Archive of Our Own

Baekjin was pragmatic.

Life was just arithmetic in motion. Every choice a calculation, every path a sum and everything — every single thing yielded to logic.

That tidy philosophy carried him through school, through college, and up into a skyline office with his name on the placard.

It was neat. It was steady. It was a landscape with a highrise vantage point.

Mysteries weren't a rumour Baekjin invested in. Superstitions either. Religion had lost him somewhere between an unanswered prayer for his mother back and the bitter realisation that even Santa didn't visit orphanages.

So when the first alarm of a meticulous fifteen nudged him awake on a dawning cloudless Monday, nothing was amiss. That was routine as he set it.

Gentle sunlight spilled through the blinds. The air hung still and purified. He lay tangled in the sheets in the two minutes he'd allotted to self indulgence. Blinking away the fog of sleep before the world demanded him.

He stretched. The same rise and revive set he did every morning. Neck rotation first. Ninety degrees left, ninety right.

Something felt immediately off.

And not in the usual Baekjin-branded out of sorts. Like forgetting to add the year end financial forecast to a presentation with board executives. Or not fine tuning the air purifier to the perfect fan speed. No — this was deeper. More profound.

An existential off. Like his skin had woken up and decided it no longer fit.

He shifts into a crossbody deltoid stretch, figuring his muscles just needed stimulation. Get the blood flowing. Maybe he twisted into an awkward position in his sleep and pulled something.

But it couldn't have been restless. Baekjin never tossed and turned. He was a shallow sleeper and rest didn't come just because his head met a pillow. It was a ritual of precision. From the temperature, to the bedding, to the balanced ambiance.

He shifts once more. This time to adjust himself upright against the headboard. He thinks maybe it's a dead leg, so he gives the faintest stir.

A tiny reposition, barely a move. Just thigh brushing thigh — and his blood turns to slurry.

His heart skitters in his throat.

That was too ... unobstructed. His upper thighs had touched with no interference, bare against bare. And something had pressed. No, something had fucking squelched.

His hand plunged reflexively, slipping beneath the covers and along the front of his briefs. Baekjin leaned on constants like breathing. Certainties and facts were his air. Human conduct had its surprises, people sometimes did the unexpected. Human anatomy on the other hand, was absolute.

Until it wasn't.

Until his hand couldn't find purchase on a constant solid. On the one presence that had never faltered. The companion of his years, growing as he did. Enduring as he did. Angry in the mornings, firm and warm, defusing only under cold showers. Mellow in his mid-thirties evenings, interests refined and picky as its host.

His dick has always been there. Through lonely, clumsy teenage hands trying to exact the right pressure, to older, lonelier, weathered hands that touched only when it could no longer be avoided.

He might have sidelined it to chase professional success. And maybe he told himself ambition required it to stay out of touch. But it was always there when he needed it. When morning stretch sets couldn't melt all of the pent up tension. When he needed a fallback plan. An exit strategy. Hell, a friend.

It was reliable. Sure. Shape. There.

And now it was gone.

Instead, his hand dipped deeper than natural, with no resistance at his crotch. Nothing to wake up before him and scream. Nothing to conspire against him in all the wrong places. Nothing to turn to after one too many drinks because his left hand was always wiser than any stranger he might do the drunken honour.

His fingertips sank beneath the elastic of his briefs and grazed skin. Tender, warm skin. Smooth in all the wrong ways. No veins like taut cables. No distinct outline. No shaft. No balls. Just absence.

Absence and heat. Folds, like it had layers, like it was sophisticated. Nerve-rich contours and a brand of hypersensitivity that felt borrowed. That certainly, scientifically, and in every absolute Baekjin ever held sacred — did not belong to him.

His hand jerks from his briefs like he'd committed a felony and he straightens up so fast his command sergeant would be proud. The room tilts with the effort and the covers tangle at his knees. A pillow hits the floor, his lamp rattles on the nightstand and the air purifier beeps like it read the room.

But all of it was inconsequential because when he yanks the covers and looks down at his crotch, he thinks atmosphere micromanagement be damned. He might never get a good night's sleep ever again.

Impossible. Unnatural. And so fucking bizarre Baekjin has to keep from gagging.

Smooth. No fabric disturbance. Nothing protruding. Nothing more punctual than an alarm clock at greeting him good morning.

With gracelessly shaky hands, he lifts his hips and shoves his briefs down to his knees. A damp patch glistens and goads him to look down. Not higher up near the waistline. Not nearly the beaded traces of wetness he's used to. Slick and centred like a spotlight in his underwear.

And there it was.

Staring back at him, plain as day. Sitting nicely between his legs like the world got it wrong the first time.

A pussy.

His. Flawlessly positioned like it slid into place. Snug in the gap of his thighs as if made to fit. Cut to shape. Like it had never looked different below the belt. As if his dick had never existed and he hadn't spent decades of his life peeing while standing, snagging it with zippers, or tucking it in waistbands when it forgot its manners in unsavoury settings.

His palms flew to his eyes, fingers furiously kneading at his eyelids, hoping to smudge the optics back to reality.

He opened them again with no luck. It was still there. Still sat like an open wound.

He pinched himself where he knew he was most sensitive. Inner thigh, skin caught sharp between merciless fingers. His body jolted like every fibre aggressively ended with an exclamation mark. Definitely awake.

Stupidly awake. Beyond the realms of possibility awake.

Baekjin goes unresponsive. Hoping if he held still enough, he'd become part of the furniture in this sitcom. Because that's what it had to be. A joke. A big, fat, cosmic sized joke and any minute now, there'd be a laughing track and an exhale of relief.

But the laughing track doesn't come. Nor does the punchline. And Baekjin's the only joke still holding its breath.

It hits him when his blood slows.

And he shrieks. An unseemly sound at inelegant volume. Decibels he'd been conditioned to never produce. Bouncing off the walls of his condo like mockery. Throwing the covers, he pitches off the bed with all the grace of Bambi on ice.

His feet just about plant on hardwood before the boxers bunched at his knees send him sprawling. He goes down in a clatter, with more unflattering music, and a bruised tailbone to match. But somehow that wasn't the worst of it.

No — it seemed the architect of this shitshow clearly wasn't done twisting the knife just yet.

Because his thighs spread open upon impact and he'd somehow strategically fallen right in front of the only full length mirror in his room.

And there it was again. Blinking back.

On full display, like a flower blossomed between his legs. The mirror affords a clarity that feels criminal. Baekjin had never even seen one up close yet, and now here he was, in intimate focus. It felt like sneaking into the girl's changing room. It felt like a bookable violation.

"This can't be real." The whisper is fragile, hopeful the moment would dissolve into a hallucination.

