#top bm

Wonho invited him a few days ago to this party, his way to celebrate for winning Best Male Artist in an international awards show.

BM didn’t care about any of it.

His focus had narrowed to a single point of gravity, and that point was currently moving through the crowd like liquid, all bare shoulder and sheer cream fabric and a smile that could charm a firing squad.

Wonho.

The shirt was the problem. Or maybe the solution, depending on how you looked at it. Loose-knit, the kind of thing that draped and clung in alternating currents every time Wonho moved—lifting a soju bottle to top off someone’s glass, tilting his head back to laugh at something a dancer said, reaching across the counter to grab a lime wedge. The fabric slipped off one shoulder, a broad, muscular shelf of trapezius and deltoid, and BM’s grip on his glass tightened until his knuckles blanched.

One button. His own black polo was held together by a single button at the collar. He’d undone the rest an hour ago, the penthouse heat and body count turning the air syrupy. His shorts sat low on his hips, and he’d caught Wonho’s gaze snagging on the exposed V-line above his waistband twice now.

Twice.

The first time, Wonho’s eyes had flicked away fast, a host’s reflex. Smooth. Professional. The second time, though—that one had lingered. Two seconds. Maybe three. Long enough for BM to feel the back of his neck prickle, for the ghost-memory of a different room, a different city, to rise unbidden.

Busan.

Few months ago. A hotel suite after a music festival, the adrenaline still singing in their veins, and Wonho had looked at him exactly like that—a question dressed up as a glance. BM had answered it. Hard. Twice.

Now he watched Wonho glide past the couch, a hand brushing a producer’s arm in easy camaraderie, and the shirt slipped again. Lower this time. The knob of his shoulder joint, the ridge of his collarbone. The faint sheen of sweat that made his skin look lacquered under the ambient mood lighting, purples bleeding into deep blues.

BM lifted his glass to his mouth. Didn’t drink. Just held it there, the rim cold against his bottom lip, and let himself look.

The hallway to the guest bathroom was narrow. Deliberately so, some architect’s idea of intimacy, maybe, or just a space-saving compromise in a penthouse that prioritized the open-plan everything. Whatever the reason, it meant that when BM pushed off the kitchen island and made his way toward the back of the apartment, the collision was inevitable.

Shoulder to shoulder.

Wonho was coming the other direction, fresh from refilling an ice bucket, and the hallway compressed them together for one humming second. The sheer knit of his shirt rasped against the cotton of BM’s polo. Heat bled through both layers immediately, a bloom of warmth that had no business being so specific, so localized, so—

“Sorry,” Wonho murmured. The smile he wore was the host smile. Polite. Easy.

His eyes said something else entirely.

“Don’t be.” BM’s voice came out lower than he’d intended, gravel in the bass register, and he didn’t move. Didn’t step aside. Let the hallway contain them for one breath longer, two, until Wonho’s host-smile flickered at the corner and something rawer pushed through.

Then Wonho was past him, and the bass drop in the living room swallowed whatever sound BM might have made in response.

He stood in the hallway for a beat too long, the back of his neck burning.

The party rolled on.

By one-thirty, the crowd had thinned. The producer left, citing an early studio session. The girl group maknae peeled off with two dancers, their laughter echoing up the stairwell. The future-bass gave way to something slower, deeper, a track with a sub-bass line that felt like a finger drawn down your spine.

BM had moved to the sectional. Sat with his legs spread, one arm draped along the backrest, the picture of casual. Wonho was across the room, seeing off a cluster of backup dancers, his host persona still running at full wattage. Hugs, back-slaps, promises to text, to grab lunch, to collaborate soon.

The front door closed behind them.

The silence that followed was a physical weight.

BM heard the click of the lock, the sudden absence of music—someone had killed the speakers—and then nothing but the distant hum of the refrigerator and the whisper of the air conditioning cycling on.

Wonho turned.

The host persona was gone. Stripped away between one breath and the next, leaving something quieter. Something that looked at BM across the expanse of the living room with eyes that held five months of waiting.

“Balcony,” Wonho said. Not a question.

BM pushed himself off the sectional.

The Seoul night sprawled beneath them, a latticework of light and shadow stretching to the Han River’s dark ribbon. The balcony was wide enough for a small seating area—two chairs, a low table, a potted plant that looked expensive and barely alive—and the railing was cold when BM rested his forearms on it.

The city hummed. Distant traffic, distant lives. Up here, the air tasted thin and clean, cutting through the alcohol-warmth that had settled in BM’s chest.

The sliding door opened.

Closed.

Wonho’s footsteps were nearly silent, but BM felt each one in the subtle vibration of the balcony decking. Felt him stop a meter away, a careful distance. A distance that felt absurd after Busan, after the hallway, after every glance that had passed between them tonight like a secret handshake.

“You’re still wearing that shirt,” BM said without turning.

“You noticed.”

“Hard not to.”

The railing creaked under a shift of weight. Wonho had leaned beside him, close enough that BM could smell him—something clean and slightly citrus, undercut by the warm, salt undertone of a body that had been moving all night. The sheer knit shirt billowed in the breeze, and his shoulder was still bare, and BM’s resolve—what little remained of it—snapped like a guitar string.

His hand found Wonho’s hip.

Not gently. Not tentatively. His palm connected with the jut of bone beneath fabric, his hands clamping tight around his hips with a grip that said stay. The heat that radiated through the knit was staggering. Wonho’s breath caught, a small hitch that he tried to swallow and failed.

BM pulled.

Wonho came, the railing forgotten, his body colliding with BM’s side in a press of muscle and shared warmth. Up close, the sheer shirt was translucent enough to see the shadow of his chest, the discs of his nipples, the way his abdomen tensed as BM’s thumb stroked a slow arc over his hipbone.

“Matthew.” Wonho’s voice had dropped an octave.

“Yeah.”

BM bent his head. The gap between them narrowed to centimeters, to a breath, to the almost-there brush of lips—

The door keypad chimed.

Digital. Sharp. A sound like a needle scraping across vinyl.

They froze.

The heavy front door swung inward, and Shownu stepped into the entryway.

He looked like he’d walked out of a photoshoot that had been designed to ruin lives. Leather jacket slung over one shoulder, hanging from a crooked finger. Black tank top stretched across a chest that seemed to defy physics—too broad, too thick, too much. Hair disheveled, a few strands plastered to his forehead with residual sweat from a schedule that had clearly run long. His jaw was shadowed with stubble, and his eyes were heavy-lidded with exhaustion, and he moved with the quiet, rolling gait of a man who could break you in half but had decided, for the moment, not to.

He stopped.

The leather jacket slid from his finger.

It hit the floor with a soft thump that sounded like a gunshot in the ringing silence.

BM didn’t let go of Wonho’s hip.

Shownu’s gaze moved from BM’s face to the hand on Wonho’s hip, then to Wonho’s face—flushed, lips parted, chest rising and falling in shallow sips of air. The silence stretched. Coiled. A rubber band pulled to its limit.

Most people would have apologized. Backed out. Made an excuse, a joke, a retreat.

Shownu was not most people.

He kicked off his shoes. Two economical movements. His eyes, when they lifted again, had gone from exhausted to something else entirely. Something that made the air on the balcony feel like it had dropped ten degrees.

“Hyung,” Wonho breathed. Just that. Just the honorific, but it came out unsteady, a question wrapped in a title.

Shownu crossed the living room in four strides.

He was bigger up close. That was the first thing BM registered—the sheer mass of him, the way he blotted out the city lights behind him. His presence wasn’t aggressive. It was worse than that. It was certain.

“I have the door code,” Shownu said. Quiet. Level. His voice had a texture like stones rubbing together underwater. “Hoseokie gave it to me years ago. I was just at a late night shoot. Decided to check out the party, actually was planning to crash on the couch.”

He stopped behind Wonho.

His hands came up. Settled on Wonho’s waist—not the hip, the waist, higher, his thumbs bracketing the small of his back—and the contrast in size was obscene. Wonho had been a presence all night, broad and commanding and magnetic. Now, caught between BM at his front and Shownu at his back, he looked small.

He looked breakable.

Shownu’s mouth found the curve of Wonho’s neck, just below the ear.

Wonho’s whole body jerked. A gasp tore out of him, high and thin and nothing like any sound BM had heard him make before. His head fell back against Shownu’s shoulder, baring his throat, and Shownu’s lips moved over the tendon there in a slow, open-mouthed kiss that was more claim than affection.

BM’s grip on Wonho’s hip tightened. His thumb pressed into the hollow where hip met thigh, and Wonho shuddered, caught between two points of pressure, two points of heat.

“Look at you,” BM murmured. The English rolled out, low and textured, his voice barely above a rumble. “Caught.”

Shownu’s eyes met his over the curve of Wonho’s shoulder. Dark. Assessing. A conversation passed between them without a single word—an acknowledgment, a negotiation, a shared decision that settled into BM’s bones like a second heartbeat.

Shownu’s hands tightened on Wonho’s waist.

“Couch,” Shownu said. The word was for both of them.

They moved as a unit—Wonho stumbling, his legs apparently forgetting how to function, bracketed by the two of them. The leather sectional was deep and oversized, big enough to swallow a body, and when they reached it, Shownu’s hands left Wonho’s waist only to find the hem of the sheer knit shirt.

He pulled.

The fabric gave with a soft ripping sound—not violent, just decisive, a seam somewhere giving up—and then Wonho was bare from the waist up, his chest heaving, his skin flushed pink from collarbone to navel.

BM went for the waistband. Wonho’s pants were expensive, some designer thing with complicated fastenings, and BM didn’t bother figuring them out. He just worked his thumbs under the fabric and pushed, and Wonho’s hips lifted to help, and then those were gone too, kicked aside along with his underwear, and Wonho lay naked on the dark leather, his body a landscape of dense muscle and taut skin and visible tremor.

“Fuck,” Wonho whispered. The curse came out breathless and reverent.

Shownu leaned over him from the front.

His hands found Wonho’s jaw, cradling it with a gentleness that felt almost incongruous given the sheer size of them. Calloused palms, thick fingers, and they framed Wonho’s face like a portrait. His thumbs stroked along the sharp line of Wonho’s cheekbones, and Wonho’s mouth fell open, a sound escaping that was half-whimper, half-plea.

Shownu kissed him.

Not gentle. Not tentative. His mouth covered Wonho’s and swallowed the moan that followed, and Wonho’s hands flew up to grip Shownu’s shoulders, his short nails digging into the black cotton of the tank top.

BM watched for a moment—the way Wonho’s body arched, the way Shownu’s back muscles shifted under his shirt—and then moved around to the other side of the sectional. Positioned himself behind Wonho’s head, which was thrown back over the armrest, throat working as Shownu kissed down his jaw, his neck, the hollow of his collarbone.

Shownu’s mouth found Wonho’s chest.

The sound Wonho made was pornographic. A high, broken cry that echoed off the penthouse walls as Shownu’s lips closed over one nipple, his tongue working in slow, wet circles. His other hand found the neglected side, rolling the nub between thumb and forefinger with a precision that spoke of practice.

“Sensitive,” BM observed. His voice was a rumble, appreciation and dark amusement threaded together. He reached down, let his fingers trace the shell of Wonho’s ear, the line of his jaw. “He’s always been sensitive here.”

Shownu hummed against Wonho’s chest. The vibration made Wonho buck, his hips lifting off the leather, his cock slapping against his stomach—hard already, flushed dark at the tip, a bead of moisture pearling at the slit.

Shownu’s mouth continued its path downward. Over the ridges of Wonho’s abdomen, tracing each valley and peak with his tongue. Wonho’s stomach muscles jumped under the attention, fluttering like a startled animal, and his hands had moved to Shownu’s head, fingers threading through disheveled dark hair and gripping.

BM shifted position. Slid down the sectional until he was behind Wonho properly, the other man’s body cradled between his spread thighs. His hands found Wonho’s shoulders, worked the knots of tension there with slow, knowing pressure.

“Breathe,” BM murmured against the shell of Wonho’s ear. “You’re going to need it.”

Shownu’s hands hooked under Wonho’s knees. Spread them. Settled between them with the heavy, inevitable gravity of a tide coming in. His tank top was still on, the black fabric straining across his shoulders, and Wonho’s fingers fisted in it, pulled.

“Off,” Wonho managed. The word was wrecked. “Please—off—”

Shownu sat back on his heels. Peeled the tank top over his head in one fluid motion. The body beneath was a monument—heavy pectorals, a waist that tapered dramatically, abdominals carved so deeply they looked like channels. His sweatpants were next, shoved down and kicked aside with a practicality that was almost dismissive.

His cock was thick. Proportionate to the rest of him—which was to say, overwhelming.

Wonho stared. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, a gesture that was entirely unconscious, and Shownu’s dark eyes tracked the movement with predatory focus.

Then Shownu was leaning over him again, his weight settling onto Wonho’s body in a controlled descent, and his hips aligned, and his hand moved between them, and—

Wonho’s scream was muffled by Shownu’s mouth.

BM held him through it. Hands on his shoulders, anchoring him as Shownu’s hips drove forward in a single, unbroken stroke, the thickness of him parting Wonho with a slick, wet sound that was barely audible over the broken keen tearing from Wonho’s throat.

Lube. Someone had found lube. BM didn’t remember seeing it happen, but Shownu’s fingers were glistening when they’d first pressed inside, working Wonho open with two, then three digits that scissored with surgical patience. Wonho had sobbed into Shownu’s shoulder then, his hips rolling down onto the intrusion, begging in a stream of Korean that BM only half-understood.

Now Shownu was fully seated, his hips flush against the backs of Wonho’s thighs, and Wonho’s eyes were glassy, his mouth slack, his chest heaving with the effort of accommodating.

“Look at me,” Shownu commanded.

Wonho’s gaze dragged upward. Obeyed.

Shownu moved.

The rhythm was slow at first—deep, grinding thrusts that rolled Wonho’s body against the leather, that pushed the air out of his lungs in rhythmic gusts. Wonho’s hands scrambled for purchase on Shownu’s back, his arms, the couch cushions, anything. Found nothing stable. Ended up gripping BM’s thighs, his nails leaving crescent marks.

BM’s cock was a hard line against Wonho’s lower back. He hadn’t undressed yet, still wearing his shorts and that ridiculous single-button polo, and the friction of fabric against his own arousal was a steady, pulsing ache that he ignored. His focus was on Wonho—on the way his lashes fluttered, the way his hips tried to meet Shownu’s thrusts and couldn’t quite coordinate, the way his mouth kept forming words that never made it past his lips.

Shownu’s pace increased. His hips snapped forward with more authority now, the wet sounds of their joining growing louder, and Wonho’s head thrashed against BM’s stomach.

“Please—I can’t—it’s too—”

“You can.” Shownu’s voice was steady. Unmoved. His hand slid up Wonho’s chest, over his sternum, curled around the front of his throat with just enough pressure to feel the flutter of his pulse. “You will.”

The orgasm caught Wonho by surprise. BM saw it happen—the sudden arch of his spine, the way his mouth opened on a silent scream, the violent clench of his abdominal muscles as his release painted stripes across his own chest. Shownu didn’t stop. Drove him through it with relentless, measured strokes until Wonho was twitching, oversensitive, his whimpers taking on a desperate edge.

Shownu pulled out.

Wonho sagged, boneless, into BM’s lap.

“Switch,” Shownu said. The word was directed at BM.

BM didn’t need to be told twice.

He eased out from behind Wonho, the other man’s body slumping onto the cushions with a soft, involuntary moan. Stood. Stripped with an efficiency that was almost mechanical—the single button of his polo popping open, the shorts hitting the floor, his boxer briefs following. His cock sprang free, flushed and aching, the tip slick with pre-cum that had been building since the balcony.

Wonho’s eyes tracked him. Glassy, but present.

“Hey,” BM said, climbing onto the sectional, positioning himself. “Still with us?”

Wonho’s answer was a sound—something between a laugh and a sob—and his legs spread in invitation.

BM took it.

The position was different this time. Wonho on top, straddling BM’s hips, his body still loose and slick from Shownu’s attention. BM guided himself to Wonho’s entrance, and Wonho sank down with a broken cry, taking him to the hilt in one slow, inexorable motion.

The heat was staggering. Wet and tight and fluttering around him, the residual contractions of Wonho’s first orgasm still rippling through his walls.

BM’s head fell back. His hands found Wonho’s hips, the bones sharp under his palms, and he let Wonho set the pace—a rolling, grinding rhythm that was slower than Shownu’s but no less devastating. Wonho’s thighs bunched and released with each movement, the dense muscle flexing visibly under his skin.

Shownu watched.

That was the thing. He didn’t move, didn’t touch himself, just stood at the edge of the sectional with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes tracking every roll of Wonho’s hips, every flutter of BM’s eyelids. His own cock was still hard, still slick, jutting from his body in a curve that was almost aggressive.

