Chapter 3: Pond manipulates Dunk into the act of sex with him
The sterile light of Ryu’s apartment had been a clinical balm. For forty-eight hours, it was a command center. Dunk slept on the stiff leather sofa, waking to the smell of strong coffee and the sound of Ryu on the phone, his voice a low, relentless drone. They’d drafted statements they never sent. They’d mapped out timelines, cross-referencing the photos with Dunk’s own memories, each match a tiny detonation in his chest. The pain had been folded, compressed, and locked away in a deep-freeze compartment of his mind. What operated now was a sharp, functional coldness.
His phone, a new burner Ryu had provided, buzzed on the glass coffee table. The screen lit up with a number he’d deleted but not forgotten. Pond.
He watched it ring. Once. Twice. On the third ring, he picked it up. He said nothing.
“Dunk.” Pond’s voice was shredded, a ruin of its usual easy-going cadence. It was the voice from the sofa, broken and wet. “Please. Say something.”
“You have ten seconds.”
A ragged inhale. “I need to see you. Not on the phone. Please. It’s not… it’s not what you think.”
Dunk almost laughed. The cliché was so perfect it was poetic. “It’s exactly what I think. I have the pictures, Pond. I was inside you. What’s left to misunderstand?”
The silence on the line was thick with shame. “I deserve that. I deserve all of it. Just… one hour. A public place. There’s a hotel, the Vela, on Silom. Room 712. I’ll be there at nine. If you don’t come, I’ll know. I’ll leave you alone forever.”
“Why would I come?”
“Because you looked at me when you… when we…” Pond’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You saw me. Not the photos. Me. And I think you have questions even Ryu’s PI can’t answer.”
He hung up.
Dunk held the phone until the screen went dark. He saw Pond’s tear-streaked face, the mix of pain and unwanted pleasure. He heard the ragged question in his own mind: Why did he let me? Why did he respond? The betrayal was one thing. The complex, ugly humanity of it was another. Ryu was in the study, on a call with a crisis manager. Dunk stood, pocketed the burner phone and his own silenced smartphone, and left without a word.
The Vela was a mid-tier business hotel, anonymous and gleaming. Dunk took the elevator to the seventh floor, his reflection in the brass doors a stranger—dressed in black, face blank. The hallway was deserted, hushed by thick carpet. He stood before 712. No sound came from within.
He knocked. Once.
The door opened almost immediately, as if Pond had been standing right there. He looked worse. His eyes were swollen, his face pale and unshaven. He wore a simple grey t-shirt and sweatpants, the uniform of defeat. The room behind him was generic: a king-sized bed, a desk, a muted landscape print on the wall. The only light came from a single bedside lamp, casting long shadows. The air smelled of stale coffee and the faint, sweet note of hotel disinfectant.
“You came,” Pond breathed, stepping back to let him in.
Dunk entered, leaving the door ajar. A statement. He wasn’t staying. He turned to face his former best friend. “Talk. You have the hour you bought.”
Pond wrapped his arms around himself. “He pursued me. At first, it was just… attention. You were so busy with your breakout role, the press tours. Joong gets lonely. He needs a mirror. I was there.”
“Spare me the justification. You fucked my boyfriend. For months.”
“I fell in love with him!” The words burst out of Pond, raw and desperate. “And he… he said he loved me too. But he loved you more. You were the public story, the perfect match. I was the dirty secret. The pressure valve. When you were away, he was mine. When you were here, I had to watch him pretend.” His eyes glittered with furious, wounded tears. “You think you’re the only victim? You got the love in the light. I got the scraps in the dark. And I was grateful for them.”
The revelation landed, not as an excuse, but as another layer of poison. It wasn’t just a fling. It was a rival love, a shadow relationship. Dunk’s coldness solidified into something diamond-hard. “So this is a pity party? For the mistress?”
“No.” Pond swiped at his face, his expression shifting into something darker, more familiar. A glimpse of the easy-going friend, but twisted. “This is about the fact that you fucked me to punish me, but you were harder than I’ve ever felt you. You came harder. I felt it.”
Dunk went very still.
