Archive of Our Own

Here, it is snowing.

The world is muffled by it—by pale light and thick fog and gusts of wind. In the distance, the tiniest figure kneels defeated in the snow.

Here, Yoo Joonghyuk is nothing but a black dot in a sea of white.

For a moment, Dokja wants to call out, but his voice does not work. His feet do not move. The snow only climbs higher, creeping up his shins.

Still, he stands, watching that distant figure kneel and kneel and never rise.

Then, Yoo Joonghyuk looks up.

He doesn’t look at Dokja. But past him. Through him. At something behind him that Dokja is afraid to turn and see.

***

The night air is cool as it hits Dokja’s cheeks.

The rooftop railing is cold under his forearms, slowly numbing the skin there. He’s been standing here long enough that the chill has seeped through his sleeves. Long enough for the ruined city below him to merge with shadow.

Behind him, the rooftop door clicks open.

Dokja doesn’t turn. He knows those footsteps—the sure weight of them, padding softly against concrete. The steady steps of a man who has walked through more apocalypses than there are stars in the sky.

After a moment, something large and fluffy drapes over his shoulders.

It’s a blanket. A faded one, fraying at the edges, dragged out from the corner of their shared closet. It’s almost as if Yoo Joonghyuk had it wrapped around his own shoulders first—Dokja can still feel the residual warmth trapped in the fabric, the ghost of body heat.

“How cute,” Dokja murmurs, thumbing over the fabric.

Yoo Joonghyuk settles beside him on the balcony, and lets out a small puff of air, watching as the faint cloud of breath is lost to the wind. “You’re still awake?”

“There’s a great apocalypse coming.” Dokja pulls the blanket a little tighter. It smells nice. He wishes it was enough to overpower the crisp scent of the night. “How could I sleep?”

“You’re so dramatic,” he says with a scoff. Yoo Joonghyuk gives an easy smile, knocking their shoulders together. “It’s just another scenario.”

If only he knew.

Dokja tilts his head up, and a soft breeze ruffles his hair.

The stars shine with scattered bits of light, blanketing out across the sky. And tonight, the constellations are mercifully quiet. Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulder is warm beside his. His face is smoothed over with a comfortable expression. Dokja almost wants to stay in this stolen moment forever, alone with Yoo Joonghyuk under the monochrome sky.

But the silence stretches, and something in Dokja’s chest tightens.

He should let it go. Keep his mouth shut. After all, that is what he always does, and he can hold the weight of this small secret for as long as needed. And still—

“I’ve been having dreams,” he admits quietly.

He doesn’t look at Yoo Joonghyuk when he says it. He keeps his eyes on the stars, on the indifferent pinpricks of light that have watched him fight and die and fail.

For a moment, Yoo Joonghyuk is silent. Then, he hums under his breath. “What kind?”

Dokja turns his head. The moonlight catches Yoo Joonghyuk’s profile, lining the sharp, exhausted edges of his face. He stares at the faint creases that line his eyes, the dark circles beneath them—evidence of sleepless night after sleepless night. They share a room after all, and Dokja wakes at strange hours, and Yoo Joonghyuk notices everything.

“Are you sure you want to know?” Dokja says, facing him fully. The movement brings them close—closer than this large expanse of space should allow, between the wide railing and the infinite sky above them. He can feel the warmth radiating off Yoo Joonghyuk’s body.

Dokja lifts one hand from the railing, and touches Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw. He doesn’t move away. He never does, which itself is miraculous and terrible and something Dokja does not deserve. His finger traces the sharp line of bone, the slight roughness of a scar there.

“Dreams where the sky splits open,” he murmurs, his thumb running along the edge of his cheek, “and the ocean swallows me whole.”

The snow has begun to melt, and when the ground becomes water, his footing is lost. The cold does not change—it is the same cold, the same icy, glacial cold that rushes towards him and engulfs him with a punishing slowness.

