Chapter 24: Studio Confession
The studio air was cool and still, thick with the scent of ozone from the equipment and the faint, lingering trace of Hyukjae’s sandalwood cologne. Donghae sat on the low black leather couch, a laptop balanced on his knees, the chaotic rainbow of his Pro Tools session mirrored in his glasses. Hyukjae was a sprawled line of heat beside him, having lasted exactly forty-five minutes in the designated ‘ugly snacks’ chair before migrating to press his shoulder firmly against Donghae’s.
He’d been mostly true to his word. He’d scrolled through his phone, demolished a bag of honey butter chips, and dozed off for twenty minutes with his mouth slightly open. His presence was a quiet anchor. Donghae could work.
He’d been stitching vocals together for the bridge of Ghost, the demo Hyukjae gave him—left for him, really—humming in his headphones. It was intricate work, layering his own voice into a whispering choir, answering the question he’d sobbed onto the living room rug. The ‘how’ was here, in the technical graft of it. Crossfades. Pitch correction. The emotional truth buried in the mechanics.
A new file was open beside it. A simpler, sweeter melody he’d been tinkering with for weeks. He’d just dragged a rough vocal take into the session.
Hyukjae stirred, his head lolling onto Donghae’s shoulder. “What’s that?”
“Nothing. A B-side maybe.”
“Play it.”
Donghae clicked play. A gentle guitar loop, airy synths, and then his own voice, softer, almost conversational: ‘Just the way you smile in the morning, before the world gets in…’ It was unabashedly pretty. Sentimental.
When it finished, Hyukjae was quiet for a moment. Then a grin spread across his face, slow and knowing. He pointed a chip-dusty finger at the track title on the screen. “‘Beautiful’?” he read, his voice dripping with deliberate, teasing inflection. “Second time you’ve written a song with this title.” His fingers found Donghae’s thigh, tapping out the rhythm of the chorus. “Let me guess. Both about me? Or was the first one for some old girlfriend you’re still hung up on?”
The question was a spark in the cool, dim room. It wasn’t about jealousy. It was a game, a provocation etched in twenty-five years of history. Donghae didn’t answer with words. He moved fast, grabbing the wrist of the hand on his thigh, his grip firm. He turned, his other hand cupping the back of Hyukjae’s neck, and pulled him into a kiss.
It wasn’t soft. It was a bruising, possessiveclaim, a silencing. He poured every ounce of the week’s frustration, the fear, the sheer fucking gratefulness into it. Hyukjae made a muffled sound of surprise that melted into a hum of acquiescence, his free hand coming up to tangle in Donghae’s hair.
Donghae broke the kiss just enough for their breath to mix, his forehead resting against Hyukjae’s. The studio lights glinted in his partner’s dark eyes.
“Who else,” Donghae murmured, the words raw and direct against Hyukjae’s lips, “could ever be?”
Hyukjae’s gaze held his, the playful teasing gone, replaced by something deeper and more devastatingly fond. He swiped his thumb over Donghae’s lower lip. “Okay. Okay.” He leaned back, his composure a fragile thing. “So write the rest of it. Make it disgusting. Make people need a cold shower.”
Donghae huffed a laugh, the tension dissolving. “It’s a pop song, not a porn script.”
“Same difference with you involved.” Hyukjae settled back against the couch, but he didn’t let go of Donghae’s hand, twining their fingers together on the leather between them. “Finish Ghost first, though. The bridge is waiting. It’s gonna be the best part.”
“How do you know?”
“I know you.” Hyukjae said it simply, a statement of fact as unshakeable as gravity. He picked up his phone again. “Now work. I’m going to order disgusting amounts of fried chicken. We’re not leaving until you get a keeper take on that last stack.”
The mundanity of it—the chicken, the grip of his hand—was the final permission slip. Donghae turned back to the screen. The bridge of Ghost stared back, a complex, emotional puzzle. He put his headphones back on, but this time he left one ear cup off, so the real-world sounds of Hyukjae tapping on his phone, of the soft hum of the computer, could bleed in.
He highlighted a vocal line. Took a breath.
He pressed record.
