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There are worse ways, Kim Dokja thinks, to reconnect with an ex after five years of mostly radio-silence.
Granted, he can’t think of them right now, dangling off an edge made of steel and wire, but a guy only really has optimism to hold on to in times like this. Yoo Joonghyuk smiles at him from above, not the smile that Kim Dokja has tucked away in the deepest recesses of his memories, the fragments of soft lips and gentle brows that he doesn’t care to look at too closely, but something altogether unknown.
“I’m hurt,” he says through gritted teeth. “Is this a kink that you never bothered to tell me about, Joonghyuk-ah? Was it because you thought I wouldn’t be into it? I mean, this isn’t the best time, but I’m sure we can- urk-!”
The hand around his throat tightens, enough to bruise. “A good imitation,” Yoo Joonghyuk says. “But not enough. Who are you.”
What would be sufficient proof, for this Yoo Joonghyuk? What would be enough for him to believe that Kim Dokja is who he says he is? Why would he think that Kim Dokja wouldn’t be who he says he is?
Is this the Yoo Joonghyuk he knows, even, or someone else? Someone who isn’t just eerily similar to the fictional character of Kim Dokja’s dreams made living, but him, in truth?
That’s impossible, he thinks. But, well. They’re here. What more impossible things are there?
“The way I see it,” Kim Dokja says, voice struggling through the chokehold. “You have two choices: If you really don’t think it’s me, you should let go and let me die. If you think it is me-” he smiles back at Yoo Joonghyuk, like he’s nineteen years old with nothing to lose but life enough to live. “Well, then you really should let go, because you know it’ll just piss me off enough to make me come back stronger.”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks at him for a long moment. “You might really be him,” he says, almost curious. Then smiles. “Well then, beloved, let’s see whether you’re a figment of my imagination or not.”
That bastard really is stupidly gorgeous when he smiles, Kim Dokja thinks, then he’s plummeting towards the water below.
He’s alive.
He can’t be alive.
He has never been alive before.
The contradictory truths-untruths-once truths rattle in Yoo Joonghyuk’s mind, like pebbles into still water. Or rather, boulders into a barely-contained tsunami.
The thing with Kim Dokja’s face smiles at him as he falls, buoyed with a confidence that Yoo Joonghyuk does not know how to interpret. If it were the man he once knew, he knows that the smile would mean fate, would mean recklessness, would be the mask of a man who has long since resigned himself to nothingness amused at the world trying to get a reaction out of him.
But it’s not him, so it cannot be any of those things. Besides - even his Kim Dokja, for all his deflection and masks and careful boxes of secrets, wouldn’t be able to keep his tranquility in a situation as dire as this. He had always believed himself to be more stoic than he actually expressed.
So Yoo Joonghyuk lets the doppelganger fall, and sears the image into his eyes.
After all, he does not know how the real Kim Dokja died, so the sin of this will serve as replacement in his nightmares now. A penance that he only deserves too well.
They find each other again in the tunnels of Chungmuro station.
There is a mist in the tunnels, and there is a memory that Kim Dokja has kept in the recesses of his mind for most of his life.
The knife gleams in his hands, and his mother reaches out, and it’s-
It’s-
There are arms around him, and he flails out wildly for a moment, a terrified child once more. There are arms around him, and he feels fear for a moment and no more, because these are the most familiar arms in the world, the touch safer than anything he has ever been allowed or allowed himself to accept.
“Kim Dokja,” the most beloved voice in the world says, and he inhales. Turns. Exhales into the lips of the only person who can make him truly feel like this memory is a thing of the past. The person he cannot bear to look at right now.
This is easier, the familiar slide of lips, the taste of him, smoke and blood unfamiliar but underneath that the warmth of skin that he has touched a million times before. The fingers tightening around his waist, sliding up his back. His own hands finding purchase in thick, unruly hair, fisting tight. Yoo Joonghyuk goes easily, gladly, the way he always does, following where Kim Dokja leads even when his movements are shaking and clumsy.
For a moment, Kim Dokja loses himself in the feeling, lets himself be lost in the feeling.
And then-
Voices, footsteps.
Their companions.
“Dokja-ssi?”
“Master?”
He remembers.
