Chapter 27: Riding Out the High
The morning after the day before was a creature of slow, golden light and profound, bodily peace. Donghae woke not to an alarm, but to the steady, reassuring thump of Hyukjae’s heart beneath his ear. His body was a map of pleasant aches—a twinge in his lower back, a delicious soreness deeper within, the ghost of fingerprints on his hips. The room smelled of sex, sleep, and the lingering citrus of Hyukjae’s cologne on the rumpled sheets.
Hyukjae was already awake. His hand was a warm weight on the nape of Donghae’s neck, fingers softly kneading the tension that simply couldn’t exist there anymore. He’d been watching the sky lighten, watching Donghae sleep.
“You’re thinking,” Hyukjae murmured, his voice gravelly with sleep. “I can hear it.”
“I’m not.”
“Liar. Your breathing changes.” He shifted, turning so they were face-to-face on the pillow. His eyes were clear, focused. “The repackage.”
Donghae didn’t bother denying it. The real world was a tide at the door. “They want concepts by Friday. A mood board. Three new tracks, minimum. One has to be a title contender.” He let out a long breath. “It’s just… more. It doesn’t stop.”
Hyukjae listened, his thumb tracing the arc of Donghae’s eyebrow. “What did the last one feel like? The album.”
“Like…” Donghae searched the ceiling. “Like building a house alone. Every brick. Knowing everyone would come to judge the architecture.”
“And this one?”
Donghae looked at him then, at the man who had spent a full day dismantling every one of his anxieties with his hands and his mouth. “Like adding a room to a house that’s already a home. It should be easier. But it just feels… redundant.”
A slow smile spread across Hyukjae’s face. It wasn’t his supportive CEO smile. It was sharper, more devious. “Then don’t build alone.” He sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist. The morning light cut across the planes of his chest, the defined lines of his abdomen. “Co-write with me. Right now. One of the tracks.”
The idea was so absurd, so simple, it stole Donghae’s breath. “Right now?”
“Why not? We’ve got nothing until that producer meeting at three.” Hyukjae swung his legs out of bed and stood, gloriously naked, stretching his arms overhead with a bone-deep groan. He turned, offering a hand. “Come on. You work best with a collaborator. So collaborate.”
It felt illicit, reckless. To channel the leftover, humming energy from their bed not into performance anxiety, but into creation. With him. Donghae took his hand.
They padded barefoot into Hyukjae’s spacious study. Guitars leaned against the wall near a sleek digital piano. A notebook, scribbled with Hyukjae’s messy shorthand, lay open on the desk. Hyukjae pulled two chairs close to the piano bench. He didn’t sit at the keys. He picked up an acoustic guitar, settling it on his lap, and began idally picking a progression. It was mournful. Sweet.
“That’s the one from your old apartment,” Donghae said, recognition dawning. “The unfinished one.”
“Mm. The ‘I Wanna Love You’ sibling. Never found the right words.” Hyukjae played the four chords again, a loop of unresolved yearning. He looked up, his gaze direct. “Give me a line. Anything. From last night. From the concert. From when I was inside you.”
Heat flushed Donghae’s skin. The leap from the physical to the creative was a short one, a natural bridge. He closed his eyes. The images came: the crush of the flower crown, the ache of denial, the absolute fullness of surrender.
“Say… Even the gold feels cold without your shadow on it,” Donghae ventured, voice soft.
Hyukjae’s fingers stilled on the strings. A slow grin touched his lips. He played the progression again, softer now, and sang the line in a low, rough whisper. It fit. It clung to the melody like skin to sweat-damp sheets.
“Fuck, that’s good,” Hyukjae breathed. He scribbled it down. Then his eyes glinted. “My turn. The echo in the hall is just my own voice, calling for a witness.”
Donghae shivered. It was exactly the hollow feeling of stepping off a stage into a silent, empty corridor. “Yes.” He reached for the notebook, wrote it beneath Hyukjae’s scrawl. They were building something new, brick by lyrical brick, and the mortar was everything they’d just lived.
The work was intense, a different kind of intimacy. They argued over a syllable. Hyukjae would hum a melody and Donghae would grasp it, spinning a harmony above it like a ribbon. They were in the middle of a heated debate about pre-chorus elevation when Donghae’s phone buzzed. A calendar alert: 12:30 – Weekly Co-CEO Briefing
Hyukkaje saw his face fall. He put the guitar down, its strings giving a final shiver. “Duty calls, Boss Lee.” He stood and pulled Donghae up beside him. Their chests brushed. The creative pulse between them shifted, deepened, thickened in the air.