And then he moved.

Behind Wonho. His hands found the globes of Wonho’s ass, spreading them, and BM felt the pause—the moment of stillness—before Shownu pressed the head of his cock against the tight rim that was already stretched around BM’s girth.

Wonho stopped moving. His eyes flew open. Met BM’s.

“Hyungwoo hyu—” he started.

“Breathe,” Shownu said, the same word BM had used earlier, and then he pushed.

The sound Wonho made was not human.

A scream, a sob, a prayer—something that tore itself from the deepest part of his chest and hung in the air like smoke. His body seized, caught between two thick cocks, two points of impossible fullness, and BM felt every inch of Shownu’s intrusion through the thin membrane separating them.

Pressure. Heat. A stretch that bordered on pain and became something else entirely.

“Oh god oh god oh god—” Wonho’s chant was barely audible, his voice shredded, his forehead pressed to BM’s shoulder.

Shownu bottomed out. Held.

The three of them stayed like that for a heartbeat. Two. Three. A tableau of sweat and muscle and shared breath, Wonho’s body impossibly full, impossibly surrendered.

Then BM moved.

A shallow thrust, barely a roll of his hips, and Wonho’s cry was muffled against BM’s neck. Shownu echoed the movement behind him, pulling out a fraction and sliding back in, and Wonho’s whole body convulsed.

They found a rhythm. Not synchronized—that was impossible—but alternating. BM’s retreat was Shownu’s advance, and Wonho was caught in the center of it, a vessel for their combined pleasure, his voice rising and falling with each stroke.

The sounds were obscene. Wet flesh, ragged breathing, the creak of leather under shifting weight. BM’s grunts were low, guttural, punctuated by English curses that spilled out without his permission. Shownu was nearly silent, just the heavy exhalation of his breaths and the occasional deep groan that rumbled through Wonho’s body and into BM’s.

Wonho was not silent. Wonho was a symphony of whimpers and pleas and broken versions of their names, his sweat-slick body writhing between them, his second orgasm building visibly in the tension of his shoulders, the desperate clutch of his inner walls.

“Close,” BM gritted out. “I’m—”

“Together,” Shownu said. The word was a command.

His rhythm fractured. Became erratic. His hips snapped with a force that pushed Wonho down harder onto BM’s cock, and BM felt the answering surge in his own belly, the tightening that started in his groin and radiated outward like ripples in a pond.

Wonho came first. A second time, dry now, his body clenching with such violence that BM saw stars. The contraction pulled Shownu over the edge—a deep, grinding thrust that stilled, buried to the root, his release pulsing hot and wet into the already overstuffed channel.

BM followed. Couldn’t help it. The dual sensation of Wonho’s spasming body and Shownu’s pulsing finish sent him careening into his own orgasm, a white-out of pleasure that erased thought, erased time, erased everything except the hot pulse of his seed joining the mess already inside.

They collapsed.

A tangle of limbs on the leather, chests heaving, skin slicked with cooling sweat and viscous release. Wonho was sandwiched between them, completely boneless, his eyes closed and his lips parted and his breath coming in shallow, shuddering sips.

The room was quiet. The kind of quiet that follows a storm, heavy and humming and thick with the aftermath.

Shownu’s forehead rested against Wonho’s damp shoulder. His arm was draped across Wonho’s waist, a possessive curve of muscle and bone, and his thumb traced idle circles on Wonho’s hip that seemed entirely unconscious.

BM leaned back against the opposite armrest, one leg tucked under him, the other sprawled. His hand moved without thought, tracing the deep valleys of Wonho’s abdominal muscles—the ridges of the rectus, the sharp descent toward the navel. His fingers came away sticky.

No one spoke.

The first pale light of dawn crept through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting the penthouse in shades of charcoal and rose. It caught on the empty glasses scattered across the coffee table, the discarded heap of shredded knit fabric on the floor, the gleam of Wonho’s skin where sweat still clung.

Shownu stirred. Lifted his head just enough to look at BM over the curve of Wonho’s shoulder. His eyes were still dark, still assessing, but something softer moved beneath the surface now.

BM met his gaze. Held it.

Something unspoken passed between them—a recognition, a promise, a question that neither was ready to voice.

Wonho shifted between them, a small sound escaping his throat, and both of them looked down. His lashes fluttered. His lips curved in the ghost of a smile, hazy and unguarded.

“Stay,” he murmured. Not a question.

Mingyu sat up on the bench, reaching for his towel, and watched the figure emerge from the shadowed corridor onto the gym floor.

Broad shoulders first. Then the sharp jawline, the close-cropped dark hair, the easy confidence in the set of the mouth.

It's BM, Matthew moved through the equipment like he was walking into his own living room. He wore a sleeveless black hoodie cut wide at the arms, revealing the kind of triceps that came from years of obsessive discipline. His joggers hung low on his hips.

Their eyes met in the mirror before either spoke.

“Oh Hyung, I didn’t expect company tonight,” Mingyu said, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Matthew’s laugh was low and warm, the kind of sound that made you want to hear it again. “Could say the same. Thought I was the only one crazy enough to lift at midnight.”

“Comeback prep?”

“Always.” Matthew stopped a few feet away, tilting his head as he took in the younger man’s frame. “You’re looking ridiculous, by the way. What’d they have you doing? Three-a-days?”

Mingyu ducked his head, that bashful canine smile breaking through despite the fatigue in his shoulders. The reaction was instinctive—a flicker of the offstage Kim Mingyu, the one who got shy when his hyungs complimented his cooking or when fans called him handsome. It was disorienting, honestly, the way his face could shift so quickly from runway intensity to boy-next-door warmth.

“Just the usual,” Mingyu said. “But I could say the same to you. Your arms are—wow” He gestured vaguely, a short laugh escaping. “You know.”

Matthew flexed one arm, posing with the exaggerated seriousness of a bodybuilding competitor. The hoodie fabric strained audibly. “These old things?”

“Yeah, those old things.”

The banter came easily, even though they’d never shared more than passing nods at music shows or awards night backstage. There was something about the hour, the emptiness of the space, that stripped away the usual formalities. No managers hovering. No stylists fluttering around with powder puffs. Just two men who understood the particular loneliness of pushing your body to its limits while the rest of the world slept.

Matthew claimed the squat rack. Mingyu moved to the cable station for his finisher. For the next twenty minutes, they worked in comfortable parallel, the silence broken only by the metallic rhythm of their respective exercises and the occasional grunt of effort that needed no translation.

At one point, Mingyu caught himself watching Matthew’s set through the mirror—the way the older man’s lats flared as he pulled the bar to his chest, the controlled violence of the movement, the bead of sweat that traced the corded muscle of his neck before disappearing beneath his collar.

Matthew’s eyes flicked up. Caught him looking.

Neither glanced away.

A small, knowing smile passed between them in the glass, and then Matthew unracked the bar with a grunt, letting the moment dissolve into the steam of their mutual exertion.

Mingyu finished first.

He gathered his towel and bottle, pausing at the edge of the floor. “I’m gonna hit the showers. Good session, hyung.”

“You too.” Matthew was mid-set, voice tight with effort. “Don’t let me keep you.”

Mingyu’s footsteps faded down the corridor toward the locker room, and the gym fell silent again, save for the steady iron percussion of Matthew completing his final rounds.

The locker room air was cooler, tinged with eucalyptus from the automated misters. Matthew stripped efficiently—shoes, joggers, hoodie, compression shorts—each garment peeled away to reveal another square inch of the physique that had earned him his reputation. His body was a study in contrasts: the overwhelming breadth of his shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, thick pectorals carved with definition, a roadmap of veins visible along his forearms and biceps even at rest.

He wrapped a single white towel low around his hips. It wasn’t a deliberate choice so much as a practical one—the club’s towels were regulation size, and on his frame, they covered little. The trail of dark hair below his navel was visible above the towel’s edge, and the fabric draped precariously, barely skimming the top of his thighs.

Barefoot, he padded across the tile toward the showers.

And then he saw him.

Mingyu, also towel-clad, his own white cloth riding dangerously low on the jut of his hip bones. His back was to Matthew as he pushed open a heavy cedar door at the far end of the corridor—the private sauna, a perk reserved for the club’s most exclusive tier of members.

Steam curled out from the gap, enfolding Mingyu’s silhouette before the door swung shut behind him.

Matthew stopped walking.

His pulse, already elevated from the workout, kicked up another notch. The decision wasn’t really a decision. His feet were already carrying him forward, the smooth floor cool against his soles, his hand reaching for the cedar door before his mind had finished constructing whatever flimsy justification it would offer later.

The dry heat hit him like a wall.

The sauna was intimate—a twelve-by-twelve cube of cedar paneling, the wood darkened by years of heat and humidity to a deep amber that seemed to absorb what little light the overhead fixture provided. Tiered benches lined two walls. In the corner, the heating element glowed faintly red behind its wooden guard, clicking softly as it cycled.

Mingyu was seated on the upper bench, leaning back against the cedar slats, eyes closed. His arms were spread wide along the bench back, opening his chest to the heat. One leg was bent, foot planted on the bench; the other extended, heel resting on the lower tier.

The towel lay across his lap like an afterthought.

Matthew’s throat went dry—from the heat, he told himself, only from the heat. But his eyes were tracing the long sweep of Mingyu’s torso, the defined ridges of his abdominals, the way his golden skin seemed to glow in the amber light. A single bead of sweat rolled from the hollow of Mingyu’s throat down the center of his chest, navigating the terrain of his sternum before disappearing into the thin trail of hair that led beneath the towel.

Very little was left to the imagination.

The door clicked shut behind Matthew, and Mingyu’s eyes opened.

Dark eyes. Alert. Unreadable for a beat—and then softening with recognition, though not surprise. As if he’d been expecting this. As if he’d left the door ajar on purpose.

“Hyung,” Mingyu said. Quiet. A statement, not a question.

Matthew crossed the small space and lowered himself onto the bench beside Mingyu. Close enough that he could feel the radiant heat coming off the younger man’s skin, a warmth that had nothing to do with the sauna’s heating element. Close enough that his thigh nearly brushed Mingyu’s knee.

For a long moment, neither spoke.

The sauna hissed softly. The cedar creaked as the heat worked its way deeper into the wood. Somewhere in the distance, a shower dripped with metronomic regularity.

Mingyu watched Matthew’s face with an intensity that felt physical, like a thumb pressing gently against the hollow of his throat. Matthew returned the gaze without flinching. The silence between them was heavy but not uncomfortable—more like water before it boils, that stage just before movement becomes inevitable.

A slow smile spread across Mingyu’s lips. Not the bashful canine grin from earlier. Something else. Something sharper.

Matthew’s answering expression was the mirror of it.

No words. None were needed.

Matthew’s hand moved first—not to touch, but to the knot at his hip. A single tug, deliberate and unhurried, and the towel fell open.

Mingyu’s gaze dropped. Lingered. Rose again.

His own hand followed. The white fabric slithered from his lap, pooling on the cedar bench beside his thigh.

They sat naked in the amber heat, the air between them charged with something that made Matthew’s skin prickle despite the temperature. His cock was already thickening, responding to the visual feast of Mingyu’s body with a frankness that made pretense impossible. Mingyu was in the same state—half-hard, impressive even in repose, his length laying against the cut of his hip.

Matthew shifted closer. The cedar groaned under his weight.

His hand found Mingyu’s jaw, palm curving along the sharp line of it, fingers brushing the damp hair at his temple. Mingyu’s breath hitched, barely audible over the sauna’s ambient hiss.

And then they were kissing.

Mingyu’s mouth was hot and soft, opening under Matthew’s with a readiness that sent a jolt straight to his groin. The kiss was messy from the start—tongues sliding, teeth clicking once before they found their rhythm, the faint taste of salt from the sweat glossing their lips. Mingyu made a sound, something between a sigh and a growl, and his hand came up to grip the back of Matthew’s neck, fingers digging into the thick muscle there.

Matthew’s other hand found Mingyu’s chest, palm flattening against the slick heat of his pectoral, feeling the hard nub of his nipple against the center of his hand. Mingyu arched into the touch. His skin was satin over iron, the sweat making every surface glide under Matthew’s fingers like oiled silk.

They explored each other with the focused intensity of men who’d been wondering, who’d been stealing glances for months—maybe years—across crowded waiting rooms and concert backstages. Matthew’s hands mapped the topography of Mingyu’s back, tracing the ladder of his spine, the flare of his lats, the twin dimples just above the swell of his ass. Mingyu’s fingers found the cleft of Matthew’s chest, dragging through the light sheen of sweat, following the trail of hair down his stomach.

“You’re—” Mingyu broke the kiss, breathing hard, his forehead dropping to Matthew’s shoulder. “You’re even more than I thought.”

Matthew’s laugh was ragged. “You’ve thought about this?”

Mingyu’s teeth grazed his collarbone in answer.

Then they were standing—how, Matthew couldn’t quite track; the moments were blurring, heat and touch and want overriding the part of his brain that kept chronological records. His back hit the cedar wall, the wood almost uncomfortably hot against his shoulder blades. Mingyu pressed against him, all six-foot-one-and-a-half inches of sweat-slick muscle and golden skin, and their cocks aligned.

The contact drew a hiss from both of them.

Hard. Both of them fully hard now, the friction minimal, just the slide of sensitive skin against sensitive skin. Matthew’s hands dropped to Mingyu’s hips, gripping hard enough to dimple the flesh, and he rolled his pelvis forward in a slow, deliberate grind.

Mingyu’s head fell back. The column of his throat was exposed, tendons standing out as he swallowed a moan. “Fuck.”

Matthew did it again, finding a rhythm, the base of his shaft sliding along Mingyu’s length with increasing friction. Pre-cum smeared between them, slicking the movement. The heat of the sauna wrapped around them like a third body, the air so thick it felt like breathing water.

Then Mingyu was sinking.

Matthew’s brain registered the movement in staggered frames: knees hitting the cedar bench below, hands sliding up the backs of Matthew’s thighs, hot breath ghosting over the head of his cock—

The first touch of Mingyu’s tongue was a stripe up his length. The second took him into the wet furnace of his mouth.

“Ah—” Matthew’s hand flew to Mingyu’s head, not pushing, just holding, fingers threading through the sweat-damp strands. Looking down was a mistake. Looking down meant seeing Mingyu’s lips stretched around him, those dark eyes lifted to meet his, the picture of submission and control all at once.

Mingyu worked him with surprising skill—tongue pressing flat against the underside, cheeks hollowing on the upstroke, one hand cupping his balls with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the filthy sounds filling the small room. Wet, obscene sounds. The kind of sounds that echoed off cedar walls and made Matthew’s thighs tremble.

“Good,” Matthew heard himself say, the word dragged out of him. “That’s—yeah, like that.”

Mingyu hummed around him, and the vibration nearly buckled Matthew’s knees.

He let it go on for another minute—two minutes, five, time had stopped meaning anything—before the need to reciprocate became overwhelming. His hand tightened in Mingyu’s hair, gently pulling him off.

“My turn,” Matthew rasped.

He guided Mingyu back onto the bench. Mingyu went willingly, sprawling with his back against the cedar, legs spread, his cock curving up toward his stomach—thick, beautiful, the head flushed a deep rose against the bronze of his skin.

Matthew knelt. The wood was hot against his knees, grounding him. He took Mingyu in hand first, stroking once, twice, feeling the weight and heat of him. Their eyes met.

Then he lowered his mouth.

Mingyu’s hand slammed against the bench beside him. His hips bucked, and Matthew had to press a forearm across his thighs to hold him steady. The taste was salt and skin and something muskier underneath, the intoxicating essence of another man’s arousal. Matthew took him deeper, jaw relaxing, tongue working the sensitive spot just beneath the head.

“Hyung—” Mingyu’s voice cracked. The honorific came out strangled, half-moan, half-prayer. His hands found Matthew’s shoulders, gripping hard enough to leave marks.

Matthew pulled off with a slick pop, looking up. “You okay?”

Mingyu’s chest was heaving. His eyes were glassy, pupils blown wide. “Don’t stop. Please.”

Something in that please hit Matthew square in the sternum. Not the desperate begging of someone caught up in the moment, but the genuine, vulnerable request of someone who wanted this just as badly as he did, who had maybe wanted it longer, who was laying himself open in more ways than one.

He went back down.

This time, he added a finger—trailing it lower, past the tight sac of Mingyu’s balls, finding the cleft of his ass. Mingyu’s legs fell open wider, an invitation. Matthew’s fingertip circled the tight ring of muscle he found there, not pressing in yet, just teasing, feeling it flutter against his touch.

When he finally pressed the tip of his tongue to that same spot, Mingyu cried out.

