everything here is pretty short

hope u like it anyway. same name on twitter and ao3. icon by me. 25+

[ksalientian]

do u have fics under another ao3? ur writing reminds me of another author (in a good way keksk)!!

wow I am late to answer this but I in fact do! i am just always writing for smaller fandoms/ships so i am probably not the same person as that other author though 🥹

[ksalientian]

hi! it seems like you dont post a lot anymore (or write about this ship) but i absolutely needed to thank you for writing seiya/shu on ao3! thank you!!

hello! it's true I am currently between fandoms and have not written outside of originals in ages... but im glad to have watered your crops briefly!

[timelessbondszine]

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[ksalientian]

32. [orv] han sooyoung & kim dokja

a kim dokja who never wakes up. text version of my twitter post.

.

These days, it was only Sooyoung who visited anymore. 

She nodded to the nurse on duty, whose face was so familiar Sooyoung could list the placement of her moles with no hesitation, and whose name Sooyoung still didn't know. At first she had felt as though knowing would make everything permanent; now— now she was only being stubborn.

Kim Dokja was pale white as the belly of a fish, blending in with his sheets. He wasn't like a normal patient, and he didn't have as many machines around him as the people in other wards. A monitor for his vital signs, a catheter that Sooyoung had blushed at before, an IV stand filled with mundane nutrient fluid instead of the Fables of the past. His face remained unobscured but for a slim tube fed through his nose, and as always, he looked like he was only sleeping.

"Still here, huh?" 

It was her standard greeting. Though the evaporation of his lifeblood that had been so urgent at the start had now slowed to a crawl— Sooyoung watched a tiny glimmer of light float up from Kim Dokja's forehead and disappear— it was still happening.

Yet despite it all he persisted.

Even Aileen and Lee Seolhwa had no guesses why Kim Dokja's avatar, which should have crumbled soon after the system did, was holding on so tenaciously with such frail hands.

Sooyoung remembered the taste of blood in her mouth and thought she knew why he lingered. 

Constellation, ‘Demon King of Salvation’, is currently activating ‘Will to Live Lv.1’.

She thought she could hear it even now. But that was a secret for her and Yoo Joonghyuk to keep. This was an avatar, but he was still Kim Dokja, after all. She wouldn't go telling his vulnerabilities to anyone else.

"I bought a new car last week," she said, trying to dismiss her other thoughts. "It looks just like the one we made an advertisement for back then. Unfortunately for you, you're destitute now; I'm definitely the only one who can afford it."

As she told Kim Dokja about her life while poking his thin cheeks, some part of Sooyoung was still wondering how long this would last. Over the years even the strongest of feelings faded, whether intentional or not. Most of their erstwhile Company had unconsciously drifted further away, starting their lives anew, finding new constants that weren't Kim Dokja's crooked smile. Yoo Joonghyuk, she knew, avoided the hospital on purpose, devoting his remaining heart to his sister.

Sooyoung might have been one of them. Only she was a writer with an obsession— she would see the end of the story, no matter what it was. It was just that even her stubborn heart was capable of growing tired.

"If you wake up, what then?" 

It wasn't the first time Sooyoung had said 'if', instead of 'when'. But she also found herself wishing, and this was for the first time, that Kim Dokja's epilogue would hurry up and come already. She reached out and pinched his nose shut, frustration suddenly welling up in her like a tide. Of course, from Kim Dokja there was no response, and she let go when the nurse gave a polite cough. 

"Sorry," she mumbled. 

But to whom she was apologising, Sooyoung wasn't sure.

[ksalientian]

31. [ORV] yoohankim

a fight's not the end of the world.

.

It was what she was used to, was the thing. There was a part of her deep down that was utterly terrified of being known, and she lacked the maturity to control it when it decided to lash out. So she said the things she said and did the things she did. It was only ever in the smoking ruins of after that she remembered the damage she could wreak.

Maybe this is what you want, Sooyoung had said. Had spat, really— that was the word for the way she had told him what she did, as if she was expelling rank poison from her gut. You want people to hate you for your griminess and your wrinkled clothes and all the rest of your carefully cultivated superficial ugliness so that you can comfort yourself by saying they're shallow, instead of having them inevitably destroy you by hating the ugliness of your real self.

She couldn't get his face out of her mind. When she had said those things she had chosen the cruellest words she knew because she had been talking about herself, really, not Kim Dokja.

But he was the one who had heard her. She had made him her target, because she had been hurting, and he had been there.

Okay, he had said. That was all he had said, in a curiously flat tone of voice. He hadn't even looked like it had hurt him much, and Sooyoung might not have known had it not been for how he couldn't control his physical response. His face had gone stark white, so quickly it was like he had put on a mask. Then he had left without saying another word. He was wearing my sweater, she thought, inanely.

There weren't words she could use to apologise. Sooyoung knew this with acute certainty. She might tell him the reasons that had contributed to her saying such a thing, but that would not erase the knife she had driven into his gut, at a time when he had least expected it. When he had only been trying to help her, even though he could barely manage to get out of bed so much of the time. He had done it for her, and this was how she repaid him.

"Kim Dokja," she said, not knowing what else she could do. She stood outside his closed door and leaned her forehead against the uncaring wooden surface of it.

When it opened, it was Joonghyuk who stood there. Sooyoung closed her eyes and waited to be struck. Joonghyuk was the sort of person who spoke best with his fists and his sword, and god knew Sooyoung would deserve it right about now. She had looked at Dokja's desperate survival and called it superficial, never mind that she hadn't really meant it. She wanted to punch herself, too.

"He's asleep," Joonghyuk told her instead. She opened her eyes again. He was watching her, his face a closed-off mask. It was infuriating, the fact that she had created him but often she had no idea how to read him. "You should leave."

"Like hell I will." She put her foot in the doorway. Joonghyuk didn't move, but he looked a little more like he wanted to hit her. Good, she thought.

"If you want to ask him to forgive you, he already has."

Sooyoung knew that. That was why she was here. "I came to tell the idiot that he doesn't have to, alright?" She put her hand against Joonghyuk's chest and pushed, but it was like pushing a granite wall. "Let me in."

"You should leave," said Joonghyuk, as if he hadn't heard her, "because the one who hasn't forgiven you is me."

