Chapter 4: The Beast's Awakening
Donghae woke with a jolt, a silent scream trapped in his throat. The pale morning light sliced through a gap in the blinds, laying a cold, hard line across the empty space beside him. The sheets were tangled, damp with sweat—his sweat—and something else. The smell hit him first: sex, sharp and unmistakable, mixed with the faded scent of Hyukjae’s cologne on the pillow. Then the memories, not as fragments but as a brutal, full-sensory flood.
Hyukjae, feverish and shaking against the door, his pupils blown wide, begging. The feel of his hot skin under Donghae’s hands. The taste of salt as Donghae licked a desperate, possessive stripe up the trembling line of his spine, feeling each vertebra tense under his tongue. The animal sounds he’d made, low and guttural, as he pushed Hyukjae face-first into the mattress, his own control snapping like a dry twig.
It hadn’t been making love. It hadn’t even been fucking. It had been consumption. Hyukjae’s cries, muffled against the pillow, had been less like pleasure and more like surrender. Donghae had bitten the knob of his shoulder, licked into the hollow of his throat, sucked bruises into his hips like brands. He had rammed into him with a single-minded, starving ferocity, chasing not just release but ownership, as if he could fuse them together through sheer, brutal force. He had watched his own hands, usually so careful with books and fragile things, dig into Hyukjae’s flesh, leaving crescent moons behind. He had devoured every gasp, every broken plea, until there was nothing left but spent, trembling silence.
And then he had cleaned him. Held him. Watched him sleep with a tenderness that felt like a lie.
Now, in the sterile morning light, the tenderness curdled into a sick, cloying horror. He had seen the state Hyukjae was in. He had felt the unnatural heat coming off him in waves, heard the ragged, chemical edge to his desperation. He had known, on some level, that Hyukjae was not himself. And he had taken him anyway. He had used the vulnerability, the poison in Hyukjae’s system, as an excuse to act on every dark, hidden fantasy he’d ever stifled.
He was a monster.
A dry heave wracked his body. He scrambled out of the bed, the cold floor shocking his bare feet. He spotted Hyukjae’s shirt, discarded by the desk chair. He was gone. Of course he was gone. What had he expected? A morning-after coffee? A shy smile?
The silence in the room was absolute, and it echoed with the ghost of Hyukjae’s whimpers, with the sound of his own animalistic grunts. He stumbled to his desk, knocking over a stack of Mokpo tourism pamphlets his mother had sent. His phone was buried under a mug of cold coffee. His hands shook so badly he misdialed twice.
The ringtone drilled into his skull.
Heechul answered on the fourth ring, voice thick with sleep. “This better be a cultural emergency. Or a fire.”
“Heechul.” Donghae’s voice was a sandpaper scrape. It didn’t sound like his own.
A pause. Sheets rustled on the other end. Heechul’s next words were alert, clear. “Donghae? What’s wrong? Is it Hyukjae? Did he…” He trailed off, a dawning, dreadful understanding in his tone.
“He came here,” Donghae said, the words tumbling out in a flat, horrified monotone. “Last night. He was… he wasn’t right. He was burning up. Begging.” He squeezed his eyes shut, the images flashing brighter behind his lids. “I… I…”
“You what?” Heechul’s voice was sharp, a blade.
“I didn’t help him.” The confession was a hollow whisper. “I didn’t take him to a clinic. I didn’t call anyone. I just… I took him. I used him.” A choked sound escaped him, half-laugh, half-sob. “He kept asking me to make it stop, the pain, the heat… and I did. I fucked him until he couldn’t speak. I licked the sweat off his back like I was dying of thirst. I held him down and I rammed into him like… like some starved fucking animal. I devoured him whole, Heechul. And then he left. He’s gone.”
The line was so silent Donghae thought it had disconnected.
“Hello?”
“I’m here,” Heechul said quietly. Then, after another beat, “Did you say he was burning up? Begging?”
“Yes. It was like he was on fire. He couldn’t think straight.”
Another long silence. When Heechul spoke again, his voice was small, stripped of all its usual theatrical flair. “Shit.”
“What?”
“I… at the party. I gave him something. In his drink. It was supposed to be a joke. A stupid, shitty joke. Just something to loosen him up, to get him to stop moping about you and just… do something. I didn’t think he’d…”
Donghae’s blood ran cold. The world narrowed to the crackle of the phone line. “You gave him something.”
“It was just a crushed-up stimulant! A party thing! I didn’t know he’d go to you, I didn’t know he’d—”
“You poisoned him.” The words were quiet, dead.
