Chapter 13: Second First Kiss
The morning of the wedding arrived not with a sunrise, but with a low, steel-wool sky and a persistent mist that swallowed the sea whole. It felt fitting, Donghae thought, staring out from the villa’s vast window. The grandiose, cinematic clarity of the previous days had been replaced by something intimate, private, veiled.
Manager Kim found him there, already dressed in the tailored white suit, his fingers tapping a silent rhythm on the glass. “Nervous?” Manager Kim asked, setting down a tumbler of water. His tone was the same as it had been before Donghae’s first solo stage: practical, unshakable.
“No,” Donghae said, then immediately shook his head. “Yes. Not about… him. About tripping. About my voice cracking if I have to speak. About dropping the ring into the ocean.”
Manager Kim allowed a small smile. “You won’t drop the ring. I have Shindong stationed as a human shield between you and the cliff edge.” He adjusted Donghae’s lapel, a fatherly gesture. “Your voice will be fine. And Hyukjae-ssi will catch you if you trip. He always has.”
That was the truth, distilled. Donghae let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
The ceremony was small, just their closest brothers and a handful of family. The cliffside altar was a weathered stone platform, its edges softened by time and salt spray. The railing was a thin, elegant line of brushed steel—more a suggestion than a barrier—and the drop below was a sheer plunge into churning, mist-obscured water. It did feel like a metaphor, but not for teetering. For jumping. Together.
They stood facing each other, the wind plucking at their suits, the humid air cool on their faces. Hyukjae looked carved from something ancient and steady. His gaze was fixed on Donghae, a slight, private smile on his lips, but his hands, held loosely at his sides, betrayed a fine tremor.
The officiant, an old family friend with a kind face, spoke words about partnership and legacy. Donghae heard them through a haze. He was too busy watching Hyukjae watch him, seeing the years flicker in his eyes—the dorms, the stages, the quiet moments in a blue room, the shared weight of building something from nothing.
Then it was time.
Hyukjae took the ring from Leeteuk, who was grinning so hard his cheeks must have ached. He reached for Donghae’s left hand. His fingers were warm, but the tremor was unmistakable now. As he slid the platinum band onto Donghae’s finger, his voice, usually so sure, wavered just slightly.
“This is technically our second marriage, you know,” Hyukjae said, low, for them alone, though the mic picked it up. A soft laugh rippled through the small gathering. “The first was signing ODE’s incorporation papers. With your terrible signature scrawled right next to mine.”
Donghae’s throat tightened. He remembered that bleak, fluorescent-lit office, the weight of the decision, the terrifying freedom of it. How Hyukjae’s signature had been neat and decisive beside his own frantic scribble.
“So,” Hyukjae continued, his eyes shining, “this is just making it official for everyone else.”
The officiant prompted Donghae for his ring. His hands were steady as he took it. He slid it onto Hyukjae’s finger, the metal catching the diffused gray light. “Then let’s make it official,” he said, his voice clear and carrying over the wind.
The officiant pronounced the words they’d written themselves. Before the man could even finish, before the traditional cue, Donghae moved.
It wasn’t a graceful lean-in. It was a full-body commitment. He launched himself forward, his hands cupping Hyukjae’s face, and kissed him. It was not a chaste wedding kiss. It was deep, hungry, and full of two months of pent-up everything. A reclaiming. Hyukjae made a sound against his mouth, surprised, then yielded, his own hands coming up to clutch at Donghae’s back, pulling him closer as their guests whooped and cheered.
When they broke apart, breathless, Donghae didn’t step back. He kept his forehead pressed to Hyukjae’s. “Okay?” he whispered.
Hyukjae’s answer was a dazed, brilliant smile. “Yeah.”
And then, with a giddy, unthinking force, Donghae shoved. Not hard, but enough to throw Hyukjae off balance. He yelped, stumbling backwards, and Donghae followed him down, both of them tumbling into the soft, rain-damp sand just beyond the stone platform. The white suits were instantly streaked with beige grit.
Hyukjae lay beneath him, sand in his hair, laughter bursting from him. “You’re insane!”