His hand moves from Yoo Joonghyuk’s jaw to the back of his neck. He can feel his pulse there when he curls his fingers, small and steady and insistent.

The water reaches Dokja’s knees. His waist. His chin.

And when it reaches his nose, so high he cannot breathe anymore—

He just goes under.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand tightens over the railing, his knuckles turning pale under the bloodless moon.

This feels familiar. Like coming home to something that has always been waiting for him. This water knows his name, and he knows its cold, and together they have done this before. Many times. Many, many times.

He opens his mouth. Water fills his lungs.

It burns.

Dokja’s mouth curves. It is a small thing, unsteady at the edges, even as he cups Yoo Joonghyuk’s face in his palms like there is nothing else to hold on to anymore. Yoo Joonghyuk's brows are furrowed, mouth set in a hard line.

“And in this dream, I drown.”

***

Yoo Joonghyuk is making soup.

Soft beams of early light spill through the window, pale gold catching on clusters of suspended dust and rising steam. As the sky begins to lighten, the kitchen fills with the warm richness of broth and simmering vegetables.

Dokja is seated at the table, scrolling through Ways of Survival.

He rubs the space between his eyes and leans back in his chair.

The final scenarios are always the most damning.

He isn’t surprised. Even though he read these chapters so long ago, he remembers how difficult it was for Yoo Joonghyuk to pass this particular scenario.

In it, Yoo Joonghyuk would face the constellations for the first time. They would descend from the sky, and a grand battle would take place in the middle of Seoul.

In the beginning, Yoo Joonghyuk failed because he didn’t have the support of Sun Wukong. Without the power of the Great Sage, his companions were overpowered, and that regression was wasted. The second, they had angered Olympus and suffered the wrath of their entire nebula. There were tens of iterations of the same tragedy—of not being strong enough, of being consumed by probability, of losing an entire turn to cruel, merciless fate.

He counts the number of failures in his mind.

Chapter 321.

Chapter 400.

Chapter 656.

778. 999. 1021. 1556.

Actually, his thumb trembles as he scrolls all the way up to the previous chapter. He skims through it again. Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t pass this scenario without Deus ex Machina.

And even then, only barely.

The sunlight catches the edge of his phone screen, dulling the words in front of him until he can’t read them anymore. He traces the shape of the text on the screen—the description of one of Yoo Joonghyuk’s deaths, the line before and after it—and thinks.

There is a price that could guarantee their success.

A single life.

If all went well, he would resurrect. The Company would survive. Yoo Joonghyuk would survive. And the story would move forward, like it always has.

But so much has already changed. The original narrative has been warped beyond recognition, and his predictions have become too uncertain. He can’t guarantee anything anymore.

He lowers his phone. Lets it rest on the table.

In the kitchen, Yoo Joonghyuk is stirring the pot with a wooden spoon. The sleeves of his shirt are pushed up to his elbows, revealing the familiar lines of muscle and old scars.

For a moment, he just watches. He stares at Yoo Joonghyuk, at the set of his shoulders against the morning light, the unhurried motion of his hands.

It smells so nice.

Behind him, the stairs creak.

Lee Gilyoung appears first, blindly stumbling down the stairs, hair sticking up in every direction. Shin Yoosung follows shortly after him, shuffling into the kitchen like a sleepwalker, and seats herself on the counter.

Yoo Joonghyuk wordlessly pulls out two extra bowls, spooning out some broth for them. The excess sloshes in the pot, and even without looking, Dokja knows that there’s enough for everyone.

It makes a small, traitorous warmth bloom in his chest.

He watches the kids’ eyes light up when they see the filled bowls, and hears Lee Gilyoung tease the stoic sunfish until he goes red in the ears. Shin Yoosung throws her head back and laughs.

For this, Dokja would give anything.

***

The ground is wet.

That is the first thing Dokja notices. Not the heavy scent of ozone in the air, sharp enough to sting the back of his throat. Not the silence, or the strange, aftermath hush of falling ash over a battle-worn field.

