Chapter 41 – Not Made for Beaches
There were birds.
Seagulls, to be exact.
Squawking like demons outside the high hotel windows, winged heralds of some infernal morning choir.
Haneul groaned into the pillow like he’d been resurrected against his will. The sheets were tangled around his waist, legs sprawled, braid clinging to his shoulder like seaweed dragged from the tide. He didn’t open his eyes.
He felt the smug heat of a certain body beside him. Felt the quiet inhale, the faint rustle of the comforter, the way the mattress dipped as a weight shifted closer.
Then a voice—soft, cautious, amused:
“…Are you breathing?”
“Barely,” Haneul croaked, face still smashed into the pillow. “If I die, it’s your fault.”
A pause. Then:
“Did I break you?”
“You and your monster-sized cock…” Haneul lifted his head half an inch, eyes slitted, glaring with the tragic betrayal of someone who had tasted heaven and woken up in hell. “I can’t feel my legs.”
Seungho tried. He really did. But the grin slipped out anyway—molten, dangerous, entirely pleased with himself.
“Want to test that theory again?”
“You need to leave this room,” Haneul hissed. “Go join a monastery. Take a vow. Redeem that weaponized dick of yours. Go become Saint Repression—First of His Name.”
Seungho snorted.
“You’re not exactly a blameless victim, snowdrop. You begged for it.”
“I was delirious from emotional constipation and lack of carbs—!”
Haneul rolled onto his back with a hiss, limbs creaking. “You sure you hadn’t done that before? Because I’ve never met a straight guy who ruts like a demon and whispers poetry while doing it the first time with another dude”
Seungho stretched beside him, gloriously unbothered, arms behind his head. “Maybe I’m a prodigy.”
“Or a liar.” Haneul’s elbow jabbed into his ribs. “You were probably secretly taking dick behind a church bell tower.”
Seungho laughed, grabbed him.
“No! Help!!” Haneul shrieked as he was pulled on top of Seungho, flailing like an angry, naked snow fox. “Heeeelp! The monk has been possessed by a cock demon!!”
They wrestled. Laughed. Gasped for breath. Limbs tangled and mouths pressed to necks, to cheeks, to collarbones. “You started this!” Seungho laughed, wrestling him back down, one hand catching both of Haneul’s wrists above his head with practiced ease. “And I’m not a monk.”
“You lie like one,” Haneul growled, squirming, his voice almost fond through the panting. “All that quiet pining. All that moral nobility. And then—bam—you snap my fucking pelvis in two.”
“Your pelvis is intact.”
“Barely! I’m gonna need a new ass!”
Seungho laughed so hard his shoulders shook.
They collapsed together in a panting heap—Haneul on top now, legs tangled, hair in his face, boneless against Seungho’s chest, heart drumming a little too fast for someone who claimed to hate affection.
He didn’t pull away.
Just laid there, breathless, bare skin against bare chest, and muttered into the hollow of Seungho’s throat:
“You’re lucky I like pain.”
Seungho pressed a kiss to the top of his head.
“You’re lucky I like sass.”
Outside, gulls cried above the glittering sea. Waves rolled in, careless and blue. And between them—tangled, aching, still thrumming with night’s memory—a rare peace unfurled, quiet and shy.
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Seungho, back in full armor, looked like a CEO again.
Pressed navy suit. Crisp white shirt. Gold cufflinks glinting. Calm expression that only cracked when Haneul said something outrageous—so, approximately every forty seconds.
Haneul looked… like vacation had been forced upon a reluctant myth.
Loose sun-bleached linen shirt half unbuttoned, oversized sunglasses, sandals and slouchy linen pants that clung to him like sea wind. His hair was damp. His grin feral.
They strolled into the breakfast lounge like sin on two legs.
The breakfast buffet was pristine—fresh flowers, white linen, whispering executives already at their tables, sipping coffee, murmuring about stock shifts and corporate agendas.
Mr. Kang, seated near the window, saw them and bolted.
Haneul smiled sweetly at his retreating figure. “Someone forgot to finish his shrimp toast.”
Seungho ignored the words and tried to look dignified.
Until Haneul slid into the seat beside him, legs sprawling, lips pink from a second round of hotel kisses, and chirped loud enough to echo:
“Ugh, fancy chairs. I feel like I’m going to get pregnant again just sitting near you.”
Three tables froze.
One executive dropped a fork.
Seungho knocked over his coffee.
“Haneul,” he hissed under his breath.
“What?” Haneul said, all innocence, piling his plate with strawberries and a croissant the size of his face. “I’m glowing. You’re limping. Why hide it?”
“You’re not glowing,” Seungho growled, dabbing coffee off his lapel. “You’re radiating threats to national stability. And you are a man for the love of—”
From the next table, one junior associate leaned over to whisper, “CEO Yeol… you’re up late.”
And Haneul—without pause, without shame—flashed them a radiant smile and said:
“That’s because some of us were up being thoroughly reorganized.”
Seungho choked.
The table fell into stunned silence—then a few nervous coughs and shifting of cutlery.
Haneul took a bite of pineapple like a saint.
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Ten minutes later, Seungho dragged Haneul to the beach.
It was meant to be a treat.
Instead—
The moment they stepped onto the sand, Haneul froze.
Sniffed.
Wrinkled his nose.
“What is that putrid smell again?”
“That,” Seungho said patiently, “is the ocean.”
Haneul stared at the sand. “I want to die.”
Seungho chuckled and kept walking.
A gull screamed overhead.
Haneul flinched like it’d fired a gun.
The wind tore at his linen pants. A fleck of wet sand hit his ankle.
“WHAT THE FUCK—” he screamed, slapping at himself. “IS THAT—AN INSECT??”
“It’s sand.”
“NO IT BIT ME.”
A tiny dark speck skittered past his foot.
Haneul howled, grabbed a slipper, and chased it across the beach like a war. People watched. Children pointed. One tourist recorded it.
Seungho’s phone buzzed. Jaewan.
He answered, stepping out of splash range. “Yeah?”
A sigh. “I can hear the chaos prince suffering.”
“You could say that.”
“That’s the life you chose, boss.”
Haneul eventually collapsed under the shade of a dark blue parasol like a frost prince banished to a furnace..
He wore an enormous sunhat (borrowed from a passing ahjumma), sunglasses the size of a dinner plate, bird-print swim trunks, and a long-sleeved linen shirt buttoned up to the throat. His feet never touched the sand. His legs were tucked up on the towel like the floor was lava.
He scowled at the horizon.
Seungho fed him iced tea. Then ice cream.
Haneul accepted both like they were reparations for war crimes.
At one point, Seungho made the mistake of saying, “It’s October. You won’t burn.”
A handful of sand hit his face before he could blink.
“Say that again, and I’ll bury you alive.”
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