“You started it!” Donghae yelled back, the formal tension shattered. He braced his hands on either side of Hyukjae’s head, staring down at him—his husband—with a fierce, possessive joy. The mist kissed their heated skin. “With your sadistic rules and your silk pajamas and your chaste single bed.” He leaned down, his voice dropping to a growl meant only for Hyukjae’s ears. “Then let’s have the wedding night we never got after the first one.”
He kissed him again, there in the sand, with their friends catcalling and Manager Kim sighing good-naturedly about dry-cleaning bills. It was messy, and perfect, and utterly them.
The reception was a blur of food, tears, and raucous speeches held in a sheltered pavilion further up the cliff. Leeteuk cried through his entire toast. Shindong revealed embarrassing dorm stories. Kyuhyun presented a mathematically calculated chart of “Who Babied Donghae More,” which Hyukjae won in a landslide.
Through it all, their hands remained linked under the table. The rings felt foreign and miraculous.
Later, when the lanterns were lit against the deepening twilight and the mist had finally lifted to reveal a sky littered with stars, they escaped. They walked back to their villa along a coastal path, the sound of the party fading behind them, replaced by the rhythmic hush of the waves.
The silence between them was full, a comfortable container for everything that had been said and everything that no longer needed words. Inside their suite, the big bed had been turned down. Rose petals were strewn artfully over the silk sheets—a gesture from the staff that made them both snort with laughter.
Donghae closed the door and leaned against it, watching Hyukjae walk to the center of the room. His husband’s suit jacket was gone, his shirt untucked and stained with sand and champagne. He looked utterly unraveled. Beautiful.
“So,” Hyukjae said, turning to face him. His earlier steadiness was gone, replaced by a visible, vulnerable anticipation. The tremor was back in his hands. “No more rules.”
Donghae pushed off from the door. “No more rules.”
He crossed the room slowly, giving Hyukjae every chance to look his fill. When he was close enough to touch, he didn’t. He just looked. “You were shaking,” he said softly.
Hyukjae gave a slight, helpless shrug. “You weren’t.”
“I was. Inside.” Donghae reached out then, his fingers finding Hyukjae’s stained shirt collar. He traced the line of it. “All day. All week. For two months.” His other hand came up, brushing a grain of sand from Hyukjae’s cheekbone. “You built it up so much. Made me wait. Made me want.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Was that the point?”
Hyukjae captured his wandering hand, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss to the knuckles, right above the new ring. His eyes were dark, endless. “The point,” he murmured against Donghae’s skin, “was to remember that we can want things this much. After all this time. After everything.” He let go of Donghae’s hand and reached for his own shirt buttons, his fingers fumbling. “Help me.”
It wasn’t a seductive command. It was a request, cracked open with need. Donghae batted his hands away and took over, methodically working each button through its hole. The fabric, stiff with dried salt and sand, parted. He pushed it back over Hyukjae’s shoulders, letting it fall to the floor.
The villa was silent except for the distant sea and the sound of their breathing. The world had narrowed to this room, this light, this man—his husband—standing bare-chested and waiting, his skin pebbled in the cool air.
Donghae finally closed the last inch between them, his lips meeting Hyukjae’s not with the frantic hunger from the beach, but with a slow, devastating certainty. This was the start of the thing they’d been building towards since the incorporation papers, since the first shared glance across a practice room, since a promise whispered on a rooftop above a sleeping city. It was not a culmination, but a beginning.
And when Hyukjae’s back finally met the silk sheets, scattering the absurd rose petals, his head falling back with a gasp Donghae had been dreaming of for months, it felt neither like a reward nor a claiming.
It felt like a homecoming.
It felt like a homecoming.
Then Donghae’s patience, already worn to a filament by two months of deliberate abstinence, snapped. A low, possessive sound ripped from his throat. In one fluid motion, he hooked an arm under Hyukjae’s knees and another around his back, hoisting him up against his chest.
Hyukjae yelped, his arms instinctively locking around Donghae’s neck. “What are you—”
“Shut up,” Donghae growled, carrying him toward the bedroom. He didn’t make it to the bed. Three steps into the room, he pressed Hyukjae against the wall, the impact shuddering through them both. His hands were already at the delicate lace bodice of Hyukjae’s white wedding undershirt, fingers twisting into the fabric. A seam tore with a sharp, satisfying sound.