It is the wet ground.

It pushes through his toes with each step, a soft, giving pressure, like the way earth yields after days of rain. It’s almost familiar. He has walked on this kind of ground before, in forests after storms, where the soil swells beyond what it can hold and the excess water rises to meet him.

He knows, without looking down, that this is not water.

It is blood.

Ahead, the field stretches open. The sky above it is a flat, colourless white, spanning along the horizon without any depth to it, any distance, any suggestion that something exists beyond it. The blood slicks the blades of grass until the roots shine black-red. And above it, the tips grow green. So vividly, unnaturally green.

The only thing still here—

Is Yoo Joonghyuk, lying a few paces in front of him.

He is on his back, arms bent over his chest at an unnatural angle. His face is tilted towards the white sky.

As if someone arranged him there with care.

As though he has been placed down and will not be moved again.

Dokja’s heartbeat is very loud. It thunders in his ears, pounding unevenly. And from Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest, something is growing.

It is a cluster of flower stems. They pierce through the fabric of his shirt in slow, unhurried twists, pale petals unfurling against the dark cloth. The petals are white and yellow and pink and blue and every colour they shouldn’t be as they spill from the collar of his shirt and wind around his throat. They push through the parted seam of his lips, crowding the dark space of his mouth with soft blooms, turning the shape of his face into something so twisted Dokja wants more than anything to turn away.

But he cannot move.

One stem curls from the corner of Yoo Joonghyuk's eye. The colour is a sharp violet.

Dokja stands with his feet in the wet ground and watches.

When Yoo Joonghyuk sits up, Dokja lets out a strangled sound.

It happens slowly. Inevitably. Yoo Joonghyuk rises from the bloodied grass, and the flowers rise with him, pushing up his body and moving his limbs like puppet strings. He takes a single step towards Dokja. Then another. Until they are face to face.

The eyes are his. That is the worst part. Behind it all—behind the petals crowding his lips, behind the stems constricting his body—his eyes are exactly as Dokja knows them. Dark and soft and tired, present with the full weight of every life he has been forced to live through.

Dokja should have known—Yoo Joonghyuk will always rise from the dead.

And still, if he can prevent it—

He whispers into the corpse’s ears.

“I will give anything. Even my own life.”

The flowers atop Yoo Joonghyuk’s body scream with a thin, shrill sound.

“You will not regress.”

Yoo Joonghyuk pushes him to the ground and his back hits the dirt with a hard thump. The flowers spread, wrapping over Dokja’s limbs and slithering their way into his throat. It roots them to the earth, like he intends for them both to be buried here, unable to escape.

When Yoo Joonghyuk opens his mouth to speak, petals fall.

“If you die,” he says, and his voice is too much like the Yoo Joonghyuk he knows—even if it is too layered and resonant, carrying some frequency that buzzes in the back of his mouth and makes blood trickle from his ears. “You will regret it for the rest of your life.”

The flowers branch out, downward, filling his nose and lungs.

The voice drops to something unbearably quiet. “When you are lying still and aching on your deathbed, you will beg. You will beg and beg for one more day. Just one.”

Yoo Joonghyuk leans down, cupping his cheeks. Close enough that Dokja can see the place where his face ends and the flowers begin, the precise seam between what is still him and what has grown over him.

His lungs scream for air. His hand beats weakly against the ground, as if that will free him.

“And it will not be granted to you.”

***

Dokja wakes with a gasp.

His body moves before he realizes it, already surging upward when something stops him—a hand, flat and firm against his sternum, pressing him back down into the mattress. He pushes against it, thrashing when it doesn’t give. Somewhere above him, a voice says his name.

“Dokja.”

He can’t locate it. The field is still present at the edges of his vision, the white sky, the feeling of his lungs filling with something that is not air.

“Dokja. You need to—let go.”

