Chapter Text
It’s a pain to commute to the Minosoft office in the middle of summer.
It’s even more of a pain when the office’s air conditioning is broken.
But, more than that…
“Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi,” says the main reason why it’s a pain to have no air conditioning in the office, rolling his chair over to his desk but keeping a respectable distance. “Have you finished today’s report?”
Tie loose, top button undone, face flushed from the heat. His white shirt sticks to his skin where it’s soaked with sweat, turning translucent. His blazer is nowhere to be seen.
Minosoft worker Kim Dokja is a pain in the ass because he’s completely unaware of what he’s doing to Yoo Joonghyuk with how messy and irritating he is.
(And if Joonghyuk’s eyes linger a second too long on Kim Dokja’s bare collarbone, it’s only because he finds it offensive, not because some risque fantasy of Kim Dokja laid out across his temporary desk is searing itself into his traitorous brain.)
“It’s”—Joonghyuk’s eyes flick to the bottom right corner of the screen—”eleven in the morning. I started two hours ago.”
He sees Kim Dokja shrug from the corner of his eye. “You’re fast as it is, so I thought I’d ask. It’s too hot in the office. The only thing we have to do today is the report for this level, so if possible, try to finish it soon.”
“You don’t have to stay,” Joonghyuk grumbles, spamming the space bar as his on-screen avatar jumps at the wall. You’re more of a distraction than help, is what he wants to say, as his avatar finally glitches through the wall. “Is this wall clip part of the level?”
Kim Dokja leans over, his pale hand pressing against the table for support. “Should be, but might be an unfinished feature,” he concludes, taking the chance to slip the report sheet out from beneath Joonghyuk’s arm. “I would go home, but I’m not allowed to leave you alone with the game,” he explains, scrawling something in the box below Joonghyuk’s neat penmanship. “Confidentiality and all that. We had a tester a few years ago who leaked one of our games so we’ve been pretty careful since then.”
Allowing his mind to wander, Joonghyuk thinks about those hands. They’re nice hands, on the thin side, but smooth, clean, and well-proportioned at that. Can’t write in readable script, it seems, but supposedly coded some part of the game he’s testing at the moment. He hasn’t asked, but he can guess by how Kim Dokja summarizes each part—it’s probably the epilogue section with the haunting, drifting graphics and quiet closing narration, which the man always mentions with a faraway look in his eye. It suits him, oddly, him and his hands and the bittersweet epilogue of this game.
“Oh, you should go back a little.” Kim Dokja’s voice is close to his ear, and Joonghyuk imagines that if he turned, maybe his lips would touch his cheek. “That’s the start of one of my favorite side stories—the Dokkaebi’s Wish.”
“I thought you wanted to go home early,” Joonghyuk replies, turning anyway. He’s not as close as he imagined.
“Well, that’s true,” Kim Dokja says, a wry quirk to his mouth, “but it’s part of what you should be testing. You’re getting paid to play everything, even the side stories.”
It’s almost sickening how much he wants to kiss that mouth of his. Instead, he channels that desire into clearing the Dokkaebi’s Wish side story, watching as the dokkaebi princess smiles before the cutscene fades to black. And then another side story. And another.
When he finally finishes the level, it’s nearly noon and Kim Dokja is dozing off in his chair.
“Hey.” He kicks at his shin, and Kim Dokja jerks awake, blinking disorientedly. “I’m done.”
“Huh? Ah, right…” He rubs his eyes, sighing. “Good job, Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi.”
He still looks bleary, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, but then he meets Joonghyuk’s gaze and shoots him a half smile that makes his heart thud against the inside of his ribcage like a threat. “You can go home now.”
“Aren’t you leaving?” Kim Dokja seems like he typically takes the subway to work, judging from the transit card that hangs on the back of his employee badge.
Kim Dokja hums in agreement. “Yeah, I am.” He stands up, swaying back and forth. “Wow, is it getting warmer in here? Hahaha…”
Joonghyuk watches him walk back to his desk, hoping that no one notices where his gaze travels. He has a decent body, which makes it all the more confusing to Joonghyuk—why does Kim Dokja have a reputation around the office for being unattractive?
Sure, the man is plain looking, and not exactly conventionally attractive. But he has good proportions. Long legs. A thin waist, as he’s found by observing him stretching during lunch breaks.
(Maybe he’s been observing too hard, because now Kim Dokja’s pretty waist appears in all of his fantasies, bruised by his grip in fresh shades of red and purple. His imagination seems to run wild whenever Kim Dokja is concerned, and although not completely unwelcome, it’s quite distracting.)
“Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi? Are you heading home?”