“Two fucking months of blue balls,” Donghae breathed against the flushed skin of Hyukjae’s neck. He bit down, not gently, marking the pulse point that had taunted him from across countless meetings and sterile hotel rooms. Hyukjae gasped, his head thumping back against the wall, his body arching into the pressure.
Donghae didn’t wait. He carried him the last few feet to the bed and deposited him onto the silk sheets, scattering the remaining rose petals. He followed him down, a shadow of intent and hunger. He kissed him again, deep and filthy, before his mouth began a slow, torturous descent.
He took his time. The lace was peeled away, kissed aside. He mapped every scar, every mole, every plane of muscle with his tongue, relearning a body he’d known for decades as if it were new territory. When he finally turned Hyukjae onto his stomach, the man was trembling, a low, continuous whine escaping him. Donghae spread him open.
He licked into him with slow, filthy strokes, deliberate and worshipful. Hyukjae choked, his fingers tearing at the sheets, his words dissolving into fractured, pleading syllables. Donghae didn’t stop until Hyukjae was a writhing, desperate mess, until his own control was a frayed wire sparking in the dark.
He slicked himself with a bottle from the nightstand, his eyes never leaving Hyukjae’s ravished form. He leaned over him, caging him with his arms, his mouth at Hyukjae’s ear. “Look at me,” he commanded, his voice rough.
Hyukjae turned his head, his cheek against the silk. His eyes were drenched, his perfect makeup streaked by earlier tears and now by sweat. He looked utterly debauched. “Donghae—”
Donghae sheathed himself in one brutal, unrelenting thrust.
A raw, broken cry tore from Hyukjae’s throat, his body seizing around Donghae’s in a shock of white-hot sensation. Donghae held still, buried to the hilt, letting them both feel the brutal, perfect fit of it. He watched a fresh tear track through the smudged liner. “Mine,” Donghae stated, the word a stone dropping into a well.
Hyukjae’s breath hitched. He nodded, a frantic little movement. “Yours. Always yours.”
The first time was against the wall, then on the floor by the bed. It was fast, primal, a desperate release of all the tension that had built in the quiet, chaste nights of their engagement. It was teeth and grabbing hands and Donghae’s choked curses muffled against Hyukjae’s shoulder. Hyukjae came with a shuddering gasp, his nails leaving half-moons on Donghae’s back.
The second time was on the silk sheets. Slower. Donghae laid Hyukjae out like a feast and took his time tasting him. He fucked him with deep, rolling thrusts that made Hyukjae’s toes curl and his mind blank of everything but the relentless rhythm. This time, Donghae watched Hyukjae’s face the entire time, watching pleasure fracture his features until he came untouched, sobbing Donghae’s name.
The third time was in the shower, the water sluicing over them as they steamed the glass. Hyukjae’s arms were braced against the tile, his head bowed. Donghae moved behind him, one hand splayed on Hyukjae’s stomach, holding him steady, the other gripping his hip hard enough to bruise. The sound was slick, obscene, drowned out by the pounding water. Hyukjae was pliant, utterly spent, murmuring nonsense as Donghae drove them both over the edge again.
The fourth time was back on the bed, in the deep quiet of the early morning. Hyukjae was stretched out on his back, asleep or pretending to be. Donghae woke him with his mouth, with gentle, insistent touches until Hyukjae was sighing and shifting beneath him, still loose and oversensitive. Donghae entered him with an almost agonizing slowness. This was different. This was not claiming, but reaffirming. Hyukjae cried silently, his hands coming up to cradle Donghae’s face, thumbs stroking his cheekbones as they moved together in a tender, grinding rhythm that felt like a conversation without words.
The fifth time was as the first gray light seeped around the blackout curtains. Hyukjae initiated it, turning in Donghae’s arms with a determination that belied his exhaustion. He pushed Donghae onto his back and straddled him, moving with a slow, sinuous grace that stole the air from Donghae’s lungs. He rode him, his eyes holding Donghae’s, his body a work of art in the dim light—marked, used, beautiful. This was Hyukjae’s final gift, his own demonstration of possession. When they finished, it was with a shared, shuddering sigh, collapsing into each other utterly spent, their skin glued together with sweat and other things.