It doesn't. His eyes flicker up and catch himself at the helm of it. His face, unforgiving jawline, tapered eyes, authoritative brows. Masculine features that led boardrooms and mediated dismissal tribunals.

Now reduced to the face of a man with a party trick between his legs.

His eyes drop again. One final appraisal. Like maybe someone had spiked the office coffee pot yesterday and Baekjin was finally learning the consequences of caffeine overconsumption. Or perhaps he'd done some unconscious acrobatics in his sleep and his dick had tucked in on itself. Maybe it just woke up shy today. Maybe this was just a really bad, needlessly detailed acid trip.

All irrational. All past the edge of reason. All thoughts married-to-logic Baekjin would've never entertained.

But there was nothing rational about this new Frankenstein reality and Baekjin was stretched thin trying to hold back the biblical flood.

He inspects it at a distance, breath held like maybe the hallucinogen was airborne. A neat bloom, folded like delicate origami. Pink at the edges and rosier at the cleft, like the blood ran hotter there. Pretty, in every way the executive director of a major financial firm should never be behind the zipper.

"It's not real. It's not real." He chants like a prayer, then blinks hard to summon it away.

It refuses to vanish when his eyes snap open, so his hand moves unbidden. Hoping maybe it could just smear it away.

But swiping at it only sends his hips lurching forward. His abdomen jumps as if he'd touched a live current and it ran the length of his nerves. His thighs coil hard, like a spring trying to clamp shut.

"Okay, don't do... that." He wheezes. Eyes blown and hands splayed on either side of him for balance. "Just... just put it away."

That staggers him to his feet and he all but spirals into his wardrobe like a human cyclone. He tugs at the first pair of sweatpants in reach, and the entire neatly folded pile topples like a laundry avalanche. He steps into the sweatpants with hope that maybe fabric could restitch reality.

"Okay. This is fine." He cinches the drawstrings tight around his waist. "Crisis containment, Baekjin. You do it everyday. This is nothing. Just a concussion. You probably just hit your head. Very hard. With a truck."

It was easy. Out of sight, out of mind.

But Baekjin faced facts, not half-truths. He never prettied it up and shelved it in the 'sort out later' rack. The only thing about him that ever wavered was maybe a whisper of hair in the wind. He was a one man army.

Except the 'man' part was now arguable and the 'army' part had no weapons.

When Baekjin looked down again, he was rapidly unspooling.

The waistband of his sweats hugged his hips awkwardly now. No swell, no curve, nothing pressing out. Just physics defyingly flat. Scandalously smooth. Obscenely even. And when he angrily crossed his legs, like maybe strangling the blood flow would eliminate the threat entirely, a bulge of fabric air mocked him.

When in doubt, he turns to flow charts. So Baekjin starts mentally diagraming conspiracy theories like a man taking attendance at his own crime scene.

The Theories: One of the office sharks slipped him a little chemical betrayal. Or he'd been exposed to vibes. Bad ones. Or he'd apparently offended a witch. Possibly taken mislabelled supplements. There's estrogen in the water. Maybe a mixup at the chromosome warehouse. Mercury was in retrograde.

Or: the simplest explanation, Occam's Razor — he was just plain losing it.

The screech of his ringtone yanks him out of his head for a distracted moment. He lunges after the sound, hands swiping for the phone on the dresser. He doesn't check the caller ID, just hits accept and brings it to his ear, hoping that this was all just some hidden-camera special and this was finally the gag.

But there's no loud 'sike!' on the other line. Or even at least a mad scientist apologising for using him as a test subject.

Just Seongmok and his concerned personal assistant voice. "Morning boss. Everything okay?"

Baekjin flinches. Seongmok didn't do niceties. Baekjin chose him because small talk wasn't in the inventory. So why did he ask that of all questions? What does he know? Did his unsolicited sex change make morning headlines?

Seemingly telepathic, Seongmok cuts in, "I only ask because, and I hope you know I say this sincerely sweating, you're late."

Late?

He tore the phone from his ear to check the time. Sure enough. The clock display read 10:48am. He wasn't just casually late, he was officially AWOL. Like flagged on attendance software late.

Baekjin. Punctuality personified Baekjin. Who arrived before the building lights turned on. So early even the coffee machine wasn't awake yet. Seven year long career streak, broken. He was late.

"I'm ... late." He repeats slowly, as if tasting the concept for the first time.

Seongmok shuffles on the other end, like he too couldn't quite process it. "Look boss," There's a moment of silence where he likely moved to a quieter corner, "if you're under the weather it's okay to take ... a break. I know that's like practically treason to you, but-"

"Under the weather..." Baekjin echoes like a man hypnotised.

"Baekjin." He taps into that tone only a worried childhood friend could use. "I've kept quiet but you're burnt out. Take the week. You've sweat your soul into the marble of this place, the empire won't crumble just because you called in sick."

The reassurance goes over his head. The essence of what makes him Baekjin had revolted some time between his first alarm and this phone call. His perfect attendance record was just collateral.

"This is just a courtesy call anyway. I've already put you down as out sick, so go ahead and... watch a movie, I guess." He hangs up before Baekjin can pushback.

Not that he could string together words that weren't parroted, much less argue a point.

Baekjin doesn't watch a goddamn movie. Instead he gathers every technological lifeline, laptop, phone, tablet, even the smart toaster, and launches back into bed. Leaving the room, and hopefully any memory of evolution's DIY disaster, behind and descending into Google's 'it's probably cancer' corner.

He buries himself in research. Scrolling until he's sure he'd achieved carpal tunnel, driving his phone bill to astronomical heights, from reputable clinics to quack doctors, crystal healers to priests, Baekjin had probably phoned half the city without managing to actually spit the words out. He could only talk around them, 'I woke up one limb short of whole' or 'I'm a boy upstairs but someone stole the downstairs plumbing'.

One spiritualist even apologised for his 'late-stage circumcision' and observed a minute's silence for his fallen manhood.

His manhood had fallen alright, but it was the rebranding that made still breathing feel violently optional.

Baekjin spent the week in a spiral from hell. It didn't go away after the first sleepless night. It didn't disappear two days after either.

And his body (the traitor it was) acted indifferent. Like it was here to stay. Like he just had a pussy now and the world kept spinning.

He stopped checking for it and started checking for a fever. Six times a day. Another symptom. Anything. Every inch of him was surveyed as if it might defect or change architecture. His mornings began with a peek down the collar and his evenings ended with presses down his hips to make sure nothing turned childbearing.

Avoiding the bathroom had become a tactical operation and he treated every trip like neutralising a threat. Peeing made noise and it wasn't subtle, no, it was amplified. Nothing like the steady or choppy streams he was used to, the controlled pinch or the disciplined ripples in the toilet bowl.