Matthew ate him with the same intensity he brought to everything—methodical, patient, attentive to every twitch and gasp. The rim was pink and impossibly tight, and he worked it loose with broad strokes of his tongue, alternating with the press of a spit-slick finger. Mingyu’s thighs were trembling now, spread obscenely wide, one hand fisted in his own hair while the other clawed at the cedar bench.

“I’m ready,” Mingyu gasped. “I’m—hyung, I need you to—”

Matthew rose. His cock was aching, leaking steadily now, the head of it nudging against Mingyu’s prepared entrance. He paused, meeting Mingyu’s eyes one more time. A question without words.

Mingyu’s answer was to reach down and guide him in himself.

The first press was tight—impossibly tight, the kind of resistance that made Matthew’s vision white out at the edges. Then Mingyu exhaled, a long controlled breath, and his body opened.

The slide in was excruciating and ecstatic, inch by inch, until Matthew’s hips were flush against Mingyu’s ass and they were both panting into each other’s mouths.

“Move,” Mingyu commanded. “Now.”

Matthew fucked him in long, deep strokes that built into something relentless. The bench groaned under them. The sauna’s hiss became a distant drone, barely audible over the slap of skin and the guttural sounds tearing from both their throats. Mingyu’s legs wrapped around Matthew’s waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper on every thrust.

It went on until Mingyu’s hand pressed flat against Matthew’s chest.

“Pull out,” he said, voice wrecked. “Want to finish together.”

Matthew withdrew with a shudder, already missing the heat of him. Mingyu stood on unsteady legs, pulling Matthew into a kiss that was more teeth and breath than technique.

His hand found both their cocks, pressing them together—Matthew’s length, Mingyu’s girth—and stroked them in tandem.

The rhythm was rough, desperate. Pre-cum slicked the way, and the wet sounds filled the small cedar room like a final incantation. Matthew’s forehead dropped to Mingyu’s shoulder. His breath came in sharp, ragged bursts against the younger man’s skin.

“Close,” he warned.

“Me too.” Mingyu’s hand sped up, twisting on the upstroke. “Together.”

Matthew’s orgasm hit like a blow to the spine—white-hot, vision-narrowing, pulling a sound from his chest that he didn’t recognize. He felt his release stripe across Mingyu’s stomach, felt the answering pulse of Mingyu’s cock against his own as the younger man followed him over the edge with a broken moan.

They stood locked together in the aftermath, chests heaving, mingled release cooling on their skin.

Mingyu’s forehead found the center of Matthew’s chest. He rested there, breathing hard, his body still trembling faintly. Matthew’s arms came around him, one hand cradling the back of his head.

The sauna’s heater clicked off. The silence that rushed in was absolute.

Outside, in the corridor, footsteps approached—the measured tread of a gym attendant doing rounds—and paused just beyond the cedar door.

“Gentlemen?” The voice was professional, polite. “The club closes in ten minutes. Please begin wrapping up.”

Mingyu’s head lifted. His eyes met Matthew’s in the dim amber light, and something passed between them—not regret, not exactly, but the sudden, sobering awareness of consequence. Of what they’d just done. Of who they were.

The footsteps retreated.

His phone buzzed against the desk. The screen lit up with a KakaoTalk notification—Rui and Wumuti’s group chat, a string of emojis and a message in Korean that roughly translated to coming to spoil our favorite hyung.

BM snorted, thumbs tapping out a quick reply with his studio address and a casual door’s open, I’m just mixing. He tossed the phone back onto the desk, its screen still glowing against a scatter of USB drives and empty energy drink cans.

The loop played on. Kick, snare, hi-hat ghost notes that danced between the beats. He closed his eyes, letting the groove settle into his bones, his head nodding with the rhythm that had become muscle memory over the past three days of near-constant studio isolation.

The door clicked open behind him.

BM didn’t turn around immediately—he was mid-adjustment on the snare reverb, dragging the decay time down by milliseconds, chasing that tight, dry crack that would sit right in the pocket. But the shift in the room’s chemistry was immediate, impossible to ignore. The air changed, carrying a sudden freight of expensive cologne, hair product, and something under that: clean skin, stage makeup, the particular electricity of people who had spent the last several hours being photographed and adored.

“Hellooooo~”

Wumuti’s voice, bright and warm, with that characteristic lilt that made even a simple greeting sound like a melody. BM spun the chair around.

The visual hit him square in the chest.

Rui and Wumuti stood just inside the doorway, backlit by the harsh fluorescent of the hallway, looking like they’d stepped out of a luxury brand campaign. Wumuti was draped in a silk button-up the color of champagne, unbuttoned dangerously low, the fabric catching the dim studio light and throwing it back in soft, liquid ripples. His black trousers were tailored to within an inch of their life, hugging his slender hips and thighs, and there was a dusting of silver glitter beneath his eyes that made his gaze seem almost wet, almost too bright. His hair—swept back from his forehead in soft, deliberate waves—framed the symmetry of his face like a painting.

Rui stood half a step behind him, taller, more severe. His stage outfit was darker: a charcoal blazer worn over nothing but bare skin and a single silver chain that dipped into the hollow of his sternum. His trousers were wide-legged, flowing, the kind of garment that moved before he did, and his jawline—sharp enough to cut glass—was set in that quiet, observant expression he wore when he was cataloguing a room and everyone in it.

BM looked down at himself. The sweat-stained tank top, the ratty shorts, the bare feet with one sock half-off. He barked out a laugh, low and genuine, spreading his arms wide.

“You two look like you just robbed a fashion week,” he said, his English slipping into the easy, slang-heavy cadence he reserved for off-camera moments. “And I look like I just crawled out of a gym bag.”

Wumuti’s smile widened. His eyes tracked down BM’s exposed arms—the thick swell of his biceps, the dark ink of his shoulder tattoo peeking out from beneath the stretched cotton strap—and there was nothing subtle about the path his gaze took. A deliberate, unhurried inventory.

“You look comfortable,” Wumuti said, switching to English with that fluid, accent-softened delivery that somehow made every word sound like a compliment. He stepped forward, extending a beautifully wrapped box tied with a black ribbon. “We brought you something. A proper thank-you for the video.”

BM rose from his chair, the height difference becoming immediately apparent as he straightened to his full six-foot-one. His tank top lifted slightly with the motion, exposing a strip of his lower stomach, the deep tan skin and the trail of dark hair that vanished beneath the waistband of his shorts. He caught Rui’s eyes flicker there. Caught it and filed it away.

“You didn’t have to do this,” BM said, taking the box. His fingers—thick, calloused from years of grip training—brushed against Wumuti’s slender ones. The contact lasted a beat too long.

“We wanted to,” Rui said, his voice lower than Wumuti’s, smoother. He moved into the room properly, and the door swung shut behind him with a soft pneumatic hiss. The studio suddenly felt much smaller.

BM set the box on the desk, pulling at the ribbon with careful fingers. Inside, nestled in black tissue paper, sat XLOV’s latest merchandise collection—a signed CD, a photobook, and a handwritten letter on thick, cream-colored stationery. He unfolded the letter, his eyes scanning the neat Hangul, the polite expressions of gratitude, the formal honorifics that belonged to the group as a whole.

“The letter is from the group.”

Wumuti’s voice came from much closer than BM expected. He’d circled around to the side of the studio chair, one hand resting casually on its back, leaning in so that his breath ghosted against the shell of BM’s ear. The sensation—warm and damp and startlingly intimate—made the fine hairs on BM’s neck stand up.

“But the real thank-you,” Wumuti whispered, still in English, each word dropping like a pebble into still water, “is just from the two of us.”

BM lowered the letter. Turned his head slightly, just enough to catch Wumuti in his peripheral vision—the glitter beneath his eyes, the slight curve of his lips, the way his throat moved as he swallowed.

“Yeah?” BM’s voice had dropped into a lower register, the playful edge still there but tempered now with something heavier. He hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his sweat shorts, a deliberately casual gesture that made the muscles in his forearms cord and flex. “Is that right?”

Rui stepped forward then, closing the distance with that dancer’s glide, all liquid precision and controlled momentum. He positioned himself directly between BM’s parted knees, his long, lean frame blocking out the glow of the studio monitors, casting them both in shadow. Up close like this, his scent was overwhelming—sandalwood and amber, the faint chemical sweetness of hairspray, the clean salt of skin that had been performing under hot lights for hours. "You came here just to tease me?", Matthew asked jokingly.

Rui’s elegant fingers lifted, slow and deliberate, tracing the edge of the cotton strap on BM’s tank top. Right where the fabric met the dark ink of his shoulder tattoo where the skin had stretched with muscle. The touch was feather-light, barely there, but it sent a cascade of sensation rippling down BM’s arm, his chest, settling low in his gut.

“We’re not teasing,” Rui said softly. His deep-set eyes held BM’s gaze without blinking. “We’re just showing our appreciation.”

Somewhere behind Rui, a door lock clicked shut with a sound like the period at the end of a sentence. BM’s eyes cut to Wumuti, who had moved to the studio entrance, his hand still resting on the deadbolt. Wumuti met his gaze and smiled—not the bright, media-trained beam from earlier, but something slower, something that curled at the edges.

“The shoot was torture,” Wumuti said, walking back toward them with a loose-hipped stride that made the silk of his shirt sway. “Two days of watching you in almost nothing, hyung. Two days of professionalism.” He spat the last word like it had personally offended him. “Rui couldn’t stop talking about it in the car.”

“Yah,” Rui said, but there was no heat in it. His fingers were still on BM’s shoulder, tracing the dragon’s coiled tail now, following the ink like a roadmap.

BM’s chest expanded with a slow, deep breath. The tank top strained audibly across his pectorals, the cotton pulling taut. He could feel his own pulse in his throat, in his temples, in the thickening pressure that was starting to press against the loose cotton of his shorts.

“So this is what?” BM asked, his voice a low rumble. “You two doll up, bring me presents, lock my studio door—what’s the play here?”

Wumuti laughed—a soft, musical sound that seemed to fill the cramped space. He settled himself on the arm of a nearby equipment case, crossing one elegant leg over the other, his posture both relaxed and deeply intentional.

“The play is,” Wumuti said, “we’ve been thinking about this since the fitting. The first day of the shoot, when the stylist wrapped those straps around your chest and tightened them?” He paused, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. “Rui had to excuse himself to the bathroom.”

Rui made a small, noncommittal sound, but his cheeks flushed distinctly—a dark pink bloom that spread from his cheekbones down to the elegant column of his throat. He didn’t stop tracing BM’s tattoo, though. His fingertip had moved up to the strap of the tank top now, slipping beneath it slightly, the pad of his finger pressing into the ridge of BM’s trapezius muscle.

“Don’t act like you were any better,” Rui muttered, but his voice was thicker now, rougher. “I saw you watching during the solo shots. You nearly walked into a light stand.”

BM laughed—a genuine, full-chested sound that shook his shoulders and made Rui’s finger slip off his skin. The tension in the room cracked slightly, but only for a moment. When BM looked back up at Rui, his expression had shifted. The playfulness was still there, but underneath it was something hungrier, something that had been coiling in his gut since the first day of the video shoot, when he’d watched the stylists buckle XLOV into their leather and silk and thought this is going to be a long week.

“You know what I thought,” BM said, his voice dropping, “when the stylist was strapping me into that harness? When you two were standing across the room in those open-back silk shirts?” He leaned forward slightly, closing the few inches of space between his face and Rui’s. “I thought, they have no idea what they look like right now. The whole room was holding its breath.”

Rui’s pupils had blown wide, eating up the deep brown of his irises. His hand had stilled on BM’s shoulder, but his thumb was moving now—small, unconscious circles against the cotton strap.

“We knew,” Rui whispered. “We knew exactly.”

And then Wumuti was there, slipping off the equipment case and pressing up against BM’s other side, his slender body a warm line of heat along BM’s arm. The contrast was dizzying—BM’s bulk, his sweat-damp skin and exposed muscle, bracketed by these two polished, perfumed, deliberate creatures.

“Hyung,” Wumuti said, and the word came out breathier than before, less controlled. “Can we show you? Can we actually show you?”

BM looked at Rui. At those intense, dark eyes, the barely-there tremor in his elegant fingers. He looked at Wumuti—the soft, pleading curve of his mouth, the way his chest was rising and falling just a little too fast beneath the champagne silk.

“You locked the door,” BM said, and it wasn’t a question anymore.

Rui moved first. His hand slid from BM’s shoulder up to the side of his neck, his palm pressing flat against the thick column of muscle there, his thumb finding the hinge of BM’s jaw. The touch was firmer now, more certain, and it sent a jolt of electricity straight down BM’s spine, pooling at the base of his stomach.

“I want to taste you,” Rui said, and the words were so quiet they were almost swallowed by the bassline still thumping through the monitors. “I’ve been thinking about it for a week. I’ve been—”

BM’s hand shot up, his thick fingers wrapping around Rui’s wrist—not hard, not restraining, just there, a point of contact that made Rui’s breath catch audibly.

“You’ve been thinking,” BM repeated, his voice a low growl. “Show me. Both of you. Show me what you’ve been thinking.”

Rui leaned in.

His lips brushed BM’s jaw first—just beneath the ear, where the skin was warm and salt-tinged—and the contact was so light it could have been mistaken for an accident. But then his mouth opened, his tongue tracing a slow, wet line down to the corner of BM’s jaw, and BM’s head fell back against the studio chair with a sound that was halfway between a groan and a laugh.

Behind Rui, Wumuti had dropped to his knees on the studio floor, the silk of his shirt pooling around him like spilled champagne. His hands—slender, expressive, the hands of a vocalist who conducted his own performances—settled on BM’s bare knees, fingers slipping just under the frayed hem of the grey sweat shorts.

“Is this okay?” Wumuti asked, looking up through the glitter beneath his eyes, his voice stripped of all performance, nothing left but raw, aching want.

BM’s answer came out as a rumble, a vibration that Rui could feel through his lips where they pressed against his throat.

“Yeah,” BM said. “Yeah, it’s okay.”

Wumuti’s fingers tightened on his knees. Rui’s teeth grazed the tendon of his neck.

The bassline thumped on, steady and relentless, and somewhere in the back of BM’s mind, he registered that he’d never finished adjusting the snare reverb. The thought dissolved almost immediately, washed away by the sensation of Rui’s mouth moving lower, tracing the edge of his tank top’s collar, and Wumuti’s hands sliding up his thighs with a deliberation that bordered on reverence.

The studio lights flickered—a power fluctuation, the city grid straining under the summer heat—and for a split second, the room plunged into near-darkness. In that momentary blackout, BM felt two mouths on his skin, two sets of fingers mapping the landscape of his body, and the contrast between Rui’s sharp, claiming precision and Wumuti’s soft, exploratory touch made his head spin.

The lights came back.

Rui was straddling his thigh now, the flowing black trousers pooled around BM’s knee, the silver chain swinging forward to tap against BM’s chest. Wumuti was still on the floor, his face hovering just above BM’s lap, his breath hot through the thin cotton of the sweat shorts.

“You’re sure,” BM said, and it came out ragged, his chest heaving, his hands gripping the armrests of the studio chair with white-knuckled force. “You’re sure this is—”

Rui kissed him.

Full on the mouth, open and hungry, his tongue sliding against BM’s with a desperate, practiced heat that tasted like mint and the faint bitterness of espresso. BM’s hand came up to grip the back of Rui’s neck, fingers tangling in that perfectly styled hair, pulling him closer, deeper, and Rui made a sound against his lips—a high, breathy whimper that vibrated in his throat.

When they broke apart, Rui’s carefully composed expression had shattered. His lips were pink and wet, his eyes glassy, his chest rising and falling in sharp, shallow bursts.

“We’re sure,” Rui breathed.

On the floor, Wumuti’s fingers hooked into the waistband of BM’s sweat shorts. He looked up—at Rui, at BM, at the space between them—and the glitter beneath his eyes caught the light like unshed tears.

“We’ve never been more sure of anything,” Wumuti whispered, and pulled.

Wumuti’s fingers hooked into the waistband of BM’s sweat shorts and tugged.

The grey cotton slid down thick thighs, catching for a heartbeat on the ridge of his arousal before pooling around his ankles. The studio air—warm, stagnant, heavy with the ghosts of a hundred burned incense sticks—hit his bare skin and made him shiver despite the heat. Rui’s mouth never left his throat. A wet trail mapped the tendon from jaw to collarbone while those elegant fingers worked the hem of the tank top, shoving it upward with an impatience that bordered on furious.

BM lifted his arms. The shirt peeled away, damp with sweat, and Rui flung it somewhere behind the console. Now the contrast was obscene—BM’s massive bare chest, the dragon tattoo curling down his shoulder, the flat planes of his stomach sheened with moisture, bracketed by two fully dressed idols still gleaming with stage makeup.