The room held the heavy, spent quiet of a battlefield after the war. The scent of sex, salt, and torn lace hung in the air.
Donghae’s heartbeat gradually slowed from a gallop to a weary trot against Hyukjae’s back, where they lay tangled. Every muscle ached with a deep, satisfying burn. He traced idle patterns over a fresh bruise on Hyukjae’s hip, a purple bloom in the shape of his thumb.
Hyukjae shifted, a wince fleeting across his features before he settled deeper into the ruined sheets. “You’re a beast,” he mumbled, his voice shredded.
“You set the rules,” Donghae murmured into his hair. It smelled of hotel shampoo and them. “You built the want.”
Hyukjae didn’t deny it. He turned his head, his nose brushing Donghae’s collarbone. “I was scared,” he said, the admission raw in the quiet. “That after all the build-up, it would just be… normal. That the frenzy would be gone.”
Donghae absorbed that. The pressure of his solo debut, Hyukjae’s own fears—they’d been weaving a different kind of tension. He kissed Hyukjae’s temple. “And now?”
A slow, exhausted smile spread against Donghae’s skin. Hyukjae didn’t answer with words. He let out a long, shaky breath that seemed to release the last of the tremor he’d carried all day. His body, pressed along Donghae’s, was heavy and completely relaxed for the first time in months.
Outside, the ocean hissed against the cliff base. A seagull cried, lonely in the dawn.
“Manager Kim is going to kill us,” Hyukjae said eventually, his words slurred with impending sleep. “We have that photo call at noon.”
Donghae’s hand stilled on his hip. A dull panic, familiar and cold, began to pool in his stomach. The real world. The schedule. The performance. He tensed.
Hyukjae felt it. He pressed back, a solid, warm counterweight against the sudden chill of anxiety. “Hey.” He twisted, winced again, but turned to face Donghae. In the grainy light, his eyes were clear. “Look at me.” It was an echo of Donghae’s own command from hours before, softened now. “You’re not doing it alone. You never were.”
Donghae searched his face—the smudged eyes, the bruised mouth, the unwavering gaze. He saw the partner who’d signed the incorporation papers, the one who’d fielded the panic calls during album production, the one who’d just been utterly ruined and remade by his side. The cold panic receded, not gone, but manageable.
“Yeah,” Donghae breathed. He pulled Hyukjae closer, tucking him under his chin. The warmth was immediate, a grounding force. “Okay.”
Hyukjae nodded, already drifting. “We’ll just wear sunglasses. Big ones.”
A laugh, rusty and real, bubbled out of Donghae. He tightened his arms around his husband. The city, the cameras, the weight of the solo stage—it was all still there, waiting beyond their door.
But here, in this wrecked bed, he wasn’t alone. And for now, that was enough.
And for now, that was enough.
The noon photo call was a study in controlled chaos. Manager Kim herded them onto the villa’s sun-drenched terrace, his expression a mask of professional tolerance that cracked only once. His eyes tracked over the dark, sprawling bruise just above the collar of Donghae’s linen shirt, then down to the distinct, finger-shaped marks visible on Hyukjae’s forearm. He sighed, a long-suffering sound drowned out by the shutter clicks.
“Boys. The sunglasses. Now.”
They obeyed, sliding on the oversized black frames. Behind them, the ocean glittered, a cruel parody of cheerfulness. Donghae’s smile felt carved from wood, but Hyukjae’s shoulder pressed against his was a living current, steadying him. They posed, a picture of honeymoon bliss, while Donghae’s mind churned with unfinished vocal takes and a persistent, low-grade panic about the album’s first single.
“Think they can tell?” Hyukjae muttered through his smile as they turned for a profile shot.
“That I can barely walk? Yeah, probably.”
“I meant that you’re mentally rehearsing choreography right now.”
Donghae’s fixed grin didn’t waver. “Fuck off.”
“Love you too,” Hyukjae chirped, lacing their fingers together and raising their joined hands for the cameras. The rings caught the sun, a flash of defiant permanence. The shutters went wild.
