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Things Not To Do Around Kim Doyoung | Fluff | Actor!AU | Coming Soon!
↳ "for all of my pretty, and all of my ugly too, i'd love to see me from your point of view".
a short and sweet series detailing your relationship with famous actor kim doyoung, as you, his newest makeup artist, can't help but put your foot in your mouth again, and again, and again...
with mark lee's black card in your back pocket and his soft, malleable heart in your hands, you're determined to teach him that love isn't some fairytale romance. It's cruel, unkind, and people like him never end up with people like you.
The Atermoiements of The Devil | Fluff, Angst, Horror | Demon!AU | Coming Soon!
↳ "atermoiements: (transl) procrastination".
na jaemin, demon lord of the abyss, is retiring, and he's recruited you to help him dismantle his cult following and show him what it means to be human.
description: with mark lee's black card in your back pocket and his soft, malleable heart in your hands, you're determined to teach him that love isn't some fairytale romance. It's cruel, unkind, and people like him never end up with people like you.
i’m back! the alternate POVs are only for this chapter, then we're y/n all the way...
Be confident.
That's what Mark thinks to himself, or tries to think, as his eyes follow her around the room. She has a very methodical way of working, he’s noticed. She always begins at the edge of the room, with the champagne flutes. Once those have been deposited onto the poseur tables by the east window, she works her way inwards.
Nothing ever seems to be too much for her. There are several empty glasses thrust at her, and she takes them away with a smile. A devastating, sincere smile.
It feels like the only real thing he’s seen all evening.
“As I was saying,” someone drones on. Mark thinks it might be Mr Choi. He flashes a polite smile to show he’s listening. “We’re so grateful you could come this evening. You and your friends really embody what it is to be...”
She’s moving again. It’s all the permission he needs to tune out Mr Choi and watch her make her way out of the room. An agonising twenty seconds later, she returns, no less perfect and no less beautiful.
Her place is against the wall, waiting there with her dainty hands folded behind her back. She’s dressed simply in a crisp white dress shirt, a black waistcoat, and matching black slacks, her hair pulled into a bun. He wonders, briefly, what it would be like to run his hands through her hair. Would it be soft and silky, or full of product?
The thought makes him turn red. He clears his throat and takes a sip of champagne.
“Well, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me.” Mr Choi gives them a smile and departs into the crowd. It’s no sooner than he does so that a sharp pain blossoms between his ribcage.
"She's staff, man!" Renjun hisses, sending a flat glare his way as he tucks his elbow back against his side. “Get it together!”
Mark blinks at him, the tips of his ears burning red at getting caught. He can’t help looking out across the room for one last glance, but he’s too late. She’s already slipped back out of the room, nothing more than a memory burning brightly behind his eyes.
An unpleasant expression makes its way onto his face, one he tampers down with an ambitious gulp of his Louis Roederer Cristal. He almost finishes the entire glass.
"Nice going, man!" Donghyuck claps him on the back, thankfully, a second after the drink has left his lips. His friend grins at him, but with a familiar glint in his eye that tells Mark that Donghyuck is laughing at him, not with him. “That's, what? The third one this month?"
“Shut up.” He mumbles, shrugging off his hand. “I just... She looked like Yujin, that’s all.”
It’s a lie and they know it. Donghyuck rolls his eyes, turning to Chenle with a ‘do you hear this shit?’ look, only to find the younger chaebol engrossed in his phone. Chenle stares down at it with intent, his eyebrows furrowed and his fingers turning white from how hard he’s clutching it.
“Get off your phone, man.” He admonishes. “We’re not supposed to be on them tonight.”
“Forget the phone. Mark. You can’t keep doing this.” Jaemin sends him a look of pity. Mark ignores it, plasters on a police smile, and nods to a few familiar faces he sees around the room. “Mark. Look at me. I’m serious, first Karin, then Yujin, and now this-”
"I'm doing anything, man!" He snaps, feeling his ears going hot. Once he’s sure no other attendants are in earshot, he turns to look at his friends, unashamedly letting his voice drop to a pleading whine. "Why can't you guys just be happy and supportive for a change?"
"- and now, ladies and gentlemen, if I could just grab your attention..."
“We would be supportive,” Renjun snaps, “if it wasn’t a new crush every single fucking week.”
Mark’s retort dies on his lips as someone delicately taps on their glass, drawing the attention of the room. With his friends distracted, he rebelliously scans the room again under the guise of looking for the speaker, working methodically from left to right until he catches sight of her. She’s tucked away behind the canapés, a stray wisp of hair tracing her jaw, and her face puckered in determination as she balances empty plates on her forearm.
He can admit it to himself: she’s not his usual type. He’d met Yujin at the premiere of her new movie and Karina was a family friend he’d met while vacationing out in the Hamptons. She was different from his usual type, but wasn’t something different usually something good?
It didn’t matter who she was. Mark had learned very young never to judge a book by its cover. He didn’t care about her outward appearance; she was simply-
[21:34] chenle: Perfect
[21:35] chenle: You look so perfect tonight <3
Your phone sends little vibrations down your thigh as the notifications come in. You would usually answer it, but two huge appetiser trays are balanced precariously in your hands. In front of you lies a sea of busy stations, chefs, and servers all yelling out at each other furiously. With a deep breath, you surge forward, ignoring the little buzzing in your pocket and navigating through the sea of chaos as quickly as you can.
You catch the swinging door with your foot, wincing when the wood connects with your ankle bone. The outside of the kitchen is no betterthan the inside: swarms of runners and waitstaff form a sea of queues as they wait to ferry food out, and you’re almost taken out by a couple of sommeliers in their rush to haul more bottles of expensive alcohol up the stairs to the ballroom. In the distance, you hear the familiar nasally shrieking of your manager.
“Hey,” you take the stairs two at a time to catch up with Sooyung. It’s a risky move, but one that pays off. “Who’s on right now?”
“Er.” She balances with her own tray. “Jung Jihoon, I think.”
“Who?”
“Jung Jihoon.” She repeats. You can feel her incredulous gaze through the tower of salmon mousse tartlets. “The swimmer? The Olympic gold medalist swimmer? You know, Jung Jihoon?”
You haven’t watched the Olympics since you were five. “Right, Jung Jihoon.” You nod. “I thought he looked familiar. Anyway, we’re late on our cue.” You jerk your head to the mahogany double doors in front of you. “I’ll take the left side, you take the right? We’ll meet back here when we’re done and get started on the rest of the food?”
“Sure.” She nods. At the same time, your phone buzzes again.
It’s getting pretty fucking annoying, so after the appetisers are carefully transported from their ugly trays and onto the beautifully decorated tables, you wait for Sooyoung outside the ballroom and turn to face the wall, hunching over to hide your phone as you read the messages.
[21:46] chenle: I haven’t seen you tonight. Did they put you in the kitchens?
[21:46] chenle: I miss you :(
[21:46] chenle: Wait for me after this thing ends?
[21:46] chenle: Pls
[21:47] chenle: Or we can just ditch? ;)
You take your phone into one hand and use the other to take off your black flats, massaging the sore muscles in an attempt to alleviate the pain. You still had another five hours on your shift to go.
“Hey,” one of the waitstaff glares at you as he prepares to enter the room. He’s got several bottles of champagne in his hands. “Get off your phone. Open the door for me.”
[22:02] You: i'm working
You send your reply and then make a show of pocketing your phone, fixing him with a glare. “Do it yourself.”
“Bitch.” He snarls before disappearing into the ballroom. Sooyoung emerges a second later, none the wiser, and the two of you head back downstairs.