Pond took a step closer. The scent of him—familiar soap, the unique musk of his skin—flooded Dunk’s senses, a sensory ambush of a thousand lost memories. “You hated it, but your body didn’t. You wanted to own it. To own me. Because part of you knows this isn’t just about him. It’s about us. You and me. We were a unit before he ever showed up. And he split us apart.”
“You let him.”
“I was weak.” Another step. They were a foot apart now. Dunk could see the pulse hammering in Pond’s throat. “But you… you were always the strong one. The good one. And look at you now. You’re not good anymore. I saw it in your eyes. You’re something else. And you came here because you want to see it again.”
It was manipulation. Transparent, desperate manipulation. But it was woven with strands of truth that wrapped around Dunk’s frozen core and squeezed. The violent, claiming heat of that night on the sofa had been a perverse release. The memory of Tin’s anonymous mouth had left him emptier. This… this was a known entity. A familiar sin.
Pond saw the flicker in Dunk’s eyes. He reached out, his fingers brushing the back of Dunk’s clenched hand. The touch was electric, a live wire to the past. “You can hate me,” Pond whispered, moving into his space. “You should hate me. Hate me while you fuck me properly. Not in anger. In control. Show me what I threw away. Show me what he never got.”
His mouth found Dunk’s jaw, a ghost of a kiss. “He never fucked me like you did. It was always… careful. Hidden. Be the hidden thing, Dunk. But be it for yourself.”
The last thread of resistance snapped. Dunk grabbed Pond by the throat, not hard enough to choke, but to possess. He spun him around and shoved him face-first against the near wall, beside the generic landscape print. Pond gasped, his hands slapping flat against the wallpaper.
“You don’t get to script this,” Dunk growled into his ear, his body pressing Pond’s into the wall. He used his knee to force Pond’s legs apart. With his free hand, he yanked the sweatpants and briefs down to Pond’s thighs in one rough motion. “You’re a lying, treacherous hole. That’s all you are now.”
“Yes,” Pond hissed, pushing his hips back in a blatant, shameless invitation. “So use it.”
Dunk fumbled with his own jeans, freeing himself. He was already fully hard, a brutal ache that had nothing to do with tenderness. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly, and positioned the head of his cock at Pond’s entrance. There was no preparation, no care. Just the brutal, slow, inexorable pressure of invasion.
Pond cried out, a sharp, torn sound that was swallowed by the wall. His body clenched, tight and hot and resistant. Dunk leaned his full weight forward, burying himself to the hilt in one relentless push, sheathing himself in the searing, tight heat.
“Fuck… Dunk…” Pond’s voice was a shattered moan.
“That’s the idea,” Dunk panted, withdrawing almost completely and slamming back in. He set a ruthless, pounding rhythm, each thrust jolting Pond’s body against the wall. The print rattled. Dunk’s hand on Pond’s throat slid up to fist in his hair, yanking his head back to expose the column of his neck. He bit down on the tendon there, tasting salt and skin.
It was raw, animalistic. A fuck of domination and degradation. But Pond was meeting him thrust for thrust, his body opening, accepting, even begging for it. The wet, slick sounds of their coupling filled the sterile room. Dunk’s world narrowed to the sensation of overwhelming heat, the slap of skin, the ragged symphony of their breaths.
“Is this what you wanted?” Dunk snarled, driving into him with deep, grinding pumps. “This, instead of his careful little secrets?”
“Yes! God, yes!” Pond’s hand scrambled behind him, grabbing Dunk’s hip, nails digging in. “It’s you… it’s always been…”
The words were a gut-punch. Dunk didn’t want them. He didn’t want this complicated truth. He wanted the simple, clean hatred. He fucked harder, faster, trying to obliterate the meaning, to reduce it back to friction and release. He reached around, his hand finding Pond’s cock, hard and leaking between his legs. He stroked him in time with his thrusts, a rough, punishing grip.
“Come for me, you liar,” Dunk commanded, his voice guttural and close to Pond’s ear. “Come all over this wall and show me what a cheap fuck you are.”
The dual assault, the filthy words, the brutal possession, shattered Pond. He shouted, a raw, unfiltered sound, as his orgasm ripped through him. His body convulsed, clamping down on Dunk’s cock in rhythmic pulses as he spilled over Dunk’s fist and onto the beige wallpaper.
