Chapter 20: The Bakery Interference
The air in Hyukjae’s apartment was a physical weight. Thick, stifling, and humming with the weak, pathetic grind of an AC unit that had given up the ghost days ago. He’d meant to call someone. He’d forgotten.
Sweat made his old t-shirt cling to his spine. He paced from the kitchenette to the mountain of half-unpacked boxes by the TV, his bare feet sticking to the linoleum. Three days. It had been three days since Donghae’s bed, his sunlight, his impossible promise. On Monday, I bring you coffee.
It was Tuesday.
The suppressants, the last of the faulty batch from the clinic, had been a ticking clock in his veins. He’d felt the cracks forming yesterday—a sharper smell to his coffee, a dizzy spell after teaching a beginner’s class. He’d chalked it up to nerves, to the seismic shift of everything.
He’d been wrong.
The first real cramp doubled him over at noon. It wasn't pain. It was a deep, hollow need, a biological siren that short-circuited rational thought. He’d called Ryeowook, voice thin as wire. His friend had arrived in a whirlwind of nervous energy and a bag of dubious “heat-aid” supplies.
“He texted, you know,” Ryeowook had said, fussing with the thermostat as if that would help. “The alpha. Asked for your schedule. I didn’t give it to him. Figured you’d want to… orchestrate your own mental breakdown.”
Now, hours later, the orchestration was complete chaos. The heat was a forest fire in his blood, burning away the cheerful façade, the clumsy charm, everything but a raw, screaming want centered on one person. The person who wasn’t here.
He sank to the floor, back against the overstuffed couch, a whimper tearing from his throat. His scent, usually honey and sunlight, was now pure, undiluted nectar—cloying and desperate.
“Okay, new plan,” Ryeowook announced, fanning himself with a pizza box. “I call him. I say, ‘Hello, tall, dark, and emotionally constipated, your omega is currently melting into my best friend’s gross floor. Please retrieve him.’” He paused. “Is that too forward?”
“Don’t,” Hyukjae gasped, curling in on himself. The bandage on his arm from the clinic visit was itchy, a maddening distraction. “He said Monday. It’s Tuesday. He changed his mind. He saw the… the reality. The mess.”
“The reality is you’re in pre-heat hell because of garbage medication and he’s probably stuck in a meeting about quarterly projections,” Ryeowook snapped, but his voice was soft with worry.
A knock at the door. Two sharp, precise raps.
They both froze. Ryeowook’s eyes went wide.
“Is it the landlord?” Hyukjae whispered, panic slicing through the fog. “I can’t—”
“Smell that?” Ryeowook whispered back, nostrils flaring. “No landlord ever smelled like rain-washed granite and expensive regret.”
The knock came again, louder. A voice, deep and unmistakably tense, filtered through the cheap wood. “Hyukjae?”
Donghae.
Ryeowook scrambled up. “Game time.” He shot a look at Hyukjae, who was trying and failing to get his legs under him. “Just… try not to look like a complete disaster. Which is impossible. Own it.”
He flung the door open.
Donghae stood in the hallway, looking out of place in his impeccably tailored slate-gray suit. His hair was slightly disheveled, as if he’d run his hands through it repeatedly. In one hand, he held two blue ice packs from the convenience store downstairs. In the other, a paper tray with two iced coffees.
He looked past Ryeowook, his dark eyes scanning the chaotic room, the boxes, the pathetic AC unit—landing finally on Hyukjae, a shivering, sweat-soaked heap on the floor.
His expression shifted from polite concern to stark, instantaneous understanding. The ice packs and coffees hit the small entry table with a thud and a slosh.
“What happened?” Donghae’s voice was low, a controlled tremor in it. “Your friend at the studio said you called in sick. I went to the clinic first, thinking your arm—” He took a step inside, his scent rolling into the apartment, a clean, powerful tide against the thick sweetness. It wasn't just rain now. It was ozone. A storm.
Hyukjae couldn’t speak. He just stared, drowning in the sight of him.
Ryeowook clasped his hands together, a beatific smile on his face. “FINALLY.” He turned, grabbed Donghae by his silk tie, and physically yanked him the rest of the way inside. “Your timing is either terrible or perfect. I’m voting perfect.”
“What—” Donghae began, off-balance.
But Ryeowook was already maneuvering him across the room, past the boxes, shoving him toward Hyukjae. “The suppressants failed. It’s a full system crash. He’s been like this for hours. I’m out of my depth.” He reached Hyukjae’s bedroom door, flung it open, and pointed.