This had splash radius. Bathroom acoustics and rhythm. When he held his bladder too long, it had flair. Like a performance starring him by mistake.

Worse yet, was the underwear death toll.

Baekjin was running through boxers with alarming efficiency. He even resorted to ordering new sets to his door like reinforcements. His washing machine was working double-shifts. He watched what he ate, he took hydration personally, he made sure there was a narrow gap separating it and the cotton when he repositioned. But the casualty count didn't slow.

There was always residue. Stubborn little watermarks of his botched second coming.

Google assured him it was natural. His underwear drawer didn't survive that reassurance. Baekjin still tore through fabric like he could erase this new normal with bleach. The stains didn't just exist either, they had personality. Like daily aesthetic roulette. One morning he'd shed his boxers to tacky and elastic, and another would greet him with thin and watery.

His dick was something he could always rely on. A low effort, high return cheat code. This shit was high maintenance. A little tyrant between his legs.

Baekjin was slowly losing the existential crisis war. One bleached boxer brief at a fucking time.

———

His brain was surrendering in stages.

He didn't pull the plug on his motherboard in the week off, which meant the war of existence marches on. He's left with one option: force it into functioning or, spectacularly malfunction.

He never could afford the luxury of falling apart. Come rain, come plague, come cosmic magic trick. Baekjin had deadlines, deliverables and delegations and a porcelain office of obligations that wobbled dangerously without him. Melodrama was strictly off the table.

He was a project, not a person. And projects didn't have identity crises.

He told himself it didn't matter. Everyone kept their secrets tightly belted. Size, girth, genital herpes. And okay his secret was closer to ... supernatural switcheroo. But it's the thought that counts.

His chin stayed up through it all. From orphanage beginnings to valedictorian of his class. From nobody to somebody in a glass tower. And this latest rebrand from man to Exhibit A at the next medical board meeting would be handled no different.

Baekjin overcame because he was a man of strategy.

And that strategy was dress rehearsal on preparation Sunday. Methodically testing the fit of every pair of slacks he owned. He sorted them by colour, from safest to outright obscene. Charcoal grey was a little gappy at the front, enough to provoke a size joke but not enough to justify a tape measure.

Navy blue was disturbingly committed. Horrifyingly snug in all the wrong places. It cupped him like sin. It pressed against his thighs like second skin and when he looked down, he swore the outline winked back at him.

He boxed every guilty Navy suit immediately after. Tagging the cardboard in sharpie all caps: BURN BARREL DINNER.

In a desperate moment, when nothing sat quite right, he shoved in a sock. But it looked lumpy and unpersuasive and he felt like a gym bro stuffing extra padding over some serious size insecurities.

Black was the most practical. The majority of his black suits were forgiving in fit, no textile plotted betrayals, no suggestive stretches at the crotch. The trouser legs were loose enough that nothing clung or caught. It was discreet and it would do.

Monday rolled around with carefully constructed denial.

15 alarms like every weekday, the room tuned into pretending nothing was wrong, a breakfast of performed calm and electrolytes. His suit of armour waiting on a hanger, pressed and starched until it looked like bureaucracy.

The office welcomed him as it always did at 6:30am. A graveyard of chairs, cold computers and that due diligence quiet only corporate air breathed. It was Baekjin's golden hour of productivity before human error invaded.

But today the focus wasn't workload.

It was poise prep to keep appearance in motion. Posturing, stance adjustment, weight distribution. He pulled out his chair and auditioned different positions.

Manspreading looked ridiculous. The excess fabric of his slacks gave a subtle tension pull that deflated where it usually tented. Crossing his legs was too seamless. Too much thigh slotted comfortably against thigh like he was sans the middle man. Ankle stacking lodged trapped air where it shouldn't.

Military rigid was the safest option. Stiff spine, squared knees, formal in a way that made it entirely unquestionable.

The office gradually came to life. Desks filled with half-awake morning greetings, coffee crept into the air as the machines yawned awake and computers slowly turned electricity into warmth and purpose.

The everyday workplace churn that he'd once found empowering now pressed in on Baekjin like a strip search.

He was seized by the imagined certainty that his secret had already networked more than the interns. Every off-glance felt informed, every pause deliberate and every 'glad to see you back, boss' sounded loaded.

Seongmok strolls into his office at half past eight with a smile and a dangerously unsteady double shot of caffeine in his hands. He sets one in front of Baekjin, takes one look at him and says, "Stop before the mouse calls HR."

Baekjin hadn't realised he'd been clenching his mouse like a stress ball until his fingers eased their death grip and the cursor complained. He schools his expression and reaches for his coffee like it was just another day. Because it was and if Seongmok believed it then his performance was foolproof.

"So... who died?"

The mug scalds his fingers and tips threateningly as he rushes to place it down. He curses under his breath. Dabs at the spill with a sleeve. Curses again when it seeps through the cuff. Seongmok's amused eyes track his every move like a spectator at a rare natural disaster.

"Everything's fine." He grits out in that executive tone he reserved for boardrooms.

It was a cruel low blow. Pulling rank on a concerned best friend. But it was the only defence mechanism he could reach for that might survive a staring contest with Seongmok.

Because truly, nothing was fine and Baekjin couldn't even begin to articulate how gloriously wrong everything was. What would he even say? Hey Mok, the universe just yanked the floor out from under me. Every fact I've ever trusted is now lying through its teeth. I put my faith in biology and it took creative liberty between my legs.

"If you say so." Seongmok retreats to his assistant's workspace with a raised brow.

They settle into preparatory morning routine. Baekjin reviewing stock reports and Seongmok optimising his schedule. Seongmok doesn't insist, but his eyes do. They keep flicking back to Baekjin like they were charting vitals for a very real, very potential heart attack.

And Baekjin wasn't doing himself any favours. That motivational pep talk he gave his morning reflection in the mirror ditched the building the moment it saw a familiar face.

He was scrambling. He felt naked and he tiptoed like it.

Every printer run felt like a full-frontal debut. Baekjin stood up, felt Seongmok's judgement on his skin and snatched the nearest binder. He held it at a casual crotch-level on every round trip. Like he usually walked around guarding his crown jewels with 243 pages of regulatory compliance guidelines.

It's roughly just after nine when the office floor changes tone. Disturbance ripples. A burst of noise, harsh against the backdrop of workday monotony. Like a boombox in a library.

Baekjin knows the sound, on a normal day it was bad news. Today it felt biblical.

"Oh no." He groans aloud, dread chilling his bones. Default death glare already preloading.

As if summoned, the one man commotion spills into his office like a toddler on espresso. Doors slammed open with the audacity of someone who thought physics was negotiable. Baekjin wasn't sure what would crack first; his glass walls or his composure.

