Chapter Text
“And STAY lost!” Someone’s standing over him, silhouetted by the sun. Blinking the static out of his vision, he cranes his neck up to look at the person.
It’s a beautiful person. He drops his head back down on the ground. Okay, whatever.
“Hey, what’s that look for? I just saved you. Friggin’ ingrate.” The person’s now crouched over him like a punk. Dokja knows that it’s probably better not to respond to this kinda guy.
Now he’s being poked. It makes one of the bruises on his side ache so he scoots a few inches away, using his elbows. With a few inches between them, he pulls himself to a sitting position.
“Had enough of playin’ dead, huh? Finally fuckin’ respawned, huh?” The dude squints at him. Beautifully. Dokja decides from then on any thoughts about this guy’s attractiveness are banned.
“You. Are. Welcome.” The dude spells out, tilting his head. Dokja feels a vague compulsion to respond but can’t think of anything to say.
“I’m Yoo Jonghyuk and I just saved your ass.”
“...What?”
“What.” Jongyuk gave Dokja a glare.
“Wait, are you that guy trying to be a pro gamer.” He was saved by the gamer. Even some loser gamer could stand up to Minwoo, but not him. Does this make things worse? “Competitive Fortnite must be going really great for you to have the courage to go at that guy, huh? Do you play Overwatch too? Oh my god I bet you’re a Diva main. Love, Jongyu—“
In a few seconds, Dokja is cradling his bloody nose. “Eych, Eych. What happened to saving me?”
Yoo Jongyuk has his back to him. He just clicks his tongue in disgust and strides away.
_________________________________________
Kim Dokja stands on the roof of the school.
There’s a 10 foot tall metal barrier between him and the edge. He’s considering what it would take to get a ladder from downstairs.
And then he hears something.
“—i sAID CUT IT FUCKING OUT! I’m trying to game over here!”
Yoo Jonghyuk’s sitting on a roof bench with his feet kicked up on a fan. He’s staring at a husky gaming laptop, and rapidly pressing the keys, eyes glued to the screen. Dokja can’t help but feel offended.
“...What the fuck? What, do you need that Fortnite Focus?” Dokja shouts back.
Yoo Jonghyuk totally ignores him. He’s got headphones with a little mic on his head and is rapidly... typing? on his computer. He’s extremely concentrated.
“Sorry guys,” Jonghyuk manages to say sorry like it’s an insult. Then he lowers his voice and says something else to them. And then he freezes, glaring at his screen like it just insulted him. He slams the lid shut, then delicately sets his computer next to him. Getting up, he strides over to Dokja and slams his hands on his shoulders, glaring him down the same way he did his computer. Dokja shrugs his hands off and takes a few steps back.
“They fucking kicked me from the game because I told them there was some stupid suicidal kid on the roof with me. So fucking quit it out, it’s...”
Dokja starts to drown the rest of the words out. Suicidal?
It happens to kids who are frequently bullied and kids who have a rough home life. ...Is that what he is? That can’t be...
That’s...
“Dude, your arms are shaking. You’re uh, shaking.” Jonghyuk looks behind himself and then forward again. “Uh.”
Dokja can’t see what he does next because his hands are covering his face. “Are you crying? Oh my god. Ohhhhh my god.” Jonghyuk sounds a bit more panicked now
“You... you... you know what you need? You need... video games. Video games, uh... they’re... good? Shit, fuck. Stop crying. I’m telling you, stop fucking crying.”
Dokja’s a little too... busy to laugh, but he would if he could. Man, Yoo Jonghyuk is totally useless in this situation, and it’s actually kind of hilarious. Dokja doesn’t think that he’s ever seen this dude nervous, ever. Something touches his arms and he feels himself flinch backwards. Oh right. He hates this. He hates this so, so, so...
“O...okay. Y’know what? I’m just gonna go. Don’t you fucking dare do anything, I’m just gonna go.”
Dokja hears footsteps away from him, then the swinging of a door shut. The Whatever that just hit him runs it’s course and passes. When he can breath again, he drops his hands from his face and makes a plan as to how to get to the bathroom fast without anyone seeing him so he can clean his face.
Looking up, catches sight of a mop of messy, pretty hair disappearing from behind the roof’s door window.
Fucking bastard.
____________________________________
Jonghyuk drags Dokja to his house the next day. Quite literally.
After yanking on his backpack’s handle into an alleyway after school, Jonghyuk held him in a friendly chokehold all the way back to his house. Dokja was 30% convinced he was going to be filleted when they got here, but instead, Jonghyuk Released him once they got inside the house, threatened him to take a glass of milk and two cookies. Said cookies look homemade. Taste it, too.
The taste is delicious but it also makes Dokja nervous. It’s not something he’s tasted for a long, long time.
And then they play video games. They play a lot of video games. Dokja didn’t even know there were that many video games out there. He goes to the bathroom just to read one of his web novel’s updates.
While they play, Dokja thinks about how Jonghyuk has a nice house. He has ridiculous selection of video games, and no one else in the house. He also has a cat named Bihyung—it’s snow-white and very fluffy. Jonghyuk calls it a bastard gremlin. Bihyung is no good because he drinks from the water cups and is very distracting.
