heat in every drag of skin. Kim Dokja wasn’t trying to forget anymore.

He was choosing this.

Yoo Joonghyuk gasped as Kim Dokja’s hand curled around him. He wasn't as rough this time. 

The strokes were slow, designed to burn rather than finish. His body betrayed him quickly, need bloomed out of the raw soreness, curling low in his stomach.

Kim Dokja leaned down, licking a stripe up his chest to the hollow of his throat, tongue pressing briefly over his hardened nipples.

“You’re sensitive,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t deny it.

Kim Dokja licked around his areola. Biting and savoring it with maddening patience.

Each contact, each warmth, sent chills down his crotch.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t beg. But he didn’t hide either. Not even when Kim Dokja pressed two slick fingers inside again, stretching him with precision. He shifted forward and settled between his thighs, cock nudging against that oversensitive entrance.

Yoo Joonghyuk clenched the sheets.

“You’re…taking your time,” he muttered.

Kim Dokja huffed a quiet breath of amusement.

“You said you wanted to talk.”

He pushed in.

“We can talk with our bodies.” Kim Dokja mused.

The stretch was more intense this time. Raw, full, dizzying. Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth fell open around a breath he couldn’t quite catch.

Kim Dokja groaned quietly, forehead resting against his shoulder. “Fuck. Still tight…”

It hurt. But less than before.

Or maybe Yoo Joonghyuk had already started adapting. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. His body was already shaking from the contrast of pain and pressure, of unfamiliar sensation curling like fire under his skin. His muscles clenched reflexively, drawing another strained exhale from Kim Dokja.

He turned his head into the pillow, ashamed of the way he was reacting. Every sound that escaped him felt too loud, too raw.

Kim Dokja pulled back and thrust in again.

The new angle made Yoo Joonghyuk jolt, breath stuttering in his chest.

“Ah—” he gritted out.

He wanted to say something scathing. Wanted to pretend he was unaffected. But Kim Dokja kept looking at him. At his messy, sweat-damp hair, parted lips, and pupils blown wide.

And then he smiled.

Genuinely.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s heart stuttered.

“You feel everything, don’t you?” Kim Dokja murmured, brushing a hand down his chest, nails grazing lightly.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His throat felt too tight.

Kim Dokja leaned down, pressing their bodies closer together, and kissed him again. Slower this time. Tongue pushing into his mouth with a patience that unnerved him more than aggression ever could. When he pulled back, he didn’t go far. Just enough to whisper, “Then don’t look away.”

He changed the angle of his hips, and Yoo Joonghyuk gasped, back arching involuntarily.

Kim Dokja chased every reaction. He adjusted with every shift, every breath, finding places inside Yoo Joonghyuk that made him twitch, made him tremble, made him forget how to speak.

“Don’t hide it,” Kim Dokja said. “I like watching your face.”

“I—” he tried. 

But Kim Dokja kissed the words from his mouth.

Every thrust was slower than the last. Intentional. Yoo Joonghyuk’s body felt like it was being played, mapped out by someone who wanted to remember every inch.

Kim Dokja’s fingers threaded through his, holding their hands above his head. It felt almost too intimate. Too much.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t look away.

“I want to understand,” he managed to say between shallow breaths. “I don’t get you. But I— Ah— want to.”

Kim Dokja blinked down at him. Something in his expression broke for just a second.

And then he laughed.

A real one. Breathless and surprised.

“Of course you do,” he said, pressing a kiss to the corner of Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth.

He rolled them over suddenly, and Yoo Joonghyuk found himself straddling on top of his lap, already flushed and slick and shaking. Kim Dokja’s hands settled on his hips, guiding his body.

“Take what you want,” he said.

Yoo Joonghyuk swallowed hard.

He lowered himself.

It was difficult. Every movement stretched him open again, but it was also easier in a strange, painful way. He moved anyway. Slowly at first. Then faster, chasing something he didn’t have the words for.

He rode Kim Dokja hard. He repeatedly brushed the head against a spot inside him that made him buckle.

“You look so hot riding me like that.” Kim Dokja grabbed his ass, and slammed into him.

Yoo Joonghyuk grunted at each thrust.

He changed his pace. Slower. Deeper. Unforgiving in its precision.

And Yoo Joonghyuk felt it.

Not just the pain. That was expected. It lanced up his back, made his knees shake, made his breath catch with every controlled thrust. But worse than the pain was the way it made him feel seen.

Every sound he made was heard.

Every twitch, every tremble, every restrained moan was studied.

Kim Dokja’s mouth opened against his skin. Sucking, licking, biting his chest and throat and shoulders like he needed to leave evidence.

He tried to stay quiet, but his body betrayed him again and again.

“So cute,” he whispered between kisses.

Heat bloomed in Yoo Joonghyuk’s ears. Kim Dokja pushed him back down with one hand on his chest, eyes gleaming with something dark and deeply amused.

Kim Dokja pulled out and Yoo Joonghyuk caught himself swallowing down the protest.

Kim Dokja flipped him. He bent Yoo Joonghyuk over and took him from behind this time, harsh breaths against his spine. There was no rhythm, just urgency. He slammed in deep enough to punch the air out of Yoo Joonghyuk’s lungs.

“You blush like you’ve never done this before,” Kim Dokja murmured.

“I haven’t,” Yoo Joonghyuk breathed.

Kim Dokja stopped for a moment. Then he chuckled low.

“No wonder you’re this reactive.” His thumb stroked a trembling line down his spine. “No wonder you’re making a mess of the sheets.”

Yoo Joonghyuk buried his face into the pillow, burning with shame at the weight of the admission. But Kim Dokja grabbed his jaw, turned it back, and made him look.

His face was flushed red, tears threatening to drip.

It was cruel. It was kind. It was everything and nothing.

And then he moved again.

Sweat soaked the sheets. Their bodies moved like they weren’t separate anymore, like they’d bled into one another under the skin. The sounds were wet and messy, echoing loud in the room, and Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t care.

Then came a sharp jolt. A cry. Something exploded inside his gut, and his vision blurred.

He came untouched.

He didn't even know he could.

His body spasmed, toes curling into the mattress, and his eyes rolled back in helpless release.

He felt Kim Dokja come with a stifled grunt against his shoulder, teeth biting hard enough to bruise.

Yoo Joonghyuk collapsed forward into the ruined bedding, body trembling from the overstimulation.

They stayed like that for a while.

Breathing.

Kim Dokja pulled out carefully, and Yoo Joonghyuk hissed at the sensation.

Neither of them said anything.

Not until Kim Dokja flopped down beside him, utterly exhausted, and stared up at the ceiling like it had all the answers in the world.

Yoo Joonghyuk turned his head, watching him in the subtle light. “…You’re different when you look at me,” he said.

Kim Dokja didn’t deny it.

Instead, he closed his eyes. A small, tired smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Blushing and crying,” he murmured. “You’re going to ruin me.”

“Shut up,” Yoo Joonghyuk rasped.

But Kim Dokja didn’t.

Not with his mouth.

Instead, he bit down on his shoulder and started again.

 

Chapter 5: I don't know

 

The air in the room had finally settled.

Outside the door, the remains of dinner sat cold. Two empty plates stacked on a tray, and a pair of empty mugs. Neither had said much when the food arrived. Neither had said much when it was eaten.

Now the lights were dimmed. The sheets were new again, but not clean. Yoo Joonghyuk lay on his side, half-covered, skin flushed and marked, the raw sensation still throbbing beneath the surface of his skin. 

His limbs ached like the aftermath of heavy kitchen work. Draining labor that wore down both body and pride. Sex, he thought dryly, really was as heavy as prep work. No wonder people did it for love or money. In this case, both seemed irrelevant. He was too exhausted to move, but his mind refused to go quiet.

Beside him, Kim Dokja sat cross-legged on the bed, shirtless, one arm propped behind his head while the other held his phone.

He was scrolling lazily, thumbing through something. 

The man was at ease in that quiet, like solitude folded into a blanket and wrapped around him. As if nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t just left fingerprints pressed into Yoo Joonghyuk’s ribs and bitten bruises into his collarbones. Like he hadn’t made him come apart so completely that Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t known whether to punch, scream, or bolt.

The soft light from the phone screen lit his face in blue-white tones. His mouth quirked faintly at something on the screen. Whatever he was reading, it wasn’t porn. It wasn’t news.

“You’ve been reading that since I came out of the shower,” Yoo Joonghyuk said hoarsely, eyes fixed on him.

Kim Dokja didn’t look up. “It’s a serialized web novel.”

“What’s good about it?”

Kim Dokja didn’t look up. “It's terrible.”

Yoo Joonghyuk frowned.

Kim Dokja continued. “The writing is bad. The pacing’s worse. Half the arcs are unfinished, and there’s a love triangle that never resolves and a character who probably should’ve died ten arcs ago.”

“Then why read it?”

Kim Dokja’s thumb paused briefly on the screen, then kept scrolling. “Because I’ve been reading it for years. It updates every day. Same time. Without fail.”

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked slowly. “So?”

“So,” Kim Dokja said, finally glancing over at him, “there’s a calm in that kind of routine. Even if it’s bad. It’s still there. Something that waits for you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk looked at him, trying to piece together the logic, but it slipped through his fingers like water. He tried to picture himself waiting for something like that. Some horrible story that didn’t even give the satisfaction of closure. He didn’t get it.

Yoo Joonghyuk watched him.

Kim Dokja's body was leaner than his own. Smaller frame, but clearly defined, like he knew what control meant and how to keep it. There were marks on his collarbone. The raw remnants of where fingernails had clawed in. His skin was smooth. Pale. Almost too soft looking in the low light.

Yoo Joonghyuk shifted, wincing slightly as his body reminded him of everything that had been done to it in the last several hours. His skin was flushed, blooming with bruises. He could feel Kim Dokja’s shape imprinted in the sore stretch of his back and the heat still simmering behind his knees.

And yet Kim Dokja just sat there, scrolling something stupid and unreadable, like nothing had happened.

Like Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t cried himself to shame beneath him.

He watched him again, as text scrolled through his eyes.

His face, too, he noticed, was almost unnaturally pretty. The kind of handsome that didn’t try. Long lashes, soft lips, cheekbones sharp in the shadows.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know how long he’d been staring when Kim Dokja said, without looking up, “You’re not going to fall in love with me just because I’m pretty, are you?”

Yoo Joonghyuk scowled, turning away. “Shut up.”

That made Kim Dokja finally look over. He was smirking, just faintly, the lines around his mouth curved like satisfaction had crept in despite himself. “Touchy.”

“You’re annoying.”

“I get that a lot.”

Yoo Joonghyuk scowled harder and folded his arms behind his head, shifting onto his back. The movement made his sore hips protest. He winced quietly, closing his eyes.

He didn’t speak for a while. The air settled again, like something unfinished had just passed between them and wasn’t in a hurry to return.

“Why were you like that earlier?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked suddenly.

Kim Dokja blinked. “Like what?”

“Detached. It wasn't cold, exactly. But it was like you weren’t there.”

Kim Dokja tilted his head.

“I’ve seen people fake it before,” Yoo Joonghyuk continued. “But you weren’t faking. You were just gone. Like you've shut everything off.”

Kim Dokja didn’t answer at first. His gaze was fixed somewhere on the ceiling.

Then he exhaled. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I mean it. I really don’t know.”

“Whenever she texts me…my mother,” He swallowed, as if mentioning her alone was enough to push him to the edge. “I just go blank. Like my body and brain checks out. I don’t feel angry. Or scared. Or anything. I just…go.”

“Go where?”

“I don’t know,” he said again, quieter this time. “It’s not like I want to feel nothing. It just happens. Like someone hitting a switch.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared.

Kim Dokja gave a small shrug, like the weight of it was too familiar to bother hiding. “I wasn’t going to say that. It sounds weird. But…you seemed like someone who wouldn’t laugh.”

“I’m won't laugh.”

“I know.”

They sat in that silence a while longer.

“You’ve been curious,” Kim Dokja said eventually. “I can see it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t deny it. He just waited.

Kim Dokja sighed.

“My mother built her business empire after prison,” he said. “With women she met inside. One of them used to run gambling dens. Another one had logistics experience from a scam operation. You’d be surprised how many skill sets you find in there.”

Yoo Joonghyuk opened his eyes again. Kim Dokja’s tone was calm, but not bitter. Detached.

“She turned our lives around, technically,” Kim Dokja went on. “Started a holding company. Fronts for more serious operations. Her name’s not on any paperwork, of course. But people know.”

“You work for her?”

Kim Dokja nodded once. “I take care of things she doesn’t want to deal with. Or can’t.”

“What kind of things?”

Kim Dokja turned back to his phone. “Let’s not ask too many questions.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at the ceiling. He could feel the moment fading. Like an open door slowly swinging shut.

So he didn’t push.

After a minute, Kim Dokja spoke again. “I had to take care of myself for the longest time. Worked through school. Learned to lie early to pay the debts. To outrun the creditors.”

“And after she got out?”

“She needed people she could trust. That meant me.” Kim Dokja’s mouth twisted into something faintly dry. “And I owed her. For killing my father, I guess. It’s hard to say.”

Yoo Joonghyuk turned his head again. Kim Dokja’s face was turned away. The flicker of the screen caught on his eyelashes. He didn’t blink often.

“I did a lot of things,” Kim Dokja murmured. “Things I’m not proud of. Things I don’t want to talk about. This isn’t me being coy. It’s just better if it stays outside the room.”

A long silence stretched.

“…Alright,” Yoo Joonghyuk said.

Kim Dokja glanced at him. “Alright?”

Yoo Joonghyuk shrugged. “It’s not like I came here looking for a confession.”

Kim Dokja laughed, softly. “No. You just came here to let someone fuck you into the mattress for six hours.”

Yoo Joonghyuk bristled. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“You make it sound…cheap.”

“Isn’t it?”

Yoo Joonghyuk sat up slightly, the ache in his body flaring again. “You know, you keep calling me an escort like it’s a punchline.”

Kim Dokja tilted his head. “Isn’t it?”

Yoo Joonghyuk glared. “Don’t.”

Something in Kim Dokja’s expression shifted. The teasing pulled back. Just a little.

“Sorry,” he said. But not like he meant it. More like a formality. A ceasefire.

Yoo Joonghyuk leaned back again, muttering, “Asshole.”

Kim Dokja let out a soft breath. “Cute.”

They didn’t speak again for a while.

Eventually, Kim Dokja shifted beside him, setting his phone down on the bedside table. He turned onto his side, facing Yoo Joonghyuk, one arm tucked under his head.

“Your turn,” he said, voice soft. “You didn’t grow up with money. That much I can tell.”

Yoo Joonghyuk hesitated. “Orphanage.”

Kim Dokja blinked. “Ah.”

“I don’t remember them. My parents.” His voice wasn’t bitter. Just a matter-of-factly. “No photos. No stories. No names.”

“That’s rough.”

“It is what it is.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers fidgeted with the edge of the blanket.

“I started cooking there. The orphanage. It was a job. Something that needed doing. I got good at it.”

Kim Dokja nodded slowly.

“And then, after I left…the debts came knocking.”

“Yours?”

“My parents’. I didn’t know at the time.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice flattened. “They killed themselves before I ever got a chance to find them.”

Kim Dokja didn’t offer sympathy. That was good. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t want it.

“It’s not a very interesting story,” he added. “I just want to clear my debt. Then I’ll be done.”

Kim Dokja’s eyes stayed on him. For once, there was no mirth in them. Just a quiet weight.

Yoo Joonghyuk turned his face away, grumbling, “Stop staring.”

“You’re weird,” Kim Dokja said.

Yoo Joonghyuk huffed. “Says the person who reads a trashy novel every day and fucks strangers on the weekends.”

Kim Dokja smiled faintly. “Second weekends.”

Yoo Joonghyuk shifted beneath the covers and closed his eyes. His back against Kim Dokja.

The mattress dipped slightly beside him.

Then, he felt fingers combing through his hair. Gentle. Thoughtless.

Ruffling him softly.

He didn’t shift.

Didn’t pull away.

Just listened to the soft hum of the city beyond the blinds, and the quiet breath of the man beside him who, somehow, had become the calm in his night.

 

Chapter 6: Lasting Memories

 

The kitchen was already warm with noise and steam when Yoo Joonghyuk stepped inside.

He walked like a man coming down from battle. Back straight, jaw locked, only a slight wince betraying the tension in his lower spine. He was freshly showered, hair still damp, clean uniform buttoned as high as it could go. But it didn’t matter. Nothing could hide the bruises peeking from his collar, or the deep crimson bite just below his ear.

For a full two seconds, there was silence.

Then, chaos ensued.

“Oh My God!” Han Sooyoung shrieked, slamming down her ladle like a declaration of war. “You dog! I knew it—I knew it! I told you he was into freaks!”

Bihyung clutched his chest and wept openly. “My sweet little baby is all grown up. Look at those marks! A whole constellation of sin!”

“Fuck off,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, deadpan, as he walked past them. Then he made a double-take at Bihyung.“Why the hell are you in my kitchen?” 

“For the tea.” Han Sooyoung and Bihyung said in unison, clinking imaginary cups between them.

Yoo Joonghyuk groaned.

Another cook gasped from the other station. “He’s walking funny.”

“I am not—”

“Did he growl?” Han Sooyoung whispered. “Does he bark? Joonghyuk, blink once if he barks during—”

A bowl came flying in her direction. She ducked, laughing, already skipping backward with flour all over her sleeves.

Yoo Joonghyuk ignored them all.

He moved with slow but practiced ease, pulling out eggs, rice, scallions. His body ached. His back, especially, but the rhythm of the kitchen was something he could fall into even when exhausted. Even when he’d been split open and remade the night before.

He didn’t know what he was doing, exactly. Maybe it was a need for normalcy. Maybe a habit. Maybe he just wanted to feed Kim Dokja again before they said goodbye.

Kim Dokja…

He hated how easily the name sat in his chest.

Bihyung shuffled up beside him, half-hugging him from the side. “He’s that good huh?”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t respond. His chopping just got faster.

 

---

 

Back in the suite, sunlight stretched lazily through the blackout curtains, which had been half-drawn to let the day in. The smell of hot rice and soy lingered as Kim Dokja picked delicately at the meal Yoo Joonghyuk had made him.

“Apple bunnies,” Kim Dokja said, lifting one between his fingers. “You’re really consistent.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer. He sat across from him, drinking tea. Quiet.

Kim Dokja took a bite. “I’ll be back next month.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave a shallow nod, eyes lowered.

“I don’t want you seeing anyone else.”

That made Yoo Joonghyuk look up.

“I’ll be paying for exclusive rights,” Kim Dokja said, tone flat, like he was reading off a receipt. “A retainer. You can tell the agency.”

“You don’t trust me?”

Kim Dokja met his gaze, steady. “I don’t want to share.”

The silence between them stretched again. It wasn’t romantic. Not quite possessive, either. Just another deal made over morning tea.

Yoo Joonghyuk accepted it. 

He didn’t ask Kim Dokja to pay his debts.

He could have. Kim Dokja probably could have cleared the entire thing with a single phone call. But then there would be no balance. No line between them. No hope of something real.

This was better. Clean.

Kim Dokja placed the apple bunny on Yoo Joonghyuk’s tray.

“You should wear bunny ears next time,” he said. “Would suit you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk flushed. “No.”

“A shame,” Kim Dokja said lightly. “You’d look cute.”

It wasn’t a goodbye. Not really.

They didn’t talk about time, or parting. They didn’t have to.

He finished breakfast slowly, with the kind of lazy focus he rarely allowed himself. Yoo Joonghyuk, still sore but stubbornly mobile, cleaned up without a word of complaint. When he returned, Kim Dokja had sprawled across the bed like he owned it, hair messy from the pillow, still in nothing but a robe.

The hours unfolded gently after that. They explored the hotel like they had all the time in the world. The spa. The garden. And the rooftop lounge, where they sat under the gentle sunlight and did nothing for a full half hour.

Yoo Joonghyuk stayed one step behind him the whole time. Watching. Learning the patterns of Kim Dokja’s presence. The way he seemed to vanish when unbothered, and then spark back to life the moment someone made eye contact.

Staff gave Yoo Joonghyuk second glances when they passed. Even the ones who knew better. His uniform couldn’t hide everything. Not the bruises, not the bite on his collarbone. Some of the other escorts looked twice at Kim Dokja, recognition flickering across their faces. A few even moved to say something.

They stopped the moment Yoo Joonghyuk met their eyes.

Kim Dokja didn’t comment. Just smiled to himself. Almost smug.

He ordered drinks at the poolside bar and made Yoo Joonghyuk try three different mocktails before settling on one. “This one tastes like a diabetic flamingo," he said, handing over something pink and fizzy with syrup. “You’ll hate it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk drank it anyway.

And Kim Dokja laughed.

The hours passed like that. 

Sometime in the afternoon, Yoo Joonghyuk fell asleep on the couch in the suite, a warm towel slung around his neck. Kim Dokja didn't wake him. He just sat nearby, legs crossed, reading the web novel on his phone again. Same one as always.

He didn’t touch Yoo Joonghyuk. But he kept looking up.

Like he was storing the moment away.

Eventually, the sunlight began to shift. Shadows lengthened.

Time started pressing again.

He changed back into his regular clothes. Neat, dark, unassuming. His face was a little too blank as he fixed his collar in the mirror. Yoo Joonghyuk stirred.

“It’s time.” He said softly.

When Yoo Joonghyuk walked him down through the lobby, it was quieter than it had been earlier. Outside, the sky had gone rose-colored. A faint gold bleeding behind the clouds, the kind of light that made glass glow and everything else looked like a memory.

Yoo Joonghyuk walked him to his car. Of course he did.

While escorts typically didn't need to, nobody explicitly told him not to.

He just reached out once, thumb brushing the inside of Kim Dokja’s wrist.

The same place Kim Dokja had grabbed him the night before. Just a touch.

It felt like standing in the middle of an unfinished sentence.

Yoo Joonghyuk hated it.

Kim Dokja didn’t say anything. He just smiled.

Then Yoo Joonghyuk stood back, watching the car pull away, holding onto the warmth of Kim Dokja’s last smile like it might carry him through the month.

 

---

 

Kim Dokja pulled up to his house just after sunset.

It wasn’t a high-rise, or a penthouse, or anything that would suggest the power he wielded in the city’s undercurrent. Just a house. Tucked behind an old bakery that never opened and beside a mechanic shop that doubled as a front. The street was narrow. Empty. No surveillance on the corners. That was why he chose it.

He keyed himself in with a quiet beep of the door.

The front room was a storage space. Bare shelves, and some crates that no one was allowed to catalogue but him. He didn’t take off his shoes. Didn’t bother with the kitchen, or the unused living space.

He headed straight to the bedroom.

His room was dim. Quiet. The curtains always drawn. The bed was unmade, the sheets half-tucked from the last time he’d bothered to sleep. Next to the bed, a fridge hummed lowly. He opened it. No food. Just bottles.

He grabbed a bottle of soju from the door, cracked it open, and downed the first half without blinking. It burned in the back of his throat, but that was the point.

He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing.

It was too quiet.

He didn’t turn on any music. Didn’t put on a movie. He didn’t like the noise unless it was someone else’s voice. Someone who had something to say.

For a brief second, his hand twitched toward his pocket. Toward the phone.

But he hadn’t asked for Yoo Joonghyuk’s number.

Didn’t want to.

Didn’t need to.

No photos, no numbers, no sentimental attachments. That was the rule. He was too far in to start leaving trails. If someone ever got into his device, there’d be nothing personal. Just schedules. Contracts. Safety measures. And perhaps the shitty webnovel.

Still. He wanted to hear his voice again.

That rough edge of sleep still hanging on his tongue. The heavy silence when he didn’t know what to say. The ridiculous honesty. That flush that ran too deep and stayed too long.

Kim Dokja opened his phone.

Not to message anyone. Just muscle memory. He tapped the icon.

The webnovel was still open. Same one as always. The same never ending series that gave him just enough to come back every day.

He read the last few lines, eyes flicking left to right, letting his breath settle into the rhythm of the prose.

He needed to recalibrate.

Clear his head.

Get back in the game.

Tomorrow, there’d be another delivery. Another negotiation. Another message from his mother. Another job where someone wouldn’t make it home.

He knew how to deal with those things. He’d trained himself for it.

But tonight... Tonight his bed was too big. The noises too loud.

No one had ever shaken him like that.

Yoo Joonghyuk had been a distraction. A good one. Dangerous. But clean in a way nothing else in his life ever was. Sharp when he needed to be. And warm in places Kim Dokja hadn’t realised he missed.

He scrolled.

A new chapter had dropped.

Good. Something to hold on to.

For now, that would be enough.

Tomorrow, he’d be Kim Dokja again.

And the rest of the world would have no idea he’d ever been anything else.

 

---

 

It was nearly 3 a.m. when Kim Dokja finally put down the webnovel.

He hadn’t retained a single word of the last chapter. His eyes had skimmed through the lines automatically, but his mind never settled.

The bottles beside him was empty. The room was too quiet. The air stale.

He stood.

There was a rhythm to nights like these. Precision carved into the hollows of his bones. He opened the drawer beneath his bed, retrieved a blade. Polished and sharp, and slid it into a concealed sheath beneath his coat. The pills went into his breast pocket. Untraceable, tasteless. 

The night air was thick when he stepped outside. Wet concrete under his boots. No cameras on this route. No mistakes.

He never rush. He never linger.

