Chapter Text
“Please! I beg of you! Spare me!”
Yoo Joonghyuk, leered down at the sniveling man, bored out of his mind from listening to such trite pleas. Tears and snot leaked from the man’s puffy red face, alcohol damaged veins spiderwebbing red across his skin. One would never know that this useless man was an alpha—and truly such a waste of space didn’t deserve to be called one. He was the kind of worthless man who boasted of and took pride in his second gender, suppressing and bullying those weaker than him for a pathetic ego high, despite being the living embodiment of the phrase ‘Better a beta than to boast’ (ie. your second gender was worthless if you didn’t have the talent to back it up). At least if one was a beta they would have an excuse for what they lacked.
As the head of the N’gai Mafia, ruler of the Red City, and the Dominant Supreme King, Yoo Joonghyuk almost never dealt with such petty things as collecting an owed debt. But the worm of a man before him had wronged and cheated a close acquaintance that supplied weapons to the N’gai Mafia, and although Joonghyuk thought his acquaintance to be an idiot for dealing with people like this (and told the man as such when he reamed him for his stupidity) he couldn’t let such a slight go unpunished if he not only wanted to preserve the pride of the N’gai Mafia and a positive relationship with the acquaintance—at least until he found a new weapons supplier.
“Shut up.” Joonghyuk commanded, the strength of his command felt by everyone in the room. “You didn’t pay what was owed and you don’t have the fucking money now. That’s it. I don’t need to hear worthless excuses.”
Joonghyuk gestured for one of his men to come forward. “Take him down to the basement. Sell every part of his body that you can.” His body would be wringed of its worth, taken apart piece by piece, until finally, even the hungry and desperate claimed his bones.
“No! No! It’s that bitch’s fault!” The man schreeched in terror, spittle flying with each scream. “Fuck Dokja! That useless slut!”
Joonghyuk immediately raised his hand, palm facing forward, a silent order to stop. The man thinking it as an opportunity to preserve his life, rambled out. “Yes yes! My nephew, Kim Dokja—I was going to sell him and get the money—the stupid bitch ran away before I could. But I’ll find him, I promise—you can even have him. He’s untouched and inexperienced but an omega like him is only good for one thing anyway.”
Joonghyuk grinned a vicious smile, his fangs on display, victory in his eyes. Finally, after years of searching, a morsel of evidence of his star’s existence in this world had serendipitously fallen into lap. His smile which chilled his men to their bone (as their boss simply did not smile), fell into an icy expression.
“Take him to the dungeon.” His men, accepting the change in orders, dragged the man towards a different door; It seemed that their boss wanted to play with this one.
Joonghyuk spent the next five days brutally torturing Kim Baekhyun, for all the cruel abuse he most likely inflicted upon his nephew, and for every vile word the man dared to utter about his star. He peeled the man apart like an orange, cauterizing each wound so that he wouldn’t bleed out while pumping his veins full of drugs so that he wouldn’t die. Baekhyun experienced five days of hell and still Joonghuk didn’t feel like it was enough.
Joonghuk walked out of the torture room, nicknamed “The Dungeon” and nodded to his subordinates, “Clean it up. Cremate the body but keep the ashes.”
“Jeez what this guy do to piss you off so much, that you’ll even torture the man in death.” A woman obnoxiously spoke, her teeth grating against a hard lollipop in her mouth.
Joonghyuk turned his gaze towards the two woman at the end of the hall, one who was politely and patiently waiting for orders, and the other who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else.
He had found this world’s versions of Han Sooyoung and Yoo Sangah and recruited them when he was first starting out, running a street gang at the age of fifteen. Although he was young, he had been a rising bloody star, with enough momentum that the established mafias were already trying to eliminate him. He had few people he could trust—so he began searching for his past companions in the hopes that they existed in this universe.
Han Sooyoung had been an author, although it never truly made her any money, rather, the side business she ran of stealing people’s identities and then robbing them of all their wealth was what really paid the bills. Yoo Sangah, appeared like a normal calm and collected business woman working as a secratary for a small guild. In reality she was their number one assassin, The Spider was skilled at collecting information on her targets lives and then eliminating in an efficient manner that left no traces. Murdering was easy for her and she was numb to bloodshed after beginning killing at a young age. It hadn’t been her choice in life to follow this path, but with her beauty this vile world refused to leave her alone even at the tender age of seven, when she made her first kill: stabbing her pedophilic step-father in the neck with a sowing needle.
