Chapter 23: Domestic Bliss and Laundry Day
The penthouse smelled of new beginnings and stale takeout. Boxes formed a cardboard cityscape in the living room, but Hyukjae had zeroed in on a more immediate problem: the growing mound of gear and clothes festering in the master bedroom corner. His gear bag exhaled the familiar, sour breath of old sweat and ice. Donghae’s things were intermingled—a cashmere sweater draped over his goalie pads, a pair of tailored trousers defiled by a streak of skate blade polish.
“The service comes Tuesdays,” Donghae said, watching from the doorway as Hyukjae began sorting. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” Hyukjae said, the statement simple and final. There was a logic to it, a control. Sorting dark from light, durable cottons from delicate fabrics, was a playbook he understood. It was claiming territory, not with fists, but with fabric softener.
Donghae just smiled and left him to it.
The laundry room was a bright, sterile cell next to the walk-in closet. It reeked of industrial bleach and the ghost of Donghae’s cologne, clinging to a single abandoned sock in the dryer. Hyukjae worked methodically. He treated the stains on Donghae’s practice jerseys, his movements precise. He turned the designer shirts inside out, reading the silent language of their care labels. His own things were straightforward—tough fabrics meant for abuse. Donghae’s wardrobe was a foreign country of textures and rules.
He lost time to the rhythm of it. The whir of the washer, the heat of the dryer, the quiet hum of the penthouse. When the final load was done, he carried the warm, clean bundle into the cavernous closet.
It was a temple to vanity and wealth. Rows of suits stood like sentinels, their shoulders perfectly aligned. Hyukjae’s few jerseys and worn hoodies looked like interlopers in this ordered world. He began to fold, stacking towels, pairing socks. The intimacy of it was unnerving. This was the lint from Donghae’s pockets, the shape of his heels impressed in his socks, the softness of the t-shirts that hugged his chest.
He was kneeling, placing a stack of folded boxer briefs into a drawer, when the light from the doorway was blocked.
“My sweet princess.”
Donghae’s voice was a warm rumble. Hyukjae didn’t turn. He felt him approach, felt the heat of his body before his arms encircled him from behind, hands splaying possessively over his stomach. Donghae nuzzled into the crook of his neck, inhaling deeply. “Taking such good care of me.”
“Someone has to,” Hyukjae muttered, but he leaned back into the solid chest.
Donghae’s hands slid down, palms skimming the front of his jeans. He found the buckle. The click was obscenely loud in the quiet. “This,” Donghae whispered, his breath hot against Hyukjae’s ear, “makes me insane. You, in my closet, folding my clothes. It makes me so hard I can’t think.”
He spun Hyukjae around before he could respond. His back hit the shelves, a row of sweaters cushioning the impact. Donghae dropped to his knees, his eyes blazing up at him.
He didn’t ask. He yanked Hyukjae’s jeans and briefs down in one rough pull, freeing his cock, which was already filling, responding to the raw hunger on Donghae’s face. Donghae leaned in, but didn’t use his mouth. First, he pressed his face into the coarse hair at the base, inhaling like a man starved. “You smell like us,” he growled. “Like my soap on your skin.”
Then he took him in, all at once, deep-throating him with a practiced, shocking ease.
Hyukjae cried out, his head thudding back against a shelf. The heat was wet, voracious. Donghae sucked, hollowing his cheeks, his tongue working the frenulum with ruthless precision. One hand gripped Hyukjae’s hip, fingers digging in, while the other fondled his balls, rolling them, then tracing a teasing path back to press against his perineum.
“Fuck—Donghae—” Hyukjae gasped, his hands flying to tangle in the soft brown hair.
Donghae pulled off with a wet pop, a string of saliva connecting his lips to the slick, purple head. “I love when you do domestic things for me,” he panted, his voice ragged. “Makes me want to ruin you right here.” He swallowed him again, taking him deeper, his nose buried in the dark thatch of hair. Hyukjae’s knees trembled. The suction was relentless, the pressure building at the base of his spine in a tight, coiling spring.
Just as Hyukjae felt the first unstoppable surge, Donghae pulled away. He stood up, his own erection straining against his trousers. His eyes were wild.
“Turn around,” he ordered, his voice guttural.
