Chapter 3: The Taste of Poisoned Honey
The three dots in Hyukjae’s text thread pulsed like a live wire, a silent, screaming indictment of everything he couldn’t say. He’d typed them two hours ago, staring at his phone screen in the sterile, humming light of the periodicals section, his knuckles white around his econ textbook.
Hey. We need…
Need to what? To talk? To scream? To pretend the library scene never happened? His thumb had hovered over the send button, then swiped back to delete. He’d crammed the phone into his pocket, feeling like he’d swallowed a stone.
Now, back in the chaos of his own dorm room, the stone had multiplied. The space was a monument to his own flighty nature. A half-unpacked suitcase from a weekend trip he couldn’t even remember the purpose of spilled laundry onto the floor. A whiteboard on the wall, a relic from a brief, manic organizational phase, was covered in a constellation of crudely drawn hearts, each one crossed out with a furious red ‘X’. Names like ‘Mina’ and ‘Sooji’ were barely legible beneath the marks. A stack of letters tied with a ribbon sat under a layer of dust on his desk—love letters from exes, never to anyone. Souvenirs of adoration he couldn’t reciprocate.
The glow from his laptop was the only light. He was supposed to be editing a film project. Instead, he was watching a grainy, soundless video on his phone, shot from across the library. He’d filmed it without thinking, a reflexive, masochistic impulse. On the screen, Donghae leaned into Kyuhyun’s space, his body angled in a way Hyukjae had never seen before. Intimate. Familiar. Kyuhyun’s hand, resting on the back of Donghae’s chair. Donghae’s flinch, so subtle only someone who knew every micron of his expression would see it, followed by that weak, shared laugh.
The laugh was the worst part. Hyukjae had never heard Donghae laugh like that with him. It was breathless, private.
He threw his phone onto the bed. It bounced off the unmade covers and hit the floor with a dull thud.
“Screw this,” he muttered to the empty room. The silence pressed back, heavy and accusing. He couldn’t stay here, not with the ghosts of half-hearted romances and the phantom image of Donghae’s head leaning toward someone else. He needed noise. Light. Distraction.
He found it downstairs in the common room of his residence hall, where a pre-exam “stress relief” party was already in full, messy swing. The air was thick with the smell of cheap beer, sweat, and microwave popcorn. Bass thumped from a portable speaker, vibrating the thin walls. Hyukjae slipped into the crowd effortlessly, his social butterfly instincts kicking in like a well-practiced reflex. A smile here, a clap on the back there, a shot glass pushed into his hand. He drank it without tasting it.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in. And the cat looks like it lost a fight with a vacuum cleaner.”
Heechul materialized beside him, holding a plastic cup of something clear and fizzy. He was dressed for a different party entirely—a silky red shirt, artfully distressed jeans—a peacock among pigeons. His keen eyes scanned Hyukjae’s face, missing nothing.
“What’s wrong with you?” Heechul asked, his tone light but his gaze piercing. “You have the expression of a puppy who just watched his favorite toy get run over by a bus.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Hyukjae said, forcing a wider smile. He accepted another shot from a passing acquaintance. “Just blowing off steam.”
“Right.” Heechul took a slow sip of his drink. “Because you always look this genuinely thrilled to be at a kegger with first-years. It’s the company, I’m sure.”
Hyukjae ignored him, turning to laugh at something a guy from his stats class said. The laugh sounded hollow in his own ears. He could feel Heechul watching him, a silent, judgmental presence.
An hour later, the noise had become a blurry wall of sound. Hyukjae’s cheeks ached from smiling. His thoughts kept circling back to the library, to Donghae’s ink-stained hands, to the text he’d deleted. The stone in his gut had grown warmer, laced with alcohol and a sharp, restless frustration.
He found himself leaning against a sticky wall, staring into a red plastic cup. Heechul reappeared, holding two fresh ones. “Here. You look like you need actual hydration. It’s just soda. Mostly.”
Hyukjae took it without looking. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” Heechul watched him take a long drink. A strange, thoughtful expression flickered across his face—a blend of impatience and something almost like pity. “You know, pining is a very unattractive color on you. It clashes with your complexion.”
“I’m not pining.”
“You’ve been staring into that cup like it contains the secrets of the universe, or at least Donghae’s WiFi password. It’s pathetic.” Heechul sighed dramatically. “Sometimes, the direct approach is the only one. All this… circling.” He made a lazy, swirling gesture with his hand. “It’s exhausting to watch.”