She realised, suddenly, that the minute shiver of his body that she felt under her hand wasn't from his exhaustion at all. It was from the way he was controlling the sheer rage inside him, how he kept it leashed with diamond focus so he wouldn't hurt her the way she had hurt Dokja. 

She hated that it made her eyes sting. She had no business crying when she was the furthest thing from a victim here. Her hand dropped to her side like a cut flower.

"What do I have to do," she said, quietly. 

Joonghyuk looked away at last. In the room behind him, Dokja snuffled in his sleep, and the noise he made was thick with what Sooyoung knew was the aftermath of tears. Her own eyes were wet and brimming now.

"Leave," he said again. She felt it as keenly as any punch he could have thrown.

But when she lost her fight with her tears and a drop rolled down her cheek, he sighed and reached out to rub it away. "Stop crying. I didn't say leave forever." His hand cupped her jaw. It was still trembling the slightest bit— not as much as it had been earlier.

"So I can bring ice cream and hot chocolate later?" Sooyoung tried for a grin, but it felt wobbly. "The expensive brand for your expensive palate."

Joonghyuk removed his hand. And then he nudged her foot out of the doorway, and shut the door in her face, and it knocked the breath out of her. She had just raised her fist to hammer on it, because no way was she just letting him kick her out like a misbehaving dog no matter how furious he was, at which point Joonghyuk said from behind the door: "No mint, it tastes like toothpaste."

She leaned her forehead against the door again, but this time her muscles were slack in relief. "Yeah, yeah, picky princesses the lot of you," she muttered.

There was still the apology she had to make to Joonghyuk— seeing him keep such tight control of himself when she hadn't bothered… her teeth ached with how small and cruel she felt, like she was making a mockery of his efforts with the unbelievable lack of her own. And there was the truth she had to tell Dokja about why she really said those things. About how much she thought those things about herself, and not him at all.

It was a terrifying thing to imagine, the idea of someone knowing the depth of her self-resentment. But Sooyoung wanted to do it. She could lay herself open if it meant Dokja would stop bleeding himself dry for her.

Still, when she was at the grocery picking up their ice cream, she bought a huge tub of mint chocolate anyway. There were just some things a woman shouldn't budge on, and the superiority of mint chocolate ice cream was one of them.

[ksalientian]

30. [orv] joongdok

something sweet and happy. text version of my twitter post.

.

"This is so crazy," he says. He's tired out from being put through his paces by his therapist, and his muscles are like jelly noodles, but he makes himself raise a hand and wave it in an appropriately dramatic fashion. "Isn't it? How are we all here?"

Now Joonghyuk is looking at him like he's the crazy one. But there's a hint of fondness in the gentle slant of his mouth, and the way his eyes crinkle just so at the edges. That's the other crazy thing, that their deaths and resurrections and countless years apart have only served to let Dokja learn even better the ways to read Yoo Joonghyuk.

"With hard work," Joonghyuk tells him, catching his foot when he attempts to kick out in irritation. "Stop being a child."

"When you stop being a grandmother," Dokja retorts.

Instead of affording Dokja any dignity, Joonghyuk starts to massage his calf, and Dokja just melts into the carpet and sighs. He knows he's right, though. This is all crazy. Dokja just doesn't get to be this happy— that's for people who didn't personally ensure the destruction of 1864 lives and counting.

"You're allowed."

Dokja flinches. He looks up, and Joonghyuk is looking at him, though his fingers don't stop pressing the ache out of Dokja's muscles. 

"Allowed to what?" Dokja tries. He gets a sharp glare for his trouble.

"Allowed to have this," Joonghyuk says, as if it's that easy. He pauses his massage. His hands are very hot on Dokja's skin. "Allowed to have me, if you still want me."

This is the last crazy thing, and the craziest, if Dokja is being honest. That after all this, after everything, Yoo Joonghyuk can look at him and see someone to be desired. That Joonghyuk could even think, for a second, that Dokja doesn't want him with a desperation that can and will destroy the world.

"Whether I want you isn't really in question," says Dokja, and he hears himself say it as though he's underwater, like he can't quite believe he's actually saying it.

"Alright," says Joonghyuk, quietly. 

Joonghyuk doesn't carry a sword, these days, but if he did, Dokja thinks he would hear it loud and clear, the tip of it dragging on the ground, like the simplest of instruments with which to play a serenade.

[ksalientian]

29. [orv] joongdok

'brother'. text version of my twitter post.

.

Joonghyuk didn't know when it had happened, but without realising it, he had gained a brother one day. Kim Dokja had appeared out of nowhere, like a magic trick. No one seemed to think it was weird; but then, Joonghyuk didn't really feel weird about it either. It wasn't like he had a lot to compare to. For all he knew this really was how brothers came about, and everyone just never talked about it, all part of some collectively buried secret. So he kept his silence too.

"Do you miss your parents?" his brother asked one day, as he walked Joonghyuk to school (Dokja didn't go to school, and for some reason no one ever called him out about this either). Joonghyuk thought for a moment about asking, what about your parents? Then he let it go.

"I don't know," said Joonghyuk. "I've never had any."

"Hmm." 

"What?"

Dokja shrugged a little. "They're just— I don't think parents are that great, anyway. Real parents aren't like in the stories." He skipped ahead so Joonghyuk couldn't see the look on his face, but he wasn't very good at hiding his tells. His hands were being loud.

Joonghyuk reached out and caught one of Dokja's hands in his own. His brother's fingers were cold, as they always were, as though he had taken them straight out of a freezer. "I believe you," he said. He didn't know how to comfort someone else, having never been comforted himself, but he thought Dokja might like hearing something like that. Dokja gave him the same sort of feeling he had when he saw stray puppies in the rain. Like he was always alone, even when Joonghyuk was right there.

"Thanks," said Dokja, turning to beam at Joonghyuk. That was a smile he only ever had when he was looking at Joonghyuk. "You're just like in the stories, though. Maybe it was worth ■■■ after all."

This would happen, sometimes. Dokja would say something, and it was like Joonghyuk's ears just blanked out. Dokja never seemed to notice it, though, so Joonghyuk never brought it up either. He just nodded, as he did now. He thought he probably knew what Dokja was forbidden to say, anyway, after all this time touching Dokja's cold skin and seeing people's eyes slide right over his existence. It was another one of those things about which Joonghyuk would stoically keep his silence.