By the time you get back to the kitchen, there are several more trays ready to go out. The serving time between the appetisers and the main course is always the most stressful in the kitchens, so you spend the next forty minutes dutifully ferrying hundreds of elaborate little snacks for New York’s elite to snack on. You catch Chenle looking for you a couple of times. He’d spent the better part of your afternoon spamming you with pictures of his outfit, so it wasn’t hard to spot him in the crowd. True to the theme of the night, Chanel over the Ages, he’s clad in a pearl-button padded shoulder suit jacket made of black tweed. It contrasts nicely with his dyed blonde hair, which makes it even easier for you to avoid him.
Chenle had been fun. There was no denying that. He held open doors for you on dates and always asked when he could see you next, rather than demanding you cater to his schedule. He was funny (sometimes) and punctual (always). He was predictable: taking his hand in yours always made him shy, he preferred Chanel and Burberry to Gucci and Fendi, and he always wanted to know your opinion on his outfits before events. Never mind the fact that he’d been in the limelight since the day he was born.
The only thing he couldn’t seem to get was how to take a hint about being so fucking clingy.
“Trouble in paradise?”
Sooyoung joins you on the back steps by the kitchen’s back door. She draws her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them to mirror you.
You fish out a cigarette and light it. “What paradise?”
“With your boyfriend.” She directs a pointed look at the phone in your other hand.
“He’s not my boyfriend.” You correct placidly.
"Right.” She drawls, a familiar bite of venom entering her tone. “I forgot. What do you call him then? ATM? Credit card? Sugar daddy?"
You bring the cigarette to your lips and take a long drag. “It’s not really any of your business, is it?”
“It is when you’re fraternising with our clients!” She hisses.
“Damn, who pissed in your panties today?” It was no secret that Sooyoung didn’t approve of your choice in men. You weren’t exactly best friends, but she’d been your most frequent shift partner for the last five years, and the most outraged when she’d heard about your most recent beau.
“I just can’t believe your audacity. What if our employers find out?”
You shrug. “Then I’ll leave this job with a new Burberry winter dress, a standing reservation for Nobu, and tickets to Billie Eilish.”
“You’re disgusting.” She snaps.
“And you’re jealous.” You take another long drag of your cigarette and watch the smoke dissipate into the air.
"Hardly! And give me that-" She leans forward and snatches the cigarette from your lips, throwing it onto the floor and stamping it out. “You’ll smell of smoke, not to mention how toxic these things are for you. The only thing I might ever potentially be jealous about is your complete lack of compassion for these people.”
“I try.” You debate fishing out another cigarette from the packet and wisely decide against it. “They don’t need my compassion, Soo. They’ve got enough money to rent a therapist and cry about it. It’s not my problem that they get too attached.”
Your words linger in the cold, dark air, and you reach down to massage your calves instead of waiting for her response. Resting your feet had been a bad decision; the balls of your feet ache painfully, and you feel like you have weights tied to your arms. The roots of your hair, which is long enough to be tied into a neat bun, are pulled so tight you’re beginning to get a headache.
You stare at the discarded cigarette lying on the cobbled stone in front of you. “We should get back to work.”
Sooyoung exits first, flouncing back up the steps and slamming the door behind her. It takes you a moment to heave yourself upright and follow her inside.
You know your argument with Sooyoung will be short-lived. She is far more polite than you’ll ever be, but easily the most timid person you’ve ever met when it comes to the patrons. When she’s upset about how they speak to her, it’s you she vents and complains to. You know the next time she’s upset, her judgement of you will be long gone until the next time she figures out who you’re seeing.
But it’s been a long night. Which means when you head back inside and are forced by your asshole manager to lug the whole crème brûlée stand back to the kitchen, her words, coupled with the fact your phone is buzzing again, you feel the minutiae embers of your temper begin to smoulder.
[00:42] You: chenle, you HAVE to stop texting me while I'm working
[00:42] You: actually, don't bother texting me again
[19:42] You: im not feeling this anymore, lose my number
You end your little tirade with a firm press of the mute button, before turning the phone off for good measure.
This is why you don't seriously date rich kids. How the fuck would Chenle ever understand working on his feet all day, having to turn his phone off for mere moments just to focus on something other than his own self-interests? The most he’d ever have to do was saunter into his father’s company, charm a few stakeholders, and then spend his summers vacationing around the globe.
He’d never have to work a day in his life. None of them would.
"Smooth." Jisung sniggers as Mark shoves a salted caramel eclair into his mouth at the same time the cute staff member meets his eyes from across the room. A burst of cream violently shoves its way down his oesophagus, and he chokes, breaking his gaze away and thumping on his chest whilst spluttering violently.
“Interesting shade of red you’ve gone there, dude.” Donghyuck laughs.
He eventually manages to swallow and clear his airway, coughing a couple more times and glaring at his friend. “I could’ve died.”
“It was that or the Heimlich manoeuvre. I’m sure she-” Donghyuck subtly points in her direction, “- would have loved that.”
"Hey, Chenle- Chenle! What's gotten into you, man?" Their discussion is cut short by the sound of Jeno’s concerned voice. "Bro, are you crying?"
Alarmed, the boys whirl around to look at their friend.
Chenle has fat little droplets welling up in his eyes.
"I think I just got dumped!" He warbles.
Renjun leans over and snatches his phone out of his friend's hand, glaring down at it. "I told you not to speak to her anymore! Didn't I say she was a gold-digger?"
"Who's this?" Jaemin peers over Mark's shoulder to grab a look at the little device. Mark follows suit and sees your name in Chenle’s phone, along with your text exchange. “Who’s Y/N?”
"Dunno, but I can tell you who she’s not." Donghyuck murmurs. "She’s not Chenle’s girl- Ow! Renjun!"
“Lose my number.” Jeno reads aloud from the phone. “Ouch, man. What did you do?”
“I just asked to see her again!” Chenle sniffles. Renjun furiously whips out his handkerchief and shoves it at his friend.
“Dry your eyes, this is fucking embarrassing. You couldn’t have waited until the afterparty?”
“Go easy on him, Renjun.” Mark defends, moving closer to his friend to shield him from prying eyes. “Hey, listen dude, I’m sure it’s all gonna be okay. I literally got almost the exact same text from Karina last month, and I’m fine now.”
“As much as I hate to say it, Mark’s right. At least you didn’t get her that dress you were talking about.” Donghyuck sighs. Then, when Chenle’s sobs pause slightly, “Oh fuck, seriously? Chenle, we told you this was going to happen...”
It takes the next couple of minutes to get Chenle to stop crying. They clamour around their friend, and though Mark tries his best, pressing another drink into Chenle’s hand, he can’t help but look up and find her again. She’s speaking to one of the attendants, her lips curved up into a smile as she gently hands them a glass of Portuguese strawberries and chantilly cream.
He can’t imagine her ever doing to him what this ‘Y/N’ has done to Chenle. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he just does/ She’s different.
Now, if only he can get her name.
“Y/N!”
It’s a little after three in the morning when you get in. Your key twists in the lock to open it. You have to do a small jiggle for the door to yield. Once you’re in, you dump your bag in the hallway and slip off your shoes, wincing as your throbbing feet hit the cold wooden floor.
Taeyong calls your name softly as you pad into the kitchen, pressing a warm plate of food into your hands.
“I could kiss you.” You mumble gratefully, letting him guide you to the couch, his warm fingers pressing you deep into the cushions. You barely register the takeout boxes littered on the coffee table, too busy inhaling what’s in front of you.
From the chair across the room, Johnny sends you a lazy wave. “How’d it go?”
“Fine.” You answer honestly between bites. “Why’d we get takeout again?”