Bihyung likes to sit in Dokja’s lap. He’s very warm. He likes being lightly stroked. Jonghyuk’s wrong about a lot of things—given he’s very stupid—but he’s wrong the most about Bihyung.
This place is...
____________________________________
“So like... why where you about to, uh, jump into the bucket?” Jonghyuk raises the question while staring at his screen. He’s playing as some dude in a orange mech suit beating up some small, yellow thing with pointy ears. The artistic style of that game seems to be all over the place, it’s very ugly. Dokja was taking a break from the gaming to read a web novel on his phone.
He swallows and thinks about his answer. He looks inside himself to see if he cares that much about Jonghyuk knowing and he finds out that he really doesn’t. Care about anything, actually.
“My... mother wrote a novel about my old home life.” Kim Dokja breathes in, then out. Well, anyway, all this was nice—no, unpleasant—while it lasted. Now Jonghyuk will kick him out, and it will be like none of this ever happened. “Her name was Lee Sookyung.”
Dokja waits.
He looks over at Jonghyuk.
“What?”
“What.” Kim Dokja blinks.
“I don’t fucking read. That shit’s for nerds.” Yoo Jonghyuk looks off to the side, looking pissed. Dokja lets out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding in and then. Wait, what?
Dokja sputters. “Wh—y—you are a gamer, Jonghyuk. You want to be a Pro Gamer.”
“And?” Jonghyuk’s glaring, but Dokja can’t stop now.
“For nerds? You are a gamer. Fucking Mountain Dew flows through your clogged-ass arteries. You live primarily off of Doritos and spend 12 hours a day in front of a screen. Your only friends are some loser strangers over the internet—“
Annnnd he’s nursing his nose again. At least this time the bop didn’t make him bleed.
“You don’t know shit. I’d never get that vile orange powder ANYWHERE near my Super Smash Bros. specialty controller. Do you even know how much that thing costs? How much it means to me?” Jonghyuk gestures at his heart emphatically.
“N....no????”
“Exactly. Then don’t draw conclusions about things you don’t understand.”
____________________________________
Jonghyuk has him try a lot of games. Space Marines, a dude with an eyepatch, explorers with stubble, some game with a little white-faced bug guy on the cover, TF2, and more. Dokja is pretty terrible at all of them, and none of them really pique his interest. Then Jonghyuk gets him started on the worst game yet.
“...what the fuck is this?” A gentle guitar sound comes over the speaker. He sees a bunch of green mountains and a clear blue sky.
“Just be fucking gracious I’m letting you use my steam account. You know only one person can use that at once, you ingrate? Well that’s the way it fucking is. You’re lucky League isn’t on steam, bitch.”
Kim Dokja scoffs at his nonsense and goes to start a new game. He gets to a player select screen and fiddles around with it for a solid 10 minutes. Jonghyuk pauses his game to look at Dokja’s screen, curious, and then makes a disgusted noise.
“The fuck is that, Dokja? Did you want bland with a side of white bread? Don’t you know you can make things like this in this game?” He reaches behind the laptop and sticks one finger on the trackpad, while Dokja pulls his arms back, frowning. He swing’s Dokja’s curser over to a little dice button and clicks. Now Dokja’s got a character with green skin, red, glowing eyes, and some hideous outfit. Dokja glares at Jonghyuk and stabs a finger at the character.
“You fucked it up. That’s not me. That looks nothing like me.” Yoo Jonghyuk is looking at Dokja like he has 3 heads and it doesn’t please him one bit. It’s a stupid look on that stupid face.
“So what? You don’t have to be you in this game, you know.” But Dokja’s ignoring him, setting up his character so that it’s back to looking the way it used to.
_____________________________________
Ok, so Stardew Valley’s really good. It’s about a dude who’s tired of being part of the corporate machine—something Dokja knows he’s destined to become a cog of, if he even makes it that far. He’s visited Jonghyuk’s house every day after school that week to pick it up again because he needs to keep playing. Jonghyuk plays his nerd games, and Dokja learns more about the detailed world of Stardew valley. He’s pinned down the many of the character’s favorite items fairly quickly and is dedicated to maxing out friendship with each and every one of them and surprisingly, there’s a dating mechanic in this game, too. Right now he’s going after Alex because Alex is a stupid buff gamer just like Jonghyuk so he’s pursuing him romantically just to bother Jonghyuk. And it totally does. And it’s excellent.
(Elliot is... so sweet. He’s working so hard on writing his novel and quite frankly Dokja would chose him in a heartbeat if that wasn’t gay and if annoying Jonghyuk wasn’t priority.)
“Anyway, who’d you go for when you played?” Dokja asks Jonghyuk one day. Jonghyuk takes a second to mute the screaming over his headset and looks over at him briefly, before looking back at his screen. He’s playing some teenage girl in a big mech fighting a bunch of other colorful characters.
“Sebastian, obviously. Because he’s a stupid edgy bastard just like you are, bitch.” They sneer at each other. “Just kidding. I went for...” He pauses. “Abigail. Cus she’s hot.”