The door was unlocked. A calculated detail from earlier in the week.

He stepped into the house like a shadow, his presence folding into the corners. A man lay asleep in the bedroom. One of the many names on his mother’s list. 

Kim Dokja didn’t flinch.

He moved to the glass of water on the bedside table. The pills dissolved in seconds. A silent, invisible thing. He watched the water fizz softly. Waited for it to clear.

Then he walked out.

By the time the sun rose, the man would be dead. Heart failure. Quiet. Efficient. Just another number on the statistics.

Kim Dokja shut the door behind him.

The street was still dark, but the sky was beginning to change. A faint purple hue bleeding into the clouds.

Birdsong crept into the quiet.

It was dissonant.

He kept walking, but his mind wandered.

To chamomile tea.

To apple bunnies on a white plate.

Kim Dokja’s fingers twitched.

He hated this part of himself. The part that remembered. But some things stayed, even when you didn’t want them to.

He exhaled, the breath fogging faintly in the early dawn.

It was going to be a long month.

And he had no idea how long the memory of Yoo Joonghyuk would last him.

 

Chapter 7: Exclusivity

 

The locker room smelled like musk and expensive cologne, faintly overrun by lemon disinfectant. Yoo Joonghyuk sat on the bench with a towel slung around his shoulders, hair still damp from his third shower that day. The bruise below his collarbone had deepened, no longer the fresh crimson of morning, but dark and blooming like a confession.

Across from him, Bihyung leaned against the locker door, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

“So. He paid for exclusivity.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer right away. He pressed a knuckle into the hinge of his jaw, rolling the muscle there, as if that would force the right words out.

“Yes,” he said finally.

Bihyung nodded once. No jokes or teasing this time. Just a long exhale through the nose. “We got the wire this morning. It cleared. He paid upfront for the whole month. No negotiations. No complaints.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t flinch. That was what he expected. Kim Dokja didn’t seem like the type to ask twice.

He didn't like the look Bihyung was giving him.

“Say it,” Yoo Joonghyuk said.

Bihyung didn’t move. “You want the professional version, or the friend version?”

“Friend.”

A pause.

Bihyung looked away, tapping his fingers against the metal locker. “You know I’ve been here longer than you. I’ve seen a lot of clients. Powerful ones. Dangerous ones. Lonely ones. But him?” He shook his head. “He doesn’t repeat. Not once. Not even the pretty ones. Not even the good ones. That guy… e's different.”

“He'll come back for me.”

“Exactly,” Bihyung said, looking up. “That’s what worries me.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s throat worked around nothing. He focused on the weave of the towel in his hands.

“He seemed…steady,” he said quietly.

“Sure. Steady like a loaded gun.”

Bihyung pushed off the locker and crouched down in front of him, serious now. No jokes behind his eyes.

“Look, you’re good-looking. You’re better than good-looking. You’re honest, hardworking, and you can take a hit without falling apart. That sells. But someone like him doesn’t chase people for sex. That’s not what he’s paying for. You understand?”

Yoo Joonghyuk nodded once.

“I’m serious. There’s something else going on. Just because he talks soft and eats apple bunnies doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. I know his type. I’ve seen what they leave behind.”

Yoo Joonghyuk looked up.

“So what are you saying? I shouldn’t see him?”

“I’m saying,” Bihyung stood again, “you should stop thinking about him like he’s someone you can get close to. He isn’t. This isn’t a soap opera. You’re not gonna change him, or save him, or whatever fantasy’s clawing at you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t speak.

Bihyung turned toward his own locker and opened it. The metal creaked softly. “If you want to keep working here, keep your head down. Let him come to you.”

“…What if I want to talk to him?”

“Then you wait until next month,” Bihyung said simply. “Clients are anonymous between appointments. We’re not allowed to reach out unless summoned. It’s protocol. And in his case?” Bihyung glanced over his shoulder. “No one even has his real number.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers curled.

“I just—” he stopped, hating how small his voice sounded. “I just want to know why.”

Bihyung didn’t ask what he meant. He already knew.

“You’re not gonna get closure, Joonghyuk,” he said, voice flat. “This isn’t that kind of job. He paid for your body. Not your questions.”

Silence.

The hum of the ceiling vent pressed in.

Bihyung stepped back into his shoes, grabbing his clipboard from the shelf. “You’re his. No one else's. While you wait, you can go back to kitchen duty.”

Yoo Joonghyuk nodded.

“And Joonghyuk?”

He looked up.

“Don’t fall in love with a client.”

He didn’t answer.

 

---

 

Later that night, Yoo Joonghyuk sat in the employee dormitory, staring at the blank screen on his broken phone. He hadn’t touched it in months, but the habit was still there. An old comfort. Before this place, before everything. A way to pretend someone might message.

He tucked it away and lay down on his side, pulling the thin blanket over his chest. The room was dark. Cold with quiet. No lamps. No laughter. Just the sharp, clinical silence of a space meant to be functional.

He thought of the way Kim Dokja had looked in the morning sun.

The robe slipping off one shoulder. That rare laugh. The lazy sprawl across the bed like he’d never had to earn comfort in his life. But there’d been something else too. Something brittle under the skin. Like he’d been pretending too long, and now couldn’t stop.

Yoo Joonghyuk rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

He breathed out through his nose. His body still ached.

He hadn’t taken anything for the soreness. Hadn’t wanted to. The dull pulse of pain beneath his skin was grounding. Real. His body remembered what it had been through, even if the sheets had been changed and the room cleaned.

Even if Kim Dokja was gone.

His guts tingled at the thought.

That should’ve been the end of it. Yoo Joonghyuk had learned to endure solitude the way most people endured weathers. With indifference. But this was something else.

The ache in his body had nothing to do with soreness now. It sat deeper. Under the ribs, in the quiet places thought shouldn’t reach.

He turned to his side again.

Then back.

Again.

The bed creaked beneath him, old springs straining against the weight and memory. He clenched his jaw.

Even in the dark, he couldn’t stop seeing him.

And worse, he couldn’t stop feeling it.

Six hours.

That’s how long they’d gone.

Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t even registered it at the time. He hadn’t been counting. He hadn’t needed to. It was the kind of thing you survived through.

Now, hours later, stripped of adrenaline, he felt everything.

The raw ache in his hips. The bite marks on his shoulders. The way the back of his thighs still trembled if he moved the wrong way.

Kim Dokja hadn’t held back.

Not once.

He didn’t understand what he’d done to make that man pay a whole month for him.

And it terrified him.

Because he wanted it to mean something.

There’d been moments Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t breathe. Moments he thought he’d black out. But what kept replaying now wasn’t the pain or the exhaustion.

It was Kim Dokja’s voice. Low and smooth and cruelly fond.

    “You’re really sensitive here.”

    “So pretty when you come apart like this.”

    “I like watching your face when you break.”

That last one came with the memory of Kim Dokja's fingers around his cock, slow and relentless, while Yoo Joonghyuk had already been trembling from overstimulation. He had gasped for air, his whole body seized up.

His thighs had clenched. His breath hitched.

He’d squirted. Not just once. More than once. It had shocked the hell out of him. Still did.

No one had ever made him do that.

Not even close.

Kim Dokja had just raised his eyebrows in quiet amusement and said, “Sensitive.”

Yoo Joonghyuk had wanted to curl into the mattress and disappear.

Instead, he’d just stared at the ceiling in mute horror, throat tight, face burning.

And Kim Dokja had leaned in. Brushing a strand of hair from his damp forehead. Kissed the corner of his eye where tears had leaked out from the force of it.

Now, lying alone in the dark, Yoo Joonghyuk covered his face with one arm.

His body was burning again. Not in a slow, building way. But all at once.

Like something had reignited.

He groaned, muffled into the pillow, but the tension kept rising.

There was no one here. No client. No rule. No expectation.

Just the memory.

And need.

And shame.

His cock was hard now, fully, insistently. The kind of arousal that didn’t feel like indulgence but like torment. A residue of something unfinished. Like Kim Dokja had lit a fire and left him with nothing but smoke.

Yoo Joonghyuk pressed his thighs together. Breathed in through his nose. His entrance twitched.

He shouldn’t.

He didn’t want to give the memory that kind of power.

But his hips trembled.

He remembered the way Kim Dokja had pushed his face into the sheets. How he’d licked over the marks he made. How he’d looked at him after, satisfied and strange and too knowing.

Yoo Joonghyuk's hand slid down beneath the blanket.

Just to take the edge off.

Just enough to sleep.

That was the excuse, at least.

But the second his fingers wrapped around himself, his back arched off the bed. The sensitivity hadn’t gone. His body remembered too much.

He began pumping his erection.

He bit his lip hard to keep from making a sound.

The ceiling swam above him, white and flat and meaningless.

The memory of Kim Dokja's mouth, hot and slow and claiming, flashed behind his eyes. His breath stuttered.

God.

He was going to lose his mind.

And still, he chased it.

The way Kim Dokja had taken him in hand, murmured praise like Yoo Joonghyuk had done something extraordinary just by feeling good. The way he hadn’t laughed when Yoo Joonghyuk cried out and came hard, involuntarily, body spasming against the mattress.

That unbearable, uncontrollable moment where Yoo Joonghyuk had begged. Quietly . Just once.

     “Please—”

The memory made him shudder.

He came with a soft gasp, hips jerking, body locking up.

His face burned. His chest felt too tight.

He stared up at the ceiling again, chest rising and falling, breath uneven.

This was bad.

This was really bad.

He couldn’t afford to be this undone by someone he barely knew.

And yet…

Even with release, even with the ache dulled for now, the emptiness that followed was worse.

He reached out for the blanket again and pulled it up to his chin.

And in the dark, one stupid part of him whispered.

Next month can’t come fast enough.

 

Chapter 8: Guillotine

 

Kim Dokja stepped into the lobby of the building.

It wasn’t grand.

A squat concrete office building with no signage, no security guards, no fake smiles. Just a flickering fluorescent light above the entrance and the low hum of silence. Functional, not decorative.

Inside, the air smelled like paper and dust. No music. No receptionist. Just rows of old mail slots and cracked tiles.

The kind of place that didn’t try to hide what it was.

He passed by the elevator and went straight for the stairwell. Two flights up. No windows. The same frayed carpet running down a narrow hallway. He knew every step by heart. Knew which board creaked. Knew where the cheap wallpaper peeled at the corners.

Cho Youngran was waiting by the door.

She didn’t greet him. Just looked up from her phone, nodded once, and stepped aside.

The office had no nameplates or unnecessary decorations. Just a plain metal door in a plain hallway in a plain building.

He opened the door without knocking.

Inside, it was no different.

A desk. A file cabinet. Two chairs. One window, blinds drawn. A clock ticking too loudly on the wall.

Lee Sookyung sat behind the desk. There was nothing soft about her. Not her eyes, not her posture. She looked like she’d been carved out of stone and sanded down for utility.

She didn’t stand when he entered.

Didn’t even ask how he was.

“Sit,” she said.

Kim Dokja sat.

She slid a folder toward him. “New job. Came in last night.”

He opened it.

A man’s face stared back at him from the top page. Early thirties. Handsome in a way that was engineered. Media-trained, and always camera-ready. His name was Cheon Inho. Rising star candidate for the eastern governorship. The press loved him. Social media adored him. Clean speeches, tailored suits, humble roots.

Kim Dokja flipped the page.

Corruption. Embezzlement. Underground connections. An entire page of quiet bribes and buried scandals.

“Client wants him removed, accident or otherwise." Lee Sookyung said.

“Heart attack?”

Silence.

Just a breath too long.

It landed between them with all the weight of a public execution.

He realised it too late.

His fingers stilled on the folder. Stupid. The man was too young. Too healthy. Any sudden death would raise questions, especially so close to the election.

He should have known that. He did know that.

He didn’t lift his eyes.

“No,” Lee Sookyung said eventually. Her voice didn’t shift. No edge, no chill. “That would raise suspicion.”

A pause.

Then she continued, like it hadn’t happened at all.

“He frequents unregistered luxury services.” She pointed at a picture, “start there.”

She didn’t reprimand him.

Didn’t even look at him for confirmation.

She moved on.

And somehow, that made the fuck-up worse.

Kim Dokja nodded once, tightly. “Understood.”

But he could still feel it. Lodged in the air like a splinter. The moment of failure she hadn’t bothered to acknowledge.

She didn’t have to.

She had already filed it away.

Kim Dokja shook it off.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a small USB. “Client report. Five from last month, finalized. The third was messier than expected.”

She took the USB stick without comment.

They worked like this. Smooth. Cold. Machine-to-machine.

And in a way, it worked better this way. No miscommunication. No misplaced warmth.

But it was always like this.

And today, he felt it more than usual.

Maybe because he’d just come from someplace warm. Someplace quiet and stupidly gentle.

He looked at her face and felt the same chill crawl through his gut as when his own emotions went offline. She had that same stillness. That same clean efficiency. 

Looking at her now, he realized. Maybe that was the whole point. She’d burned everything soft out of herself just to survive.

And now she expected nothing less from him.

“How long will it take you?” she asked.

“Two weeks,” Kim Dokja said.

“Don’t linger.”

“I won’t.”

She nodded. That was it.

Not even a take care.

He stood. 

She didn’t.

She went back to her papers like their conversation had never happened.

And for a second, standing at the door, he wondered how much of himself had been shaped by this woman. How much of what he’d become was a reflection. Not of her expectations, but of her indifference.

She never asked about his personal life. Never pried. Never even hinted.

But she knew. She always knew.

And she didn’t care.

That was the unspoken deal.

He did his job. Clean, sharp, without questions. And in return, she didn’t ask him about the blood, or the bruises, or the reasons he needed to drink to sleep.

Kim Dokja left the office with his hands in his pockets.

He didn’t look back.

The hallway was just as empty as before. Same buzzing light. Same creaking board.

As he stepped into the stairwell, he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

His hands were steady. His face was calm.

But inside, something felt colder than usual.

He could feel her in his spine. In his jaw. In the way he compartmentalized things without thinking.

He could see her in the mirror when his own face went blank.

It had always been like that.

He hadn’t learned detachment. He’d inherited it.

Their eyes had met only once, in the space between movement.

And in her face, Kim Dokja saw no cruelty. But worse, he saw nothing at all.

No malice. No affection. Just the clear, mechanical acceptance of a tool she had forged, sharpened, and now sent out again.

She hadn’t always been like this.

There had been warmth once. She used to read to him at night. Used to tuck his scarf in when the wind got cold. Used to hum under her breath when she cleaned.

Before the body in the kitchen.

Before the blood she hadn’t let him see.

Before she planted a knife in the man he called father and bleed until all that softness drained from her eyes and never came back.

She hadn’t been the same since.

Neither had he.

But he didn’t miss that warmth.

He hadn’t expected it to return. Not in this room. Not in this life.

He didn’t mourn the absence.

He expected it.

And so, like always, Kim Dokja kept walking.

 

---

 

Two weeks had elapsed since.

Kim Dokja stood with his back pressed to a wall. The bar across the street looked like every other local dive. Cheap liquor, cheap music, cheaper secrets. But the real business happened two floors below, where the regulars didn’t need menus and the clients knew better than to ask questions.

The street was louder than it needed to be.

He waited six minutes past the arranged hour before the side entrance finally opened. A woman in glossy heels and a designer knockoff stepped out, arm linked with a man she didn’t love. Cheon Inho, the rising-star populist governor candidate. Good hair, fake smile, a criminal network thicker than his campaign funding.

Kim Dokja followed them in.

The bar swallowed him whole. Darkness at the edges, red lighting thick like a bruise. Velvet curtains, padded booths, conversation muffled by the beat of some indistinct bass. The staff didn’t check him. No one did.

By the time he reached the lower level, the couple were already seated in a private room. The table was already stocked with powder, pills, and alcohol. It didn’t matter what they took, only that it hit hard and left no trace.

Kim Dokja smiled once. Briefly. Just enough to pass as someone selling fun.

The door closed behind him.

He didn’t need more than fifteen minutes. Half a crushed pill dissolved into the woman’s drink. Another, flicked into Cheon Inho’s. The rest was routine. Lean into the performance. Let the high rise in them naturally. Then help it climb a little further. Touch, laugh, pour another drink. Say something nice.

He watched their pupils bloom like drowning flowers.

He made sure they couldn’t get back up.

When he emerged, the bar hadn’t changed. Still loud, still swaying to something soft and synthetic. No one noticed the slight delay in Room 4’s departure. No one looked at him twice.

Kim Dokja didn’t even straighten his coat until he stepped into the streetlight.

His heartbeat never sped up.

Then he saw him…

Across the road. Half-silhouetted by the glow of a convenience store window. Black hoodie. Clean jawline. Eyes too sharp for someone buying a meat dumpling at this hour.

Yoo Joonghyuk.

Two weeks. That’s how long it had been.

Long enough for the bruises to fade. Not long enough to forget how they got there.

Kim Dokja turned his face away immediately. Walked like nothing happened. Fast. Controlled. Without a change in posture.

Yoo Joonghyuk was already moving.

He could hear his hurried footsteps among the crowds.

A quiet curse slipped between Kim Dokja’s teeth.

He ducked into the nearest alley without looking back.

It took Yoo Joonghyuk less than a minute to catch up. His hand reached out, but Kim Dokja twisted first, grabbing his wrist and slamming him into the alley wall, blade already drawn.

The moment their eyes met, something in Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest hitched.

“You’re breaching a clause,” Kim Dokja said, coldly, voice low. “You should pretend you don’t know me.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer at first. His mouth parted slightly. Not from fear. From confusion. Hurt, maybe. His pulse pounded where Kim Dokja held him. Close enough to feel it.

Kim Dokja’s eyes narrowed.

The blade closed in on his neck.

“It's my day off.” Yoo Joonghyuk retorted. “Contract's on pause.”

Kim Dokja didn't blink. He stepped back after a beat, sighed, and motioned Yoo Joonghyuk to follow.

 

---

 

Yoo Joonghyuk got in the passenger seat without a word.

Kim Dokja drove without speaking. The city passed in flickers of neon lights, blurred shadows, a red glow caught in the side mirrors like blood trailing behind them.

The silence wasn’t comfortable. It pressed down like static, thick between them. Kim Dokja didn’t put on music. Didn’t look over.

When Yoo Joonghyuk opened his mouth, Kim Dokja simply said, “Don’t.”

That was it. No explanation. A quiet, commanding tone sharp enough to slice through the air between them.

So Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t speak. He leaned back, jaw tight, and watched the way Kim Dokja’s knuckles gripped the steering wheel like he wanted to throttle something. Or someone.

The drive wasn’t long.

They pulled into a narrow parking lot tucked behind a row of vending machines. The kind of place with no reception, just a keypad and a short list of numbered doors. Cheap enough not to ask questions. Clean enough to still be open.

Kim Dokja killed the engine.

Neither of them moved.

“Get out,” he said.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t move.

He turned his head instead, slowly, the way you look at something that had the nerve to come back and act like it hadn’t left.

“You’re seriously doing this?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked.

Kim Dokja didn’t look at him. “You followed me on a job.”

“It was my day off.”

“You think that matters?”

Kim Dokja rolled his eyes, and got out of the car. Yoo Joonghyuk followed behind him.

 

Notes:

I'm sorry this chapter is a bit short. I hope the next one will be worth the length :)

Chapter 9: Drag me to Hell

 

They got a room.

The walls were cheap drywall covered with textured wallpaper. The bedspread was a dated floral pattern. A vending machine buzzed outside the window.

Kim Dokja threw his coat over the back of a chair. 

Yoo Joonghyuk stood in the center of the cramped room. Still breathing hard, like he hadn’t quite caught up to what had just happened in the alley. In the car. In his chest.

Two weeks.

He hadn’t been able to forget. The way he crumbled under Kim Dokja’s stare. The feeling of his hand curled around the back of his neck. The way his body remembered being used like something valuable, and ruined anyway.

“I did follow you,” he said finally.

Kim Dokja didn’t look at him.

“I couldn’t forget you,” Yoo Joonghyuk confessed, voice steadier this time. “I tried.”

Kim Dokja turned.

“Is that what you want, then?” Kim Dokja asked.

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked. “What?”

A breath passed.

Then Kim Dokja shoved him. Not hard. Just enough to startle. Just enough to make Yoo Joonghyuk stumble backward, hit the bed with the backs of his knees, and fall onto the mattress.

Kim Dokja followed.

He climbed over him with that same emotionless expression, knees bracketing Yoo Joonghyuk’s thighs, hands flat on either side of his head. He didn’t touch him. He loomed over him, eyes dark and impossible to read.

“Is this what you came for?” Kim Dokja asked again, quieter this time. “You want to be fucked senseless? By me?”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s fists curled in the sheets.

He pushed at Kim Dokja’s shoulders, but Kim Dokja didn’t move.

He was stronger than he looked. Unreasonably so. Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t expected that. Or perhaps it explained everything.

“You said not to contact you,” he bit out.

“You don’t even have my number.”

“Exactly!”

Yoo Joonghyuk was breathing hard. 

Kim Dokja hovered close. Too close.

And that was the problem.

He was already half-hard.

Kim Dokja glanced down.

Then he smiled. No traces of kindness in it.

“Of course,” he said, voice quiet and bitter. “Of course your body doesn’t care either.”

That made Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw clench.

Kim Dokja pulled back, slow and cold. He climbed off the bed like he hadn’t just offered himself up like a loaded gun. He crossed the room, reached into the coat he’d draped over the chair and pulled out a blade.

The same blade he had pushed against his neck.

He stabbed it down into the wooden desk, point-first. It sank in with a hollow thunk, the handle still quivering.

“This is my life,” he said, not looking at Yoo Joonghyuk. “Dirty. Unhonest. Paid for in blood.”

He turned his head. “I don’t know what the fuck you thought you were chasing, but it’s not me.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at the blade standing upright like a finality. He looked at its owner, who had been ready to walk away the second they locked the door behind them. 

He remembered Bihyung’s reminder in the staff hallway, low and serious.

“He never goes back to the same person twice. So either you’re special…or he’s really, really fucked in the head. Be careful.”

He remembered nodding. Brushing it off. But not forgetting.

If that was the case, then…

Yoo Joonghyuk stood slowly from the bed.

“You don’t get to decide what you are to me,” Yoo Joonghyuk said quietly.

Kim Dokja followed him with his eyes. Listening.

“I didn’t come here because I was blind to the life you lead,” Yoo Joonghyuk went on. “I came because I remembered the things that slipped through anyway.”

He took a step closer.

“The way you looked at the apple bunnies. Like they were a surprise.”

Another step.

“The way you smiled at nothing. In the quiet.”

Another step.

“The way your eyes looked alive in the morning, like maybe you’d forgotten what you’re supposed to be.”

He stopped just in front of Kim Dokja, who still hadn’t spoken.

“You only bought me for a weekend,” Yoo Joonghyuk said. “But you already own everything. There’s nothing left of me that isn’t yours. I don’t have anything else to give.”

His voice was calm. Desperate, yes, but also vulnerable. Something that he had forgotten he could be.

“And if that’s all I can offer you, then I hope it’s enough.”

Silence rang.

Then Kim Dokja exhaled. Not a laugh. But not quite a sigh either.

Something in between. Like a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Yoo Joonghyuk watched the mix of tension and uncertainty flicker across his face. 

The smallest twitch of his mouth, the faintest shift in his jaw. The tiniest crack of vulnerability in his facade that told Yoo Joonghyuk everything he needed to know.

For a brief moment, the ice cold gaze had melted slightly.

It was enough to make Kim Dokja step toward him.

Their lips crashed into each other.

Their bodies met in a collision of heat, exhaustion, and everything left unsaid. His hands were cold when they gripped Yoo Joonghyuk’s collar, and his mouth tasted like tension and silence and something bitter that hadn’t quite burned away.

Yoo Joonghyuk kissed back.

There was no finesse. No slow unraveling. It's all pressure. Urgency. Teeth.

They crashed into the bed. It was the second time tonight, but this time Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t fight it. He stumbled back. He let himself be pressed down with no resistance.

Kim Dokja climbed over him the same way he had earlier. Only now, there was no question in it. Just hunger.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands found Kim Dokja’s waist, gripping tight. Anchoring him in place. He gasped into the next kiss when Kim Dokja rolled his hips down, both of them hard and aching through their clothes, the pressure dizzying.

He didn’t say anything else.

Didn’t have to. No words or riddles or questions were enough to convey it.

Kim Dokja was already unbuttoning his shirt with hands that only trembled when they lingered too long. And Yoo Joonghyuk arched up into him, chest to chest, as if to say ' yes, I’m here. Take all of it — take me.'

Kim Dokja’s fingers slipped on the third button. He cursed under his breath and yanked the shirt open instead. The buttons popped, skittered across the floor. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t flinch. He let it happen. He let himself be handled like something already paid for, but not with money this time.

There was a mouth on his neck a second later. Then his collarbone. Then lower. Kim Dokja was all teeth and tongue, working him open like he could carve understanding out of skin. 

Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands slid to his back, gripping hard enough to leave marks, dragging nails down just to feel him flinch. He didn’t want it slow. Didn’t want it gentle. He wanted Kim Dokja to remember he was here.

And god, Kim Dokja gave him that.

He ground down again, breath ragged. There was nothing graceful about it. They were both too far gone. Unspoken things scraping the backs of their throats. 

Yoo Joonghyuk gasped when their cocks aligned through clothes, friction sickeningly good, too much and not enough all at once.