Several things come back into focus at once. The ceiling. The blanket twisted around his legs. The sound of his own breathing enormous in the room.

His hand at Yoo Joonghyuk's throat.

Yoo Joonghyuk is above him, one knee braced beside his ribs, the hand still flat against his chest. His expression is very still, tense at the edges.

Dokja stares.

He sees everything—the soft rise and fall of Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest, the sleep-mussed tangle of his hair, the darkness of his pupils, blown wide open. Slowly, he lifts his other hand up and begins to pry at Dokja’s fingers.

One by one.

The marks are already showing. A red ring of bruises at his throat, already blotting to a dull purple. The half-moon indents where Dokja had dug his fingers fill with small pools of blood.

Suddenly, Dokja feels very small.

“I—” He immediately lets his hand go slack, curling it tightly against the bedsheet. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I know.”

And then, with a heaviness that seems to come from somewhere deep within himself, Yoo Joonghyuk simply drops down—forehead pressing into the space beside his shoulder, the whole weight of him settling there like he intends to fall asleep, just like that.

Dokja lies very still under that weight.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s breath is warm. His body is warm. His heart rate is slowing as his breathing evens out.

His hands hover uncertainly over Yoo Joonghyuk’s back.

The twist of guilt in his stomach is…irrational. Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t be affected by an injury so small. After all, he has fought battles until his body collapsed on itself. He has regressed three times and will regress a thousand more, and the cold grip of death is something Yoo Joonghyuk will always remember.

Still, he can’t help himself from tapping Yoo Joonghyuk’s back softly, dragging a palm along his spine and rubbing over the warm muscle. “Hey,” Dokja murmurs. He hopes this will be enough to draw him out of sleep. “You’re hurt.”

“Mm,” he mumbles, and Dokja knows it's a lost cause.

“Wake up.”

“Later.”

“Joonghyuk-ah—”

Unexpectedly, he groans, pushing himself up. There's a mildly irritated look on his face as the blanket slips from his shoulders and pools around his waist.

Dokja props himself up on his elbows, taking in the ring of bruises on Yoo Joonghyuk’s neck, how they almost look black under the darkness. And the guilt simmering low in his stomach curdles into something sour.

“If you don’t patch this up,” he smiles, a teasing lilt bleeding into his voice, “the others will get the wrong idea.”

Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he reaches down, hooks an arm under Dokja’s knees, and hauls him up over his shoulder.

“What are you—hey! Bastard. Put me down.”

“No.”

Dokja goes limp, defeated. The blood rushes to his head. He watches the floor move beneath him—carpet, tile, the edges of the bathroom doorway. Yoo Joonghyuk’s bare feet are quiet on the cold floor.

He gets deposited on the bathroom counter without much ceremony.

It’s awkward. The counter is too small, half his ass digging into the ceramic of the sink. His legs dangle, dangerously close to sliding off. The ceiling is all but three feet above his head.

Yoo Joonghyuk rummages through the cabinet beneath the sink. He emerges with the medkit, a scuffed piece of white plastic they had stashed under there for emergencies.

“If you feel guilty,” he says, pressing a small tube into Dokja’s palm, “then do something about it.”

The tube is almost completely used, twisted to all hell. The label is half rubbed off, but Dokja can still make out the faded words.

Bruise cream.

He uncaps it, working the last of the cream onto his fingers. Yoo Joonghyuk waits, one hand braced on the counter beside Dokja’s hip, head tipped back slightly so Dokja can reach the marks more easily.

Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t ask him to stop when Dokja lifts a hand towards him. He doesn’t move back when Dokja’s fingers brush, uncertain, over the skin above his collar. He just closes his eyes.

Somehow, that feels worse.

His skin is so warm. Too warm. Beneath it, the damage is already fading at the edges, the dark red of bursted blood vessels thinning into something less angry. Yoo Joonghyuk heals too fast for this. His incarnation body has already been enhanced beyond human capabilities. By morning, maybe sooner, there would be nothing left of these bruises but the memory of it.

