Work Text:
A heatwave doesn’t go unnoticed in a city like Seoul. With tall buildings replacing trees and the population skyrocketing, it only gets harder to ignore with every year that passes.
Kim Dokja squeezed his eyes shut in annoyance until he was sure his eyelashes stuck together, with his sweat as glue. A thick coat of salt covered his face and back, no matter the fan blasting on his barely clothed self and the open windows in the rest of his and Yoo Joonghyuk’s apartment.
He quickly glanced at the clock next to him. 02:47.
Dokja sighed, burying his face in the folds of his palm, his fingers feeling wet at the slightest touch. Joonghyuk slept next to him, soundly—as unbothered as he always was by warm temperatures, with sweat still leaving damp blotches on his back.
He had work tomorrow, more games to test from nine in the morning to seven at night. Every minute of sleep kept him awake in that boredom and drowsiness that got worse with the weather outside.
Hmm. It wasn’t fair that his boyfriend could sleep through the sweltering night, leaving tired Dokja alone with his frustrations for the world.
He backed the sole of his foot into Joonghyuk's calf and silently gasped at the coolness of his skin. An asshole with a cold body like him would surely stay unbothered in the heat, unlike Dokja with a naturally warm figure.
Dokja tossed and turned for a couple moments more, sneaking soft and gentle touches to Joonghyuk’s shoulders and arms, kicking his legs around their thin duvet back and forth, until finally, finally, he found a comfortable position that allowed the fan to give him even the tiniest sliver of relief. His eyes met the dark moles on Joonghyuk’s back, an almost shiny back the amount of sweat covering the tan skin.
His fingertips moved to rest on his shoulder blade before his brain could process it.
Dokja hummed, drawing different shapes on the icy skin—a flower, a fish, then a heart. He traced both the letters of his own and Joonghyuk’s name in Hangul, then in English—then whatever was on his mind.
It’s so hot in here.
Joonghyuk left him alone in the middle of the night with nothing to do.
Selfish bastard.
Wake up alredy. Dokja paused and cursed himself silently for not being good with languages like his co-workers were. He scratched a line across the imaginary word, as swift as a knife slicing silk, and continued his previous maneuver. Already. I miss you.
Joonghyuk grunted, pushing himself further into the sheets, spine curling into itself.
He didn’t plan to wake him up.
He wasn’t done with his... revenge… yet.
Dokja’s finger froze—ironic considering the circumstance to his insomnia—a hairline away from his cold skin. He could hear a couple streetlights buzzing outside—only them and the moonlight illuminating the city outside—not daring to move.
He waited for so long, just making sure his boyfriend’s breathing stayed steady, he began feeling the sheet under him stick to his skin.
The prior morning, Joonghyuk offered to buy another, stronger fan to replace the nearly broken one.
But Kim Dokja is cheap. Despite having enough to buy a hundred of them—hell, what didn’t he have money for—he wanted to feel every single last breeze of air it could produce.
He now regretted that decision. Terribly, terribly so.
The shirt he initially wore to bed stuck to his skin like annoying slivers of a paper towel on wet hands and around an hour ago, he took it off, throwing it into some corner behind him he already forgot about.
You’re so lucky for being cold all the time.
He made an effort to trace each line, each curve, each letter as slow as he could; Joonghyuk’s skin being the ice rink for Dokja’s finger to skate on.
I love you for being cold all the time.
Dokja pressed both his hands on Joonghyuk’s shoulder blades, mimicking the look of wings, and enjoyed as the cool sensation travelled through his palms to the rest of his body.
I love you, he traced with his thumbnail.
“Mmn…” Joonghyuk mumbled. “Dokja–ya?”
He turned his face around to look at Dokja, who didn’t bother hiding the shit-eating grin on his face, limbs still stuck to his back. “You’re so cold. In the middle of a heatwave. That’s selfish.”
Joonghyuk quietly stared into his soul, still getting used to being conscious—like a baby bird after hatching—and glanced over at the clock on his own nightstand shining a bright three, mind too cloudy to care enough and read the string of numbers that follows.
“It’s late.” he leaned back into the mattress with a grunt, eyelids lowering and nearly covering the pupils he directed onto the man behind him. “You have work tomorrow. We have work tomorrow.”
Dokja pressed his cheek into the crook of his neck and hummed, putting a deaf ear to the complaints. “Mm. You’re my personal freezer.”
Joonghyuk stared down at him, not a single muscle on his face moving along with his eyes—from Dokja’s hair to his eyes to his own bare chest to the arms now around his torso, fingers resting intertwined on his sternum.
“You’re—” Joonghyuk turned around and wrapped an arm around his chest, pulling him closer to his own. “Insufferable, you bastard.”
Like a cat, Dokja trilled at the contact, his smile only widening at the brief kiss pressed on the corner of his mouth. “You don’t seem to mind much, do you, Joonghyuk-ah?”
Brief silence filled the small space between their faces.
“... Just sleep, for god's sake.” His head fell on the pillow beside his boyfriend’s, a sigh escaping his lips. His arm dropped lower, to rest on the space between the last of Dokja’s ribs and the start of his waist, the cool caress leaving goosebumps standing on his neck despite the scorching heat enveloping him from outside to the inside.
Dokja pressed his warm face to Joonghyuk’s collarbone, feeling it cold against his cheek, and exhaled in relief.
“Oh, and, Joonghyuk-ah, you’re ordering three fans for me tomorrow.”