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Kim Dokja realizes he is in love with minimal fanfare.
It is as simple as a light-switch clicked on. It is a car pulling into their driveway; the comforting feeling of coming home. It is also as vast as space, and equally as all-encompassing.
He takes the snack in hand from Yoo Joonghyuk, dazed. He hadn’t asked, but he also hadn’t eaten beyond breakfast today. Joonghyuk has never once questioned whether Dokja cares for gim or not. He didn’t need to; he observed and then he knew.
It’s as their out-stretched hands brush and while Joonghyuk silently turns back around to walk up the stairs that Kim Dokja thinks: I love him.
He crunches on the salty seaweed snack as this thought overtakes him.
Not love in admiration, he’d felt that long before Yoo Joonghyuk became someone real. Not lust, though that’s probably there as well. The man was created to cater to exactly his taste, afterall. But this love, this heavy weight that nearly chokes and sinks his gut with apprehension, is love in totality, in every way.
The novel Kim Dokja was previously engrossed in suddenly becomes unreadable. He turns no pages and loses sight in the stark white between the text. The book in his hands stares back.
Now Kim Dokja is no stranger to love, as backwards as it may sound. At first, love was sacrifice and agony. Then, the Scenarios started and love became fighting for each other, support and surrender. Most of all, at present, the love he holds for his Company members is about living and doing so together. These are changes he has grown accustomed to, through a lot of growing, since returning from the train.
He thought that the mortal ordeal of being loved by others was about as tough as it was going to get, as far as emotional rollercoasters without protection from the Fourth Wall would go. It gets his palms sweaty and shaking along the hardcover book’s jacket. To think that there is yet another challenge within his psyche to parse through.
And how weird is he, to view pure unfiltered love as a challenge, a burden, a cross to bear? Maybe Kim Dokja still hadn’t grown at all.
But this love, this damned feeling is undeniably heavy. It presses down on his ribcage with a sick gooey drip, ready to feed off of him and fester into something worse now that he’s acknowledged it lives there. Maybe that’s the most frustrating part of it all; he has been living like this for years. Two decades, one millennia, give or take. His love for Yoo Joonghyuk is there in every step he’s taken. Why must it rear its head now, when everything is peaceful, calm. Stable like his life had never been before.
Why now does he love, ache with it and stupidly aspire to enact change.
Dokja flops sideways to sprawl out along the couch and stare at the ceiling, novel tossed away un-bookmarked. He sighs, exhaustion aimed at these thoughts overtaking him quickly. The most glaring problem here is in fact, that Kim Dokja does not know who he is outside of loving Yoo Joonghyuk.
He’s never known a reality where Yoo Joonghyuk does not feature in his mind and in his heart in some way. Within every universe, if Kim Dokja existed, then so did Yoo Joonghyuk. There is never a worldline where he does not care. Maybe it’s not always positive, but the man always has his attention no matter what. If Yoo Joonghyuk is, then Kim Dokja is looking at him.
Knowing all this now, what is he supposed to do about it?
The ceiling offers no answers.
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His agitation is made clear immediately, to Han Sooyoung. Kim Dokja has knocked upon her door twice, now the third time he sets up shop and settles into her room. They don’t speak. Still, the sounds throughout the room ring loudly.
Dokja’s physical tics are up to three: he keeps shifting on her bed, making the springs creak with each displaced movement. He clicks his tongue intermittently, deleting whatever’s been written on his phone. He picks at a nail with one hand the entire time. Sooyoung elects to type more aggressively on her laptop keyboard.
It works for a little moment of peace, granting tunnel vision-focus on her writing. Which is then broken by Kim Dokja rearranging himself on the bed again. Her next breath is sharp.
“What?” She bends around in her desk chair and asks.
Dokja on her bed looks up, startled. “What?” He echoes.
“Can you not tell how pent-up you’re acting? When’s the last time you jacked off?” She prods.
“It’s not that.” He says distractedly to his phone screen. He doesn’t even balk in disgust at her comment and Han Sooyoung knows this is bad. Super bad.
“Well, did you come in here to talk about it?” She says, a bit lighter and less snappy this time.
He looks at her, makes eye contact, looks back down at the screen. A contemplative twist of his lip and then Dokja speaks, “No.” His shoulder slump. “I didn’t want to be interrupted…”
Interesting. Maybe. Though, she really can’t find it in herself to care too much if he won’t speak his damn mind. Her frustration is readily wielded. “Then you came in here to interrupt me in turn?”
“No.” He smiles sweetly at her from his perch. “But it’s a nice added benefit.” He says enigmatically like the shithead he is and then rolls off of her bed with finality. “I’ll leave you be then.”