Kim Dokja sat up, straddling him, pulling off his shirt. His chest heaved with every breath as Kim Dokja trailed lines along the canvas of his body, pale and marked still. Some of the bruises were still faintly there. Yoo Joonghyuk kept them like they were his. Like a proof of everything that happened.

“You really want this?” Kim Dokja asked, voice full of guilt and uncertainty.

Yoo Joonghyuk stared up at him. “What the fuck do you think?”

That pulled a low chuckle out of him.

Kim Dokja bent down again, kissing him hard. Sloppy. Possessive. His hands slid down, shoving Yoo Joonghyuk’s pants out of the way, breath hot against his jaw.

Yoo Joonghyuk hissed through his teeth. Everything felt too much. The room. The air. The ache he’d carried for two weeks straight, not just in his body but somewhere deeper, lodged between ribs and memory.

When Kim Dokja finally got both their pants out of the way, it was with a grunt of frustration. 

Neither of them laughed. Yoo Joonghyuk almost wished he would. It would’ve meant that this was just sex. That they were just bodies in heat. But it was not. Far from it. It was full of every night Yoo Joonghyuk laid awake thinking about the way Kim Dokja looked at him like he mattered, and the morning Kim Dokja had shoved that memory down so deep it couldn’t claw its way out.

Kim Dokja shoved his fingers in Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth. He licked it tenderly. Slobbering all over it. He could taste the metal. Perhaps blood, or something else. He didn't care.

Then, Kim Dokja used the same fingers to pry him open.

He gasped, head falling back, thighs tense. His body remembered. The ache turned into something else. Something tighter. Hungrier.

Kim Dokja didn’t say anything. He watched. Focused like he was memorizing how Yoo Joonghyuk opened up for him. Like he didn’t trust his own memory and needed to remake it again, from scratch, with fingers and breath and heat.

Yoo Joonghyuk gritted his teeth and choked down the sounds. He wouldn’t give him that. Not this early.

His whole body felt hot. Begging for release long overdue.

Then, finally, Kim Dokja put his cock against his entrance.

When he pushed in, slow and deliberate, Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t hold back when his whole body jolted to life. His back arched, hands scrabbling for grip on the sheets.

Moans ripped out of him.

He hated how easy it was to take him now.

No. He hated that he wanted it.

And yet.

His body remembered the rhythm and the weight. His muscles ached in welcome, and no resistance.

Kim Dokja groaned low under his breath. His grip tightened on Yoo Joonghyuk’s hips, bruising. Like he was trying not to fall apart.

Then he moved.

And Yoo Joonghyuk did fall apart.

They weren’t in sync. Not at first. There was too much emotion and not enough clarity. 

Kim Dokja rutted into him like he was trying to rid of a feeling he didn’t have the words for. And Yoo Joonghyuk took it, breath shattering in gasps. Their skin slapped wetly, sweat slicking between them, the air sharp with heat and tension and pleasure that tasted like grief.

Yoo Joonghyuk let out a strangled noise when Kim Dokja shifted position, driving in deeper. Hitting something that made his eyes blur. He grabbed Kim Dokja’s arm without thinking. Dug his nails in.

Kim Dokja only fucked him harder.

“You shouldn’t have followed me,” he whispered into his ear, breath ragged.

“I didn’t—” Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice cracked. “Didn’t plan to—”

“You should’ve stayed away.”

“Then tell me to go.” His thighs trembled. “Tell me, and I’ll walk out that door.”

Kim Dokja didn’t say anything.

He kissed him instead. Vicious, unforgiving. And Yoo Joonghyuk broke under it.

The rhythm stuttered. Grew desperate. They moved like men drowning, pulling each other under. Hands everywhere. Lips crushed. The air thick with need and resentment and everything in between.

And then Kim Dokja’s mouth found his ear again.

“I’m not good for you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t say he knew.

Didn’t say he didn’t care.

He only pulled him closer, hips lifting to meet every thrust, every broken breath.

Let him take it all.

Let him take everything.

He didn’t know when the rhythm changed.

One second it was anger. Control. A fight to forget. And then…

Kim Dokja trembled slightly.

Not visibly, but Yoo Joonghyuk felt it in the way his hips faltered, the way his grip slipped and clenched again. Like something inside him was fraying, unraveling against his will. His breath hitched with every thrust, growing uneven.

Yoo Joonghyuk reached up, almost on instinct, palm cupping the back of Kim Dokja’s neck.

He expected him to flinch. To push him down again. To reassert the distance.

But Kim Dokja didn’t.

He stilled. Just for a second.

And Yoo Joonghyuk whispered, hoarse, “take me. Take all of me.”

A fragile sound made its way out of Kim Dokja’s throat. Choked and raw. He fucked into him harder, more desperate now. Full of the repressed feelings carved into each and every thrust.

Yoo Joonghyuk bit back a gasp, hand tightening.

He was so close. Too close. Everything ached. Not just in his body, but in his chest, his throat, his eyes. The pain wasn’t just physical. It never had been.

“I thought I could forget you,” Kim Dokja said, suddenly.

The words spilled out in gasps. Like he’d been holding them in so long they were burning his lungs.

“I thought if I buried it deep enough… I wouldn’t care.”

His eyes were closed. Still moving inside him. Still holding on like Yoo Joonghyuk was the only thing left tethering him to something real.

“But I do,” he said. “I care. I fucking care.”

Yoo Joonghyuk felt everything stop in his chest.

“And that makes me a liability.”

His breath hitched. “And you… You were supposed to be a transaction.”

Yoo Joonghyuk reached up with both arms now, curling them around Kim Dokja’s shoulders, pulling him down until their foreheads touched.

“I don't care.” He rasped. “Drag me to your hell.”

Kim Dokja’s face crumpled. Just for a second. Then he let himself lean into it.

"I'm going to ruin you,” he whispered.

Yoo Joonghyuk kissed him.

His walls clamp up.

His insides were already rearranged to the shape of submission and longing.

He was so close.

Dangerously close.

Kim Dokja shattered first, moaning low into Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth as he came, hips jerking while buried deep inside him. Seconds later, Yoo Joonghyuk followed. His back arching, mouth parting in a silent cry. The wave dragged them both under, messy and wet and shaking, until they stilled in the quiet.

Kim Dokja stayed inside him for a long moment, head bowed, hands gripping Yoo Joonghyuk’s arms like he might fall if he let go.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t push him away.

He didn’t want to move.

Because this wasn’t victory. It wasn’t even close to a conclusion. It was a fracture. A point of no return.

And Yoo Joonghyuk had already pried it open and forced himself in.

If all he could have was this? This raw and fleeting broken thing? He would take it.

Even if it ruined him.

Kim Dokja’s breath shuddered into his mouth, and for a while, neither of them moved.

His body was heavy. Still pressed to Yoo Joonghyuk’s, forehead resting against his. Their skin was slick. The air was too warm. But Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t complain. He didn’t even shift. He let Kim Dokja breathe.

Kim Dokja finally eased out of him with a soft hiss, and a sharp intake of breath.

Yoo Joonghyuk still didn’t look away.

Not when Kim Dokja collapsed next to him, elbow propped up like he might flee again.

Not even when he reached for the cheap tissue box on the nightstand and cleaned them both up with quick, impersonal motions. Like if he slowed down, he might say something he couldn’t take back.

Yoo Joonghyuk let him.

Then, after a moment, Kim Dokja spoke.

“You really don’t care?”

Yoo Joonghyuk met his eyes. “I meant what I said.”

“You don’t even know what I am.”

“I know who you are,” Yoo Joonghyuk said.

Kim Dokja gave him a look. A little incredulous. Sceptical. “That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, “it’s more important.”

Kim Dokja let out a soft breath. Almost a laugh. Almost.

The silence lingered between them, softer this time. And Yoo Joonghyuk, finally, turned onto his side.

Kim Dokja was staring at the ceiling again. Like it might offer answers.

“Assassinations,” he said. “Among other things…”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t react.

“I take them. Arrange them. Most times do them myself.” A pause. “It’s not romantic. Not cinematic even. It’s logistics. Information. Pressure points. And the right time to make someone vanish.”

Yoo Joonghyuk closed his eyes briefly. And opened them again.

“Do you enjoy it?”

“No,” Kim Dokja said flatly. “I survive it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk nodded once. “Then I still don’t care.”

Kim Dokja finally turned his head. “Why?”

“Because when you looked at the apples,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, “you smiled like you’d forgotten everything else. Like something in you was still alive.”

He swallowed.

“I’ve seen men fall to that world,” he said. “Drugs. Debt. Violence. All of it. But none of them ever looked like that. None of them ever smiled like you did.”

Kim Dokja blinked.

The room was so quiet, you could hear the cheap fridge humming near the bed.

“You shouldn’t say that,” he said.

Yoo Joonghyuk held his gaze. “Why?”

“Because it makes me want to believe you.”

“Then believe me.”

Another pause.

Another silence.

Then Kim Dokja sat up, slowly, his back to the headboard. He looked tired. But clearer.

“I have things to do,” he said, finally. “People to watch. One target just disappeared.”

Yoo Joonghyuk almost smiled. “Disappeared?”

Kim Dokja didn’t respond.

“I won’t follow you again,” Yoo Joonghyuk said. “Unless you ask me to.”

Kim Dokja leaned his head back. Eyes closed.

“Second weekend of the month,” he said.

Yoo Joonghyuk looked at him.

“I’ll be at the same hotel.”

He looked over, expression unreadable. But for the first time since they’d met, there were no walls in his eyes. It was a glimmer of hope. Impossible thread of hope that may or may not snap in the next minute.

“You know where to find me.”

Yoo Joonghyuk exhaled.

Just two more weeks. He could bear it. He’d borne worse. But as Kim Dokja pulled his shirt back on, fingers brushing the fabric, Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t stop watching him. The way the light caught on the line of his jaw, the faintest flush still on his throat, the haunted look in his eyes. 

Two weeks.

It was a promise. A thread pulled tight between them, thin enough to break, stubborn enough not to. Yoo Joonghyuk would grab onto it. Even if it were to split, he would know that it had once been real.

 

Notes:

Hi, author here. This is just me rambling, but I wanna get it off my chest and throw it out into the void.
I've basically been writing fanfictions without much breaks for a month now. And has been posting daily since...weeks? ago.
Idk if it is healthy, but it gives me the motivation to get through another day. To wake up in the morning. To get excited about a new plot. Or even to just fill the empty. I write as soon as I wake up, during commute, through lunch breaks, and even during boring meetings that could've and should've been duked out in a long ass email thread.
My strategy thus far is to just think of a premise, write some banger lines, and vomit out thousands of words to justify that one paragraph or sentence.
Works really well. Especially because I love both the characters so much, I want them to be put into 1000 different scenarios. In a way, I feel like I'm turning into one of those constellations hahaha.
I'm surprised google hasn't offered me any thesaurus ads. Just imagining a popup that slaps my screen with a huge 'stop googling the synonym for XXX you're wasting server power' or some shit like that. Because I generally end up using the words I had in mind anyway.
I don't usually write long notes, but I've just woken up and am still nursing a hangover. And the character limit looked funny.
Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed my works. I know I did. See you again in the next chapters!

Chapter 10

 

No one teased him anymore.

Not after he came back with crescents on his neck and walked like his joints didn’t line up right. Not after he burned dinner two nights in a row and didn’t even curse about it. Not after he stood by the sink too long, just scrubbing a spotless plate like he’d forgotten what water felt like. Not even when he sat in the corner of the kitchen during breaks, staring at the clock like it owed him something.

They stopped poking fun.

They’d started looking away instead. They knew that look. They’d seen it happen before. The hollow fixation. The ache that couldn’t fade. One that lingered in every silence between shifts, in the way conversations trailed off when Yoo Joonghyuk walked in. 

Someone was falling. And they all know how that story ends.

Even the creditors had stopped rattling the doors. He sent more than they asked for and slammed the door in their faces.

Nothing seemed to rattle him anymore. His thoughts were consumed by a man with the face of an angel and the heart of a demon. The same man who kissed like salvation and disappeared like a curse.

Everyone had stayed clear from Yoo Joonghyuk.

Everyone except for Han Sooyoung.

She caught him on the fire escape one night, thumbing a dead phone.

One look and she could already guess.

She leaned against the railing and said, “You’re really gone, huh?”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t look at her. “You came all the way out here to say that?”

“No,” she said. “I came to say I didn’t think it’d be you.”

Her voice didn’t carry its usual brassness. It was soft, like someone lowering their voice at a funeral.

Yoo Joonghyuk stayed silent.

Han Sooyoung continued, “I thought maybe Bihyung. Maybe even me, if I got stupid. But not you.” She paused. “He must be something.”

He was.

He was everything Yoo Joonghyuk had told himself he hated. Loathe even. A walking red flag. A storm behind a quiet face. The kind of man who looked at you like he knew your worst secrets and would dangle them in front of you just to see if you’d flinch.

And Yoo Joonghyuk had fallen for him anyway.

He couldn’t stop.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Han Sooyoung said, flicking imaginary ash off the railing before she turned to go.

“I know,” he muttered.

She stopped. “You know it’ll hurt?”

He nodded once.

“You know it’s going to—” She broke off, leaning her elbows on the railing beside him. Studying him for a moment. Her voice dropped. “Not just a little. Not the kind of hurt you can ice and sleep off. The kind that crawls under your skin and stays there.”

He didn’t look at her.

Han Sooyoung sighed. “Then go ahead, dumbass.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn't move.

He waited.

The first weekend passed painfully slow. Every second was like static in his teeth. He asked Bihyung if he had heard anything. 

Bihyung just glanced at the schedule and shrugged. “Your guy always comes on the second weekend. Like clockwork. Sometimes Friday. Sometimes Saturday. Never stays longer than two nights.”

Yoo Joonghyuk held onto that. Built a routine around it. Trained harder. Took extra shifts. Anything to grind the days down faster, to sand the hours into something he could endure.

 

---

 

Friday night came.

Second weekend of the month.

He didn’t hear the footsteps. But when the keycard beeped and the door burst open like a storm breaking, Yoo Joonghyuk was already standing.

His body moved before his mind did. He crossed the room in three strides, fists clenched at his sides, heart beating like something caged.

Kim Dokja barely got one foot in before Yoo Joonghyuk grabbed him.

He yanked him forward. Hard. And kissed him like he could erase the days apart by force. He slammed Kim Dokja’s back against the door. The sound sent trembles across the hall. Hard wood on bone.

Kim Dokja gasped, but didn’t resist.

It had been too long.

Too fucking long.

Like the weeks had gutted him and this was the only thing left.

The scent of him, like smoke and iron and something faintly antiseptic hit like an old wound reopening. His mouth tasted like nothing had changed.

Kim Dokja’s fingers curled into Yoo Joonghyuk’s hair, knuckles tight. But Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t let go. He kissed him again, sloppier. Messier. Like they hadn’t touched in years instead of days. Like the waiting had lit something hot and sharp beneath the skin, and it was finally burning loose.

Kim Dokja kissed like he was starving. Yoo Joonghyuk kissed like he was drowning.

They didn’t make it to the bed. Not right away.

“You’re late,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, voice hoarse against Kim Dokja’s cheek.

Kim Dokja let out a laugh. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Yoo Joonghyuk kissed him again. Harder. His hands slid beneath the shirt. Touching bones, muscles, and heartbeat. The body that wrecked him so completely.

“I waited.” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered into his neck.

“You did.” Kim Dokja tilted his head, baring his throat. “Come on then.”

Yoo Joonghyuk sank his fangs. Kim Dokja winced, but the pain turned him on even more.

With one smooth move, Yoo Joonghyuk wrapped his arms around Kim Dokja’s thighs and lifted him clean off the ground.

Kim Dokja laughed, breathless and startled, holding back the reflex to fight back and didn’t stop kissing Yoo Joonghyuk.

Their mouths stayed locked as he carried him across the room. He murmured something against Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth, but it was lost beneath the heat.

Then Yoo Joonghyuk unceremoniously threw him onto the bed, knocking a playful breath out of his lungs. He blinked up at the ceiling like the world had just tilted. Then Yoo Joonghyuk grabbed his hips, and dragged him into place. One swift motion that said ‘ mine’ more than anything.

Yoo Joonghyuk climbed on top of him. From this angle, he looked monstrously handsome and divine. Kim Dokja couldn’t take his eyes away even if he tried.

Their mouths found each other again, teeth clashing, tongues slick and demanding. Yoo Joonghyuk kissed like he wanted to bury every second lost without him. Like if he pressed hard enough, he could melt time.

Clothes came off in pieces.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s shirt was flung somewhere near the lamp. Kim Dokja's ripped and discarded to the edge of the bed. 

Yoo Joonghyuk paused, eyes skimming down the body in front of him. That mouth that always twisted with irony. That neck, marked and already bare for more. Chest rising with short, shallow breaths. 

He lay his hands flat against Kim Dokja’s ribs, thumb making circles around his nipples, Yoo Joonghyuk’s kisses went lower. The hot breath and tongue on the stomach made the man beneath him shiver.

And when Yoo Joonghyuk settled between his legs, Kim Dokja’s legs parted for him without hesitation.

There were no instructions. Just a mutual understanding and hunger borne of hunger.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands held his thighs down as he leaned in. He took Kim Dokja’s cock in his mouth. 

The first touch of tongue made Kim Dokja flinch. 

The second pulled a sound from his throat. 

By the third, his legs had gone loose, one heel digging into the mattress, the other hooked behind Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulder.

He licked around the length, then slowly from base to tip, as if he wanted to map out every part of him. Every bump and vein and curves. 

Then he closed his lips around the head and sucked. Gentle at first, then deeper, more determined. He didn’t tease. He devoured.

Kim Dokja made a noise that sounded almost broken. Like the pleasure scared him. Like it shouldn’t have felt that good. But he didn’t stop him. 

He grabbed the back of Yoo Joonghyuk's head, threading through his hair, pulling tight and planted his cock into his throat.

Yoo Joonghyuk choked, but he let Kim Dokja move him as he pleased. His teeth occasionally scraped the length, but it seemed to delight Kim Dokja more.

He took him deeper with every bob of his head, spit slicking his chin, his jaw working slow and relentless. Kim Dokja was hard in his mouth, twitching with every pass of tongue, and he didn’t stop.

He never looked away.

Kim Dokja made a sound that barely escaped his throat, chest rising unevenly, hips beginning to roll up against Yoo Joonghyuk’s grip. His thighs trembled.

His fingers spasmed in Yoo Joonghyuk’s hair.

“Fuck,” he hissed. “Joonghyuk—”

He sounded wrecked. Like he didn’t want this to end. Like he couldn’t stand how good it felt. Like he hated it.

Yoo Joonghyuk responded by wrapping a hand around the base and doubling down. Tongue flat and filthy, throat flexing as he took him deeper, until Kim Dokja’s legs kicked out beneath him and he broke into a sound that was almost a sob.

He came. 

Hand clamped over his mouth, thighs shuddering, toes curling into the sheets, Yoo Joonghyuk swallowing everything without pulling away.

Even afterward, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t move immediately. He kissed the crevice between his cock, and his hips, breathing hot and heavy.

Their eyes met.

“…You didn’t have to do that,” Kim Dokja muttered, voice raw.

“I wanted to,” Yoo Joonghyuk said.

Kim Dokja lay there, dazed. Chest rising. Lips parted.

But Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t done.

He kissed him hard. Pushing his tongue in, swallowing the remnants of his gasp like a man starved. Kim Dokja responded out of instinct, but he was slower now, pliant. Yoo Joonghyuk climbed over him, nudging his thighs apart with a knee, slotting their hips together.

“You're not leaving me again.” Yoo Joonghyuk stated.

Kim Dokja blinked.

Before he could form so much as a response, Yoo Joonghyuk kissed him again, silencing any replies that might surface. 

He’d waited too long. Thought about it too much. Every night he spent alone, sore and aching, every second he'd relived the short time they'd spent together.

Not this time.

Not when Yoo Joonghyuk had burned through the week replaying it in his head like a punishment.

He broke the kiss and sat back on his knees. His cock was already leaking, flushed and heavy against his abdomen. He grabbed a bottle of lube from the drawer without being asked, slicked his fingers quickly, and reached behind himself.

Kim Dokja’s eyes widened, head lifting. “Whoa…”

“I’ve been thinking about it all week.” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered, sliding his fingers between his cheeks. His muscles were still too tight, even after all the times he’d tried to get himself ready, alone, in the dark. But this was different. This was for him.

Kim Dokja’s throat bobbed.

Yoo Joonghyuk worked himself open with practiced fingers, panting quietly. His legs trembled where they straddled Kim Dokja’s hips, but his gaze didn’t waver. He watched Kim Dokja the entire time.

“Fuck,” Kim Dokja breathed. “You look so hot.”

Yoo Joonghyuk lined himself up. “This is for you.”

He sank down.

It wasn’t smooth. It was tight. Much too fast. But he didn’t stop. He gritted his teeth and forced himself down inch by inch, swallowing every twitch of pain and turning it into something else. Something more. The stretch, the burn, the pressure. Everything. 

They fed that deeper ache inside him. The longing he hadn’t been able to rid of. That emptiness only Kim Dokja could fill.

He rode Kim Dokja. Greedily devouring his length to quench the thirst of being left for two weeks. He ravished every sensation. The stretch, the pounding, the heat.

His thighs shook. His hands were planted on Kim Dokja’s chest, fingers curling into skin like he needed to anchor himself.

A sharp roll of his hips, up and down. Kim Dokja cursed beneath him, head falling back.

Yoo Joonghyuk found a rhythm. Harsh, deliberate. And Kim Dokja synched his movements. Meeting him in the middle.

It felt too good. Too much.

Every bounce punched sounds out of his throat, ragged and unfiltered. His body burned. His mind blurred. And still, he moved using Kim Dokja’s cock like it belonged to him, like it had been waiting inside him all this time.

“There! Right there—!” Yoo Joonghyuk threw his head back.

Kim Dokja straddled his hips, picked up his pace, and pounded on the same spot.

“Look at you,” Kim Dokja rasped, “fucking yourself on my cock.”

Yoo Joonghyuk groaned. He couldn’t speak anymore. Could barely think.

“Was this what you wanted?” Kim Dokja said, eyes dark. “Is this what you touched yourself to?”

Yoo Joonghyuk dropped his head forward, sweat dripping from his chin. “Yes.”

“How many times?”

“Every night.”

He clenched around him, hard, and Kim Dokja swore violently, hips bucking up. Yoo Joonghyuk cried out, grabbing his wrist, grounding himself.

“Don’t stop,” he choked out. “Don’t—don’t stop—”

Kim Dokja didn’t.

He thrust up into him, matching Yoo Joonghyuk’s rhythm, letting the pace turn filthy and fast. The slap of skin on skin echoed. Sweat ran down Yoo Joonghyuk’s back. His cock was hard, neglected, weeping against Kim Dokja’s stomach.

“I want you to come like this,” Kim Dokja said. “On top of me. Just like this.”

Yoo Joonghyuk was already there.

His body tensed. His head fell back. And with a wrecked, open sound, he came. Spilling between them, trembling all over, thighs spasming as Kim Dokja fucked him through it.

Kim Dokja came soon after.

Bodies shaking. Breathing jagged. Yoo Joonghyuk’s arms gave out, and he collapsed onto Kim Dokja’s chest, face pressed against his neck, too wrecked to speak.

Liquid dripped down Yoo Joonghyuk’s thighs. He let the warmth sit inside him as Kim Dokja stroked a hand down his back.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t move.

He didn’t want to.

He’d waited too long for this. 

For him.

Yoo Joonghyuk buried his face into the lean shoulder and breathed everything in while he still could.

Kim Dokja didn’t say anything. He just held him, fingers sifting gently through Yoo Joonghyuk’s damp hair, as if memorizing him piece by piece. 

Yoo Joonghyuk stayed where he was, full of him, marked and trembling. He didn’t ask what this meant. Didn’t dare to. He only held on, arms tightening just once around Kim Dokja, as if he was afraid the moment might vanish if he breathed too loud. And when he finally spoke, it was a whisper barely pulled from his chest. 

“…Don’t go yet.”

Notes:

My brother now calls me smut writer, former smut appreciator on every interaction.
He tells everyone I write sword fights and fix pipes QAQ

Chapter 11: Bunny Boy

Summary:

More smut. But shorter. (Fanart at the end, courtesy of @Chalalala15 or @Chalara12 on X)

 

“My arm is dying,” Kim Dokja said, voice muffled by Yoo Joonghyuk’s hair.

Yoo Joonghyuk stirred. His body ached everywhere.

Sore thighs, a dull throb deep in his spine, but he made an effort to lift his head. “You should’ve said something.”

He tried to sit up, but Kim Dokja’s hand immediately pressed him back down, palm cradling the back of his head. “No. Stay.”

“But your—”

“They can suffer.” Kim Dokja’s fingers threaded into his hair again, smoothing it lazily like he was petting something warm and precious. “This is fine.”

Yoo Joonghyuk let himself sink into it. To the warm chest beneath his cheek, the faint thump of a heartbeat he could count like seconds. 

There were still smudges of sweat between them, marks cooling on skin, the sticky remnants of everything they’d done. Twice. Three times, if he was counting the messy, frantic one in the shower. But this, right now? This was the part that Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know how to endure.

He shifted slightly, burying his face into the curve of Kim Dokja’s collarbone, where he could still smell a trace of the soap 

“What have you been doing?” he asked, voice low and hoarse.