Understanding, swift and absolute, hardened Donghae’s features. He knelt beside Hyukjae, his hand coming up to cradle his jaw. His touch was cool. Hyukjae leaned into it with a broken sound.
“Hey,” Donghae murmured, his thumb stroking Hyukjae’s cheek. “Look at me.”
Hyukjae forced his eyes open. The world was blurry, but Donghae’s face was clear. Worried. Determined.
“Can you stand?”
Hyukjae shook his head.
Without another word, Donghae slid one arm under his knees, the other around his back, and lifted him from the floor as if he weighed nothing. Hyukjae buried his face in Donghae’s neck, inhaling the storm-scents, the only thing that made the burning recede for a second.
Ryeowook made a giddy sound. As Donghae carried Hyukjae into the bedroom, his friend pulled the door shut with a definitive click. The sound of a key turning in the lock echoed.
“Ryeowook!” Hyukjae managed to cry out, mortification flaring.
“Use protection!” Ryeowook’s voice was muffled but gleeful through the door. “Or don’t! I’ll bake a congratulations cake! With little alpha and omega figurines! I’m leaving now! Bye!”
Footsteps retreated. The front door opened and shut.
Silence, except for Hyukjae’s ragged breathing and the frantic beat of his own heart.
Donghae laid him gently on the rumpled bedsheets. The room was dim, blinds drawn. He stood over the bed, looking down at him, loosening his tie and pulling it off. He shrugged out of his suit jacket, draped it over the chair. Each movement was deliberate, focused.
“You came,” Hyukjae whispered.
“I told you I would.” Donghae unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt, rolling his sleeves up his forearms. The muscles there corded with tension. “I got held up in a merger negotiation that turned… contentious. My scent was all over the place. I didn’t want to come to you like that.” He sat on the edge of the bed, his weight causing the mattress to dip. He reached out, his fingers tracing the edge of the bandage on Hyukjae’s arm. “This was never supposed to happen. Not like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Hyukjae choked out, heat and shame washing over him. “It’s so… messy.”
“Stop.” Donghae’s command was soft but absolute. His eyes burned. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Those clinic bastards… this is on them.” He leaned down, his nose skimming the column of Hyukjae’s throat, a slow, deep inhale that made Donghae shudder. “God, you’re beautiful. Even like this. Especially like this.”
The words shattered the last of Hyukjae’s restraint. He reached up, fumbling for Donghae’s collar, pulling him down. “Please.”
It was all he had to say.
Donghae kissed him. It was nothing like the reverence of the penthouse. This was pure, unvarnished hunger. A claiming kiss that tasted of coffee and desperation. Hyukjae kissed back just as fiercely, his hands pulling at Donghae’s shirt, needing skin.
Fabric tore. Buttons pinged against the wall. Donghae didn’t seem to care.
His hands were everywhere, mapping the fevered skin, learning the new, urgent geography of Hyukjae’s body. When he finally slid inside him, it was with a single, relentless thrust that punched the air from Hyukjae’s lungs. It was too much. It was everything.
There was no slow reverence this time. This was a conflagration. Donghae moved with a driven, rhythmic intensity, his face buried in Hyukjae’s neck, breathing him in, murmuring words that were half-growl, half-prayer. “Mine. This is what you feel like. This is what I’ve been imagining.”
Hyukjae clawed at his back, legs locking around Donghae’s hips, meeting every thrust. The heat crested, not in a wave, but in a sharp, sudden detonation. He came with a soundless cry, his body seizing, the world whiting out.
Donghae followed, his own release a sharp, bitten-off groan against Hyukjae’s skin, his teeth pressing once more, firmly, into the swollen flesh of Hyukjae’s bonding gland. Not a bite. A promise of one.
For long minutes, the only sound was their synced, heavy breathing. The fever in Hyukjae’s blood had banked to a low, manageable simmer. The frantic edge was gone, replaced by a deep, liquid exhaustion.
Donghae shifted, rolling to the side but keeping him close, an arm locked around his waist. He nuzzled the sweat-damp hair at Hyukjae’s temple. “The ice packs were for your arm,” he said, his voice gravel. “The coffee was an excuse.”
A weak laugh bubbled out of Hyukjae. “You didn’t need an excuse.”