As soon as Manager Kim declared them done, the structured world dissolved. The schedule, a tyrannical god for so long, was banished. Three empty days stretched before them, vast and terrifying in their freedom.
The first morning they explored the island on foot, following a winding path through lush greenery that gave way to a crescent of pristine, white sand beach, marked as private. The air was thick with salt and the scent of frangipani. They were alone.
The silence was different now. It wasn’t the tense quiet of separate hotel rooms, but a shared, comfortable hush. Donghae found himself actually seeing things—the dizzying blue of a starfish in a tide pool, the precise geometry of a crab’s burrow. He pointed them out to Hyukjae, who listened with a soft, attentive expression Donghae hadn’t seen since before the album preparations had swallowed him whole.
They swam in the gentle surf, the water cool and cleansing. After, they lay on their towels, letting the sun dry their skin. Donghae rolled onto his side, propping his head on his hand, and just looked at Hyukjae. The lines of his body were so familiar, yet the sunlight glinting off his wedding band made everything new.
His hand drifted, tracing the line of Hyukjae’s hip, dipping beneath the waistband of his swim trunks. Hyukjae’s breath hitched. His eyes, hidden behind his sunglasses, turned toward Donghae. “Out here?”
“No one for miles,” Donghae said, his voice low. He hooked his fingers, pulling the fabric down. “Manager Kim’s not here. Your rules aren’t here.” He leaned close, his lips brushing Hyukjae’s ear. “Just sand. And me.”
It was fast and gritty and hungry. Hyukjae rolled onto his stomach, a silent invitation, his face pressed into the folded towel. Donghae spat into his palm, slicked himself, and pushed in from behind. The tight, hot clutch of Hyukjae’s body was even more intense under the blinding sun, with the sound of waves covering Hyukjae’s choked-off moans. Donghae fucked him with hard, deep strokes, one hand braced in the sand, the other splayed possessively over the small of Hyukjae’s back, holding him down.
“God, you’re tight,” Donghae grunted, the sweat dripping from his chin onto Hyukjae’s spine. “Still so fucking tight for me.”
Hyukjae’s answer was a shattered gasp, his body pushing back against each thrust. It was over quickly, a brutal, sun-soaked claiming. Donghae came with a sharp groan, collapsing heavily atop him. For a long moment, there was only the sound of the sea and their ragged breathing.
Then Hyukjae shifted, his voice muffled by the towel. “Oh, god. The sand.”
Donghae pulled out, and Hyukjae immediately curled onto his side, wincing. “It’s… gritty. Everywhere.”
A laugh, loud and free, burst from Donghae. He helped him up, brushing ineffectually at the sand sticking to his damp skin. “Come on,” he said, still grinning. “Let’s get you cleaned up. This is why we have a villa with a pool.”
The second day was for the pool. They spent the morning lazily swimming, then lounging on submerged ledges, cold drinks in hand. The water distorted their bodies, made them long and wavering. Donghae floated on his back, staring at the cloudless sky, the album anxieties a faint, distant hum.
Hyukjae moved through the water like a secret. He came up behind Donghae, his hands sliding around his waist underwater. His mouth found the juncture of Donghae’s neck and shoulder. “Remember the pool at the old dorm?” he murmured, his teeth grazing skin. “That one time, after curfew?”
Donghae remembered. The reckless fear of getting caught, the chlorinated water stinging his eyes, Hyukjae’s muffled laughter against his mouth. He turned in the circle of Hyukjae’s arms. Here, now, there was no fear. Only the heavy, warm water and infinite time.
He kissed him, open-mouthed and slow. His hands found Hyukjae’s hips, guiding him back against the smooth tiled wall of the pool. The water provided a surreal, weightless resistance. Hyukjae wrapped his legs around Donghae’s waist, locking his ankles. Donghae reached between them, guiding himself inside with a slow, inexorable pressure that made Hyukjae’s head fall back against the pool edge with a soft thud.