Han Sooyoung and Yoo Sangah became the heads of his intelligence network—which was sorely needed after all he couldn’t keep relying solely on his strength to fend off surprise assassination attempts. Dokja had taught him that lessen in their first life; pure strength could only get him so far. With Sangah and Sooyoung’s aid, assassination attempts could either be almost entirely prevented, precautionary measure could be implemented, or counter attacks could be used to turn the tables on their enemies.
Once Joonghyuk was sure absolutely sure that the two could be trusted, he revealed to them that he was looking for someone—his mate to be exact—and that he needed their help to find them as he had never met them in this life. He vaguely explained his reasonings for wanting to mate a person he had never met as some kind of soulmate situation. They already believed him to be a blood thirsty crazy bastard (had to be to survive in this world) so while strange to hear they just chocked it up to him being mad. It didn’t matter to them whether being soulmates was true. If it was what their leader wanted then they would follow his commands.
“He hurt my mate.”
A hard crunch and pained swearing from Sooyoung followed Joonghyuk’s revelation.
“Fuck I think I chipped a tooth! Give us some warning before blurting stuff like that out you bastard! What if I choked and died?” Sooyoung berated.
“The world would be off then.” Joonghyuk brusquely jabbed.
Sangah slapped a hand over her girlfriend’s mouth before anymore obscenities could escape. “You found him?” She inquired, somewhat in disbelief. They had been searching for Joonghuk’s mate for fifteen years now—truly she thought that maybe he was fictional being that Joonghuk’s disturbed mind made up.
Joonghuk deflated a bit upon hearing her question, and then sighed deeply, stress and longing etched into his features. “Not exactly. I’ve found a hint of his existence. That worthless trash in there,”he pointed backwards over his shoulder with his thumb, “was his abusive uncle who tried to sell him into an omega brothel.”
“Ah I see.” Sangah affirmed, removing her hand from Sooyoung’s mouth, gaining a sharpness to her ever present polite smile. Sooyoung at least was perceptive enough to know when to keep her mouth shut around Sangah, and she nervously shuffled closer, entwining her hand with Sangah’s to gently rub their wrists together in a calming gesture. As a beta, Sooyoung’s scent wasn’t strong enough to be used to calm an alpha down, but assuaging actions could still be taken.
Abuse—especially of a sexual and discramatory nature—always sent Sangah into a rage, having been subjected to numerous rape attempts, more than her fair share of handsy men, and enough sexism and misogynistic comments about her status as a female alpha that if they were worth a nickle, she could afford to buy a yacht.
Sangah calmed down slightly, her mate soothing her, but it wasn’t enough to dull the fire burning in her eyes. Her form was taught with energy, eager for action. “What is your command?” She asked in a breathy voice, barely contained excitement imbued in each word.
Joonghuk grinned viciously. “Find him. Dig up everything you can about his uncle—his wife and children, his extended family, his friends and associates—even acquaintances. I want to know everything that pertains to my mate; And bring me anyone who was involved in his abuse.”
“As you command.” Sangah affirmed, bowing to her boss.
The hunt was on, and The Spider would weave her web and catch her prey.
——————————————————
Luigi’s—a banally named Italian restaurant with subpar food—was bustling with people, which had more to with its’ location as one of the only establishments near the Red Hat Slum than the quality (or accuracy) of its’ cuisine. The customers were loud and rude, although their behavior wasn’t due to them being from the slums but rather that a restraurant open late and serving cheap drinks and salty oily foods tended to attract rowdy degenerates.
Joonghyuk, from his seat in the second floor apartment that he just recently bought for the sole purpose of staking out the restaurant, clicked his tongue in distaste. He’d have to burn the establishment to the ground—but not yet. He ignored the racuos rabble, and instead focused his keen eyes on the mousy man, with disheveled brown hair obscuring his face and a servers uniform that was two sizes too big, hiding his body beneath layers of fabric.
He had finally found his star.
Dokja, kept his eyes down, and his body hunched submissively, with his slender frame and pretty face cloaked by poor style, he blended into the crowd as he moved through the room delivering beers and plates of over cooked pasta smothered in questionable sauces. People yelled epithets to grab his attention, never bothering to call his name despite the name tag on his shirt clearing reading Guwon in bright letters. Some of the customers got handsy, but they were with everyone and it never went farther as “Guwon” had zero appeal (Joonghyuk was already creating a tally of whose hands he would need to cut off for daring to touch his mate). For all intents and purposes, Guwon presented as an ordinary beta blending into the background of society—only Joonghyuk knew that he was anything but. Dokja was a god amongst mortals, a gem rarer than anything existing on the planet, cleverly hidden by an ordinary disguise.