Joonghyuk snaps back to reality, glancing up at Kim Dokja. He stands up, grabbing his bag and heading for the elevator. Kim Dokja falls into step behind him, seemingly understanding his tacit agreement. That’s part of the many things he likes about Kim Dokja; the man seems to somehow understand him and his unspoken words despite the fact that they’ve only been working together for about a month.
(He does hope, though, that Kim Dokja isn’t privy to the lewd thoughts he’s been having about him on a near constant basis. He’s perfectly content to just keep Kim Dokja in his thoughts, so what the man doesn’t know can’t hurt him.)
Another month later, their game has finally received its first launch, and Joonghyuk has been released from weeks of continuous overtime at the Minosoft office.
He sighs, shutting down his computer and stretching. Everyone else in the office left right after the game was launched. Unfortunately, Kim Dokja caught a bug in the game right after it was launched, and the two of them have spent the last hour trying to patch it before some hapless player discovers it.
Speaking of which…he hasn’t seen Kim Dokja in the last half hour, so absorbed in trying to figure out the exact conditions of the bug that he hasn’t looked away from his screen once.
He grabs his bag. Kim Dokja hasn’t gone home yet, since his computer screen is still glowing an eerie blue and he didn’t hear the elevator arriving. It’s likely he’s in one of the other rooms on their floor.
He checks the break room first. Kim Dokja often likes to take his sweet time here, nursing a single use cup of black coffee in an effort to shirk the less enjoyable parts of his job. He’s not there, though, so Joonghyuk moves on.
He doesn’t bother with the bathroom—the lights are off, so it’s unlikely Kim Dokja would be holed up in one of the stalls.
That leaves the file room at the very end of the hall. It seems like he’s right—there’s a sliver of light peeking out from the bottom of the door, and as he gets closer he can hear cabinets opening and closing. The question is…why is he in there? Hardly anyone needs to use the file room here, since most of the documents related to Minosoft’s games are digitized and easily accessible from their computers.
He keeps his footsteps light, stopping in front of the door. He hears Kim Dokja mumble something that sounds like a curse word, then the slam of a file cabinet and the shuffle of papers.
What is he doing in there? He sounds like he’s looking for something specific…and he’s being rushed about it.
He pushes the door open, the harsh fluorescent lights making him blink rapidly in succession.
“Kim Dokja.”
Kim Dokja scrambles backwards so fast that he nearly slams his head into the shelf behind, dodging it by a narrow margin. His eyes dart to Joonghyuk.
“Yoo—Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi,” he says, a nervous laugh bubbling in his throat as he rights himself, tugging at his collar in an attempt to loosen it. “Did you find the bug conditions already? You should’ve called me if you were done.”
“I did.” Joonghyuk steps into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. Kim Dokja’s gaze flicks to the door behind him, his shoulders visibly tensing.
“We should leave then,” Kim Dokja says, a half smile on his face. “I’m sure you’re tired of doing so much overtime—I know I am.”
He’s clearly trying to avoid the topic of why he’s in the file room with at least four different file cabinets opened.
“Kim Dokja. What are you doing here?”
The smile on his face fades, replaced by confusion. “Oh, why I’m in the file room? One of the managers wanted me to find a specific file for him, on one of the beta testers for an older game—The World After the Fall.”
Joonghyuk puts his bag down. “All those files are digitized in the database. You don’t need to look for the paper copy.”
“Well—”
“And those cabinets”—Joonghyuk points to them—”are clearly labeled with the names of different games, not The World After the Fall.”
In a split second, the nearest file cabinet is kicked shut and Kim Dokja’s hand is on his shoulder, his body leaning into his personal space. Like the start to one of his sordid wet dreams about the man, but the grip on his shoulder is hard enough to convince him it’s reality.
“Hey.” Kim Dokja’s eyes are the same as ever, but there’s a strange chill in the way he looks up at him. “Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi, what are you trying to imply?”
Joonghyuk stares back without a word.
Kim Dokja sighs. “Don’t answer that. You’re seriously scary when you’re trying to suss me out. I only opened all those cabinets because I can’t find the file they’re asking for in the cabinets for The World After the Fall.”
“I’ll help you.”
“A-ah, you really don’t need to…” His hand falls from his shoulder, and he takes a step back, giving him a weak laugh. “You should go home and get some sleep—the next update comes sooner than you think, so you should enjoy not having overtime when you can.”
“If I report you, won’t you lose your job?”
Kim Dokja stiffens at that. “You can’t report me if I’m not doing anything wrong,” he says, but his reaction has already betrayed him, and it’s clear that he knows it, with the way his face turns a shade paler, his omnipresent dark circles and his red-rimmed eyes providing a stark contrast.
“What’s the name of the manager?”
“It’s…urgh…”
The silence is telling.