“How are you here?” he murmurs. Yoo Joonghyuk should’ve been- ahead. Somewhere else. The corpses of monsters left behind a testament to his path. Yoo Joonghyuk does not answer, just looks at him for a long, silent moment. Then lets go of him. Kim Dokja tells himself that he does not miss the weight.
By the time the others can see them again, they are an arm’s length apart. Carefully not looking at each other. He watches Lee Jihye talk to Yoo Sangah with flailing gestures-
“- and then he suddenly said that we had to go back for some reason -”
And all of them turn towards the two of them in askance. Kim Dokja shrugs before Yoo Joonghyuk can say anything incriminating: “I had a feeling we might need some help,” he says evasively. Jung Heewon narrows her eyes at them, but he’s careful not to give anything away with his expression.
At least their dishevelment can be chalked up to the scenario, he thinks.
[Demon-like Judge of Fire sponsors 1000 coins for the beautiful example of companionship!]
...Fuck.
They agree silently not to talk about it.
Well- Kim Dokja decides that they’re not talking about it, and dodges any attempts by Yoo Joonghyuk to bring up the subject. Thankfully, Yoo Joonghyuk is just as bad at being straightforward as he is sometimes, so their companions never seem to figure out what he’s actually trying to say.
Kim Dokja isn’t sure, actually, of what he’s trying to say. There are too many possibilities. Why he’s here, why he knows so much, why they’ve never seen each other before, where their-
Well.
Kim Dokja breaches that one himself, with a note slipped to him before the beginning of the King’s Games. Our daughter, it begins, and he already knows that Yoo Joonghyuk will be long gone for as long as he needs him to be.
It’s a terrible thing to do, he knows, but he’s never claimed to be a good person, and he puts the fate of his - their - heart in someone else’s hands at the same time. Holding Jung Heewon’s wrist and saying to her “This is the most important task I can give you. You have to find her. I need to trust you.”
She looks at him searchingly, penetratingly. He knows he’s never sounded this desperate before. If it weren’t for the fourth wall, he thinks his hands would be shaking. Finally, she nods.
“Of course,” she says, and he chooses to believe her.
He thinks about them throughout the games, about Yoo Joonghyuk burning a path in the world to find the person that occupies both of their minds, about Jung Heewon holding a small hand through torn earth. He isn’t even sure that it is her, if the name in the book and the name in this reality belong to the same small being that he loves as much as he is able to love anything.
If it is her, did he do this to her? Consign her to her fate the moment she was placed in their arms and he said “I have an idea for her name”?
The fourth wall stops him from thinking too much about it.
Yoo Joonghyuk holds a blade to his neck, and Kim Dokja wonders if this is the only way that they are able to have a conversation, now.
“You’re not him after all,” he says, voice blank and low. “Because he would never use her-”
“Papa!”
A small figure slams into Yoo Joonghyuk’s knees. If it were anyone else, they would be meeting his blade. But Yoo Joonghyuk drops his sword without hesitation, wraps both his arms around the little girl.
[The Fourth Wall is Shaking!]
“Mia,” he says, and the miniscule tremor in his voice would be wracking sobs in anyone else.
Jung Heewon jogs forward from behind her- “Wait, you’re-”
Before she can finish, Mia untangles herself from Yoo Joonghyuk’s vice grip, slapping tiny hands to either side of his cheekbones with a stern expression that is all her papa. “Papa, you’re being mean,” she scolds, and someone in the room chokes as Yoo Joonghyuk actually looks slightly contrite. “You’re not allowed to shout at Daddy!”
Kim Dokja feels dozens of eyes suddenly turn to him. Jung Heewon is the only one who seems less than surprised, apparently having put things together at the first papa. He hopes that she’ll start laughing soon, the tremors from keeping it in look painful.
Mia turns to him, then. “Daddy,” she cries, and suddenly nothing else matters. Kim Dokja meets his daughter with open arms.
[The Fourth Wall has temporarily been disabled!]
“Mia,” he echoes his companion, murmuring it like a prayer into her hair. “Oh, Mia. You have been so brave.”
He meets Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes from over her head, and for a moment they are a family again. For a moment, he lets himself think that this story will have a happy ending.
“Wait, you were fucking the protagonist?”
“...engaged, actually.”
“What the fuck.”