“I didn’t poison him! It was just a… fuck.” Heechul’s breath hitched. “Is he okay? Physically?”
The question was so absurd Donghae almost laughed. “Physically? I don’t know. He couldn’t walk straight when he left my room. My bed looks like a crime scene.” He opened his eyes, staring at the rumpled sheets. “He came to me for help, and I… I took advantage of him while he was drugged. You drugged him, and I… I…”
The two truths connected, forming a circuit of utter, devastating culpability. Heechul had lit the fuse. Donghae had set off the explosion.
“I have to find him,” Donghae said, the panic returning, cold and slick now.
“No,” Heechul said, the command sudden and sharp. “You can’t. Not like this. Not while you’re… and he’s… Give him space. A day. Let him process.”
“Process what? The fact that his best friend raped him?”
The word hung in the air between them, ugly and final. Heechul didn’t refute it.
“He came to you,” Heechul said, his voice desperate. “He asked you—”
“He was out of his mind! He didn’t know what he was asking for! He wouldn’t have…” Donghae’s voice broke. “He wouldn’t have wanted me. Not like that.”
He heard Heechul light a cigarette, the inhale long and shaky. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.” And he did. With a certainty that felt like a bone deep in his chest. Hyukjae’s frantic, lust-glazed eyes had not been looking at him. They’d been looking at a solution, a release from a chemical prison. The real Donghae—the one who organized his notes by color, who called his mother every Sunday, who loved him quietly, fiercely, and cleanly—had been nowhere in that room. Only the beast had been there.
“I have to fix this,” Donghae whispered, more to himself than to Heechul.
“You can’t,” Heechul replied, his voice grim. “Some things don’t get fixed. They just… are. Wait. Let me talk to him first. Feel him out.”
Donghae didn’t answer. He ended the call and let the phone drop from his hand. It clattered onto the textbooks. The fairy lights over his bed flickered once, then went out.
The fairy lights over his bed flickered once, then went out. Donghae stared at the dead string of bulbs, their cheerful glow extinguished, and felt something click off inside himself too. He didn’t move for a long time, just sat on the floor breathing in the ruin of his own choices.
Heechul found Hyukjae two days later, holed up in the campus cinema watching a terrible horror movie in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. The theater was empty save for them and one old man sleeping in the front row. Hyukjae was slumped so low in his seat he was almost horizontal, a bucket of stale popcorn untouched in his lap. He smelled like unwashed laundry and despair.
“You look like a raccoon that lost a fight with a lawnmower,” Heechul said, sliding into the seat beside him. The screen flickered, casting blue and gray shadows over Hyukjae’s hollowed-out face.
“Go away.”
“Can’t. My dramatic sensibilities are offended by your tragic mope.” Heechul stole a piece of popcorn, grimaced, and dropped it back. “You haven’t answered your phone. Donghae is spiraling. I drugged you. It’s a whole thing.”
Hyukjae flinched at the word ‘drugged.’ On screen, a teenage actor screamed silently as a ghost approached. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Tough.” Heechul’s voice lost its playful edge. “What do you remember? From that night.”
“Everything.” The word was a flat, toneless expulsion. Hyukjae kept his eyes glued to the movie, his jaw tight. “I remember pounding on his door like a madman. I remember begging. I remember…” He swallowed hard, the sound dry and painful. “I remember telling him to fuck me until I couldn’t think anymore. And he did.”
Heechul was silent for a moment. “And how do you feel about that? The remembering.”
A laugh, bitter and short, escaped Hyukjae. “How do I feel? I feel like I forced my best friend, the most decent person I know, into some… some degrading pity fuck because I was too stupid to watch my drink at a party.” He finally turned his head, his eyes shining with unshed tears in the cinematic gloom. “I ruined everything. He’ll never look at me the same. He probably hates me.”
“You’re an idiot.” Heechul said it without malice, a simple statement of fact.
“I know.”
“No, a different kind of idiot. The kind who’s so busy hating himself he can’t see what’s right in front of him.” Heechul leaned closer. “Donghae thinks he assaulted you. He used that word. Rape. He’s sitting in his room right now believing he’s a monster because he gave you what you were literally screaming for.”
Hyukjae’s head snapped around fully. “What? No. He didn’t… I was the one who…”
“He thinks he took advantage of a vulnerable, intoxicated person. Which, technically, he did. Because I made you vulnerable and intoxicated. So, my bad.” Heechul waved a hand. “But here’s the thing. When you were begging, who were you begging for?”