"Don't do it again," was all Joonghyuk said. His grip on Dokja's fingers tightened enough that someone else might have cried out in pain.

Dokja, however, only looked terribly pleased. "Oh," he said, and his smile seemed to have far too many teeth in it, "I'll never leave you."

[ksalientian]

28. [slam dunk] senru

"sweat". text version of my twitter post.

.

Rukawa is laid out on the futon when Sendou comes home, rudely dampening it with his sweat. One package of Sendou's favourite instant noodles is missing, and there's a used bowl in the sink. Sendou ignores this to go over and look at Rukawa, whose face is somehow still sour even in his sleep.

"Take a bath before you nap," Sendou says under his breath, but his tone is fond. Rukawa knows by now that Sendou's complaints aren't really complaints at all, and he seems to get some weird satisfaction from leaving his mark all over Sendou's apartment, like a cat claiming his territory.

When Sendou is pulling Rukawa's jersey off him, he wakes up— of course, he's not happy about it.

"Pervert," Rukawa mumbles, flailing his arm and nearly taking Sendou's eye out.

"I only worry for your health, young master." Sendou taps his forehead just to see him frown. "You're going to catch a cold if you lie around all sweaty. Shower?"

"Nn," says Rukawa. His eyes are still closed, but he finds Sendou's arm and tugs him down onto the futon. "Later."

Sendou's futon smells like sweat and lemon danishes. He clicks his tongue. "Have you been eating sweets in my bed again?" He braces himself on one elbow, his free hand sliding across Rukawa's stomach.

"I left one for you," Rukawa says, as if that makes up for it.

"One day," Sendou presses his teeth against Rukawa's throat, tasting salt and the way he shivers, "I'm going to get angry, and then you'll be sorry."

"You won't," says Rukawa. He's as smug as a cat, too. Sendou likes him so terribly much.

"I won't," Sendou agrees, helplessly, and has no choice but to kiss him.

[ksalientian]

27. [orv] joongdok

yjh likes tearing kdj's clothes off. kdj isn't a fan. text version of my twitter post

.

Joonghyuk, in all his Neanderthal glory, had a thing for literally tearing clothes off. Dokja wouldn't mind so much if they were his own clothes— the bastard had one too many black turtlenecks anyway— but unfortunately for Dokja's wardrobe, the main victim of Joonghyuk's impeccable caveman imitation was Kim Dokja himself.

"Oh, fuck," Dokja would gasp, clawing at Joonghyuk's shoulders as he ground his knee between Dokja's legs, and plink plonk would go his shirt buttons on the floor, sacrificed to summon the beast with two backs. Or Dokja would arch his body against Joonghyuk's after a particularly intense kiss, and rrrrip would go the t-shirt Yoosung had bought him for his birthday the year before. He had even lost a pair or two of slacks to Joonghyuk's terrible hands, although the amount of force required to actually tear his slacks off inevitably made Dokja horny instead of angry, and then it was too late to make a fuss about it afterwards.

But not this time. This time Dokja would not be put off.

"Joonghyuk-ah," said Dokja, attempting to wriggle his way out from the trap of Joonghyuk's thighs (to his later chagrin, he had to admit he wasn't actually trying very hard. They were very nice thighs). "We need to talk."

Joonghyuk, whose fingers were already sliding up Dokja's shirt, only grunted in acknowledgement. Dokja opened his mouth to initiate the Talk but found himself summarily kissed into dazed silence.

No, he thought frantically, pulling himself together some moments later, no, this is a Charvet shirt, I can't let him ruin it— 

"Do you know how much this shirt costs," Dokja groaned. Joonghyuk thumbed at his nipple and did not answer him. He did, however, suck a bruise into Dokja's neck, like a vampire. And his free hand, like a caveman, gripped the front of Dokja's shirt. "The buttons, Yoo Joonghyuk."

"They take too long," Joonghyuk answered, at last, and pulled. There was a minute pause, just long enough for Dokja to really appreciate the sound of his mother-of-pearl buttons scattering across the floor. His shirt lay open at his sides, pitiful and torn. Dokja closed his eyes in pain.

"I am," he began, breath hitching when Joonghyuk bent to continue his vampiric hobby on Dokja's bare chest, "I am upset, Joonghyuk-ah. I am very upset. This is upsetting."

Joonghyuk sat back up, licking his lips. His mouth was red, and Dokja couldn’t look away.

"Buy you a new one," said Joonghyuk.

"It's 900 thousand won."

Joonghyuk had an impressive poker face, but Dokja was too familiar with him to miss the twitch of his eyelid. "Why are you wasting money on shirts," Joonghyuk said petulantly, and bit at his chest again. When Dokja inhaled as if to continue the argument, Joonghyuk stuck his hand down Dokja's pants, and then Dokja forgot what he was going to say.

Oh, Dokja knew what was happening. Joonghyuk was an unemployed bastard who couldn't afford Dokja's shirts, and now he was trying to use sex as a distraction.

Well— (Joonghyuk slid further down and put his mouth to good use) well— (Dokja's fingers tangled in Joonghyuk's hair, moaning)

Well, Dokja was successfully distracted.

[ksalientian]

26. [orv] love is a four-letter word

happy birthday yoo joonghyuk. on love. text version of my twitter post.

.

Joonghyuk is careful, these days, about what he calls love.

Every second with Mia is a starburst in his chest, a deep and impossibly vast ocean of feeling that he wishes he could wrap her in, all her sweetness and intelligence and foolishness, all the ways she teaches him what it is to live for another. Love is a word that comes to mind, but it doesn't seem big enough for something that is the foundation of his existence. He calls it that anyway, even if it doesn't quite fit, just for the brilliant smile that dawns on her face when he makes himself say he loves her.

Then, sharply to the left, is the vibrant thrum of his blood in his veins, the heat-haze that steals across his skin, the dark twisting in the pit of his stomach at the sight of Kim Dokja— this he names desire, and he knows what one does with a thing like that. 

When the beast that should have been sated howls again at Kim Dokja's hand on Yoo Sangah's shoulder, Joonghyuk frowns. This, Lee Seolhwa tells him, carding her fingers gently through his hair, is called jealousy. He tilts his head, asking but not, and when she presses a kiss to his forehead like a benediction, he knows the meaning of comfort.