Kim Dokja hummed. “What do you think?”

“Working,” Yoo Joonghyuk guessed.

“Of course.” Kim Dokja tilted his head back against the pillow. “I broke into someone’s office.”

Yoo Joonghyuk frowned. “Alone?”

“I don’t take plus-ones to crimes.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, no murder this time. I just needed their server.”

“You hacked it?”

“I don’t hack. I just…plug things in and wait for the blinking light to go green. Someone else makes the tools. I’m just the courier. With a lockpicking hobby.”

Yoo Joonghyuk was silent. Not judging. Just listening.

Kim Dokja continued, “The server room was freezing. All those blinking lights and fans. I thought my fingers were gonna fall off. Why do people refrigerate their computers?”

“Heat damage.”

“Still stupid.” Kim Dokja yawned into his wrist. “I got in, copied everything, got out.”

Yoo Joonghyuk let the words settle. They weren’t confessions so much as details tossed out like crumbs, but he caught each one. Held it. Treasured it.

He could picture it too clearly. Kim Dokja walking across the tiles, eyes scanning shadows, hands swift and precise with wires and ports. No one seeing him. No one knowing he was even there.

It hurt, strangely. Yoo Joonghyuk had seen worse. But the fact that Kim Dokja lived in the shadows, and only came up for air once a month in a room exclusively reserved for him, sparked something unsettling.

He wanted to ask why. Why live like that? Why not just stay with him? But all that came out was, “Did anyone see you?”

“No,” Kim Dokja said simply. “I’m good at what I do.”

Something soft bloomed inside his chest. Yoo Joonghyuk buried his face further in.

A silence stretched. A  pause while breath slowed and muscles relaxed and the clock ticked on in the background.

Then, the phone buzzed.

Kim Dokja’s phone. 

It lit up from where it had been thrown. Face-down, but vibrating insistently.

Yoo Joonghyuk stiffened. His jaw tensed. “Don’t.”

Kim Dokja exhaled. “It might be nothing.”

“It’s never nothing.”

Yoo Joonghyuk lifted his head to glare at the phone like it was an enemy. His entire body went taut, every protective instinct lighting up. He’d just gotten Kim Dokja here. Warm and quiet and breathing beside him. He wasn’t ready to let it end yet.

Kim Dokja, somehow, didn’t flinch. He didn’t look rattled or even annoyed. He just reached out, picked up the phone, and with a few taps of his thumb, turned it off.

No password check. No messages read.

He actually just turned it off.

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked.

Kim Dokja turned his attention back to him, and brushed his cheek with a soft smile. “There. It’s not important right now.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know what to say. So he just looked at him. At the faint bruises along Kim Dokja’s neck, the new scratch all over his back, the bite mark Yoo Joonghyuk had left near his ribs. The mess of black hair curling slightly at the ends, sticking to his forehead.

This man had stolen things. Lied. Murdered. Slipped through systems like a ghost. He could vanish in a breath. And yet he was here.

Just like this.

Yoo Joonghyuk lowered his head again and pressed his ear to Kim Dokja’s chest.

“You didn’t ask who it was,” Kim Dokja murmured.

“I don’t care,” Yoo Joonghyuk replied.

“You should.”

“I won’t.”

Kim Dokja didn’t speak again. He just wrapped both arms around Yoo Joonghyuk’s back and held him closer. They stayed that way for a long while. Warm. Quiet. Tangled in the dark, pretending. That just for tonight, the world didn’t exist outside of the bed.

And for once, Kim Dokja let it be true.

For once, he let his mind go still.

He listened to Yoo Joonghyuk’s breathing, the way it settled into rhythm against his chest. His own heartbeat slowed to match it.

It was strange how easy it was to drift off like this. With Yoo Joonghyuk beside him, it didn’t take the usual hours. No ceiling-staring. No doomscrolling on shitty webnovels. No loops of unfinished plans. Just warmth. A body. A heartbeat.

When he woke again later, much later, it was still dark out. He shifted, barely, and felt Yoo Joonghyuk’s arm flex around his waist.

“…How long did you sleep?” Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice was a low murmur against his temple.

Kim Dokja blinked slowly. “…Three hours.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t say anything at first. 

“That’s a record, isn’t it?”

Kim Dokja huffed, tired but amused. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

But he curled closer anyway.

Eventually, they both fell asleep again.

 

---

 

 

Yoo Joonghyuk was the first to wake.

His limbs ached faintly, and he was still sore in places that had no right to be, but his mind was calm. The room was quiet. The bed beside him still warm. He slid out carefully, pulling on pants, and made his way to the kitchen.

A few minutes later, he was slicing apples in silence. Precise, practiced. He carved them into clean arcs and curved ears, forming little rabbit shapes on a plate, just like last time. 

It had become a routine. Borderline religious.

He hurried back without wasting any precious seconds.

As he was arranging the plates, the bathroom door creaked behind him.

Kim Dokja padded out barefoot, damp hair sticking to his neck, wearing nothing but boxers and a half-buttoned shirt. He squinted at the sunlight, then blinked at the sight of Yoo Joonghyuk plating breakfast like a domestic fantasy.

For a moment, he just stood there. Watching.

Yoo Joonghyuk glanced back at him. “What?”

Kim Dokja shrugged. “Apple bunnies again?”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer. He turned to pour coffee into the fancy teacup, hiding the way his ears pinked.

“It’s just apples,” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered.

“Still,” Kim Dokja said, walking over. “I appreciate it.”

Kim Dokja brushed against his hips and took a seat.

They ate quietly for a bit. Kim Dokja stealing more slices than he should have, and Yoo Joonghyuk pretending not to notice.

Kim Dokja was sipping on his coffee, when a knock came to the door.

They both paused.

Yoo Joonghyuk tensed instinctively, but Kim Dokja waved a hand. “Relax. Probably the front desk.”

He stood, crossed the room, and opened the door.

Yoo Joonghyuk caught a bit of Bihyung’s silver hair before Kim Dokja slammed the door shut.

He turned around and grinned.

In his arms was a medium sized black box tied in a pretty pink bow.

“What’s that?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked, brow twitching.

“A present,” Kim Dokja said. “For you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk looked at him suspiciously.

Kim Dokja gave him a mild look. “It’s not a bomb.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“Just open it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk hesitated, then peeled back the lid.

Inside, nestled neatly in black cloth, was folded fabric headband. Smooth, matte, and at first glance, tastefully made.

It took him a second to register the soft structure beneath the cloth.

Then he lifted it out fully.

Two plush black bunny ears flopped upright.

The silence was immediate.

“…You ordered this?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked, voice neutral. Dangerously neutral.

Kim Dokja nodded. “Custom. Took a while, but it arrived on time.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at it.

Then back to Kim Dokja.

Then back to it again.

He lowered it back in the box.

To Kim Dokja’s surprise, Yoo Joonghyuk brushed the fur like it was something strange and precious. Like they were something fragile. He had expected Yoo Joonghyuk to at least blow up or chuck it across the room.

But his reaction was…mild.

Then, his fingers touched something hard tucked among the fabric in the box.

Yoo Joonghyuk paused.

He fished it out.

A small, metal plated tag. Attachable to a collar.

His eyes scanned it.

NAME: Yoo Joonghyuk
SPECIES: Domesticated Bunny Boy
PROPERTY OF: Kim Dokja
CAUTION: May Bite.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s entire body went still.

Kim Dokja took a sip of coffee and smiled at him over the rim. “I had it engraved.”

There was a beat of horror.

Yoo Joonghyuk looked at the tag.

Then the ears.

Then back at Kim Dokja.

He flung the whole box across the room.

Ah, there’s the reaction he was hoping for.

“I’m going to kill myself,” he said flatly.

Kim Dokja grinned. “You’ll still wear them though.”

 

---

 

And wear them he did.

The ears sat crooked on his head, one flopped to the side in defeat, the other barely upright. The collar was snug against his neck, catching the dim light with every shift of his throat. The tag clinked softly when he moved. Just enough sound to make Yoo Joonghyuk want to implode.

He refused to look at Kim Dokja. He stared at the wall instead, jaw tight, every inch of him tense and pink with mortification.

Kim Dokja, sprawled comfortably against the pillows like he had all the time in the world, just smiled lazily. Like a cat watching a rabbit tremble before pouncing.

"You’re adorable," he said.

"Shut up," Yoo Joonghyuk muttered.

"You're not denying it."

The blush traveled to his ears now. Kim Dokja reached out and flicked the droopy one playfully. “This one looks exhausted. Just like you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk grabbed a pillow and threatened to smother himself. “I hate you.”

"No, you don’t." Kim Dokja shifted forward, nudging Yoo Joonghyuk’s knees apart with casual ease. His hands were warm on Yoo Joonghyuk’s thighs, grounding. "You wore them. You let me put the collar on. And now you’re hard.”

Yoo Joonghyuk groaned and covered his face with one arm. “I’m never going to recover from this.”

Kim Dokja kissed the inside of his thigh, just above the bend of his knee. “Don’t worry, bunny. I’ll treat you reeeally well.”

Yoo Joonghyuk jolted. “Don’t call me that.”

But Kim Dokja only grinned and kissed higher. “Why not? You’re being so good for me. Ears on, cheeks flushed, legs open. My perfect little bunny.”

Yoo Joonghyuk made a choked noise, the muscles in his stomach tightening as Kim Dokja mouthed at the base of his cock slowly.

"You're enjoying this," Kim Dokja said, voice low. "Aren’t you?"

"...Shut up."

Kim Dokja licked a slow stripe up the underside, and Yoo Joonghyuk’s hips jerked. “That’s not a no.”

The teasing didn’t stop there. Kim Dokja took his time, mouthing and kissing, never giving him the satisfaction of being fully taken in. He circled the head with his tongue, sucked softly, then pulled away just when Yoo Joonghyuk’s breath caught. Over and over.

Yoo Joonghyuk was practically trembling.

"Please—" he gasped at one point.

Kim Dokja raised an eyebrow. “Please what?”

Yoo Joonghyuk looked like he wanted to sink through the bed. “...More.”

That earned him a satisfied hum, and finally, Kim Dokja took him in fully. Deep and slow, warm and wet. The collar tag jingled faintly when Yoo Joonghyuk’s hips bucked forward and Kim Dokja firmly held him down with both hands.

Yoo Joonghyuk was panting now, both hands fisting in the sheets, barely able to hold himself together.

He came embarrassingly fast.

Kim Dokja didn’t pull away. Just let him ride it out, let him shake and twitch and fall apart, keeping one hand on his stomach, steadying him.

When he finally collapsed back onto the mattress, breath ragged and ears slightly askew, Kim Dokja crawled up his body and kissed him gently on the cheek.

“Cute,” he whispered, brushing a thumb under Yoo Joonghyuk’s flushed eye. “Very cute.”

Yoo Joonghyuk mumbled something incoherent into his mouth and tried to hide again.

Kim Dokja didn’t let him.

The ears came off somewhere between kissing and straddling him. Kim Dokja tossed them aside with a casual flick, but the collar stayed on. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t complain. Not once.

Kim Dokja entered him with practiced ease, coaxing him open all over again. This time, slower. Softer. Still teasing, but no longer playing. His hands were gentle, but firm. He whispered things that made Yoo Joonghyuk’s heart stutter. Things about how warm he felt, how tight, how he’d been thinking about this all week.

“You wanted this too,” Kim Dokja murmured, lips brushing the shell of his ear.

Yoo Joonghyuk shivered and nodded. “...Yes.”

Kim Dokja pushed in deeper. “Say it.”

“I wanted you,” he said, barely audible. “All week.”

“That’s better.”

The rhythm built. Less punishing and messy than last night. This was indulgence. This was Kim Dokja claiming what was his, slowly and thoroughly, fucking him deep into the mattress while kissing and biting every part of him he could reach.

Yoo Joonghyuk arched when Kim Dokja hit just the right angle. His fingers scratched at his back.

The collar clinked when he moved.

Kim Dokja leaned down and kissed the tag where it rested against his throat.

“You're mine,” he said, with a grin. “Even if you pretend you hate it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t argue.

He couldn’t.

He just held on and let himself be taken apart again. Because somewhere along the way, he had accepted it. If this was the one thing that could beat Kim Dokja’s ghosts, then so be it.

 

Notes:

Thank you for the fanarts my love, my sweet, my dearest reader!! I love you so much muaaaaahhhh 💋💋💋❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️🐇🐇🐇
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Chapter 12: Knives Dull

Summary:

If last chapter was the calm, this chapter is a quiet storm.

 

The walls were green. Not hospital green, but rotting fruit green, nicotine-stained and sweating with heat. A slow ceiling fan turned, blades whining every few seconds like it hurt to move. 

The man stitching Kim Dokja up smelled like rubber and cleaning fluid. His hands were steady. Unlicensed, but he’d done this before.

Kim Dokja didn’t flinch.

The blade had gone in just below his ribs. It hadn’t hit anything major. He’d finished the job. Not cleanly, but he finished it.

Now, he lay on the table, blood running down his side, half-numb from painkillers that barely worked. His shirt was folded on a chair. A blade in his coat pocket, wrapped in a napkin. He hadn’t even washed his hands yet.

And she was there. Dabbing sweats out of his brows. Her coat was pristine. Her hair tied back for once. 

She hadn’t spoken at all.

When she did, her first words were cold as always.

“You used to be sharper than this. I suppose even knives go dull when you keep them in warm places.”

Kim Dokja didn’t reply. He looked up at the fan. Counted the seconds between its creaks.

The stitching continued.

She sighed, like someone looking at a spilled drink. He could feel the weight of her expectations like a hand around his throat.

“You should’ve seen it coming,” she said. Her voice wasn’t angry. It never was. “I thought I taught you better than this.”

Kim Dokja swallowed back the pain. It burned in his lungs, in his ribs, everywhere.

“You did,” he rasped. “I just—”

She cut him off with a slight tilt of her head. That was worse than yelling. She didn’t need to raise her voice to undo him.

“We don’t belong in that kind of life, Dokja. You know that, don’t you?”

He froze.

That kind of life.

She didn’t say it outright. She didn’t have to. Warm beds, safe homes. Sunday mornings. Someone making tea in the kitchen while you sleep a little longer. Laughter without looking over your shoulder.

They didn’t belong there. They never had.

“We’re not made for it,” she said, looking at the floor like she was reading a truth in the cracks. “Not when softness gets you killed.”

She reached for the bloodied towel and wrung it out over the sink. Red spiraled down the drain like water. Kim Dokja watched it vanish.

“If you’re so eager to be needed somewhere else, you don’t need to come back here.”

That one struck bone.

Like a guillotine dropped on his neck clean.

It was framed like a choice. But he knew better. 

He knew what it really meant: if your heart is split, then don’t bother showing your face. If you want another life, go have it. But don’t expect mine too.

He hadn’t said anything. She didn’t know anything. But somehow, she always knew.

Kim Dokja stared at her.

Something broke open in his throat.

“…Then why are you here?” he said, hoarse.

It came out before he could stop it. He hated how small his voice sounded, how it cracked on the last word.

“If you don’t care,” he forced out, “then why even bother coming?”

His mother didn’t look at him.

She wrung out the towel again. Calm and detached.

“Of course I care,” she said. “You’re my only child.”

The words should have meant something. They should have hurt less.

But they landed like a slap wrapped in gauze. Clean, dry, and impersonal.

What the hell did she mean by ‘ care’ ? Feeding him? Keeping him alive? Holding him to impossible standards so he wouldn’t die like she almost had? Did she think that was love?

Kim Dokja lay still, too hollow to speak. He wished she’d just hit him instead. Like what their father used to do. It would make it easier to blame.

She stepped closer. Not enough to meet his eyes, just enough to reach for the corner of the bloodied towel again. The one she had wrung out like it was just another chore. With a practiced motion, she wiped at the blood that had begun to crust along his side. Her hand never shook.

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t glance at his face.

It was the same gesture she used on the floor after a fight. The same rhythm as scrubbing a red stain from the tile.

No affection.

Just plain erasure.

The stitching continued. 

He bit the inside of his cheek. The pain grounded him, in some small way. Kept him from saying anything unforgivable. Kept the tears from rising.

All he had ever wanted…he couldn't even remember it. Recognition? Affection? For his mother to say she was proud?

Perhaps it was everything. At first.

He couldn’t even remember when that had changed. 

When her praise started to feel like the last drop of water before a long thirst. When he started counting her silences like a child waiting for punishment. When he started walking on eggshells, not because she was cruel, but because he never knew which version of her would show up.

He let his eyes close. He wanted to hide.

And for a second, he thought of Yoo Joonghyuk.

The bastard. The idiot. The person who saw through him.

“Just quit,” Yoo Joonghyuk had said on their last night together. “You don’t have to keep doing this. Stay with me. We’ll figure it out.”

He hated that memory. Hated the way it made him want something. Making him hope.

He hated how gentle Yoo Joonghyuk had been when he said it, like he actually meant it. Like he believed in some version of Kim Dokja that could exist outside this world.

Outside her.

He could almost laugh.

A simple life? Eating breakfast together? Waiting for the weekends?

What the fuck did he think this was?

There was no room for happiness in Kim Dokja’s body. Just old scars, muscle memory, and a soul trained not to hope. Hope would get you cut open. Hope would make you forget to check behind you. Hope would get someone else killed.

He clenched his jaw. His fingers twitched. 

The stitches tugged.

He needed to recalibrate.

That was all.

He just needed to stop thinking. Stop dreaming. Stop remembering what it felt like to be held with care.

Something curdled in his chest. It was neither grief nor anger. Just the gray static of knowing this would happen again. And again. And again.

His mother didn’t say another word. She didn’t need to.

Her silence screamed everything she believed.

And Kim Dokja lay still on that broken table, bleeding slowly into the towel, trying not to feel anything at all.

 

---

 

Back in Eden hotel, the restaurant was quiet.

Not just any late night quiet, but post-storm quiet. Like the whole building had exhaled and was waiting to see if it would be asked to breathe again.

Yoo Joonghyuk wiped down the last countertop in the hotel’s main kitchen, his hands moving on autopilot. The last dinner service had ended more than an hour ago. 

Most of the staff had already trickled out except for the overnight concierge team and a single junior dishwasher in the back room. The clatter of silverware had faded into silence.

His thoughts went back to Kim Dokja.

Many months have passed since. And Kim Dokja had kept coming back for him. Not just on the second weekends, but also randomly, between jobs.

They don’t always have sex. Sometimes they just laid next to each other. Talking about things that didn’t matter. At times, he’d arrive cold and broken. Other times, he’d smile like he was dragging a whole circus behind him. And every single time, he'd come bearing gifts as though to apologise for everything he had done.

Yoo Joonghyuk never knew what would get dragged in.

But still, he waited.

He would scrub the countertop each night a little more thoroughly. Prepared a few extra plates. Kept the kitchen open late. 

He didn't know the schedule. He counted the weekends, timed his breaks around the hour Kim Dokja might or might not arrive.

He waited.

At times, he’d wonder if it was all for naught.

But when he did arrive, all the waiting melted into warmth.

A fragile, brittle warmth. 

One that Yoo Joonghyuk had come to anticipate with every waking moment no matter how often it slipped through his fingers.

He was almost done for the night when a floor attendant ducked in, voice low.

“Chef, someone from the restaurant is asking to speak to you. Said she wanted to compliment the food.”

Yoo Joonghyuk glanced at the clock. “Now?”

“She insisted,” the attendant said, half-apologetic. “Seems calm, not drunk.”

He sighed, wiped his hands on a towel, and headed out.

The lounge lights had already been dimmed. Most tables were empty, but in the far corner, a woman sat alone with a half-finished glass of wine and an empty plate in front of her. She wasn’t looking around expectantly. She was reading the back of the menu card as if it might reveal a secret code.

Yoo Joonghyuk had dealt with guests like this before. Sometimes they asked about obscure ingredients. Sometimes they asked for the name of the vendor. Sometimes they just wanted to talk to someone.

He approached the table. “You had a comment about the food?”

She looked up slowly.

Her face was pleasant. Polished. The sort of elegance that didn’t shout for attention but earned it anyway. The kind of guest who would never yell in a restaurant, but could destroy you with one sentence on a comment card.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re the head chef?”

“I am.”

She nodded slightly, then lowered her gaze back to the table. Her fingers traced the edge of the wine glass. For a moment, she said nothing.

Yoo Joonghyuk waited. Silence wasn’t foreign to him. He’d learned it could say more than a mouthful.

“I don’t usually drink red,” she murmured eventually.

He didn’t respond.

“But this...works.” Her voice was faintly distant, as though she were speaking to herself. “Rich. A little bitter.”

Yoo Joonghyuk inclined his head slightly. “Was that your compliment?”

She glanced up. “No. You’re precise.”

Another pause.

“Do you always plate like that?”

“Yes.”

“Even for people who won’t notice?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes held his for a moment, unreadable. Then she looked down again.

“I suppose some people care even when they don’t show it.”

Still not a question. Not quite a praise either.

“Do you always work this late?” she asked.

“I close the kitchen.”

“Even when the guest list is light?”

He gave her a cautious look. “The hotel expects consistency.”

“Of course,” she murmured. “Consistency can be its own kind of devotion.”

The way she said it made it sound like she wasn’t talking about kitchens.

“If you have a specific comment, I can take it,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, already regretting coming out.

She hummed faintly, almost amused. “I can see why he likes you.”

That made him still.

“I’m sorry?”

She folded the napkin in front of her. Straight edges. Clinical movements.

“You don’t recognize me.”

He stared at her. “Should I?”

“No,” she said. “But I wondered if he told you.”

Her gaze lifted.

“I’m Kim Dokja’s mother.”

Silence dropped like a coin.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t move. The air in the room changed. Cold without any draft, as if he was standing in front of an open freezer.

She didn’t elaborate. Didn’t explain what she was doing here, or how she knew, or why now. She didn’t even offer a smile.

Lee Sookyung gestured to the seat across from her. “Sit.”

He sat down across from her without realising.

Now that he knew who she was, the familiarity hit a little too close to home. The same air. The same tone. The same quiet gaze that instilled fear and command without trying.

Lee Sookyung regarded him as though appraising a piece of furniture.

“You’re not what I pictured,” she said. “But I can see why.”

Yoo Joonghyuk clenched his fists. Holding back the urge to flip the table.

“What did you do to him?” he asked, voice low.

She studied him again. It felt like being put under an x-ray.

“You’ve been seeing him for a while now. You were still in debt when you met him, weren’t you?”

Yoo Joonghyuk stiffened.

She didn’t wait for him to confirm. “And now you’re not.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not.”

He met her eyes. “You came all the way here to insult me?”

“No.” She said slowly. “I was curious.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers curled against the table. “Where is he?”

“He’s recovering.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes widened.

She reached into her coat and pulled out a folded napkin. There were dark brown stains all over it. Dried blood.

“He won’t be coming tomorrow.”

She dropped it on the table. It contrasted hauntingly against the white.

Her tone didn’t shift. Not once. Not once has her face betrayed her for anger, or fear, or even concern.

Which made something ugly twist in Yoo Joonghyuk’s stomach.

“Where is he…?” 

He hated how his voice faltered. Shaken.

It didn’t go unnoticed. 

Lee Sookyung tilted her head slightly. She didn’t answer. She was gauging his reaction.

“What do you want from me?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked again.

His eyes darted to the bloodied cloth.

“I don’t want anything from you,” she said after a while. “I just wanted to see.”

“See what?”

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she looked around the empty restaurant. The quiet. The gleaming glasses. The careful perfection of his space.

“It’s clean here.”

Another beat.

“Too clean.”

Yoo Joonghyuk narrowed his eyes.

“Did you ever ask him why he comes back?” she asked, very softly.

He didn’t respond.

“I’m not going to stop him,” she said. “If he wants to keep seeing you, he will. If he doesn’t…he won’t.”

It sounded simple.

Yet cruel.

She stood.

“I just came to see for myself. What kind of person he’s becoming.” She met his gaze. “And what kind of person you are, to let him go soft.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stood too. “He’s not soft.”

“No,” she said. “But he could be.”

She adjusted her coat. Glanced at the empty seat where she’d been sitting like it had already forgotten her.

“Thank you for the meal.”

He blinked.

Words caught in Yoo Joonghyuk’s throat. He couldn’t get a single word out.

As she passed him, she paused.

“I came to say this.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “You can keep him. If that’s what he chooses.”

Then she walked away.

He didn’t realize he was still holding his breath until the door shut behind her.

And for a long time, Yoo Joonghyuk stayed in the dark, empty restaurant, the ghost of her presence curdling everything she hadn’t said.

It explained everything.

He had met the ghost who raised him.

Not a villain. Not a monster. Just a woman carved from the same hard edges she passed down. The same silences. The same precise cuts never deep enough to bleed outright, but always enough to scar.

And Kim Dokja…

Yoo Joonghyuk pressed a hand to a chair. Steadying himself.

She hadn’t come to sever anything. She’d come to witness it. To measure the distance.

And she had said it. 

    “You can keep him.”

Was it a permission? Or a threat? Perhaps in some sort of twisted way, a blessing. But it sounded closer to a plain and simple truth.

    “If that’s what he chooses.”

Kim Dokja must have been tearing himself apart over those words. Overthinking everything. Drowning in her voice long after she’d gone quiet.

Yoo Joonghyuk knew that look. The panic tucked beneath stillness.

The readiness to run before anyone could push him.

But she hadn’t pushed him.