Joonghyuk doesn’t really care if Kim Dokja is stealing company secrets or not—it’s not like he’s a Minosoft employee, he’s just doing some side work for extra money—but the way Kim Dokja seems to take being caught suggests it’s something personal.
“Kim Dok—”
Kim Dokja slaps a hand over his mouth, grabbing his collar with the other hand and shoving him against the wall next to the door. The hand is hot against his lips, Kim Dokja’s body almost flush against his, and Joonghyuk has to will himself to not react, letting his hands rest by his sides even though Kim Dokja’s waist is right there, pressing against his hips and shifting in a way that will definitely become material for one of his lewd fantasies featuring the man.
“Someone’s coming this way.” Kim Dokja curses under his breath. “What if I—damn it, there’s nowhere to hide—”
Kim Dokja removes his hand, but before Joonghyuk can say a word, Kim Dokja tugs on his tie, making him lean down to his level.
“Sorry about this, Yoo Joonghyuk,” he whispers, mussing his own hair before reaching to attack Joonghyuk’s in a similar fashion, his fingers tugging and pulling until all the styling comes undone. He undoes Joonghyuk’s tie with much struggle before pulling his loose with one fluid motion, Joonghyuk’s gaze snapping to the pale collar bones that peek out from his collar. “Please keep quiet and cooperate with me.”
Joonghyuk can hardly say anything, watching as Kim Dokja bites his lips hard, leaving them cherry red and glistening with spit like in his fantasies, only it’s all too real now that it’s before him. Now that he’s realizing what Kim Dokja is trying to do, it’s all that much harder when he places his hands on his waist, knowing that he’s taking advantage of the situation to feed his imagination. Although Kim Dokja shivers at his touch, he doesn’t stop him. He presses his thumb against Joonghyuk’s lips, and pulls him down into a fake kiss, their lips only separated by Kim Dokja’s thumb.
Joonghyuk barely has the sense to close his eyes before the door swings open. Kim Dokja lets out an all-too-convincing moan, and the intruder freezes in place, as does Joonghyuk, the thread of his self control wearing dangerously thin.
It’s someone from QA, judging from the nameplate on his suit. He stares at Kim Dokja’s disheveled appearance, then seems to do a double take when he sees Joonghyuk.
“Are you working overtime?” he asks, pointedly ignoring Joonghyuk’s existence.
“Ah,” Kim Dokja says, voice hoarse. “I suppose so, Deputy Yoon. I was going to discuss one of the bugs we found with Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi.”
Deputy Yoon nods, taking a step back. “Very well. Most of the employees are already gone, so”—he gestures vaguely in Joonghyuk’s direction, eyes going wide when he sees the very obvious hard-on in his pants—”you should wrap this up.”
As soon as his footsteps fade away, Joonghyuk releases his hold on Kim Dokja’s waist (with some regret), and Kim Dokja takes a large step away from him, pointedly keeping his gaze level and wiping his hands on his slacks.
“Kim Dokja.” He crosses his arms, willing the tent in his pants to go down to no avail. “You’d better have a good explanation for this.”
“I-I do,” he manages, his eyes accidentally looking down. “Shit, sorry about that, was that—”
“Stop looking at me,” Joonghyuk snaps, and to his credit, Kim Dokja does, averting his eyes. The way his ears turn bright red isn’t lost on him, but he can hardly take any pleasure in eliciting a reaction from Kim Dokja when his own reaction is threatening to reveal his desires. “Explain. Now.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Uh.” Kim Dokja hesitates. “You might not believe me?”
Joonghyuk glares at him, and even though Kim Dokja still can’t meet his eyes, he seems to get the idea. “Okay, this is going to sound unbelievable and you’re well within your rights to report me after you hear this, but I’m gathering evidence so my friend can sue Minosoft.”
“Your friend.”
“Yes, my friend. In brief, Minosoft stole her work and she needs proof against Minosoft to make a legal case. I’m sorry, I can’t say any more in case you report me.”
“Why would I report you?”
Kim Dokja’s jaw visibly slackens. “Huh?”
“I don’t care.”
“You…you don’t care that I’m violating company policy by stealing confidential documents?”
“No.”
“Wow, you’re pretty easy-going, aren’t you?” Kim Dokja sighs. “So you’ll keep quiet about all of this?”
Joonghyuk grunts in agreement, and Kim Dokja visibly relaxes. “Thank god. You’re a good person, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
“It’s nothing,” he grumbles, picking his bag back off the floor now that he’s finally calmed down enough to be out in public. “I’m leaving.”
“I’ll leave with you,” he says, closing all the cabinets and stuffing a stack of documents into his briefcase. “And don’t worry about Deputy Yoon, I don’t think he’ll tell other people about what he saw tonight.”