Comfort is a rare thing, after the end of the world, and so is safety. But he finds both like miracles in quiet moments with the travelers by his side. With the steady rock that is Lee Hyunsung at his back, with Jung Heewon so determined to protect even a man like him, with Yoo Sangah who lets his instinctive anger slide off her back like nothing. He is nothing but a stranger knocking at their door, and yet their hearts are wide open.

Love, he thinks again, but he swallows it back. Companions, he says to them instead, and feels settled when they accept it with ease.

The children are another kind of miracle. Joonghyuk does not feel for them what he does for his baby sister, but it seems to be a friendly cousin in nature. A lightness in his step, the involuntary quirk of his lip. An almost-forgotten fondness, when Lee Gilyoung snickers and throws a cockroach at a yelling Jang Hayoung, when Shin Yoosung sits on Lee Jihye's shoulders and kicks her feet in excitement. 

He watches them with a feeling he names not love but affection, a thing that warms the places he'd never known were cold. 

For Han Sooyoung, he runs into a wall again. Love, he strikes out immediately, as he does hate. It's complicated, he admits. The tangle of whatever he feels for her has evolved so much over the years that it's become a wild thing, another beast he can't hope to tame. She has hurt him like no other, the architect of his lonely millennia, and yet when he sits by her in silence some unknown ache in his soul is soothed.

He asks her about it, one day when they are watching Kim Dokja struggle through his physical therapy. She is an author, Joonghyuk thinks. She must know something.

"Just call it friendship, you dumbass," Han Sooyoung says to him. "Friendship can be complicated. God knows Kim Dokja makes everything complicated."

"But it's different—"

"Shut up, who's the emotionally constipated one here? Not me." She pushes two hands through her hair in exasperation. "Look. You don't have to have an exact name for everything. I mean, you can feel massively different about two different people but still call what you feel for both of them love. There's no rules about that sort of thing, so don't hurt your little brain fussing about it."

Joonghyuk doesn't answer her, and she doesn't press him. Like a friend, he thinks. She understands.

He looks at Kim Dokja again, and it happens that Kim Dokja is looking back, this time. His face is screwed up in pain, sweat is beading on his forehead, and his skin still retains the pallor of the days spent silent and bedridden. But he raises his eyebrows at Joonghyuk, and Joonghyuk knows this means he is fine. He knows, in fact, every microexpression and every reflexive twitch, has learnt the language of Kim Dokja's body with his own body.

There is the languid coil of desire when Kim Dokja stretches, and the well-worn sting of jealousy when he rolls his eyes at Han Sooyoung. And there is the overwhelming tide of something, the hooks of it catching painfully in his marrow and dragging out his vulnerable insides, the way Joonghyuk will let it happen if only it would make Kim Dokja do the same. Joonghyuk thinks he knows the name of it now.

Love is at the tip of his tongue, a fragile bird caged all its life, spreading its wings to take flight.

[ksalientian]

25. [orv] joongdok

'yjh is a dakimakura'. text version of my twitter post.

.

I have a weird question, Dokja wrote, on his Twitter account that had eleven followers (two of which were bots). Do you think ghosts exist?

No one replied to him, of course, because Dokja's online acquaintances weren't interested in things other than the popular webnovels, but he hadn't expected it anyway. He wasn't even sure if he was imagining things. It was only— well, it really might have been his paranoia. Dokja looked around, made eye contact with the thing lying innocently on his bed, flushed, and looked away again. No, Dokja didn't think he was being paranoid.

He opened up a Q&A forum to ask the same question, hesitating when he was prompted to add more detail. I made a body pillow, he typed, slowly. I commissioned the art and only made one of it so I'm the only one who has one, it's not from a maker. He didn't add that it was a picture of a man on the cover, nor that it was a fictional man whom he sometimes felt like he'd been in love with for half his life. Long story short, it feels like it's watching me.

Supernatural questions were fairly popular on this forum, and before long the answers were filled up with people heckling him for being dirty and asking if he liked 'that sort of thing'. He scrolled past these answers with mild embarrassment.

"Joonghyuk-ah, you're making people think I'm a pervert," he said, absently. 

Then he closed his eyes and heaved a sigh. He'd meant to stop talking to the pillow, but he just couldn't seem to break the habit. Dokja had always talked to himself like he was talking to Yoo Joonghyuk before, and the addition of a life-size pillow with an almost-perfect recreation (because nothing really lived up to the Yoo Joonghyuk in his imagination) had just made this habit exponentially worse.

To be fair, it wasn't that the pillow responded to his talking. In fact, the pillow didn't respond to anything he did.

Honestly, Dokja thought, turning to look at the pillow again. What has it really done? Nothing, that's what. It was just Dokja inexplicably sensing the constant weight of someone's regard, feeling like the pillow's eyes were watching his every move. He glanced back at his phone and saw that the answers on the forum were heading in an irrevocably age-restricted direction, sighed again, and decided to just give up. If his pillow was haunted, just let it be haunted. What could a pillow do to him, anyway.

——

Joonghyuk hadn't meant to do it.

Really, he hadn't. 

He had been doing so well in all his world-jumps, avoiding even the thought of looking for traces of Kim Dokja. Down that path lay no good things whether for him or Biyoo. He stayed just long enough to make sure the story was being published, then he left, nice and simple.

Until… this.

Being a pillow was very stressful. He couldn't speak or move or do anything, really, for fear that Dokja would notice him and the situation would spiral out of control. The fact that Biyoo was somewhere else fixing the Ark made it even worse— he had nothing to fill his time when Dokja was away, because even if he did move, his movements were limited to that of a pillow. He couldn't open the door, or the window, and in any case leaving meant someone might see him, which was what he had to avoid in the first place. 

Joonghyuk cursed whatever metaphysical whim that had decided to allow a Ways of Survival clone in this world, and then cursed the Kim Dokja in this world along with it. He was, somehow, certain that it was all because of Dokja's ridiculous custom body pillow. The picture on the thing didn't even look like him; it was far too clean and unmarred. And less good-looking, not that Joonghyuk cared about that sort of thing.

Having cursed his fill, Joonghyuk returned grouchily to his only pastime, which was observing Kim Dokja.

