Chapter Text
Kim Dokja was no stranger to trouble that came out of nowhere.
So when an exorbitantly expensive-looking imported sports car pulled up right next to him and rolled the windows down, he braced for the worst.
“You! You’re Kim Dokja!”
Kim Dokja might have lived his entire life under the pop culture equivalent of a rock, but even he knew that voice and face—Nirvana Moebius, rising international musical sensation.
“Don’t think I don’t know all about you. How dare you steal someone else’s beloved?” The pop star’s shapely pianist’s fingers flicked to their silver-rimmed designer sunglasses, lowering the shades momentarily to fix Kim Dokja with a venomous glare. Even in anger, though, they were beautiful—all rosy cheeks and red-rimmed eyes, the stray wisps of their golden hair catching the rays of the afternoon sun to form a halo around their face.
Nirvana Moebius was like a character out of a book.
The words coming out of their mouth, Kim Dokja thought wryly, would have been perfectly at home in a soap opera script, though.
“We’ve been promised to each other since we were kids, you know. Don’t you have any shame? Hey, are you listening to me?!” Nirvana’s eyes narrowed into a dangerous line.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kim Dokja answered with practiced blandness. “If you keep on harassing me, I’ll have no choice but to press charges.”
Having said that, he turned heel and began walking in the exact opposite direction from earlier, cutting into a pedestrian alleyway as soon as he saw one.
“Hey, come back! Hey! You!!”
Unlike Kim Dokja with his dextrous escape, the sports car was stuck in Seoul’s punishing afternoon traffic. But evidently, Nirvana Moebius had decided to use their lungs to make up for where their wheels failed to reach, because even after turning several blocks, Kim Dokja swore he could still hear shouting and honking.
More importantly, he also heard the dreaded telltale click of camera shutters in the distance.
Damn, he thought. There goes my peaceful everyday life.
Yoo Joonghyuk had just begun dicing an onion when he heard the click of the apartment lock turning. Kim Dokja’s familiar voice drifted toward him, along with the sound of grocery bags rustling.
“… would not believe what happened today,” Kim Dokja said with dissatisfaction as he entered the kitchen. “It was the gaudiest sports car I’ve ever seen, and guess who was inside? Nirvana Moebius—as in, the singer. Can you believe it?”
Luckily, he chose that exact moment to open the refrigerator door and stuff inside the groceries that Yoo Joonghyuk had requested. Thus, he missed the way Yoo Joonghyuk froze ever so slightly upon hearing that name.
Then, the refrigerator door slammed shut, and Yoo Joonghyuk came back to his senses.
“Did he say or do anything to you?” He asked with a frown.
“He didn’t do anything except honk,” Kim Dokja said dryly. “But he said plenty. Something about stealing his beloved and being promised as children. Does that actually happen in real life?”
“It’s a load of crap,” Yoo Joonghyuk said sharply.
Kim Dokja looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t know you’d started paying attention to celebrity gossip.”
“I don’t,” Yoo Joonghyuk said flatly. “I just,” he paused, choosing his words carefully, “heard about it in the past.” A furrow appeared between his brows as another thought suddenly came to mind. “Were there cameras following him?”
“I think so. I heard them,” Kim Dokja said with a mournful sigh. “I can see the headlines already. ‘Nirvana Moebius’ Lover Stolen by Rabid Pedestrian’ … or something.”
Yoo Joonghyuk looked up from his cutting board to study Kim Dokja for a few quiet minutes. Noticing his gaze, Kim Dokja flashed him a reassuring smile, then returned to organizing the rest of the groceries into the pantry. Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers twitched and reached out hesitantly, but ultimately fell back to his side.
“Dinner will be ready in ten,” he said instead.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Kim Dokja breathed. He quickly laid out their bowls and chopsticks on the table as Yoo Joonghyuk dumped the contents of his cutting board into the pan. “By the way,” he added nonchalantly, “Today is a stream night, isn’t it?”
Yoo Joonghyuk nodded.
Kim Dokja paused, and Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t even have to look up to visualize the slight pucker of his lips as he chewed on it, debating whether or not to make his next request.
“Come watch,” Yoo Joonghyuk said first.
“Really? Well, alright, then,” Kim Dokja answered, just a little too fast. The corner of Yoo Joonghyuk’s lips curved in the barest hint of a smile.
After dinner, Yoo Joonghyuk quickly turned on his streaming setup and closed the viewer count and comment displays with practiced ease. He double-checked the adjusted camera angle as well before letting Kim Dokja inside.
Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t the type to speak during a stream—a habit that’d held true since his pro-gamer days—so the only sounds in the room were the humming of the PC fans and the meditative clicking of his mouse and keyboard buttons.
“This is one of those infinite dungeons?” Kim Dokja asked quietly. “The ones that reset all of your progress when you die?”
Yoo Joonghyuk nodded, and Kim Dokja fell back into silence, watching the screen with rapt attention. He would never understand why Kim Dokja found watching him play these types of games fascinating—honestly, he himself would sometimes start to find it tedious—but the warm buzz in his chest whenever he glanced down and saw the tips of Kim Dokja’s eyelashes flutter in concentration kept him coming back.
For the fifth time that night, he checked the camera preview and verified its angle. Just low enough to keep Kim Dokja’s face out of frame, but high enough to capture every detail of how they were squeezed together in one gaming chair, Kim Dokja’s right leg almost resting on his knee from how tight the space was. How on some nights, Kim Dokja would rest his head on Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulder when he was tired or in low spirits, his fine hair falling tantalizingly in little tufts at the very edge of the video frame.
Today was one of those nights.
“The forty-sixth floor,” Kim Dokja said suddenly, his words a little indistinct from the way his cheek was still pressed against Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulder. “It’s not randomly generated like the others. It’s looked the same every time you’ve passed it.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers paused for a moment, and he began to explore the floor in greater detail. Sure enough, there was some bullshit key item for some bullshit requirement later in the game that would be impossible to clear without this hidden checkpoint.
A few floors later, the rise and fall of Kim Dokja’s chest had slowed to a gentle rhythm. Making sure not to jostle him awake, Yoo Joonghyuk closed the stream and lifted him up. For a brief, delusional moment, he wondered how Kim Dokja would react if he were “accidentally” set in Yoo Joonghyuk’s bed for the night by some excuse or other—but unfortunately, Kim Dokja needed every minute of sleep he could get.
By the time Yoo Joonghyuk returned to his own room, there were a few new messages on his phone from a familiar sender nicknamed “The Devil”—Kim Dokja’s handiwork.
(Privately, Yoo Joonghyuk agreed.)
The Devil: cute as always, lovebirds
The Devil: so like have u made any non-zero progress yet or r u still playing make believe on ur stream to cope
Yoo Joonghyuk scowled. Mind your own business, he typed back.
It was a mistake.
Message notifications shot off one after another on his phone like a rapid-fire cannon.
The Devil: lmfaoooo howd i kno
The Devil: dont worry u kno i got a pot running still
The Devil: the longer it takes the more i win
The Devil: btw tell him to stfu abt my new series protag
The Devil: im not fcking basing another guy off u again, that was a disaster
Yoo Joonghyuk glared at the phone with irritation, turned it off, then turned it on again to type a slightly heated reply which he still had enough rationality to delete instead of actually sending. Finally, he took a deep breath and recalled the reason why he still associated with Han Sooyoung at all.
Do your parents still own the local news publication? He typed.