He feels sick.

Dokja wonders what would happen if he dug his fingers into the raw skin. If he pressed so hard the cream was rubbed off, and the bruises split open beneath his palm, and the man in front of him stopped breathing completely—

Would Yoo Joonghyuk hate him then?

Silently, Yoo Joonghyuk takes Dokja’s wrist—gently, always so gently—and moves it away.

“Are you done?”

Dokja looks at the fading marks. At his own hands. At the tube of useless cream, thrown to the side.

“Yes.”

Without warning, Yoo Joonghyuk shoves his hands under Dokja’s arms and lifts him clean off the counter.

“Are we seriously doing this again—!”

“Don’t complain.”

“I don’t appreciate being carried like a sack of potatoes,” he says as he feels his centre of gravity shift for the second time that night. “You’re going to break your back, old man.”

He can feel it against his chest when Yoo Joonghyuk lets out a short, breathless laugh. “You say the sweetest things.”

Dokja huffs, half indignant. He’s too aware of the steady strength under Yoo Joonghyuk’s grip. It makes him feel exhausted and grateful in a way that shouldn’t mix.

“I have a great vocabulary—” his voice is punched out of his lungs as he gets thrown onto the mattress for his troubles. He bounces once as he lands on his back.

Beside him, Yoo Joonghyuk stands for a moment, one hand braced on the side of the bed. Then, he asks, very quietly, “Will you sleep now?”

Dokja stares up at the ceiling, at the dim shape of the room slowly coming back into focus around him, and already knows he won't. His pulse is still too fast. His skin still remembers the dream in ugly, lingering fragments. Every time he closes his eyes, all he can see is an endless, white sky.

He turns his head. Yoo Joonghyuk is still looking down at him, expression unreadable in the dark save for the faint tension in his mouth. His neck should look worse than it does. It should hurt more than it seems to.

He reaches up before he can think better of it, catching the front of Yoo Joonghyuk’s sleep shirt in his fist.

Maybe he can keep this sunfish bastard up with him.

Then Dokja tugs.

Yoo Joonghyuk trips forward and it's nothing but a collision of breath and warmth. Yoo Joonghyuk catches himself with one hand on the mattress, and his other braced near Dokja's shoulder. And for one brief moment, he stares at Yoo Joonghyuk's startled expression and thinks he will push himself away.

He doesn't.

Instead, Yoo Joonghyuk hums softly under his breath, a sound that disappears into the space between them, and his face breaks open into a grin.

It's barely there at first, then impossible to miss—bright and fond and so devastatingly alive it makes Dokja's chest ache with it. It transforms his whole face, all the hard edges loosening like they were simply never there.

For a moment, Dokja forgets how to breathe.

Yoo Joonghyuk has a beauty to him that makes him seem so otherworldly. A power that shows with every ripple of muscle, a presence that demands submission.

He smiles, and suddenly Dokja understands why people ruin themselves over impossible things.

It's so unfair.

Dokja opens his mouth. Closes it again. Nothing comes out.

He threads his fingers through the back of Yoo Joonghyuk's hair and pulls him down the rest of the way. He comes without resistance.

What is there to say but stay with me?

***

The apartment is quiet enough that Dokja can hear his own pulse.

It’s a little strange, noticing it like this—a small, persistent humming beneath his skin. He sits across from Yoo Joonghyuk on the other end of the couch, watching the way lamplight stripes along his jaw, the bored flick of his thumb as he reads through a webnovel Dokja had handed him.

“Wow,” Yoo Joonghyuk deadpans, tipping his head back against the headrest. “This is garbage. Did you really read these as a kid?”

Dokja glances at the screen.

‘Nayeon trips over her big ball gown, falling face-first into the prince’s back. She’s not used to wearing long dresses like this—’

He rips his eyes away, blinking like it hurts.

“Well, yeah. I had no friends.”

“I wonder why.”