This Kim Dokja was different from the one that was his companion. Younger, of course, still a kid fresh out of high school who hadn't even been to the military yet. But he was also a little less… hardened. Less hurt. Joonghyuk remembered the days he'd been here, how Dokja relaxed and smiled when he thought he was alone and felt like his own Dokja wouldn't be like this even if he was nineteen too. His Dokja must have been a shifty bastard since he was in the cradle.

If he started categorising all the ways they were different, there would be no end to it. Sometimes Joonghyuk thought he might have built up the Kim Dokja in his head so much that when (if) Kim Dokja actually came back, he would be disappointed.

Just then, this world's Kim Dokja laughed at something on his phone.

Joonghyuk watched the way his whole face softened, how he leaned back in his chair and opened his mouth wide and didn't put his hand over it like he was embarrassed. Watched a little less calmly as Dokja eeled off the chair and came to flop on the bed right next to him.

"Joonghyuk-ah," said Dokja, face a little flushed and eyes shining. It was depressingly attractive. "You're so cute!"

Dokja began to tell Joonghyuk about the antics of fake-Joonghyuk in this world's Ways of Survival. Fake-Joonghyuk had apparently jumped in a lake and fished out all the marine life in it because Mia had wanted to eat fish, which— Joonghyuk wasn't going to say he hadn't done that before, but it hadn't been fun and it most certainly hadn't been cute. But he listened to Dokja's spirited retelling anyway, because what else could he do?

Soon, Dokja's bright voice faded away. "It would be nice if I was that brave," Dokja said, softly enough that Joonghyuk almost missed it. He didn't hug Joonghyuk, but he put his back against Joonghyuk's pillow form and leaned against him.

You are so brave, Joonghyuk wanted to say. You are brave enough that you still want to live, despite everything, despite the universe.

But that wasn't this Kim Dokja. Joonghyuk's Dokja was still scattered, waiting for Joonghyuk to bring him home. This Dokja was not yet in such dire straits.

You can be brave, Joonghyuk thought instead. 

Very carefully, he curved the pillow that was his body closer to Dokja's. Dokja stiffened. Joonghyuk pressed himself against Dokja's back anyway, suddenly glad that he was a pillow in this world (there was no way he could do this as a human). He knew Dokja had some suspicions about him. But if it meant a kid could take some comfort from it, he was alright with being discovered. Biyoo would fix it. Probably.

"Are you… a ghost?" Dokja asked, in a trembling little voice.

Joonghyuk couldn't answer.

The room was quiet for a long time, and then Dokja hesitantly reached a hand behind him to touch the pillow. Joonghyuk noted that his fingers rested coincidentally on fake-Joonghyuk's chest.

"Thank you," whispered Dokja, and said no more.

[ksalientian]

24. [ORV] two percent

49/kdj, also joongdok, 'jealousy'. text version of my twitter post.

.

"The other me," he said, almost choking on it. "He might not want this to happen."

That was a lie.

"This— this story," he said, faster, knowing it was pointless. "It ended back then."

He didn't want to disappear.

"Why don’t we ask that after meeting the other you?"

There is no other me, some part of him longed to tell her, resentful and ugly and nauseatingly bitter. But that small protest had been his limit. He wasn't their Kim Dokja, but he was Kim Dokja. He still wanted everyone to be happy, too. Just like the one behind the wall— even if it meant that he could never be happy again.

So he stretched forward, and touched his downfall.

It hurt.

It hurt a lot. More than any pain he had ever experienced in his life. (Maybe there was worse pain, in the memories he didn't have that everyone thought were so important. He wouldn't know about those things.)

He thought it would be over after that. He'd summoned all the courage in his little heart to reach out that hand. But he woke up after the pain, and there were his mothers. 

"Dokja-ya," said the woman who had shaped his childhood from a prison cell. The other said nothing at all. Her silence told him she had looked upon him and found him wanting.

He bit his lip so hard it cut right through, and he reached out once more.

After that, everything was a blur of agony so blinding he couldn't speak, could barely even think, until Kim Dokja swallowed him up and left nothing behind.

 *

Yet in the never-ending night, something shined.

*

He wasn't in the dark anymore. His fingers felt his face, and touched real skin. He pinched his arm and felt a sting of pain.

And there was light, at last.

It was a lamp that lit up the niche around him, and when he looked at what it illuminated, there were only countless books on countless shelves. Faintly visible on his right was a signpost that said '0000~0100'. 

There were no other distinguishing markers, but he knew this place. It was the Library. But hadn't the Library disappeared? Even if it hadn't, why was he here? These books didn't belong to him.

"Hello?" he called, a little hesitantly. There was an indistinct sort of pull in his stomach, one that felt entirely foreign, tugging him patiently from somewhere else. 

He swallowed. The Library was much darker than he remembered.

"Hello," said a voice from behind him.

He whirled around, hands reaching for a weapon he didn't have, until he saw who had actually spoken. Then, he put his hands in his pockets with a sigh. "Of course," he said, keeping his voice carefully blank. "It's you."

"It's me," agreed the speaker. "I didn’t expect to see you here, 49."

Though the person didn't seem to take pleasure in calling him 49, it annoyed him anyway. He did have a name, even if it was one they shared. Dokja decided he would call the man 51 out of spite. 51 was leaning on the bookcase just within range of the lamp, a tangled expression on his face that Dokja couldn't understand— and wasn't that a strange thing, to be unable to read the face of someone who was supposed to be the other him? It made Dokja intensely uncomfortable.

"Where are we?" Dokja asked, instead of arguing.

"In my head," 51 said. "If you think about it, you could probably see what's happening in the real world, too."

Dokja didn't want to think about the implications of 'in my head'. He closed his eyes, focused on the foreign pull that he had felt, and when he opened his eyes again he saw a bed, a desk, and Yoo Joonghyuk.

"Kim Dokja, are you listening?" It was Yoo Joonghyuk's voice, gentler than Dokja remembered, a fondness there that Dokja had never heard before. There were lines at the corner of his eyes and strands of grey threaded through his hair.

"Guess," said Dokja, only it wasn't Dokja who said it. Without his input, the body that Dokja was in leaned forward. He tried, increasingly desperately, to move, to do anything, but it was impossible— he could only look on as Yoo Joonghyuk touched not-his cheek (and it did not feel like a touch to Dokja, only the barest impression of something, perhaps even his imagination) as Yoo Joonghyuk tilted not-his head— as Yoo Joonghyuk's mouth pressed against— 

Dokja opened his eyes in the Library again.

