minwon / 1.8k / explicit
an idea i love but i was gonna get too insane about. the concept is good tho
The first thing Wonwoo does when he wakes up is check Twitter.
It’s a bad habit. But a horribly ingrained one. It’s left over from his teenage years spent knee-deep in fandom culture, and the fact that now, at 23, he’s still just as deep - if not deeper.
His notifs are full of replies from his moots - nice wip! so excited for this one!!! - and DMs - WON WAKE UP!!!! NEW MIN POST!!!!! - and his timeline is impressively active, given that it is currently… 6:30 in the morning.
Well. He sighs, turns off his phone, and gets out of bed. Time to start the damn day.
Wonwoo Jeon is a year fresh out of college with a degree in English Lit that he never uses. Freelance writer, six months in at his current project. Office life is stifling, to say the least. Much different from the commission work he did back in college to make ends meet, where he’d write pretty much anything people wanted him to write.
All of it was porn, by the way.
It kind of messed with his head to be 8k words deep in a very morally ambiguous kink, or an x reader fic, or something just as bad. It’s a nice fallback, though, if this 9-to-5 life doesn’t end up panning out.
(Which he hopes and prays that it will. Pan out, that is. Because the alternatives - going to grad school, becoming an English teacher, being a librarian - aren’t looking too good.)
Wonwoo slips into his slippers, heads to the bathroom, and washes his face. He brushes his teeth. He flosses, examines his face in the mirror, and tries not to poke at the new spot of acne on his chin. He is still a little baby-faced, and his glasses still make him look like a fucking nerd. As such is being the only Asian person at his job, most people at work think he’s a college intern instead of a full time employee.
Which he barely is. But that’s not the point.
He gets dressed into something as casual as he can get away with, and walks three long strides across his shitty studio apartment to get to the kitchenette to make some damn coffee.
-
Wonwoo is a writer.
A fanfic writer, to be exact. He writes fanfiction.
Wonwoo is in the middle of rewriting parts of a current WIP during his lunch break when Soonyoung calls him. Which is never a good sign.
(There’s no reason for him to call during this hour unless something truly disastrous has happened, like Jun’s new dye job going horribly wrong, which means that he wants Wonwoo to schedule them for group therapy. Or something equally catastrophic.)
“Hm?” Wonwoo doesn’t even bother sounding enthused to answer the phone. It’s his thing.
“Wonwoo,” Soonyoung sounds serious, for once. “Dude. Do you know where my hair dryer is?”
Wonwoo blinks, checks the Caller ID again, and then pinches himself to see if he’s, like, dreaming or not. He isn’t.
“Why would I possibly know where your hair dryer is?” Wonwoo asks. “I literally never use your bathroom because of that weird-ass tiger poster you have in there.”
This is true. Soonyoung has a photo-realistic colored pencil drawing of Tony the Tiger (which he literally had commissioned, by the way), that stares you down when you have to take a shit. He even hung it at eye-level. It’s a monstrosity and it’s probably the least tasteful thing Wonwoo has ever seen in another person’s home. Which is saying a lot.
“Oh, true,” Soonyoung says thoughtfully. “But, like, you haven’t seen it around…?”
“Ask your roommate, maybe,” Wonwoo says. “I don’t, like, live with you.” He checks the time. “It’s 1 PM and you’re still not at work?”
“Crazy night,” Soonyoung says, and doesn’t elaborate, which is nearly worse than when he does. Because that means that he experienced things (sex things, most likely) that even he doesn’t want to share with the class. Despite the fact that Wonwoo has heard in detail, hundreds of times, the ins and outs of his kinks and sounding isn’t all that bad, Won, you just gotta try it. “My boss is chill. I guess I’ll just go to work with crazy hair.”
Wonwoo sighs. “I’m still waiting for the day you become well-adjusted.”
Soonyoung laughs. “Like you’re any better than me! You write fanfic and have an online boyfriend whose face you’ve never seen, and-”
“Okay, great talking to you,” Wonwoo cuts him off, and hangs up. Because once you get him started, he’ll go on for hours, and Wonwoo really doesn’t want to hear his own life choices mocked in his ear while he’s at the office, of all places. He sets his phone down and sips absentmindedly on his coffee. Ten minutes left in break. Maybe he can get a little more done…
Despite his hobbies, Wonwoo’s life is painfully normal. For the most part. He’s a wage slave at an office job, just with a little unconventional side gig. Writing fanfic isn’t that weird, anyhow. And he’s got a decent fanbase - 9k followers on Twitter. He’s made plenty of friends on there. People besides Soonyoung and Jun, who he has the displeasure of being best friends with because he and Soonyoung were the only Asian kids in their midwestern high school, and then Jun because he was a roommate in college: grouped together because - you guessed it - he was the only other Asian on his floor.
But it’s fine. They’re good friends. Just a little overwhelming at times.