His own voice filled the one ear, clean and alone in the void of the headphones. He sang the layered answer, the resolution Hyukjae had suggested in the dark. It wasn’t perfectly in tune. The timing was a fraction off. But the feel was there, a cracking, human truth in the midst of all the digital perfection.
He stopped, rewound, listened. In the silence after the playback, a new sound seeped in from his uncovered ear. Hyukjae was humming along quietly to the melody of Beautiful, while scanning a fried chicken menu, his thumb idly stroking the back of Donghae’s knuckles.
Donghae didn’t delete the take. He saved it, marking it: BRIDGE_TAKE1_RAW. He would polish it later. Do twenty more versions. But the core was there, recorded in the sanctuary of this room, with the man who was both his oldest wound and his only balm sitting beside him, planning their dinner.
The solo album no longer felt like a monument he had to carve alone. It felt like a map of their private language, and for the first time, he was eager to let the world listen in, to hear the story in the layers. He leaned his head against Hyukjae’s, and as the evening light faded from indigo to black outside the soundproof glass, he prepared to sing it again.
He leaned his head against Hyukjae’s, and as the evening light faded from indigo to black outside the soundproof glass, he prepared to sing it again. That night became a template. Hyukjae became a permanent fixture in the studio, a silent partner in the process, his presence the only collaborator Donghae allowed. The songs took shape, one after another, each one feeling less like a solo confession and more like a private conversation meant for a public audience.
Weeks bled together in a cycle of recording, debate, and exhausted takeout. Donghae argued with producers over synth layers while Hyukjae napped on the couch. He spent three full days perfecting the vocal stack for the Ghost bridge, the one Hyukjae had pinpointed in the dark. When he finally played the finished version, Hyukjae just nodded, his eyes a little glassy, and said, “Yeah. That’s it.”
The final master was approved on a Tuesday. Donghae emailed the files to the label at 4:17 PM from his office. He closed his laptop. The silence that followed was enormous, a physical weight lifting and leaving him hollowed out. He sat there for twenty minutes, staring at the blank screen, until the office door creaked open.
“Hey.” Hyukjae leaned in, carrying two takeout bags that smelled of garlic and ginger. “The intern said you hadn’t moved. It’s done?”
Donghae just nodded. He couldn’t form words. The culmination of months of pressure had evaporated, leaving nothing but sheer, stark fatigue in its place.
“Good.” Hyukjae put the bags down. He walked over, pried Donghae’s fingers from the mouse they were still gripping, and pulled him to his feet. “You’re done. Now you crash.” Donghae swayed, his body finally acknowledging the debt of stolen sleep and coiled anxiety. Hyukjae caught him, slinging Donghae’s arm over his shoulders. “Come on. Penthouse. Now.”
The car ride was a blur of neon streetlights. The elevator ascent felt like drifting. Inside the penthouse, Donghae stood uselessly in the middle of the living room, the same room where Hyukjae had given him the demo, where he’d fallen apart. He felt both lighter and more fragile than ever.
“Shower,” Hyukjae instructed, steering him toward the bathroom. “You smell like studio despair and old coffee.”
“Don’t wanna.”
“You’re going.” Hyukjae turned on the water and began undressing him with a brisk, clinical efficiency that brooked no argument. He pushed Donghae under the spray and left him there.
Donghae leaned his forehead against the cool tile, letting the hot water pummel his neck. He heard Hyukjae moving around in the bedroom. When he finally stumbled out, wrapped in a towel, Hyukjae was waiting. The bedroom lights were dimmed, and the familiar scent of sandalwood hung in the air.
“Lie down. On your stomach.”
“Hyukjae, I’m not really in the mood for—”
“I know you’re not.” Hyukjae cut him off, his voice firm. “That’s not what this is. Your shoulders are up by your ears. You look like one solid vibration would shatter you. Just lie down.”
The command was a relief. Donghae collapsed face-first onto the cool sheets. He heard the cap of a lotion bottle click open. Hyukjae’s hands, warm and slick, landed on the knotted musculature of his shoulders. They pressed, deep and knowing, finding every point of tension accumulated over months.