Hyukjae, dazed and leaking, turned. Before him was the neat pile of warm, freshly folded towels. Donghae shoved him forward, bending him over the stack. The terrycloth was soft and hot against his stomach. Donghae’s hands spread his ass cheeks, thumbs rough on his skin.
He heard the rip of a foil packet, the frantic rustle of clothing. A moment later, the blunt, slick head of Donghae’s cock was pressing against him. There was no patience, no gentle preparation beyond the spit from his mouth.
“You’re ready,” Donghae muttered, more to himself. “You’re always so fucking ready for me.”
He pushed in. One long, brutal, burying thrust.
The sound Hyukjae made was choked, punched out of him. The stretch was blinding, a perfect, punishing fullness. Donghae didn’t pause. He set a punishing pace from the first stroke, each drive slamming Hyukjae into the pile of towels, scattering the neat folds.
“My princess,” Donghae grunted, his hands vise-locked on Hyukjae’s hips. “My good girl. Taking such good care of your man.” Each filthy endearment was punctuated by a deep, jarring thrust. “Folding my shirts. Washing my come out of your clothes.”
The words ignited him. Hyukjae pushed back, meeting him thrust for thrust, the shelf rattling with their impact. The crude praise, the ownership in it, unraveled him completely. He was reduced to sensation: the burn of the stretch, the slap of skin, the abrasive softness of the towels beneath him, the scent of clean cotton and sex.
Donghae leaned over, covering his body, biting the shell of his ear. “You gonna come? Gonna come all over the nice, clean laundry I don’t give a shit about?”
It was the permission he needed. The coil snapped. Hyukjae’s orgasm ripped through him, violent and silent for a heartbeat before a raw, broken sob escaped. His release spilled onto the fabric beneath him, hot and sudden.
The clenching of his body dragged Donghae over the edge. He drove in one last time, hilting himself with a savage snarl, his body going rigid. Hyukjae felt the hot, rhythmic pulses inside the condom, the way Donghae’s entire body shuddered against his back.
They collapsed together over the ruined laundry, a mess of damp towels and sweat-slicked skin. Donghae’s weight was heavy, anchoring. He pressed his lips to the knob of Hyukjae’s spine.
When he finally pulled out, he disposed of the condom and turned Hyukjae around. He looked down at the mess—the spent cock, the come drying on the towels, the slick sheen between Hyukjae’s thighs. His gaze was dark, satisfied. He traced a finger through the wetness on Hyukjae’s stomach, then brought it to his own mouth, tasting him.
“Now you’re really part of my home,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Your scent’s in my clothes. Your mess is on my things.” He kissed him, deep and slow, sharing the taste. “You’re everywhere.”
From the bedroom, Hyukjae’s phone buzzed insistently on the floor, screen lighting up with a string of texts from Hyohyeon. They both ignored it. The world outside the closet, beyond the pile of warm, stained towels, felt irrelevant. For now, the only geography that mattered was the space their bodies had claimed.
For now, the only geography that mattered was the space their bodies had claimed. That claim, however, was soon tested by geography of a different kind.
The call came three days later. A professional club, one tier below the national league, had been scouting Donghae since his arrival at Silver Ice. They offered a training camp invitation, an aggressive trial period with the main squad. It was everything he’d worked for, a siren song he couldn’t ignore. “It’s two hours away,” he’d told Hyukjae, his expression torn between elation and something else. “I’ll have to stay at their facility during the week. Weekends, if I’m not wrecked.”
Hyukjae understood. He truly did. He packed Donghae’s bag with the same meticulous care he’d shown with the laundry, folding the designer shirts that now felt familiar. “Don’t get hurt,” was all he said at the door, his voice flat. Donghae kissed him, hard and promising, and then he was gone.
The understanding was a cold, logical thing. The missing him was a physical ache.
The penthouse became a museum of absence. Hyukjae kept busy with his own training, with classes, with annoying his sister. He did not fold Donghae’s clothes because there were none to fold. The closet stood half-empty, the silent suits seeming to judge the emptiness. He slept sprawled in the center of the bed, chasing a warmth that wasn’t there. The two weeks stretched, thin and taut as a wire.
When Donghae’s text finally flashed on a Friday night—On my way. Broken. Need you.—Hyukjae moved.
He didn’t plan it, not consciously. He just saw the white shirt hanging alone in the closet, one Donghae had worn the morning he left. Hyukjae slipped it on. The fine cotton fell to mid-thigh, smelling faintly of Donghae’s cologne and their laundry detergent. It exposed the pale, lean length of his legs, still faintly traced with the shadows of old bruises from the ice.
