Work Text:
Yoo Joonghyuk’s new roommate is surprisingly normal.
He’s had his fair share of awful roommates who thought showers were optional or thought the living room couch was the most appropriate place to hide their burnt eggs. Kim Dokja, in comparison, is, for all intents and purposes, a good roommate.
He has good hygiene and cleans up after himself, doesn’t trash Yoo Joonghyuk’s sacred kitchen (although Yoo Joonghyuk thinks that’s primarily due to the fact that Kim Dokja lives off of convenience store ramen and cheap takeout), and he’s relatively quiet when he’s home from work, barring that one time Yoo Joonghyuk caught him curled up on the couch crying over a webnovel he’d read (‘The dog died, Joonghyuk-ah! The dog!’) at 4am in the morning.
(Well, maybe he’s not entirely harmless, because Yoo Joonghyuk has seen him wrestle an attempted burglar twice his size into the ground with only a towel around his waist. Yoo Joonghyuk had privately filed the image of water dripping down from Kim Dokja’s wet hair onto his surprisingly well-defined abs away for his next jerk off session science.)
They have a tentative friendship that comes along with most roommates, and if Yoo Joonghyuk maybe stares a bit too long at the dimples on Kim Dokja’s cheeks when he laughs, or when he gets a passing thought of rubbing his hand through Kim Dokja’s hair... well, if no one notices, then he can just pretend it never happened.
1.
Three months into their shared living, Kim Dokja apparently decides that he’s comfortable enough around Yoo Joonghyuk to become... weird.
“Why are you making food right now?” Yoo Joonghyuk asks, voice groggy from sleep. He’d gotten up for a glass of water only to be nearly spooked out of his skin after bumping into Kim Dokja before his eyes adjusted to the dark.
“I was hungry,” Kim Dokja shrugs in the darkness.
Yoo Joonghyuk shifts to grab his cup by the sink, but accidentally bumps into Kim Dokja’s shoulder again.
“...Without the lights?”
“I didn’t want to wake you up!”
Yoo Joonghyuk looks down at the pot his roommate is holding. It’s... it’s just pasta sauce.
“Kim Dokja.”
“What?” the other replies with his mouth full. He puts the pot back down on the counter when he decides that holding it is too much work. Yoo Joonghyuk scrunches his face in disgust.
“Are you just eating sauce?”
There’s a beat of silence, quiet enough that Yoo Joonghyuk can hear Kim Dokja swallow what he has in his mouth.
“What’s wrong with just eating the sauce?” Kim Dokja defends immediately after swallowing.
“Didn’t you say you hate tomatoes?”
“Pasta sauce isn’t just tomatoes!” he sniffs. “It’s different.” He spoons another helping into his mouth. Yoo Joonghyuk stares at the pot and wisely decides not to voice the rest of his thoughts. The other man notices his intense gaze and huddles closer to the pot. “I’m not sharing any with you, Joonghyuk-ah.”
“...I don’t want any.”
There’s only the sound of Kim Dokja slurping on his pasta sauce before Yoo Joonghyuk remembers he came for a glass of water. He shuffles over and pours himself the drink and then starts walking out of the kitchen, stopping at the door to look back at Kim Dokja hunched over the pot.
“Ah, sleep well, Joonghyuk-ah!” There’s a spot of sauce on his upper lip that Yoo Joonghyuk gestures at him to wipe. Kim Dokja sticks out his tongue and licks it off, oblivious to how Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes have zeroed in on his mouth.
“Goodnight,” Yoo Joonghyuk eventually replies. He hesitates before adding, “Don’t stay up too late.”
“Don’t worry your pretty little head over me, Joonghyuk-ah,” Kim Dokja waves cheekily from the counter. “I’ll be in bed soon.”
Yoo Joonghyuk wakes up the next morning to Kim Dokja slouched on the couch, snoring lightly with his phone lightly clenched in his hand. He sighs, but doesn’t wake the other man up; instead, he quietly walks to the closet and picks up a spare blanket and carefully covers his body, taking a moment to observe his sleeping face.
2.