“Couch,” Rui murmured against his sternum. “You’re too big for this chair.”

Wumuti laughed, that bright musical sound, and rose from his knees in one fluid motion. Together they guided BM across the cramped studio, past the rack of untouched synthesizers, past the vocal booth with its fogged glass, to the worn leather couch pushed against the far wall. The cushions sagged under his weight as he sat, legs spread, cock standing thick and flushed against his belly.

Rui and Wumuti stepped back.

They exchanged a glance—some private, wordless communication born of countless stages and shared van rides—and then Rui’s blazer hit the floor. The silver chain followed, pooling on the charcoal fabric like mercury. His bare chest was lean and carved, pink nipples tight in the cool air, the sharp lines of his hip bones vanishing into the waist of those flowing black trousers. He undid the clasp with one hand, never breaking eye contact with BM, and let the fabric slither down his long legs.

Beside him, Wumuti slipped the champagne silk from his shoulders with a dancer’s grace. The shirt fell away, revealing a slender torso, smooth and golden under the dim track lighting. His trousers came next—peeled down slowly, deliberately—until he stood in nothing but the silver glitter beneath his eyes and a pair of briefs so sheer they left nothing to the imagination. Those, too, he hooked his thumbs into and drew down.

Two naked bodies. One sharp and angular, one soft and lithe. Both achingly beautiful.

“You planned this,” BM said, his voice a low scrape. His hand had found his own cock without conscious thought, palm resting against the base, not stroking, just holding.

“Since the fitting,” Rui admitted. He stepped into Wumuti’s space, one hand finding the smaller man’s waist, and pulled him into a kiss that was all tongue and teeth and shared breath. Wumuti’s fingers tangled in Rui’s disheveled hair, tilting his head, deepening the angle, and a slick, wet sound filled the studio that had nothing to do with the monitors.

BM’s grip tightened. His jaw ached from clenching.

They broke apart with a string of saliva connecting their lips. Wumuti’s chest heaved. Rui’s pupils had swallowed his irises entirely. And then they turned—in perfect synchronization, like a choreographed stage moment—and dropped to their knees between BM’s spread thighs.

Two mouths. One cock.

Rui reached first. His long fingers wrapped around the base, tilting the thick shaft toward his lips, and he pressed a kiss to the very tip—gentle, almost reverent. Wumuti ducked lower, his tongue tracing the vein that ran along the underside, a wet, dragging heat that made BM’s hips jerk involuntarily.

“Fuck,” BM breathed.

Rui’s mouth opened. He took the head between his lips, his tongue circling the ridge, and then sank down—inch by deliberate inch—until the blunt tip hit the back of his throat. His jaw went slack, eyes fluttering shut, and a single tear escaped from the corner of his eye and tracked through his makeup.

Wumuti’s mouth found his balls. Soft suction, his tongue working the sensitive skin, one hand sliding up to cup them while the other stroked the spit-slick shaft that Rui’s lips couldn’t reach. Their rhythms synced—Rui’s head bobbing, Wumuti’s tongue lapping—and BM gripped the edge of the couch cushion with both hands, the leather creaking under his fingers.

“Both of you,” he ground out. “Both of you at once.”

They understood. Rui pulled off, gasping, and shifted sideways. Wumuti rose up, and together they pressed their mouths to either side of BM’s cock—two tongues tracing parallel lines from base to tip, meeting at the crown in a wet, messy kiss. Rui’s hand joined Wumuti’s around the shaft. They stroked together while their tongues tangled over the slit, and the visual—the two of them debauched and gleaming, sharing him like something sacred—made BM’s vision tunnel.

Then Rui was climbing onto the couch.

He straddled BM’s lap in one fluid motion, knees bracketing those massive thighs, and braced his hands on the broad shoulders. “I need you inside me,” he said, and the words came out cracked, desperate, stripped of every ounce of his usual composure.

BM’s hand found Rui’s hip. His other hand guided his cock, pressing the tip against the tight heat of him, and Rui sank down with a sound that was half-moan, half-sob. The fit was obscene—so tight that BM could feel every pulse of Rui’s heartbeat around his shaft.

Rui began to move. Slow at first. Experimental rolls of his hips that dragged exquisite friction along BM’s length. BM leaned forward and sealed his mouth over one of Rui’s nipples—that sharp pink peak he’d been fixated on since the blazer came off. He sucked hard, laving the bud with his tongue, and Rui cried out, his rhythm faltering.

A hand landed on the back of BM’s neck. Wumuti, still kneeling beside the couch, pulling him into a kiss that tasted like salt and precum and something sweetly floral. BM kissed him deeply while his hips thrust upward into Rui’s tightness and his teeth grazed Rui’s nipple.

Wumuti’s other hand found Rui’s cock—abandoned and leaking against BM’s stomach—and wrapped around it. He stroked in time with Rui’s bouncing, a relentless counterpoint of sensation, and Rui made a sound like the air had been punched from his lungs.

“I’m— I can’t—”

The first pulse of hot cum striped BM’s chest. The second hit his collarbone, dripping over the dragon’s open jaw. Rui’s body clenched around BM’s cock in rhythmic spasms, milking him, and BM had to grit his teeth against the urge to follow.

Rui collapsed forward, forehead against BM’s shoulder, chest heaving. BM kissed his temple—soft, almost tender—then eased him off, pulling out with a wet sound that made them both groan.

“Hyung.”

Wumuti’s voice. Low. Insistent.

BM looked. Wumuti had moved to the center of the studio floor, on hands and knees atop the discarded silk of his shirt, spine arched like a cat. The glitter beneath his eyes caught the glow of the monitors, and he was looking back over his shoulder with an expression that was pure invitation.

“Please,” Wumuti said.

BM crossed the floor on his knees. His hands found the cheeks of Wumuti’s ass and spread them apart, and he lowered his mouth to the exposed center, dragging his tongue—broad and flat—over the tight ring of muscle. Wumuti’s arms buckled. He dropped to his elbows with a muffled cry, and BM worked him open with lips and tongue, with patient, penetrating strokes that turned the muscle soft and yielding.

Only then did he rise up, align his slick cock, and push inside.

Wumuti’s back bowed. His fingers scrabbled against the floor. “Yes— yes, right there—”

BM built a rhythm—deep, rolling thrusts that bottomed out with the slap of skin against skin—and it was then that Rui appeared in front of him. Still flushed, still trembling, but standing, his softening cock hanging heavy between his thighs. He cupped BM’s face in both hands and kissed him, open-mouthed and slow, while BM fucked into Wumuti from behind.

The kiss deepened. Tongues slid. Breath mingled. And BM felt the pressure building at the base of his spine—a tightening, a gathering—until he couldn’t hold it anymore.

He tore his mouth from Rui’s. His hips slammed forward once, twice, and then he was spilling, a hot flood emptying deep inside Wumuti’s clenching body, and his groan was a raw, broken thing that filled the whole studio.

He pulled out. Wumuti collapsed, rolling onto his back with limbs gone loose, chest splattered with sweat and Rui’s drying cum. His own cock stood rigid against his stomach, untouched and weeping.

Rui sank down. Took Wumuti into his mouth—not teasing, not gentle, just a deep, hungry swallow that made Wumuti’s heels skid against the floor. His cheeks hollowed. His head bobbed. And Wumuti’s voice cracked on a sob as his hips bucked up and he came, flooding Rui’s tongue, his throat working around the taste.

BM watched. His spent cock twitched. His chest was a mess of cum and sweat, and his heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted out.

“You two,” he said, and his voice came out wrecked, hoarse, entirely un-moderated. “You two are the wildest, craziest—” He broke off, shaking his head, a disbelieving laugh rumbling up from somewhere deep.

Wumuti’s bright eyes found his, glitter now smeared, mouth curved in a wobbly, blissed-out smile.

The company headquarters loomed silent against the Seoul skyline, most of its windows dark except for the scattered glow of overnight production rooms. BM’s sneakers squeaked against the polished lobby floor as the security guard waved him through, Joohoney had left his name, apparently. The elevator ride to the ninth floor took long enough for him to check his reflection in the brushed steel doors.

He wasn’t vain. He was aware. Six-two, two hundred and change, shoulders that made doorframes feel narrower than they actually were. The black compression shirt did what it always did—hugged the architecture of his chest and arms without trying too hard. Gold chain. Minimal jewelry. He looked like he belonged here, or anywhere.

The elevator chimed.

The hallway beyond was dim, lined with studio doors marked by engraved plaques. He spotted the one he wanted immediately: a custom metal plate reading “JH” in aggressive, angular font, backlit by a thin strip of red LED. Before he could knock, the door swung inward.

“You’re punctual. Respect.”

Joohoney stood in the doorway, and the first thing BM registered was the energy. Compact but coiled, the man radiated a kind of high-frequency intensity that made the air around him feel charged. He wore an oversized white tank top that draped off one shoulder, revealing the dense architecture of his traps and delts, and gray sweatpants slung low on his hips. His smile split wide, dimples carving deep parentheses into his cheeks.

“Bro, you think I’m gonna be late to see the legendary setup?” BM stepped inside, already scanning. “This is the one you’ve been posting on IG for months.”

“Months of curation.” Joohoney closed the door behind them and locked it with a decisive click. “Every piece in here has a purpose. Energy doesn’t lie.”

The main room opened up like a cathedral of controlled chaos. Overhead, the ceiling was paneled in alternating red and black acoustic squares—the checkered pattern BM had glimpsed in photos, but up close it felt almost hypnotic, the geometry pulling your eye across the room in waves. Pink and violet neon strips ran along the baseboards and behind the monitor setup, casting everything in a low, liquid glow that made shadows pool in the corners.

“The ceiling panels,” BM said, tilting his head back. “Custom-cut?”

“Imported from Germany. Each one’s a different density depending on placement—bass traps in the corners, diffusion in the center.” Joohoney’s voice pitched up with genuine enthusiasm, the producer-brain taking over. “I spent three weeks on that alone. The room breathes exactly how I want it to.”

He gestured toward the far wall, where his logo dominated the space. Hand-painted in black and metallic gold, the brushstrokes visible up close, giving it texture and weight. Below it, a glass display cabinet caught the neon and threw it back in fractured glints.

“Hold up.” BM crossed to the cabinet and crouched down. “Is that the Spider-Man 2099 figure? The limited Japan release?”

“Number four hundred and twelve of five hundred.” Joohoney’s reflection appeared in the glass beside him, grinning. “Next to the Bugatti Chiron model. And that—” He tapped the glass directly above a sleek black vehicle. “—is the Batman car Wonho hyung gave me for my birthday two years ago. He said it matched my ‘dark producer energy.’”

BM’s attention snagged on the name. He straightened slowly. “Wonho’s got taste.”

“Wonho’s got a lot of things.” Joohoney’s tone shifted almost imperceptibly—still casual, but with a new layer underneath. He moved past BM toward the private bar counter, all glossy black surface and minimalist shelving. “You want something? Water, soju, something stronger?”

“Water’s fine.”

Joohoney poured two glasses from a chilled bottle, and when he handed one over, their fingers brushed. Cold condensation. Warm skin. Neither man acknowledged it.

“Face Genius.” BM pointed to a framed award on the shelf above the bar, the Korean text ornate and official.

“Don’t laugh.” Joohoney did laugh, though, a bright burst of sound. “My mom still brings it up to strangers. Every item in this room—the awards, the figures, the panels, the neon—it’s all arranged to cultivate a specific energy. High intensity. No dead zones. Creativity needs friction.”

He said the last word with his eyes locked on BM’s.

The air changed. Subtle, but definite—like a bass frequency you felt before you heard.

“Show me the booth,” BM said.

he recording booth was smaller than he’d expected.

Insulated foam covered every surface in geometric waves, charcoal gray and textured like egg crate, swallowing the ambient light until the only illumination came from a thin strip of violet LED running along the ceiling seam. The space couldn’t have been more than seven feet across, dominated by a plush dark leather recliner positioned before a high-end condenser microphone on a counterweighted boom arm. The mic wore its pop filter like a mesh crown.

Joohoney slipped past BM into the booth, his shoulder brushing against BM’s chest in the tight quarters. “This is the heart. The actual heart. Everything out there—” He jerked his chin toward the main room. “—is just the circulatory system.”

“Soundproofed how well?”

“You could scream in here and they wouldn’t hear it on the floor below. Triple-layer insulation, air-gapped walls. I recorded half the last album’s ad-libs at three in the morning.” Joohoney settled into the recliner, spreading his knees wide, taking up space he didn’t physically have the mass to occupy. The confidence made up the difference. “You want to test it?”

“Test how?”

Instead of answering, Joohoney leaned forward toward the mic, his lips nearly brushing the pop filter, and dropped into something that wasn’t quite words.

“Gugu-chk chk Gugu-tacha.”

The beatboxing rolled out of him in a percussive cascade, impossibly textured—his throat producing bass hits and snare snaps and hi-hat rhythms simultaneously, the sound so dense it seemed to thicken the air. The acoustics caught every frequency and held it, no reverb, no decay, just pure presence. His voice dropped lower on the second pass, rougher, and the vibration traveled through the floor into BM’s sternum.

Then Joohoney looked up.

His eyes were dark, liquid, and entirely aware of what he was doing. “Well? How’s the sound?”

BM closed the distance.

Three steps in a space that barely allowed two, his frame swallowing the remaining square footage until he was standing directly over the recliner. Joohoney didn’t lean back. Didn’t flinch. Just tilted his chin up to maintain eye contact, the beatboxing dying on his lips.

BM planted both hands on the insulated wall behind Joohoney’s head, arms braced, boxing him in. The foam compressed under his palms with a soft crunching sound.

“Crystal clear,” BM said.

Joohoney’s gaze tracked down BM’s body with deliberate, unhurried attention. Across the breadth of his shoulders. Down the compression shirt’s strained seams. Over the chest his fans called “big matthews” and the arms that had become their own brand. The inspection was thorough. Professional, almost. Like he was assessing studio equipment.

Then he let out a low whistle.

“You’re massive,” Joohoney said. Flat. Factual. “Like, I knew you were big from photos, but in person? You swallow up the whole booth. There’s barely room for me to breathe.”

BM chuckled, the sound rumbling up from somewhere deep in his chest. “Man, you haven’t seen Wonho lately. He’s still way swoller than me. That guy’s built different.”

The name landed.

Joohoney’s expression flickered—something quick and knowing passing behind his eyes. His dimples appeared, but the smile that accompanied them wasn’t the bright, enthusiastic one from before. It was slicker. Sharper.

“Wonho hyung,” Joohoney repeated, drawing out the syllables. “Funny you mention him.”

“Funny how?”

“He’s brought you up before. A few times, actually.” Joohoney leaned forward in the recliner, closing the already minimal distance between them until his tank top brushed BM’s shirt. His voice dropped to something just above a whisper. “When we talk. About… certain things.”

BM’s arms stayed planted on the wall. His pulse kicked up eight notches. “What kind of things?”

“You really want me to spell it out?”

“I want you to tell me exactly what Wonho said.”

Joohoney’s tongue darted across his lower lip. “He said you’re competitive. Said you don’t back down from anything. Said if someone pushes, you push back twice as hard.” The recliner creaked as he shifted his weight forward. “But he also said you talk a big game and sometimes need someone to make you follow through.”

The challenge hung in the air between them, electric and waiting.

BM’s jaw tightened. “Wonho said that?”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m adding my own observations.” Joohoney’s knee pressed against the outside of BM’s thigh, intentional pressure through thin sweatpants. “You came here for studio advice. You’re getting it. The energy in a room matters. The tension matters. You can’t make great art without friction.”

“And you think you can provide that friction?”

“I know I can.” Joohoney’s hand came up and fisted into the collar of BM’s compression shirt, knuckles pressing against his collarbone. The gesture was aggressive but not violent—a claim, not an attack. “Question is, what are you going to do about it?”

BM surged forward.

His mouth found Joohoney’s with the same precision he brought to everything else—not sloppy, not desperate, but exact. The kiss was a collision of heat and intent, Joohoney’s lips parting immediately, his free hand coming up to grip the back of BM’s neck. The recliner groaned under their combined weight as Joohoney pulled him down.

“This booth’s too tight,” Joohoney gasped against BM’s mouth. “Can’t—”

“Yeah.” BM pulled back just enough to breathe. “Yeah.”

They moved together in a tangle of limbs, Joohoney keeping his grip on BM’s collar as he dragged himself out of the recliner and backward through the booth door. His shoulder hit the frame, and he laughed—low and breathless—before pulling BM through into the main room.

The couch stretched long and low against the far wall, dark leather gleaming under the pink and violet neon. Joohoney backed toward it without breaking eye contact, his chest rising and falling in sharp, anticipatory breaths. The oversized tank top slipped further off his shoulder.