The intense, milking tightness tipped Dunk over the edge. With a final, deep plunge, he emptied himself inside Pond, a hot, pulsing flood. He stayed there, buried, as the waves subsided, his forehead pressed against Pond’s sweat-dampened back. The only sounds were their heaving breaths and the distant hum of the city through the sealed window.
Slowly, Dunk pulled out. He tucked himself away, zipping his jeans with hands that showed the first faint tremor. Pond slumped against the wall, spent, exposed, pants around his thighs.
Dunk turned and walked to the bathroom. He washed his hands slowly, methodically, watching the water run clear. He caught his own eyes in the mirror. The deadness was still there, but behind it, a new horror was dawning. Pond’s words echoed. It’s you… it’s always been…
He had just fucked his best friend, not as an act of pure vengeance, but as a twisted consummation of something buried and dark. And part of him had reveled in it.
When he returned to the room, Pond had pulled his pants up and was sitting on the edge of the bed, head in his hands.
“You should release the photos,” Pond said, his voice muffled.
Dunk stopped. “What?”
Pond looked up. His face was a wreck, but his eyes were clear. “Ryu’s photos. Leak them. To the press. Ruin him. Ruin us. It’s the only play that makes sense now.”
“You’d burn your own career to the ground.”
“It’s already ash.” Pond held his gaze. “He played us both. He gets to be the heartbroken lead while we’re the villains? No. You show the world what he is. A cheating liar who played his lover and his lover’s best friend. You control the narrative. You become the wronged party who fought back. It’s the only power move left.”
It was a scorched-earth strategy. The cold, logical part of Dunk’s brain, the part trained by Ryu, saw its brutal merit. It would be a nuclear option. It would end all three of their careers, but it would likely end Joong’s most definitively. The public adored a fallen angel, but they devoured a two-faced manipulator.
Dunk looked at Pond, truly looked at him. The friend, the betrayer, the willing victim, the strategist. A complex, broken ally in the ruins.
“Why are you giving me this?” Dunk asked.
“Because I loved him,” Pond said simply. “And you just proved I’m still in love with you. In whatever fucked-up way is left. So I pick you. I burn with you.”
Dunk walked to the door. He didn’t agree. He didn’t disagree. He simply absorbed the offer, another weapon for his arsenal.
“The hour’s up,” he said, and left.
In the elevator, descending, he leaned against the wall. The scent of Pond was on his clothes, inside him. The physical satisfaction was already curdling into a deep, psychic sickness. He had two paths: silent, strategic recovery, or a public, mutually assured destruction.
The elevator doors opened to the pristine, silent lobby. As he walked out into the humid night, his phone buzzed. An alert from a news app. He tapped it.
A headline blared: “JOONG SPOTTED ENTERING TEMPLE ALONE, SOURCES SAY HE’S ‘PRAYING FOR HEALING’ AMIDST RUMORS OF SPLIT FROM CO-STAR DUNK.”
Attached was a photo of Joong, dressed in simple white, head bowed, the picture of poignant, beautiful sorrow.
The cold flame in Dunk’s chest erupted into an inferno.
He hailed a taxi. He gave Ryu’s address. As the car moved, he typed a message to Ryu on the burner phone: “We’re going nuclear. Get the digital files ready.”
He then opened his personal, silenced smartphone. Hundreds of notifications. He opened his camera roll, scrolled past countless images of Joong’s smiling face, and found the one he needed. The folded, grainy print from the manila envelope. Joong, on his knees.
He stared at it until the image seared itself onto his retina. Then he put the phone away. He watched the city lights blur, no longer a victim navigating the wreckage, but an architect preparing to detonate the ruins.
The taxi’s vinyl seat stuck to his thighs. The city smeared beyond the window, a watercolor of neon and shadow, but all Dunk saw was the afterimage of that headline. Praying for healing. The theatricality of it, the flawless, pious narrative Joong was weaving alone, ignited something volatile inside him. The cold architect’s blueprint in his mind warped, melted at the edges by the heat of that hypocrisy. He told the driver to stop a block from Ryu’s. He needed air that didn’t smell of Ryu’s clinical strategizing or Pond’s desperate sweat. He paid and walked, his shoes echoing in the quiet sidestreet.