It had taken two years to find Dokja after the day Joonghyuk ripped his uncle apart. His star had certainly used his intelligence and penchant for scheming to his advantage leaving Joonghyuk in a seemingly endless cycle of frustration for two years—not that the man had any clue about what anguish and trouble he caused (Joonghyuk would pay him back for it later). Truly Dokja’s tactical mind was a boon to his allies and a curse for his enemies. He was the only person who could stand against Joonghyuk on equal footing without ever having to lift a finger. Although Joonghyuk greatly preferred when they worked together; brain and brawn, an unstoppable duo that had torn down Gods from their thrones, and reshaped worlds.
Sooyoung and Sangah had done an excellent job tracking Dokja after he ran away from his uncle’s home when the feeble pathetic man tried to sell his only sister’s—his dead sister’s—precious child into sexual slavery. Dokja didn’t make it easy for them, traveling from city to city as a vagrant, faking his death, reappearing, and then faking his death again before once again reappearing and then completely vanishing leaving no traces. Had Joonghuk not provided them with Dokja’s info from their past lives including his commonly used pseudonyms, they probably would’ve never found him.
As the clock neared two in the morning, Joonghyuk casually shrugged on his coat and left the apartment. Dokja was already midway down the block, walking slowly, clearly exhausted after his shift. Joonghuk followed him like a shadow, close enough to act if any unsavory people attempted to harm him, but far enough that Dokja wouldn’t be able to detect him. He carefully watched as Dokja climbed the steps up to his apartment building: a dilapidated structure that by all accounts, shouldn’t have still been standing. Bars covered the entry windows, with a lone harsh flickering light doing a poor a job of chasing away the shadows of the night. The door frame, along with all the other wood trim on the building, was partially detached, askew, and held together with a desperate hope and false prayer. Dokja tugged on the door once (half the time the lock didn’t work) before huffing at the door for personally wronging him, and grumpily punching in his code into the key pad. The number two fell to the ground as he did so.
The place was in absolute shambles, barely fit enough for the rats that gnawed on the wires in the walls.
Joonghyuk had visited Dokja’s apartment earlier in the day, when the squid had been gone, spending time at the “library”: a hovel of a home owned by an eccentric literature collector who was so well versed in the art of murder that most chose not to mess with him as the effort to steal from him wasn’t worth the effort. Dokja dedicatedly spent his free time reading there as he couldn’t afford to buy books. The apartment had been as thread bar as he thought it would be: there was single table and one uncomfortable metal chair; a pair of chopsticks and a bowl with no other cooking utensils or dishware present; and a disgusting couch with lumpy cushions that appeared to double as a bed as no other sleeping arrangements existed within the studio apartment.
Joonghyuk let out a deep suffering sigh. He really wished Dokja wasn’t so inept at taking care of himself, or at least wished that the foolish man actually had some standards for living. It was a consistent trait across universes and one that worried Joonghyuk to no end. Although, he supposes, it was a beneficial trait for him, as it made his star highly dependent on him, no longer able to survive on his own once he experienced Joonghyuk’s love and care. He’d chain the flighty man to him in whatever way he could.
Joonghyuk flicked open the cupboard to find nothing but ramyeon inside. He distastefully shut the door. There was no way Dokja was having regular heats (if any), with the way he was running his health into the ground. Joonghyuk sighed deeply again, reaching a hand up to rub the back of his neck, already feeling his blood pressure rising. Having seen enough, Joonghyuk moved on to what he came here to do: placing cameras all around Dokja’s apartment. Once his task was completed, he subtly scented the place, rubbing his wrists against the bare thread blanket on the couch, and along the doorway. It was light enough to not be immediately noticeable, but present enough that Dokja would realize he had been in his apartment.
And thus began their flirtation, their dalliance, a challenge of sorts, primal in nature, prey and predator, who could out smart the other. Joonghyuk would ultimately win of course but Dokja liked a challenge, although he would always claim otherwise. He insisted that he was lazy by nature preferring to lay in bed and read. But he never chose fluff or derivative trash when reading, always going for well a well built and constructed story, often full of anguish and suffering (he did read through Joonghyuk’s 1863 incarnations), that ultimately led to a happy ending.
This was a story he was constructing for his star.
A love story.