“Lose the shirt,” Joohoney said. Not a request.

BM stripped it off in one motion, the compression fabric peeling away to reveal the full scope of his physique—chest broad enough to cast shadows, abdominals carved in sharp relief, the gold chain catching neon and scattering pink light across his collarbones. Joohoney’s tank top followed a half-second later, dropped carelessly to the floor.

The contrast between them was obscene. Joohoney’s dense, explosive frame—shoulders like carved stone, torso compact and powerful—against BM’s towering, broad-shouldered architecture. Two different definitions of formidable, pressing into each other’s space.

“Couch,” Joohoney managed. “Now.”

BM’s hands found Joohoney’s hips and steered him backward until the backs of his knees hit the leather. They went down together, Joohoney’s back hitting the cushions, BM bracketing him with arms and chest, the couch wide enough to accommodate both of them but just barely. Joohoney’s sweatpants were already being worked down past his thighs, BM’s following in a graceless scramble of fabric and elastic.

The neon painted everything in shades of rose and amethyst. Joohoney’s skin looked almost otherworldly under it—flushed and gleaming, the sweat already starting to sheen across his chest and shoulders.

“Turn over,” BM rasped.

Joohoney complied, shifting onto his stomach, and BM’s breath caught somewhere in his throat. The man’s back was a landscape of muscle and definition, tapering down to a narrow waist and the curve of his ass—pale, firm, the cleft visible in the low light. BM’s hands spanned the width of Joohoney’s hips, thumbs pressing into the dimples just above his tailbone.

“Wonho said you were thorough,” Joohoney murmured into the leather, his voice muffled but unmistakably smug. “Prove him right.”

BM lowered his mouth to the base of Joohoney’s spine.

He worked downward, tongue tracing the path of vertebrae, heat blooming wherever his lips touched skin. Joohoney’s breath hitched when BM reached the swell of his ass, hands gripping the edge of the couch cushion. BM didn’t rush. He took his time mapping the territory—kissing, licking, letting his stubble drag just enough to raise goosebumps across the sensitive skin.

When he spread Joohoney open, the man let out a sound that was half gasp, half laugh.

“Finally. Been waiting for you to—”

BM’s tongue cut off the rest of the sentence.

Joohoney’s response was immediate and unguarded—a sharp, punched-out moan that he tried to muffle against the leather but couldn’t quite contain. His hips jerked involuntarily, and BM’s grip on his thighs tightened in response, holding him steady. The pink hole fluttered under his attention, tightening and releasing in rapid succession as BM laved over it with broad, flat strokes.

“Fuck,” Joohoney breathed. “Fuck, your mouth—”

BM hummed against him, and Joohoney’s back arched, his spine curving into a deep bow. The sounds he made were exquisite—high and breathless, completely unlike his deep rap register, a private frequency that only this room would ever hear. His fingers scrabbled against the leather, seeking purchase, finding none.

BM worked him open with patient, relentless attention. He alternated between pointed precision and broad sweeps, reading Joohoney’s body like sheet music—the tremor in his right thigh meant harder, the way his breath caught meant slower, the desperate roll of his hips meant don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop. The room filled with wet, obscene sounds and the rhythmic creak of leather.

“I’m—okay—enough.” Joohoney’s voice cracked on the last word. He pushed up onto his elbows and twisted to look over his shoulder, his face flushed, dimples carved deep with something between ecstasy and impatience. “I need you inside me. Right now.”

BM didn’t need to be told twice.

He positioned himself, the head of his cock pressing against the slick, prepared opening, and Joohoney’s eyes fluttered half-closed. The initial push met resistance—and then yielded, Joohoney’s body opening for him in a slow, tight slide that pulled a groan from somewhere deep in BM’s chest.

“Jesus,” BM managed. “You’re—”

“I know.” Joohoney’s voice was strained, triumphant. “Keep going.”

BM sank deeper, inch by excruciating inch, until he was fully seated and Joohoney was trembling beneath him, his forehead pressed to the leather, his breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps. The fit was impossibly tight, slick and hot and clutching around him with every involuntary clench.

Then he started to move.

The rhythm built naturally—not the frantic, rushed pace of a hookup, but something more deliberate. BM’s hips rolled in deep, grinding thrusts that pushed Joohoney forward into the cushions with every stroke. The leather groaned beneath them. The sub-bass from the monitors, still on from earlier, vibrated through the floor and into their bones, a low hum that matched the pulse of blood in BM’s ears.

Joohoney was vocal in a way that BM hadn’t anticipated. Every thrust pulled a sound from him—sharp, high moans that he tried to stifle, breathless curses in Korean that BM didn’t need to translate to understand, a litany of “yes” and “there” and “don’t stop” that got progressively less coherent as the pace increased. When BM hit a particular angle, Joohoney’s whole body seized and he bit down on his own forearm to keep from screaming.

“Nah,” BM grunted, reaching forward to pull the arm away. “Let me hear you. Room’s soundproofed, right?”

Joohoney’s laugh dissolved into a moan. “Arrogant—ah—bastard.”

“Confident. There’s a difference.”

BM shifted his grip to Joohoney’s hips, fingers digging into the dense muscle there, and increased his pace. The sound of flesh meeting flesh filled the main room, obscene and rhythmic, undercut by Joohoney’s increasingly desperate vocalizations. Sweat dripped from BM’s chest onto Joohoney’s back, mingling with the sheen already there, and the neon caught the moisture and turned it into liquid light.

He was close. They both were—he could feel it in the way Joohoney’s body tightened around him, in the frantic pitch of his moans, in the way his own thrusts were starting to lose their rhythm and become something more urgent, more primal.

“Come on,” Joohoney gasped, pushing back against him. “Come on, Matthew. Give it to me.”

BM’s vision narrowed to a single point of focus. The man beneath him. The heat. The friction. The sound of his own name in Joohoney’s wrecked, desperate voice.

He drove forward one last time, burying himself to the hilt as a ragged grunt tore from his throat. Joohoney’s entire body went rigid, his back arching dramatically under the sudden, searing heat of BM’s release, a long, high-pitched whine echoing off the studio walls before he collapsed face-down into the leather.

For several long minutes, the only sound in the sanctuary was the heavy, synchronized sound of their breathing, heavy and uneven against the faint, persistent hum of the idling subwoofers.

Slowly, the frantic edge of the adrenaline began to dull, replaced by a heavy, syrupy exhaustion. BM shifted his weight, carefully pulling out with a wet, quiet sound that made Joohoney let out a weak, appreciative murmur. Instead of getting up, BM reached down to the floor, blindly grabbing his discarded compression shirt and using it to lazily wipe away the slick sheen of sweat from their hips before tossing it back onto the hardwood.

With a low groan, BM slid onto his side on the plush leather couch, pulling Joohoney backward into his chest.

Joohoney didn’t fight it. He let out a breathless, tired laugh, his dense, muscular frame fitting surprisingly well against the massive breadth of BM’s chest. He reached back, his fingers loosely tangling with BM’s gold chain, tracing the heavy links as the pink and violet neon lights washed over them both.

"Friction," BM murmured into the damp curve of Joohoney’s neck, his voice deeper and more gravelly than usual. "You weren't lying."

"Told you. The acoustic design... unmatched," Joohoney wheezed softly, his eyes half-closed as he leaned heavily into the warmth of BM’s torso. He shifted his hips slightly, finding a comfortable groove against BM's thighs. "Though I don't think Germany engineered the panels for that specific frequency."

BM chuckled, a deep vibration that Joohoney felt directly against his spine. He wrapped one massive arm securely around Joohoney’s waist, pulling him even closer until there wasn't a single inch of dead zone between them. "We're gonna have to tell Wonho his advice was solid."

"Shut up," Joohoney muttered, though his lips curved into a soft, genuine smile, his dimples reappearing in the violet light. "Let me sleep for twenty minutes. If I don't get some sort of rest, the hair and makeup team is going to kill me at five a.m."

"Five?" BM blinked, a sudden reality check hitting his sleep-deprived brain. He checked the digital clock glowing on the studio monitor across the room. It was already past three. "Damn. I've got a concept shoot at six."

"Exactly. So don't move." Joohoney let his head drop back against BM’s shoulder, his breathing instantly slowing down as his body began to drift off.

BM stopped. The alcove was twenty feet ahead, a semi-private recess with velvet curtains half-drawn, designed for the kind of conversation that needed to happen away from the main room’s open floor. Through the gap in the curtains, he caught movement. Three silhouettes. Broad shoulders, expensive cuts of blazer, the unmistakable posture of men who’d never been told no.

And a fourth. Smaller. Pressed against the wall.

“—just one drink. We bought it special for you.”

“I said I’m fine.” The voice was thin, strained at the edges. “Please, I just want to—”

A wrist was grabbed. BM saw it happen, one of the men snatch a delicate hand out of the air, yanking it forward, and the smaller figure stumbled, silk slipping off a shoulder, catching the amber light.

BM moved.

He didn’t run. Running implied urgency, and urgency implied they were worth his panic. Instead, he closed the distance in four unhurried strides, his 6’2” frame cutting through the dim like a blade, and when he pulled the curtain back, every head in the alcove turned.

The conversation died mid-breath.

Up close, the three men were exactly what he’d expected: wealthy heirs with too much gel in their hair and too little sense in their eyes. Early thirties, late tewnties, probably, though they carried themselves with the arrogance of men who’d never had to earn what they wore. One still had his fingers clamped around that fragile wrist.

BM didn’t look at them. He looked at the boy.

Recognition hit like a punch to the sternum.

Hyeongjun.

They’d never exchanged more than polite nods during music show finales, never shared a waiting room or a variety show segment. But BM knew him. Everyone knew him—CRAVITY’s main dancer, the one with the impossible doe eyes and the laugh that sounded like wind chimes in a breeze. The industry called him the nation’s little brother, and seeing him now, pressed against the marble wall with his silk shirt hanging off one shoulder and his pupils blown wide with terror, BM understood why everyone felt the urge to protect him.

He looked small. Small and pale and so clearly out of his depth that something hot and protective coiled in BM’s chest.

“Is there a problem?”

BM’s voice dropped into that register, the one his members joked could rattle windows. Deep. Calm. The verbal equivalent of a hand on a throat.

The heir holding Hyeongjun’s wrist went rigid. His fingers loosened.

“BM.” The name came out as a squeak, stripped of all the bravado that had been dripping from him seconds earlier. “We were just—it was a misunderstanding. We didn’t know he was with you.”

With you. As if Hyeongjun needed to belong to someone for his autonomy to matter.

BM stepped forward. It was a small movement, barely six inches, but it placed his chest directly between Hyeongjun and the man who’d grabbed him. The guy had to crane his neck to maintain eye contact.

“He’s not with me,” BM said. One corner of his mouth ticked up. “But I’m with him. So I’ll ask again. Is there a problem?”

Silence. The kind that tastes like retreat.

The lead heir exchanged a glance with his friends, a flicker of calculation, then dismissal. They knew the math. BM wasn’t just physically imposing; he was a established idol, a senior in an industry that worshipped hierarchy, and his reputation for being protective preceded him. Escalating would be stupid. Even they could see that.

“No problem.” The words came out tight, resentful. “We were leaving anyway.”

They shuffled past him like scolded schoolboys, shoulders hunched, one of them muttering something under his breath that BM chose not to hear. The heavy velvet curtain swung shut behind them, and then it was just the two of them in the amber-lit alcove, the shattered remains of a whiskey glass glittering at their feet.

BM turned.

Hyeongjun hadn’t moved from the wall. His chest was rising and falling too fast, each breath hitching at the top like his lungs couldn’t quite remember how to work. The silk shirt—cream-colored, expensive, definitely not his style—had slipped further down, exposing the elegant line of his collarbone and the pale slope of one shoulder. His cheeks were flushed a feverish pink, and his eyes, those famous doe eyes, were glassy and unfocused.

Drunk. Dangerously so, by the looks of it.

“Hey.” BM softened his voice immediately, the alpha register dissolving into something gentler. “Hey, you’re okay now. They’re gone.”

Hyeongjun blinked up at him. Recognition flickered behind the haze, and then his face crumpled with something that looked horribly like relief.

“Hyung—”

His knees buckled.

BM caught him before he hit the floor. One arm hooked around his waist, the other bracing his shoulder blades, and suddenly BM was holding a full-grown idol against his chest like he weighed nothing at all. Which, honestly, he barely did. Through the thin silk, BM could feel the delicate architecture of his ribs, the frantic flutter of his heartbeat.

“Okay,” BM murmured, more to himself than to the boy sagging against him. “Okay. I’ve got you.”

Hyeongjun’s fingers curled weakly into the lapel of his leather jacket. His head lolled against BM’s shoulder, and the scent of expensive whiskey and something sweeter—peach, maybe, or apricot—drifted up between them.

“M’sorry,” Hyeongjun mumbled. “Didn’t mean to, they kept buying me drinks, and I didn’t want to be rude, and then they cornered me, and I—”

“Don’t apologize.” BM adjusted his grip, hoisting Hyeongjun more securely against his side. “Can you walk?”

A pause. Then a tiny, miserable shake of the head.

Right. BM exhaled through his nose and made a decision. “I’m calling you a car. You need to get back to your dorm and sleep this off.”

He’d already pulled out his phone when Hyeongjun’s reaction registered.

The boy went rigid. His fingers, which had been clutching BM’s jacket with kitten-weak strength, suddenly tightened into claws. His head snapped up, and the glassiness in his eyes sharpened into something closer to panic.

“No.” The word came out high and tight. “No, hyung, please—I can’t go back to the dorm.”

“What? Why not?”

Hyeongjun’s throat bobbed. “The managers. They’re already stressed about comeback prep, and if they see me like this—” He gestured vaguely at himself, the smeared gloss on his lips, the wrinkled silk, the whiskey on his breath. “I’ll get in so much trouble. And my members, they’re asleep, but if someone wakes up and—I can’t, hyung. Please.”

The last word cracked down the middle.

BM stared at him. The professional, responsible part of his brain said take him to a hotel. Book him a room, leave a bottle of water and some aspirin on the nightstand, let him deal with the consequences in the morning. That was the smart play. The safe play.

But then Hyeongjun shivered. A full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the adrenaline crash, and BM found himself shrugging out of his leather jacket before he’d consciously decided to move.

He draped it over Hyeongjun’s shoulders. The jacket swallowed him—sleeves hanging past his fingertips, collar riding up to his ears—and somewhere in the back of BM’s mind, a door that should have stayed closed creaked open an inch.

“Fine,” BM heard himself say. “My place. But you’re drinking a liter of water and going straight to sleep. No arguments.”

Hyeongjun’s eyes, swimming with gratitude and something else BM didn’t want to name, fluttered shut. “Thank you, hyung.”

BM wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulled the jacket up to shield his recognizable face, and guided him toward the exit.

The drive home took twenty minutes.

Hyeongjun spent most of it slumped against the passenger window, forehead pressed to the cool glass, making small sounds that were somewhere between sleepy and nauseous. The car's heated seats were on low, and BM had killed the radio the moment they pulled out of the garage, leaving only the soft hum of the engine and Hyeongjun’s irregular breathing to fill the silence.

At a red light, BM glanced over.

The boy looked impossibly delicate in the dashboard glow. His silk shirt had slipped again, baring the curve of his shoulder and the thin strap of something dark underneath—an undershirt, maybe, or one of those inner layers stylists made them wear. His lips were parted, his lashes fanned dark against his cheeks, and his hands, small and fine-boned, were curled loosely in his lap like sleeping birds.

BM gripped the steering wheel harder.

He’s drunk. He’s a junior. He’s barely twenty-three, and you’re thirty-three, and you need to get a fucking grip.

The light turned green.

BM’s condo was on the fifteenth floor, a minimalist sprawl of concrete walls and floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Han River. It smelled like sandalwood and the expensive candles his sister kept sending him from Los Angeles, and it was quiet—blessedly, mercifully quiet.

Hyeongjun blinked as BM guided him through the front door. “Wow.”

“What?”

“Your place. It’s so…” He wobbled on his feet, and BM’s hand shot out to steady him. “Big. Like you.”

BM snorted. “You’re still drunk.”

“Mhm. A little.” Hyeongjun’s head tipped back, his gaze wandering across the high ceilings and the abstract art on the walls. “But also. It’s nice. Doesn’t feel like anyone yells at you here.”

The observation landed somewhere between heartbreaking and dangerously endearing.

“Kitchen,” BM announced, steering them away from the living room and toward the marble island. “You’re drinking water. Then sleep.”