When Yoo Joonghyuk comes home from a day-long meeting, he opens the door to a face full of fluff. Batting away the floating fuzz, he walks into the living room and finds Kim Dokja leaning over the coffee table, tongue sticking out in concentration as he fumbles with a giant plush ball he’s holding in his arms.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, welcome home, Joonghyuk-ah!” Kim Dokja doesn’t look up from where he’s not-so-carefully shoving the rest of the stuffing into the plush, but Yoo Joonghyuk can tell he’s in a good mood by the tone of his voice.
It’s an improvement from his mood from yesterday, when he had laid on the couch and whined about how he was stuck at home all day after spraining his ankle a few days prior. Yoo Joonghyuk had put him on bed rest, but he crawled out of bed and sat his ass on the couch claiming “he didn’t want to be alone.” Normally, Yoo Joonghyuk would’ve stayed in his room, but he was simping felt that it wouldn’t be too bad to humor his injured roommate.
It was something he almost regretted, because when he thought Kim Dokja finally fell asleep, he had carried over a blanket and was instead surprised by the other man popping up and grabbing his chest.
“Squishy,” Kim Dokja had said, seconds before Yoo Joonghyuk gave him another injury to cry over after bopping the top of his head with a hard fist and knocking him fully unconscious in one hit. Kim Dokja had awoken moody and sulking in the morning, a visible bump forming on his head.
“You didn’t have to hit me that hard!” He cradled his head with both hands. Yoo Joonghyuk remained indifferent to his cries, even when Kim Dokja gave him the silent treatment when he left the apartment not too soon after, arms crossed against his chest and leg elevated on a pillow.
In lieu of an apology, Yoo Joonghyuk ended up buying murim dumplings on the way home, Kim Dokja’s pout still clear in his mind.
Yoo Joonghyuk peeks over Kim Dokja’s shoulder to take a closer look at the plush. It’s lopsided and uneven—one side was fatter than the other, and the… eyes (or what Yoo Joonghyuk thought were the eyes, at least) were placed almost near-hazardly in the middle.
“The eyes are crooked,” Yoo Joonghyuk mentions unhelpfully. The other merely hums in response.
“It’s a dokkaebi, it doesn’t need to be perfect.”
“....”
There’s a silence in the room while Kim Dokja finishes the last of the stitches. He turns around and shoves the giant ball into Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest, grinning as he squeezes it between their bodies.
“I named her Biyoo!”
Yoo Joonghyuk decides not to ask why, exactly, Kim Dokja felt it was necessary to name his lopsided ball, and instead runs his hand through the soft fabric. The plush is massive—large enough for his arms to have a bit of difficulty wrapping themselves around the circumference—but Kim Dokja manages to squeeze it enough that his hands are wrapped around the edges of Yoo Joonghyuk’s arms.
“It’s not so bad for my first time, isn’t it?” he smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners. Not even a minute later, the smile instantly turns into one of pain, because it’s apparent he’s forgotten about his sprained ankle. His imbalance takes Yoo Joonghyuk by surprise, and he ends up tripping backwards, falling onto his back with Kim Dokja’s weight on top of him.
Biyoo cushions most of Kim Dokja’s weight, and Yoo Joonghyuk looks up to see his roommate looking sheepishly down at him, half his face smushed into the plush fabric.
“Oops.”
“...I’ll help you up,” Yoo Joonghyuk sighs, pushing himself upwards into a sitting position and sliding the other off of him. Kim Dokja is still hugging the ball, face buried into the softness, his injured leg extended outwards. Yoo Joonghyuk observes him for a moment and then walks around so he can haul him up by the armpits, sliding his arms under the back joint of Kim Dokja’s knees to a princess carry.
“Why are you so careless.”
“Hehe,” Kim Dokja says, leaning his weight onto Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest, and Yoo Joonghyuk hopes he can’t hear his heartbeat pounding beneath his skin. “I have you, don’t I? I’ll be fine, Joonghyuk-ah.”
3.
Biyoo becomes a staple object in their home.
There was a time where Yoo Joonghyuk was seriously tempted to fix her appearance, but every time he looked at her, her beady black eyes stared back into Yoo Joonghyuk’s inner soul as if she were alive. It wasn’t exactly scary—she’s actually quite cute, in a strange, lopsided kind of way—but Yoo Joonghyuk is now fully convinced she might actually house a soul.