...
“Fucking stupid.” Mutters Dokja.
_____________________________________
“I mean, seriously, you didn’t have to go feral on the guy.”
Jonghyuk scoffs and scratches at the dried blood on his sleeve some more, trying to get it all out. Dokja feels concerned again. “Dude, that’s not gonna get out of there. You’re gonna have to to buy a new one. If you even still go here—“
“Oh, my god. Why are you always so pessimistic. Why are you always like this?”
“...it’s just my luck. I’m a lonely person,” He explains, looking down at the floor. “You shouldn’t’ve gotten near me.”
“Okay, shut the fuck up.” Jonghyuk grabs Dokja by the cheeks and squishes them together. The gamer’s face scrunches up in a look of anger and... concern. It makes Dokja extremely uncomfortable.
“You still have fucking bruises on your ugly mug—they’d have to be fucking blind to ignore that.” His expression tightens. “Everything’s going to be fucking fine. I’m going to make it fine.” Jonghyuk glares him down.
“Yoo Jonghyuk, you can come in.” The lady looking out of the school counselor’s office has a look of concern on her face. Jonghyuk lets go of Dokja’s face and gives him a glare as he enters the office. With him gone, Dokja feels a stiffness leave his body that he didn’t know was there.
He sits there in silence and waits.
He feels a deep, ominous pit in his stomach. This isn’t going to go well.
_____________________________________
“Welcome, Dokja.” There’s an old man behind a big desk and a single chair in front of the desk.
“Can you tell me what happened today?”
The carpet pattern is very interesting in this room—dark red rectangles on a blue background. Dokja stares at it while he tries to come up with words. He finds a few, but they get stuck in his throat.
“No...?”
Dokja nods.
“Okay.”
“So, you were behind the school. What where you doing there?”
“Reading. O-on my phone.”
“And then Song Minwoo approached you. What did he say?”
“...” Minwoo said a lot of things, none of them pleasant. They weren’t the kind of things Dokja could repeat—to the headmaster, at least.
“...okay. He attacked you?”
Dokja... nods.
“And then Yoo Jonghyuk saw him attacking you, and attacked him?”
“H-he laid into the guy. He... got him off of me.”
“Right. Where are you hurt?”
“Uh... my sides. He also knocked my head into the wall when he brought me down.”
The headmaster looks at his paper. “Song Minwoo said that you and Yoo Jonghyuk are, er...” His forehead wrinkles. “Engaging in sexual activities?”
“....There’s no truth to that.” Dokja scoffs, making his disgust apparent. “I hate that guy.”
The headmaster nods and writes that down.
“Okay, just wanted to know. Bullying on the basis of sexual orientation was made illegal in 2012.”
Dokja sputters and feels his face heat up a little. “O-okay?”
The headmaster chortles, then sighs. It’s long, and drawn out. He pauses for a long time. Dokja sits perfectly still.
“I’m sorry.” He says.
Dokja just shivers and nods. Sorry for what?
...
“Alright.” The headmaster closes his planner, sounding grim. “Are you going to see the nurse after this.”
“No.”
“...right. Well, you’re free to leave.”
Dokja stands and heads for the door.
_____________________________________
Something strong smacks Dokja’s back as he leaves the room. He flinches and folds his arms over himself and jumps away from his aggressor—Jonghyuk. It’s Jonghyuk. Jonghyuk waited for him.
“Fuck! Shit. Don’t be like that. It’s what they do in the... e-sports teams...” He mumbles, scratching the back of his head. “Everything fine?”
“It sucked.” Dokja deadpans. Jonghyuk barks out a laugh.
“Okay, okay. But nobody died or got expelled or—look at this.” Jonghyuk proudly shows off his sleeve—he’s gotten most the blood out of it, but there’s still a spot or two. It’s barely visible on the black uniform, though. Dokja points this out.
“It’s a badge of fucking honor. This is Bastard Blood.” Ridiculous. Jonghyuk’s a character.
Dokja nods slowly, giving Jonghyuk the smarmiest face he can muster. “You still suspended, though, didn’t you?”
“I don’t give a fuck.“ Dokja folds his arms, and this time it’s Dokja’s turn to laugh. “Did you see how the other guy came out of it?”
“I’d do it all over again.” He says it slightly quieter, this time.
“...mmm.”
...
“...I still can’t believe you punched me. In the head, no less.” Jonghyuk whistles. Dokja flinches.
“I couldn’t let you k-kill the guy, could I?” He narrows his eyes, and Jonghyuk laughs.
“That was a weak-ass punch, dude. It sucked. I mean, it’s great you did it, but it sucked.” Dokja glares at him. “See, I’m gonna train you to punch better then that. I’ll still whoop your ass anyway, though.” He smiles, and Dokja rolls his eyes.
...
Then, Dokja smiles. “Hey, you might do that. But one day I’m gonna destroy you with Jigglypuff.”
“Only counts if you do it in a tournament, and if it’s like, the final match. Git gud, chump.”
And they all lived happily ever after.