“What?”
“You were out of your mind. You could have gone anywhere, to anyone. You stumbled past three ex-girlfriends’ dorms, Hyukjae. You know how many people live on this campus? But you went to Donghae. You pounded on his door and you said ‘please.’” Heechul’s gaze was piercing. “Your poisoned, messed-up brain zeroed in on him. Why?”
Hyukjae opened his mouth, then closed it. The ghost on screen killed another teenager. The sleeping man in front snored softly.
“Because he’s my best friend,” Hyukjae finally whispered, the excuse sounding weak even to him.
“Bullshit. You don’t want your best friend to wreck you like that. You don’t say his name like a prayer when you’re coming down from a stimulant haze.” Heechul sighed, the sound lost in a sudden orchestral sting from the movie. “You’re in love with him. You have been for years. And he’s been in love with you. And you’re both so monumentally stupid about it you needed chemical interference to even get to first base.”
The truth of it, laid out so baldly in a deserted movie theater, was terrifying. Hyukjae couldn’t breathe. All his flitting from person to person, the crossed-out hearts on his whiteboard, the hollow feeling after every date—it wasn’t restlessness. It was displacement. He’d been trying to outrun a feeling that had always been right there, quiet and constant, in the shape of Donghae’s shy smiles and dependable silence.
“He doesn’t,” Hyukjae choked out. “He can’t be.”
“He is. He watched you date everyone on campus and just… accepted it. Because he’s an idiot, too.” Heechul slumped back, a plan visibly forming behind his sharp eyes. “The problem is, you both think it was a mistake. A bad, drugged-out error. Donghae thinks he violated you. You think you coerced him. You’re orbiting each other’s guilt and it’s disgusting.”
“So, what? We just… talk about it?” Hyukjae muttered, rubbing his eyes.
“God, no. You’d just apologize to each other for existing and make it worse.” Heechul’s smile returned, sly and determined. “We need a reset. A level playing field. You were out of your mind; he was in his right one. That’s the power imbalance. It has to be even.”
Hyukjae looked at him, suspicion dawning. “Heechul…”
“Don’t ‘Heechul’ me. You want to fix this? Actually fix it, not just mope in dark theaters?” He leaned in, his voice a low, conspiratorial murmur under the movie’s soundtrack. “He needs to understand what it was like for you. The… lack of inhibition. The clarity. He needs to feel that frantic, desperate need. Then you’ll be equal. Then you can talk.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I still have some of those little pills.” Heechul’s gaze was unwavering. “And you’re going to invite Donghae over tonight. To talk. To clear the air. You’re going to give him a drink. And you’re going to make sure he drinks it.”
Hyukjae recoiled. “No. Absolutely not. I’m not drugging him. Are you insane?”
“You think what happened was a beautiful connection? It was a trauma! For both of you!” Heechul’s whisper was fierce. “This isn’t about recreation. It’s about eradication. Of the guilt. Of the doubt. He needs to be freed from his own head, just for one night, so he can act on what he actually wants without his fucking conscience strangling him. So he can come to you without you having to beg.”
“It’s wrong.”
“So was what I did to you. And look where we are.” Heechul gestured at the empty theater, at Hyukjae’s defeated posture. “This is the only way to bridge the gap. Let him be the one who’s desperate. Let him be the one who can’t think. See what he does. Who he comes for.”
The idea was monstrous. It was also, in some warped, desperate way, perversely logical. Hyukjae remembered the terrifying, exhilarating loss of control, the way every hidden desire had surged to the surface, undeniable and pure. If Donghae felt even a fraction of that… if he was the one who initiated…
“What if he doesn’t… come for me?” Hyukjae’s voice was small.
“Then you have your answer. And you both move on, knowing it was just the drugs.” Heechul placed a small, unmarked tablet in Hyukjae’s palm. It felt impossibly heavy. “But he will.”
Donghae answered the door looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. His eyes were shadowed, his usually neat hair a mess. He stared at Hyukjae standing in the hallway, a six-pack of expensive barley tea in hand, as if he were a ghost.
“Hi,” Hyukjae said, the word scraping his throat.
“Hi.”
An awful, thick silence stretched between them. Hyukjae held up the drinks. “Can I… come in? We should talk.”
Donghae hesitated, his knuckles white on the doorframe. Then he stepped aside, a wordless surrender. The room was tidier than usual, books stacked with military precision, as if he’d tried to scrub away the memory of what had happened here. The air still felt charged.