51 was looking absently into the distance, but when Dokja's attention returned, so did his. And, too, the expression that Dokja hadn't recognised before, but that he now understood to be pity.

Neither of them had to elaborate on what they felt. They were still two sides of the same coin.

"Can't you just…?" He waved his hand to express death, disappearance, anything.

"I've tried."

Dokja looked away. He ran a finger down the spine of the book labelled 0000. It was this two percent that had been the difference between them, spread out before his eyes now like a mockery. He knew that 51 resented him for those years with the Company that the other could never have. Their first picnic by the Han River, their first group noraebang, the pizza he had promised Yoosung. If they had really combined into one person, 51 could have had it all.

But he remembered what he had felt, at his last moment, when everything that made him up had been on the verge of disintegrating.

I'm sorry, he had told Han Sooyoung. Sorry because he had wanted to live, after all— and now, here he was. 

"Is he happy?" 

51 thought about it, then inclined his head. Dokja bit his lip, at which 51 exhaled lightly. He came closer to Dokja, put an awkward hand on his shoulder.

"He kisses like this," said 51, and kissed him.

Dokja let himself be kissed. He was hurting again, all over, the way he had hurt before, but he closed his eyes and didn't think about it and imagined Yoo Joonghyuk with perfect black hair and no crows marking their feet at the corners of his eyes.

After a while, they parted.

"Give me other books, if I have to be here," said 49.

"Alright," said Kim Dokja, quietly, and then 49 was alone.

[ksalientian]

23. [orv] joongdok

actors au, 'skinship'. text version of my twitter post.

.

Kim Dokja is an enigma.

They had met for the first time on this set, the two of them— Joonghyuk is playing the male lead and Kim Dokja one of the minor characters on the antagonist's side. Kim Dokja isn't an actor by trade. He is only here because he's friends with the screenwriter, and she'd asked the director for a favour slotting him in. Joonghyuk doesn't like that sort of thing, and so he hadn't thought much of the man at first.

But for some reason, Joonghyuk keeps finding himself in Kim Dokja's vicinity. They have the same preferences in food and always receive the same boxed lunches, and by some twist of fate they even have their hair and makeup done at the same times before filming. And they always film on the same afternoons, one after the other, as though Kim Dokja is a big name or the second lead instead of just a side character. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem. Joonghyuk's seen it before, when investors throw some random idol into the mix and the crew has to give them the same star treatment as the lead actors. Joonghyuk doesn't particularly like it, but as long as he isn't personally disturbed, all he has to do is act as he always does. 

It's only that Kim Dokja, once he's discovered that Joonghyuk will scowl and be cold but never really get angry— Kim Dokja decides that this is permission to start taking liberties.

"Are you a squid," Joonghyuk asks, when Dokja has flopped down on the ground next to his chair and leaned on his knee for the nth time. "Don't you have bones? Can't you sit properly?"

"Squids have bones," Dokja says, which is not at all the point. 

Joonghyuk wonders why he's not pushing the man off. He's had ample opportunity to stop this. 

It had started with just a fleeting touch to his elbow, a friendly nudge here and there. Then an arm slung around his neck, or Kim Dokja's chin resting on his shoulder. Now, it's escalated to Kim Dokja hugging him (ostensibly to recharge) and holding his hand, fingers interlocked. Every day, all of the cast and crew he's worked with before give them looks ranging from mildly surprised to drop-jawed incredulity; he's fairly sure the screenwriter is running a betting pool for how long it will take him to snap. Yet every time Kim Dokja touches him, Joonghyuk just… accepts it. Begrudgingly. But he does.

"Squids don't have bones," he tells Kim Dokja, instead of pulling away. 

"They do! Just one in their head. But it's an important bone."

Kim Dokja has turned to look up at him, and his cheek is resting on Joonghyuk's thigh. Joonghyuk has a sudden and inexplicable urge to show him a human man's important bone. He stamps it out ruthlessly.

"That's an internal shell. Cartilage."

Kim Dokja smiles, and like most of his smiles it's an attractive curve of his lips, perfectly calculated to bring out the best of his features. Joonghyuk is not a fan. He thinks Kim Dokja must have a better, more honest smile that he's only hiding because he's an idiot. "How do you know so much about squids, Joonghyuk-ssi?"

"I—" Joonghyuk has no idea. "I read it somewhere." At this, Kim Dokja reaches out to take hold of his hand. (From the corner of his eye he sees Lee Jihye whip out her phone. He'll have to delete her entire gallery after filming is done.)

The hand that has so rudely grabbed his is surprisingly soft. Joonghyuk's own hands are rough and calloused from years of cooking and housework, and later martial arts. They're scarred, too, though his agent is always nagging him to get the worst of it lasered off. Against his hand, Kim Dokja's is milky white and smooth as mutton fat jade.

As usual, he doesn't shake it off. Kim Dokja squeezes him, just once.

"Yoo Joonghyuk," he says, looking steadily at Joonghyuk's face though it seems to be making him shy, if his flushed neck is any indication, "do you believe in past lives?"

Without his input, Joonghyuk's fingers tighten around Kim Dokja's. He still doesn't know why he keeps letting this man touch him. No one else has ever been allowed this close, this level of casual intimacy. And he and Kim Dokja— they barely even know each other.

Joonghyuk doesn't believe in past lives, either. But when he looks at Kim Dokja's expectant eyes, somehow, his mouth opens to say: "Yes."

[ksalientian]

22. [free!] nao & natsuya

in which natsuya is a fuccboi lol. text version of my twitter post.

.

Natsuya wasn't sure how to feel about his brother's new friends. They were all very nice kids, probably, and good company for Ikuya to have— it was just— 

"Which one did you sleep with this time?"

It was just that it was a goddamn disaster.

"Why do you think I slept with any of them?" Natsuya bit his thumbnail, staring at the photo on Hiyori's Instagram. He knew Ikuya was going to meet new people on the road to international competition, but did he have to meet… all these people? "It's not like anything happened between me and Hiyori back then. I don't go around sleeping with my little brother's friends."

Nao gave him a very pointed look that he pretended not to see. "You slept with more than one?"

"How did you—" Natsuya caught himself before he said anything too incriminating, swiftly finishing the sentence with: "— get that from what I said?"