Wonwoo parses over his dialogue, adjusting here and there on grammar and punctuation. This specific WIP has been driving him crazy over the past couple weeks because he hit a wall with it once the momentum of starting a new big chaptered fic kind of slowed down. But he’ll work through it. He always does.
When it’s the top of the hour, he closes his laptop, clocks back in, and heads back to his desk. Sparsely decorated, as work desks should be. He sits next to the most invasive, nosy bitch in the whole office, anyways. Fucking Brenda. Wonwoo has seen her go around, asking people about the pictures at the corner of their monitors, or funny little trinkets, because if you give her an inch, she’ll get a mile. And Wonwoo is too awkward to fight her off.
“Good lunch, Woo?” She asks, even though Wonwoo hates being called Woo by white people. It always just kind of feels like they don’t even want to pronounce Wonwoo, shortening it because they’re racist assholes. “What are you always typing on that laptop? Not working off the clock, right?”
Wonwoo gives her a strained, tired smile. “It’s nothing.”
“You always look so focused, I try not to interrupt, but…” she keeps talking, and Wonwoo promptly tunes her out.
It’s the only way to survive here, after all.
It’s just a part of Wonwoo’s boring, painfully normal life. Where he has friends who ask him about hair dryers, nosy coworkers, and Google Docs that just keep getting longer and longer. All in all, it’s not too bad.
-
The best part of Wonwoo’s day, by far, is 8 PM. When it’s 6 PM in Los Angeles. When his not-boyfriend-but-something-a-little-bit-more-than-just-a-friend gets home from work and the green dot next to his name lights up on Discord.
Gyuie. The light of his life and simultaneous bane of his existence.
gyu_ie: homeeee
gyu_ie: did u miss me??? :3
gam3bo1: no
gyu_ie: i bet youve been waiting around for me for hourssss
gam3bo1: NO
gyu_ie: rly? :)
gam3bo1: get on vc.
gyu_ie: ok sheesh im omw
Wonwoo hops in the VC of the server that just the two of them share and stares at his second monitor as he waits, very patiently, with his hands playing with the strings of his hoodie.
Twenty seconds later: “Hey, Won.” In that deep, pouty voice.
Wonwoo grins. “Hi, loser.”
“So mean,” Gyuie says - whines. His tone is always pouty, which should be incredibly off-putting coming from a 22 year old man, but Wonwoo just always finds it to be cute. “I spent my day slaving around at work, and I came home to your abuse.”
Wonwoo hums. “But you are a loser, you know. Coming home from work to get on a JMMORPG with me. Did you even eat dinner yet?”
“Got some leftovers from work,” Gyuie says, which must be awesome because he works at a steakhouse. “I bet all you ate for dinner was Buldak, hmm? And no vegetables.”
Wonwoo frowns. “I put in some green onions.”
You can hear the grin in Gyuie’s voice. “Won, you can’t still be eating ramen every night. There are actual meals in the frozen section of the grocery store, you know.”
“Shut up,” Wonwoo grumbles. “Get on the game. I hate you.”
Gyuie laughs. “Love you too, Won.”
Wonwoo’s heart, unfortunately, is pounding in his chest. Because… okay. So maybe Wonwoo is harboring something like a crush. But that’s no one’s business.
Him and Gyuie met on the game way back in middle school, before Discord servers, when all they had was a Steam friends list and in-game chatbox. They were doing the same quest and joined forces, and then did it again. And again and again and again.
They started Skyping - voice only - back in high school. Before either of their balls dropped, when Wonwoo learned that Gyuie was one year younger, also Korean American, and a Californian, of all damn things. Gyuie called him hyung, once, as a joke. It made Wonwoo go bright red, and he told him to never do it again. So he hasn’t.
So long story short, they’ve known each other for years and years and years. And somewhere along the way, some of Wonwoo’s wires got crossed. Gyuie was the first queer friend he’s ever had - bisexual - and he eventually developed that deep voice, and has a cute laugh, so… you know. Wonwoo has maybe fallen in love with a guy whose face he doesn’t even know. Sue him.
It doesn’t help that they talk everyday. Every single day. For hours. Wonwoo knows Gyuie like he knows himself - he’s afraid of heights, loves dogs, has a younger sister, works as a server - and it’d be a lie to say that he isn’t, like, the shining beacon of Wonwoo’s life. Always just a Discord call away on bad days, because Gyuie knows that Wonwoo has pretty bad days every now and again. He’s even Uber Eated food to Wonwoo’s house on said bad days. With flowers. Which, you know… got him to feel certain. Things.
(And, yes, Wonwoo gave his address to a stranger whose face and government name he doesn’t know. But c’mon, it’s Gyuie. The guy he’s known since he was 12 and once walked Wonwoo through his calculus homework, back in senior year of high school. He’s harmless.)
(Probably.)