Dokja kicks him in the shin for that, putting some force into it. He wants it to sting. Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t even look up from the screen, a slight curve to his mouth.

“Keep reading,” Dokja says. “It gets good at around chapter sixty.”

“It’s already chapter seventy.”

“Then it gets good around chapter ninety. It’s better if you don’t skim, but I don’t trust your general literacy.”

Yoo Joonghyuk shows him just how literate he is when he starts reading aloud. “I used to live in poverty, Jagiya.” He kicks him again. “I can’t marry someone as esteemed as you.”

Dokja gives him a long, unimpressed look, one Yoo Joonghyuk meets over the top of the phone. After a moment, Yoo Joonghyuk looks away, blue light washing across his face and pooling beneath his eyes.

The silence settles between them again as he returns to the webnovel.

This regression is too perfect.

He’s had the thought before. It comes unbidden on nights spent combing through Ways of Survival. It returns after every unearned victory, every favorable scenario.

It comes to him on nights like these.

If Yoo Joonghyuk regressed now, how many more lives could he endure? How many more attempts would it take before he arrived at this exact point again?

Dokja glances at him, at the exhaustion lingering beneath everything he does. Yoo Joonghyuk makes no effort to hide the shadows under his eyes, nor the weight of knowledge carried over from previous regressions.

They both know: If this regression fails, there will never be another like it.

I will end the cycle. I will die. I will reach my desired ending, no matter the cost.

It should feel like an easy conclusion to accept. But when Dokja looks at Yoo Joonghyuk’s hands—scarred and scrolling through that stupid webnovel—something in him aches so badly he has to look away.

He doesn’t remember deciding to move. Only that one moment he is sitting with the cushion’s worn fabric beneath him, and the next he has crossed the space between them.

Yoo Joonghyuk looks up, brow furrowing. “What are you—”

Dokja doesn’t answer. He reaches out, plucks the phone from Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingers, and dangles it just out of reach. “You know,” he teases, “I’m getting bored of watching you read.”

“What a pity,” the man snarks. “And it was just getting good. Give it back.”

“Make me.”

The words hang between them, and Yoo Joonghyuk studies him for a moment. Then, he reaches for the phone.

Dokja pulls it back. Yoo Joonghyuk leans forward. Their movements tangle, hands brushing, breath catching.

Dokja doesn’t think. He just—moves.

He pushes, palm flat against Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest, shoving him back into the couch. Before Yoo Joonghyuk can react, Dokja climbs into his lap, settling his knees on either side of his hips. The phone slips from his fingers, landing somewhere on the floor with a soft thud.

“What…”

“What? I thought you wanted to keep reading.”

“This is a decent alternative,” Yoo Joonghyuk mumbles. His hands hover somewhere near his waist, as if he hasn’t quite decided whether to push him off or pull him closer. “But you’re heavier than you look.”

“Don’t lie. I’m light as a feather.”

“You’re not,” he grunts, hands settling like he’s really about to just throw him off.

So he does the only reasonable thing. He leans in, lips puckered obnoxiously.

He doesn’t make it.

A palm slaps flat over his mouth, stopping him an inch short, the heel of Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand tilting his head back at an undignified angle. Dokja blinks down at him.

“You know,” Yoo Joonghyuk begins, eyes darkening dangerously. “I have a theory. Because this—” His thumb presses lightly against Dokja’s cheekbone, and the other digs into the space between his ribs. “—isn’t normal.” He pauses, eyes narrowing. “You’re not planning something stupid, are you?”

Dokja huffs a laugh against his palm.

Then, because he’s feeling reckless, he turns his head and catches the edge of that hand between his teeth. “Always so paranoid,” he says, the words muffled by skin and heat. He bites down a little more before letting go. “And mind your language, brat.”

Yoo Joonghyuk frowns. “Don’t ignore my question.”

“I’m not.” Dokja lets his voice go light, almost lazy, even as his heart thuds once, hard, under his ribs. “I’m just wondering how you reached such a flattering conclusion.”