Getting Hyeongjun onto the counter was a logistical challenge that BM solved by simply lifting him—hands spanning his waist, setting him down on the cool marble like he was a centerpiece. The boy let out a startled squeak that softened into a giggle, and his silk shirt slipped again, and suddenly BM was standing between his thighs, and the visual was so arresting that he forgot to breathe for a second.

Hyeongjun’s legs dangled off the counter’s edge. Pale thighs, smooth and slender, bare beneath the hem of his oversized shirt. He was at the perfect height that his knees bracketed BM’s chest, and when BM reached for a glass from the cabinet, his forearm brushed against the inside of Hyeongjun’s knee.

Neither of them mentioned it.

“Drink.” BM thrust the water toward him.

Hyeongjun accepted it with both hands, looking absurdly childlike as he gulped it down. A bead of water escaped the corner of his mouth, trailing down his chin and the elegant column of his throat before disappearing into the dip of his collarbone.

BM watched it travel. His jaw tightened.

“Your collar’s too tight.” The words came out rougher than he intended. “Here, let me—”

His fingers found the top button of Hyeongjun’s silk shirt. The fabric was slippery, expensive, and it parted easily under his touch, revealing more of that pale throat and the sharp angle of his clavicle. BM’s knuckles brushed the warm skin just above Hyeongjun’s collarbone, and the boy’s breath caught.

“Better?” BM asked.

Hyeongjun nodded. His glassy eyes had fixed on BM’s face with an intensity that hadn’t been there before.

“There’s—there’s a smudge,” he said. His voice had gone soft and slurry, but deliberate. “On your cheek. From the club.”

BM frowned and lifted a hand to wipe it away, but Hyeongjun’s fingers got there first. They were cool from the water glass, feather-light, and they traced the line of BM’s cheekbone with a tenderness that made his stomach clench.

“Got it,” Hyeongjun whispered.

His hand didn’t move. It slid sideways instead, palm settling against BM’s jaw, thumb brushing the corner of his mouth.

The kitchen felt very, very quiet.

“You’re so big,” Hyeongjun murmured. His other hand came up to join the first, and then both of his palms were framing BM’s face, small and cool against the heat of his skin. “Like… everywhere. Your shoulders. Your neck.” His thumb traced the tendon on the side of BM’s throat. “So warm, too.”

“Hyeongjun-ah.” BM’s voice came out hoarse. “You’re drunk.”

“I know.” The boy’s gaze dropped to BM’s mouth. “But I’ve also wanted to touch you since forever. So. There’s that.”

The confession landed like a grenade.

BM’s hands, which had been resting on the counter’s edge, moved without his permission. They found Hyeongjun’s waist—the narrow dip of it, the heat of his skin through the silk—and he felt the boy’s breath stutter in response.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do.” Hyeongjun’s grip on his neck tightened. “You saved me tonight. You put your jacket on me. You brought me to your home.” He leaned forward, and the shirt slipped again, and now BM could see the dark strap of whatever was underneath, and it definitely wasn’t an undershirt. “And right now, hyung, I really, really want you to kiss me.”

BM’s restraint, already frayed, snapped clean in half.

He surged forward.

The kiss was not gentle. It couldn’t have been—not with the way Hyeongjun gasped and opened for him immediately, not with the way his legs wrapped around BM’s waist and pulled him closer, not with the desperate, grateful sound that crawled out of the boy’s throat. BM kissed him like he was claiming territory, one hand fisting in the back of his hair, the other spreading across the small of his back to press their bodies flush together.

Hyeongjun tasted like whiskey and something floral, and he kissed with the clumsy enthusiasm of someone who’d been waiting a very long time.

“Bedroom,” BM growled against his mouth. “If we’re doing this—”

“Yes.” Hyeongjun pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. His pupils had swallowed the brown of his irises, and his cheeks were flushed a deep, feverish pink, but his voice was steady. “Please. I want to.”

BM lifted him off the counter like he weighed nothing, carrying him down the hallway with Hyeongjun’s legs wrapped around his hips and his face buried in the crook of BM’s neck, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses to the tattooed skin there.

The master bedroom was dark except for the city lights streaming through the windows. BM laid Hyeongjun on the king-sized bed, and the boy sank into the white duvet like he’d always belonged there—dark hair fanned against the pillows, silk shirt rucked up to reveal a strip of pale stomach.

“Wait.” BM forced himself to pause. Hovering over Hyeongjun, forearms braced on either side of his head, he dragged in a ragged breath. “I need you to—you have to tell me this is really what you want. Not the alcohol. Not the adrenaline. You.”

Hyeongjun’s answer was not verbal.

He reached for the hem of his own shirt and pulled it over his head in one fluid motion.

And BM froze.

The dark strap he’d glimpsed earlier wasn’t a strap at all. It was lace. Black lace, delicate as spiderweb, stretching over Hyeongjun’s slender torso in a bralette that cupped his chest with obscene precision. And when BM’s gaze dropped lower, he saw the matching panties—same black lace, same impossible delicacy—sitting low on Hyeongjun’s hips, the waistband cutting a sharp horizontal line across the jut of his hip bones.

“Fuck.” The word punched out of BM’s chest. “Hyeongjun. What—?”

“They make me feel pretty.” Hyeongjun’s voice was small, but his eyes were defiant. “I wore them tonight because I wanted to feel like myself. Not the idol. Not everyone's baby. Just… me.” His fingers traced the lace edge along his ribcage. “Do you hate it?”

BM’s answer was to descend on him like a man starving.

He kissed a path down Hyeongjun’s throat, his collarbone, the lace-draped swell of his chest. His tongue found a nipple through the sheer fabric, and Hyeongjun arched off the bed with a cry that was half-surprise and half-relief. His hands flew to BM’s hair, gripping the short strands.

“Hyung— ah —”

“You’re beautiful.” BM’s lips moved against his sternum. “You know that? Walking around with this underneath your stage outfits. Driving me insane.”

“Didn’t know you were looking.”

“I’m always looking.”

The confession, half-accidental, made Hyeongjun whimper. He tugged at BM’s shoulders, and BM understood the demand—sitting back just long enough to strip off his own shirt, letting Hyeongjun’s glassy eyes roam over the topography of his chest, the swirl of dark ink across his pectoral, the hard-cut abs that tapered down to his belt.

Hyeongjun’s small hands reached for him. “Want to touch you. Come here.”

BM came.

He let Hyeongjun explore—let those delicate fingers trace his tattoos, the ridges of his stomach, the trail of dark hair below his navel. When they reached his belt buckle, Hyeongjun’s movements fumbled, and BM’s hand closed gently over his.

“You sure?”

Instead of answering, Hyeongjun surged up and caught his mouth in another kiss. It was messier than the first—tongue and teeth, a whispered “please, hyung, please” swallowed between them—and when Hyeongjun’s fingers finally worked his zipper open and wrapped around him, BM groaned into the kiss like he’d been wounded.

“God. Your hands are so small.”

“Mhm.” Hyeongjun’s thumb swiped over the head, collecting the moisture there. “But I know what to do.”

He proved it.

Sliding down BM’s body, positioning himself between those massive thighs, Hyeongjun looked up at him with hooded eyes and a swollen mouth and then took him in.

BM’s head fell back. His hand found the back of Hyeongjun’s skull—not pushing, just resting, anchoring himself to something real as the boy’s mouth worked him with a sloppy, desperate enthusiasm that more than made up for any lack of finesse. Hyeongjun gagged, pulled back, went down again, his jaw stretching to accommodate BM’s girth.

“Fuck. Fuck. That’s—yeah, like that.”

The sounds Hyeongjun made were obscene—wet, hungry, interspersed with small moans that vibrated around BM’s length. His hands gripped BM’s thighs for leverage, and his panties, the black lace, were visibly damp.

BM couldn’t take his eyes off them.

“Come here.” He hauled Hyeongjun up by the shoulders, flipping their positions. “On your stomach. I want to see you in them when I—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

Hyeongjun went willingly, rolling onto his stomach, hugging a pillow beneath his chest. The position arched his back, and the black lace stretched taut over the curve of his ass, and BM had to press his palm against himself and breathe through the wave of want.

“Drawer,” he managed. “Left nightstand. There’s—”

“I saw.” Hyeongjun’s hand emerged with the bottle of lubricant, and when he passed it back, their fingers brushed. “Hyung. Please.”

BM didn’t make him wait.

The first finger made Hyeongjun gasp. The second made him moan, low and broken. By the third, he was pushing back against BM’s hand, his fingers clawing at the pillows, babbling a stream of “yes, yes, more, right there.”

And when BM finally, finally lined himself up and pressed forward—

Hyeongjun cried out. A high, shattered sound that filled the dark bedroom, and his body clenched around BM so tight that he saw stars.

“Okay?” BM’s voice was wrecked.

Hyeongjun’s answer was to push back, taking him deeper, burying his face in the pillow and moaning something that sounded like BM’s name.

BM moved.

Slow at first, then faster—each thrust dragging another broken sound from Hyeongjun’s throat. The lace was still on, black against pale skin, and BM hooked a finger under the waistband and tugged, not to remove it but to feel the friction, to watch the way the fabric cut into Hyeongjun’s hips.

“Look at you.” His voice was a growl. “Taking all of me. Like you were made for it.”

Hyeongjun sobbed. “Hyung—I’m— ah —”

His hand scrambled backward, gripping BM’s hip, pulling him impossibly deeper.

The city lights flickered beyond the windows.

Inside the bedroom, there was nothing but skin and lace and the rhythm of two bodies finding each other in the dark—and the sound of Hyeongjun’s voice, rising higher and higher, about to shatter completely.

“Don’t stop,” he begged. “Please, please, don’t—”

The festival glitter still clung to him. Tiny flecks of silver caught in the hollow of his throat, smeared at his temple where he'd wiped sweat hours ago and forgotten. His stage makeup had been scrubbed off in the green room, but traces of it lingered in the inner corners of his eyes, a faint smudge of kohl that made his stare look sharper than it actually was.

His chopsticks clicked against the ceramic bowl. He'd ordered the spiciest thing on the menu—a broth so red it looked weaponized—and hadn't touched it.

The phone screen glowed. He scrolled past photos from the performance. Past the group shots. Past the thousand-and-one notifications that accumulated when eight people shared a career and a cramped tour bus and apparently every single waking thought. His members were upstairs in the artist hotel three blocks away, sprawled across beds and couches, too exhausted to move.

Good.

Minho wanted silence. Wanted anonymity. Wanted to sit in a shithole noodle bar at an hour when no reasonable person was awake and eat something that burned going down just to feel it.

The bell above the door chimed.

Hot air rushed in. Footsteps—heavy. Not the shuffling gait of someone drunk or lost or both. These steps landed with purpose, with the kind of physical confidence that announced itself before a face ever came into view.

Minho didn't look up.

The footsteps crossed the narrow restaurant. Passed three empty booths. Passed the empty counter. Stopped directly beside his table.

A shadow fell across his phone screen.

"Yah."

The voice was deep. Resonant in a way that vibrated through the cheap tabletop. Minho's thumb paused mid-scroll. He did not look up.

"The restaurant was empty," he said flatly. Still scrolling. Still not looking. "And you chose to sit right here."

Matthew—BM—slid into the booth opposite him like he'd been invited. Like the concept of not being welcome had never occurred to him, or if it had, he'd dismissed it as irrelevant.

"That's because you looked lonely."

"I looked like someone who wanted to be alone."

"Same thing."

Minho's jaw tightened. He finally lifted his gaze—slow, deliberate, the kind of look that made rookie trainees flinch and variety show hosts laugh nervously. His eyes were sharp. Catlike. Holding the exact temperature of disinterest.

BM met them without blinking.

And that was the thing, wasn't it? The man was enormous. Not just tall—his online profile claimed 186 centimeters, and in person it felt like more—but dense. His shoulders stretched the fabric of his tank top in ways that suggested the garment had given up trying. A tattoo curled around his left bicep, partially visible, ink against golden-brown skin. His hair was damp at the temples, pushed back from a forehead that gleamed faintly under the fluorescent lights.

But his face was... warm. Open. The expression of someone who'd never needed to build walls because he'd never met anyone who tried to tear him down.

They knew each other from the industry. Though they’d only ever traded polite nods during passing promotions, the ice had officially cracked earlier that afternoon backstage when Matthew playfully dragged Hyunjin, Han and a half-protesting Minho into doing a quick collaboration TikTok—their brief, high-energy proximity leaving behind a lingering, unspoken tension that neither of them could quite shake. "Your bowl's getting cold."

"I'm aware."

"The broth's going to congeal."

"I know how soup works."

BM leaned back against the vinyl booth, and the bench creaked. His knees bumped the underside of the table, jostling Minho's untouched bowl. "You always this friendly?"

"Only when strangers invade my personal space at two in the morning."

"Then order me a drink, and I won't be a stranger anymore."

Minho's lips pressed into a thin line. Something flickered behind his eyes—irritation, definitely, but something else too. Something that looked almost like relief, buried so deep it barely registered. Being alone was exhausting. Being alone while someone refused to let you was... different.

He hadn't decided if it was better or worse.

"I don't drink with people I don't know."

"BM. Matthew." A hand extended across the table—palm up, relaxed, the gesture of someone who'd introduced himself a thousand times and never once doubted his welcome. "We performed at the same festival tonight. I watched your set from side stage."

Minho stared at the offered hand.

"I know who you are. I did the tiktok with you earlier."

"Oh is that right? Then you know I have exceptional taste in late-night food." BM's grin widened, and it transformed his face completely—from handsome to boyish, from intimidating to almost goofy. "And you know I'm not going to leave just because you're being prickly."

Prickly.

The word landed somewhere between insult and observation. Minho's fingers curled around his chopsticks.

"My members are boring," he said, as if this explained everything. "They wanted to sleep. I wanted real food. Don't flatter yourself."

"I won't. I'll flatter you instead."

Before Minho could formulate a response—and every possible response died somewhere between his brain and his tongue—BM had already turned toward the counter, already flagged down the elderly woman scrubbing a wok, already ordering in Korean that was surprisingly fluid for someone who'd grown up in Los Angeles.

"Two bowls of the pork bone." He pointed at Minho's cooling broth. "The spicy one. Two beers. Soju if you have it. Whatever's coldest."

The woman nodded and disappeared into the steam.

Minho blinked. "I didn't say you could order for me."

"You weren't eating what you ordered. Now I'm ordering what you'll actually eat." BM settled back into the booth, his knees spreading wide, claiming space beneath the table that Minho's own legs had been occupying. Their shins brushed. Minho flinched back.

The beer arrived in condensation-beaded bottles. BM cracked both open with the edge of the table—one flick of his thumb against the cap, practiced, effortless—and slid one across the laminate surface.

Minho caught it before it tipped.

"See?" BM tilted his own bottle toward him in a mock toast. "You do want company. You're just bad at admitting it."

"You're insufferable."

"You're smiling."

"I'm scowling."

"Your mouth is scowling. Your eyes are smiling." BM took a long pull of his beer, throat working around the swallow. "It's a weird combination. Kind of endearing."

Minho's scowl deepened. His ears were definitely red now, the flush creeping down the sides of his neck, and he tugged his hoodie collar higher as if that would hide it.

The new bowls arrived on a plastic tray along with a green bottle of soju beaded with cold. The pork bone broth was darker than Minho's original order—richer, studded with slices of tender meat that fell apart at the touch of a chopstick, topped with scallions and threads of chili and a single soft-boiled egg halved so the yolk pooled gold into the soup.

His stomach growled.

Audibly.

BM's eyebrows lifted. "When did you last eat?"

"Before the performance."

"That was eight hours ago."

"Seven and a half."

"Eat."

Minho wanted to argue. The instinct was automatic—a defensive reflex honed over years of being told what to do and when to do it and how to smile while doing it. But the broth smelled like every late-night meal he'd ever stolen between practices, and his body was betraying him, and BM was watching him with an expression that wasn't quite smug and wasn't quite soft but occupied some strange territory between the two.

He picked up his chopsticks.

The first bite burned. Literally—the chili paste hit the back of his throat and bloomed heat up into his sinuses. But the pork was tender, the noodles springy, the broth so savory it coated his tongue. He made a sound before he could stop himself. Small. Involuntary.

BM's grin softened into something quieter.

"Good, right?"

"Acceptable."

"You're welcome."

The restaurant settled around them. The fluorescent lights hummed. Outside, the alleyway breathed its humid breath against the fogged windows, and somewhere down the block a car alarm wailed and cut off. Minho ate. BM watched him eat, matching him bite for bite, and the silence between them shifted from hostile to something that almost felt like company.

"Your group," BM said eventually, setting down his chopsticks. "Stray Kids. You're the performance leader."

"That's not a question."

"It's an opening statement. I watched you tonight. The way you move—" He shook his head, a single slow motion that made the damp ends of his hair sway. "It's different in person. Videos don't capture it."