She left the door open.

That much was obvious.

A resolve settled in his chest.

He could help rebuild whatever was left. Not perfectly, not easily, but piece by aching piece. The chance was right there.

Because even if Kim Dokja had been raised on silence and control, Yoo Joonghyuk had learned something else.

Kim Dokja didn’t need to be fixed.

He just needed someone who would stay.

Yoo Joonghyuk picked up the bloodied cloth.

It was heavier than it looked.

Something slid out from the folds — a card.

An address…

To a mechanic shop.

He didn’t stop to wonder how or why she knew.

He didn’t stop at all.

He ran.

 

 

Notes:

Please forgive me for this anticlimactic confrontation…I had an undiagnosed, unchecked mommy issue that I have partially overcomed. It might have…bled through (pun intended).

Chapter 13: Marked

 

The street was still.

The subtle hum of the city’s decay bled through a crack in the boarded window. Neon leaked faintly through, painting a sickly red that colored the wall like blood.

Yoo Joonghyuk stood in front of the door. The keypad blinked faintly beside his shoulder. He made no move to press it or to knock on the door.

Above the doorframe, a hidden camera lens watched him.

Kim Dokja sat in the shadows, staring at the door like it had wronged him.

His finger rested against the trigger of a gun. The other hand clutching the wound in his side, where the gauze had long since failed and warmth was pooling again.

There was only one reason why Yoo Joonghyuk would be standing there right now.

The fucking hag.

Of course she sent him.

It wasn’t enough that she’d hollowed him out and built him into a blade. Wasn’t enough that she broke him. No. She had to reach further. Dig deeper. She had to find the one thing — the ONE goddamn thing that felt like it might’ve been his.

She got to him.

Of course she did.

Why wouldn’t she? She’d always been good at finding the cracks. Always knew where to tap.

He watched the door, watched the camera feed paint Yoo Joonghyuk’s face in ghostly grayscale. Hands at his sides. Waiting like he had a right to stand there. Like he hadn’t already been rewritten with her fingerprints on his spine.

He was tainted now.

Ruined.

There was no coming back from it.

Kim Dokja pressed his palm harder against the wound. His vision swam, static at the edges. The blood was seeping through the cloth. He should’ve stayed upstairs. He should’ve locked everything down. Thrown the breaker and left the front porch in darkness.

But some pathetic part of him…the part that still remembered the warmth and the touch, had moved. 

When his mind finally caught up, it had dragged him to the bottom of the steps. It didn’t care that the stitching reopened. It only chased the light behind the door.

A knock reverberated through the steel. 

"Kim Dokja," Yoo Joonghyuk said through the door.

His voice was soft. Full of longing.

Kim Dokja shut his eyes and felt it like a slap.

He shouldn’t have come. 

He should’ve known better. 

The version of Yoo Joonghyuk that belonged to Kim Dokja had died the moment she entered the equation. The Yoo Joonghyuk who cuts apple bunnies. The one who watched him like he wanted to understand without prying. The one who held his wrists like they were something gentle.

Gone.

Replaced with another puppet.

Kim Dokja exhaled shakily. Not a laugh. Not a sob. Something cracked and empty in between.

He pushed himself up, and staggered to the door. 

The muzzle of the gun rested against the peephole with a heavy thud.

"Get lost," he said.

The silence that followed was thick.

"I came to—" Yoo Joonghyuk began.

"Shut up."

His voice wasn’t loud. Just sharp. Like the edge of a blade pressed to skin without cutting.

Kim Dokja’s breath hitched. His wound throbbed with every syllable, but he didn’t stop.

"She got you. You know that, don’t you?"

Yoo Joonghyuk said nothing.

"She always does," Kim Dokja continued. "She finds the things I care about and stains them. Leaves her scent. Like a fucking predator."

He laughed under his breath. It was a terrible sound. Crooked and bitter.

"I should’ve known better. I should’ve known I don’t get to keep anything in this life. Nothing I can hold. Nothing that’s really mine."

His grip faltered, just slightly, as blood slicked his fingers. 

He leaned forward, forehead against the door. The cold of the metal helped. A little. He wondered, fleetingly, if the door could hold him upright once he passed out. Maybe it would hold him better than anyone else ever had.

“This…” he rasped, “is the last time I’ll repeat myself. Get lost. Before I shoot you through this door.”

Kim Dokja didn’t hear footsteps retreating. Just a long silence. A heavy, stupid silence that pressed into his skull.

Then Yoo Joonghyuk spoke, quiet enough that it almost didn’t register.

“She didn’t send me.”

Kim Dokja wanted to believe it.

“But I’ll go. For now.”

He wanted to believe those words.

“I’ll be waiting for you. Always.”

Kim Dokja bit down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste copper. Anything to stay grounded. Anything to keep himself from reaching for the keypad like a fool.

He punched the door with the hilt of his gun. The metal trembled loud under the shock, emphasizing his next words.

“Fuck. Off.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t leave right away. He lingered outside, as if waiting for Kim Dokja to undo his words.

He listened until the silence changed. Until Yoo Joonghyuk finally retreated, like fog peeling off glass.

Gun slid to the floor with a dull thud.

Then, and only then, did he let himself slump to the floor. 

He didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean any of it. But he’d rather swallow barbed wire than admit it.

His fingers twitched uselessly against the blood-slick floor.

Every part of him ached. Not just from the wound, but the places no one could stitch up. The spaces carved hollow, under his ribs. The places that throbbed under memories and pressure.

Kim Dokja blinked slowly, eyes unfocused. The room was swimming in shadows now. The neon outside flickered through the boarded cracks like a dying heartbeat. Red, then gone. Red, then gone.

His breaths came in shallow waves. He didn’t even notice when one eye began to shut. The weight of consciousness was simply… too much.

His body didn’t move. It curled tighter, quiet and pathetic against the door like an abandoned animal.

The taste of iron hadn’t left his tongue. He could still feel Yoo Joonghyuk's voice reverberating in his bones.

    “I’ll be waiting for you. Always.”

Fucking idiot.

Didn’t he know that everything Kim Dokja touched fell apart?

Didn’t he know that his waiting was an execution, not a kindness?

The edge of his vision blurred. Then warped. Then dissolved.

A low hum built beneath his ribs, white noise static and drowning. His final coherent thought wasn’t a word. It was the ache of something left unfinished. The way Yoo Joonghyuk had looked at him like he still believed there was something worth saving.

He didn’t even feel it when his forehead hit the floor.

Then everything faded into black.

 

 

---

 

 

The garden was too bright.

Sunlight spilled over the water like gold leaf, dazzling and surreal. There was no pain here. No noise. No blood seeping through gauze. Just warm grass beneath his bare feet, soft air that smelled like clean wind and distant citrus. The world trembled like an artwork too delicate to be touched.

Kim Dokja stood at the edge of a narrow stone path that threaded across a stream so clear it looked painted. On the other side, something waited. He couldn’t say what. But he knew it with the same certainty he knew how to breathe.

Peace.

It stood just beyond the final stone. Just a step.

He could feel the light on his face. Feel the pull in his chest to keep walking. No one here could hurt him. There were no contracts. No mothers. No past.

He took one step forward.

Then another.

A final stone remained.

The water rippled.

Then a hand clamped around his wrist, yanking him backward so hard the sky split open.

He fell.

The garden shattered.

Pain returned in full colour.

Kim Dokja came to with a strangled breath, lungs burning, whole body cold with sweat. He gasped and flinched, reaching instinctively for the gun that was no longer in reach.

Instead, there were hands on his torso. Pressing on the gauze. 

“Stay down.”

That voice.

Kim Dokja blinked slowly, eyes adjusting to the dull, flickering light. Shadows loomed overhead, the broken window casting jagged shapes along the floor. The chill of early morning wind filtered in through broken glass.

And Yoo Joonghyuk was crouched over him. Brow furrowed. Blood on his forearms that didn’t belong to Kim Dokja. Faint cuts decorated his wrist and forearms. Nothing deep, but enough to sting.

“You broke my window,” Kim Dokja rasped, voice barely a whisper.

“You were bleeding out,” Yoo Joonghyuk replied, retying the gauze with quiet precision.

Kim Dokja squinted at the small scratches along Yoo Joonghyuk’s arm. Red welts where the glass had dragged skin open. “You’re a chef,” he mumbled. “Take care of your hands.”

Yoo Joonghyuk paused. His eyes lifted, meeting Kim Dokja’s gaze in the dark.

“You’re one to talk,” he said.

“Still,” he added, eyes slipping half shut, “cutting through glass like that…idiot move.”

“Wouldn’t have to if you let me in.”

Kim Dokja didn’t respond.

Not immediately.

Not for a long time.

He stared at the ceiling like it might cave in. Let the silence stretch until it pressed uncomfortably between them. The wind moved the curtains in tired, broken rhythm. A distant siren warbled across the city.

Finally, he whispered, “You shouldn’t have come.”

“I know.”

“I told you to fuck off.”

“You did.”

Kim Dokja’s eyes slid sideways, staring at him through lashes heavy with exhaustion.

“But you came anyway.”

Yoo Joonghyuk met his gaze and didn’t blink. “You didn’t mean it.”

Kim Dokja looked like he wanted to deny it. Wanted to laugh. To spit something sharp and bitter to drive the man out for good.

But he didn’t.

Because that dream was still sitting in his lungs like fog. Because the pain was creeping back into his bones and he had no strength left to carry it alone.

Because for one second, while crossing the garden, he really had thought no one would come after him.

His eyelids drooped.

“…I almost made it,” he whispered.

“To where?”

Kim Dokja didn’t answer.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t press.

Instead, he put a blanket over Kim Dokja’s waist, checked the dressing one last time, and exhaled. A long, low breath. His shoulders slumped a little. The adrenaline was wearing off.

He slumped next to him and stayed there.

“I’ll fix the window later,” Yoo Joonghyuk murmured, brushing glass shards away from the floor.

Kim Dokja’s voice came barely audible, blurred by sleep.

“…bring apple bunnies.”

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked. He stilled.

Then softly, he said, “…okay.”

And Kim Dokja let his eyes shut.

This time, he didn't dream of a garden. He was back at the hotel suite with Yoo Joonghyuk. Drinking camomile tea and laughing at apple bunnies.

Chapter 14: Eepy Tea

Summary:

Kim Dokja gets pampered <3

 

The problem with inviting a man like Yoo Joonghyuk into your bedroom, besides the obvious complications, was that he refused to mind his own business.

Kim Dokja had been carried to the bed, changed, and wrapped in warm sheets. His head was still light and numb from the loss of blood, when Yoo Joonghyuk spoke.

“…Why is there an industrial fridge in here?”

Kim Dokja cracked one eye open.

“Oh. That,” Kim Dokja said, gesturing vaguely. He tried to think, but clearly, his brain was as out-of-maintenance as his body was.

“It’s for my sleepy tea.” Kim Dokja said with a deadpan so practiced it could pass for sincerity.

There was a beat of silence.

Yoo Joonghyuk wrenched the fridge open.

Inside: rows upon rows of liquor. Soju, gin, wine, whiskey, vodka, and a small unidentified jug wrapped in black duct tape labeled “do not drink. unless the hag knocks” .

“…This is all alcohol.”

Kim Dokja didn’t even look ashamed. “They're herbal.”

“I feel sorry for your liver.”

“I can always buy a new one.”

Yoo Joonghyuk muttered something under his breath that sounded distinctly like a curse, and closed the fridge with more force than necessary.

The bottles inside clinked against each other.

A few minutes passed in silence. 

Kim Dokja expected Yoo Joonghyuk to maybe sulk quietly in a corner like he usually did when the world didn’t make sense.

Instead, Yoo Joonghyuk stalked off without a word. Kim Dokja heard him going downstairs and the fridge in the actual kitchen open, followed by the rustle of dry air and disappointment.

A pause.

“You have nothing in here.”

Kim Dokja blinked at the ceiling. “That’s not true. There’s ice.”

In the matter of seconds, Yoo Joonghyuk was already back, slipping his jacket on with military efficiency, jaw tight, like the empty fridge had personally insulted his ancestors.

“I’m going to the store.”

“Why?”

“You have blood loss. You’re dehydrated. And your ‘tea’ is the fastest way to make your liver sleep forever.” Yoo Joonghyuk turned from the door, expression flat. “You probably haven’t eaten in days.”

Kim Dokja blinked, like the thought hadn’t even occurred to him.

He opened his mouth, and closed it again. Then, shamelessly he said, “I had some cheese last night.”

“The ones that come with alcohol don’t count.”

“Still food.”

Yoo Joonghyuk shot him a glare that could've sliced bone.

Kim Dokja raised both hands. “Fine, fine. But you’re not going to find a store open this late.”

“I’ll find one.”

“Take my car,” he tossed a key at him. “I'll drag you into another debt if you crash it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk already grimaced at the implication.

 

---

 

Yoo Joonghyuk returned an hour later.

With newp equipments, fresh ingredients, and bottled water.

The kitchen came to life for the first time in forever.

Eventually, Kim Dokja peeled himself upright. It was a slow effort. He clutched at the edge of the bed frame, limbs stiff and head foggy. His body hated him, and frankly, it had every reason to.

He made it to the doorway of the kitchen and leaned against it like a ghost with poor posture.

Yoo Joonghyuk stood at the stove, sleeves rolled up, faint cuts still visible along his forearms from the shattered window. A pot was boiling. A pan sizzled softly. Something warm and savory filled the air.

Kim Dokja sat down without a word. Watching Yoo Joonghyuk move with quiet precision.

Focused, efficient, and utterly grounded. It struck him, distantly, that he had never actually seen him cook before. The food had always just… appeared. Like everything else Yoo Joonghyuk touched. Like the man himself, who had shown up and overturned his life. Who chased him down a busy street. Who broke through glass to drag him back from the edge.

And now, here he was again, bringing purpose to a kitchen Kim Dokja had long since abandoned.

After a while, Kim Dokja spoke.

“She told you where to find me, didn’t she?”

Yoo Joonghyuk glanced over. “No.”

“Don’t lie.”

He looked away.

“She left your address in a bloodied napkin.”

Kim Dokja’s jaw flexed, like something was straining behind his teeth.

“She always finds a way,” he said eventually. “Even when I think I’ve covered my tracks. Even when I try to disappear. I should’ve known she’d find you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk turned off the stove. “She showed up, yes. Said her piece. But I came here because I wanted to.”

Kim Dokja looked unconvinced. “She always does this. She waits until I care about something, and then she…” He trailed off. “She digs her claws in. Marks it. Makes it hers.”

“She didn’t touch me.”

“Not physically,” Kim Dokja muttered. “That’s not how she works.”

A bitter silence fell between them.

Yoo Joonghyuk plated the food. Pushed a bowl toward Kim Dokja. Rice and soup, something simple and warm.

Yoo Joonghyuk said, “You’re bleeding. Again.”

“I’m always bleeding.”

“You should eat.”

Kim Dokja stared at the food. “You’re good at this.”

“At what?”

“This whole domestic caretaker thing. You’d make a great wife.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t entertain it. He set his own bowl down, pulled out a chair, and sat.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t eat right away.

Kim Dokja poked at his bowl with a spoon. He wasn’t hungry, but the heat was comforting. It made the pain recede a little, or at least blur around the edges.

Then Yoo Joonghyuk said, without looking up, “You don’t have to think about her.”

Kim Dokja’s fingers stilled. “She’s always there.”

“I know.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s voice was level. “But you don’t have to let her take up all the space.”

Kim Dokja smiled faintly, like someone humoring a child who didn’t understand how the world worked. “That’s not how trauma works.”

“I’m not asking you to forget.” Yoo Joonghyuk met his eyes now. “I’m asking you to stop fighting alone.”

Kim Dokja stared at him.

“I don’t want you dead,” Yoo Joonghyuk continued, calm and terrifyingly earnest. “I don’t want to keep chasing you through blood and glass. I just want…” His voice dipped. “I want you to stay.”

The words rang out like a bell.

Kim Dokja laughed.

Not because it was funny, but because he didn’t know how else to survive that kind of sincerity. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I’m serious.”

“You always are.”

Kim Dokja looked down. His chopstick tapped gently against the rim of the bowl. “Do you even know what you’re asking?”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer right away.

“I’m asking you to stop trying to disappear.”

Kim Dokja leaned back in his chair and tipped his head back. His voice was quiet. “If I stop running…she wins.”

“No,” Yoo Joonghyuk said. “She only wins if you let her decide what your life looks like.”

A long silence followed.

Then Kim Dokja said, too tired to deflect it properly, “You’re asking me to let myself want something.”

“Yes.”

Kim Dokja exhaled.

He looked at the man in front of him. The one thing. The one person that he had ever wanted in life. And he finally let himself believe it. Just for a little bit.

Kim Dokja blinked once. Then he picked up his spoon and took a bite of the rice.

Yoo Joonghyuk picked up his own bowl.

Between them sat a small dish. Kim Dokja hadn’t noticed it before. 

Apple bunnies freshly sliced. Familiar. One had uneven ears. Another was just slightly bruised.

Kim Dokja stared for a moment. He picked up the one with uneven ears, and ate it.

After the quiet had stretched long enough to soften into something natural, Kim Dokja glanced at the window still patched with makeshift boards. His voice came low, drowsy.

“You really broke my window just to play house?”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t miss a beat. “You would’ve died, dumbass.”

Kim Dokja choked on his food and laughed. He looked down at his half-empty bowl.

“Thanks for the food,” he said eventually.

Yoo Joonghyuk only nodded.

 

---

 

They returned to the bedroom once more.

Yoo Joonghyuk moved like it was second nature, taking the first-aid kit from the shelf without being told. Kim Dokja didn’t ask how he knew where it was.

Kim Dokja laid back on the bed with his phone raised above his face, thumb lazily scrolling. The screen cast a faint blue glow across his tired features. The novel he’d opened had some absurdly long title. Something about regressors, demon kings, and aristocracy. Total garbage. He was twenty chapters in.

Yoo Joonghyuk sat beside him and peeled back the edge of the bandage. A low hiss escaped Kim Dokja's lips.

“Put your phone down,” Yoo Joonghyuk said without looking up. “You'll get a headache.”

Kim Dokja didn’t. “What are you, my mom?”

Yoo Joonghyuk said nothing. He tightened the fresh gauze a little more than necessary.

Kim Dokja huffed out a breath of laughter. “She wouldn’t have cared either way.”

The words dropped between them like loose change. Not heavy enough to crush, but enough to be noticed.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands paused for just a moment. “You need to fix your mommy issue.” Then he resumed, quieter this time.

Kim Dokja rolled his eyes and closed the app. Setting the phone aside.

“You done cooking, chef?”

Yoo Joonghyuk finished tying off the new bandage. “Don’t move too much. You’ll tear it again.”

Kim Dokja hummed. “Then you’ll just have to come patch me up again.”

Yoo Joonghyuk looked up. He said nothing, but his eyes lingered a second longer than usual. Burning the details of Kim Dokja, as if he'd disappear again at any given point

Kim Dokja shifted, and the bed creaked beneath him. “You could stay,” he said, casually. “I mean. If you want.”

He patted the empty side of the mattress.

“I’ve got space. And apparently a bunny fetish now.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a flat stare.

Kim Dokja grinned. “I’m just saying. You keep feeding me cute food and patching me up. You’re setting a dangerous precedent.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer. He stood slowly, brushing invisible dust off his palms. His expression gave away very little, but his eyes lingered. His footsteps were quiet as he crossed to the other side of the bed.

He sat.

Kim Dokja turned toward him with a smile. “What, no protest? I thought you’d accuse me of seducing you again.”

Yoo Joonghyuk met his gaze. “You are seducing me.”

“Oh no,” Kim Dokja deadpanned. “Not the accountability.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t flinch. He looked at Kim Dokja like he was memorizing something. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Joke when you want something real.”

Kim Dokja blinked, and for a second, something flickered in his expression. Too quick to catch unless you knew where to look. He leaned forward, slowly, just enough to close the space between them. Their knees brushed.

“I guess I want a lot of things I’m not supposed to ask for.”

Yoo Joonghyuk's breath caught in his throat.

Then, quietly, Kim Dokja said, “So take what you want. Before I disappear again.”

There was no bravado in it. No teasing. Just an invitation. Soft, aching, and terrifying.

Yoo Joonghyuk moved like someone afraid to wake from a dream. He reached out, cupped Kim Dokja’s cheek, and kissed him slowly, with all the patience of someone trying not to break something fragile.

Kim Dokja melted into it, fingers curling into Yoo Joonghyuk’s shirt like he was trying to ground himself.

The kiss broke with a breath.

Then Yoo Joonghyuk shifted, moved down. Trailing his mouth along Kim Dokja’s throat, down the line of his chest. He hesitated only once, looking up for permission.

Kim Dokja’s hand threaded through his hair. A small nod.

Yoo Joonghyuk lowered himself further. Nowhere near the fresh bandage. He avoided it, as if touching it might undo everything.

And for once, Kim Dokja didn’t try to say anything clever. He just let himself feel.

His hands were careful, warm where they pressed into Kim Dokja’s thighs. One hand bracing just beside Kim Dokja’s hip, the other resting lightly on the curve of his leg.

Kim Dokja had half a mind to make a joke. Something about surgeons. Or professional focus. Something to fill the silence and the unsettleness of being laid bare, vulnerable, and wanting.

His mouth was dry. And Yoo Joonghyuk’s breath was already ghosting over the inside of his thigh.

“Joonghyuk-ah…” 

Yoo Joonghyuk looked up. His eyes held no hesitation.

“You don’t have to…” Kim Dokja started, but the words withered away as Yoo Joonghyuk leaned in, lips brushing skin.

“I want to,” he said, low and certain.

And then he kissed him again along the seam of his hip. The tender places usually gone ignored. The parts no one else ever lingered on.

Kim Dokja’s breath hitched.

He wasn’t used to this. He's always used sex as currency. Sex as distraction. As transaction.

But Yoo Joonghyuk wasn't any of that. He didn’t rush. He treated him like something breakable, even when Kim Dokja knew damn well he wasn’t.

When Yoo Joonghyuk finally took him into his mouth, Kim Dokja gasped. The pressure and the warmth hit him immediately. 

Hands stayed firm on Kim Dokja’s thighs, holding him open but not forcing anything. Always mindful of the injury, always listening to the sound of his breathing.

Kim Dokja's fingers twisted into the sheets. His body didn’t know whether to fight or fall apart.

He let his eyes close. He didn’t need to see. It was too much to look at Yoo Joonghyuk’s face. That impossible tenderness, the patience in every movement. The way he never once lost control, even when Kim Dokja did.

“Look at me.” Yoo Joonghyuk said. “Don't run.”

Kim Dokja opened his eyes. They were blown wide when Yoo Joonghyuk took him fully down his throat.

Pleasure built quickly. It rose like tidewater, lapping at his edges, steady and relentless.

His body jerked once, involuntarily, and Yoo Joonghyuk paused.

“You okay?” he murmured, lips brushing sensitive skin.

Kim Dokja let out a breathless laugh. “You're the first person to ever ask me that during a blowjob.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t smile, but his grip tightened slightly. His thumb brushed the inside of Kim Dokja’s thigh.

“I’m serious,” he said.

Kim Dokja swallowed. His throat felt tight. “I know.” He dragged in a shaky breath. “Don’t stop.”

So Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t.

He kept going, unrushed, focused. His mouth was warm, his hands holding them in place.

Kim Dokja had no defense against this kind of gentleness. Against being treated like someone who deserved it.

He came quietly, the way he did everything. He curled in on himself slightly, breath shuddering, body clenching around the soft ache from the wound and something more.

Yoo Joonghyuk pulled back only after Kim Dokja’s breathing evened out. He swallowed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then leaned to check the bandage again.

“Still clean,” he muttered, half to himself.

Kim Dokja stared at the ceiling, flushed and dazed. “Was that your main concern the entire time?”

“You’re injured.”

“You just gave me head like you were reading instructions off a medical journal.”

Yoo Joonghyuk looked unimpressed. “You’re welcome.”

Kim Dokja barked a laugh. He didn’t know if it was from affection or hysteria or some bleeding mix of both.

He reached out. Fingers brushing Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw.

“You didn’t have to be that gentle.” 

“I did,” Yoo Joonghyuk replied, without missing a beat. “Because no one else ever was.”

Kim Dokja looked at him. Tingles bloomed in his chest.

Then he pulled Yoo Joonghyuk in by the collar and kissed him. Messy and grateful with the force of nothing like the ones they’d shared before.

Kim Dokja pulled away. His voice came out hoarse, “When I recover… I’m coming for your ass.”

Yoo Joonghyuk scoffed. “Then stop ripping a new hole in yourself.”

There was a beat. Then Kim Dokja snorted. A tired, broken kind of laugh.

“You’re lucky I’m too injured to pin you down.”

“Go to sleep,” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered.

And Kim Dokja did. Without his sleepy tea. With just the warmth of someone next to him and a dream of apple bunnies jumping the fences.

 

Chapter 15: Secret Base

Summary:

Yoo Joonghyuk attempts to clean out Kim Dokja’s plague nest.

Notes:

I didn't decide on the hotel name until this chapter lol

 

“I can't believe you’re doing this,” Kim Dokja said, voice hoarse with sleep and betrayal. “This is a hate crime.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t reply.

He was too busy dragging entire bottles of soju out of the industrial fridge and dumping them, one by one, into a black trash bag with the solemnity of a man performing a funeral rite. Somewhere in the background, the sink hissed as he rinsed out empties like they had personally wronged him.