A groan was wrenched from Donghae’s throat. It was almost painful, this slow, systematic unraveling. Hyukjae worked in silence, his thumbs digging along Donghae’s spine, palms smoothing over his scapulae. He kneaded the base of Donghae’s skull where a permanent headache had taken root.
“The bridge,” Donghae mumbled into the pillow. “You were right.”
“I know.” Hyukjae’s voice was a soft rumble. His hands moved down, working the small of Donghae’s back. The touch was intentional, therapeutic. It held a profound familiarity but none of the usual teasing electricity, none of the deliberate heat that typically passed between them. This was something else. This was dismantling.
The intentional absence of any sexual charge was itself a kind of intimacy. It said, I see your exhaustion. I will not ask anything more of you. Donghae felt his body, wound tight for so long, begin to truly surrender. The anxious energy that usually hummed under his skin, the energy that would seek a different, more frantic type of release, slowly drained away under Hyukjae’s steady hands.
He drifted. The rhythm of the massage was a tidal pull. Hyukjae’s hands moved to his calves, then his feet, pressing out the tension there. Donghae’s breath grew slow and deep, syncing with the strokes. The world narrowed to the warmth of the room, the scent of the lotion, the anchor-point of that touch.
He was halfway into a dream when he felt Hyukjae’s lips brush his bare shoulder, a dry, chaste kiss. The sheets were pulled up over him. A hand smoothed his damp hair.
“Sleep, Hae,” Hyukjae whispered, his voice fading at the edges of Donghae’s consciousness. “It’s done.”
And for the first time in a year, with the ghost of his album finally laid to rest, Donghae did.
And for the first time in a year, with the ghost of his album finally laid to rest, Donghae did.
He slept for fourteen hours straight, a comatose, dreamless stretch that felt like being erased and gently redrawn. The next six weeks were a blur of a different texture—a screaming, colorful cyclone of final edits, jacket photo shoots, jacket photo shoot arguments, logistics meetings, and the constant, low-grade terror of impending exposure. Through it all, Hyukjae was a fixed point. He was there in the morning with a shoved-into-his-hand coffee, at the pointless marketing meetings where he’d yawn elaborately until they wrapped up, and late at night when Donghae would jolt awake, muttering about a typo in the lyric booklet.
“It’s fine,” Hyukjae would slur into his pillow, dragging Donghae back down. “The world can survive a misplaced comma. Sleep.”
The launch day itself was a flat, strange stillness. Donghae stood in his kitchen at dawn, watching the digital counter on his phone tick over. The music was live. It was out. He felt nothing but a hollow ringing in his ears, like after a concert. His phone began to vibrate, skittering on the marble countertop—a cacophony of notifications. He didn’t touch it. Hyukjae walked in, took one look at him, and wordlessly made toast. He spread the butter thick, cut it diagonally, and placed the plate in front of Donghae.
“Eat.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Try. The first headline just popped up on my feed.” Hyukjae took a deliberate bite of his own toast. “It says, ‘Veteran Idol Finally Speaks His Truth.’ Pretty dramatic.”
“That’s awful.”
“It’s traffic. Eat the toast, Hae.”
He ate the toast.
The first solo stage was two days later on a popular music show. The dressing room was too bright and smelled of hairspray and other people’s nerves. Donghae sat perfectly still as a stylist dabbed at his face, his own reflection a stranger under the stark bulbs. The weight of his in-ear monitors felt foreign, a solo burden. For twenty-five years, the stage had been a shared breath, a collective pulse. This walk to the stage was a long, silent corridor.
He stood in the dark, on the marked tape, hearing the intro for ‘Ghost’ begin. His mouth was dry. Then, from the side of the stage, a sharp, clear whistle cut through the pre-track haze—their old cue, from debut days, for get it together. He didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. He took a breath that finally reached his lungs.
The lights hit. He sang.
It wasn’t perfect. His hand shook holding the mic during the first verse. But he found the camera, and when he hit the bridge—the one built from a demo on a rug and Hyukjae’s words in the dark—his voice didn’t crack. It opened. The performance was a release, not a plea. The final note faded into the screaming of his name, a sound so massive and directed it was physical. He bowed, once, deep, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Back in the wings, the silence was abrupt. Staff rushed past with headsets. He was shepherded toward the dressing room, his body buzzing, ears ringing. Then a body collided with his, an arm hooking firmly around his neck, pulling him into the dim space behind a heavy curtain.