It doesn’t exactly help that Kim Dokja speaks to her like he’s talking to a human and not a giant ball of fluff.
“How do you think Yoo Joonhyun is going to survive the next scenario?” Kim Dokja says one day, hugging the plush in his arms, chin leaning on the top near the horn. He’s holding his phone in front of him, angled so Biyoo’s little black eyes have a clear view of the screen.
Yoo Joonghyuk looks up in confusion.
“What?”
“Huh? Oh. I wasn’t talking to you,” he says, and looks back down at his phone.
“...Then who were you talking to?”
Kim Dokja gives him a funny look, one eyebrow raised as if mocking him. Yoo Joonghyuk feels a little offended.
“Biyoo, obviously.”
“The plush.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s not alive.”
Kim Dokja gasps, throwing his phone on the couch and using his hands to cover Biyoo’s sides, where her non-existent ears would be if she had them.
“Yoo Joonghyuk! How could you! She can hear you!”
“She’s a toy.”
“Shh, Biyoo-ah,” Kim Dokja coos, petting Biyoo’s sides, “Joonghyuk-ie is just being a rude bastard. You don’t have to pay attention to him.”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s face furrows up, creases forming between his eyebrows. He keeps the expression for a moment before bringing his hand up to massage his temples, because Kim Dokja is ignoring him in favor of comforting the object in his arms. When he finally decides he’s done, he shoots Yoo Joonghyuk a glare that doesn’t really hold any heat, and returns to reading on his phone with Biyoo in his lap.
Yoo Joonghyuk sighs.
Three days later, Yoo Joonghyuk starts talking to Biyoo too.
“What do you think Kim Dokja wants for dinner?” he asks absentmindedly, tying his apron around his waist. He freezes the moment he realizes what he’s said, body turning comically slow to the dining table, where Kim Dokja had placed Biyoo that morning before he left for work.
“Haa,” Yoo Joonghyuk breathes out, burying his face in his hands. “That bastard is really getting to me.”
4.
“Joonghyuk-ah,” Kim Dokja says one evening after returning home from work. “I heard my coworkers say there’s going to be a meteor shower tonight. Do you want to go watch them together?”
“We live in the middle of the city,” Yoo Joonghyuk points out, like the party pooper he is. “There’s too much light pollution to see the stars.” For a split second, he can see the sparkles fade from Kim Dokja’s eyes, but the other’s enthusiasm is renewed almost seconds later.
“It’s okay, I’ve figured it out!” Yoo Joonghyuk hears him say, before he buttons his jacket back up and heads out the door again.
“Wait.” Yoo Joonghyuk quickly pulls Kim Dokja back, but only manages to grab the other by the hood of his jacket. Kim Dokja looks up at him from where Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand is holding from falling backwards onto the floor.
“Ah?”
“If you’re going out, I’ll come with you. We’re running out of groceries.” He coughs and pulls the other back up, patting Kim Dokja on the back as he steadies him on his feet.
It’s their first time shopping together—normally, their schedules clash too much, and Kim Dokja rarely ever wants to leave the apartment on his days off—and Yoo Joonghyuk pretends his ears don’t get hot at the tips at the domesticity.
They don’t talk much on the walk to the grocery store, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable. Yoo Joonghyuk can feel the warmth of Kim Dokja’s body next to him, and it fills him with an indescribable feeling of peace.
Kim Dokja disappears while Yoo Joonghyuk is standing over the fruit stalls outside, debating whether or not he should buy some pears. It takes a while for Yoo Joonghyuk to notice his absence, and it isn’t until he decides to buy some cherries instead that he notices Kim Dokja is nowhere to be found.
He debates calling him, but his phone buzzes with a text the next moment.
Kim Dokja: I’ve run next door to buy something, I’ll meet up with u after I’m done!!!
Yoo Joonghyuk replies: OK.
He’s a bit disappointed they aren’t actually shopping together, but he pushes the thought aside in favor of deciding what to get for dinner.
He’s standing next to the tomatoes when Kim Dokja finds him. There’s a little paper shopping bag shoved under his arm.