“I don’t want to talk about quarterly projections,” Donghae muttered, sliding his palms up Hyukjae’s bare back. “I want you to fuck the melody into my chest.”
Hyukjae met his kiss hard. It wasn't soft, wasn’t an extension of their lazy morning. It was fresh, desperate, and full of the creative fire they'd just shared.
”Tell the secretary to cancel,” Donghae demanded against his mouth.
“My secretary,” Hyukjae countered. They started pulling each other towards the study window, a dance of mutual ownership, his voice hot and promising, ”...would hear you yelling like you just rode us through another round. So I'll be brief instead.”
He spun them, pressing Donghae to the desk, clearing the notebooks with a sweep of his arm. Paper whispered down like falling leaves.
He held firm and Donghae let his weight sink onto both arms, presenting—inviting. Hyukjae leaned, and there was no finesse. A slick spit into one hand—a rough, audible rub.
Push, but it was already happening. This penetration was purposeful and brutally efficient. No time to open.
Groaning, Hyukjae’s teeth buried under Donghae’s shoulder with a guttural curse. Tight... so ridiculously mine and always this—the rest lost.
The pace that had been gentle this morning returned as the only rhythm that mattered.
Hyukjae’s hips snapped, each shallow drive pushing a gasped syllable of Korean swear words from Donghae’s throat. They echoed in his study—the rhythmic slap of skin, the shuddering creak of desk straining against wood flooring. This was the other form of truth.
One of Hyukjae’s hands clamped at the hairpin turn of Donghae’s hip…the other came to press in at the very angle from before, just—there. Harder.
“There—that’s where it’ll come, isn't it,” he demanded rough against Donghae’s ear, voice vibrating deep. “That’s the melody. You think the music is in your throat—it’s not baby, that's just the noise we release to get there.” The rhythm hitched once, brutally specific ...it’s here.
Donghae felt each deep, purposeful surge hit the core of him where pleasure wasn't about rising—but a sudden release, like his nerves became liquid heat. A cry tore from him.
”Inside—” No pretense, his voice a raw scrape. It wasn't a request that implied a future state —it was only the now. He needed the emptiness filled. "Give it inside. The whole thing.”
No more than three strokes later the hands holding him suddenly left him, bracing on the desk to bury impossibly deeper. A hoarse sound from his throat, one more powerful snap.
Everything inside filled.
For a moment it was only that single point of connection where they fused, Hyukjae’s breaths coming in broken sobs against Donghae’s neck, and each tremor inside matched the frantic beats felt beneath Donghae’s own skin pressed flat against the cool wood.
When Hyukjae finally slid out, it was with a soft, wet sound. Donghae’s knees gave way and Hyukjae caught him, lowered them both to the floor tangled in one fluid move amid the scattered pages and words.
They sprawled gasping… the golden rectangle of light from the window moved now across Hyukjae’s arm—the world’s clock ticking on.
Hyukjae recovered first, rolling to nuzzle Donghae’s temple. “Fuck projections,” he murmured, “But I'm fucking you more before the actual meeting.”
A different silence settled, heavy with the warm humidity of effort and completion.
Donghae’s eyes were closed, sweat cool on his temples. He heard Hyukjae's breathing return to normal, felt his fingertips trail sticky patterns through the drying sweat on his lower back.
"The song’s tempo? Faster now, maybe," Donghae mumbled into the back of his knuckles pressed to bruised lips.
Hyukjae just grunted back before he began to laugh. It rumbled through his own frame into Donghae’s, a low unburdening.
”Whatever tempo, I'll make sure the next concept photo requires a chair.”
Hyukjae’s laughter faded into the quiet, his breath warm against Donghae’s shoulder. The world outside the study window continued its indifferent rotation. Donghae could feel the slow, inevitable leak of Hyukjae’s release tracing a path down his inner thigh, a visceral claim that anchored him more firmly than any contract.
“We’re going to be late,” Donghae said, not moving.
“Fashionably,” Hyukjae corrected. He pressed a kiss to the knobs of Donghae’s spine before rising with a grunt. He offered a hand, pulling Donghae up. They stood, naked and spent, amid the lyrical wreckage of their morning. Hyukjae’s gaze swept the room, landing on the half-empty glass of water sweating on the desk ledge.
A slow, predatory smile touched his lips. He picked up the glass, the ice cubes clinking. “We’re not done collaborating.”
Donghae watched him, a flutter of anticipation tightening his stomach. “The meeting—”
“Can start without us.” Hyukjae took a single cube, holding it between his fingertips. It glinted, already beginning to melt. “You said you wanted to feel me all day. Let’s make it more memorable.”