“You were stiff on the second pre-chorus,” Hyukjae’s voice grumbled in his ear, his breath warm. His other hand was a solid, grounding press between Donghae’s shoulder blades. “But the bridge? Fuck. You killed the bridge.”
Donghae turned, the adrenaline crystallizing into a sharp, desperate need. He fisted his hands in the front of Hyukjae’s black hoodie and pushed him back against the concrete wall. The sounds of the busy corridor were muffled, distant.
“Here?” Hyukjae asked, his eyes dark, but his hands already coming up to Donghae’s waist.
Donghae answered by crushing their mouths together. It was nothing like the kiss in the studio. This was all teeth and shared breath, a transfer of raw, screaming energy. Hyukjae took it, his grip tightening, letting Donghae pour the post-performance tremors into him. When Donghae finally broke away, gasping, he buried his face in Hyukjae’s neck.
“I did it,” he whispered, the words vibrating against skin.
“You did.” Hyukjae’s hand cradled the back of his head, fingers threading through sweat-damp hair. His other hand rubbed slow circles on Donghae’s back, feeling the tremors slowly subside. “Now we go home. Your manager is holding the car. The reviews are already coming in.”
“I don’t want to see them.”
“You won’t. I’ll read the good ones out loud and delete the rest.” Hyukjae pushed him gently upright. “Come on. Walk. Before someone finds the legendary Lee Donghae having a meltdown behind a curtain.”
The car ride was quiet. Donghae watched the city lights smear past the window. His phone, silenced, glowed intermittently in the cupholder. He didn’t reach for it. Hyukjae’s knee was pressed firmly against his the entire way, a steady point of contact.
In the penthouse elevator, Donghae watched their reflection—the stage makeup still sharp under his eyes, his costume sleek and unnatural. Hyukjae, in his ripped jeans and hoodie, looked like home. The doors opened. Hyukjae went straight to the kitchen and came back with two glasses of whiskey, no ice. He handed one to Donghae.
“To the ghost,” Hyukjae said, clinking his glass hard against Donghae’s. “Now officially exercised.”
The whiskey burned a clean path down. The silence of the apartment settled around them, different now. It was no longer waiting to be filled. It was just quiet. Donghae toed off his expensive shoes. He looked at Hyukjae, who was already scrolling through his phone, a small smirk playing on his lips.
“What?” Donghae asked.
“Just a tweet. Some fan said, ‘The way he looked at the camera during the second chorus, he’s clearly in love.’” Hyukjae looked up, his smirk widening. “Little do they know he was just looking at the stage monitor trying to remember if he turned his stove off.”
Donghae laughed, a real one, that started in his stomach and hurt his face. He finished the whiskey, placed the glass on the table, and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. The city sprawled below, endless and glittering. His album was in it now, floating in that sea of light and noise. The stage was done.
A warmth settled against his back. Hyukjae’s chin hooked over his shoulder, his arms wrapping around Donghae’s waist. They stood there, watching the silent city.
“It doesn’t feel like I thought it would,” Donghae said.
“Nothing ever does.” Hyukjae nuzzled the side of his head. “It just feels like what’s next.”
Donghae leaned back into the solid, familiar weight. The pressure was gone. In its place was a vast, open space, and the simple, terrifying freedom to choose what to put in it. Hyukjae’s arms tightened. For now, that was enough.
For now, that was enough.
The quiet lasted three more days. Then the numbers hit.
Donghae was in a quarterly budget meeting, arguing with the head of A&R about trainee vocal lessons, when his personal phone lit up. He’d left it face-up on the table, a silent concession to his own lingering anxiety. A text banner from their distribution lead glowed against the grainy wood: First week physicals finalized. Come to my office when you’re free.
He didn’t move. He kept nodding as the A&R manager droned on about cost-per-hour. His knuckles were white around his pen.