The disgusted expression on Kim Dokja’s face is funny enough to make the corner of Yoo Joonghyuk’s lips quirk up in amusement.
“No tomatoes.”
“Mn,” Yoo Joonghyuk agrees. “No tomatoes.” He conveniently does not mention that he’s already put a bag of tomatoes in his shopping basket.
Kim Dokja accompanies him for the rest of the trip while he picks out the rest of the groceries, and Yoo Joonghyuk has to stop him several times from dumping several packets of instant ramen into their basket.
(After one too many times of watching Kim Dokja eating sad, plain toast for breakfast and prepackaged frozen meals for dinner, Yoo Joonghyuk had forcibly dragged Kim Dokja into having his meals with him. Later, it went from two meals together to two meals together and Yoo Joonghyuk packing a lunch for him in the morning, after he found out the other man was eating cheap convenience store ramen for lunch at work.)
He manages to eventually cajole Yoo Joonghyuk into letting him buy some of that “good stuff,” triumph flaunted on his face until it visibly falls when Yoo Joonghyuk takes out the bag of tomatoes at checkout.
“What did you buy?” Yoo Joonghyuk asks when they finally get home. He helps Kim Dokja put his jacket on the hooks by the door and carries their groceries into the kitchen to unpack. Kim Dokja walks to his own room with a spring in his step.
“It’s a surprise, Joonghyuk-ah!” Kim Dokja winks from behind the door. Yoo Joonghyuk resists the urge to pinch his cheeks.
Dinner is an uneventful affair, but Kim Dokja is smiling the entire time and Yoo Joonghyuk feels soft inside. After the table is cleared and Kim Dokja has finished washing the dishes, he drags Yoo Joonghyuk by the arm into his room.
The light is still on, but Kim Dokja turns them off when they step inside and pulls Yoo Joonghyuk to his bed and points up at the ceiling.
“Who said we can’t see the stars?” Kim Dokja pats himself proudly on the chest and grins at him. Yoo Joonghyuk softens, turning his head from Kim Dokja’s face and to the ceiling where the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars are taped onto the ceiling.
“It’s pretty, right? I think I did a pretty good job.”
Yoo Joonghyuk turns his gaze from the stars to Kim Dokja’s delighted face, the other’s eyes still glued to the ceiling. The stars are surprisingly bright enough to give Yoo Joonghyuk a good look at Kim Dokja’s face
“Mm,” Yoo Joonghyuk hums, eyes gazing down to Kim Dokja’s mussed-up hair and lips. “It’s pretty. You did well.”
They stay like this until Kim Dokja yawns and accidentally falls asleep, clearly exhausted from his spontaneous effort of decorating his room. Yoo Joonghyuk makes sure the other is tucked into bed and walks quietly out of the room, taking one last look at the stars.
The stars’ greenish glow has long since begun to fade, and several of them look like they’re about to fall, but in the darkness of the room, there’s still an illusion of a star-lit sky.
5.
The heating and electricity goes bust one night, just in time for a heavy snowstorm. Yoo Joonghyuk had closed the windows earlier in the day, when the snow began piling up and blanketing the ground in a wet white blanket, but evidently, the sealing of their apartment was shit because he was freezing mere hours after the heating went out.
After a scathing call to the landlord—which had ultimately led to nothing but apologies about how they wouldn’t be able to fix the power outage until the snow calmed down—and a quick text to Kim Dokja about the situation, Yoo Joonghyuk has himself (and Biyoo, which he will not admit despite the giant lump next to him) wrapped under a blanket, shivering slightly from the cold. He’s itching to finish the remainder of his work, but with the electricity out, he decides it’s probably better to save the battery in case of an emergency.
The blanket is warm, Biyoo radiating a heat that probably shouldn’t be possible but Yoo Joonghyuk is too cold to care about, and eventually, he manages to fall into a light sleep, cozied under the blanket and leaning his weight onto Biyoo.
He wakes up when Kim Dokja comes stumbling home, unlocking the door with a loud click followed by the door banging into the wall.
“Why is it so dark?” Yoo Joonghyuk hears him ask, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. “Oh right, Joonghyuk-ie mentioned the power went out…,” Kim Dokja adds a few seconds later. “Joonghyuk-ah? Are you there?”