Because, of course. Naturally. His day wasn't going to hell fast enough before lunch.

Park Humin. The pain in the ass to end all pains in the ass. Baekjin's personal human migraine and the reason he stashed emergency whiskey in a filing cabinet. A walking, talking act of war with a LinkedIn profile. A legal loophole with job security. He could neither terminate him nor tolerate him.

To say Baekjin hated him would be putting it politely. Hate was too gentle a word. Every breath he took flirted with Baekjin's homicidal tendencies. He made human rights feel like suggestions.

Humin had a talent for entering a room, finding the nearest boundary and licking it. He lived several policies past professional conduct and laughed about it. He was chaotic, smug, flashy, a master in his field and a menace everywhere else.

And worst of all. He had a spectacularly stupid, wildly inappropriate, schoolboy crush on Baekjin.

He absorbs Baekjin's cutting edge like he always does, irritatingly undeterred. Grin boyish and eyes mischievous. Still in his riding gear. Helmet tucked under his arm, leather biker jacket moulded to his physique, hair a windswept mess that made Baekjin's fingers twitch to tame. Or shave clean off.

"Boss!" His voice detonated in uncaffeinated Baekjin's ears. "You're back."

Baekjin curbs a groan between his teeth, fingers already pinching his nose to intercept a blooming headache no sip of coffee could soothe. "You're late." He exhales like it shortened his lifespan.

"By three minutes. Just enough time for you to feel my absence." Humin says, all cheek and grin.

Baekjin's mental narrator instantly leaps into damage control: Don't throw the stapler Baekjin. You can't. You're the boss. The boss doesn't flip desks either. Deep breath and — unclench.

"Don't forget to bring that sweet-talk with you to the disciplinary hearing." He says instead.

"You think I talk sweet?"

"Park Humin." Baekjin balls a fist.

"Baku, if you will."

"I will not."

"Indulge me, darling." He strides closer to Baekjin's desk with a pesky smirk. "A little morning flattery keeps me productive."

Baekjin blinks. "You'll be indulging unemployment if you don't productively get out of my office. Pronto."

"Recovery really brings out your sass." His tone drops, silk and trouble. "I'll make myself scarce. Just here to drop off a package."

Baekjin peers over a stack of budget approvals, preemptively disinterested. Humin digs into his satchel and produces a takeout bag, with tupperware and a drink. He slides it in front of Baekjin like a humble offering.

Baekjin eyes it like it's radioactive. "You're really leaning into those delivery driver allegations."

"Only your packages get this kind of attention, promise." He winks.

And Baekjin finds a fresh surge of hatred for him. Hates how quick he is on the volley back. Hates his knack for twisting anything into innuendo. Hates his... everything.

"Mokie said you came down with a cold." He says, eyes looking Baekjin over as he zips his bag. "Figured you could use a little pick me up."

Baekjin glares daggers at Seongmok who tries his best to look blameless. "Mokie clearly wants a career break."

"Play nice." Humin cuts in, all empty heroics. He points to the handout then to himself. "This was all me."

"Just perfect." Baekjin flashes him a dry, unappreciative smile. "Now put all of you on the clock. It's ten past and you still haven't logged in."

"Yes sir!" Humin says brightly like the dismissal was entirely his own idea, finally turning to leave.

"And Humin..." Baekjin calls out. "Find a tie before lunch or find yourself written up."

Humin comes up empty for once and the door thankfully swings on his way out. Baekjin glares at the package on his desk like it might spring. And for the first time in the past week, he's distracted by a trap bigger than the one in his own underwear.

Seongmok clears his throat and Baekjin's on him in an instant. "Nothing like a betrayal from the home team."

"What?" Seongmok groans. "It's not like I sent him a personal forward or anything. I just put it out into the atmosphere. People asked questions okay."

"Yeah right. You probably whispered it in his ear." Baekjin scoffed. "No one else mentioned a cold."

"Alright fine. The only person who asked questions was him." Seongmok chuckles.

Baekjin hisses, "Stop helping him."

"Can't." Seongmok shrugs, like he wasn't the first reason on Baekjin's suicide list. "I pity the guy. Death by ice princess is such a miserable way to go."

"Help him again and you can let him know how it feels."

———

The remainder of the morning mercifully ticked by without any Humin-shaped hitches. Baekjin disappeared into paperwork that clearly held a grudge for his absence. Only partially tuned in to the more urgent concern looming over him.

The backlog luckily held him hostage at his desk. His legs curled beneath it, neatly tucked away. A meeting threatened to happen at 11am but he was conveniently 'otherwise engaged'. By noon, his stomach's punctual growl forced him to notice Seongmok for the first time in hours.

His eyes seek out his usual; grilled chicken salad, hold the dressing. His lunch ritual for the last two years. Catered by courtesy of his devoted personal assistant.

Who decided today was the ideal day to break pattern. Because Baekjin wasn't already nearly vibrating without the extra helping of disruption.

Baekjin prompts him with a demanding glare, but Seongmok only tips his chin to the neglected takeout bag still sat on his desk like he was daring him to do something about it.

And Baekjin just wanted this day to hurry up and go to hell, so he says nothing. Studies the tupperware like he was mentally calculating whether it offered sufficient crotch-coverage for the distance between his office and the break room. Scoops it up and moves fast.

Being the boss meant he didn't have a fixed lunch hour. Being Baekjin meant he absolutely did. But by some small mercy, the lunchtime foot traffic hadn't raided the break room yet and it was empty.

He knew that had an expiration date, so he tore the plastic bag and popped open the container. Made a face at the contents then nudged it into the microwave.

When it sat steaming in front of him, he stared at it as if one bite might be his last, spoon suspended, throat reluctant. It was congee, he knew that much. But whether it went down gracefully depended entirely on what type of congee it was.

Baekjin was... choosy with his meals. Seongmok would say that was underselling it. His therapist called it unresolved childhood ARFID, he called himself a dictator of taste. He didn't like playing Russian roulette with his appetite.

Congee was usually a safe food. Provided it was the right flavour. Otherwise, it tasted like ash on his tongue and sat like cement in his stomach.

The first spoonful was braved like he was bracing for impact, careful, tentative and naggingly hungry. But the moment the subtle umami taste registers, something in him loosens and melts into it. He hums. His expression smooths out, his brows ease and he devours.

Oyster congee. Suspiciously his favourite. Mild seasoning, clean flavours, no green onions. Prepared so well it almost felt personal.

And it probably was. It had more Seongmok co-conspirator betrayal written all over. The chef had clearly followed a very Baekjin-specific recipe.