Hyukjae didn’t answer. He just drank. The soda was sweet, with a faint, bitter aftertaste he chalked up to cheap mixers. He drained the cup.
The change was subtle at first. A warmth that spread from his stomach outwards, sharper than alcohol. A heightened awareness of the fabric of his shirt against his skin, the bass line thumping in his chest cavity. The crowd around him seemed to recede, then press in closer, their faces overly bright, their laughter sharper. His own heartbeat became a pronounced drum in his ears.
He pushed off the wall. “I need air.”
“Probably a good idea,” Heechul said, his voice a little distant. Hyukjae couldn’t read his expression.
The night outside was cold, a slap after the stuffy heat of the party. It didn’t help. The cold air felt like a physical caress on his overheated skin. Every sensation was amplified. The grit of the pavement under his shoes, the distant wail of a siren, the rustle of leaves—each was a distinct, urgent signal. A restless, crawling energy ignited in his muscles. He started walking, aimlessly at first, then with a gathering, frantic purpose.
His feet, seemingly of their own volition, carried him past the polished windows of the business school. Past the dark, quiet dorm where Yuna, the girl with the hyena laugh, lived. His pace quickened. The memory of her voice grated against his heightened nerves. He cut across the quad, the grass damp underfoot, and found himself outside the modern arts building where Sooji, the one who’d called Donghae ‘his quiet friend,’ had her studio. A light was on in a third-floor window. He stared up at it, a hot, shameful flush creeping up his neck. He’d kissed her in that studio. He’d tried to lose himself in the smell of turpentine and her expensive perfume. It hadn’t worked.
The energy inside him was no longer just restless; it was a frantic, pounding need. His skin felt too tight. His thoughts, previously a muddled storm, narrowed to a single, laser-focused point: Donghae.
Not the Donghae laughing with Kyuhyun. Not the Donghae who flinched. The Donghae from before. The Donghae who shared his notes, who listened to his stupid stories, whose steady, quiet presence was the only thing that had ever made sense in the whirlwind of his life. The Donghae whose door had always been open.
He was running now, his breath forming ragged clouds in the cold air. The campus blurred around him. The stimulant, whatever Heechul had given him, had burned through the alcohol, leaving behind a raw, aching clarity. Every insecurity, every suppressed want, every image of Donghae with someone else surged to the surface, unbearable.
He skidded to a halt outside Donghae’s residence hall, a older, brick building covered in ivy. His heart was a wild, caged thing against his ribs. The rational part of his mind—a faint, fading voice—told him this was a mistake, that he was not in his right mind, that he would ruin everything.
The louder, desperate, chemical-driven part didn’t care.
He took the stairs two at a time, his footsteps echoing in the empty stairwell. He reached Donghae’s floor, the familiar, worn linoleum of the hallway stretching out before him. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead.
He stopped in front of Donghae’s door. It was closed. A simple, wooden barrier he’d passed through a thousand times without thought. Now it looked imposing. Final.
He raised a fist. His hand was trembling.
He knocked. A soft, tentative rap.
Silence.
The panic surged, hot and acidic. He knocked again, harder. “Hae?” His own voice sounded alien, strained.
Nothing.
The stone in his gut dissolved into pure, unadulterated fear. He’s not here. He’s with Kyuhyun. The thought was a white-hot spike. He couldn’t breathe. The need to see him, to explain, to fix the fissure that had cracked open between them, was a physical pain.
He balled his hand into a fist again, the chemical fire in his veins overriding all caution, all sense.
He pounded on the door. The sound was terrifyingly loud in the quiet hall. “Hae!” The word was half-shout, half-whimper. “Please.”
He leaned his forehead against the cool wood, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Every nerve ending was on fire. The world had narrowed to this door, this silence, this yawning, desperate need.
“Please,” he whispered again, the word scraping his throat raw. “Open the door.”
The door swung inward so suddenly Hyukjae almost fell into the room.
Donghae stood there, hair mussed from sleep, wearing worn sweatpants and a faded t-shirt. His eyes were wide, swimming with confusion and concern. The glow from his desk lamp cut a sharp angle across his worried face. “Hyukjae? What’s—”
Hyukjae pushed past him, into the familiar, book-lined space that always smelled of Donghae—of clean laundry and old paper. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing them in. The room was small, cramped. It felt like the only real space in the world.