"Honestly, it's less what you said and more the way you're looking at that photo like it's your final exam in university," Nao told him, neatly plucking the phone from his lifeless fingers. "It can't be that bad, right? Is it this blonde one, the Swede? Volandel?"

"Wait, Al's in that— how is he friends with Albert?" Natsuya grabbed for his phone to no avail.

"So Volandel, probably Matsuoka too—"

"Look, it wasn't on purpose—"

"And is this Yamazaki in the corner?" Nao eyed him over the top of his glasses, and Natsuya crawled under the kotatsu to avoid his judgmental stare. "The same Yamazaki you're completely infatuated with right now?"

"I could stop," Natsuya said, weakly.

"You couldn't," said Nao, very kindly, and slid another can of beer under the table so Natsuya could drown himself in it and not have to face the cruel, cruel world where his entire love life was, in fact, made up of his little brother's friends.

[ksalientian]

21. [free!] haru & makoto

'eight years'. text version of my twitter post

.

"Do you ever think," Makoto asked, "about how it could all have been so different?"

It was late, the room only lit by the moonlight from the window and the everpresent green blinking of a missed notification on Haru's phone. For a long while all Makoto could hear in response was Haru's steady, even breathing, and he regretfully pulled his covers up again. Though the opening ceremony was only in a week's time, it still wouldn't do to disturb an athlete's rest schedule. Makoto had just been too full of restless feeling to sleep.

Just as he closed his eyes to try and get some rest, Haru said, quietly: "Sometimes."

Makoto turned his head to look, and Haru's eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling. It was too dark to really see what expression he was making, but Makoto thought he could guess. "Did I wake you?" he whispered, before anything.

"No…" Haru sat up, reaching for his phone. "I was awake. I guess someone else is too."

Makoto rolled out of his bed and went over to join Haru, shoulder to shoulder, seeing him tap Rin's name in his contact list. "It's one in the morning," said Makoto, a little worried.

"You know he's awake," Haru replied, and Makoto did, too. Rin probably hadn't been able to sleep properly since he qualified. Now, just a couple of days before the Australian team flew in, it was almost a certainty. But instead of accepting the video call, Haru's request was rejected, and Rin sent a message instead.

"Ikuya's sleeping?" Makoto read, then smiled. "I didn’t think he'd be so considerate. They're always bickering."

Haru showed him Rin's follow-up message, which said 'i have to look out for my teammates, ok?' and Makoto couldn't restrain his laughter. Haru laughed with him, in that quiet and slightly helpless way he got about both Rin and Ikuya. Makoto watched him send his mackerel stamps back at Rin, feeling all over again how glad he was that Haru had gotten that laugh back.

"I'm so glad," he said out loud, because he just had to let some of it out. His heart was full to bursting.

Haru nudged his shoulder companionably, and for a while they sat together in peaceful silence but for the vibrating of Haru's phone. Haru got tired of it soon enough, and after sending one last goodnight mackerel, he put his phone back on the side table.

"When I think about it," he said, looking at the screen that continued to light up from Rin's messages, "I wonder what would have changed if I didn’t beat him eight years ago."

Had it been eight years already? Makoto counted in his head, and found that Haru was right. Eight whole years since that day Haru had decided to 'quit swimming'.

"I think Rin would still be here." Haru's hand, loose on his thigh, clenched into a fist. "But maybe I wouldn't be."

Makoto wanted to deny that, but wasn't quite sure if he could. He remembered the argument they had had, on the lookout over the beach— he remembered the way Haru had wrenched away from him. And it hadn't been Makoto who had brought him back, either. What would Rin be like if, for instance, he didn't think of Haru as his lifelong rival? What would Haru be like without that influence, the unstoppable force to his immovable object? And what about Makoto?

"Maybe you would be," Makoto said, at last. Because despite everything, Haru loved the competition with a fierceness that Makoto hadn't quite expected. It was the thing that took his swimming from beautiful to breathtaking. Someone like him, Makoto thought, would always end up at the peak, even if his life changed into something unrecognisable. It might have happened slower, or it might have been even harder, but Haru… Haru was meant to see the scenery from up high.

"Really?" 

"Really."

And Haru, too, even if he tilted his head and made the slightest moue of discomfort— Haru looked like he was starting to believe it.

"I'm glad you're here with us, Makoto," said Haru. He held out his hand, and Makoto grasped it, held on tight.

"I'll be here for a hundred more eight years," Makoto said, feeling his throat get all choked with emotion. Haru wrinkled his nose, eyeing him.

"That's eight hundred years. What kind of monster persimmons are you trying to grow?"

Haru, Makoto knew, was not big on Moments. But this was too much even for him. Makoto didn't even know what Haru was talking about. "I'm trying to grow our friendship," he said, despairingly. "I knew I should have talked to Rin instead."

Makoto returned to bed in a huff, but he was still grinning widely. And at his back, he knew Haru was smiling too.

[ksalientian]

20. [orv] joongdok

northern archduke, southern prince. follow-up to this short, a text version of my twitter post

.

In the days following his less-than-triumphant return to the Northern Wilds, Dokja learns that the Archduke is all bark and no bite. True, he barks very loudly (and for all that Dokja suffers no injury the man is quite thoroughly intimidating when he sees reason to be), but when the elders start wanting to drive Dokja out, Yoo Joonghyuk doesn't even spare them a minute to try and convince him.

It works for a time, at least until the elders lose their patience and attempt a different tactic. 

Yoo Joonghyuk is forced to pay attention, finally, when he enters their chambers to find Dokja lounging on the window seat, spinning a ball of silver magelight in his hands. On the bed is a barely-clothed woman whom Dokja is studiously ignoring. 

"Who is this?" It is, quite clearly, the Archduke who is speaking now, and not just Yoo Joonghyuk the man. 

"Is she not the mother of your future child?" Dokja smiles as he says this, not looking up from his hands. He can feel the woman's fear. He feels a minor twinge of guilt— he supposes it isn't really her fault that the elders have forced her to the Archduke's bed. If Dokja would have acquiesced to the elders' demands and pretended at ignorance, he might have been happier. But the Archduke has a spouse, despite his being a man, and Dokja finds that he is very unhappy indeed. "My lord surely knows men cannot bear children, virile though my lord's seed may be."