“I thought I did.” Donghae propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at him. His gaze was serious, tracing the dark circles under Hyukjae’s eyes, the flush still high on his cheeks. “This changes the timeline.”
Hyukjae’s stomach tightened. “What timeline?”
“Ours.” Donghae’s hand found his, lacing their fingers together. “You can’t stay on those suppressants. And I can’t… I won’t watch you go through this alone again. Ever.” He took a breath. “I’m staying. Tonight. Tomorrow. However long it takes for this cycle to pass. We’ll order food. I’ll call my office. You’ll call the studio.”
The simplicity of it, the sheer audacious certainty, left Hyukjae speechless. “You have a multi-million dollar company to run.”
“It can wait.” Donghae said it like it was a law of physics. He leaned down, kissing him softly. “You’re the merger I’m most concerned with.”
Hyukjae stared at him, at the man who’d watched from the shadows, who’d carried him from a clinic, who’d just wrecked him and put him back together on a sunlit bed and now on his own messy sheets. The longing wasn’t hidden anymore. It was answered, fiercely and completely.
Outside, the weak AC hummed its sad song. Inside, tangled in the damp sheets, with Donghae’s storm-scent wrapped around him, Hyukjae finally believed it. Monday didn’t matter. They were already happening.
They were already happening. The thought shimmered in the haze between one breath and the next, a solid truth holding him down to the wet sheets. Donghae’s weight was an anchor. His breathing softened, evened. For a handful of minutes, the world shrank to the steady beat of a heart against his ear, the cool drip of sweat between their bodies.
Then the furnace in his gut roared back to life.
It wasn’t a wave. It was a sudden, vicious spike, a wire pulled taut and humming inside him. A full-body flinch betrayed him. Donghae went still, his hand on Hyukjae’s back pausing its idle stroke.
“Again?” Donghae’s voice was sleep-roughened, but alert.
“It’s… it’s not done.” The words were a gasp. Shame heated his face. “The bad suppressants… it comes in waves. Worse ones.” He felt raw, oversensitive, and yet the empty ache was returning, deeper, more demanding. He couldn’t lie still. He shifted, his thigh rubbing against Donghae’s, a spark that made him jerk.
Donghae understood. His calm was a palpable force in the dim room. He moved, his hands firm on Hyukjae’s hips, guiding him. “Okay.” A single syllable of acceptance. “Then tell me what you need. Right now.”
Hyukjae looked down at him. Donghae’s dark eyes held no judgment, only a waiting intensity. The control he’d wielded before was banked, offered. It made the need sharper, more desperate.
“I need,” Hyukjae panted, the grammar of want reducing to its simplest form, “you. Now.”
He climbed astride Donghae’s hips, his body trembling with the effort. The sight beneath him was indecent: Donghae, shirtless and devastatingly solid, his cock already hard again against his stomach. Hyukjae didn’t wait for help. He reached between his own legs, guiding Donghae inside with a hand that shook.
He took him in one sinking, brutal motion.
The stretch was exquisite, a perfect, burning fullness that made his vision shimmer. He cried out, a raw, broken sound. Above him, Donghae hissed, his hands flying to Hyukjae’s waist to steady them both. His grip was tight, almost painful.
“Fuck, Hyukjae. Easy.” But his voice was a ragged scrape.
Easy was impossible. Hyukjae was chasing, a creature of pure need. He planted his hands on Donghae’s chest, feeling the strong beat of his heart, and began to move. He set a punishing pace from the first rise and fall, his muscles straining. Each downward thrust was a jolt of piercing pleasure, each lift a moment of desperate emptiness he needed to fill again.
He rode him hard, a frantic rhythm that had the bedframe groaning against the wall. His head fell back, cords standing out in his throat. The world dissolved into sensation: the slap of skin, the slick, filthy sounds of their joining, his own choked sobs for air.
Donghae let him take, his body tensing like a bowstring beneath the onslaught. He watched, his gaze hooded and dark, drinking in the sight of Hyukjae unraveling. His thumbs dug into the sharp points of Hyukjae’s hip bones, guiding the angle just so.
“There,” Donghae grunted, as Hyukjae found a spot that made stars burst behind his eyelids. “Just like that. You take it so fucking good. So perfect for me.”
