Chapter 20: Feverish Apology
The key turned in the lock at two-seventeen in the morning.
Donghae knew the time precisely because he’d been watching the digital clock on the bedside table burn its neon numbers into the dark for the past four hours. The penthouse was too quiet. Taipei sprawled below the wall of windows, a pulsarium of endless lights, but up here, in Hyukjae’s bed, the silence had a dense, humming quality. It was the same silence that had filled the rehearsal hall before Hyukjae had fractured it. Now it was back, and it felt like a personal failure.
He heard the shuffle of boots in the entryway, a low cough, the thud of a dropped bag. The sounds were all wrong. Hyukjae moved through spaces with a dancer’s economy, even dead on his feet. This was the stumble of a ghost.
Donghae lay perfectly still on the vast bed, buried in a fortress of pillows. He’d showered after the studio, washing away the sweat and the residue of what happened there, but the emptiness had followed him home. The only thing that had helped was stealing the worn, grey hoodie from Hyukjae’s closet. It swam on him, sleeves past his fingertips, the cuffs frayed. It smelled like the airport, like cheap hotel soap, like him. It was a pathetic anchor, but it was all he had.
The bedroom door pushed open. Light from the hallway sliced across the floor, framing Hyukjae’s silhouette. He looked wrecked. His hair was flat, his skin pale and waxy under the residual tan from Taiwan. His eyes were glassy, fever-bright. He leaned against the doorframe as if standing upright was a chore.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice sandpaper rough.
“Observant,” Donghae said, not moving.
Hyukjae managed a weak smile. He toed off his shoes and shuffled into the room, dropping his jacket on a chair. He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, his back to Donghae. “Flight was a killer. Caught something, I think. Feels like a truck parked on my chest.”
A part of Donghae, the worried, caretaking part, immediately flared. He wanted to press a hand to Hyukjae’s forehead, to make tea, to fuss. The other part, the part that had been marinating in lonely anxiety for three days, hardened. That part noticed Hyukjae hadn’t even looked at him properly.
“Welcome home,” Donghae said, tone flat.
Hyukjae finally turned. His gaze, hazy with illness, tracked over Donghae’s form—his bare legs, the excessive fabric of the hoodie. Something flickered in his tired eyes. Recognition. Affection. A need to touch.
He reached out, fingers aiming for Donghae’s ankle where it poked from the duvet.
Donghae jerked his foot away as if burned. “Don’t.”
Hyukjae’s hand hung in the air. He blinked, slow. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. You’re sick. Don’t get your germs on me.”
“Since when do you care about germs?” Hyukjae coughed, a wet, ugly sound that shook his shoulders. He tried again, reaching to brush a strand of hair from Donghae’s forehead.
Donghae slapped his hand away. The sound was sharp in the quiet room.
Hyukjae went still. The fever seemed to recede for a second, burned away by a sudden, clear intensity. He studied Donghae’s face—the petulant set of his mouth, the defiant glare, the vulnerability he was trying so desperately to armor with anger.
“Ah,” Hyukjae breathed, understanding dawning. It wasn’t about germs.
He slid off the bed. Not to walk away, but to his knees on the thick carpet. He moved between Donghae’s legs, his hands settling on Donghae’s hips through the soft fabric. His touch was hot, even through the layers.
“I’m sorry,” Hyukjae said, his voice a low rasp. Not for the trip. They never apologized for the work. For the absence yes, its effect, always.
“For what?” Donghae challenged, his heart hammering against his ribs. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I left you alone in your head for too long.” Hyukjae leaned forward, pressing his burning forehead against Donghae’s sternum. The heat was alarming. “And now you’ve worked yourself into a state where you’re jealous of a virus.”
“I’m not jealous.” The protest was weak.
Hyukjae didn’t argue. He just nudged Donghae’s legs further apart, his hands sliding under the hem of the hoodie, up the bare skin of his thighs. His palms were scorching.
“Hyuk, you’re sick. Really—” Donghae’s objection caught in his throat as Hyukjae pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the inside of his thigh. The sensation was a lightning bolt: the contrast of the dry, fevered skin of Hyukjae’s lips against his own cool flesh.
“I’ll make it up to you,” Hyukjae murmured, his words vibrating against Donghae’s skin. He kissed another inch higher, a slow, deliberate ascent. “Until you can’t remember why you were mad. Until you forget there was ever a you without me in the room.”
It was an impossible promise. But the intent, the sheer, stubborn determination in his hoarse voice, unmoored Donghae completely. The anger bled out, leaving only the raw, needing thing underneath.
Hyukjae hooked his fingers in the waistband of Donghae’s briefs and pulled them down just enough. He didn’t use his mouth, not yet. He just looked, his fever-glazed eyes taking in the sight as if it was a cure. Then he leaned in, and with a sinful, precise focus that defied his shaking limbs, he licked a long, slow stripe from base to tip.
Donghae cried out, his fingers fisting in the duvet. The hoodie’s fabric was soft against his oversensitized skin.
Hyukjae was not gentle. He was thorough. Relentless. His technique was blurred by sickness, less finesse and more blunt, worshipful hunger. It was better. It felt more real. This was him, offering the only thing he had left in his depleted body: this devotion.
Every swipe of his tongue, every suctioning pull, was a direct counter-argument to the emptiness. See? You are not alone. I am here. Even like this, I am here for this.
Donghae arched off the bed, a broken string of syllables falling from his lips—Hyukjae’s name, curses, nonsense. The climax, when it tore through him, was less pleasure than a violent release of tension, a dam breaking. He shook with the force of it, his vision spotting.
Hyukjae stayed with him through it, swallowing, until Donghae went limp, boneless against the mattress. Only then did he collapse forward, his head resting on Donghae’s stomach, his own body wracked by a sudden, deep chill. He was shivering violently.
“Okay,” Donghae whispered, his anger completely evaporated, replaced by a wave of protective guilt. “Okay, you idiot. Come here.”
He maneuvered them both under the duvet, peeling the sweat-damp hoodie off himself. He pulled Hyukjae’s shaking form against him, skin to skin, wrapping himself around the feverish heat. He took Hyukjae’s icy hands and tucked them between his own warm thighs.
“You’re an idiot,” Donghae repeated, his voice thick as he carded his fingers through Hyukjae’s damp hair.
Hyukjae nuzzled into his neck, his breathing congested and ragged. “Worked, though,” he mumbled, already half-gone. “You’re not mad.”
“I’m furious. You’ve probably given me the plague.”
“Worth it.” Hyukjae’s shivers began to subside, nestled in Donghae’s warmth. “Your solo… the track list finalized?”
The question, asked now in this vulnerable, post-intimacy haze, disarmed Donghae completely. “Almost. The ballad’s giving me trouble. Feels like something’s missing.”
“It’s missing my harmonies,” Hyukjae sighed, a joke and not a joke. “Put them in. I’ll do them. Quiet, in the back. Like… a ghost.”
A ghost. A foundation. Something present even in the empty spaces.
Donghae held him tighter, watching the first faint streak of grey lighten the sky over Taipei. The vast, silent bed finally felt occupied. “Yeah,” he whispered into Hyukjae’s hair. “Okay. Go to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Mm. Morning meeting… nine…”
“Cancel it.”
But Hyukjae was already asleep, his breath evening out, trusting Donghae to handle it. To handle everything. For now, Donghae thought, scrolling through his phone with one hand to email their assistant, he could. The loneliness was, for the moment, vanquished. It was just them, and the rising dawn, and the manageable chaos of what came next.