The woman makes a breathless whimper, horrified at the tone he's taking. And well she should be. Dokja doesn't think anyone has ever spoken this way to Yoo Joonghyuk, other than perhaps his sister when they were children, and even then her words would not have been so crass. He hopes the man's bite continues to be painless.

Yoo Joonghyuk takes a step into the room from the doorway where he had been standing, and already Dokja has to bite his lip to keep from shivering at his sheer presence. 

"It seems, husband," Yoo Joonghyuk says, his voice very low, "that I have not made myself clear. I am not an unfaithful man."

At this, Dokja looks up before he can stop himself. Yoo Joonghyuk's eyes bore into him, and the magelight in his hands flickers nervously. Dokja swallows. "I wasn't aware that our marriage terms had necessitated monogamy," he says, lightly. Yoo Joonghyuk's scowl deepens.

"You expect me to lie with another?"

Dokja takes a breath, looks at the woman and motions for her to leave. She stays frozen until Yoo Joonghyuk jerks his head in annoyance, at which point she runs out as if chased by wolves.

"I don't expect it," Dokja answers after she is gone, watching Yoo Joonghyuk stalk over to him. He turns slightly so that he faces the other man, but lets the magelight wisp into nothing so that his expression is hidden in shadow. "I only think an heir is the responsibility of any leader to his people."

Yoo Joonghyuk snorts. He is standing in front of Dokja now, still wearing his outdoor furs over his armour, and Dokja has to lean back to take it all in. "Since when have you cared about responsibility, mage?" He cups his hand around Dokja's cheek and pats it meaningfully.

Dokja, who has already opened his mouth to retort, suddenly remembers his months-long disappearance right after their wedding night and reluctantly lets the insult slide. 

"We are not speaking of my various failings, my lord," he says instead. He is trying to keep his voice firm, but it is becoming increasingly difficult with Yoo Joonghyuk's fingers stroking the soft skin on his face. "The marriage was only ever meant to be—"

"Prince Dokja," says the Archduke, pressing his thumb to Dokja's lower lip. Dokja falls silent. "Do not play games with me. You and I both know that this is no longer simply a political alliance." When Dokja makes as if to answer, Yoo Joonghyuk replaces his fingers with his own lips.

Yoo Joonghyuk's mouth tastes like blood and smoke, like the battlefield, and it makes Dokja tremble down to his bones.

"I rule the North," Yoo Joonghyuk says, his mouth dragging across Dokja's skin to suck bruises into his jaw, "not the elders. And not you, my foolish husband." He bites Dokja's neck so hard Dokja cries out, then lets him go in satisfaction. "The next time you try to insult our marriage, I won't be so forgiving."

"You say that as if you know there will be a next time."

Yoo Joonghyuk unclasps the furs from around his shoulders and begins to unbuckle his armour, dark eyes never leaving Dokja's reddened lips. At some point, Dokja had lit the lamps by accident.

"I know you," Yoo Joonghyuk says as his armour falls piece by piece to the floor. Dokja licks his lips. "And knowing you, I feel confident that you deserve to be disciplined in advance."

Dokja should, perhaps, be offended by this slight to his character. But he can't help the overflowing warmth in his chest from Yoo Joonghyuk's complete rejection of the woman the elders had sent, from his matter-of-fact declaration that it isn't only their countries that bind them to each other— a truth that Dokja himself had never dared to believe.

So he arranges himself on the window seat as best as he can, lets the lamps flare brighter so they can look at each other. 

"My tutors say I was a very slow learner, my lord," Dokja says, magic sparking in his eyes. "But I'm sure your discipline will work wonders."

[ksalientian]

19. [orv] joongdok

northern archduke, southern prince. text version of my twitter post

.

The Archduke of the North is every bit as cold as the land over which he reigns, and from his scowl and the way his thumb rubs meaningfully over the hilt of his sword, it's clear he doesn't trust Dokja at all. It wouldn't be the first time Dokja's own reputation worked against him.

"My father is sincere in his offer," Dokja murmurs. He lets a harmless twist of magic spark silver at his fingertips just to see how the Archduke reacts, but the man doesn't even twitch. "Won't you reconsider?"

A branch snaps outside, and they both turn to look out the window. The tree in the courtyard has lost one of its limbs to the snow's heavy weight, its insides revealed to be the same creamy colour of bone under all that cracked bark. Dokja is a little surprised at how much it stands out against the snow.

"Even if I didn’t think it a joke, you haven't convinced me of the merits of a marriage alliance, mage." The Archduke's voice is another surprise. Dokja had expected a low growl, something aggressive to fit his look. Instead it's a clear, arresting baritone, warm enough it's almost inviting. He wishes the man's attitude was more like it.

"You have my word that I will be nothing but the most agreeable spouse," Dokja says, gracing the Archduke with a smile that goes sadly unappreciated, as he isn't even looking at Dokja.

"Imagine," mutters the Archduke, after a time, "what your word means to me." But he lets go of the hilt of his sword, and Dokja will count that as a win.

.

Unbelievably, after they marry, the mage has the breath-taking audacity to run away.

"To my—'' His attendant hesitates over the salutation, darting a wary glance at Joonghyuk. Joonghyuk pointedly taps the armrest of his throne. "To my most wonderfully-endowed husband," continues the attendant, and Joonghyuk grinds his teeth. "I enjoyed our wedding night so much that I beg leave of you to return to my kingdom for a time, as I fear I may grow addicted to such pleasures…"

The letter, left on top of Joonghyuk's chest the morning after their wedding (and how the mage had left without alerting him remains a mystery), continues in that vein, prattling at length but saying nothing at all of why he had the gall to leave.

It's no matter, Joonghyuk thinks. He can take it out of the man's hide when he returns.

But then Kim Dokja stays away for months, and by the time he finally comes slinking into the throne room pretending at contrition Joonghyuk is well and truly incensed.

"Attend me," he commands. The mage makes a face, conjuring a crystal goblet out of nothing and filling it with wine dark as blood. He offers the goblet to Joonghyuk, who ignores it in favour of seizing the mage's waist. "Apologies should be spoken," he tells his trickster of a husband.

"I am sorry," Kim Dokja says, then chokes on a gasp when Joonghyuk lays teeth on the pulse in his throat. "How bold, my lord."

"I learned from one yet bolder," Joonghyuk says, and sets about thoroughly marking his property.