The words were a catalyst. Hyukjae’s pace became frenzied, sloppy, his thighs burning. He was close, teetering on a cliff’s edge made of pure, animal bliss. Donghae’s control finally snapped. He surged up, wrapping one arm around Hyukjae’s back to crush their bodies together, rolling them with a powerful twist until Hyukjae was beneath him, legs hooked high over his shoulders.
The new angle was devastating. Deeper. Hyukjae screamed.
Donghae drove into him, each thrust a deliberate, measured conquest. He caged Hyukjae, his face inches away,每一次進入都帶著毀滅性的精準。他困住赫宰，臉離他只有寸許，每一次呼吸都混在一起。
“Look at me.” The command was guttural. Hyukjae’s tear-blurred eyes focused. Donghae was watching him as if memorizing the fracturing of his soul. His movements never slowed, a relentless, thorough possession. “This,” he whispered, the foul, beautiful words a secret between their mouths. “This tight, wet heat. It’s mine.”
He punctuated each claim with a drive of his hips. Hyukjae could only claw at his shoulders, gibbering yes, yes, yes.
The coil inside him snapped. His climax ripped through him silent at first, a seizure of pure light, before a broken wail tore free from his chest. It seemed endless, wracking every nerve.
Through the pulsating haze, he felt Donghae’s rhythm fracture. Felt the hot, sudden flood inside him as Donghae came with a low, ragged groan, his forehead collapsing against Hyukjae’s shoulder. He kept moving, slower now, drawing out the aftershocks for both of them until they were spent, hollowed out.
For a long time, there was only the sound of struggling lungs. The scent of sex and satisfied omega was heavy, a physical layer in the air. Donghae eventually shifted his weight away but didn’t let go, pulling Hyukjae against his side. His fingers found the edge of the clinic bandage again, a habitual touch.
“The waves,” Donghae said, his voice wrecked but clear. “How long?”
“A day. Maybe two.” Hyukjae felt boneless, the heat temporarily sated to a dull glow.
Donghae was silent for a moment, his chest rising and falling. He turned his head, his lips brushing Hyukjae’s temple. “I meant what I said. I’m staying.” His arm tightened. “But after this… we’re fixing it. No more clinic. No more guessing. We find a real solution. Together.”
It wasn’t a flowery promise. It was a plan. A logistics of care that addressed the faulty suppressants, the vulnerable chair in the clinic, the silent watching. Hyukjae nodded against his skin, the motion small and sure. The heat would return. But so would Donghae. And after that, they would begin
But so would Donghae. And after that, they would begin.
The reprieve lasted exactly forty-seven minutes.
Hyukjae counted them on the digital clock, his head on Donghae’s chest, listening to the strong, steady heartbeat. Then a cramp, low and mean, twisted his insides. He jerked. A fresh, slick heat flooded between his thighs, soaking the sheet beneath him. His scent, which had mellowed to a warm honey, spiked again into something unbearable and sweet.
“Oh, god,” he moaned, curling into a ball. “No, not again. It’s too soon.”
Donghae was already moving, his hand flat on Hyukjae’s stomach, feeling the muscles clench. “Okay,” he said, voice steady. He sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist. “It’s okay.” He didn’t sound surprised.
“It’s not okay,” Hyukjae gasped, frustration and shame boiling over. He kicked at the tangled sheets. “It’s fucking endless. I’m just a… a leaky, needy mess. You should go. This is… it’s pathetic.” He was babbling, tears of sheer overwhelm threatening.
A firm hand cupped his jaw, turning his face. Donghae’s gaze was unyielding. “Do you want me to go?”
The question hung there. Hyukjae stared at him, at the serious set of his mouth, the dark eyes that had watched him in the studio, in the clinic, that saw every part of this disaster and hadn’t flinched. “No,” he whispered, the truth wrenched out of him.
“Then stop.” Donghae’s thumb swept over his cheekbone. “This is biology. Fucked-up, manipulated biology. It’s not you.”
He leaned forward and kissed him, a deep, consuming kiss that tasted like sweat and resolve. When he pulled back, his breath was hot on Hyukjae’s lips. “Tell me what you need. In words.”
The command cut through the fog. Hyukjae’s hands fisted in the sheets. His hips gave an involuntary, desperate roll. The need was a physical scream, a hollow vertigo that only one thing could fill. He was past poetry, past polite euphemisms.
“Please,” he begged, his voice breaking. “Donghae, please, I need you inside. I need your knot. I need to feel you… I need to feel you lock in me. Fill me up. Stretch me. Right now. Please, just… get in me. I can’t… I can’t think.”