“You're the 1920s Prohibition incarnate,” Kim Dokja continued from where he lay on the bed, still swaddled in his blankets like a disgruntled larva. “This is unfair. This is—hey! That one’s vintage.”

Yoo Joonghyuk popped the cork on a suspiciously expensive bottle of wine and dumped it straight down the bathroom sink.

“Monster,” Kim Dokja muttered.

He let out an exasperated sigh as another glass bottle clinked into the trash bag. 

“That fridge’s been with me longer than most people.”

“That explains a lot,” Yoo Joonghyuk said flatly. “You should’ve died ten times over from liver failure.”

Kim Dokja watched as he squatted in front of the open fridge, evaluating the next row of chaos.

And then Yoo Joonghyuk paused.

His gaze landed on THE jug. That one jug in the corner, ominously wrapped in black duct tape.

He reached for it warily. “What the hell is this?”

Kim Dokja squinted across the room like he needed to verify it was that jug. “Ah. That’s the express ticket to see God.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Don’t open it,” Kim Dokja added lazily. “It’ll make your eyelashes fall off.”

“…Why is it labeled ‘do not drink unless the hag knocks’ ?”

“Because that’s when you drink it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk held the jug like it might explode. “What’s even in this?”

Kim Dokja yawned. “I don't know. Once melted part of the table. Other times I used it as an emergency grenade. You should've seen the other guy.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him, then at the jug again.

He finally stood up with the jug still in hand and muttered, “I don’t even know how to dispose of this.”

“Legally? You don’t.”

Yoo Joonghyuk grimaced and shoved it back inside the fridge. “You need therapy.”

“I'm already in one. Look at me.” Kim Dokja gestured at his blanket burrito form. “Drinking nothing but water and suffering.”

“Your bedroom should be classified as a biohazard.”

“You should be honored,” Kim Dokja said, closing his eyes. “Very few people get invited into my plague nest.”

“I broke in. That’s not an invitation.”

“And now you’re cleaning my fridge. Congratulations, you’ve unlocked the domestic route. You're getting the good ending.”

Yoo Joonghyuk muttered something unflattering in return. Kim Dokja smiled to himself, tucking deeper into the covers.

It started with good intentions.

After clearing the fridge (and possibly violating five separate waste disposal laws), Yoo Joonghyuk stood in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed, surveying the rest of the wreckage.

The countertops were clear. Suspiciously clear. No spice rack. No knife block. Not even a kettle.

He opened the first cabinet.

A nest of crumpled takeout menus and expired instant noodles fell out like the ghosts of meal plans past. Inside, a random dusty gun. Further in, clear jars with suspicious yellow liquid and something shaped like eyeballs floating inside. No labels.

A cockroach might’ve fled the scene, but it could’ve also just been the wind.

The second cabinet revealed five paper plates, all still shrink-wrapped, crumpled money with currency he didn't recognise, a taser, and two katanas for some reason.

The third one had a crowbar, three burner phones, pill bottles, and what looked like a half-empty bottle of acetone stuffed inside an old cereal box.

Yoo Joonghyuk stared.

Not even pests would come anywhere near this possibly radioactive ‘kitchen’. And he had cooked here the night before. He could physically feel his years of culinary integrity washing down the drain where all the booze had gone.

Then, from the bedroom, Kim Dokja’s muffled voice drifted in.

“If you find the Beretta, don’t touch it. It’s got a hair trigger.”

Yoo Joonghyuk closed the cabinet slowly. He didn't even know what a hair trigger meant.

He opened another one.

This time it was a drawer. A utensil drawer, allegedly. Inside were six mismatched chopsticks, a collection of USBs labeled things like “Taxes probably” and “blackmail material,” and folding knives of different colours. 

There was also a rubber duck for reasons he refused to think about. But curiosity got to him.

He held it up. “Why is there a rubber duck in your kitchen?”

Kim Dokja’s voice came again. “Don't squeeze it!”

Yoo Joonghyuk put it back and closed the drawer with force.

He found a clean pot in the oven of all places. He muttered something sharp under his breath and started boiling water. The rice cooker was still in its box, gathering dust on the top shelf like an unused wedding gift.

Kim Dokja shuffled in fifteen minutes later, still swaddled in his duvet, looking like a sentient regret burrito. He dropped into the chair at the kitchen counter, watching Yoo Joonghyuk go about the miracle of navigating around seemingly innocent looking objects and visibly illegal items.

“How's the reorganizing?”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t look up. “Terrible.”

“You found the duck?”

“I think I saw Satan being tied up somewhere.”

Kim Dokja grinned sleepily. “You should check the second freezer.”

“I’m not going near it.”

“Suit yourself. But if you see a lunchbox that glows in the dark, don’t open it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk paused the rice rinse, closed his eyes, and took a long, deep breath through his nose.

Then he turned around and said, deadpan, “I thought you were rich.”

“I am.” He replied without blinking.

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him. Really stared this time, like he was trying to see through the skin and into the internal logic (or lack thereof) that kept Kim Dokja’s brain barely stitched together.

“You’re a VVIP at Eden,” he said eventually. “You tip the concierge in USD. You used to throw money at escorts with a five-figure wallet.” His eyes flicked toward the moldy tile grout and the flaky paint on the ceiling. “And you live like this?”

Kim Dokja shrugged.

“You’re a biological hazard.”

“I’m a minimalist,” Kim Dokja corrected, stretching one arm out and knocking a suspicious pill bottle off the counter by accident. It bounced once, then rolled under the fridge with a soft clink that made Yoo Joonghyuk visibly flinch. 

“I live with only what I need.”

“And what is that?”

“Have you checked the crates by the door?”

Why did he even bother asking.

Yoo Joonghyuk pinched the bridge of his nose like he was trying to physically extract the migraine. 

“You could live in a penthouse suite with heated floors.”

“I do. If you press a button upstairs, this whole floor goes up in flames.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a long, haunted look.

He turned back to the stove and started doing what he knew best. Cooking.

He stirred the rice, carefully, like he was back in his Michelin-star kitchen and not surrounded by five different felonies and a, probably, cursed rice cooker. The scent of garlic began to cut through the mold and mystery chemicals, which was already an improvement.

Behind him, Kim Dokja was clearly awake enough to be obnoxious now. “You know,” he drawled, “You look hot when you cook.”

“Shut up.”

Kim Dokja smiled like he’d just been handed a love letter. He leaned on the counter, chin in hand, blanket draped like a robe of judgment. “I bet this is what you do when you're in love. You show up, insult the fridge, and then make congee like a housewife.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t turn around. “Stop talking before I stab you myself.”

“That’s also hot.”

“…You’re incurable.”

Kim Dokja yawned again, unbothered. “I am but a humble plague upon your domestic instincts.”

“You need therapy,” Yoo Joonghyuk repeated, like a mantra.

“I have you,” Kim Dokja said, almost too sweetly. “It’s even cheaper than a subscription. And I get to fuck.”

He heard the very distinct sound of a spoon being snapped clean in two.

It didn’t stop him from giggling into his blanket.

“Ah…All this laughing will tear me a new hole.”

“Yeah?” Yoo Joonghyuk was already gripping a knife.

Kim Dokja smirked. “That’s even hotter, bunny .”

Yoo Joonghyuk slowly turned, the chef’s knife gleaming in his hand like the wrath of god. He didn’t say anything. His expression was already performing a high-level exorcism.

“Stop calling me that.”

“Why? You cook. You clean. You hop into my bed and…” His eyes darted down to his crotch.

“…I will poison your congee.”

Kim Dokja licked his lips. “Try me.”

Then Yoo Joonghyuk raised the knife.

And stabbed it directly into the wooden counter inches away from Kim Dokja, sending small splinters all over.

He didn't even flinch.

Kim Dokja murmured like he was watching the best porn in his life. “Is this your idea of foreplay?”

“If you speak again,” Yoo Joonghyuk said evenly, “I will feed you this with a knife.”

Kim Dokja grinned. “Is that a promise?”

At that moment, the rice cooker dinged softly, like a distant bell at the end of an absurd funeral.

The congee was done.

He left the knife upright on the table.

“Saved by the bell.” Kim Dokja sighed, a bit disappointed.

Yoo Joonghyuk moved toward the cooker with the cold efficiency of a war general, ladling steaming spoonfuls into two bowls. 

He garnished it with scallions, a splash of soy, and, after a long moment of consideration, exactly zero poison.

He placed one bowl in front of Kim Dokja with the gentle care of someone offering a last meal to a condemned man.

Kim Dokja beamed at him like a sun with no impulse control. “Look at you,” he said, inhaling the steam. “Husband material.”

Yoo Joonghyuk sat down with his own bowl.

“You’re the worst person I’ve ever met,” he said plainly.

“And yet you’re still here. Feeding me breakfast. Cleaning my war crimes.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a flat look.

Kim Dokja reached out and poked him in the cheek with the blunt end of his spoon.

“Thanks, bun.”

Yoo Joonghyuk very nearly took the knife and stabbed him for real.

But he stayed. Eating quietly. In the plague nest. With a war criminal and a bowl of congee.

 

Chapter 16: Back to work

Summary:

YJH goes back to work (both kinds)

 

It has been more than a week.

The spare bedroom was now sealed shut with two chains and a warning sign in Yoo Joonghyuk’s handwriting: “HELL” 

The kitchen cabinets were still unusable, but at least they no longer contained weapons, suspicious jars, tasers, or unlabelled burner phones. And for the first time in recorded history, Kim Dokja’s fridge held actual food.

As in real vegetables, fruits, fresh meat, eggs in their proper carton and not shoved into an empty wine box alongside an expired gochujang tub. Yoo Joonghyuk cooked every morning, ignored every complaint, and shoved medicine into Kim Dokja’s mouth like it was his civic duty.

He’d taken a full week off work just to watch over him, which Kim Dokja claimed was oppressive and unnecessary.

Yoo Joonghyuk simply called it maintenance.

Now, days later, the stitches were gone.

Kim Dokja lay half-propped against the pillows, the edge of his shirt rolled up just enough to expose the healing bruise where he’d been stabbed. 

He was no longer bleeding.

But that didn’t stop Yoo Joonghyuk from hovering like he still might.

Which was exactly why Kim Dokja had to cheat.

With fingers slick against his own skin, he exhaled softly and shifted his hips. Just enough to send the message. His other hand was scrolling through a sexy scene in his webnovel.

His body ached in phantom ways, but not enough to stop him.

Yoo Joonghyuk stood frozen in the doorway with his jaw clenched when he walked in.

“Stop looking at me like I’m dying,” Kim Dokja said, voice low and petulant. “I’ve had paper cuts that bled more than this.”

“You almost flatlined,” Yoo Joonghyuk replied, without moving.

Kim Dokja smiled, slow and deliberate. “And now I’m almost fine. So what’s your excuse, bunny?”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes flicked down to the motion of Kim Dokja’s hand, then back up. He didn’t take the bait.

Kim Dokja clicked his tongue. “Come on. You know I can hear you jack off in the bathroom. I know you want it.”

“I’m not letting you move.”

“Then don’t,” Kim Dokja murmured. “Get on top.” He threw his phone aside.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands curled into fists. His gaze lingered on the flat of Kim Dokja’s stomach, on the bandage edges no longer needed, on the scar that glared like a warning sign.

“I’m serious,” Kim Dokja said. His fingers stilled. “I can’t do much. But I want to feel you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stepped forward at last, slow and heavy like he knew he was going to regret it, but knew that there wasn't a point in holding back.

He reached the bed and grabbed Kim Dokja’s wrist firmly, pulling his hand out of his pants. Kim Dokja let it happen and held his gaze.

“I’m fine,” he whispered. “Let me have you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t say anything. He just kissed him. Hard and deep. Tongues colliding. One knee on the mattress. Then the other. His weight caged Kim Dokja in, his mouth bruising and warm, hands trembling faintly even as they undressed with care.

And then Yoo Joonghyuk climbed on top.

Yoo Joonghyuk settled over him with the care of someone handling glass.

His thighs bracketed Kim Dokja’s hips, cautious not to jostle too much weight onto him. Even with the wound closed, even with no blood, his body still remembered the damage. Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands ghosted over the scar, then down to Kim Dokja’s sides, hesitant. Tense.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he said, voice low and hoarse.

Kim Dokja gave him a crooked smile. “Hurts already. You’re sitting on my pride.”

Yoo Joonghyuk narrowed his eyes, but didn’t rise to the bait. He reached down instead, guiding them together with a careful slowness that bordered on reverent. 

He stretched himself with two slick fingers.

It had been too long.

He shouldn’t be humouring this. But his body had been burning with need after spending his whole waking and sleeping hours next to this beautiful, dangerous man.

When he was loose enough, he positioned himself carefully.

His breath caught as he sank down, inch by inch. The stretch sharp, the sensation overwhelming, and his body shivered with restraint.

He didn’t move once he was fully seated. He exhaled through his nose, shoulders tight.

Kim Dokja tilted his head back against the pillow, watching him. “You’re allowed to move, you know.”

Yoo Joonghyuk shook his head. “Not until I’m sure.”

Kim Dokja let out a soft, incredulous breath. “You’re on top of me. You’ve already committed.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw clenched. His hands planted firm on Kim Dokja’s chest.

He wasn’t sure what scared him more. How much he had wanted this, or how much he needed it.

Then Kim Dokja shifted beneath him, trying to rock his hips. Just slightly, just enough.

But Yoo Joonghyuk’s grip immediately hardened.

“Don’t,” he said sharply. “You’ll tear something.”

“I’m fine,” Kim Dokja murmured. “Come on. You said I’d be out of commission for a week. It’s been more than a week.”

“You’re reckless.”

“I’m bored,” Kim Dokja said, grinning now. “And horny. And underappreciated.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s brow twitched. His breath was starting to come harder, control slipping by degrees.

Then Kim Dokja moved again. With a little more force this time, trying to buck up into him.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t hesitate.

One palm landed against Kim Dokja’s sternum, pressing him down flat against the bed. The other curled under his ribs, holding him still. Their eyes locked.

“Don’t move,” he said, voice dark. “You said you’d let me.”

Kim Dokja stilled. Barely. But his smirk widened, infuriating and hot. “Then do something, bunny. Hop on it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk inhaled sharply through his teeth and moved.

Slow at first, cautious, dragging his hips in a steady grind. The stretch, the friction, the heat, were cracking the veneer of restraint he’d built all week. His thighs tensed as he set the pace.

Yoo Joonghyuk sank down on him, slow and shaking, until Kim Dokja filled him completely. He rode with control honed through sheer, furious discipline.

Kim Dokja cursed softly beneath him, head thrown back, gripping onto Yoo Joonghyuk's thighs.

Yoo Joonghyuk bent down and kissed him.

Hot and sloppy as he pounded himself into Kim Dokja's hardness.

Kim Dokja arched into him as much as he could, breath broken against Yoo Joonghyuk’s lips. “I missed you like this,” he murmured. “So serious. So obsessed.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer.

But his rhythm deepened, sharper now, lips moving down Kim Dokja’s throat and his hands, still bracing him, still pinning him down, trembled as if caught between worship and ruin.

Kim Dokja wasn’t speaking anymore.

He couldn’t. Not with the way Yoo Joonghyuk was grinding down, deliberate and punishing, angling just right like he’d spent the entire week studying every twitch in Kim Dokja’s body. Maybe he had.

Every roll of Yoo Joonghyuk’s hips made heat bloom through him, pressure rising behind his eyes like something uncontainable. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t rough. But it was relentless.

And it was the way Yoo Joonghyuk looked at him. Jaw clenched. Breathing through his nose like he was still fighting the urge to ruin him.

"Joonghyuk-ah," Kim Dokja rasped, mouth parted, "you're so hot."

"Shut up," Yoo Joonghyuk said, hoarse.

He shifted forward, planting one hand beside Kim Dokja’s head, and braced himself with a gasp as he picked up the rhythm again. The other hand stayed firm on Kim Dokja’s chest, keeping him down, reminding him not to move, that he was still recovering. That this was a privilege.

Kim Dokja’s fingers curled around the waist, the muscles of his stomach twitching under strain. He was trying not to react, and failing miserably.

Yoo Joonghyuk leaned down and bit the corner of his jaw.

“Fuck me harder,” he said into his ears. “It’s not enough.”

Kim Dokja shuddered.

The next drag of their bodies was too much. The angle hit something just right. Blinding, tender, raw. 

Yoo Joonghyuk’s back arched instinctively, a broken sound tearing from his throat. His walls clenched around Kim Dokja. His thighs trembling from overstimulation.

“Wait,” Yoo Joonghyuk gritted, struggling to hold his rhythm. “Nevermind—”

“You asked for it so nicely though,” Kim Dokja choked out.

He moved faster, abandoning caution for something desperate. His hand slid down, wrapping around Yoo Joonghyuk’s cock, stroking him in time with each thrust. Every sound they made echoed in the too-small room. The bed creaked under them. Sweat dampened Kim Dokja’s hairline.

It was hot, stimulating, and too much.

Yoo Joonghyuk couldn't think. He could only feel all of Kim Dokja inside him. Stretching him raw and hitting the spot that made every nerve in his body burn .

He was close.

Too close.

“Look at me,” Kim Dokja said, voice barely more than a rasp.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes fluttered open.

Their gazes met and then it unraveled.

Kim Dokja came with a silent shudder, mouth falling open, vision flickering. His body seized beneath Yoo Joonghyuk, hips jerking once, twice, before going slack.

Yoo Joonghyuk followed soon after, burying his head in Kim Dokja’s neck and climaxing all over him with a muffled, wrecked grunt. His whole body tensed, then slowly eased.

Neither of them moved.

The only sound was their breath, ragged and warm.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s forehead stayed pressed to Kim Dokja’s shoulder. He was still inside him, afraid to let go as if he’d vanish the moment the pressure let up.

Kim Dokja was the one who broke the silence.

“…I’d rate that,” he whispered hoarsely, “two out of three stars.”

Yoo Joonghyuk groaned. “Seriously?”

“Docking one point because you didn’t bite me hard enough,” Kim Dokja murmured, lips twitching with exhausted amusement.

Yoo Joonghyuk finally pulled back and looked down at him.

And sank his teeth in.

Kim Dokja gasped and laughed through it. He patted Yoo Joonghyuk in assurance.

Then, Kim Dokja licked a bit of the cum on his chest and tasted it like it was the most delicious thing he'd ever had.

“Three stars,” he said, eyes fluttering closed. “Breakfast in bed really hits different.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer. 

Just got up slowly, cleaned them both up with care, and returned with a bottle of water and some pills. Actual medicine. None of those suspicious ones with the labels removed.

“Go to sleep,” he muttered.

Kim Dokja let himself sink back into the pillows, after swallowing the meds. “Then come to bed.” 

“I'm heading to work.”

Kim Dokja blinked up at him, dazed. “Ah. So the day of reckoning has arrived.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a look. The kind that said he deeply regretted every life choice that had brought him to this moment.

“You’re wearing that to work?” Kim Dokja added, squinting at the sweatpants.

“I haven’t left yet.”

“You will, and everyone will know.”

Yoo Joonghyuk looked like he was going to strangle someone. Probably Kim Dokja.

 

---

 

“Well, well, well,” came a familiar voice, smooth as oil on marble. “Look who rose from the dead.”

Bihyung was leaning against his locker, arms folded like he’d been waiting all morning for this exact moment. His suit was sleek, his hair immaculate, and his grin sharper than the hidden fees he regularly scammed from unsuspecting guests.

He looked Yoo Joonghyuk up and down. 

“You're walking a little too straight for someone who’s been missing a week,” Bihyung said dryly. “Should I be worried, or disappointed?”

Yoo Joonghyuk rolled his eyes. “Move.”

He shoved Bihyung off of his locker and wrenched it open. 

“I was on leave.”

“Medical leave.” Bihyung echoed mockingly. “I assumed that meant emergency room medical. Or knowing you, maybe detained by the mafia, or—”

Yoo Joonghyuk twitched.

Bihyung’s eyes widened. “Wait. Seriously?”

Yoo Joonghyuk said nothing and started unbuttoning his shirt, jaw locked tight.

Bihyung made a low whistle. “VVIP mafia dick, huh? You struck gold.”

“He's not mafia.” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered, throwing on his work shirt.

“So it is our star VVIP Kim Dokja.” Bihyung said brightly. “He paid off your debts and now he whisk you away to his vacation home? That's some cliché plot right there.”

Yoo Joonghyuk slammed his locker shut with a bang and stalked off.

Yoo Joonghyuk had stopped listening. He quickened his pace and made a beeline towards the kitchen. Bihyung fell into steps with him, unbothered.

“So how was it?” Bihyung asked innocently as they neared the kitchen. “Was he gentle, or has he ruined you for life?”

Yoo Joonghyuk shoved open the kitchen’s double doors with enough force to nearly take them off their hinges.

Unfortunately, peace was not waiting for him inside.

“Yo, bunny boy’s back from his sex sabbatical!”

Han Sooyoung crowed from behind the prep table, flinging an apple at him.

He caught it one-handed and crushed it in his fist.

Han Sooyoung let out a long whistle. “Someone’s had a lot of protein this week.”

Juice dripped between his fingers.

“A week off and you still look constipated,” she continued, chin propped on her palm. “That rich dick must’ve been disappointing.”

Yoo Joonghyuk continued to ignore her and walked to his station, and began chopping the scallion.

“Seriously,” Han Sooyoung pressed, “you vanish without a word, come back alive, still with the same pissy attitude? What, did you go on a luxury retreat and meditate yourself angrier?”

"He probably got pampered into a coma,” someone muttered from the pastry station. “Those VVIPs have jacuzzis bigger than this kitchen. Bet he didn’t lift a single finger.”

Yoo Joonghyuk pressed the knife to the cutting board. The rhythmic chop of scallions resumed.

“God,” Han Sooyoung groaned, stretching, “and to think we were actually worried about you a few months ago. Remember that? Thought you were catching feelings, losing your edge. I even considered organizing an intervention.”

“I still have the banner,” one of the sous-chefs added.

“‘Don’t Fall in Love with Your Client,’” Sooyoung recited solemnly, hand over her heart. “Very tasteful. Glitter lettering. It shedded everywhere.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s chopping didn’t slow.

“So,” she said, sliding a bowl toward him with her elbow, “did he fly you somewhere ridiculous? Tell me it was private island levels of stupid. I need to live vicariously through your morally bankrupt sex life.”

He set down the knife, lifted the bowl, and carried it to the stove.

Han Sooyoung squinted after him. “What, no comment? Not even a snide remark?”

“Must’ve been really good,” someone whispered.

“Or he’s already planning how to never go back,” another added.

Yoo Joonghyuk stirred the broth. Steam curled up past his face, briefly masking the flicker of tension in his jaw.

“Fine, keep your secrets.” Han Sooyoung leaned back with a dramatic sigh. “Just don’t expect sympathy when you show up one day in diamond-studded bunny ears and an ankle monitor.”

“I’d pay to see that,” Bihyung’s voice floated in from the door.

“Of course you would,” Han Sooyoung shot back. “You’re his pimp.”

“Former pimp. Now I’m just his nosy coworker with a keen eye for drama.”

Then Yoo Joonghyuk turned.

Slowly. Silently.

The clatter of the kitchen died.

One by one, he looked each of them in the eye. Steady, unblinking, like he was choosing which body to bury first.

A knife appeared in his hand.

No one saw him pick it up.

He held it loose at his side, the blade catching the overhead light.

Then, in a voice low and quiet that didn't mask the threat, he spoke.

“Next person who talks,” his gaze zeroed in on Han Sooyoung, “gets a medical leave.”

The room froze. No one even dared breathe.

Yoo Joonghyuk turned back to the stove, completely unbothered.

The broth kept simmering.

 

Notes:

As some of you may have known, I had way too much sleepy tea yesterday. And I'm in no condition to join the rafting activity. So I've decided to chill and write xD

Chapter 17: Still Got It

Summary:

Kim Dokja goes on another mission.

Notes:

GUYS Please recheck chapter 11 because an artist have made TWO fanarts of that chapter!!! PLEASE give them some love!!! ❤️❤️❤️

 

Kim Dokja sat curled in the corner of his bed, one leg tucked under him, the other stretched out with a blanket draped over his knee. His phone glowed faintly in the dim room, the latest chapter of a webnovel scrolling past at an idle pace. He wasn’t really reading them. He just skimmed the lines with a deadpan face.

Yoo Joonghyuk has gone back to Eden and won’t be back until his shift ends.

The room smelled faintly of ginger tea. The window was cracked open. Somewhere, the neighbors’ dog barked half-heartedly, like it was too tired to commit.

Without Yoo Joonghyuk, the room was quiet.

Predictable.

And boring.

His phone buzzed and a preview message popped out.

He glanced at it.

Unknown number. But it was a number he had memorised.

Cho Youngran.

Are you in good health?

We’re stretched thin tonight.

Nothing violent. Just tailing.

Your mother didn’t want to bother you, but I made the call.

Let me know.

Kim Dokja stared at the screen for a long second. Then flicked it off.

He sat back, stared at the ceiling. One hand fidgeted with the corner of his blanket. The novel on his lap continued to glow, forgotten.

His body still ached faintly, and yet, he was already halfway to the door before he could stop to think.

He hated how natural it felt.

It would be fine, he convinced himself. He grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door, two blades, and pocketed his keys.