He decided complaints could wait until he polished off the container. At least he wasn't wrestling each mouthful like he would the dry chicken salad. To his irritation, it was the best meal he'd had in ages.  He was already devising discreet ways to get the restaurant's name.

"I see someone liked that."

Baekjin's shoulders hike to his ears, spooked for just a second before it occurs to him he's in charge. He turns and Humin is there. Leaning against the counter like working hours didn't apply to him.

He lost the leather jacket and found a tie like Baekjin instructed, but wore it like defiance. Tied it on like a toddler learning knots. And in keeping with his dishevelled, office outlaw chic, he flaunted every small rebellion. Shirt tail untucked, collar creased, cuffs sloppy. 

And here he was. Witnessing Baekjin commit his most epic act of self-sabotage yet. Dining at the unsanitary hands of his nemesis, and enjoying it.

Baekjin clears his throat to try for casual. "It was fine." He lies, his stomach singing a different tune.

"Just fine?" Humin chuckles, eyes settling fondly on Baekjin. "You practically licked it clean."

Baekjin's jaw tightens and the lingering flavour on his tongue testifies like a guilty confession. "It was edible...decent."

Humin laughs again, lighter, pleased without fanfare. Like he was content to just see Baekjin fed. "I'd hope so. I went to culinary school."

Baekjin bristles in disbelief. He made it? Forget the magically appearing pussy debacle, this was a crisis of global proportions. He fumbles for a defence. Anything to recover from basically moaning over Humin's cooking.

"That explains the aftertaste." He says too loudly.

Humin's grin only grows victorious. "If you need some privacy with the container, I can leave."

"Don't bother, I'll leave." Baekjin scrambles to his feet, trying and failing to seal the tupperware lid with grace.

And because he'd clearly not lost enough dignity to the whole interaction, it slips from his grasp, spoon in tow, and clatters noisily to the floor.

And that's when it happens.

Baekjin doesn't think, he just bends over after it. Giving his back to Humin, dropping to one knee and lunging to a crawl. That's when his blazer rode up, his slacks pulled tight to a seam, and his unfortunate disappearing-dick situation announced itself through tight linen and bad angles.

"There's more where that came from if..." Humin starts, then stops short.

Baekjin felt the exact moment his eyes landed on his unnaturally flat crotch like a frisk. He hears Humin's buffering like static on loudspeaker. That nanosecond of mental hiccup when you witness something strange and your brain has no category for it.

Baekjin sprang up and spun so violently he nearly tipped back over. His hand shot down for emergency groin coverage with the only utensil he'd managed to salvage. The fucking spoon.

"No. No. I'm, um, I'm good." He says too fast. "I'm full... forever."

Humin blinks slowly. "Right."

There was a brief hitch. Baekjin could practically see Humin's neuron's short-circuit in real time trying to make sense of what he'd just seen. The confusion was muted but present. A head tilt, a skeptical frown, a faint eh? like reality had just shifted half an inch and refused to explain itself.

Baekjin unravels.

"I'm actually uh aggressively allergic to a lot of ingredients." His voice went high, defensive and wildly undermining. "Like I can feel a reaction coming on right now. Did you use green onions?"

"I didn't."

"Salt then." Baekjin chokes out. Ears burnt pink and collar getting progressively more hostile.

Humin raises a doubtful brow. "You're... allergic to salt?"

"Yes!" Baekjin blurts. "Deathly. The symptoms are intense. Mystical even."

"Then-" Humin pauses again, still lagging, "Don't you need medical attention? I mean I used about a pinch, should I be dialling 119?"

"No need!" Baekjin swallows so hard every mechanism in his throat visibly strains.

"I have an epi-pen in my desk." He tacks on, like the lie wasn't spiralling from bad to worse. "I'll just go- I'll go get it."

He bolts out of there so fast he practically kicks up dust. Spoon still clutched like a very impractical sword and tupperware abandoned like a fallen soldier. And miraculously, for once, Humin's persistence cuts him some slack. He doesn't chase or call after him. He just stays put.

Baekjin hurtles into the bathroom like gravity had doubled down and oxygen was suddenly scarce. His spoon wielding hand trembled fiercely until he set it down by a sink to douse his face with cold water.

"A deadly sodium allergy." He hisses, blinking up at himself in the mirror then groaning. "You can't be fucking serious Baekjin."

He pat down his cheeks like he was trying to slap some sense back into the world. His reflection stared back, eyes wild and pulse erratic.

Humin had seen.

Park Humin of all people.

Had looked and seen and noticed.

And he might've held his tongue, but the seed of doubt was already sown. Weeds of suspicion found a crack in Baekjin's concrete. And Humin wasn't the type to sit idly on a secret.

No, he burrowed his way in.

———

From that day forward, Humin's teasing ramped up into an excruciating, slow-cooked torment of psychological warfare. Drawn out with malicious patience and a sole goal: watch Baekjin squirm.

He was nowhere and everywhere like a bad habit.

Like asbestos in Baekjin's pristinely sterilised personal space. In urgent need of fumigation.

And Baekjin was giving some serious consideration to waging a full blown war with HR for his dismissal. Even if it cost him his own job.

The office transformed into a big game of hide-and-seek. Humin was the seeker, and Baekjin's life depended on staying hidden. Going home wasn't any better. Bathroom trips were still a minefield, he felt like a peeping tom in his own shower and he avoided touching his new equipment like it was contagious.

In his head, he'd drafted and redrafted his two weeks notice sixteen different times already.

And in his desk drawer was a scrawled, growing list of motivations to opt out of life where Seongmok had been demoted — and every single reason started and ended with Park Humin.

———

There was that memorable day work shoved him into a one-on-one with the head of IT to strategise about the digital lending apparatus.

Which was fine most days. Baekjin had the gift of the gab and the art of diplomacy. Private meetings were his playground.

Except the head of the IT department was none other than Humin himself.

And Baekjin was once again, in hell before 11am. He lost his verbal footing, tripped over words he normally delivered flawlessly, botched the PowerPoint, and somehow turned his cuff into an abstract art project with whiteboard marker.

But that wasn't the worst of it. No. Because somewhere between a stammer and a frantic board gesture, he dropped the marker.

They both stared at it. Baekjin, like it might detonate any second. And Humin, like it was just the opportunity he'd been waiting for.

Naturally, Humin wasted no time. "Not gonna pick that up?" He asked, all faux innocence and artificial concern.

Baekjin blinked down at the red marker like it was complicit in the plot against him. His brain itched then his mouth spilled; "It ran out of ink."

The corner of Humin's lip tilted just so. Small, loaded and so deliberate Baekjin wanted to smack it straight.

"Seemed fine to me." He said coyly.