Hyukjae, slouched in the chair next to him, hooked a foot around Donghae’s ankle under the table. A sharp, sudden pull. Donghae jerked his head toward him. Hyukjae wasn’t looking at him. He was examining his own nails with theatrical boredom, but his jaw was tight. He’d seen the screen too.
“We’ll table this,” Donghae heard himself say, cutting off the A&R manager mid-sentence. He stood, the chair legs screeching. “Reschedule. Sorry.”
He was out the door, Hyukjae a half-step behind him. They didn’t speak in the hallway. The walk to the distribution office was a long, silent tunnel of corporate beige carpet and the faint smell of printer toner. Donghae’s heart was a dull, heavy thump against his ribs. He braced for polite disappointment, for the respectful it did well for a solo venture pat on the head.
The distribution lead, a perpetually harried woman named Minjee, looked up as they entered. Her office was a cave of cardboard shipping boxes and monitor glow. She didn’t smile. She simply turned her largest screen toward them.
A spreadsheet filled it, rows and columns of neat, devastating figures. Minjee pointed a single, unvarnished fingernail at a bolded total at the bottom.
“You outsold the first-week projections by three hundred percent,” she said, her voice utterly flat. “You also,” she paused, clicking to another tab, “outperformed the first-week sales of all recent senior soloist debuts under major labels.” Another click. Her eyes finally met Donghae’s. There was a flicker in her professional calm. “Including the Reset project by Lee Hyukjae-ssi. By a significant margin.”
The air vanished from the room. The hum of the computer fans grew deafening. Overwhelming success. The phrase from the boardroom presentations now had teeth, and it was biting into the very fabric of their understood world.
Donghae felt frozen. He stared at the number. It was just digits. It didn’t compute.
A low whistle came from beside him. Hyukjae leaned in, squinting at the screen. He was so close Donghae could feel the heat of his arm.
“Huh,” Hyukjae said. The sound was neither happy nor angry. It was pure, unadulterated surprise. He straightened up and looked at Donghae, his eyebrows raised. “Well. Shit.”
That broke the spell. Minjee finally cracked a faint, exhausted smile. “The media team is preparing a statement. You should… process. There will be calls.”
They walked back out. The hallway felt different, the lights brighter, the ceiling higher. Donghae’s footsteps echoed. At the intersection leading to his office, Hyukjae stopped. He turned, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
“My album,” Hyukjae said, his voice carefully light, “did really well. I got a plaque. We had samgyeopsal.”
“I remember.” Donghae’s tongue felt thick.
“Yours just beat mine. By a lot.” Hyukjae scrunched his nose, a familiar thinking tic. “This is a new feeling. I’m trying to identify it. It’s not jealousy. It’s… cognitive dissonance.” He rocked back on his heels. “My eternally anxious baby, who needed a demo and a fuck on the rug to even start, just out-sold me.” A slow, wicked grin spread across his face. “It’s kind of hot. Is that weird?”
The tension in Donghae’s chest fractured, splintering into a disbelieving laugh that hurt his throat. “Yes. That’s profoundly weird.”
“Good. We’re established as weird.” Hyukjae closed the distance between them, his gaze turning serious. The playful glint remained, but it was grounded now. “They’re just numbers, Hae. But they’re your numbers. You made a thing, and a shitload of people wanted it. That’s the point, right?”
“It doesn’t feel real.”
“It will when the royalties hit.” Hyukjae nudged him with an elbow. “Buy me something stupid. A gold-plated dance belt.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And you’re a commercial powerhouse. We have to redefine our dynamic.” Hyukjae started walking backward toward his own office, his eyes locked on Donghae. “I’m going to go sit at my desk and have a minor identity crisis. You should go to your office and stare at a wall. It’s the traditional next step.”
He turned a corner and was gone. Donghae stood alone in the bright, silent hallway. The numbers still burned behind his eyes. Overwhelming success. It was a tidal wave, and it was finally here. It hadn’t crushed him. It had lifted him up and left him stranded on an unfamiliar shore, dry-mouthed and staring at a horizon he’d never actually believed he’d reach. He took a breath, the first one that felt truly his own in days, and walked toward his office to stare at a wall.