He dimmed the lights. He dragged the thin, Japanese-style mattress from the guest room to the center of the living room floor. He found almond oil in the bathroom cabinet, warming it between his palms. He lit a single candle. It wasn’t much, but it was a signal. A welcome.
The key turned in the lock just past ten. Donghae shuffled in, his gear bag dropped with a thud by the entry. He looked ravaged. Not just tired, but hollowed out. His eyes were shadowed, his usual vibrant energy replaced by a grim, weary stillness.
Then he saw the living room. Saw the mattress, the candle, the oil. Saw Hyukjae.
Hyukjae stood by the mattress, feeling the cool air on his bare legs. “You look like shit,” he said, his voice quiet.
A slow, exhausted blink. Donghae’s gaze traveled from Hyukjae’s face, down the open collar of the shirt, over the naked legs. “You’re wearing my shirt.”
“It was clean.”
“You changed the room.”
“You said you were broken.” Hyukjae knelt on the mattress, gesturing for him to come closer. “Get over here. Let me fix what I can.”
Donghae obeyed, moving like each joint pained him. He sank to his knees on the mattress, his back to Hyukjae. A low groan escaped him as he pulled his sweatshirt over his head, then his t-shirt. The muscles of his back and shoulders were knotted cords of tension, new bruises blooming like storm clouds over his spine.
Hyukjae poured oil into his palms, rubbing them together. He started at the base of Donghae’s neck, his thumbs pressing into the rigid trapezius muscles.
A sharp, pained hiss. Then a shuddering exhale. “God. Right there.”
Hyukjae worked in silence, his hands learning this new map of exhaustion. He kneaded the tight ropes of muscle along Donghae’s shoulders, his fingers digging deep into the fascia. Donghae’s head hung forward, his breaths becoming ragged, open-mouthed things.
“Fuck, princess. Your hands.” The words were a slurred groan. As Hyukjae’s palms smoothed down the length of his spine, pressing the heels of his hands into the sore lower back, Donghae’s noises changed. The pained grunts softened, melting into low, sensual moans that vibrated in his chest. “Yeah… just like that. Oh, fuck, right there.”
Hyukjae focused on the knots, on the physical need. But each unabashed, hungry sound Donghae made was a lick of flame against his skin. He could feel the shift in the air, the easing of pain morphing into a gathering of a different kind of tension. Donghae began to move subtly under his touch, not away from the pressure, but into it, his hips pushing back faintly against the mattress.
“Missed you,” Donghae mumbled, his voice thick. “Thought about your mouth. Your ass. Every fucking night in that sterile bed.”
Hyukjae’s hands stilled for a second. He poured more oil, slicking his hands before sliding them around Donghae’s sides, working the intercostal muscles. His knuckles brushed the hard plane of Donghae’s stomach. Donghae gasped, a sharp, wanting sound.
“Turn over,” Hyukjae said, his own voice rough.
Donghae turned, moving with a sudden, predatory grace that belied his exhaustion. His eyes were black in the candlelight, fixed on Hyukjae’s face, then dropping to where the white shirt gaped open. His cock strained against the front of his sweatpants, a thick, obvious line. “Two weeks,” he said, as if it were a sentence. “I’m fucking empty for you.”
Hyukjae placed a hand on his chest, pushing him gently down to lie on the mattress. He straddled Donghae’s thighs, avoiding the obvious need. He began again on his chest, his hands sliding over pecs, over nipples that hardened instantly under his slick palms.
Donghae’s restraint snapped.
He surged up, one arm hooking around Hyukjae’s waist, flipping them with a brutal, practiced twist. Hyukjae’s back hit the mattress, the breath knocked from him. Donghae loomed over him, his body caging him in, his eyes wild with two weeks of deprivation.
“No more,” Donghae growled. He fisted the front of the white shirt and ripped it open. Buttons pinged against the wooden floor. “I need to be inside you. Now.”
There was no finesse, no seduction. It was a starving man at a feast. Donghae crushed their mouths together, his tongue claiming Hyukjae’s with a brutal urgency. He shoved the ruined shirt off Hyukjae’s shoulders, his mouth following, biting a path down his throat, sucking a dark mark over his collarbone. His hands were everywhere, gripping, squeezing, as if re-memorizing his territory.