“You’re here,” Hyukjae breathed, his back against the door as if barricading them both inside. He was shaking. Every particle of air felt like a touch against his feverish skin.
“Of course I’m here. It’s two in the morning.” Donghae’s voice was low, hushed. He took a careful step closer, his analytical eyes scanning Hyukjae’s face, his trembling hands. “Are you drunk? What’s wrong?”
“Not drunk.” Hyukjae shook his head, a frantic motion. The denial was true, but the reality was worse. A raw, consuming heat was coiling tight in his abdomen, shortening his breath. He looked at Donghae’s mouth. He looked at the pale column of his throat where his pulse fluttered. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Something… something’s not right.”
He couldn’t articulate the fire. He could only feel it. It burned away every other thought, every fear, every image of Kyuhyun in the library. All that remained was need. A deep, throbbing, painful need centered entirely on the man in front of him.
“You’re sweating.” Donghae reached out, his fingers cool and dry as they brushed Hyukjae’s forehead. The touch was clinical, concerned. It was also electric.
Hyukjae gasped, his eyes fluttering shut for a second. He leaned into the touch, chasing the relief of that coolness. “Hae,” he whimpered, the word stripped bare. “It hurts.”
“What hurts? Where?” Donghae’s hand dropped to his shoulder, grip firm. “Did you take something? At the party?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Hyukjae’s eyes opened, glassy and desperate. He grasped Donghae’s wrist, pressing his friend’s palm flat against his own chest. He could feel his heart hammering against it. “Here. It hurts here. And everywhere.”
Donghae tried to pull his hand back, his frown deepening. “You need water. You need to sit down.”
“No!” Hyukjae’s hold tightened, desperate. He pulled Donghae closer until their bodies were almost touching. The gap between them hummed with tension. Donghae’s scent, so familiar, was now an intoxicant. “Don’t make me sit. Don’t make me think. Please.”
His free hand came up to clutch at Donghae’s t-shirt. The fabric was soft, thin. He could feel the warmth of Donghae’s skin beneath it. He buried his face in the juncture of Donghae’s neck and shoulder, inhaling sharply. “You smell good. You always smell so good.”
“Hyukjae, stop.” Donghae’s voice was strained, but his body had gone very still. “You’re not… you’re not in your right mind.”
“I know I’m not!” The confession was a ragged tear of sound against Donghae’s skin. Hyukjae pressed closer, his body arching unconsciously. “That’s why I’m here. I didn’t know where else to go. You’re the only one.”
His hips shifted, a small, helpless motion that pressed the undeniable, hard evidence of his condition against Donghae’s thigh. Donghae stiffened, a sharp inhale catching in his throat.
Hyukjae felt the flinch, the recognition. Shame washed over him, hot and immediate, but it was drowned out by a stronger, more urgent tide of pure sensation. “I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I’m so sorry. I can’t… I can’t make it stop. It’s like my skin is on fire. Please.”
He pulled back just enough to look into Donghae’s eyes. His own vision was blurry with unshed tears of frustration and need. Donghae was staring back, his face a mask of conflict. There was fear there, and shock. But underneath it, swimming in those dark, worried eyes, was something else. Something Hyukjae, in his altered state, could only interpret as a possible lifeline.
“Help me.” The plea was barely a whisper. It was everything. “Please, Hae. Just help me.”
Donghae’s resolve shattered. He saw the genuine agony, the chemical-induced torment twisting his best friend apart. He also saw the boy he’d loved for years, finally in his arms, finally asking for him. The line between compassion and desire, long worn thin, snapped.
He didn’t speak. He simply leaned in and kissed him.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a raw, claiming pressure, a release of years of pent-up longing. Hyukjae moaned into his mouth, a sound of pure relief, his hands flying up to tangle in Donghae’s hair. Donghae backed him against the door, his body a solid, welcome weight pushing the unbearable heat into a sharp, delicious focus.
“Okay,” Donghae breathed against his lips, his own control slipping. “Okay. I’ll help you.”
What followed was not gentle either. It was a frantic, clumsy dance across the small room, a tangle of limbs and whispered, desperate pleas. Clothing was not removed so much as ripped away, barriers destroyed. Hyukjae’s words tumbled out between gasps, stripped of pretense.
“Touch me, please, just touch me.”
“It’s too much, it’s burning, make it stop.”