"I know."

"Modest."

"I know that too."

BM laughed—a full sound, loud enough that the elderly woman glanced up from her wok with something like amusement. "You're exhausting."

"So I've been told."

"By everyone, probably."

"By people who can't keep up."

"And what about people who can?"

The question hung in the air, suspended in steam and the faint buzz of the overhead lights. Minho's chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth. He looked at BM over the rim of his bowl—really looked, for the first time since the man had slid into his booth uninvited. The broad shoulders. The easy confidence. The way his eyes stayed steady, no wavering, no uncertainty, like he'd already decided how this conversation would end and was just waiting for Minho to catch up.

"People who can keep up," Minho said slowly, "don't usually try."

"I'm not most people."

"No." Minho set his chopsticks down. "You're very loud and very large and you don't understand personal boundaries."

"And yet you're still sitting here."

"I'm eating."

"You were eating before I arrived. You weren't actually eating, but the bowl was there. Now you're eating." BM leaned forward, forearms braced on the table, and the vinyl creaked again under his weight. "What changed?"

The question hit closer to the bone than Minho wanted to admit. He broke eye contact first—a tactical retreat, or that's what he told himself—and reached for the soju bottle instead of answering.

"We should drink properly," he said. "If we're doing this."

"Doing what?"

"Whatever this is." He poured two shots into the small glasses that had accompanied the bottle. The liquid was clear, almost viscous, the smell of it sharp and faintly sweet. "You ordered. I'm drinking. Don't make it weird."

"I wasn't the one making it weird."

Minho pushed one shot glass across the table. "Geonbae."

"Geonbae."

They drank.

The soju hit warm going down, a softer burn than the chili broth, spreading through Minho's chest like a slow exhale. He poured another round immediately. BM matched him, and they drank again, and somewhere between the third shot and the fourth, the sharp edges of Minho's posture began to blur.

His hood slipped back. The festival glitter at his throat caught the light.

"You're staring," he said.

"I'm appreciating."

"Staring."

"Same thing." BM's finger traced the rim of his shot glass. "The glitter. It's still on you."

"Couldn't get it all off. It sticks."

"I like it."

Minho's throat moved around a swallow that had nothing to do with alcohol. He reached for the soju bottle, found it empty, and set it aside with more force than necessary.

"We should go back," he said. "It's late."

"It's early. There's a difference."

"The hotel is three blocks. My members will wonder where I am."

"Will they?"

No. They wouldn't. They'd be asleep, all seven of them, sprawled across the suite's various surfaces with phones charging and mouths open and the careless vulnerability of people who trusted each other completely. They wouldn't notice Minho's empty bed until morning, and even then they'd assume he'd been at the gym or getting coffee or wandering the streets in one of his solitary moods.

BM knew that. Somehow, without being told, he knew.

"Fine," Minho said. "Walk me back."

"That sounded like an order."

"It was."

"I like orders." BM stood, and the full scale of him became immediately apparent—the way he unfolded from the booth, the way his shadow stretched across the table, the way he seemed to occupy space that had been empty seconds before. He pulled a wallet from his back pocket and dropped a handful of bills onto the table. "I like giving them more, though."

Minho's stomach flipped. He ignored it.

"Don't push your luck."

"I never do." BM's hand extended again—not for a handshake this time, but open-palmed, an offer. "I just know what I want."

Minho looked at that hand. Broad palm. Long fingers. The kind of hand that could wrap around his wrist and have room to spare.

He didn't take it.

But he didn't walk ahead, either. He let BM fall into step beside him as they pushed through the door into the humid alleyway, and the night swallowed them whole.

The walk back was silent.

Not the comfortable silence of the noodle bar—that tentative, surprising quiet that had settled between bowls of broth and shots of soju. This was different. This was the silence of two bodies walking too close together on a sidewalk barely wide enough for one, shoulders brushing, heat radiating between them in the muggy Los Angeles night. The festival crowd had dispersed hours ago. The streets were empty except for a few stragglers, a few food trucks closing down, the distant wail of an ambulance.

Minho kept his hands in his hoodie pocket. His heartbeat was too fast. He could feel it in his throat, at his wrists, in the hollow of his stomach where the soju sat warm and treacherous.

BM walked beside him with the easy stride of someone who'd never felt unsafe in his life. His head was up. His shoulders were back. Every few steps he glanced down at Minho—not checking on him, exactly, but noticing him. Cataloging him. The way a collector might examine a piece they'd just acquired.

It should have been infuriating.

Minho's skin prickled. His throat was dry. The glitter at his collarbone itched.

They reached the hotel.

The lobby was empty. Marble floors. Chandelier dripping crystals that caught the dim emergency lighting. The front desk clerk was scrolling through her phone and didn't look up as they crossed toward the elevator bank. Their footsteps echoed.

BM pressed the call button. The elevator dinged.

"So," BM said, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. The posture made his biceps press against the fabric of his tank top, made the tattoo on his left arm shift with the movement. "What floor?"

"Fourteen."

"I'm on sixteen." A pause. Calculated. "Come up for a drink."

It wasn't a question.

Minho's pulse stuttered. His face stayed perfectly blank—years of variety shows and fan meetings and cameras catching every micro-expression had taught him that much. But inside, something was happening. Something that felt like the moment before a stage lights came up, the darkness electric with possibility.

"That's a terrible idea," he said.

"Probably."

"We've already been drinking."

"One more won't kill you."

The elevator doors slid open. Minho stepped inside first—a tactical decision, claiming the back corner, giving himself space to think. BM followed, and the car suddenly felt much smaller than it had any right to be.

BM pressed 14.

Then 16.

"Unless," he said, and his voice dropped half an octave, settled somewhere deeper in his chest, "you're boring like your members and need your bedtime."

The doors closed.

The elevator began to rise.

Minho's jaw tightened. The challenge landed exactly where it was aimed—square in his pride, in that stubborn core of competitiveness that had dragged him through auditions and training and debut and every sleepless night since. He knew what a 2:30 AM hotel room invitation meant. He wasn't naive. He'd been in this industry long enough to recognize the cadence of a proposition, the weight of a gaze held one beat too long.

But BM wasn't looking at him like prey.

He was looking at him like an opponent. A worthy one.

Minho's chin lifted. His eyes narrowed.

"I can out-drink you any day," he said, and his voice came out steady. Cool. The voice he used when cameras were rolling and he needed to project invincibility. "Big guy. Don't regret it."

BM's smile was slow and certain.

"I never regret anything."

The elevator stopped at 14.

The doors opened onto an empty hallway. Minho's floor. His room. His members sleeping somewhere behind those identical wooden doors, oblivious, dreaming.

He didn't move.

The doors closed.

The elevator continued upward. Sixteen floors. Seventeen. BM didn't say anything else—didn't need to. The silence between them had changed again, thickened into something with weight and texture, something that pressed against Minho's eardrums and made the air feel too thin.

The doors opened on 16.

BM stepped out first. Walked down the hallway with the confidence of someone who'd done this a hundred times, who'd never once been turned away, who moved through the world like every door would open for him eventually. Minho followed. His sneakers made no sound on the carpet. His pulse was a drum beat in his throat.

The hotel room door clicked open.

BM held it for him—a gesture that would have been gentlemanly if not for the heat in his eyes, the way his gaze tracked Minho's movements as he stepped past him into the darkness. The door swung shut.

The lock engaged.

And the atmosphere shifted.

The playful bickering, the competitive edge, the banter that had carried them from noodle bar to sidewalk to elevator—gone. Snuffed out like a candle between thumb and forefinger. The room was dark, lit only by the city glow bleeding through the curtains, and everything in it smelled like BM—cologne and clean sweat and something muskier underneath.

Two glasses sat on the desk. A bottle of whiskey, unopened, next to them. BM had set them up before he'd left, hours ago, as if he'd known. As if he'd planned this from the moment he watched Minho's set from side stage.

But he didn't reach for the drinks.

He stepped forward instead. Closer. Into Minho's space. His body eclipsed the window light, threw Minho into shadow, and suddenly the room felt very small and very warm and very, very private.

Minho's back hit the edge of the desk.

He tilted his chin up—a reflex, that refusal to be intimidated, even now. Even with his heart hammering against his ribs and his breath coming shorter and BM's massive frame blocking out everything else in the world.

"Are we going to drink," he said, sharp as a blade, "or are you just going to stare at me like a creep?"

BM's hand came up.

Fingers caught Minho's jaw—firm, not gentle, the grip of someone who knew exactly how much pressure to apply. His thumb pressed into the soft spot beneath Minho's chin. Tilted his face further upward.

"You talk a lot," BM murmured, "for someone whose pulse is racing."

Minho opened his mouth to respond—some barb, some deflection, some final desperate attempt to maintain the facade—but BM's head dipped, and his teeth closed over the side of Minho's neck, and every word died in his throat.

The bite landed exactly where the festival glitter still clung.

Minho gasped. His spine snapped rigid. One hand flew up to push at BM's chest—fingers spreading over the solid wall of muscle—but the push didn't land. It faltered. His fingers curled instead, twisting into the cotton of BM's tank top, gripping tight like a lifeline.

"Ah—"

The sound escaped before he could catch it. High and breathy and nothing like the sharp-tongued persona he'd been projecting all night.

BM's laugh vibrated against his skin.

"There it is," he whispered. "There's the boy under all that armor."

Minho's knees buckled. He caught himself on the desk, palms flat against the wood, but BM was already moving—already gripping his hips, already lifting him like he weighed nothing, setting him down on the high edge of the desk with a thud that rattled the whiskey glasses.

Stepping between his thighs. Forcing them wide.

The position was obscene. Minho could feel the heat of BM's body through both layers of their clothing, could feel the solid pressure of his hips settling into the space he'd made for himself. His face flooded crimson. He turned his head away, staring fixedly at the curtain, at the city lights, at anything except the man who had him pinned and spread and trembling.

"You're too loud," he managed. His voice cracked on the second word. "And too big. Back up."

"No."

One syllable. Absolute.

BM's hands slid under Minho's hoodie. Under the t-shirt beneath it. His palms were rough and hot as they skimmed up Minho's sides, fingers spanning his ribcage, thumbs pressing into the dip of his waist. Minho's stomach clenched. His muscles jumped under the touch like startled animals.

"I watched you tonight," BM said, and his mouth was at Minho's ear now, breath hot and damp, "and I couldn't stop thinking about this."

"About what."

"About how hard you work. How fierce you are on stage. That untouchable mask you wear." His thumbs traced slow circles into Minho's hipbones. "You don't have to wear it in here."

Minho's breath caught.

"Let me have you."

Something inside him cracked.

Not broke—he'd been broken before, shattered and reassembled and shattered again by an industry that demanded perfection and punished vulnerability. This was different. This was a crack in a wall he'd been building since he was sixteen years old, mortar and brick and barbed wire, every defense mechanism a person could learn to keep the world at arm's length.

BM's praise slipped through the crack like water.

A sound rose in Minho's throat. Soft. Wounded. The kind of sound he'd never made in front of another human being, the kind of sound that would have horrified him if he'd had any capacity left for shame. His head turned—slow, involuntary—and his eyes met BM's.

Dark. Glassy. Stripped bare.

His arms lifted. Wrapped around BM's thick neck. Pulled him down.

The kiss was messy.

Teeth and tongue and desperation. Minho kissed like he was drowning, like BM's mouth was oxygen, like he'd been starved for this exact thing without ever knowing what it was. BM kissed back with the same intensity—one hand sliding up to cup the back of Minho's skull, fingers threading through his hair, tilting his head to deepen the angle.

Minho moaned into his mouth.

The sound was swallowed immediately, but it changed something. Shifted the balance. BM's other hand tightened on his waist, grip hard enough to bruise, and when he pulled back, Minho's lips were swollen and wet and his eyes were unfocused.

"Good boy," BM murmured.

Minho's hips jerked. Completely involuntary. His body responding to words before his brain could catch up, before his pride could intervene, before any of the thousand sharp retorts he'd been stockpiling all night could find their way to his tongue.

"I—" He swallowed. "I'm not—"

"You are." BM's hands moved to the hem of Minho's hoodie. "You're exactly what I thought you'd be."

The hoodie came off in one motion. The t-shirt followed. Minho sat on the edge of the hotel desk in nothing but his jeans, bare-chested, the air conditioning raising goosebumps across his skin. The glitter at his throat was still there. Silver flecks catching the city light.

BM looked at him like he was something precious.

"Beautiful," he said. "Look at you."

Minho's arm came up to cover his face—an instinct, a shield, that desperate need to hide even now. But BM caught his wrist before it could reach his eyes. Pinned it to the desk. Caught the other one too, when Minho tried to twist away.

"No hiding," BM said. "Not from me."

"I'm not—"

"You are." He leaned down, and his mouth found Minho's collarbone, and his teeth grazed the bone. "You're blushing all the way down to your chest."

Minho's back arched. His thighs tightened around BM's hips. The friction of denim against denim sent a jolt through his nervous system, and he bit his lip hard enough to taste copper, and somewhere in the back of his mind he registered that he was losing this battle completely and couldn't find it in himself to care.

BM released his wrists only to reach for the button of his jeans. Deliberate. Unhurried. The metal button gave way. The zipper rasped down. Minho lifted his hips without being asked, let the denim peel away, let BM strip him down to nothing while the city lights painted silver stripes across his skin.

"Matthew."

The name slipped out before he could stop it. Before he could think. Before the last crumbling remnants of his defenses could remind him that he wasn't supposed to want this, wasn't supposed to be this person, wasn't supposed to spread his legs on a hotel desk for a man he'd met two hours ago.

BM paused. His hands rested on Minho's bare thighs.

"Say it again."

Minho's throat worked. His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths. The glitter at his collarbone glittered.

"Matthew." Quieter this time. Needier. "Please."

"Please what?"

"Don't make me wait."

The words hung in the darkness, raw and desperate, and Minho felt the last of his armor fall away. He was exposed completely—physically, emotionally, every vulnerability he'd spent years hiding laid bare under BM's steady gaze. His arm came up again, not to push away this time but to cover his own eyes, to hide the flush that burned all the way to his hairline.

"I can't—" His voice broke. "I can't look at you. Not when you're looking at me like that."

BM's hands tightened on his thighs.

"Then don't look," he said, and his voice was gentler than it had been all night. "Just feel."

He lifted Minho's legs. Draped them over his shoulders—broad, solid, the muscle shifting under Minho's calves. The position folded Minho nearly in half, pressed his back flat against the cool wood of the desk, and he could feel everything: the grain of the wood against his spine, the heat of BM's body between his thighs, the slick sound of a bottle opening somewhere above his head.

"Deep breath," BM murmured.

Minho obeyed.

And then he wasn't thinking anymore. Wasn't cataloging. Wasn't protecting. BM filled him with one slow, inexorable thrust, and Minho's mouth opened on a sound that wasn't a moan or a cry but something between—something that had been trapped in his chest for years and was only now finding its way out.

"Look at me." BM's voice was strained now, his composure finally cracking. "Minho. Look at me."

Minho's arm dropped from his eyes.

Their gazes locked.

BM drove into him, deep and heavy, and Minho saw stars. The desk creaked beneath them. The whiskey glasses rattled in their holders. Somewhere in the room, the thermostat clicked on, but it was distant, irrelevant, drowned out by the sound of skin on skin and the breathless praise falling from BM's lips.

"Such a good boy. Taking me so well. Knew you would—knew it the moment I saw you on that stage—"

Minho's hands scrabbled for purchase on the desk, found nothing, and instead reached up to grip BM's shoulders. His nails dug in. His thighs trembled. The pressure was building somewhere low in his gut, coiling tighter with every thrust, and his mouth was open and his eyes were wet and he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt anything this intensely.

"Close," he gasped. "I'm—"

"I know." BM's hips didn't slow. His rhythm was relentless, deep, each thrust pushing Minho closer to the edge. "Let go. I've got you."

Minho buried his face in BM's neck and bit down.

The climax hit like a seismic shift—his whole body clenching, arching, his cry muffled against BM's skin. BM followed a moment later with a low groan that vibrated through Minho's chest, his hips stuttering, his hands gripping Minho's waist hard enough to leave marks.

They collapsed together.

Panting. Sweating. The desk creaked one final time and then fell silent.

Minho's legs slid off BM's shoulders. His arms remained wrapped around BM's neck, his face still pressed to the junction of throat and collarbone, and he could feel BM's pulse hammering against his lips. Rapid. Erratic. Human.

The city lights continued their slow crawl across the ceiling.

Neither of them spoke.