He paused before stepping out the door.

He picked up an almost dried out sharpie and wrote on the wall by the door.

To Bunny ♡

Won’t be back for dinner.

Don’t wait up.

He brushed the words longingly before leaving.

Then he disappeared out the door silently.

 

---

 

Kim Dokja sat in the passenger seat of an unremarkable sedan, the windows cracked just enough to prevent fogging. The car smelled faintly of ginseng candy and old leather.

In the driver’s seat, Lee Boksoon hummed to herself, her tiny hands steady on the wheel. She looked like someone’s kindly grandmother on her way to church.

Which was the point.

“Must be nice,” she said after a moment of comfortable silence, her voice light as rice paper. “Coming home to someone who loves you. Sleeping in your own bed, warm dinner on the table. That chef boy of yours. He seemed very devoted.”

Kim Dokja didn’t answer right away. His eyes tracked the glass building across the street, where their target was supposedly working overtime.

“We're not married,” Yet , he wanted to add.

Lee Boksoon snorted. “Did I say marriage? Aigoo, I was just admiring the miracle. You, Kim Dokja, all grown up and letting someone in. I thought I’d be long dead before I saw that.”

He leaned back in his seat, arms crossed. “You’re not allowed to die. You know way too much.”

She smiled. Her eyes gleamed dangerously behind the crow’s feet. “I’ll take them to the grave. Don’t worry.”

A silence settled again. 

Outside, traffic hummed. The sidewalk glowed orange beneath the streetlamps.

“…I’ve been thinking,” he said eventually.

“That’s dangerous.”

He ignored her. “About getting out.”

Lee Boksoon didn’t flinch. She simply cracked another ginseng candy between her molars and waited.

“I don’t like being someone she can command with a single word,” he said, quieter now. “Not anymore.”

“Ah,” Lee Boksoon exhaled, leaning back in her seat. “Is this about the stabbing?”

He didn’t answer.

She tapped her finger on the steering wheel. “You know, nobody’s forcing you to do this job. Not me. Not your mother. You’ve always had choices. Even when you didn’t believe you did.”

“Don’t start,” he warned.

“I’m just saying,” she chirped, undeterred. “You’ve always been good at this. Not because she made you, but because you like it.”

Kim Dokja gave her a long, sharp look.

“Come on,” Lee Boksoon said, smiling wide now. “The sneaking around. The dressing up. The gadgets. The thrill of slipping past people unnoticed. You don’t need to be a killer, Dokja-yah. You can be a spy. Espionage suits you.”

He scowled. “You sound like my career counselor.”

“You didn’t have one. That’s why you ended up with us.”

Before he could respond, her hand flicked to the console. “There he is.”

The target stepped out of the building, locking the glass doors behind him. Mid-thirties, well-dressed, slightly distracted as he pulled out his phone.

Lee Boksoon’s entire posture shifted. Her frail frame hunched a little further, head drooping lower. She reached into the back seat, pulled out a heavy handbag and got out of the car.

“Remember,” she said sweetly, “grandmother and grandson. Don’t slip up.”

Kim Dokja sighed and exited the car. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets, trailing a few steps behind her.

“Let’s make it quick,” he said under his breath. The scar throbbed faintly, but the pain was almost negligible as long as he didn't need to run.

The man rounded the corner. Lee Boksoon staggered forward with perfectly measured clumsiness.

“Oh! My goodness—Joonghyuk-ah!” she cried, latching onto the startled man’s arm with both hands. “I told you not to run ahead like that!”

“Excuse me—?!” the man said, blinking.

“How could you leave your poor grandma behind?!” Her fingers deftly brushed over the inside lining of his coat, a quick motion lost in the fuss. 

The bug was planted.

Without missing the cue, Kim Dokja limped over, panting slightly. “Ah, grandma, that’s not me.”

“Oh—! Oh no,” she gasped theatrically, pulling back. “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be… Oh, young man, I’m so sorry…”

The target smiled kindly. “No problem at all. My grandmother does the same thing.”

Kim Dokja bowed slightly. “Thank you for being understanding.”

He offered a handshake, and the man took it. He planted another bug in the button of his sleeve.

When they felt the buzz, they apologised again and finally turned around.

They walked off with the practiced ease of a routine pulled off a dozen times before. Once they rounded the corner, Lee Boksoon straightened her spine with a satisfied grunt.

“Perfect contact. I deserve a snack.”

Kim Dokja checked the signal strength on his phone. The bugs were live. Audio clear. Signal strong.

“Don’t tell her I took this job,” Kim Dokja said.

“I won’t,” Lee Boksoon replied easily, already sliding back into the car. “But she’ll know.”

He didn’t reply.

She paused with one foot in the driver’s seat and looked back at him with that knowing, frustrating smile.

“See?” she said. “You still have it in you.”

Kim Dokja closed the door for her and didn’t answer.

Lee Boksoon started the engine. As the car slowly pulled away, her voice floated through the open window one last time.

“She just wants you to be safe, you know. Even if she’s terrible at showing it.”

Then she was gone.

Leaving Kim Dokja alone on the curb.

Just him, the cold night, the whisper of wind, and the soft hum of the bug transmitting.

 

---

 

Kim Dokja got back home sometime around midnight. The door opened without a sound, welcoming him back.

The lights were off. He slipped in quietly, shrugging off his coat, moving soundlessly across the entryway, reaching for the staircase leading up—

Click .

The lamp by the couch flicked on.

Kim Dokja froze.

Yoo Joonghyuk was sitting upright on the sofa like a judgmental ghost, legs crossed. His expression was blank. But there was that crease between his brows, the one that spelled death.

In his hands…

Were chains.

Not metaphorical ones. Literal, cold steel chains, coiled in his lap like a punishment and a kink accessory rolled into one.

Kim Dokja blinked. “…I’m home.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t say anything.

“...Were you planning to kill someone or reenact a dungeon fantasy?” Kim Dokja asked mildly, “Because I’m into one of those.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stood.

The chains rattled like the tail end of a snake preparing to strike.

Kim Dokja squinted at them. “Wait, we can talk about this. Hold up—”

“You wrote, ‘Don’t wait up,’” Yoo Joonghyuk said in a voice too calm to be normal, gesturing at the writing on the wall. “Well I waited. With these.”

Kim Dokja stared at him, then cracked a tired grin. “You’re such a drama queen.”

“I thought you were bleeding out in a ditch somewhere.”

“I was tailing a middle-aged man who owns a tire company.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn't look convinced. Even if it were true, Kim Dokja doubted that he'd be getting out of this unscathed. He'd have to think fast. 

Unfortunately, thinking wasn't his greatest strength.

“It was very boring,” Kim Dokja continued, putting a hand on his shoulder and feeling the muscle that could definitely make a dent on his skull. Or crack it clean. “I had to pretend to be an ungrateful grandson.”

Yoo Joonghyuk grabbed his wrist.

Not harshly but definitely with intent.

Kim Dokja arched his brow. Readying himself to parry a fist. “Do you like roleplaying? I can show you how good I am.”

“No,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, annoyed. “I was going to chain you to the bed so you don’t sneak out again.”

“I’m flattered,” Kim Dokja drawled. “That you think that would stop me.”

They stared at each other.

A beat passed.

Kim Dokja leaned forward just slightly and whispered, “You can’t solve all your problems with handcuffs, Joonghyuk-ah.”

“I don’t own handcuffs,” Yoo Joonghyuk said flatly.

“Oh. So I’m the kinky one.”

Yoo Joonghyuk sighed. He dropped the chain onto the couch, and walked away muttering something under his breath.

Kim Dokja, amused and relieved that he wouldn't be out of commission for another week, followed him to the kitchen.

“Wait,” he said. “Were you seriously going to chain me up?”

“I considered it.”

“…I should sneak out more often.”

Yoo Joonghyuk turned and threw a dish towel at him. “Shut up and eat. I reheated dinner.”

 

---

 

After dinner finished, and the dishes were done, the chains still sat on the couch, untouched. Waiting to be used.

Now, they lay in bed upstairs in the dim lights.

Yoo Joonghyuk was on his side, one arm under his head, the other lazily resting across Kim Dokja’s waist. The covers were pushed low. Neither of them bothered with shirts. The quiet hum of the city filtered in through the barely cracked window.

Kim Dokja exhaled against his chest, eyes half-lidded, hair damp from the shower they’d shared in silence. One of his hands toyed with the edge of the blanket, idle, like he was thinking about something.

Yoo Joonghyuk could feel it.

That slight tension in Kim Dokja’s frame. The kind that built up in quiet layers. He was thinking too much again.

“What is it,” he said, voice low.

Kim Dokja didn’t answer at first. His fingers tracing Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest idly. His lashes fluttered, caught in the shadow of the bedside lamp.

Then, he said, “I’m not quitting.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stayed quiet.

Kim Dokja’s voice was softer when he continued, hesitant. “I mean, I could. I’ve thought about it. And part of me wants to. But I don’t know if that part is me , or just…something else.”

That made Yoo Joonghyuk shift slightly, propping his head on one hand so he could see him better. Kim Dokja didn’t look up. He was staring somewhere past his collarbones.

“I’ve lived this life too long to pretend I’m clean,” Kim Dokja said. “And I’m good at it. I like knowing things no one else knows. I like making calls that no one else can make. And I hate that I like it. Because it’s…because maybe it makes me a bad person. Or at least someone who doesn't deserve this.”

He paused.

“This,” he repeated, quieter. “You.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand rose to the back of his neck, grounding. His touch wasn’t gentle so much as solid. Real in a way Kim Dokja often struggled to be.

“Say something,” Kim Dokja said eventually. “You always look at me like I’m someone you’d die for. But I don’t want to drag you into...this.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s brow twitched, faintly incredulous. “You’re an idiot.”

Kim Dokja let out a short, surprised laugh. But Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression didn’t waver. He dragged a thumb across Kim Dokja’s cheek, tracing the lines of his jaw lovingly.

“You don’t have to quit,” he said. “You don’t have to change. You just have to be honest with me.”

Kim Dokja looked up at him then. Searching. Still not sure if he was allowed to believe it.

“You’re not scared?” he asked. “Of what I do?”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze didn’t blink. “I’ve seen what you do. I’ve seen what you keep in your kitchen. We basically have a whole room for it now.”

Kim Dokja swallowed, throat tight. ‘We’ he had said. That left a warm feeling in his chest.

“Because you’re not a thing to be stopped. And I'm not about to try.” Yoo Joonghyuk leaned in, resting his forehead against Kim Dokja’s. “You’re not some fragile bird who needs saving. You’re not someone I get to put in a cage and admire.”

“I thought you'd like the idea of putting me in one,” Kim Dokja muttered. “So I'd stay put.”

“I like you . And you’re not made for a cage. You’re made for doors you open yourself.”

Kim Dokja shut his eyes, breath stuck in his lungs.

For a long time, they just stayed there. Bare skin against bare skin, heartbeats steadying into the same rhythm.

“I’m still going to keep working.”

“I know.”

“But I’m not doing it for her anymore.”

“I know.”

“I want to stay.”

Yoo Joonghyuk kissed the corner of his mouth. “Then stay.”

The grip on his waist tightened just a little.

“You’re free,” he said. “You’ve always been free. Even when you didn’t feel it. Even when someone told you otherwise. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here.”

Kim Dokja looked at him for a long moment.

There was something unspoken, hovering between them. The shadow of a man who had spent so long being watched, commanded, sharpened into a weapon. And yet here he was. In bed, half-naked, with a man who would’ve chained him to the bed for coming home late.

They stayed like that, bare skin against bare skin, tangled legs and steady hearts. No false promises. No redemption arcs. Just a soft happy ending without a plot twist.

“I still think you've fantasized about chaining me up,” Kim Dokja murmured.

“I fantasize about duct taping your mouth.”

“Romantic.”

Yoo Joonghyuk kissed him, slow and sure. “Sleep.”

Kim Dokja closed his eyes.

And nuzzled closer into the warmth and softness.

 

Chapter 18: Chains

Summary:

Kim Dokja gets thoroughly fucked. Literally. Because he's a bottom this chapter
Please skip if you don't want to read that.

Notes:

I know some of you guys expected angst, based on my track record, but I hope that this one doesn't come as too much of a shock.

 

The scent of grilled mackerel and freshly brewed coffee lingered in the air. Morning light bled through the curtains, catching dust motes and the curl of steam from a chipped mug.

Kim Dokja sat at the kitchen table, half-dressed in one of Yoo Joonghyuk’s buttondowns and sleeves rolled up past his elbow. The shirt hung loose on his shoulders, the hem brushing his bare thighs. 

He crunched contentedly on a piece of bunny apple as he watched Yoo Joonghyuk pour him another cup of coffee.

“I’m starting to think you are trying to tame me with this,” he said, holding another slice up toward the sunlight. “You know, like a zoo animal. You feed me treats so I don’t bite you in your sleep.”

“You don't bite. But you do punch.” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered, standing by the coffee machine. “Three days ago, you dreamt someone was trying to choke you and almost broke my collarbone.”

“I apologised.”

“I still have the bruise.”

Kim Dokja only hummed and popped another apple bunny into his mouth, pleased and unapologetic.

Yoo Joonghyuk reached for Kim Dokja’s phone on the counter to checking the time. 

But then, the screen lit up with a message.

An unknown number.

His jaw clenched. A muscle twitched in his cheek. He didn’t speak, but the temperature in the room dropped. Kim Dokja felt it like a shift in gravity.

Kim Dokja didn’t even need to look to know. The sudden silence was enough. 

“Is that work?” he asked mildly.

Yoo Joonghyuk turned the screen toward him.

New target in Bus an.

Tell me if you’re up for it.

Should be fast.

“You said you were resting.”

“I was. Now I’m bored again.”

Yoo Joonghyuk moved towards the sofa before Kim Dokja could blink.

“Wait…”

A heavy rattling sound.

The unmistakable clatter of chains on the hardwood floor.

Kim Dokja’s breath stuttered. His heart beat loud in his ears. Not from fear, but anticipation. And a bit of horniness.

Yoo Joonghyuk's eyes burned into his. He could already guess where this was going.

Kim Dokja didn’t react when the chains wrapped around his upper torso, his arms tight against his sides above the elbow.

He staggered back against the counter, breath catching.

"Are you taking this job?" Yoo Joonghyuk gave him one last chance to reconsider his answer.

"Yes." Kim Dokja challenged, amused. He was more curious to see where this was going.

Yoo Joonghyuk stepped in close, grabbed the slack of the chain, and jerked it taut, yanking Kim Dokja’s body against his chest.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, voice low and dangerous. “Not until you can walk without limping.”

Kim Dokja inhaled sharply. “Oh my...is that a promise?”

The kiss wasn’t gentle. Yoo Joonghyuk bit down on his lower lip until Kim Dokja groaned into his mouth. The chain dug into his ribs. Tight. Yet arousing.

“You’re serious,” Kim Dokja breathed, chest rising fast. “You’re actually—”

Yoo Joonghyuk turned him and bent him over the counter, the chain rattling against the hard surface.

“I’ll make sure you stay home this time.” He grabbed Kim Dokja’s hips, and yanked his boxers halfway down the thighs.

Kim Dokja’s laugh was breathless. “Jealousy looks good on you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk leaned down and bit the back of his shoulder. “Shut up.”

He didn’t warm him up gently.

Two fingers immediately entered him. Slick with olive oil from the counter.

Yoo Joonghyuk watched as Kim Dokja squirmed under him, jaw clenched, eyes fluttering at the sudden burning pain. Yoo Joonghyuk forcefully pried him open. 

His head pressed against the cold counter, fogging up the surface.

“I’d like my meat raw, chef,” he managed to breathe out over the pain.

Yoo Joonghyuk pushed deeper, earning him a pained groan. “I’m buying duct tape later.”

Kim Dokja’s insides pulsed around his fingers. Hungrily clenching around as it let out obscene sounds. It was completely different from preparing himself.

He probed around to find the bump.

When he found the spot, Kim Dokja tensed. His knees buckled. His ass twitched erotically.

Yoo Joonghyuk pulled his fingers out and slicked more oil on his cock.

He stretched the hole, and pushed in.

Kim Dokja’s back arched violently. He gasped, chain clinking against the wood. “Fuck—!”

Yoo Joonghyuk watched the way Kim Dokja took him. How his mouth fell open, how his body shook with effort to hold himself still.

It lit something primal inside him. The usual control Kim Dokja wielded with a smile and a lie was nowhere to be seen. He was fully surrendering himself.

And Yoo Joonghyuk was going to take full advantage of it.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t give him time to adjust. His grip was bruising the slender thighs. His thrusts were merciless. He held Kim Dokja down, torso pinned with the weight of his own body, hands gripping the slack of the chain to anchor him.

“Stay home,” he growled against his ear.

Kim Dokja whimpered in pain or pleasure, he couldn’t even tell. He tried to rock back, greedy and desperate. “Fuck— yes! Maybe—ah—”

Yoo Joonghyuk angled deeper, hand trailing up to grip the back of his neck, forcing him lower against the counter. “You’re not leaving this house until you’re crawling. I want you so sore they can smell it on you for a week.”

“God,” Kim Dokja choked, hips twitching. “You’re actually— Oh fuck, you’re good at this—”

Yoo Joonghyuk pulled back and slammed into him again, hard enough to knock the breath out of his lungs.

If this was the only thing that will keep Kim Dokja out of trouble, then he’d be willing to do it ten times over just so that he would stay put.

“I don’t mind you working,” he said through gritted teeth. “But do it after you’ve stopped limping.”

Kim Dokja could barely think. His hands were clenched into fists where they were bound to his sides. Every movement rubbed against the chain, every thrust left him twitching.

Yoo Joonghyuk was relentless. He didn’t give him time to breathe or even think.

His cock rammed into him in one spot over and over.

Every thrust rubbed him raw in the best way. The chain across his chest rattled each time he moved, digging in just enough to leave a mark.

“You like this?” Yoo Joonghyuk growled. “Being chained? Being taken like this?”

Kim Dokja laughed through it. “Yes— fuck . I should tie you up too next time.”

“You’re a freak.” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered.

“Sure, bunny.”

Yoo Joonghyuk could feel a vein pop in his neck.

He thrusted so hard it shook the countertop. Yoo Joonghyuk pulled the chain to drive his cock in deeper. The tip of his dick hits the edge of Kim Dokja’s insides.

He moved with brutal precision. Making sure that by the end of this, Kim Dokja will not be able to walk and will finally get a proper rest.

Kim Dokja moaned. Loud, unrestrained, and messy. All the tension melted in that moment as his body convulsed around Yoo Joonghyuk’s cock. He came hard, groaning as chains bit into his skin, a string of drool slipping from his lips as he gasped for air. He didn’t even care.

He collapsed against the counter, trembling.

“Damn,” he whimpered. “Joonghyuk—”

But Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t stop. He kept moving, chasing his own finish, making sure Kim Dokja felt it. Every stroke, every grind, every vein.

When finally came, Yoo Joonghyuk stayed inside him, panting, still holding the chain. Yoo Joonghyuk rested his forehead against Kim Dokja’s spine, catching his breath.

Kim Dokja mumbled something into the counter.

“What?” Yoo Joonghyuk said, loosening his grip.

Kim Dokja lifted his head just barely. "Don't stop there.”

“I gotta go to work.” Yoo Joonghyuk kissed the sweat at the back of his neck.

“Hm…?”

A mischievous grin surfaced.

He had a bad feeling about this.

Kim Dokja’s eyes were heavy-lidded, mouth red and swollen. But the look he gave was dangerous. His cock was hard again, flushed and dripping against his thigh.

Kim Dokja flipped himself, and in a blink of an eye, the chains loosened and fell to the ground in a rattling thud.

“Says who?” Kim Dokja hooked his legs around his waist and pulled him closer.

Yoo Joonghyuk's breath hitched.

“You took my virginity.” He licked his lips seductively. Trailing his fingers across his jaw. “You’re staying too.”

Yoo Joonghyuk swallowed once. And only managed a weak, “I can't.”

Kim Dokja rolled his eyes. His phone already in his hand. Somehow.

He dialed a number.

“What are you doing?” He tried to reach for the phone, but Kim Dokja simply kicked him out of the way as if he weighed nothing.

He heard the line connecting.

Kim Dokja rolled off the counter with the grace of a cat and spoke. “Yoo Joonghyuk’s taking a day off. Handle it.”

And he ended the call.

He sent a quick message and tossed the phone to the sofa.

Then he turned to Yoo Joonghyuk. Who was clutching the edge of the kitchen counter with a look of horror in his face.

“My hole needs more stretching.” He approached with a rock hard cock and the sluttiest gaze known to mankind.

He slammed his hand on the countertop and pulled Yoo Joonghyuk into a kiss. Hard and claiming.

He kissed back.

A faint blush coloured his face almost immediately.

“Let's go to the bed.” Kim Dokja whispered.

 

---

 

Yoo Joonghyuk sat at the edge of the bed, breath shallow, as Kim Dokja crawled into his lap. He straddled him with practiced ease, shirt slipping down one shoulder. The chains hung loose around his torso like a decoration.

"You look good like this," Kim Dokja murmured, eyes dragging down his chest. "Tense. Caged. Like you’re still trying to decide if you regret it."

“I don’t,” Yoo Joonghyuk said. His hands came up to Kim Dokja’s thighs automatically, steadying him.

Kim Dokja shifted, grinding against him deliberately. 

He was hard again. 

Still flushed from earlier, skin dewed with sweat. But there was no room for denial. No chance of playing it off like this wasn’t exactly what he wanted.

“Fuck,” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered, tightening his grip.

“So cute,” Kim Dokja chuckled, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth. “You're topping. Act like it.”

Yoo Joonghyuk moved. 

He shoved Kim Dokja back against the pillows, taking his shirt off, and pressed his body down, pinning him. The chain clinked between them, cool metal against overheated skin. Kim Dokja arched with it, breath catching like he was tasting something electric.

“You’re insane,” Yoo Joonghyuk said.

“I know.”

He aimed his cock head against the pulsing hole.

When Yoo Joonghyuk pushed in, it was smooth and slick with his cum. He was already sensitive, already too open. But still so tight.

Kim Dokja’s head dropped back. His eyes fluttered open, dark and glossy. “That’s it,” he sighed in content. “You’re so big.”

Yoo Joonghyuk moved. Hips grinding in a deep, punishing rhythm that dragged sound after sound out of Kim Dokja’s mouth. 

Whining, moaning, half-choked curses muffled into the sheets.

The chain made it worse. Or better. Every movement pulled it taut across Kim Dokja’s chest, brushing his nipples, keeping his arms trapped, muscles flexing with each thrust. Yoo Joonghyuk watched him strain, his own breath ragged.

“You’re not going to walk tomorrow,” Yoo Joonghyuk said roughly, voice breaking.

“Then make it worth it,” Kim Dokja spat. “Go on. Ruin me.”

And he did.

He snapped his hips forward harder, chasing the rhythm that made Kim Dokja tremble and turned his moans downright vulgar. 

His body shook under Yoo Joonghyuk’s weight, lips parted, eyes blown wide. His thighs tightened around him, slick with sweat, the obscene sound of skin against skin filling the room.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t stop. 

He drove in again, and again, until Kim Dokja broke with a sharp gasp, orgasm crashing through him in shudders. He clenched hard, nails digging into Yoo Joonghyuk’s wrist as his body strained against the chain, hips jerking involuntarily with every aftershock.

Cum streaked up his stomach in ribbons.

Yoo Joonghyuk lasted only seconds longer. 

The way Kim Dokja looked blissed out and panting, marked and bound, undid him. He came with a grunt, biting down on Kim Dokja’s shoulder as he emptied into him.

They collapsed together, sweat-slick and exhausted, heartbeats pounding in tandem.

Kim Dokja broke into a soft laugh. “That was fun.”

Yoo Joonghyuk rested his forehead against Kim Dokja’s collarbone. “Yeah,” he muttered.

They cuddled for a few minutes to catch their breaths. Tangled together, skin sticky and warm. The chain was still looped around Kim Dokja’s chest.

Then Kim Dokja shifted on top of him.

He straddled Yoo Joonghyuk, wrists loose but eyes sharp, as if he hadn’t just been thoroughly fucked. 

He grabbed the chain still hanging from his body, wrapped it around his fist, and leaned in close.

“Now it’s your turn.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes widened. “What?”

But the betrayal was almost immediate. A flush crept up his neck. He couldn’t hide the obvious boner and the twitch in his backside. His body was already consenting faster than he could muster out a rejection.

Kim Dokja looked down at it, then back up with a slow, feral grin. “Interesting.”

“I—” Yoo Joonghyuk started, but faltered.

Kim Dokja tilted his head, voice deceptively innocent. “Something you want to say?”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at the ceiling like it might save him.

It didn’t.

 

Notes:

Hope you guys enjoyed the role reversal! While I am a Bottom!YJH advocate, I just love the idea of them being switch/vers.

Chapter 19: Dumbass Recovery Period

Summary:

Just fluff and slice of life comedy

 

By the end of the day, the bed had turned into the aftermath of a war zone.

Sheets half off. Pillows in exile. A used towel hung off the headboard like a flag of surrender. The chains, still faintly glinting despite the taints, lay discarded somewhere across the floor, like an unwilling witness (and active participant) to their sins.

In the center of it all, two half-conscious men lay sprawled like corpses.