"That's because you're sat too far." Baekjin steadied himself after a brief wobble. "Anyway, back to unsecured lending—"

———

Then there was the time Humin found him at the photocopier. Like he now had a built-in Baekjin radar and a sixth sense for perfect opportunities.

Baekjin had been wrestling a paper jam. Blue-collar work he never usually rolled his sleeves up for and conveniently outsourced. But that convenience had clocked out at five along with the rest of the office and Baekjin was left tussling the paper-hungry beast alone.

Or not so alone it would seem.

Because just as he slouched over the machine to poke around the tangled wiring at the back, Humin materialised like a bad manifestation.

"Need help with that?" He asked, too close for comfort.

Baekjin startled, thunked his head on the document feeder, then tried to stand tall, or at least vertical. "What are you still doing here?" He attempted nonchalance like he wasn't seeing double.

"Watching you duke it out with office hardware." Humin laughed like lurking was socially acceptable. "Pretty even odds I'd say. If that doesn't purple by dinner. Turn around, let me check it."

Baekjin raises a defensive hand to keep him at arm's length, it sways along with him. "I'm fine. Barely felt it."

"You're staggering like a day drunk right now." Humin stepped close enough that Baekjin can smell the leather of his jacket. "Just let me check you over. You fussed so much about me getting first aid certified but won't let me put it to practice."

"Ugh fine." Baekjin grumbled, eyes tipping up to catch Humin's.

He was kitted in full riding gear as if he considered leaving, then remembered Baekjin was worth the extra hours. A gloved hand manoeuvred Baekjin by the chin, steering him carefully from side to side.  Something like gentle concern glinted in Humin's eyes as he watched Baekjin's slow, reorienting blinks.

And then a bright, evil phone-flash nearly fried his retinas because of course, Humin couldn't be trusted with tender things like real concern. He closed in. Near enough that Baekjin recognised the aftershave by name brand. Then he levelled the light into Baekjin's eyes like he was trying to spotlight the secret he was hoarding.

"Pupils are responsive." He murmured, finally withdrawing the eye assault. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Two."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Office."

"Do you know who I am?"

Baekjin glared. Teeth tight around the name. "Park Humin."

A brief pause. Then something bothersome bloomed on Humin's face. "Baku, if you will."

"I never will." Baekjin flinched back, reclaiming his chin. "And you'd make a shit nurse."

Humin clutched his chest in mock outrage but all that did was guide Baekjin's attention to the wrong focus. Firm chest, lean muscle, leather stretched like it knew exactly what it was flattering.

Baekjin resented it. The whole 'I bench press then hit the throttle' fuckboy charm. It was cocky, it was shameless, it didn't belong in a corporate setting and it forced Baekjin to remember dress code didn't apply out of hours.

No tie or untucked shirt tail could bid it away. He was subjected to seeing it. To processing it. To discovering, in a nauseating existential betrayal kind of way, that he found it unhelpfully appealing.

He strategically pinned that on the concussion and filed it away under 'exiled thoughts'.

"Concussion checklist cleared you as fit. Allegedly." Humin shrugged, making no move to restore personal space. "Emergency mouth-to-mouth is available on request if you're still woozy."

Baekjin wanted to pounce. The spinning room kept him friendly. "You're severely lacking in home training." He instead snarled.

Humin perked like snarky Baekjin was his favourite flavour. "I can be taught new tricks."

"Or you can be put down." Baekjin returned.

"You're delightful." Humin chuckled, too amused. "That bump's still got you rigid as a chair. Drop and give me twenty so I know you're still functional."

Baekjin shot him a lethal glare. "After you. Drop and give me six feet under."

"I could give you six inches inste—"

"I recommend stopping while you're still on payroll."

Humin laughed, messy, unrepentant, still within breach radius. "So you can tell me to die but I can't say I want to fuck y—"

"Park Humin." Baekjin keyed into the tone that dismissed four stakeholders and put three more on recovery plans.

Baekjin's voice meant business. Humin's eyes promised war. He inched forward, crowding Baekjin until his breath caught. With enough audacity to bend gravity across three time zones, he muttered softly: "Use your bossy voice all you like. Doesn't make me want what I want any less."

Then, like a hurricane receding, he retreated. Cast Baekjin a boyish grin that dared him to react, savoured the provocation tremors, then pulled the helmet over his head.

Spun on his heel and waved a casual goodbye like he hadn't ground Baekjin's world to a screeching halt.

Baekjin stood paralysed. Mortified. Tampered with. Chest swollen with trapped air. Flush behind the collar. Left with an unresolved paper jam, a fresh bruise, a questionably diagnosed non-concussion and something infinitely worse.

Heat, banking low in his belly. A tight, tugging ache beneath his hips followed by a thoughtless urge to squeeze his thighs.

Which he did. And instantly wished he hadn't. The mistake came with a flood of nerve-bright sensation, but that wasn't what sent an undignified squeak up his throat. No. It was something new. Something he'd produced. Warm and silky and receptive. Moist in a way that hit him like a second concussion.

His pussy was wet.

"Fucking hell." He wheezed. Slumping back against the copier.

Baekjin never wished for the heavens to crack open and unleash doomsday until that day. When Humin objectified him, broke 3 different sexual misconduct regulations, all but spat on hierarchy.

And Baekjin's response? Seduced. Bitch-slapped into silence. And slick between the thighs.

———

The thing about Humin was he was young. Like mid-twenties, weekend chasing, partygoing, shouldn't be as established as he is, probably needs 5G just to process thoughts, young.

Youth had determination and poor impulse control. Baekjin dismissed and Humin found wiggle room. Baekjin rejected and Humin didn't bruise. Baekjin growled and Humin admired the pitch.

Baekjin was thawing fast.

He couldn't outpace Humin, physically or figuratively. And as of recently, enduring him became a new kind of cardio.

Humin noticed things others overlooked because he was always watching. Because Baekjin was his favourite binge watch and he was youthfully addicted to pixels.

Like when Baekjin's black-suit streak was starting to read as a corporate wake. Humin tossed a sly remark across a conference table in an office-wide meeting.

"What's with all the black, boss? I miss your wardrobe rotation. Navy really brought out your eyes."

Baekjin had to set the laser pointer aside before he weaponised it.

Or that day Baekjin forgot his number one rule: never pee at work, and went full athlete on his bladder. He stepped out of a previously vacant restroom stall to find Humin hunched over a urinal. Unzipped and cocksure.

"Very vocal." He'd hurled over his shoulder.

In a murderous split second, Baekjin ran a mental checklist of the many ways a urinal could become life threatening.

And of course, there was the classic elevator scene because Baekjin's life had committed to being a poorly written sitcom. Overcrowded elevator. Humin pressed against him like a stage direction. Front to front, Baekjin's briefcase wedged between their waists like an anti dry-hump prop.