Taeyong settles on the opposite end of the couch with his hands curled around a coffee mug. You hope for his sake that it's decaf.
“Oven’s busted.” Johnny says simply, eyes glued to the television screen. There’s a basketball game on. "Landlord wants $150 to fix it."
Your kung pao chicken falls from your open mouth. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. I told him to fuck off."
"Good job."
"But we need a working oven," Taeyong looks between the two of you pleadingly. “Takeout is expensive, we can’t keep eating out."
“Well, we can have a working oven or we can fix the pipes. The money’s not gonna cover both.” Johnny shrugs. He lifts his large frame from the chair and comes to drop down between the two of you, and before you know it, one of your prawn crackers has been swiped. “And I doubt Y/N can take much more of that dripping sound in her room.”
"It's fine." You swat his hand away. It's not fine. When you’re not out working, you’re lying in bed listening to the incessant dripping noise that comes from the water pipes above your room. You’ve even started to hear it when the apartment is quiet, and no one’s around, like a hallucination. But when it came to a working oven, it was a no-brainer. “Just leave it with me. I’ll sort it.”
“You sure?” Taeyong asks you.
“I’m sure.”
You leave the two of them watching television after you've eaten, padding into your room after a quick detour to the bathroom to grab some painkillers for your aching body. Taeyong follows half an hour later, joining you on the carpet as you hang your Burberry trench dress against the closet and snap a picture.
"How much will you get for that?" He wonders, watching as you edit the tags and set the price.
"I dunno. It’s out of season. Enough to cover the oven bill, at the very least. Maybe some for rent too."
It's silent for a moment, then:
"But you liked that dress."
Biting your lip, you turn to look at your best friend. He's watching you carefully, his doe brown eyes unable to convey anything other than concern as he stares back at you. Taeyong has always been the most timid of the three of you, the first to cry at a scraped knee or bad day, and in the same breath, the first to offer up his measly residency salary to cover a new pair of shoes for you despite his monstrous student loans.
He had work in a few hours, but despite that, he was here with you. Real.
As you sit gazing at him in your shitty room within your shitty apartment, you can’t find an ounce of regret within you at the way your life has turned out. You’d work a thousand shifts to see him through medical school. It was what he deserved.
"There'll be other dresses, I'm sure." You comfort him. "There always is. Now, think we can bully Johnny off the TV and pirate some movies?"
Taeyong’s worried expression sobers immediately, and he fixes you with a steely glare.
“No.” He tells you. “It’s bedtime.”
Most of your days are spun of the same monotonous thread. Work is your first priority; you take any and every catering shift that comes your way, unless it clashes with your university timetable. When you’re not working, you and Johnny take the subway to campus. He walks you to your classes, and then you lose him to some frat party for the rest of the evening. He’s a DJ by trade, having never been interested in education, unlike you and Taeyong. The two of you meet up in the early hours of the morning after he’s finished, unless Johnny stays out late. In that case, you catch the last bus home.
In between that, you have your side hustle. It’s what keeps things exciting.
The Burberry dress sells in less than eight hours to the highest bidder, and you forgo your studying to drop it off for them for an extra ten dollars. The buyer’s building is close to another item you’ve sold, a Coach leather jacket, so you drop that off too. On the way back, Sooyoung texts you about a last-minute shift that’s available at a charity gala. You dash home, grab your uniform, and set off again.
The shift comes at the perfect time for the other half of your side hustle.
"So, what's a pretty little thing like you doing in a place like this?"
A grin tugs your lips upwards as you finish pouring a drink, leaning over the bar to slide it over to its owner. As you straighten up, you find your admirer’s eyes hanging just a fraction too low, peeking unashamedly at your exposed collarbone before his gaze meets yours.
“Your drink, sir.” You counter. “And why would you assume I’d be anywhere else but here?”
“Oh, please.” He takes a long, slow drink, unafraid of the chasing burn of the scotch. “I think we both know you don’t belong on that side of the bar.”
You don’t know if it's your Cartier earrings that have drawn his attention, or the Louis Vuitton Rouge lipstick on your lips. But you do know how the rest of this night will play out. You’ve practically got it down to a science.
“And where do I belong?” You tilt your head. “On the other side of this bar, with you?”
He smirks. “Perhaps.”
Rich men seem to have a need for possession, you’ve come to realise. Not to appreciate something, but to own it, like a child who sees a sparkling coin at the bottom of a wishing well. They can’t help but be drawn in, and when they want something, you have to run the opposite way.
“I don’t think so.” You counter. “Let me guess, it’s your daddy’s gala tonight? You’ve got all dressed up and dropped off on his dime?”
“Who says it’s my father’s event?” He counters. “Why couldn’t it be mine?”
The man in front of you wants the thrill of the chase. He wants something to win other than awards, accolades, mergers, or business cases. You can see it plain as day, the way he waits for your reply, the way his body is fully angled towards you, leaning in, hanging off your words like you’re the most interesting person in attendance tonight.
Because to him, you are.
"Because," you let yourself laugh, let your head tilt back so he can admire the expanse of your neck and the Tiffany diamond locket that sits there, "no host would ever come down to talk to a girl like me.”
A girl like you.
He’s never going to see beyond your uniform. It’s why this always works so well. To him, you’re always the one who needs saving in some way.
“Don’t talk about yourself that way.” His smirk falls away to reveal a genuine smile, and it softens the commanding edge to his tone. He’s nowhere near as cute as Chenle, but he could easily pass as a model or an actor. “But you’ve got me. It’s not my gala.”
“No? Then shouldn’t you be off enjoying yourself?”
He takes another sip. “I’m standing here, drinking my favourite drink and flirting with a pretty girl. I’d say I’m enjoying myself.”
"Is this what we're doing?" You move to the other end of the bar to clean a few glasses. He follows. "Flirting?"
"Are you not impressed?"
Someone calls your name in the distance. It sounds like Ten, so you store the glasses under the bar and cast one last glance at Eunseok. He’s much nicer looking in person than his Instagram pictures. You thought the son of a politician would be far less fun.
"Ask me again after this is over," you challenge, "show me you can work a room. Then I'll tell you whether you've impressed me. I might even give you my name, if you ask extra nicely.”
With one last glance at him, you depart, slipping past your replacement and out of the room to meet with Sooyoung and Ten, who are conversing animatedly by the prep station.
"Am I interrupting something?" You slide in.
Ten shakes his head. "Just running the numbers for tonight. You two okay on the floor while we serve the food? That asshole Song Senior wants double numbers. He said for every empty glass he sees, he'll dock our tip by a hundred."
"Asshole." You reply, though it has no real bite in it. You’d thought Eunseok would have been a lot harder to speak with under his father’s watchful eye, but you hadn’t seen tonight’s host all evening. He was probably too busy schmoozing to babysit you all, or his son, for that matter. "Ugh, fine. C'mon, Soo."
The two of you take a quick detour to the bathrooms before you officially begin service. You take turns giving each other a once-over; Sooyoung straightens out your bowtie while you pick off bits of fluff from her waistcoat.
“Are you still mad at me?” You ask.
She rolls her eyes. “If I were still mad, I would have texted Joohyun to come in tonight, not you.”
“Why the change of heart?”
“This is a charity gala. I’m feeling charitable.”
“Sure you are.” You snort, nudging her shoulder with your own. “Who are we bitching about tonight?”
“No one,” she hides her giggles behind the palm of her hand. “No one. I’m serious. Okay, fine. Let me tell you about this rude old lady earlier. You won’t believe what she said to me...”
Once you’re finished checking your uniforms, the two of you arm yourselves with champagne and begin your tour of the room.