Fucking in the water was a different kind of intensity. There was friction and a fluid, rolling buoyancy. Each thrust was met with the water’s push and pull. Donghae held him there, anchored against the wall, moving in a deep, languid rhythm. Hyukjae’s pleas were swallowed by Donghae’s mouth. His muscles fluttered tightly around him with every surge forward. The sunlight fractured on the rippling surface around them, casting dancing light across Hyukjae’s face, his expression one of rapt, overwhelming immersion.
They moved together until their muscles burned with the unique fatigue of fighting water, until pleasure coiled, thick and unavoidable, in their guts. Hyukjae came first, his body seizing, a silent cry tearing from his throat as he spilled into the water between them. The clenching pulses dragged Donghae over the edge after him, his release a hot rush lost in the cool, chemical blue.
They stayed like that for a while, foreheads touching, breathing the humid, chlorinated air, their bodies still joined beneath the calm, settling surface.
The third day dawned. Their last full day. A peculiar, heavy quiet settled over Hyukjae. He was attentive, but distant, his gaze often fixed on some inward horizon. After breakfast, he disappeared into the bathroom for a long time.
He emerged just as Donghae was contemplating another dive into the pool. Hyukjae stood before him, completely bare. In his hand was a small, unmarked silver bottle. “I want today to be different,” he said, his voice strangely formal.
“What is that?”
“Something from Taiwan. A… gift from a local promoter. He said it strips everything away. Just leaves the want.” Hyukjae’s knuckles were white around the bottle. “I want you to take me. I want to feel nothing but you. Until it’s gone.”
A cold trickle of concern cut through Donghae’s post-coital languor. “Hyukjae. We don’t need—”
“I know we don’t,” Hyukjae interrupted, his eyes finally meeting Donghae’s. They were blazing with a desperate, vulnerable resolve. “I want to. For me. I spent two months building a wall between us and my head. I want it gone. I want you to demolish it.” He uncapped the bottle, tipped a small, viscous pearl of liquid onto his tongue, and swallowed. “Please.”
The change wasn’t instantaneous. It was a slow, sinister bloom. Twenty minutes later, as they sat on the lounge, Hyukjae’s breathing deepened. A faint flush crept up his chest. He reached for Donghae’s hand and placed it on his inner thigh. His skin was already fever-hot. “It’s starting,” he whispered, and his eyes were pure, undiluted need.
What followed was not making love. It was not even fucking as they knew it.
It was demolition.
The aphrodisiac didn’t create desire; it vaporized every other signal. Hyukjae became a single, consuming nerve ending. He begged, raw and unfiltered, his language crumbling into obscene, graphic demands. He presented himself on his hands and knees on the cool tile floor, his back arched sharply, his body already slick with sweat. “Donghae, now, fuck, please, I need it, I need you in me so deep, please—”
Donghae gave it to him. He drove into that impossibly hot, clutching channel with a force that rocked Hyukjae forward. Hyukjae screamed, a sound of pure, shattered relief, and pushed back against him, meeting every brutal thrust. There was no finesse, no teasing build. It was a direct, furious circuit of need and fulfillment. Donghae fucked him until his own thighs screamed, until the slap of skin and Hyukjae’s ragged sobs were the only sounds in the world.
When Donghae came, spilling inside him with a guttural shout, Hyukjae merely sobbed, “Again. Don’t stop. It’s still there, I can still think, make it stop, please.”
So Donghae did. He pulled out, turned Hyukjae onto his back on the floor, hooked his legs over his shoulders, and sank back into him. Hyukjae’s body was relentlessly receptive, impossibly tight, fluttering around him in constant, desperate ripples. His cock, hard and leaking, lay untouched against his stomach. He didn’t seem to care about his own release. He only chanted, “More, more, more,” his eyes glassy and fixed on Donghae’s face.
They moved from the floor to the armchair, where Hyukjae straddled him, riding him with a frantic, piston-like rhythm, his nails digging bloody trails into Donghae’s shoulders. To the edge of the bed, where Donghae bent him over, his cheek pressed to the mattress, and took him with short, punishing strokes that finally wrenched a screaming orgasm from Hyukjae, his body convulsing so violently Donghae had to hold him down.
Still, he pleaded. His voice was a ruined scratch. “It’s fading. I can feel it fading. Don’t let it come back.”
The sun crossed the sky. The room swam with the ste