“Donghae, please, I need…”
Donghae answered every plea with his hands, his mouth, his body. He mapped Hyukjae’s feverish skin like a man memorizing a route in the dark. He tasted the salt on his neck, the bitter tang of whatever Heechul had slipped him on his lips. He let Hyukjae’s desperate, slutty words—“Just fill me, come on, I can take it, make it stop hurting”—wash over him, fueling a hunger he’d kept caged for so long.
He was not tender. He was voracious. He pushed Hyukjae onto the narrow bed, covered his body with his own, and devoured him. He took him apart with a focused, relentless intensity, using his own repressed love as the blueprint for every touch, every thrust. It was a claiming, a devouring, an exorcism.
Through the haze, Hyukjae responded like a man starved. He arched and begged, his voice fracturing on Donghae’s name. He chanted “more” and “yes” and “right there” like prayers. The pain of the need transformed, under Donghae’s relentless attention, into waves of shocking, mind-numbing pleasure that crashed over him again and again.
Donghau whispered into the sweat-slick space between them, his lips against Hyukjae’s ear, his temple, the pulse point in his wrist.
“I’ve got you.”
“Let go, I’ve got you.”
“You’re so good, you’re so perfect for me.”
The words were soft, heartfelt counterpoints to the brutal, driving rhythm of their bodies. They were the truth wrapped in the guise of comfort.
It lasted for hours. The chemical fire in Hyukjae’s veins demanded it, and Donghae, once unleashed, found a depth of stamina he didn’t know he possessed. He was methodical, thorough, wringing every last shudder, every gasp, every broken sigh from Hyukjae’s spent body until the frantic, needy sounds finally died into whimpers and then into silence.
When it was over, when Hyukjae lay boneless and finally, blessedly cool, Donghae cleaned him with a warm, damp cloth. He did it quietly, with a tenderness that contrasted sharply with what had just transpired. He pulled the covers over them both, tucking Hyukjae against his chest, where he fell into an immediate, deep, and drugged sleep.
Donghae did not sleep. He stared at the ceiling, Hyukjae’s breathing steady against his side. He felt hollowed out and shattered. He had given Hyukjae what he wanted, what he’d begged for. But a sickening dread was already seeping into the spaces the frenzy had left behind.
Dawn light, gray and unforgiving, crept around the edges of Donghae’s blinds. It painted the wreckage of the room in soft focus: discarded clothes, the upturned desk lamp, the blanket twisted at the foot of the bed.
Hyukjae stirred first. A slow, deep breath in, then a sharp hitch as consciousness returned, bringing with it the full, heavy weight of memory. His body ached in unfamiliar ways. The scent of sex and sweat and Donghae filled his nose. The warm, solid weight of an arm was draped possessively over his waist.
He went utterly still. The events of the night replayed not as a blur, but in sharp, crystalline, horrifying detail. Every touch. Every whisper. Every shameless, begging word that had fallen from his own lips. The Library. Kyuhyun. The party. The pounding on the door. The pleading. The consuming, inexplicable fire.
And Donghae. Donghae giving in. Donghae’s hands on him. Donghae’s mouth. Donghae’s body.
A sob caught in his throat, strangled and harsh. He clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle it, his eyes burning. He had done this. He had come here, a mess, poisoned by some stupid party drug, and he had… he had used him. He had used his best friend, his anchor, the person he…
He couldn’t finish the thought. The shame was a physical weight, crushing his lungs.
He carefully, slowly, extracted himself from Donghae’s grip. Donghae murmured in his sleep, his brow furrowing, but didn’t wake. Hyukjae stood on trembling legs, wincing at the protests from his muscles. He found his boxers and pulled them on, his movements furtive, like a thief.
He looked at Donghae sleeping in the tangled sheets. His face in sleep was soft, younger. Innocent. The opposite of what they had done.
A fresh wave of nausea rolled through him. He had corrupted this. He had taken something simple and pure and broken it. Things would never, ever be the same. He could never look at him again without seeing this, without remembering the sounds he’d made, the things he’d asked for.
He grabbed the rest of his clothes, holding them in a bundle to his chest. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t be here when Donghae woke up. He couldn’t face the confusion, the regret, the disgust he was sure would be in Donghae’s eyes.
He slipped out of the room, closing the door with a soft, final click. He stood in the empty hallway, the silence pounding in his ears. He leaned his forehead against the cool wall, the tears he’d been holding back finally breaking free. They were silent, shaking sobs that wracked his sore body.
He had gotten what he asked for. He had gotten help. And in doing so, he was certain he had destroyed the only thing that had ever truly mattered.