He leans into that palm, testing the pressure of it, pressing his mouth against the heel of Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand as if that will move it away.

“Kim Dokja,” he grits out.

There it is. That tone.

He coaxes the hand down, kissing along Yoo Joonghyuk’s knuckles. And without another word, he leans forward, knees digging into the cushions on either side of those absurd thighs, hands fisting in the collar of his shirt to drag him the rest of the way.

Dokja already knows Yoo Joonghyuk will return everything he gives him.

He never gets used to this—the faint roughness of their lips, the way Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand tangles in the back of his hair, the small huff of breath stolen from him when Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand finally slides up his spine, fingers searing divots into bare skin where his shirt has ridden up. It’s unbearable when he kisses him. Always.

Dokja tilts his head for a better angle, dragging a low sound out of Yoo Joonghyuk’s throat that he immediately wants to hear a second time.

His heart pounds. His skin burns. Every nerve in his body is lit up, sending fire down his veins as he runs his hands down the line of Yoo Joonghyuk’s throat, the solid plane of his chest, over the unrelenting strength in his thighs.

It’s funny, Dokja thinks. He wants to stay here forever.

What is it, exactly, he wonders, as his mouth parts under Yoo Joonghyuk’s own, feeling the scrape of teeth that isn’t quite an accident, that I’m so afraid of?

He doesn’t have an answer.

It would be easy—it has always been so easy—to tell himself that none of this matters. He has told himself this so many times it can’t be anything but true.

But Yoo Joonghyuk’s mouth is warm against his. His hand is steady and grounding where their fingers are intertwined. His pulse is a steady, insistent beat beneath Dokja’s palm. Here, with his mouth pressed to the corner of Yoo Joonghyuk’s smile, feeling it curve against his lips before it’s kissed away, he has the strangest feeling.

This ridiculous, ordinary happiness—

It’s enough to make anyone want more.

***

This field is gold.

The gold of late afternoon in autumn, the kind that is almost amber, falling through the half-bare trees in soft beams of light. The breeze smells of dry earth and leaves just beginning to decay, of half-mottled sweetness and clean air.

Dokja is lying on his back in the grass.

This is the first unusual thing. He feels at peace.

The ground beneath him is cool through his shirt, slightly damp as it absorbs lingering moisture. Above him, the pale, washed-out blue of the sky stretches endlessly, and he watches as an array of clouds drift lazily along the vast expanse of space.

He thinks, distantly, that he should get up. Move. He doesn’t have time to lie here.

His thoughts dissipate into a soft nothingness when Yoo Joonghyuk leans over him.

He is above him the way the sky is above him—completely, utterly, and without awareness of its significance. One hand is braced in the grass beside Dokja’s head. His hair falls forward, catching the light.

Before, Dokja would never have imagined something like this was possible. Yoo Joonghyuk choosing him. Choosing him over everything—

“Are you happy, Dokja?”

He reaches up, brushing his fingers across Yoo Joonghyuk’s cheek, staring in wonder.

“With every breath you take, you have been given another chance to continue fighting in my name.” His voice is quiet, intimate, as if the sound has nowhere else to go in this open air. “Does that make you happy?”

Dokja looks up at him, and thinks—

‘Yes’.

It does.

He would do anything Yoo Joonghyuk asked of him. He would. He has. He will. Over and over, for this name, this face, this person, leaning over him in a field of autumn.

Yoo Joonghyuk lowers himself, down beside Dokja on the grass. Their shoulders press together. Dokja watches the way his chest rises and falls, slow and steady.

“Would you really give me anything?” Yoo Joonghyuk asks, turning his head to look at him. His voice is small and powerful and irresistible— “Even your life?”

Dokja nods, smiling.

Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression softens, and he reaches out to brush a strand of hair away from Dokja’s eyes. His fingers linger as they trail his forehead, his nose, his cheek.