Humin smelled of exhaust, leather and bad news. And he drummed a tiny, mocking beat into the briefcase, like the buffer was temporary and their waistline collision was inevitable.

"Textbook choice of chastity belt." He'd whispered.

Baekjin never evacuated an elevator more efficiently.

The office sports day is advertised to boost team cohesion. To Humin, it was a playground of pretexts to turn Baekjin into a full-contact sport. His hands latched onto Baekjin's hips during the three-legged race because sportsmanship allowed it. He knelt to tie Baekjin's laces because it looked like nobility and not just a convenient excuse to snoop around the suspicion-area. He playfully swat Baekjin's ass with a baton mid-relay race because he couldn't be trusted around phallic objects.

But the final blow came spiking across a net. Volleyball. Opposing teams. Humin launched the ball at Baekjin with one, deliberate aim: nutshot.

The ball struck Baekjin square in the groin but his response came a beat too late. Muscle memory had made him flinch but the absence of pain kept him upright.

Until he remembered. Then went full broadway to compensate.

He cupped his non-existent balls, doubled over, groaned, smacked the ground. And when he squinted through an exaggerated wince to check if he was selling it, he saw it.

The sly smile playing on Humin's lips.

Then came the cursed office Christmas party, a glorified drinking contest disguised as holiday spirit. Baekjin nursed the same drink all evening to pretend he was keeping up with the open bar. He'd slipped away to wash his hands when Humin found him. Wine flushed and twice as cocky.

There were no pretences then. No manufactured suffering. He crossed the bathroom in three strides and pinned Baekjin against the counter. Then, like his audacity needed any liquid courage, he snagged Baekjin by the necktie and reeled him closer.

"Black is for mourning, not mistletoe." He slurred.

Baekjin shifted back until his spine met countertop. "Black is classic. Mistletoe is seasonal." He said, fingers closing around Humin's wrist. "And you're drunk. Let go."

"I'm starting to think the suit's part of your personality."

"It is."

"You always this hard to undress?"

Baekjin drew in a sharp breath. "Let go, Humin."

"Just a few buttons...for me?" He tilted his head. Glassy eyed. "I'm being polite here. I had your zipper in mind."

The heel of Baekjin's pump sank into the top of Humin's shoe and pressed. Hard and exact. Pain flared bright across his face, barely a second long.

He hissed and leaned in, grin tipsy and carefree. "Harder."

"Clearly," Baekjin's grip cinched, tight enough to bruise, "You've had a bit too much."

"Maybe." He tugged rough, jerking Baekjin half an inch nearer. His breath fanned. Tequila and insubordination. "Or maybe I just like giving you something to moan about. Keeps your complexion lively."

"There's something seriously wrong with you."

"And what about you?" He smiled, lazy but sharp. "Nothing wrong...at all?"

Baekjin's heartbeat kicked into double-time. Woozy by proximity and confronted. "Mind your business." He snaps.

"You are my business." He gave Baekjin a dazed look over. "You're like a nun hiding a secret under her skirt. I never behaved in church."

The implication pressed in, painfully spot on. Baekjin burned with exposure, like cafeteria food under a heat lamp. His collar bit. A flush crept high up his neckline. He went taut all at once.

"Stop talking." He whispered. Barbed but brittle.

Then, like a cornered animal, he thrashed. He drove both hands into Humin's chest and shoved. Humin stumbled back, balance sloppy and alcohol-soft. He lurched, then went down hard on his tailbone with an aching hiss.

Baekjin didn't offer a hand. He didn't apologise or ask if he's hurt. He just bolted like someone had spiked the oxygen. Away from the exposure. Away from a sobering Humin with wounded eyes. Away from the guilt.

Back at the party, Baekjin had to put on a calm front. Breathe, socialise, and act like he wasn't walking around with a pussy between his legs and manhandled a drunk coworker who absolutely knew it too.

———

It all came to a head on the annual company retreat.

A corporate-funded weekend of mandatory fun and team bonding under duress. This year, it featured woodland views and forest lodges.

Initially, the weekend progressed with suspicious ease. Scenario workshops on responsible lending, seminars on innovation, presentations from guest speakers.

Then there were the less mind-numbing activities. And that was where Humin made his presence felt. In group meals, he'd gently top off Baekjin's plate like it was second nature. When they went canoeing, he blindly reached out and stabilised Baekjin's canoe so he didn't capsize. On hikes, he lingered behind Baekjin like a shadow waiting to protect. In a campfire, he draped a blanket over Baekjin's lap as if by habit.

Baekjin was disarmed by the shift.

His true nature made its dramatic reappearance after a pleasant, civil Saturday dinner. Lodge dining, private room, floor seating. Someone suggested immortalising the moment with a group selfie.

And naturally, Humin suddenly materialised at Baekjin's side.

They all huddled together to fit within frame. Baekjin sat legs extended under the low table, positioned at the centre like the mastermind behind this unfortunate idea.

"Move in closer, you're out of shot." The server tasked with taking the photo, said innocently...or secretly in on it.

Because that's when it happened.

Bodies pressed from all sides, nudging Humin impossibly closer until they were leg to leg. Baekjin stole a sidelong glance at his expression but his face betrayed nothing. Just that easygoing charm, mindful of professional boundaries.

"Strike a pose!" The server said cheerfully.

Then Humin's hand fell on his thigh.

A tad too high.

Baekjin felt it like a spark of voltage. The subtle placement, the mock accidental splay of his palm.

His luxury slacks suddenly felt paper-thin. Offering nothing to dull the touch. And for their price, they resisted very little when Humin's fingers curved. A casual gesture, entirely harmless on camera.

Until Humin's pinky inched inward.

Right along the inseam of his trousers.

And then paused.

Just a brief stop, but loud enough to imply a question.

A moment so brief it almost went unnoticed. The room didn't pause with Humin or still with Baekjin. On camera, their closeness read as team unity. Off camera, Baekjin felt the touch like a fundamental shift.

Because even without words, Baekjin sensed it. Humin's uncertainty. The mute confusion. The tentative press of a finger where a bulge was supposed to be. Where there was now nothing.

No shape. No weight. No fabric disturbance. Just a flat, unassuming surface concealing a heat that shouldn't be there.

Once the camera was tucked away, the crowd dispersed, sliding back into their seats. But Humin remained in place. Sidled. Hand still perched too high on Baekjin's thigh, smooth as disinterest. He leaned into the table talk immediately, a flawless decoy for where his attention truly was.

As if nothing worth commentary just happened. As if he hadn't just discovered his boss was suspiciously lacking some very essential, very defining, masculine hardware below the belt.