His feet, however, did not turn toward Ryu’s modern building. They carried him back toward the Vela’s glowing sign. His mind rationalized it: he needed the original photo, the physical copy he’d left on Pond’s nightstand. Evidence. But the pulse hammering in his throat told a different, simpler truth. The ruin inside him was hungry. It wanted more of that searing, obliterating heat.
He took the stairs, his breaths coming sharp by the seventh floor. The hallway was silent. He stood before 712 again. He didn’t knock. He tried the handle. It was unlocked.
Pond was standing at the window, his silhouette dark against the city’s glow. He turned. He’d washed his face. In the half-light, the devastation was gone, replaced by a weary, knowing calm. The manila envelope was in his hand. “You forgot your weapon,” he said, his voice flat.
Dunk shut the door. The click of the latch was deafening. “You knew I’d come back.”
“I hoped.” Pond tossed the envelope onto the desk. It skidded to a stop beside the lamp. “Ryu would tell you to walk away. To be smart. But you’ve never been just smart, Dunk. You feel everything. It’s your gift. It’s your fucking curse.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me.” Dunk’s words were brittle.
“Or what?” Pond took a step forward, then another. He wasn’t pleading now. His movement had a new gravity to it. “You’ll fuck me against the wall again? You already did that. It didn’t fix it. I could still see the shattered boy behind your eyes while you were inside me.”
The accuracy was a violation. Dunk flinched.
Pond was in front of him now, close enough for Dunk to see the faint tremor in his own reflection in Pond’s dark eyes. “Your turn,” Pond whispered.
Then his hands came up, fast, and shoved Dunk hard in the chest.
Dunk stumbled back, shock robbing him of balance. His calves hit the edge of the bed, and he sat down heavily. Before he could rise, Pond was on him. A knee pressed into the mattress on either side of Dunk’s hips, caging him. Pond’s hands gripped Dunk’s wrists, pinning them down on the cheap duvet cover. The strength in him, usually latent under his easy-going slouch, was absolute.
“Get off,” Dunk snarled, bucking upward. It was useless. Pond’s weight was solid, immovable.
“No.” Pond leaned down, his mouth a breath from Dunk’s. “You dominated. Now you endure. You want to feel something real? Stop running from what this is.”
He crushed his mouth to Dunk’s. The kiss wasn’t gentle or exploratory. It was a claim. Pond’s tongue forced its way past Dunk’s lips, a hot, wet invasion that tasted of whiskey and bitter resolve. Dunk tried to twist his head away, but Pond’s hand left his wrist to fist in his hair, holding him still for the plunder. A moan, unbidden and treacherous, vibrated in Dunk’s throat.
Pond broke the kiss, breathing ragged. He looked down at Dunk, his eyes blazing. “You came back for a reason. It wasn’t for the photos.” With his free hand, he yanked Dunk’s t-shirt up, exposing his stomach and chest. He lowered his head and bit down on the tender flesh over Dunk’s nipple, hard enough to bruise.
A sharp, electric jolt of pain-pleasure shot straight to Dunk’s groin. He arched off the bed, a strangled gasp escaping him.
“See?” Pond murmured against his skin, laving the sting with his tongue. “Your body knows. It’s always known.” His hand went to Dunk’s belt, fingers making quick, efficient work of the buckle and the button of his jeans. He shoved the fabric down, just enough. Dunk was already painfully hard, his cock straining against his briefs. Pond palmed him through the cotton, a rough, grinding pressure that made Dunk’s vision blur.
“Pond…” It was half-protest, half-plea.
“Shut up,” Pond said, his voice low and thick. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of Dunk’s briefs and jeans and pulled them down to his thighs, freeing him. The cool air was a shock against his heated skin. Pond sat back on his heels, still straddling Dunk, and just looked. The hunger in his gaze was terrifying in its nakedness.
He spat into his own hand, the sound crude in the quiet room. He didn’t slick Dunk. He reached behind himself, working the spit over his own entrance, his eyes locked on Dunk’s the entire time. “You want to detonate everything?” Pond breathed, shifting forward on his knees. “Then feel this.”