“Off,” Donghae snarled, yanking at Hyukjae’s briefs. “Get these the fuck off.” Hyukjae lifted his hips, aiding him. Donghae shoved his own sweatpants and boxers down just enough to free his erection, which jutted out, angry-red and leaking copiously. He spat into his own hand, slicking himself in rough, frantic strokes.
He pushed Hyukjae’s thighs apart, his grip bruising. He positioned himself, the blunt head nudging against Hyukjae’s entrance. He was wet from the oil and spit, but not enough, not for this.
“Donghae, wait—”
“Can’t.” The word was a plea and a command. He pushed forward, a relentless, burning invasion.
Hyukjae cried out, his spine arching. The stretch was fierce, almost too much, a white-hot ache of being filled too fast by a cock that felt bigger, harder, more desperate than ever. Donghae sank in to the root with a guttural, choked sob, his whole body trembling.
He didn’t move. For three heartbeats, he was still, buried deep, his forehead pressed to Hyukjae’s, his breath shuddering. “You feel… fuck, you feel like heaven. My heaven.”
Then he fucked him.
It was a relentless, pounding rhythm, a physical venting of two weeks of distance and desire. Each drive was deep, seeking, punishing in its intensity. The thin mattress slid on the floor with their force. Donghae’s hands pinned Hyukjae’s wrists above his head, his lips and teeth leaving marks on his neck, his shoulders.
“You take it,” Donghae rasped, his thrusts becoming erratic, harder. “You take all of me, princess. My good fucking girl. I dreamt of this. Dreamt of splitting you open on my cock just like this.”
The filthy words, the raw possession, the overwhelming fullness shattered Hyukjae’s control. His own cock, trapped and leaking between their sweat-slicked stomachs, jerked. Pleasure detonated, a silent, seizing explosion that ripped through his gut and radiated out to his fingertips. His channel clamped down violently around the cock pistoning into him, milking it.
Donghae saw it, felt it. With a roar that was pure triumph, he slammed home one final time, his body bowing. Hyukjae felt the hot, pulsing rush as Donghae came, a flood that seemed endless, filling him in thick, possessive waves. Donghae collapsed on top of him, his full weight a welcome anchor, his face buried in Hyukjae’s neck.
Their hearts hammered against each other, a frantic, slowing drumbeat. The living room smelled of sex, almond oil, and sweat. Donghae finally shifted, pulling out slowly. He looked down between Hyukjae’s splayed thighs, at the evidence of his possession dripping out onto the mattress. A low, satisfied sound rumbled in his chest.
He gathered Hyukjae close, rolling them to their sides. He nuzzled into his hair, his breathing still ragged. “I’m not going anywhere next weekend,” he mumbled, his words already slurred with impending sleep. “They can fucking fire me. This is my home.”
Outside, the city lights blurred into a distant, indifferent galaxy. Inside, on a ruined mattress in the center of the room, they were a tangled, sticky, complete universe of two. The promise of tomorrow’s chaos—the training, the distance, the world—could wait. For now, this was the only victory that mattered.
For now, this was the only victory that mattered. It became their pattern, a taut rhythm of separation and collision. Donghae’s trial stretched into a permanent contract, his weeks a blur of grueling practice and sterile hotel rooms. Hyukjae’s own final semester at Silver Ice was a countdown, his future a formless, looming question.
The answer came from an unexpected, pointed direction. The Seongnam Storm, Donghae’s club’s most bitter rival, sent a scout. They’d been watching Hyukjae’s captaincy tapes, his ferocious defensive plays. They offered a three-week intensive trial. “It’s a real shot,” Hyohyeon said, looking over the contract on his laptop. “But oppa… it’s Seongnam. Donghae will combust.”
“It’s my shot,” Hyukjae said, his voice low. He accepted.
The distance this time was a colder, sharper thing. Three weeks. Their texts were clipped, strained by time zones and a simmering, unspoken competition. Donghae’s replies grew terser as Hyukjae’s updates mentioned Storm drills, Storm coaches, Storm facilities. The careful intimacy of the laundry room felt like a relic from another life.