Eunseok is on you in an instant, light as a blanket yet as unrelenting as a stormy wave. It’s the same as always: men, who feel entitled to look at you rather than being embarrassed they’ve been caught staring. With every fake smile and drink handed out, you can feel him watching, though when it comes time for you to serve him, you're merely afforded a polite smile before he goes back to his conversations, brushing you off almost entirely in favour of speaking to his companions.
But then there's the glances stolen between courses, the way his hand brushes against yours whenever he takes a drink from you. The way he looks at you, not Sooyoung, when he wants something.
He looks like a Gucci guy, like most new-money men are. You’re sick of Gucci, but it doesn't matter because it sells just as well as anything else, and-
You walk smack bang into someone's chest.
A surprised "oof" erupts from your mouth as you feel a pair of hands at your shoulders, steadying you. By the time you’ve found your feet, you’re looking up into concerned brown eyes.
"Oh my god, are you okay!?" The guy asks, eyes roaming over you- checking for injuries, you realise. You wait for the moment he catches sight of your uniform and realises you're not an attendee, but it never comes. He continues looking down at you with a concerned expression. Instead, you're left with enough time to quickly take him in. His hair is a soft brown colour at the roots, though the tips of his hair are a shade or three lighter, almost a bronze colour. You have to crane your head slightly to look up at him. He’s tall, but not as tall as Chenle or Eunseok. His lips are still in that plump o shape of surprise, but they quickly settle back to a neutral expression as you come to the realisation he's waiting for your response.
"Yes!" You spring away. You never make mistakes at work, and you’re trying to seduce one of his friends, probably, so this is actually kind of embarrassing. "So sorry, sir."
"Don't worry about it!" He smiles at you, openly and genuinely, but then his eyes drift over your head. He scans the room with a little furrow in his brow that, for some reason, reminds you of Taeyong when he was younger, when he’d search for you both in the playground. It’s... oddly endearing, and you wonder if perhaps it’s his first time at an event like this. He does look vaguely familiar. Maybe you’ve seen him on a billboard somewhere?
Realising he might be a bit out of his depth, or even lost, you decide to help him find whoever he’s looking for. Perhaps he’s looking for a colleague or a friend, or a partner.
Before you can turn to help look, however, he catches sight of someone, and his gaze softens. A small smile drifts onto his face as he stills, perfectly content for a moment to simply stand next to you and observe.
It feels oddly intimate, so you finally whirl around to satiate your curiosity about who he’s looking at.
And when you find them, your jaw drops.
It’s not his partner, or a friend, or even a colleague.
genres: cyberpunk au, FLUFF (because cyberpunk is depressing enough and i want these two cuties to be happy), angst
length: 6.6k
description: in which doyoung's so used to taking people apart and then back together, he can't fathom wearing weakness when you could be wearing metal instead. then you come along and teach him some things are better off flawed.
alternatively, doyoung turns people into cyborgs and is less than impressed when little old you starts undoing all his handiwork.
a/n: love love love this request! researching the cyberpunk universe was so interesting because there's so much you can do with it, so a huge thanks to the anon who requested this.
you don't need to know anything about cyberpunk to read this! it's pretty self-explanatory!
also, alternatively alternatively, watch doyoung fall like a hot sack of shit in love with you while you break all his toys
It's well past 3AM when Doyoung is summoned back down to the clinic. He slings his stethoscope around his shoulders and shoots for the door, all traces of sleep forgotten as he receives the silent alert that his clinic's security system has been breached. Cracked. Like a walnut.
He rearranges the access protocol and draws his gun from its hoster, nudging the door a little further ajar. It opens, and his pistol finds itself staring down at Johnny’s forehead.
Johnny grins. There's blood on his cheekbones.
"Hi, Doyoungie."
Doyoung briefly wonders if it's some sort of fucked-up training exercise from Taeyong. Like, surprise! we're here and now we're going to give you a ten-hour explanation on why biometric scanners trump hardware security systems! But no. There's four mercenaries huddling in various states of disarray in his clinic. Jaehyun's got his own weapon concealed by his jacket but undoubtedly aimed his way, and is leaning against the wall with a hand to his stomach.
Mark looks like he's just watched his favourite car get t-boned, doused in gasoline, lit on fire and then tossed off a cliff while he's been forced to watch. Then there’s you, curled up atop his filing cabinets- he doesn't recognise you- with a superficial gash above your left eyebrow he's surprised isn't self-healing.
"So," Johnny starts, running a hand through his hair and leaving a streak of crimson behind. "Get this. The job, funnily enough, was not a simple in-and-out. Who would have thought?!"
"Who would have thought." Jaehyun repeats, darkly, gruffly.
The fact Johnny is still his usual irritatingly chipper self, and Jaehyun looks ready to murder him means Doyoung allows his shoulders to drop and a sigh to leave his mouth. The tiredness creeps back all at once. His adrenaline says, fuck you, this isn’t like the time Jaehyun took a machete to the kidney, and retreats, angrily, leaving him to deal with this mess himself.
Johnny is sprawled out in the operating chair, legs spread with an expectant eyebrow raised, though it’s Mark who speaks next with nothing more than a high-pitched squeak:
"Can you take a look at my arm? I think I'm going to vomit."
Doyoung's eyes go wide. "Hey, hey! No vomiting in here! Johnny, move!"
You tuck yourself under Mark’s armpit and help him limp over to replace Johnny under the spotlight. Jaehyun grabs the latter by the collar and yanks him to the floor, while Doyoung manages to find a surgical bucket just in time for Mark to empty his guts into it, blood and all.
"I hate my life." Doyoung hears Mark warble once the vomiting has subsided, and thinks, same.
"Whaat?" Johnny slurrs, still on the floor. For all his usual bravado and macho, he’s taking too long to find his feet. "Where's that fighting spirit?"
"It died." Mark moans. "It's gone. Buried."
You shuffle away from the makeshift operating space as Doyoung slips on his exoglove, gently loosening Mark's protective grip on his clavicle to examine the damage. The exoglove refines his movements, steadies his hand as he inspects the damage to reveal a small tear at the glenohumeral joint. Nothing more and nothing less.
"Wimp." A grin flicks up onto Johnny's face as Doyoung announces the good news. He gives Mark a shot of metoclopramide alongside the local anaesthetic, and even though it’s only an anti-sickness drug, Mark goes limp, placid, too tired to respond, and that allows Doyoung to finally begin repairing the bioware inside him.
But he’s distracted. From the corner of his eye, he watches you shuffle over to your fearless leader, squat down and begin to work tinker with Johnny’s cyberware. You pour over the biomonitor readings flickering above his arm, brow furrowed in concentration, and he can’t help but mimic the expression. Haven't you ever heard of ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’?
"I can't believe we walked into that." Jaehyun mutters from behind him, mulish. It’s accompanied by the petulant scuff of a boot against the floor. "Should've known they weren't gonna leave military-grade weaponry with just a few foot soldiers to guard it."
Even though it physically, physically pains Doyoung to do so, because it's still 3AM and he truly couldn't care less about what’s brought you to him today, he asks the forbidden question:
"What happened?"
"A dead-man’s trigger!" Johnny announces with a flourish, grinning at Doyoung over your hunched body, before jerking his chin down at you. "Good job we brought the part-timer along."
He gives you a cheery punch to the shoulder and you glances over at him, soulless. The cut above your brow still hasn't healed.
"And what, you blew a hole through a wall or something?" Doyoung asks sarcastically. A dead-man’s trigger activates as a last resort when all security systems are compromised, cages the victims in by locking doors until backup arrives, and the day Doyoung sees Taeyong's team of muscle use their brains instead of their fists is the day hell freezes over. He’d put Johnny in charge, after all.