The younger idol was a striking, ethereal presence, dressed in a stylized, open-collar silk shirt that clung subtly to his long, elegant limbs. The sharp, doll-like lines of his facial features looked almost otherworldly in the harsh corridor lighting. As Kai turned his head, his large, expressive eyes locked instantly onto Matthew.

Matthew didn’t hesitate. He let out a low, warm chuckle and offered a casual wave. "Yo, what’s up, man?" his deep voice rumbled in fluent, effortless English.

Hearing a familiar, West Coast American accent cut through the rigid, stressful Korean broadcasting environment instantly lowered Kai's guard. The tense set of his shoulders melted. He offered a polite, deep bow for the sake of the surrounding managers and cameras, but as he straightened up to his full six-foot height, his eyes lingered. A quiet, knowing gaze passed between them, a silent acknowledgment of the intense physical contrast between Matthew’s heavy, ultra-masculine build and Kai’s sharp, prince-like elegance.

By late afternoon, the atmosphere had shifted from stressful to performative. Their respective managers had agreed to a quick TikTok dance challenge collaboration, a standard industry PR move that masked a brewing, private tension.

"Alright, so the hook goes like this," Matthew said, stepping close to Kai in an empty corner of the rehearsal room. He began breaking down KARD’s point choreography. It was a mature, rhythmic sequence that relied heavily on low hip movements and close-contact spacing. To the staff watching behind the smartphone screen, they were just two charismatic male idols having wholesome, sunshiny fun.

But the reality inside the space between them was suffocatingly intense. Matthew was a heavy, grounded dancer, taking up space with absolute confidence. Kai was different—sharp, exceptionally long-limbed, and deceptively fluid.

"You gotta catch the beat right on the drop here," Matthew muttered, stepping directly into Kai's personal space. He reached out, his broad, calloused hand settling firmly against the smooth silk covering Kai’s waist to guide his timing for a slow body roll.

Kai didn’t flinch. He didn’t pull away. Instead, his posture stiffened just a fraction as the heat of Matthew's palm bled through the thin fabric. Slowly, Kai tilted his head, holding Matthew’s gaze through the practice mirror. The innocent, bright maknae smile he usually wore vanished, replaced by a small, sharp, knowing smirk that made Matthew’s chest tighten.

"Like this, hyung?" Kai asked, his voice dropping an octave.

"Yeah," Matthew breathed, clearing his throat and stepping back. "Exactly like that."

They switched to TXT’s choreography. Now, Kai took the lead. The routine was sharper, more aggressive, and Kai used his height to completely dominate the space. During the final chorus, Kai moved right into Matthew’s chest, executing a dramatic, synchronized drop that required their bodies to align almost perfectly. Kai’s movements were mesmerizingly intense, his professional focus bordering on predatory.

When the camera stopped rolling, the staff cheered loudly at their "amazing chemistry," completely blind to the fact that both men were breathing heavily, their eyes locked in a silent, high-stakes game.

The moment the managers stepped away to review the footage, the loud, public atmosphere faded into something heavy and private.

Matthew laughed, a slightly breathless sound as he clapped a heavy hand on Kai's shoulder. "You picked that up crazy fast, man. Seriously. We gotta link up outside of this madness." He reached into his pocket, slid his phone out, and unlocked it before handing it over.

"I'd like that," Kai said softly. He took the device. His long, elegant fingers deliberately brushed slowly against Matthew’s broad palm, a spark of friction traveling up Matthew's arm. Kai quickly typed in his digits, saving his contact name simply as Kai followed by a single, cryptic emoji. He handed the phone back, his gaze lingering on Matthew's mouth for a fraction of a second before his manager called his name from the hallway.

The music show finally ended hours later, but the adrenaline lingering in Matthew’s veins refused to die down.

Back in KARD's quiet dressing room, stripped of his stage jewelry but still wearing his tight leather pants, Matthew sat on the couch. His phone buzzed in his palm. A notification lit up the dark screen.

Kai 🃏: Good job today, hyung. The challenge video looks great. Fans are screaming.

Matthew stared at the text. He didn't want to type. He didn't want a polite, drawn-out text conversation. He tapped the contact and pressed the call button, bringing the phone to his ear.

It rang twice before a low, muffled voice answered. "Hyung?" Kai whispered. Matthew could hear the soft hum of a car engine in the background—Kai was likely sitting in the back of a company van, surrounded by his sleeping members and a tired manager.

"I'm not trying to sleep yet," Matthew said, his gravelly voice dropping into a deep, commanding rumble that left no room for argument. "My place is twenty minutes from your dorm. I’m texting you the address and the gate code right now. Wait till you drop off the staff, grab a black cab, and come over."

There was a beat of heavy, absolute silence on the other end of the line. Matthew could practically feel the shift in Kai’s energy through the phone line—the sudden, sharp focus replacing the sleepy idol persona.

Then, a quiet, amused breath hitched in Kai’s throat.

"See you in a bit."

The keypad beeped. Four short tones, then the heavy click of the lock disengaging.

BM didn't move from his position on the couch. One arm draped across the backrest, the other holding his phone loosely against his thigh. The screen had gone dark minutes ago. He'd been staring at the Seoul skyline instead—those countless pinpricks of light bleeding into the low clouds, the Han River a black ribbon cutting through the city below.

The door swung open.

Hueningkai stepped inside and paused, one hand still on the handle. The hallway light behind him carved his silhouette into something almost unnaturally long—those limbs, that neck, the fall of dark hair across his forehead. He'd changed out of the stage outfit into an oversized black hoodie that swallowed his frame, but the boots were still there, heavy-soled, laced tight to mid-calf. The contrast made him look younger and older at the same time.

The door clicked shut. The automatic lock engaged with a soft whir.

"You don't waste any time, do you?"

Hueningkai's voice came out in English, smooth and unhurried, with that particular California flattening of vowels that BM had clocked the moment they'd exchanged greetings at the rehearsal studio. No trace of the polite, register-shifting Korean he'd used all day around staff and managers. Just this—low, edged with amusement, eyes tracking slowly across BM's bare chest.

BM let the silence stretch for a beat. Let himself be looked at.

Then he pushed off the couch.

"You walked into my house looking like that," he said, closing the distance between them. Three long strides across polished concrete. "What did you expect?"

His hand found the edge of Hueningkai's hood and pulled. Not hard, not rough—just enough to bring them chest to chest, hoodie fabric bunching under his grip.

Up close, Hueningkai smelled like the music show: hairspray, some expensive fabric spray, and underneath that, something warmer. Clean skin. The faint salt of a long day's work.

Hueningkai's lips curved. That same small, knowing expression BM had caught in the rehearsal mirror hours ago, when his palm had pressed against a narrow waist to guide the timing of a body roll.

"I expected exactly this," Hueningkai said.

The kiss didn't start gentle.

There was no tentative press of lips, no exploratory pause. BM angled his head and took what he'd been thinking about since the moment those long fingers had brushed against his when Hueningkai handed back his phone. Mouth firm, stubble scraping, tongue sliding past teeth without asking permission.

Hueningkai made a sound—not a gasp, but something deeper, a vibration in his throat—and his hands came up to grip BM's shoulders. Fingers dug into the muscle there, finding no give, just dense flesh over bone. The hoodie sleeves fell back, exposing pale wrists. Pale forearms. The contrast against BM's darker skin was stark under the dim apartment lights.

"Fuck," BM muttered against his mouth.

Pulling back. Looking.

Hueningkai's eyes had gone half-lidded. Lips already reddening. His chest rose and fell visibly even through the loose hoodie, and his fingers hadn't loosened their grip.

"The tattoos," Hueningkai said, breath warm, "are they everywhere?"

BM felt his mouth twitch. "You want to find out?"

"That's why I'm here."

The honesty landed like a punch to the sternum. No coy deflection, no playing at innocence—just those large, expressive eyes holding steady. Hueningkai had been watching him all day. They both knew it. The glances during camera blocking, the way he'd lingered close when BM demonstrated the steps, the deliberate brush of fingertips across a phone screen.

Now here he was, in BM's apartment at nearly one in the morning, asking about tattoos.

BM released the hood and stepped back. "Take off the hoodie."

Hueningkai didn't move immediately. He let his hands drop from BM's shoulders, unhurried, and hooked his fingers under the hem of the fabric. Drew it up slowly—revealing a strip of stomach, the ladder of ribs, the lean definition of a dancer's torso. The hoodie came off with a soft rustle and dropped to the floor.

Underneath, Hueningkai wore nothing.

BM's jaw tightened.

The body was long lines and sharp angles. Narrow through the waist, with shoulders that had broadened in the past few years but still carried that elegant, almost delicate proportion. His skin was pale enough that the apartment's low lighting made it look luminous, unbroken except for the shadowed indentations of his collarbones and the faint definition of muscle across his stomach.

"Your turn," Hueningkai said.

"There's nothing to take off."

"I know." A pause. "I want to see."

BM was already in just the sweatpants, slung low on his hips. He didn't bother with theatrics—just hooked his thumbs into the waistband and pushed them down, stepping out of the fabric and kicking it aside.

Hueningkai's exhalation was audible.

Standing there, BM knew exactly what he looked like. The work he'd put in, the hours in the gym, the ink that traced patterns across his chest and down his arms and over his ribs. The heavy swell of his cock, already half-hard, thickening visibly as Hueningkai stared.

"You're ridiculous," Hueningkai murmured. Not a complaint. A statement of fact, delivered with something approaching wonder.

BM closed the distance again. One hand settling on Hueningkai's hip, the other sliding around the back of his neck. Skin to skin now, the heat between them immediate and sharp.

"The bedroom," BM said.

"Impatient."

"You've been looking at me for ten hours." His thumb pressed into the soft hollow beneath Hueningkai's jaw, tilting his head back slightly. "You want me to keep waiting?"

Hueningkai's tongue darted out, wetting his lower lip. "No."

The bedroom was darker than the living room. BM didn't bother turning on a light. The windows faced east, and at this hour the city glow was behind the building, leaving the room in deep shadow broken only by the faint red eye of a sound system's standby light.

They found the bed by touch.

BM went down first, pulling Hueningkai with him—those long limbs unfolding, arranging themselves on either side of BM's hips. The mattress dipped. Fabric rustled. Hueningkai's stage pants were still on, the material cool and smooth where it brushed against BM's thighs.

"These need to go," BM said, voice a low rumble.

Deft fingers found the closure. The zipper's metallic hiss seemed loud in the quiet room. Hueningkai shifted, lifting his hips, shoving the pants down past his thighs, and then BM's hands were helping—rough palms sliding over hipbones, pulling fabric away, tossing it somewhere into the dark.

Now just the boots remained.

"Leave them," Hueningkai breathed, settling back down. The position brought their bare cocks into alignment, and both of them went still.

Hot. Velvety skin. The slight give of flesh against flesh.

BM's hands found Hueningkai's waist and gripped.

"Condom," he managed.

"Pocket." Hueningkai's voice had thinned slightly. "In the pants."

A pause. BM's laugh came out breathless. "You brought your own?"

"I'm not stupid." Fingers trailing up BM's chest, tracing the edge of a tattoo. "And I don't do unprepared."

The thought hit BM square in the gut—Kai in the back of that company van, surrounded by his sleeping members, palming a condom into his pocket before anyone could notice. Planning for this. Wanting this.

He reached down, fumbling in the dark for discarded fabric. Found the pants. Found the foil packet.

Hueningkai took it from his fingers. "Let me."

The sound of tearing foil. A breath. Then Hueningkai's hand was on him, cool against the heat of his cock, rolling the condom down with practiced efficiency. Not rushed. Not fumbling. When BM looked up, he could just make out the line of Hueningkai's jaw, the focus etched into it even in near-darkness.

"Lube?" Hueningkai asked.

"Nightstand. Drawer."

Hueningkai leaned across him. Body stretching, ribs expanding, the faintest tremor in his arm as he reached. The bottle made a soft click when he uncapped it.

Coated fingers found their way downward. Not BM—himself.

The realization hit like a shock. "You're prepping yourself."

"I said I don't do unprepared." A hitch in his breath now. Arm working slowly behind him. "I took care of things before I left the dorm."

BM's hands tightened on his waist. "How long have you been—"

"Since you sent the address." The words came out slightly strained. "I knew what I wanted."

Watching Hueningkai work himself open in the dark, that beautiful face going slack then sharp with concentration, BM felt his own composure fraying at the edges. Every microexpression visible now—the slight furrow between his brows, the way his lips parted when his fingers found the right angle.

"Enough," BM said, his voice rougher than he intended. "Come here."

Hueningkai withdrew his hand slowly. Wiped it absently on the sheets. Then he was positioning himself, thighs bracketing BM's hips, one hand braced against BM's chest for balance. The other reaching between them to guide.

The first press of pressure made them both inhale sharply.

"Slow," BM said. It wasn't a command. It was the only word he could manage.

Hueningkai sank down. Increment by increment, heat enveloping him, so tight and so warm that BM's vision momentarily whited out. His hands found Hueningkai's hips and held—not guiding, just holding, fingers pressing into pale skin hard enough to leave marks.

"Fuck," Hueningkai whispered. Head dropping forward. Hair brushing against BM's forehead. "You're—"

He didn't finish. Didn't need to.

They stayed there for a long moment, joined and trembling, the silence of the apartment pressing in around them. From somewhere far below, the distant sound of a late-night taxi horn filtered through the windows.

Then Hueningkai moved.

A slow roll of his hips. Experimental. Testing the angle. BM watched his face—those expressive eyes fluttering shut, mouth falling open on a silent breath. The second roll was deeper, more confident, and this time the sound that escaped Hueningkai's throat was audible.

"You look good like this," BM said. Low. Rough.

Hueningkai's eyes opened. Met his. "I feel good like this."

The rhythm built slowly. Hueningkai set the pace at first—long, undulating movements that spoke to years of dance training, control over every muscle group. When he lifted, the loss of heat was almost painful. When he sank back down, BM's grip on his hips tightened involuntarily.

BM started to meet him on the downstroke. Small upward thrusts that made Hueningkai's rhythm stutter, then recalibrate. They found their sync the way dancers do—adjusting to each other's bodies, reading cues in breath and tension.

"You've been thinking about this," Hueningkai said. Not a question.

"All damn day."

A ragged laugh. "Me too."

BM's hand slid from hip to lower back, fingers splaying across the base of Hueningkai's spine. Pulling him closer, deeper. The new angle made Hueningkai gasp, sharp and sudden.

"There," he managed. "Right there."

BM gave it to him. Thrust up into that same spot, watching Hueningkai's composure crack open—the toss of his head, the arch of his throat, the way his fingers scrabbled against BM's chest for purchase. The idol mask was gone entirely now. Just this young man, trembling and gasping, working himself on BM's cock with increasing urgency.

Their breathing filled the room. The wet sounds of their coupling. The creak of the mattress frame.

"So close," Hueningkai breathed out. "I'm so—"

BM's hand left his back. Found his cock, hard and leaking against his stomach. The touch made Hueningkai cry out, a broken sound that he tried to muffle against his own wrist.

"No," BM said. "Let me hear you."

He stroked once. Twice. Tight grip, twisting slightly at the head the way he liked it himself, gambling that it would work on Hueningkai too.

It did.

The orgasm took Hueningkai apart in stages. First the sharp inhale, like he'd been submerged in cold water. Then the full-body shudder, muscles clenching rhythmically around BM's cock. Then the sound—a wordless cry that started high and broke into something lower, more guttural, as warmth spilled across BM's fingers and onto his stomach.

The sight of it finished BM.

His own release hit like a blow to the spine, pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. He drove up into Hueningkai once, twice more, riding the waves of it until his muscles locked and his breath stopped entirely.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

Hueningkai was the first to collapse. Those long limbs folded gracefully, his chest pressing against BM's, forehead dropping to rest in the crook of BM's neck. His breath came hot and damp against BM's collarbone.

BM's arms came around him automatically. One hand splayed between his shoulder blades, the other still loosely cupping the curve of his ass.

"Okay?" BM asked. Voice scraped raw.

A weak laugh puffed against his skin. "Yeah." Another breath. "Yeah, I'm okay."

They lay there as their heartbeats slowed. The city hummed its constant drone outside the windows. In the dim room, the red eye of the sound system blinked steadily, counting seconds neither of them were keeping track of.

Finally, Hueningkai stirred. Lifted his head just enough to meet BM's eyes. Sweat glistened at his temples. His lips were swollen. He looked absolutely wrecked and utterly satisfied.

"The tattoos," he said, voice hoarse. "I'm going to look at every single one."

BM felt his mouth curve. "That could take a while."

"I'm not in a hurry to leave." Hueningkai's eyes flickered downward, to where they were still joined, still tangled together. Then back up. "Unless you want me to."

BM's answer was to tighten his arms. Pulling him close again. Pressing his mouth to the edge of Hueningkai's jaw, just below his ear.