On the final night of his trial, the Storm’s coaching staff took the prospective players out. The celebration was a roar of relieved masculinity, too many shots of soju pushed across a sticky table. Hyukjae, who held his alcohol like a lightweight, drank to drown the weird hollow feeling in his chest. He drank to forget the calculating gleam in the head coach’s eye, to forget that Donghae hadn’t answered his last three texts.
The world became a smeared, unsteady blur. He fumbled with his phone, his thumb slipping on the screen. He called the last number, the only number that mattered.
“’S me,” he slurred into the receiver, slumping against the alley wall behind the bar. The sounds of the city wobbled. “Can’t… cab. Hotel. ‘S far.”
Donghae’s voice was a crackle of static, cold and sharp. “Where are you? Hyukjae, are you drunk?”
“Celebrating.” The word was a messy exhale. “Did good. They liked me.” He recited the hotel name, the address a tangled knot in his mouth, before the phone slipped from his grasp.
He didn’t remember the wait. The next concrete sensation was a hand gripping his arm, hard. He was hauled upright from the curb where he’d been listing. Donghae’s face swam into view, his features carved from stone in the neon light. “You reek,” Donghae said, his voice tight. “You’re a fucking mess.”
Hyukjae offered a loopy, lopsided smile. “You came.”
“Of course I fucking came,” Donghae snarled, maneuvering him into the passenger seat of a rental car. The drive was silent, tense. Donghae’s knuckles were white on the wheel. Hyukjae drifted, his head lolling against the window, mumbling about forechecks and power plays.
The hotel room door clicked shut. Hyukjae swayed, reaching for the bed but finding Donghae’s chest instead. “Need to sleep,” he mumbled.
“You need a shower,” Donghae corrected, his anger a live wire beneath the calm. He began unbuttoning Hyukjae’s stained shirt, his movements efficient, clinical.
The touch, however gentle its intent, ignited a frantic, drunken panic in Hyukjae. He swatted at Donghae’s hands, a clumsy, desperate motion. “No! Stop it!” The shout was too loud for the quiet room.
Donghae stepped back, eyes flashing. “I’m trying to help you, you idiot. You’re covered in beer and god knows what.”
Hyukjae staggered back, clutching the front of his shirt closed with a childish, solemn protectiveness. His vision swam, but his declaration was clear, ringing with a drunkard’s profound conviction. “Do not undress me! I’m a married man! Only my husband can touch me!”
The words hung in the air, stark and absurd. Donghae froze, his anger momentarily derailed. He stared at Hyukjae, who stood there weaving, jaw set in a belligerent pout, defending his virtue from the very man who had wrecked it in a hundred different ways.
A strange, weary understanding smoothed the fury from Donghae’s face. The fight left his shoulders. He let out a long, controlled breath. “Okay,” he said, his voice softening into something careful, placating. “Okay, sweetheart. No undressing. Your… husband wouldn’t like it.”
He guided the pliant, now-satisfied Hyukjae to the bed. He tugged his shoes off, then simply tipped him onto the mattress. Hyukjae curled into the covers, mumbling something about wedding rings, and was snoring within seconds.
Donghae stood over him, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. He didn’t move to clean him up. He just stood there in the dark hotel room, the words I’m a married man echoing in the silence. A slow, unbidden heat began to uncoil in his gut, replacing the anger. He sat in the chair by the window, watching the digital clock tick through the hours, watching Hyukjae sleep.
Sometime near three in the morning, Hyukjae stirred. With the unselfconscious logic of the drunk and asleep, he grew too warm. He wrestled with his clothes in the dark, peeling off the offensive shirt, shoving his trousers down his legs and kicking them to the floor. He lay back down, naked, one arm thrown over his eyes, and fell immediately back into a deep sleep.
He had no idea Donghae had finally left the chair. No idea he’d stripped down to his own boxers and slid into the bed beside him. In his unconscious state, Hyukjae turned toward the new source of heat. He slung a heavy arm across Donghae’s waist, his forehead coming to rest against his shoulder with a soft, sighing breath.
Donghae lay utterly still, Hyukjae’s naked skin searing against his own. The declaration, the unconscious trust, the sheer totality of his possession even in stupor—it forged the last of his anger into something denser, more terrifying. He stared at the ceiling, Hyukjae’s breath warming his skin. “You’d better be fucking married to me,” he whispered into the dark, his hand coming up to cradle the back of Hyukjae’s head. The future, with its rival jerseys and separated cities, suddenly looked like a war he was already winning.