"No. I rigged their behemoth's engine." You mumble hoarsely, so quiet Doyoung almost misses it. "Sent it through the walls when they trapped us in. Couldn't bypass the mainframe security system without activating a bloodhound program, and that’s suicide.”
“It was an explosive strategy,” Johnny chimes in.
“The behemoth hit a structural pillar on the way out. Mark ripped his implant when the ground gave way beneath us."
Doyoung mulls the situation over in his head and then confirms, again, that he does not care about your team’s little escapades. Instead, he narrows his eyes at you, still curled up on the floor, patched into Johnny’s software as you give it a once-over. Little walnut cracker.
"Exactly," Johnny breathes, like a proud papa. "The two of you were just... hanging around."
In the darkness of the clinic, Jaehyun barks out a forbidden giggle that cuts quickly into a hiss of pain.
“You’re fucking sick, dude.” Mark moans, eyes shut.
“I caught Y/N as they fell, right?! I contributed more than enough.”
“Actually,” Jaehyun has recovered from his muscle spasms. “I caught Y/N. You were too busy making sure the truck wasn’t damaged.”
“Can we please focus on the extent of your injuries?” Doyoung says, exasperated.
"Mark has extensive damage to his neural network and pain receptors because I didn't adequately calculate the building’s critical nodes." You reply flatly, obstinately. Doyoung does a quick check of Mark's neural network and yep, there it is. Quick, jerky motions and falling debris will do that to a person.
"You got us out of there with nothing but the neuroport you were born with!" Johnny counters. Doyoung's scalpel knicks Mark's epidermis as he stops, pauses, and decides he wants to shake Taeyong by the shoulders and tell him that team debriefings need to happen outside the clinic from now on. "No-one's perfect, Y/N!"
Instead of giving in to his baser instincts, Doyoung finishes the repair listlessly, checks Mark's vitals, launches an ice pack at Johnny's face once you determine he has a mild concussion, and then lets Jaehyun slink into the chair and lift his shirt up. When he catches you out of the corner of his eye, you've moved on from Johnny, drawn in by the mantis blades sitting pretty on his desk like a moth to a flame and ghosting a fingertip along the the long, scythe-like claws protuding from the synthetic metacarpals.
"Do you want them?" He asks, curious and quiet, because he thinks a raised voice will startle you if it's not Johnny. He doesn't know why he thinks that, but he knows metal packs a punch and you look like you bleed too much red to take that.
You recoil. "No."
Well, ouch.
"They're the best you'll get outside of a specialist," he retorts, tongue poking his cheek, but it doesn't matter because you're now squatting down next to Mark who’s slumped against the wall, tilting his head and connecting your personal link to the neural port in his neck.
Because it's his patient, Doyoung activates his own neural connection and tunes into your frequency, sees you going over his work with a fine-toothed comb. When you graft several damaged nerve endings to reinforced cells, he tells himself it's down to personal preference.
He takes a backdoor entrance into your systems when you're distracted and basks for a moment in the quiet glory of victory. There’s walut-cracking residue all over your systems.
"You're good," you murmur to Mark, like honey in hot water. "Thank you, buddy."
The next time you see Doyoung is at an admittedly more respectable hour. He works tirelessly until Donghyuck is patched up, denies Johnny the custom cyberlegs he's working on, offers you yet another set of cyberoptics, before exiting the clinic and disappearing into the night.
Alternatively, Doyoung spends at least three hours fixing Donghyuck’s glitching neuroport, ignores Johnny’s non-stop commentary of the former, gives you one last chance with an offer for the state-of-the-art cyberoptics he's just had delivered, before cracking.
He kicks open the clinic door (walnut cracked again. He’d been five minutes late!), stalks around the corner, through the door, and wades through the seas of dancing bodies until he reaches the back room. He ascends the two flights of stairs and nods at Yuta on the door, then he enters Taeyong's office and says, "You need to fire them."
Taeyong, to his credit, glances up and mutters a quick, "Call you back," to whoever is on the other end of his holophone, then beckons him further into the room. If Doyoung didn't know any better he'd say their years-long professional relationship had flourished into something genuine. But he does know better, knows that the price of Taeyong having a medic and ripperdoc on standby means Doyoung will be listened to.
"I kept quiet when you brought in Donghyuck because at least if he gets caught out, he's got some physical offensive capability, physically and mentally." Doyoung snaps, "But this is where I draw the line. They are clearly not interested in getting cybernatic augmentations or enhancements and I'm not sticking around to watch that liability ruin everything we've built."
Taeyong stays silent, watching Doyoung watch him with nothing more than his usual quiet, unreadable expression. It only serves to rile him up further.
"Well?!" He demands, impatient. "Are you operating a business or a shelter?"
"Y/N got into your clinic." He finally says. "What do you call that?"
"Luck."
"I call it an investment."
"It is not-" Doyoung has to slam his palms together and bring the tips of his fingers to his lips. "An investment. It’s an accident waiting to happen. A walking catasrophe. An expendable. You cannot compare the security protocols on my place of work to actual safehouses and containment areas. Sooner or later that kid wont be able to keep up!"
Taeyong rises, swallowed up by the sharp charcoal edges of his suit. His hair is the same gunmetal gray colour of the pistol strapped in its holster, sitting patiently at his hip.
"I'm aware of the risks,” Taeyong replies eventually, cool, stone-line, “and I cannot be so stupid as to let talent slip through my fingers when it comes looking for work."
That makes it even worse, because Doyoung understands the inherently predatory nature of gang recruitment, even if Taeyong’s philosophy operates differently. He knows this world is a fight-to-survive, kill-or-be-killed environment, where places of safety are few and far between.
What he doesn't understand, however, is the sheer imbalance between your evidently high IQ and your apparently nonexistent common sense to be parading around, following Johnny like some infantile lackey, like, hi! i have no cyber enhancements and can be taken out by a common cold! hire me!
He tries again. "Talent means nothing if it can't withstand pressure." Pressure in this world usually comes in the form of broken bones and bullet sprays. "What happens if she meets a junkie looking for a quick fix? Or someone with a sandvestan? What happens when someone catches wind of the fact you've now got two new kids sniffing around on the net and one is easy pickings?"
"I’m going to ignore your infantalisation of your co-workers because you’re obviously upset, but I am not going to disregard what’s good for my business just because you're worried. Though if it helps, both Jaehyun and Yuta shared your concerns but have come round to the idea. You will too."
"You're putting everyone in danger because you want a techie who has no cyberware!" Doyoung snaps, stepping closer. "And I am not worried. In fact, I couldn't care less, I just don't want to be caught up in your mess when it all hits the fan."
"Anything else?" Taeyong bites out, blithe and snappish. The end of his tether has been reached. His business-like facade split at the eyebrows, irritation seeping through the cracks. “Anything else the lowly doctor thinks I care about?”
"No," Doyoung sneers, "but my price has just gone up. Ten percent increase for any patch-ups."
"Ah, Doyoungie!" Taeyong's face splits into a cajoling smile as he watches the younger man turn on his heel and stride away. "Don't be like that! Be reasonable, let's make this work. I totally understand what you're saying!"
Doyoung does not stop. He kicks open the door and marches out, leaving Yuta to slink in with a shit-eating grin on his face. "Ten percent, huh?"
"Fuck off," Taeyong’s face falls again, and he pouts.
Doyoung think's it's a real fucking shame that no-one uses his calendar, even though it's one of the most accessible things about him, because if they did use it then he may, one day, experience that sweet, sweet luxury they call free time.