The vulgar, direct plea seemed to ignite something in Donghae. A low growl vibrated in his chest. “Alright.” It was gravel and smoke. “Alright, baby. Don’t fight it. Just give in.”
He manhandled Hyukjae onto his hands and knees with effortless strength. The position was primal, exposing. Hyukjae shuddered, presenting himself without shame, his back arching. The cool air of the room hit his wet skin. He felt desperate, raw, an animal in its most honest state.
He felt the blunt, wet head of Donghae’s cock press against him. It was so much larger now, swollen and hot. The threat of the stretch was a promise.
“Take whatever you need from me,” Donghae murmured, one hand gripping Hyukjae’s hip, the other guiding himself. He didn’t push. He waited.
Hyukjae pushed back.
He impaled himself in one agonizing, perfect slide, a choked scream tearing from his throat as he sheathed Donghae completely. The fullness was immediate, overwhelming, a borderline pain that was the only thing that made sense. “Fuck,” he sobbed, his arms trembling.
Donghae held still, letting him adjust, his own breath coming in sharp gusts. “Jesus. You just… you just take it. So fucking greedy for it.” His voice was full of awe and raw lust.
Then he began to move.
These weren’t the measured, deep strokes from before. This was shorter, harder, a brutal piston motion aimed at one single, devastating point inside him. The bed slammed into the wall with each thrust. The sound was obscene: wet, fleshy slaps, the groan of the frame, Hyukjae’s shattered cries.
“Yes, right there, right there, don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop,” Hyukjae chanted, his forehead pressed to the mattress, drool slick on his chin. He was incoherent, reduced to a pleading, grasping thing. His own cock, hard and neglected, leaked onto the sheets beneath him with each jarring impact.
Donghae’s pace was relentless, a machine designed to break him apart. One hand left his hip and fisted in Hyukjae’s hair, pulling his head back, arching his spine further. “You feel that? You feel how deep I am in this perfect, sloppy cunt?” The filthy words were a brand. “This is what you begged for. Take it.”
The pressure at his core began to build differently, a coiling, expanding heat that was more than an orgasm. It was a biological imperative reaching its peak. Hyukjae felt Donghae’s thrusts grow more erratic, felt the base of his cock begin to swell against his rim.
“It’s coming,” Donghae warned, his voice straining, his movements becoming short, urgent grinds. “Gonna knot you. Gonna fill you so full you’ll feel it for days. That what you need, baby?”
“Yes! Knot me, please, please lock it in me, do it, do it now!” Hyukjae screamed.
With a final, deep, grinding shove, Donghae buried himself to the hilt. The knot, thick and insistent, popped past the tight ring of muscle, seating itself inside. Hyukjae shouted, his vision whiting out as his body clamped down in a series of violent, pulsing contractions. It wasn’t a climax; it was a seizure of pure completion.
He felt the hot, rhythmic pulse of Donghae’s release deep inside him, filling the space the knot created, a flood with no escape. It was an intimate, profound fullness that anchored them together. Donghae collapsed over his back, his weight pinning Hyukjae down, both of them breathing in ragged, shattered harmony.
Slowly, carefully, Donghae rolled them to their sides, tied together. He wrapped an arm around Hyukjae’s heaving chest, holding him close. The oversensitivity was a live wire, every tiny movement sending jolts through Hyukjae’s spent body.
“Breathe,” Donghae murmured into his damp hair. His lips pressed a kiss there. “Just breathe through it. I’ve got you.”
Hyukjae floated. The frantic, clawing need had been utterly obliterated. In its place was a heavy, sated warmth, a liquid peace. The bond was temporary, biological, but the arm around him, the quiet words, felt permanent.
The digital clock ticked over. The city’s neon glow bled around the edges of the blinds. They were stuck like this, joined, for a while longer.
Donghae’s fingers found the clinic bandage again, tracing its edge. His voice, when it came, was quiet but concrete in the dark. “On Monday,” he said, “we find a new doctor. A good one. We show them the faulty batch numbers. We get you something that doesn’t make you suffer.” He paused. “And we tell them you have an Alpha now. So they tread carefully.”
We. The word settled deeper than the knot, a different kind of anchor. Hyukjae closed his eyes. The heat would recede. The mess would remain. But so would Donghae. And after that, they would begin the real work of building something that didn't hinge on disaster.
Something built on this.