Chapter 18: Aphrodisiac Aftermath I
The champagne bubbles went flat hours ago. The golden haze in the penthouse bedroom had deepened to indigo, the city now a silent, glittering diorama far below. Donghae lay on his back, one arm flung over his eyes. Hyukjae’s even breaths beside him were a metronome in the dark.
He should feel different. He did, physically—a pleasant, heavy lassitude in his limbs, a tenderness in places that made him want to smile. But underneath it, a familiar current of static had returned. The high of the release, both the chart’s and Hyukjae’s, was fading. The vacuum was back.
“You’re thinking,” Hyukjae’s voice was a rasp, sleep-rough. He hadn’t moved. “I can hear the gears grinding from over here.”
“It hit number one,” Donghae said to the inside of his arm.
“I know. I was there when your phone screamed.”
“It should feel… bigger. Or smaller. I don’t know. It just feels like a fact.” He lowered his arm, staring at the dark ceiling. “Tomorrow there’s the photo call. The radio interviews. The thank-you messages. It’s just… more work. A different kind of waiting.”
The sheets rustled as Hyukjae turned onto his side, propping his head on a hand. His expression was unreadable in the gloom. “You spent all your emotional capital on the worry. Now there’s none left for the win. I get it.”
“It’s stupid.”
“It’s human.” Hyukjae was quiet for a moment. Then he pushed himself up. “Stay there.”
“Where are you going?”
“To make an investment.” He slid out of bed, his naked form a pale slash in the dark before he pulled on a robe. He padded out of the room.
Donghae listened to the faint sounds from the kitchen: a cabinet, the clink of glass. He closed his eyes. The silence of the penthouse felt immense, accusatory. He’d won. Why did he feel like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Hyukjae returned. He didn’t turn on the light. He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping. He held two small crystal glasses, not with champagne, but with something that looked like dark honey.
“What is it?”
“A reset.” Hyukjae handed him one. “It’s sweet. Just drink it.”
Donghae took the glass. The liquid was viscous, clinging to the sides. It smelled of ginger and something earthy, floral. He knocked it back. It was syrupy, warm, with a slow, spreading heat that bloomed in his stomach almost immediately.
Hyukjae drank his own, watching him. He took the empty glass from Donghae’s hand and set both aside.
“Lie back.”
The command was soft. Donghae obeyed, the strange warmth in his gut beginning to pulse in time with his heartbeat. Hyukjae’s hands went to his own robe, untying the belt. He let it fall open, then shrugged it off his shoulders. In the faint light from the window, his skin looked like marble.
He didn’t join Donghae under the sheets. Instead, he moved, positioning himself kneeling over Donghae’s hips, but not touching. He just… presented himself. An offering in the dark.
“You did the work,” Hyukjae murmured, his voice assuming a low, instructional tone. “You sat in the fire. You got your number one. Your body is here, but your brain is still in that fire. So we’re going to burn it out. We’re going to scorch the anxiety right out of your nervous system.”
The heat in Donghae’s core wasn’t just from the drink anymore. It was a slow, coiling snake of desire, thick and insistent. His eyes were adjusting. He could see the flush already spreading across Hyukjae’s chest.
“What was in that drink?” Donghae’s own voice sounded far away.
“Something to help you feel. Only feel. No thoughts.” Hyukjae reached behind himself, his movements fluid, almost rehearsed. When his hand came back, his fingers were slick, glistening. He’d prepared himself again. “Tonight, you don’t have to earn a thing. Tonight, you take. I’m your prize. All of me. And I am wanting.”
The last word was a shiver, a genuine crack in his composure. It electrified Donghae. He watched, mesmerized, as Hyukjae lowered himself, not onto him, but onto his own fingers, his head falling back with a sharp gasp. He was working himself open, right there above him, a performance that was utterly real, the sounds ripped from his throat raw and unmetered.
Donghae’s hands shot up, gripping Hyukjae’s thighs. The muscles were tight, trembling. The heat was everywhere now, a fever under his own skin. The static in his mind was being drowned out by a roaring, single-pointed need.
Hyukjae removed his fingers, breath coming in short pants. He shifted forward, his hand guiding Donghae inside him in one slow, devastating slide.
It was different. Hyukjae was molten, impossibly hot and slick, his body clutching Donghae with a frantic, internal rhythm that had nothing to do with Donghae’s own movements. The aphrodisiac wasn’t just for Donghae. Hyukjae was lost in it, his skin hypersensitive, every nerve alight.
“Fuck,” Donghae choked out, his hips bucking involuntarily. The sensation was too much, a feedback loop of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. Hyukjae cried out, a sound of pure overstimulation, and began to move, riding him with a frenzied, desperate abandon.
Donghae’s control shattered. He surged up, wrapping his arms around Hyukjae’s torso and rolling them over, pinning Hyukjae’s wrists to the silk sheets above his head. Hyukjae’s back arched, a strained gasp escaping him. His pupils were black pools, blown wide, reflecting no light. They were fathomless, hungry.
“So needy for me, baby?” Donghae heard the growl in his own voice, a possessive, dark thing he rarely let out. He ducked his head, biting at Hyukjae’s collarbone, not gently, licking a stripe down the frantic pulse in his throat, down the trembling plane of his abdomen. The taste of salt and heat was addictive. “Gonna wreck you properly.”
He released Hyukjae’s wrists, but only to slide down the bed, his hands spreading Hyukjae open. He didn’t use his fingers. He breached him with his tongue, spearing into that hot, fluttering tightness.
Hyukjae screamed.
It was a raw, stripped sound, untouched by performance. His hands fisted in the sheets, his body bowing off the mattress. Donghae drank him in, lapping at his rim, fucking him with his tongue, relentless. The world dissolved into this single, wet, burning point of connection. Hyukjae was babbling, a stream of broken pleas and affirmations that made no sense and every sense.
Donghae felt the orgasm tear through Hyukjae before he saw it—a violent, full-body clench, the muscles of his stomach seizing. Hyukjae spilled across his own abdomen with a choked-off sob, untouched, his climax ripped from him by sheer, overwhelming sensation.
Donghae didn’t let up. He kept working him through the aftershocks, until Hyukjae was whimpering, oversensitive, pushing weakly at his head. Only then did he rise up, surging back into the heat he’d made even wetter, even more desperate.
He fucked him then, deep and punishing, chasing his own release. Hyukjae was boneless beneath him, taking it, his oversensitive body sparking with every thrust, his cries soft and shattered. When Donghae came, it was with a finality that felt like annihilation. He saw white, his vision tunneling to the man beneath him.
He collapsed, his weight driving a final gasp from Hyukjae’s lungs. They were a mess of sweat and spend, breathing in ragged, syncopated rhythms. The strange, feverish heat was finally receding, leaving behind a profound, gelatinous peace.
Long minutes passed. The city lights didn’t change.
Hyukjae stirred first, his hand coming up to stroke Donghae’s damp hair. “Still thinking?” he whispered, his voice utterly ruined.
Donghae listened. The static was gone. The vacuum was gone. There was only a deep, resonant silence in his mind, a physical memory of heat and possession that had scorched every other thought away.
“No,” he said, the word a truth etched into his bones. He nuzzled into Hyukjae’s neck. “It’s my number one.”
Hyukjae’s chest moved in a silent huff of laughter. “Damn right it is.”
This time, when sleep came, it was total and dark and dreamless. There were no wings, no intermissions. Just the unshakeable ground of Hyukjae’s heartbeat under his ear, and the certain, quiet knowledge of his own victory.