“I brought tea,” Hyukjae said lamely, placing the bottles on the desk. His hands were shaking. He willed them to stop. “The good kind from that store you like.”
“Thanks.” Donghae remained standing, a trapped animal by his own bed.
Hyukjae opened two bottles, his back to Donghae. The pill was a cold, secret weight in his jeans pocket. His heart hammered against his ribs. This was wrong. This was so wrong. Heechul’s voice echoed in his head: “It’s the only way to bridge the gap.”
His fingers, moving of their own accord, dipped into his pocket. He palmed the tablet, his body blocking Donghae’s view. He crushed it between his thumb and forefinger over one bottle, letting the fine powder spill into the golden liquid. It dissolved almost instantly.
He turned, a bottle in each hand. He held out the tainted one. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it for everything.
Donghae looked at the offered bottle, then at Hyukjae’s face. His eyes were pools of raw, unguarded pain. He took the drink. His fingers brushed Hyukjae’s, and they both flinched at the contact.
“I’m sorry too,” Donghae whispered. He didn’t ask what for. They both knew.
He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank deeply, as if it were medicine.
The barley tea was too sweet. Donghae noticed that first, the cloying aftertaste clinging to his tongue as he lowered the bottle. He set it on the desk with a quiet click, the sound too loud in the suffocating silence between them. Hyukjae was just standing there, holding his own untampered drink, looking like he was waiting for a verdict.
“So,” Donghae started, because someone had to. His voice felt frail. “We should probably…”
The sentence died in his throat. A sudden, warm flush bloomed across his chest, fast and unsettling. He blinked, attributing it to the room’s stuffy air or his own simmering shame. But the warmth didn’t subside. It spread, a liquid heat moving up his neck and down his arms, a direct counterpoint to the cold dread lodged in his stomach.
“…talk,” he finished weakly, but the word sounded distant, like someone else had said it. The fluorescent light above his desk seemed to sharpen, its hum growing more distinct against the ringing starting in his ears. He focused on Hyukjae’s face, seeking something solid to anchor himself. “About what happened.”
Hyukjae’s eyes were wide, almost frantic. “Yeah. I wanted to say… I’m not mad. At you.” He took a step closer, then stopped, as if repelled by an invisible force. “It wasn’t your fault.”
The heat was pooling low now, a strange, insistent thrumming. Donghae’s thoughts, usually so orderly, began to stutter and slide. He tried to grasp the thread of the conversation, but it kept slipping away, replaced by a hyper-awareness of his own body. The scratch of his collar against his skin. The tight seam of his jeans. The accelerated beat of his own heart.
“It was,” Donghae countered, but his argument lacked its usual conviction. A film of sweat coated his upper lip. “I knew you weren’t… right. I knew, and I still…” He shook his head, trying to clear the gathering fog. “I took advantage. I can’t forgive myself for that.”
“I was begging for it,” Hyukjae insisted, his voice tight. He was watching Donghae’s face intently, his own guilt a visible weight on his shoulders.
A sharp, unbidden image flashed in Donghae’s mind: Kyuhyun’s hand on the back of Donghae’s chair in the library. The casual intimacy of it. The way Hyukjae’s face had fallen, watching from across the room. The connection fired in his drugged brain, twisted and urgent. Hyukjae had seen that. Hyukjae had been upset. Kyuhyun was the problem.
“It’s because of Kyuhyun, isn’t it?” The words tumbled out, raw and abrupt. His filter was gone. “You saw us. In the library. That’s why you were so upset at the party. That’s why you…” He gestured vaguely between them, the movement uncoordinated. “You should be mad at him. Not me.”
Hyukjae’s face crumpled in confusion. “What? No. Donghae, this has nothing to do with him.”
But Donghae was already moving, propelled by a sudden, chemical-fueled certainty. The logic was pristine in his addled state: find Kyuhyun, confront him, erase the reason for Hyukjae’s pain. It was the only way to fix this. He stumbled toward the door, his legs feeling unconnected from his body.
“I’ll talk to him,” Donghae mumbled, fumbling for the doorknob. “I’ll make it clear. I’ll tell him to stay away from…”
“No!” Hyukjae’s hand shot out, wrapping firmly around Donghae’s bicep. The touch was electric, a jolt that bypassed the confusion and went straight to the heat coiling in his gut. Donghae froze, his breath catching.