“..Ah?” His voice is groggy, but Kim Dokja pads into the room and pulls the blanket that’s managed to cover his face in his sleep. “Kim Dokja?” Through the weak light from the window, Yoo Joonghyuk can see a light pattering of snow on the top of Kim Dokja’s head, white against the dark mop of his hair.
Kim Dokja crouches down so he’s at eye-level to where Yoo Joonghyuk is laying on the couch.
“Wake up, sleepyhead?” He reaches out to poke Yoo Joonghyuk’s cheek. The sleeves of his suit are a bit wet at the edges from the snow, but the other man doesn’t seem too bothered by it, choosing instead to warm his hands on Yoo Joonghyuk’s neck. Yoo Joonghyuk yelps when he feels the cold of Kim Dokja’s icicle hands seeping into his skin. He shivers, batting the other away, but Kim Dokja only laughs, enveloping Yoo Joonghyuk in a hug, blanket and all.
“Go get changed,” Yoo Joonghyuk eventually grinds out, reaching over to pat away the snow on Kim Dokja’s head. “You’re wet.” Kim Dokja pokes him again, flattening the exasperated crease between Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyebrows.
“Okay, boss,” he replies, bouncing up. It’s too dark to see the expression on his face, but Yoo Joonghyuk can hear a playful smile in his voice. It doesn’t take long for him to change and Yoo Joonghyuk suspects he’ll have to lecture him about leaving his dirty clothes on the ground again, but he eventually comes stumbling back out into the living room.
Yoo Joonghyuk can barely see his figure behind the several layers of blankets and pillows Kim Dokja is holding in his arms.
“Why are you carrying so much stuff?” Yoo Joonghyuk lifts his blanket off, pulling it on top of Biyoo and patting her in place before walking over to help him.
“It’s cold and snowing and terrible.” Kim Dokja dumps the blankets and pillows onto the other side of the couch and begins moving the furniture. “So it’s the perfect time to make a pillow fort!”
“Aren’t we a little too old for pillow forts?”
“Joonghyuk-ah,” he admonishes from behind the loveseat. “You’re never too old for pillow forts.”
Yoo Joonghyuk snorts, but still pads over to help layer the blankets and pillows. Kim Dokja chatters the entire time, with the occasional grunt in reply from Yoo Joonghyuk, the previously silent room filling up with noise.
The end result is… a bit messy. Neither of them can actually really see it, the remaining light from the window dimming due to the storm, but Kim Dokja drags Yoo Joonghyuk under the blankets, the both of them falling into a heap of pillows they’ve laid on the ground.
Kim Dokja pokes his head out from the blanket tank and pulls Biyoo in as well, tucking her in a corner next to them, and then plops down, burying himself under the blankets next to Yoo Joonghyuk. He snuggles closer, leaning on his shoulder and sneaking his arm down to hold Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand in a soft grip. Yoo Joonghyuk startles for a moment, freezing in place.
“Is this okay?” he hears Kim Dokja say, voice raspy against his ear. He snaps out of his daze to squeeze back, leaning into the embrace.
“...Yeah,” Yoo Joonghyuk replies, wrapping his arm around Kim Dokja’s shoulder to pull him closer. “It’s okay.” He presses their heads together, foreheads touching and noses brushing against each other, warm breaths mingling. “It’s good.”
+1
TOPIC:
Help I think I have a crush on my roommate what do I do
Posted by Guwon1863
He’s hot and he can cook and he has muscles and I think I’ll faint every time he smiles
TOP ANSWER:
(+3) make sure you don’t act weird, bro
Posted by nottls123
> How do I do that
Posted by Guwon1863
>> Idk? Just act normal. But like be spontaneous at the same time, y’know?
Posted by nottls123
>>> ok.
Posted by Guwon1863
>>>> That wasn’t helpful at all but I think I got it
Posted by Guwon1863
TOPIC:
(UPDATE) Help I think I have a crush on my roommate what do I do
Posted by Guwon1863
No one gave good advice at all especially not @nottls123 and now he thinks I’m weird but we’re somehow together now so it’s okay. Look at our daughter and our funny little pillow fort [img]