He positioned himself, one hand guiding Dunk’s cock. Then he sank down.
The slow, burning, impossibly tight slide stole the air from Dunk’s lungs. It was more intense than taking, a suffocating, all-consuming heat that squeezed him in a velvet vise. Pond took him inch by agonizing inch, his body stretching to accommodate, his face a mask of concentrated sensation. When he was fully seated, Dunk buried deep inside him, they both shuddered.
Pond’s hands planted on Dunk’s chest for balance. He began to move.
It wasn’t the frantic, punishing pace Dunk had set earlier. This was a ruthless, rolling rhythm, a deep, grinding undulation that milked Dunk’s cock with every lift and fall. Pond controlled every fraction of an inch, the angle, the depth. He rode him with a fierce, focused intensity, his own cock hard and leaking against Dunk’s stomach.
“This is what you wanted,” Pond gasped, his hips circling. “Not revenge. This. Connection. Even this fucked-up, broken one. It’s real. It’s the only real thing left.”
Dunk’s hands flew up, grabbing Pond’s hips, his fingers digging into the muscle. He tried to thrust upward, to regain some control, but Pond slapped his hands away, pinning them back to the mattress.
“No,” Pond commanded, his voice guttural. “You take it. You take what I give you.” He leaned forward, changing the angle, and Dunk cried out as the head of his cock dragged against a spot inside Pond that sent white sparks behind his eyes. “That’s it. Let go. Just feel it, you selfish bastard. Feel me.”
The profanity, the raw command, shattered the last of Dunk’s resistance. His hips jerked up involuntarily, meeting Pond’s downward plunge. A broken sound, half-sob, half-roar, tore from his throat. The pleasure was a riptide, pulling him under. He was completely at the mercy of Pond’s rhythm, of the clenching, wet heat surrounding him, of the devastating truth in Pond’s words.
“I’m not him,” Pond grunted, sweat dripping from his chin onto Dunk’s chest. “I won’t lie and say it’s love. It’s need. It’s fucking ruin. And it’s yours.” He reached between them, fisting his own cock, stroking in time with his movements. “Come inside me. Mark it. Make it yours for real.”
The order, the sheer filthy permission of it, detonated Dunk’s control. His orgasm erupted without warning, a seismic surge that locked his spine and blinded him. He spilled into Pond with a choked, endless groan, his hips pumping shallow, helpless spasms as he emptied himself.
Pond followed, his rhythm stuttering. He came with a sharp cry, stripes of white painting Dunk’s stomach and chest, his body clamping down in rhythmic pulses that drew out the last shocks of Dunk’s climax.
For a long moment, the only sound was their ragged, gasping breaths. Pond slumped forward, his forehead resting on Dunk’s shoulder. The weight of him, the intimate, sticky mess between them, the profound and terrible vulnerability of his own release, left Dunk hollowed out and terrifyingly still.
Pond finally moved, lifting himself off with a wince. He stood on unsteady legs, looking down at Dunk lying spent on the bed, exposed and glistening. He didn’t speak. He walked to the bathroom, returning with a damp, warm washcloth. He cleaned Dunk’s stomach with a startling, tender thoroughness. Then he cleaned himself. He tossed the cloth into a corner.
He pulled his sweatpants back on, then collected Dunk’s clothes, handing them to him piece by piece. Dunk dressed mechanically, the fabric feeling alien on his skin.
Pond picked up the manila envelope from the desk. He held it out. “Your move, architect,” he said, his voice stripped raw. “But now you know the cost of the fire you’re playing with.”
Dunk took the envelope. His fingers brushed Pond’s. There was no spark now, just a deep, resonant ache.
He left without a word. The hallway, the elevator, the lobby—they passed in a numb haze. Outside, the night air felt no cooler. The envelope in his hand was no longer just a weapon. It was a relic from a before-time, a before-self. He had crossed a line within himself, one no public scandal could ever map.
He walked toward Ryu’s apartment, the photos heavy in his grip. The plan was still there, sharp and clear. But the man who would execute it was gone, replaced by someone who understood, in his bones and his still-tingling flesh, that in the ruins he was about to create, there would be no sanctuary. Only the lingering, dominant echo of what he had just allowed, and the terrifying freedom that followed.