It would be nice to stay here forever. In this small, simple world where Dokja is allowed to have whatever he wants.

Yoo Joonghyuk props himself up on one elbow, looking down at him. The sun halos his hair. His thumb traces the line of Dokja’s jaw.

“Then die.”

The words almost don’t register. Dokja’s smile falters, and his heart picks up speed. He blinks up at Yoo Joonghyuk, as if it was all a mistake. As if he will laugh warmly and tell him he misunderstood.

But Yoo Joonghyuk’s face flickers. It is nothing but a stutter, a glitch. The face that replaces his, for just a moment, is—lifeless. The skin is pale and waxy, drained of all warmth. His lips are cracked and bloodless.

It is a look he recognizes.

Dokja’s blood turns to ice. And between one breath and the next, Yoo Joonghyuk is himself again. His skin is whole, free of blood and mud and ruined skin.

Yoo Joonghyuk smiles then, creasing the edges of his eyes. Dokja should feel afraid. He should pull away. But this smile is so familiar, so warm, and he is so tired of being afraid.

‘I want this.’

‘I want—’

Yoo Joonghyuk leans down.

He presses his lips to Dokja’s. The pressure of it, the light drag of soft skin—it’s more than he can handle. The grass ripples against a breath of wind. A leaf blows upwards in a slow, lazy loop. The sky is very blue.

When Yoo Joonghyuk pulls back, he is still smiling.

“You can’t die because you’re scared, right?”

***

Seoul has never looked so dark. Without the stars, the sky above them is a single sheet of black—so smooth and depthless it feels like someone has scraped the heavens clean. The absence makes Dokja feel uneasy. The world buzzes in a way he can feel in his teeth.

Probability cracks downward like lightning. White light tears through the storm clouds, splitting them through with a horrible sound.

And then the constellations descend.

One by one, their incarnated bodies fall from the sky—bodies of light that sear afterimages into Dokja’s eyes. The burn lingers, and when it fades, he sees their true forms: the faces of legends, the limbs of myths, the silhouettes of beings who have watched Yoo Joonghyuk’s story unfold for centuries.

I should be up there with them.

He stands on the ruined asphalt, the wind pulling at his coat, the air vibrating with power. As the sky continues to break open above them, footsteps approach through the settling dust.

His companions take their places—Shin Yoosung, Jung Heewon, the others—but it is Yoo Joonghyuk who stops at his side, the Black Heavenly Demon Sword resting easily in his hand.

Something about this moment feels so fragile. And in the midst of it all, a single voice bubbles to the surface.

‘You can’t die because you’re scared, right?’

Dokja’s hands go numb at his sides. His head pounds as the wind screams thin and high between broken buildings, carrying the scent of ozone and ash.

He’s never feared death.

But looking at the solid weight of Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulder beside his, the thought tastes bitter.

I can’t die because I hold on to this stupid hope that maybe, if I’m alive, I can find some reason to live.

The sky splinters again, a violent fracture of white and violet. The ancient gaze of a hundred gods fixes upon them.

Even if a thousand people would be happier if I was gone, Dokja thinks, his fingers twitching against the cold air. Even if no one would grieve the loss of my existence.

He watches the way the wind catches Yoo Joonghyuk’s dark coat. The unyielding line of his jaw.

I want to be selfish just this once. Just for this one thing.

For the stolen nights on the rooftop, for the taste of warm soup in a quiet kitchen. For the tender and shameful tears shed when life becomes entirely unbearable.

In the hopes of staying by your side.

It’s such a selfish decision.

Dokja reaches down. He draws Unbroken Faith from its sheath.

The sound of the steel clearing its sheath is lost to the screaming wind. Instantly, ripples of blue lightning from Electrification arc off the blade, casting sharp, flickering shadows across the ruined street.

He tightens his grip, the blue light reflecting in his eyes, and takes a single step forward.

I hope to live until my body can’t take anymore.