He’s probably playing a mental game of 5D chess about something and historically, that only serves to cement stupid misunderstandings in his head. He needs to be stopped. She turns back to her computer. Unfortunately, she has a draft to edit. It is her writing that pays most bills; someone else in the house can step up to bat for this go around.
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Yoo Sangah finds Dokja in the library, not even reading and decidedly looking worse for wear.
She closes the door lightly behind herself and sits across from him in the opposite armchair. “So,” She starts, and Kim Dokja jolts as if he hadn’t heard her enter. “What’s wrong?”
“Huh?” He remarks, then looks down and away. “What do you mean?” He asks evasively.
“You’re staring at a wall. I’m used to you staring at a blank phone screen enough, but this is a bit too far.”
He laughs tightly at her joke. Raising a hand noncommittally, Dokja asks: “How much time do you have?”
She tucks her feet under herself, comfortably curling up in the chair. “Plenty.” She says. Her smile is warm, full of endearment. “However much time you need.”
Apparently, the man needs a lot of time, as it turns out. Minutes tick by while he fiddles with a hangnail, gaze lost in the bookshelves.
Finally, quietly, Dokja admits, “I love Yoo Joonghyuk.” He fumblingly tacks on, “I- I know you already know this. I’ve never been discrete, just unaware of how deep it ran. Plus, you were stuck in my mind for weeks on end.” He finishes quietly. “I know you know.”
Sangah nods. “Then, now that you’re aware, what do you want?”
“I have only ever wanted him to be happy, this entire time.”
She clicks her tongue at him. “You have got to stop dis-servicing yourself at the expense of others. What do you want.”
Dokja hunches his shoulder indignantly. Slowly he says, “To talk to him.”
“Just that?”
“I want…” Dokja’s hands clench. His teeth grind, his eyes are shut tight. Everything that he can do to block out this selfish feeling, he will do it. It escapes from between his lips anyway. “I want to be allowed to love him. My way. In every way I can.”
Sangah looks at him, pitifully curled up in the armchair as he is. “Then ask.” That is her response, easy, simple and chiding. “You will never get what you want if you avoid it.”
Dokja looks at her helplessly. He panics, fumbling with his hands as he weaves excuses. “But I… I have no right, to ask this of him. After all that he’s done for me, I still want more than what’s been offered. And, and, I can’t lose his presence in my life, I don’t know what to do withou-”
“Dokja. You’re afraid, I understand that. But you’ve never asked Joonghyuk-ssi how he feels. You can make assumptions until the heat death of the universe comes, but you will not know without asking him.” It’s enough now that tears well up in his eyes. They build and drip past his lashes to fall carelessly down his face. His breathing is heavy as he continues.
“What if he doesn’t love me and he’s disgusted by me after?”
“You’re belittling him. You think he would’ve done half of the things he’s done to bring you back if there wasn’t love there?”
“What if he lies for my benefit.” Kim Dokja whispers.
“He can make his own choices. Most often he chooses you.”
“But what if my love’s not the same?” Dokja still insists.
Sangah heaves a sigh. “Then he will say so. And you will still hold love for each other. That will not just go away. Do you see what I’m saying? Dokja, this is unraveling you. It has to be your choice to do something about it. Even in the worst-cases, are those results really as bad as you spiraling further?” Yoo Sangah speaks with clear-cut compassion. She quietly adds, “Now that we’re free, why not chase your own happiness? It might also be his.”
He laughs. “You know I’m really bad at doing that.” Dokja replies wetly.
“Which is why you have to try so hard, for this, for him.”
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Dokja being the first one to cave actually comes as a shock to most of them, including Joonghyuk himself. He stands stock-still through Dokja’s confessing, driving the statements into a stumbling stuttering mess of a thing when he offers no cues.
Yoo Joonghyuk simply stares, blinks a few times for good measure. Dokja’s hands meet his face and run agonizingly downwards. Joonghyuk is suffused with warm, cottony need. “Okay, fine.” Dokja grits out. “I’m trying not to back-track so just- just, thank you for listening.” He tries to turn away.
Finally, Joonghyuk clicks back into place and panics at the threat of retreat. No way. Not after that. Not after finally owning up to it and after all the words left unsaid. “Dokja-” He grabs him, cages him against his chest to belatedly realize he’s shaking.
And maybe that’s the core of it. All of this, from both sides, is fear. Fear of further loss, abandonment. Fear of chasing after and holding happiness in the palm of the hand when it’s guaranteed to be temporary. Fear of loving, and being loved in return.
So Joonghyuk meets Kim Dokja there, raw and afraid like never before. Presses his lips to the crown of his head and quietly admits:
“I love you too.”
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