Kim Dokja was facedown, hair a disaster, cheek mashed into a pillow he may or may not have bitten at some point. Yoo Joonghyuk was flat on his back, limbs spread like he’d just lost a boss fight, eyes focussed to the ceiling but clearly not processing a single thing.

Neither of them was talking. That would’ve required air in their lungs.

The chain marks were unmistakable. 

Reddish lines across shoulders, wrists, thighs. Kim Dokja’s torso looked like it had been gift-wrapped by a horny psychopath. Yoo Joonghyuk’s neck had one particularly aggressive ring that probably should’ve concerned them more than the rest of the marks on his body did.

Eventually, Kim Dokja made a noise. It sounded like a dying animal.

Yoo Joonghyuk grunted in reply, which in their shared post-sex language roughly translated to: I am also dying.

A long moment passed.

“We…should shower,” Kim Dokja mumbled into the pillow.

Neither moved.

The silence stretched.

Kim Dokja tried again, slightly more coherent. “I think I might actually die this time.”

Yoo Joonghyuk cracked one eye open to squint at him. “Not on my watch.”

“I think I’m seeing the river again.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“You manhandled me with actual iron. I’m allowed to be dramatic.”

Yoo Joonghyuk closed his eyes again. “You did the same to me.”

Kim Dokja groaned and flipped halfway over, wincing as various muscles protested. 

“You know what?”

“What.”

“We beat the six hour record.”

His mind immediately replayed the scene of them switching positions and railing each other for hours like a horny pair of rabbits. Yoo Joonghyuk’s backside twitched in response. He made a low, strangled noise that might have been shame.

Kim Dokja turned his head, smirking through the wreckage of his post-orgasm haze. 

“We’re going to have bruises in the shape of literal links.”

“I know.”

“There’s probably an imprint of your spine on my sternum.”

“Fuck...”

“We’re not normal,” Kim Dokja sighed in content.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t argue.

They laid there for another ten minutes, naked, exhausted, chain-marked, and absolutely refusing to clean up after themselves.

Truly, the picture of responsibility.

 

---

 

Getting into the bathtub was a journey of shared pain, muscle screaming, and sheer prideful refusal to ask for help.

Yoo Joonghyuk had tried to carry Kim Dokja at first. That lasted approximately three seconds before Kim Dokja bit his shoulder and declared, “This isn’t romantic, it’s pathetic,” while dangling halfway from his grip like a traumatized gremlin.

Eventually, they settled for the world’s slowest synchronized slide over the tub's edge. Yoo Joonghyuk’s back hit the porcelain with a wet thud. Kim Dokja followed gracelessly, knees bumping into ribs and nearly pulling the faucet off the wall.

Now they were tangled together like seaweed in soup. Half-submerged. Steam fogged the mirrors, condensation rolling slowly down the walls like dramatic punctuation.

Neither moved.

Kim Dokja let his head flop back against Yoo Joonghyuk’s collarbone. “Do you remember that Breaking Bad scene? The one with the bathtub?”

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked slowly. “No. I don’t watch TV.”

“Jesse tries to dissolve a body in hydrofluoric acid. In the bathtub.”

“…Why?”

“Science.” Kim Dokja waved a lazy hand in the air. “Anyway. The acid eats through the tub and the floor and everything falls through and it’s gross. Don’t worry though. This bathtub’s new.”

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at him. “Are you trying to say you’ve disposed of bodies here?”

Kim Dokja gave a mild shrug. 

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t even have half the energy to question the things that came out of Kim Dokja’s mouth anymore.

Then, inexplicably, they both laughed.

It was a quiet, wheezy sort of laughter. The sort of laugh that comes when your ribs hurt too much to breathe properly. Kim Dokja’s chuckle died into a low hum as he let his eyes drift shut. Yoo Joonghyuk’s arm floated up behind him, then lazily flopped back into the water with a wet slosh.

“We should shower,” Kim Dokja mumbled.

“Hm.”

Neither of them moved.

“We smell like sweat and bad decisions,” Kim Dokja added.

Yoo Joonghyuk let out a half-asleep grunt. “You smell like apples and war crimes.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Another long pause. The water was still hot, somehow, as if the tub respected the sanctity of their exhaustion.

After a while, Yoo Joonghyuk said, “We didn’t have proper pans at the orphanage.”

Kim Dokja cracked an eye open. “Yeah?”

“They stuck all the time,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, voice quiet now, almost monotone. “Everything burnt. Eggs. Meat. I tried to scrub them clean once and the bottom peeled off. Just flaked like rust. I thought I ruined them.”

Kim Dokja tilted his head slightly. “Did you?”

“No.” A pause. “Then I learned how to season pans. How you need to burn oil into the steel. So I did that. Over and over. I almost set the kitchen on fire twice. But eventually, they stopped sticking.”

Kim Dokja smiled faintly. “That's a very dramatic metaphor for trauma recovery.”

“I’m talking about pans.”

“Sure you are.”

Silence again. 

Water sloshed gently as one of them shifted a leg.

“She didn’t throw them away,” Yoo Joonghyuk said suddenly. “The caretaker. Even after I broke the handles and scratched the surface. She could’ve tossed them. Said they were useless. But she didn’t.”

Kim Dokja turned his head just enough to see his face. “Why not?”

Yoo Joonghyuk shrugged. His eyes were distant. “She said, ‘If you’re still trying to fix something, then it’s not broken. Just not quite done yet.’”

Kim Dokja stared at him for a long beat. “…Are you sure you’re talking about pans?”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t answer. But his foot nudged Kim Dokja gently under the water, like a quiet admission.

Kim Dokja let out a soft breath. “That’s so stupid,” he whispered.

“You’re stupid.”

“It’s also kind of sweet.”

They settled into the comfortable silence and each other. Even when the water was slowly starting to go cold, neither of them moved.

 

---

 

Getting out of the bathtub was like dragging themselves through a second apocalypse.

Kim Dokja slipped once on the tile, cursing the floor, the bath, his knees, and existence in general. Yoo Joonghyuk barely managed to catch him, which somehow made it worse. They were both too exhausted to dry off properly. 

Kim Dokja flopped down face-first on the mattress, still damp. “If I die in my sleep, cremate me and put me in a bunny urn.”

Yoo Joonghyuk dropped beside him, hair still dripping.

“I'll put your ashes in a confetti.”

“Nice. Aim it at my mom.”

Yoo Joonghyuk sighed, reached over, and tugged Kim Dokja’s towel down gently to free his face. “You’re waterlogging the pillow.”

“Die with me.”

“No.”

But his hand lingered. His fingers carded softly through Kim Dokja’s damp hair, slow and absent. Almost unconsciously affectionate.

They stayed like that for a while. Just lying there, quiet and stupid and barely functional.

At some point, Kim Dokja shifted closer. “You’re warm.”

“You’re wet.”

And yet, Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t move away. His hand settled on Kim Dokja’s back. 

The room was quiet except for the hum of the AC and their breathing, finally steady. The mattress dipped as they adjusted, until their limbs touched. Skin against skin in a way that felt more like comfort than sex.

“…Hey,” Kim Dokja murmured.

Yoo Joonghyuk hummed in response, barely awake.

“You’re a good pan.”

He blinked, then softly he said. “So are you.”

“You seasoned me properly.”

Yoo Joonghyuk smiled then. Small and sincere.

His chest felt lighter than it had in years. Like something that had been packed tight inside him had finally loosened.

It was ridiculous, really. All this time, he had thought understanding Kim Dokja would mean breaking him open, forcing out whatever rot his life had filled him with. He’d imagined it as an act of force, of dragging the man into the light whether he wanted it or not, or walking into the depths himself.

But it was… this.

A damp bed. A stupid towel. And stupider murmurs about cookware.

Kim Dokja had laughed tonight. A real laugh without that razor sharp edge underneath. He was sprawled next to him, half-asleep and defenseless, with no trace of the mask Yoo Joonghyuk had grown used to hating. And somehow, Yoo Joonghyuk realised, there was nothing left to fix.

Somewhere between all the arguing and the bruises and the stupid shared meals, Kim Dokja had stopped being broken.

And somewhere in the middle of that, so had he.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand stayed in his hair. His chest was warm, not just from the contact, but from the knowledge that…this was it.

This. Soft and simple. This was all he had ever wanted.

He didn’t know what it was that pulled him in in the first place. Maybe it was the contradictions. How Kim Dokja could smile with his mouth while his eyes stayed shuttered, how his hands could be firm even when the rest of him looked like he might shatter.

A beautiful, dangerous, broken man.

A man who should have been too much trouble to keep, yet somehow felt impossible to let go of.

Then, Kim Dokja shifted.

He pulled his hand to his lips and kissed his fingers.

“Stop thinking too much.” He murmured. “Go to sleep.”

So he did. He closed his eyes and let the dreams take him.

 

---

 

The first sound of the morning was Kim Dokja groaning like an old floorboard. The second was Yoo Joonghyuk doing the same, only louder.

They lay there for a good minute without moving, both staring blankly at the ceiling like two soldiers who had survived a war. Except the only thing they’d fought was each other’s stamina the day before.

Kim Dokja stared at the ceiling for a long moment before turning his head toward Yoo Joonghyuk. “We didn’t even eat dinner.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s stomach growled at the mention of dinner. “I crave dumplings…”

“You’re weak,” Kim Dokja mused. “I can go days without eating.”

“Congratulations,” Yoo Joonghyuk muttered, “you’re a camel.”

Kim Dokja ignored him and tried to sit up. “...Alright. I’m going to take care of you.”

“That’s the worst idea I’ve heard all year.”

But Kim Dokja, through sheer stubbornness, managed to swing his legs over the side of the bed. His muscles lit up like fireworks. He gritted his teeth, reached back, and grabbed Yoo Joonghyuk’s wrist.

“What are you—”

“Up,” Kim Dokja ordered. “We’re getting food.”

Dragging Yoo Joonghyuk out of bed was like trying to tow a sleeping bear. They both nearly collapsed twice before even reaching the door.

The stairs were the final boss. Kim Dokja planted one hand on the railing, the other gripping Yoo Joonghyuk’s arm, and took the first step down. His thigh screamed in protest.

Halfway down, both of them were breathing like they’d run a marathon.

“Almost there,” Kim Dokja panted.

“You said that three steps ago,” Yoo Joonghyuk replied, swaying dangerously.

It was sheer, irrational determination that got them to the bottom. Kim Dokja looked disproportionately proud of himself, even though he was slumped against the wall like he’d just survived a hostage situation.

“See? Easy,” he said, chest heaving.

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a long, unimpressed look. “If this is your definition of easy, I don’t want to see hard.”

Kim Dokja made a show of straightening his back, even though it popped like a cheap folding chair. “Right. You sit. I’ll…handle this.”

Yoo Joonghyuk gave him a skeptical look. “You don’t cook.”

“I can cook.”

“No, you can boil water and hope something edible materializes by accident.”

Kim Dokja waved him off and shuffled toward the pantry with the gait of someone who’d been trampled by a horde of livestock. He yanked open the nearest cupboard, squinted at the shelves, and pulled out the first thing his hand landed on.

Instant noodles.

“If you fail this, we're divorcing,” Yoo Joonghyuk said flatly from the counter stool he’d sunk into. His head was propped on one hand like he might fall asleep mid-sentence.

Kim Dokja froze mid-step. “We’re not even married.”

“Exactly,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, tone bone-dry. “That’s how bad it’ll be.”

Kim Dokja snorted.

“Don’t talk to the wife while he’s working,” Kim Dokja replied, tossing the packet onto the counter. He turned toward the stove, grabbed a pot, and set it down with too much force. His wrists protested immediately.

Water. Right. That was the next step. 

He filled the pot at the sink, nearly sloshing half of it onto the floor. When he turned back, Yoo Joonghyuk watched him like a hawk, as if Kim Dokja was a particularly stupid prey animal. And to be fair, he was.

“You’re going to spill that.”

“I’m not going to spill—”

He sloshed it all over himself.

“I've spilled worse,” Kim Dokja continued without breaking eye contact. “I’ll forge the marriage certificate tomorrow. Then you can rip it up.”

The pot finally made it to the stove. Kim Dokja ripped open the ramen packet with unnecessary aggression and promptly scattered the dried noodle crumbs all over the counter.

“You’re hopeless,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, standing up despite the stiffness in his legs.

“Sit down, you’re injured.”

Yoo Joonghyuk brushed past him, ignoring Kim Dokja’s protests, and took over the pot. His movements were efficient despite the fact that he was grimacing whenever he bent slightly. Within moments, the kitchen smelled like actual food instead of desperation.

Kim Dokja leaned on the counter, pretending this had been the plan all along. “You know, this is technically still me taking care of you.”

“This is weaponised incompetence.”

“That’s one interpretation.”

By the time the noodles were done, Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands were steady but his legs were visibly trembling. Kim Dokja noticed, and without saying anything, he grabbed the bowls and set them on the counter for him.

They sat side by side at the island, blowing on the steaming broth.

Kim Dokja slurped a mouthful and sighed. “No mission I’ve ever been on has made me suffer like this.”

“No back-to-back shifts have ever come close,” Yoo Joonghyuk agreed, lifting another bite.

They ate in silence for a while, the quiet broken only by the occasional groan as one of them shifted and their muscles seized up.

Halfway through his bowl, Yoo Joonghyuk muttered, “We’re idiots.”

Kim Dokja smiled faintly, not disagreeing.

 

Notes:

Hi! Just a quick (or long) note regarding the last chapter. I now know that tagging is important for readers’ comfort. But please understand that even I can’t predict plot twists I haven’t thought of yet. To those who have taken the time to give me feedbacks, thank you. Because I am not super familiar with the tagging etiquettes. And to that one person who went out of their way to send the ‘kys’ adjacent spams, idk what drug you're on, but I want it. Don’t do that to any other authors though haha.

On another note, I’m just happy that some of you guys actually love the switch up. Your support and words of encouragement helped. So I’ll keep writing like I’m running out of time. Like tomorrow won't arrive. Even if it’s only for that 1 reader. Because as we are all fans of ORV, we know how the story goes.

Hope you guys are ready for the last chapter! <3

Chapter 20: Open Doors

Summary:

Welcome to the final chapter!
This is the part where Kim Dokja begins his healing journey.

Notes:

Thank you everyone who has commented, left kudos, and leave such endearing messages. Y'all are just amazing. I've laughed and smiled through every single one!

Enjoy this final chapter!

 

The Eden sky restaurant had been silent for over an hour. The clink of silverware was almost indecent in the emptiness, softened by the slow hum of the city beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass.

Yoo Joonghyuk set a plate down between them. Caramelised apple bunny sat in a shallow pool of syrup, with a single scoop of vanilla ice cream melting into the heat.

Kim Dokja leaned forward and let the warm sweetness rise to meet him. “That smells amazing.”

A faint curve touched Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth. “It should. I made it.”

Kim Dokja’s fork hesitated above the dessert. He almost didn’t want to eat it. “It’s perfect,” he said instead.

Silence stretched. Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t reach for his own fork.

Instead, he said, “Your mother’s coming tonight.”

Kim Dokja froze, the compliment curdling in his mouth. “...What?”

“She called earlier this week,” Yoo Joonghyuk said, voice even. “Asked if she could see us. I told her yes. And that she could meet us here.”

Kim Dokja laughed once, short and breathless. “You—” His chair scraped back an inch. “You should’ve said no. I’m not—”

“She’s already on her way.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s gaze stayed level, the way it always did when he was bracing for a punch.

“I’m leaving.”

“No.” It wasn’t sharp, but it was enough to stop Kim Dokja. “Stay. Just this once. Trust me.”

Kim Dokja’s hand stayed on the edge of the table, fingers curled as if ready to push himself up. But his legs didn’t move.

The ice cream melted into the syrup, pale ribbons seeping into gold. Outside, the city swam in soft neon haze, red and blue lights flickering on wet asphalt far below.

He could feel Yoo Joonghyuk’s quiet patience, the weight of someone who had no intention of dragging him forward but would not let him run, either.

In the glass, their reflections blurred together against the night. Kim Dokja’s expression looked all too familiar. The tense, guarded expression bordering on disassociation.

He thought of all the times his mother’s voice had carried over him. Never soft. Always cold as ice. Not cruel. But sharp enough to remind him of the thin line they thread on. That edge had cut him before he knew he was bleeding.

He dug his spoon into the apple bunny without eating it, letting the caramel cling. The sweetness was almost suffocating. 

“Do you think this is going to fix anything?” he asked without looking up.

“We’ll see,” Yoo Joonghyuk said simply.

The hum of the fridge in the kitchen was the only sound for a long time.

And then the faint sound of the door bell broke the stillness.

 

---

 

Kim Dokja didn’t turn at first. He didn’t need to. Her presence always came in like a draft, subtle but undeniable. The sound of her heels echoed into his skull. Each click carried the precision of someone who had learned to make every step count.

Yoo Joonghyuk stood up and nodded at the seat, which Lee Sookyung acknowledged wordlessly.

“Dokja,” Lee Sookyung’s voice was softer than he remembered. 

Softer, and all the more dangerous for it.

He forced himself to look at her. The same long hair, the same sharp line of her jaw. A tailored coat in a shade too muted to draw attention, yet her mere existence filled the room.

Her gaze flicked to the dessert on the table before she took the seat opposite him, without a sound. “How have you been?”

Kim Dokja’s fingers tightened around his fist until his knuckles whitened. He could feel Yoo Joonghyuk watching him from the side, unreadable, as though taking a measure of each breath he took.

“I didn’t agree to this,” Kim Dokja said finally.

“I know.” Lee Sookyung’s lips curved faintly, though it wasn’t quite a smile. “But he did.” She tilted her head toward Yoo Joonghyuk, “And you stayed.”

Kim Dokja wanted to tell her that staying didn’t mean anything. That staying was just inertia disguised as choice. But the words caught in his throat.

The air between them tightened. She leaned back in her chair, fingers folding neatly in her lap. “I didn’t come here to fight.”

“That’s new,” Kim Dokja said before he could stop himself.

Her eyes narrowed, not with anger, but with the faint, clinical interest of someone cataloging behavior for later use. “I came here to talk. Without the past getting in the way.”

It was such a ridiculous sentence he almost laughed. 

Kim Dokja’s jaw twitched slightly. “You mean your version of it.”

He exhaled. His posture straightened, and he rested his palms on his lap. 

His gaze steeled into a chilling calmness.

Yoo Joonghyuk was still silent, but there was an alertness in him now. A readiness to step in, though he didn’t yet. His posture was the same as it always was when watching a pot of milk just before it boiled over.

Kim Dokja met his mother’s eyes and held them. “The past is the only reason we’re here.”

Lee Sookyung didn’t flinch. “Then let’s start there.”

She waited patiently for the first words to drop.

The air shifted a few degrees colder as the seconds ticked.

One.

Two.

“You dragged me into this world.” Kim Dokja started.

“You followed.”

“I did everything you ask of me.”

“As you should.”

“You left me in places you wouldn’t survive a night in.”

“And you came out stronger.”

“You made me watch.”

“And you learned.”

"I almost died."

"You were too soft."

"And you didn't even care."

"I always do."

Kim Dokja exhaled sharply in disbelief.

His eyes almost betrayed him. He looked down on the plate in front of him. His brain searching for more things to blame on his mother.

The seconds ticked on like a timer.

“You ruined everything I touched.”

She tilted her head slightly. “If we hadn’t done all that,” her gaze flicked, almost casually, toward Yoo Joonghyuk, “you wouldn’t have met him.”

Kim Dokja stilled. 

It wasn’t that the words were untrue on the surface. If one were to chart the events like a neat line of dominos, placing each pieces in a neat little line, perhaps it would lead here.

But he knew better.

He let the silence stretch, the clink of glass from the bar filling the space in place of his voice. 

Somewhere, deep inside, something small and cold cracked open. Not because she’d touched a nerve. She had done that many times before. 

But because this time, she had missed. 

She was wrong. 

For once.

In the strange ache of that realisation, he saw her differently.

Not as the woman who put the pieces down.

Not as the immovable figure who had shaped so much of him, but as a person capable of misunderstanding, of not having the full picture. Something that almost humanise her in a way that unsettled him more than any sharp words.

“There’s always three versions to a story.” Lee Sookyung’s voice broke into the quiet again, the edge in her tone softening.

The words landed with an odd familiarity, tugging at a long buried memory. Almost nostalgic.

Kim Dokja’s fingers twitched against his knee.

“Mine, yours, and then the truth.” He finished it for her without thinking, reciting the phrase like an old decree.

One they had once shared.

Yoo Joonghyuk glanced between them once, briefly, before lowering his gaze to the untouched dessert plate in front of him. The ice cream was melting around the apple.

“The truth can be rewritten,” she continued.

“And reread into something better,” he answered, this time lifting his head to meet her eyes again.

For a moment, silence settled between them. A shared understanding neither of them would admit aloud.

“Have you found your better?” She asked. She knew the answer, but she asked anyway.

His lips twitched. It wasn’t a smile, but it could have been mistaken for one in a softer light.

Something flickered in her eyes. Like the recognition of a hit she knew she had invited.

Their eyes stayed locked for a while.

“I have,” Kim Dokja finally said. He didn’t look at Yoo Joonghyuk, but the shift in the air was telling enough.

Lee Sookyung’s gaze slid briefly to where Yoo Joonghyuk sat. A flicker of acknowledgment. 

Yoo Joonghyuk leaned back, arms folding across his chest. He still didn’t speak, but there was a quiet readiness in the way his weight shifted.

Her eyes lingered on him for a moment longer before returning to her son.

“You’ve always been stubborn about standing alone,” she said. “Maybe that’s why you think everyone else will leave.”

Kim Dokja didn’t answer. He didn’t look away either.

The tension on her shoulder grew softer. “I’m not here to undo what’s been done. But I can choose what I do next. And right now, I’m choosing not to make you push him away.”

“That's my choice to make.”

“Indeed. And it is the right one.”

The words caught him off guard. Because it was neither a warning nor a demand that he was accustomed to. It was acceptance. Loud and clear.

Yoo Joonghyuk blinked at the unexpected shift. He was about to say something, but chose to remain silent.

She noticed, of course. She always noticed. 

“If you choose to stay with him,” she turned fully to Yoo Joonghyuk, “then you’ll find that I don’t make a habit of harming the people who keep him alive.”

Kim Dokja’s lips pressed together. “That’s… new.”

“Perhaps to you,” she replied. Her voice was level, but something softer lined the edges now. “I don’t care how you define it. Just don’t make me bury either of you.”

The room went quiet again, but it was a different kind of quiet than before. Less sharp, less brittle.

The ice cream on the plate was gone now, leaving a pale vanilla puddle around the apple slices.

Without comment, Yoo Joonghyuk took the plate, stood, and carried it into the kitchen.

Kim Dokja’s gaze followed him for a moment before drifting back to the window. He could see their reflections in the glass.

It reminded him of the visitations all over again. Passed by in silence. No eye contact. And bruises that went unacknowledged.

Except now, they were on the same side of the glass.

And this time, his mother was the first to talk.

“Don't drag him down.” She said, as if a warning.

“I won't.”

“Good.”

And that was it. They sat in silence again. 

Just like old times.

When Yoo Joonghyuk returned, he set down a fresh plate. 

Both Kim Dokja and Lee Sookyung shifted.

Three apple bunnies forming a triangle, and an ice cream in the middle still holding its shape.

Lee Sookyung looked at him, eyebrows faintly raised, but said nothing.

Yoo Joonghyuk lingered by the table, watching them both dig into the fresh plates. Slow, almost mechanical bites at first.

Lee Sookyung didn’t thank him. But when she cut into one of the apple bunnies, the corners of her mouth lifted just slightly, as though she were humoring a memory no one else could see.

Kim Dokja ate in silence, gaze down, but he didn’t retreat into the careful mask he wore earlier. His hand softly brushed the edge of the plate.

Yoo Joonghyuk swallowed his apple whole without a word.

The conversation didn’t start again. It didn’t need to. 

When they finished, Yoo Joonghyuk collected the plate. 

Lee Sookyung stood, smoothing her sleeves, and for a moment her eyes softened as they landed on Yoo Joonghyuk.

“Thank you for choosing him,” she said, and stepped away before either man could respond.

Yoo Joonghyuk stayed where he was, plate in hand, until the quiet stretched thin and broke under the hum of the refrigerator from the bar.

Their eyes met for a second.

Then, Kim Dokja bursted into laughter. 

Sharp at first, then loosening into something bright. Relief tangled with disbelief, warmth spilling over his features like he didn’t know what to do with it. Bright and free.

Like he’d been holding his breath for years and had just now remembered how to exhale. 

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t look away. The corner of his mouth lifted, small but certain, and he crossed the space between them.

Their lips touched.

The kiss was unhurried, tasting faintly of apple and vanilla. Kim Dokja was still smiling when it broke, his forehead resting lightly against Yoo Joonghyuk’s.

There had been days honed sharp as a blade, and nights worn warm as a well-seasoned pan. Steel and heat, edge and comfort. Neither whole without the other. But there had also been apple bunnies in between. Small and ridiculous, set on plates like a promise that not everything had to hurt.

And now, with laughter still trembling in the air, it felt like the first bloom of spring. Inevitable, no matter how long the winter had held.

Notes:

If you want an epilogue or a continuation to this, I can always write more, but it will be split and turned into a series.

I hope you guys had enjoyed this 20 chapter work! I know I did!

So thank you uwu!!

On another note, Daemon_Kaedes made a poem out of this: Linkie here

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Second Weekends