He marches up to his door and finds the- fuck- the fucking system hacked again. Because he's having a bad week (Jaehyun flat-out refused to pay the extra ten percent, and that set a precedent), he allows himself to kick and stomp and swear while he fixes his security protocols and gets himself inside, surprised to find you perched at his desk once he does so.
It's only when he sees your guilty expression that he remembers it's not him that should be feeling caught out.
"Get out!" He barks, striding forward. "And stop messing with my security systems!"
"But," you skitter away like a pingpong ball and Doyoung carves his territory back, rearranging the datashards you've been examining. "You weren't around. I didn't want to wait outside."
I have a calendar! He wants to scream, but you're looking so dejected and genuinely clueless that all he can come up with is, "This place is for emergency repairs or appointments only. Seeing as you have nothing to repair-" He jerks a thumb to the door, "get out."
Your frown deepens. "You just have some stuff I've been asked t-"
Someone thuds against the door, trying the handle. He flicks the feed up instantly on his monitors to show a client doing a perfect imitation of Doyoung only a few minutes prior, albeit with a lot more passion.
"Open this fucking door, Kim Doyoung!" Comes the static scream that the two of you can hear through the metal walls. "Fix my fucking arm!"
You hesitate, gnawing on your bottom lip, and fix Doyoung with a doe-like stare.
He takes one look at it, sighs, and points towards the depths of the room where the back door is. You're gone by the time Wooseok and his crew come tumbling in.
"You fucking changed the locks?" Wooseok accuses, slamming himself into the chair. "I told you we were coming!"
"I had a bug in the system," Doyoung's replies, noncommital.
"How about that?" One of Wooseok's cronies watches him slip on the exoglove and flick on the lights. "Lee can't keep the rats out, huh?"
"Nothing I can't handle." Doyoung replies, icy. "What do you want?"
Wooseok gets comfortable in the chair, pulls his shirt sleeve all the way up to his shoulder and- holy shit. What's left of his right arm is a mangled, twisted mess of wires and metal. "What I want, is the person who did this to me dead. If you can't do that, then fix this."
Doyoung stares. "I installed this for you last month."
The taller man snarls, enraged. "And charged me pretty fuckly highly, if I remember correctly."
"This is near military-grade, Wooseok. What the hell did you stumble into that could do this?"
Doyoung is going to find whatever ballistic or crude little instrument did this and reforge, replan. This was supposed to be his finest work. "IED? Power surge?"
"Not what," Crony #2 mutters sullenly, "Who."
Doyoung barks out a laugh of disbelief and then turns to Wooseok for the real explanation, except his client isn't smiling. All the blood promptly drains from Doyoung's face.
"Was it a- like a cyberpsycho?" He tries, then tries again, "Military? Exoskeleton?"
"We didn't see." Wooseok grinds out. "One minute I'm doing a perimeter check down at the docks for some cargo, the next minute I’ve lost my arm, my visuals, and all my fucking comms!"
"Must have been a sniper or something." Crony #1 decides.
“Had to have been.” Crony #2 murmurs in assent. "We had all exits covered and any cyberware activity woulda come up on our radar. The fuckers that did this scrambled us then took off with the payload. Fuck."
A quick scan of the cyberlimb's RAM confirms it. A single ballistic round had hit the shoulder joint and sliced through the upper arm power conduits, and if that wasn't bad enough, the riccochet had shattered most of the outside casing on its way out. There’s no sensory response when Doyoung pokes at the twisted digits.
"Just give it to me straight, doc," Wooseok watches him, shifts his weight from one side to the other. "How much is this gonna cost me?"
Doyoung decides "an arm and a leg" would be a joke in poor taste, so settles on offering up a cheaper replacement he’s got laying around somewhere.
"And you're sure it was no implants?" He presses. "No gun modification traces or anything nearby on the net?"
"Nope." Crony #1 pops the p. "Just some serious firepower from some fucker hoping to strike lucky, I guess. They better hope we never find ‘em, though."
Doyoung installs state-of-the-art, cybernetic technology for a living. There is no such thing as striking lucky.
"I guess." He says, and gets to work.
"Please stop this," Doyoung asks, politely, weakly, when he next sees you. Because it's the fifth time this month he’s had to install another firewall on the clinic's security program, and because strapped on your back is a tsunami-tech sniper rifle which, a quick digital analysis reveals, takes ballistic rounds. Serious firepower.
You point your finger to the culprit: a banged-up Jaehyun who’s already stabbing a round of hemozal into his upper arm.
Jaehyun shrugs, unrepentant. "Doesn't this increase business?"
You nod sagely. "Circle of life."
"I like Junmyeon," he protests, because he truly does, "and Junmyeon liked his legs. Quite a lot, actually."
"He shouldn't have gotten in the way then." Jaehyun states, matter-of-fact.
You inch towards the chair with round, wide eyes, even if another forensic scan of the weapon reveals you’ve fired and hit no less than eight targets tonight.
Doyoung looks at Jaehyun.
Jaehyun looks at you.
Doyoung sighs, defeated. You hop up and show him the shrapnel poking out of your calf and he gets to work. It's only when he’s halfway through and you're rolling up the jeans on your right leg that he sees a flash of metal where your left fingertips should be.
He moves, quick, and snaps his hand around your wrist. You yank and tug but can’t pull away, watching him watch you as his other hand gently rolls up the sleeve to reveal-
Metal. Rusted and prosthetic, at least 10 years old which means even if it wasn't well and truly useless back then, it certainly is now. A hollow laugh leaves Doyoung’s chest at the irony, the sheer irony, while you finally snatch your arm back and cradle the cold metal to your chest. Your chest rises, lips parted in a silent snarl, and you’re glaring at him.
"Seriously?" He moves to take your hand in his again, but you won't let him. “You got this when you were, what, ten? Eleven? That’s the age people usually start getting enhancements, not stop."
“Don’t care.” You wiggle your leg for emphasis. "Get on with it!"
So he does. Setting his hand just above your knee and splaying his fingertips across the skin. Soft, warm, skin. Real. He glances up and finds you already watching him, lips still parted just enough for your breath to escape.
"You want anaesthetic?" He murmurs, not sure why he does, because Jaehyun's already tuned out in favour of his own little world, tucked away in the corner as he nurses his wounds in the corner.
"No." You murmur. Both your hands- one metal, one flesh -curl into fists as he begins to remove the shrapnel. He wants to cradle them against his own. He doesn’t know why.
Then a piece of shrapnel nicks your skin and the spell is broken.
"Hi," You slide into the booth one rainy morning as Doyoung is hunched over the cyberware laid out in front of him. The club is empty during the day except for a few mercenaries who never like to stray too far from Taeyong’s territory. The man in question is squabbling with Jungwoo at the bar, while Jaehyun nurses a coffee and watches over Donghyuck, who's splayed out in a booth with VR goggles covering most of his face. Yuta's nowhere to be seen, but then again, he usually never is. "What are you working on?"
You've bonded quick and fast with the team, like neuron synapses after injury. They normally forge new connections rapidly, growing stronger with every impulse, so he knows if it weren't for Donghyuck's affinity- and addicition -to surfing the cybernet, you wouldn't even be with him right now. He doesn't know why that annoys him.
"Upgrades." He peels back part of the tactile sensor with his tweezers, feels your thigh press against his own as you peer over his arm, and decides to just stay still. If your lonely neuron has decided to bond to his, so be it. Who is he to fight against neurobiology?
“You're awfully interested for someone who has nothing better to do.”
"I wanted to be a ripperdoc once," You shrug.
Doyoung sets down his tools and turns to look at you.