He guided Donghae back to the floor, but this time onto his side, arranging him with a choreographer’s precision. The polished wood was cool against Donghae’s hip. Hyukjae knelt behind him, one hand soothing the curve of his flank. “Relax.”
The first touch was a shock. Not Hyukjae’s fingers, but the biting, impossible cold of the ice cube pressed directly against his loosened entrance. Donghae gasped, his body jerking forward. “Jesus—”
“Shh.” Hyukjae held him firm. He worked the cube in a slow, cruel circle, the ice melting instantly into a trickle of freezing water that mixed with the warmth already there. The sensation was electrifying, a sharp contrast that made every nerve ending scream. Then, with deliberate pressure, he pushed the edge of the cube inside.
Donghae cried out, a ragged sound. The cold was an invasion, a breathtaking theft of heat that made him clench violently around the intrusion. It burned in the most peculiar way. Hyukjae fed more of the cube in, a slow, stretching penetration of solid cold. He held it there, buried deep, while Donghae panted, his toes curling against the floor.
“Feel that?” Hyukjae’s voice was a low hum against his ear. His other hand came around, palming Donghae’s cock, which was rapidly hardening again under the assault of contrasting sensations. “It’s gonna melt inside you. You’re gonna be wet and cold and fucking empty until I fix it.”
He withdrew the remnants of the cube and immediately pressed a second one in its wake. This one was smaller, a sharp, cold bullet that slid in more easily, followed by a third. The stretch was minimal, but the temperature was torture. Donghae shuddered, a full-body convulsion. He was split between wanting to arch away and push back for more.
“Hyukjae, please—” The plea was mangled.
“Please what? You’re the one who wants to be filled.” Hyukjae removed his hand from Donghae’s cock, leaving him achingly hard. He leaned back, surveying his work. Then, with no further warning, he positioned himself and pushed in.
The stretch was nothing. The sensation was everything.
Donghae screamed. The heat of Hyukjae’s cock was a brand after the ice, an overwhelming wave of sensation that stole his breath. He was so cold inside, and Hyukjae was so unbearably, perfectly hot. The meltwater created a slick, shocking slide as Hyukjae sheathed himself to the hilt in one excruciatingly slow thrust.
“Fuck,” Hyukjae groaned, his head dropping forward. “God, Donghae… you’re freezing… it’s like fucking a winter lake.” He didn’t move, just let the heat of his body radiate, a gradual thaw from the inside out. Donghae could feel every pulse, every vein, the stark contrast burning a memory into his flesh.
Then Hyukjae began to move. It was a sluggish, deep, rolling rhythm. Each withdrawal pulled the lingering chill with it, each thrust brought the searing heat back. The wet sounds were obscenely loud, a mixture of slick friction and melting ice. Donghae was babbling, nonsense words and shattered fragments of Hyukjae’s name.
Hyukjae’s pace was agonizingly patient. He focused on the depth, grinding his hips in tight circles, maximizing the contact, letting the friction generate its own heat. “This is what you do to me,” he panted, his voice rough with strain. “You turn everything cold when you’re not with me. Your stupid solo anxiety. It’s a block of ice in your chest.” He thrust harder, driving the point home. “My job is to melt it. To fucking replace it.”
The ice was gone now, fully melted, but the phantom chill remained, a memory being ruthlessly overwritten by the relentless, building heat of Hyukjae’s possession. The pleasure was a coiled, superheated spring, tight and urgent. Donghae reached back, fingers scrambling for purchase on Hyukjae’s hip, nails digging in.
“Now,” Donghae choked out. “I need it now.”
Hyukjae’s control snapped. His rhythm fractured into hard, punishing drives. The slapping of skin filled the room again, faster, more desperate. He wrapped a hand around Donghae’s throat, not squeezing, just holding, a anchor point as he fucked into him with a final, brutal intensity.
Donghae came with a silent, breathless shudder, his release spilling onto the floor beneath him in hot stripes. The clenching pull triggered Hyukjae’s own climax, a guttural shout muffled in Donghae’s shoulder as he emptied himself, flooding the newly-warmed hollow with a fresh, claiming heat.
They collapsed together onto the hard floor, a tangled, sweating, shuddering heap. The city’s distant hum was the only sound. Donghae felt utterly ruined, scoured clean, every hidden crevice warmed through.
Hyukjae nuzzled the back of his neck, his breathing gradually slowing. “Concept meeting,” he murmured, the words slurred with exhaustion and satisfaction.
Donghae closed his eyes. The hollowed-out feeling was gone. In its place was a heavy, liquid fullness, a physical reminder that would linger for hours. He smiled against the floor.
“Let them wait.”