“Let go,” Donghae said, but there was no force behind it. He was staring at Hyukjae’s hand on his arm, the points of contact burning through the fabric of his shirt.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Hyukjae’s voice was low, decisive. It wasn’t a request. He pulled Donghae away from the door, turning him around. Donghae offered no resistance. His body was humming, listening to a different set of commands now. “Look at you. You’re flushed. You can’t even stand straight.”
“I’m fine,” Donghae protested, but his knees felt weak. The room tilted slightly. All he could see was Hyukjae’s mouth, the set of his jaw, the fierce concern in his eyes. “I need to fix this.”
“You are fixing it,” Hyukjae said, his other hand coming up to cup Donghae’s cheek. His palm was cool against the feverish skin. “By staying here. With me.”
The last thread of Donghae’s resolve snapped. The mission to find Kyuhyun evaporated, meaningless. The only point of gravity in the spinning room was Hyukjae. The only thing that mattered was the pressure of his hands, the intensity of his gaze.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Hyukjae whispered, his thumb stroking Donghae’s cheekbone. “That fire. That need. You know what it is now.”
Donghae could only nod, a slow, dazed movement. He leaned into the touch, a pathetic, grateful sound escaping him. The analytical part of his brain, the part that catalogued and worried and feared, had been shut down. In its place was a pure, wanton craving.
“Let me take care of you,” Hyukjae said, and it sounded like both an apology and a promise.
He led Donghae to the bed, pushing Donghae woke up in panic, from his POV, explicit description of what he did to Hyukjae, licking his nubs , ramming, full of lust like an animal to his Hyukjae. Called Heechul to report what happened. aside the neatly stacked study notes. He guided him down onto the sheets with a gentleness that contradicted the hungry look in his eyes. Hyukjae’s movements were deliberate, focused. He was in control, a stark reversal of their previous roles, and Donghae surrendered to it completely.
Hyukjae undressed him with slow, maddening care, each revealed patch of skin a new revelation. He kissed the hollow of Donghae’s throat, the frantic pulse there, and Donghae arched off the bed with a broken gasp. Hyukjae licked a stripe up his sternum, bit gently at a nipple, and Donghae’s hands fisted in the sheets, his mind dissolving into sensation. He was muttering, a stream of consciousness lost to the drug: “Please… don’t stop… it’s too much… more…”
Hyukjae gave him more. He used his mouth until Donghae was sobbing, his fingers tangled in Hyukjae’s hair, begging for release and denial in the same breath. He prepped him with slick, careful fingers, watching Donghae’s face contort with overwhelmed pleasure. He whispered things Donghae could barely process—“You’re so beautiful like this,” “Let go, I’ve got you,” “All mine”—and Donghae believed every word.
When Hyukjae finally sheathed himself inside, it was with a slow, relentless pressure that stole the air from Donghae’s lungs. He set a deep, punishing rhythm that had Donghae seeing white sparks behind his eyelids. He leaned down to capture Donghae’s cries with his mouth, swallowing every sound.
But it was the last round that undid them both. Hyukjae, slick with sweat, positioned himself astride Donghae’s hips. He looked down, his expression a complex map of guilt, desire, and a determined kind of love. “My turn,” he breathed, and then he sank down, taking Donghae into him in one smooth, devastating motion.
Donghae cried out, his hands flying to grip Hyukjae’s thighs. The angle was deeper, more intimate. He could only watch, hypnotized, as Hyukjae began to move. Hyukjae rode him with a fluid, powerful grace, his head thrown back, his body a perfect arc of motion. He controlled every rise and fall, every grind, his eyes locked on Donghae’s. He was giving him this—the sight, the feel, the undeniable connection. He was taking care of him by offering himself completely, by letting Donghae see the raw, unfiltered want he’d always hidden.
The climax, when it ripped through them, was mutual and wordless. Donghae’s world narrowed to the feeling of Hyukjae clenching around him, to the sight of his ecstasy, to the total, annihilating silence that followed as they collapsed together in a tangle of spent limbs.
The drug’s edge finally began to recede, leaving a profound, echoing exhaustion in its wake. Donghae floated back to himself in fragments. The feel of Hyukjae’s weight on his chest. The slowing drumbeat of their hearts. The silence, now peaceful instead of tense.
Hyukjae shifted slightly, his lips brushing Donghae’s temple. “Okay?” he whispered, his voice rough.
Donghae tried to form a word, a sentence, anything. But his brain was soft and quiet. He managed a nod, his fingers tightening where they rested on the small of Hyukjae’s back. He held on as the last of the chemical fire faded, leaving only the warm, terrifying truth of what they had done, stone-cold sober this time, and who they now were to each other in its wake.