"What?" You ask, a touch defensively, when you catch him staring, and he can't help but laugh at the indignant expression on your face. You soften slightly at the sound.
"Nothing," he settles on, even though you've stolen his tweezers and have reached the dual processor deep within the cyberlimb's core, severing it neatly from the cooling system. "I just don't know many who would trust a ripperdoc to install cyberware if they don't have any themselves. It would be like letting someone tattoo you without seeing their portfolio."
You're quiet, too quiet. He thinks it’s just concentration at first, that he’s lost you to your (his) work. Both you and Donghyuck share the affinity for netrunning, able to bend and slither your way through firewalls and into places you shouldn't rather than Jaehyun, Yuta and Johnny’s “punch first, think later” philosophy, but only you have shown interest in the more mechanical, tangible side of cyber augmentation.
"I guess." You mumble, finally, into the table.
It doesn't make logical sense. Doyoung hasn't done anything wrong, hasn’t said anything false, yet you've ceased tinkering and your face is turned away, hidden, and even though you're right next to him he feels like your mind is even further away than Donghyuck’s. The synaptic connection has been severed and even though it’s a stupid fucking metaphor, Doyoung reaches for it again.
He stands, drops his hand to your head and lets his fingers intertwined with your hair as he ruffles it up. "Let me get us some coffee, walnut. Okay?"
"Walnut?" You wiggle out of his grip, staring up at him in disbelief. "I'm not a walnut!"
He shuffles out the booth, points to the cyberlimb, and grins, wide and infectious. "Keep up the good work!"
Your slow and budding friendship is tested on a Saturday night downtown when he pokes the bear.
(Not friendship. Synapses don’t cling to each other with the hope that it works out. You don’t hack a security program in halves, asking permission before you eviscerate. You don’t hesitate before you pull the trigger, or go for the non-lethal shot. Synapses cling and don’t let go. It’s a methodology and a mantra. He’s only returning the favour.)
"I just think," he puffs, veering to the left just as a slug embeds itself in the far wall, where his head had just been, "that having some offensive arsenal would be of great help right now."
"Shut up!" You yelp, hand tangled in his as you jerk him along. Behind the two of you, Johnny covers your six, stopping occasionally to return fire and muttering, "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," as he does so.
Yuta is several paces ahead of you and cracking skulls like eggshells once you join him at the door.
"Won't open," he explains simply as you examine the bullet-ridden control panel by his side, before lifting up his gun and emptying a few rounds into Johnny's pursuers.
The two of you drop to your knees while Doyoung grips a panel on the wall and yanks it away.
"I'm just saying-"
"Don't care, Doyoung." You snap, moving into grab at the wires.
"-you're quite literally putting yourself at a disadvantage just letting it just sit there like that. Were you too broke to purchase anything other than the basic shell?"
"Not the time!" You worm your way past the thick cabling and link yourself to the port. Yuta never does anything by halves so it's no surprise to find the code scrambled, programs just begging to be put out of their misery. You gather them up and start coaxing.
"Well can you at least let me put some sythentic strengthening coating on it? So it matches the human one?"
Johnny, ever the brightest spark, reaches the door and just starts punching. It bends but doesn't break. "Stop talking and get this thing open, metalheads!"
"I didn't fucking sign up for this!" Doyoung snaps back, equally as frustrated, before deciding enough is enough and joining you within the door's systems. "Just- Y/N, let me fix the arm, make it better-"
You yank the code he's reformulating from his grasp and slot it into place against your own. "It doesn't need to be fixed!"
The program sings with delight and the door slides open. Yuta's large fist clamps around your jackets and he hauls the two of you through. "I'm not broken, so I’d appreciate it if you stop trying to fix me."
Mark waits outside with wheels smoking and the gas hot. Yuta launches the two of you into the back seats, leaps in after, and Johnny's not in the passenger seat for even a second before the warehouse is nothing but dust behind you.
"Can't argue with that, dude," Yuta pants from beside him.
Yeah, your finger says as it pokes him in the side. Doyoung wants to bite back, truly, but the adrenaline has left him now, so all he can do is rest his head against your own as the two of you wait for the comedown.
“Sorry.” He mumbles into your hair. It’s silent, but it’s there nonetheless.
You tell him on a cool summer Wednesday night, when he wakes to find your silhouette curled up in on itself, tracing the metallic lining of your left arm. He still hasn't gotten used to you being in his bed, never will, because he's Kim Doyoung and he doesn't deserve nice things, but it had been a late night at the clinic and you’re nothing but quiet, persistent and persuasive.
"Y/N?" He shifts upright, reaches out to draw you closer. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," you say into the darkness, then, "I used to have a brother."
He pauses to imagine it: someone with the same slant of your jaw, same shade of hair, same laugh. It's not hard. He thinks about you far more often than he'll ever admit, even if Johnny and Donghyuck have been trying their hardest to wheedle it out of him.
"He was three years older than me but it never felt that way. I followed him everywhere. Mom used to call me his little shadow." You laugh hollowly. "He used to take me with him to the clinics when he'd saved enough money, sneak me out of school because he knew I was obsessed with technology and how it worked. He'd explain to me what he was getting and where, how it was gonna get us out of this shithole.
"And it got better, for a bit, except he kept borrowing to afford the surgeries, kept saying he needed more to keep up with everyone else. You know how it is."
He does. If you haven't got the highest specs on the market you might as well quit while you're ahead. It's what keeps him in business.
"He kept going," Your voice is clogging up now, thick with emotion on the precipice of eruption. "I told him to stop. I didn't care how awful our life was at the bottom, all I cared about was that we were together. No-one told me you had to look out for the signs. I thought the aggressiveness was just him being a teenager."
You turn to face him, a bitter, twisted smile on your lips. You gesture to the useless metal appendage attached to you, sitting limply at your side.
"I came home from school one day and it wasn’t him that answered the door. One of the neighbours called the psycho squad, I think. He kept me in the apartment for so long it’s all a bbit fuzzy. They went through him to get me, in the end, blew a few holes in him once he opened the door. Didn't stop him from blowing one into me first."
You gesture helplessly to your prosthetic arm. "I didn't get a choice; I woke up in hospital and they'd already attached it. Once I was released I went straight down to the ripperdoc to get it covered or upgraded or something-" You reach out with it, twisting it around, testing it out like it's the first time all over again. "But all I could think about was my brother, how that technology rotted him from the inside out. I'd never even stepped into another clinic till I met you."
Doyoung remembers it like yesterday, the way you'd curled up in the corner, let guilt gnaw away at you until you'd physically checked Mark was okay. He reaches out, ghosts against your shoulder, then lets his arm fall.
You stare out into the night sky.
"I don't think I'm made to love metal." You admit, quietly, finally, into the dark expanse of his room, Night City humming with life below.
Softly, so softly, he comes to cage you in from behind, tucking you against his chest. His fingers come to rest against your cheek, taking your right hand in his hands and cradling it to his own face. He feels your heart beat against his chest as his own settles into an identical rhythm.
"Feel me, Y/N" implores, ghosting a kiss onto the skin of your palm. "I am anything but."
So you peel back Doyoung's layers, piece by piece.
He's warm in the mornings, arms open wide to tuck you against him before he hands you a coffee. He wraps you up in his hoodies on days when the heating dies out and watches with Jaehyun at the bar, fondness in his eyes, as you and Mark and Donghyuck squabble over the songs on the jukebox.
If he finds you waiting for him in the afternoon, twirling around in his desk chair, he moans and whines with playful chagrin, walking you back to the door and begging you to fix it, so he can make it better, so he can fix it.
When he gets called out in the early hours of the morning to find Donghyuck curled up and snoring on your shoulder, once he melds metal back to flesh and stops the screaming, the two of you steal away to his apartment. He makes you a warm drink and runs you a shower, washes away the blood and sweat and draws circles into your shoulder under the covers. The touch lets the livewire codes buzzing around in your head die down, grounds you to him like an anchor, lulls you to sleep even when you close your eyes and still find yourself deep in the net, surrounded by nothing but 1's and 0's.
You can’t do much in return except watch. Doyoung’s hands never shake when he works, his eyes never widen as he swings into the clinic and takes in the scene in front of him. He’s steady, always.
Yet when you watch Jaehyun barrel out of the van and pound on the clinic's doors, watch Doyoung's sleepy head emerge and then startle as he's dragged forwards, you realise you've never seen him truly scared.
Donghyuck's body writhes in the back of the van. Your knees pin his arms down as you cradle his head between your legs. His eyes are closed, seared shut in pain. He cries out occasionally, legs kicking out until Doyoung composes himself and can steady them. He turns to you, hopeless, wide-eyed and panicked.
"We were out on a job," you whimper, tears glistening like jewels in your eyes. "I- He was netrunning to grab us some data. A bloodhound virus got wind of him, it's keeping him in the net. I don't know what to do."
"Hyuck?" Doyoung leans over and gives him several sharp taps to the face. "Hyuck, can you hear me?"
He moans moans, then falls silent again.
There's several variables that bounce between the two of you in quick succession. First, the location. If Donghyuck stopped moving the bloodhound would lock onto his location and then you'd have every mercenary within a five-mile radius knocking at your door to collect the bounty. Second, there's the sheer terrifying fact that if Donghyuck can't fight this thing, he's going to lose complete and utter access to his body. And-more urgently, his mind.
You stare down at your friend, unable to get him to a properly-resourced location, unable to bring him home, and make a decision. "I'm going in."
"Nope." Doyoung reaches out and snatches at your wrist, stopping you from preventing the link. "You can't. If that thing catches you-"
Bullets spray into the back of the van. You yelp and duck, immediately crushed by the weight of Doyoung pinning you down.
In the driver’s seat, Jaehyun swerves a sharp left.
"Gun!" Johnny snaps, leaping over the front seats in one fluid motion. He snatches up your discarded rifle, kicks open the back doors, and takes aim. Doyoung watches it power up with a sickening hum until a shot is released. It goes straight through the chassis of your attacker's vehicle, riccochets, catches the engine- and explodes.
Heat licks at your face, Johnny yanks the doors back shut and retreats to the front, leaving Doyoung free to allow you back up, nudge you out the way and hold out his own wrist to acccess his neuroport. "I'll do it. It has to be me-"
"No," this time it's you stopping him. "Work on his cyber enhancements. Disconnect them from his neural network so it can't get to them through there, it'll reduce the strain on his cerebral cortex. I'll try and pull him out."
"Y/N," Doyoung slows, turning to cradle you to him, even though you wriggle, even though there's no time, "Hyuck isn’t your brother. He's still in there. I promise we'll get him out."
"It's not- It’s not-" You splutter, beside yourself, but Doyoung has already let you go and you have nowhere to sink your anger into.
Before Doyoung can stop you, you tilt Donghyuck's head and connect your personal link to his neural port. The bloodhound is greeted with fire and fury and even though your body goes limp while you ascend to cyberspace, it's only minutes later that Donghyuck splutters to life, eyes flying open and panicked yelps tearing from his mouth as he's torn away from the net and into the world of the living.
"Jesus!" Johnny cries out, "Jesus, fuck, don't do that again, kid!"
"Welcome back," Jaehyun grunts, turning the truck into a drift and then straightening back up. "Let's go the fuck home."
You emerge milliseconds after Donghyuck, severing the connection, blinking slowly as you come back to yourself. Once you do, you find yourself cradled to Doyoung's chest.
"Dont ever do that again," he murmurs against your temple. He presses a kiss there, then another. "Please please pleasepleaseplease."
"Get a room," Donghyuck warbles pathetically from the floor.
"Idiot." You send a half-hearted kick to his calf. "I can't believe you did that to us. Drinks are on you for the rest of the year."
The panic is passing. Adrenaline ebbing, retreating, until all you're left with is the hum of the engine, the sound of your own breaths.
Trumping all that is Doyoung, the feeling of his skin on yours and his presence all around, holding you tight, keeping you safe.
It's well past 3AM when Doyoung wakes, roused by your absence. His arm reaches out to find you next to him but falls onto the empty sheets instead. It’s so easy to notice you when you’re gone now that he can’t quite remember what he did before you.
He slings the covers off and settles onto the balls of his feet. He moves quickly, because there's no point sleeping if you're not with him, and because the window is wide open.
It had not been like that a few hours earlier.
He checks the access protocol on his way out and lowers himself onto the fire escape. Clambering up, he ascends to the rooftop of his apartment building just as the advertisement billboard across the way lights up neon. It bathes you in a cerulean glow.
You turn to smile at him. "Hey."
"Hey." He joins you on the edge, letting his feet swing over and knock against yours. The advertisement dies down so he can join you in tilting his head back and mapping out the stars. The moon shines the brightest.
"I always wonder what life is like up there." You say softly. "If anyone ever regrets it."
Doyoung knocks his head into yours, gentle, affectionate. "C’mon, walnut, I doubt it. Aren't they all rich fuckers anyway?"
You sigh. "Probably. It's so beautiful though. Ever thought about going?"
"It is." He agrees. You turn, he's not looking at the moon. You chase his lips as he laughs and tries to move away. He gives in quickly.
When he next speaks, it's a sentiment you both agree on. Finally, like settled metal, done right so there's no chance of erosion, he says, "I have everything I need right here."
omg no stop because i love it SO much! it got the point i just had to say ‘fuck it this is it’ because i was trying soo hard to make it perfect, cause dy and mc have my whole heart. so im super nervous to publish it, its only 5k ish because i don’t want to over complicate their relationship, i just want it to be two people carving a place for themselves in each others hearts and we just get a little glimpse into how that happens 😊
i have a phd proposal due in on thursday and my last assignment due on the 30th so after that i’ll get to editing but it’s so close to being done !!
honestly i just 💗💖💗 deffo wanna explore their relationship further/other characters in the future!!!
OMG so glad that you're back! I'd like to request a cyberpunk, mercenary x ripperdoc fic with doyoung plsss! (doesn't matter who is what)
Okay but yes. Imagine ripperdoc!Doyoung who's become a little bit tired of life, a little bit snappish because he's so used to carving humanity out and welding metal back in, so different from the kind boy with kind eyes that he used to be. And then one day he finds mercenary!You, a new recruit working for the rag-tag team under Taeyong's command that run the streets, and he can tell you're just so painfully human and so against cyberware (only on yourself, always on yourself. why?) that he's livid, actually livid that Taeyong would allow you to put others (and yourself) in danger like this.
But then his clients turn up for emergency repairs because something is putting them through the grinder. Security systems shredded, limbs mangled and and someone keeps fucking breaking his clinic's security protocols its only when someone admits that they picked up no cyberware biosignatures after being attacked that he pauses, and thinks holy shit. Because there's no way.
And then the next time he sees you, you're just perched there with your little sniper on your back and chatting with the guys and he just. gives up. And slowly but surely you worm your way into his little heart and oops! He's whipped. Not much he can do about it now not that he wants to so he just decides to. give you the world. And slowly but surely, you let him in too.
because 2077 and phantom liberty and edgerunners are so fucking sad that SOMEONE needs to write a happy ending and *britney spears voice* it's gonna be me