Like it was completely normal and no one needed to break out a lab coat or sound the emergency sirens.

Baekjin swallowed against the dryness in his throat. Trying his best to settle his expression into something calm. His head swam, even though his wineglass sat untouched. And then, out of habit, his leg began to bounce.

And Humin's hand responded. This time with half the hesitation and twice the nerve.

He forwent the subtlety of a pinky, angling the heel of his palm inward and letting it pass over the area where Baekjin's dick should have been. Contact so light it could have passed for a simple reposition.

Humin spoke on, unbroken by it. Eyes ahead. Face blank, neutral, balanced. Like he wasn't nearly cupping a palmful of dickless supervisor.

For Baekjin, it was nuclear.

His breath snagged shallow. His leg ceased its rhythm. Heat crawled under his suit until every fastened button felt oppressive. And his pulse scattered everywhere at once. Pounding behind his temples, echoing in his throat and leaping somewhere low.

Pressure was applied in acknowledgement. Deliberate now. Like even with his gaze fixed ahead and his mouth moving, Humin caught every small inconsistency in Baekjin's demeanour.

His hand drifted downward slowly, light as a whisper. Discerning the shape.

Baekjin's stomach dropped. He froze, like sitting perfectly still might make the movement evaporate on sheer will. Composure is everything, he chants in his head, you're not some teenage girl swooning over skin contact. This is just some kind of ... seizure. Endure. Endure. End-

Humin's thumb drags down once, curious, mapping the outline to understand it, until it grazed right where the heat was concentrated.

And Baekjin flinched. Visibly. His hips jumped. Luckily overlooked by overlapping chatter across the room.

Then it hits him. A throb, like a heart just learning to beat. Low pitted, as if drawn from impossibly deep within. Somewhere untouched and somehow, needy.

Humin's face doesn't stay stoic then. He doesn't break character but he casts a brief glance over Baekjin, like he needed to absorb this reaction. Their eyes lock, Baekjin's wide and compromised, Humin's, with the easy fascination of someone who'd struck gold by accident.

Baekjin sees it as he turns back, the flicker of a smirk at the corner of his lips. Like he'd finally grasped the lay of the land between Baekjin's legs. Had the instruction manual and knew how to navigate it.

His hand adjusts with new terrain awareness. More confident and discreet. Experienced, in a way that said this wasn't his first rodeo.

That this wasn't the first time his hand wandered beneath tables.

And for some absurd reason, that's the thought that jolts Baekjin up to his feet. Flustered and urgent. He adjusts his pants, the way a man would, then clears his throat and excuses himself to the bathroom.

He just about explodes into the restroom, catching the basin with clammy hands and panting hard. Inhaling deep, like he was trying to catch up on missed breath. He arches forward, yanks his tie and nearly rips open his collar.

Everything sat on his skin like an accusation. He felt cornered, hemmed in by his cuffs, choked by his collar, and above all, haunted by the relentless pulsing between his thighs.

"Why him of all people?" He grunted. Defeated. "Pick someone else. You're not even meant to exist. You don't get an opinion."

"Giving a pep talk to your crotch?" Humin's voice cuts in from behind.

Because naturally, his paranormal genitals were now a shared concern that required discussion.

Baekjin moved fast. He knew secrets like this didn't come without humiliation rituals. He wasn't going to let Humin serve his. So he seized him by the lapels and slammed him up against the nearest wall.

"What the fuck are you playing at?" He hissed.

"Funny you should ask." Humin said with casual ease, like he wasn't being throttled. "I have questions."

"No you don't." Baekjin cinched his grip around the collar of his hoodie.

"Believe me. I do." He cocked his head. "Was there like, a procedure or?"

Baekjin drove him further up the wall. "I said no questions!"

"Then...if I can't ask you—"

Humin's hand worms its way to his front. Baekjin barely had time to react before two fingertips traced across the heat between his legs. It was mortifying how quickly his hips bucked after it. How even that whisper of friction made something in his belly flutter and squirm.

"Woah..boss, it's really-" Humin's gaze drops to his own hand, watching every motion. "You're actually wet. Is it one of those self-lubricating sex toys?"

"Shut up!" Baekjin groaned. Horrified. "What do you think you're d—"

His hand darts down to wrap around Humin's wrist and yank him away. But then Humin changes rhythm, rubbing teasing, practised little circles where the pulsing was strongest. His slacks hugged him where he burned hottest, fabric, meant to chafe, instead nestled with torturous precision.

And Baekjin broke.

His resistance crumbled almost instantly, and his hand fell slack. Momentum lost. Clutching Humin's wrist like a lifeline, not a trespasser.

"It feels like the real deal." Humin murmured in wonder. "Wait. So it's not surgically installed?"

"No." Baekjin tried to steady his breathing. "Bastard. Stop touching it."

"It's not complaining." Humin's fingers pause. "Really though. Where the fuck did your dick go?"

"I don't know!" His voice pitched high and desperate. "I woke up and it was just...gone. Like a fucking curse or something."

Humin's eyes lingered on his pants, unapologetic and indiscreet. Then he met Baekjin's gaze again, the faintest smirk twitching at his lips.

"Or an upgrade." He said. A little too amused. "Depending on how you're wired."

"You're just wired wrong."

"Sweetheart, I was already sold on the original." He beamed with obnoxious ease. "This bonus entry point is just lucky."

Baekjin glared at him, twisting a fist into the fabric of his hoodie. "How the fuck is this lucky?"

"Is it like...all accounted for? Like fully functional?"

"I'm going to kill you."

"Have you, you know, tried breaking it in?" He leaned back, like he was trying to gauge Baekjin's reaction.

Baekjin felt the wind punch out of him. "Please stop talking."

But Humin is structurally incapable of shutting up. "Oh my god. Did you masturbate?"

"Park Humin."

"I'm like two layers shy of a hand in your pants. Drop the formalities, Baekjin-ah."

Baekjin throws him a long suffering look, suddenly very aware of where Humin's hand was parked like it was part of the furniture. He shoves again. This time Humin just absorbs the impact.

"What?" He asked sweetly. "I'm being helpful here. You're a 33 year old virgin. Maybe God gave you a pussy for better odds."

"You're so fired." Baekjin seethed. Ego bruised.

Humin leaned in, stopping just short of a kiss. Close enough to count the heartbeats in Baekjin's neck. Every inch of him shifted forward, like he wanted to feast on the way the words landed on Baekjin's composure.

"What if," he dragged out the sentence, like he was savouring the flavour against his teeth before letting the words commit to the room, "We had sex?"

Baekjin's whole body jerked. A primal rejection in the snap of his muscles. "You're a degenerate." 

"I'm practical."

"Yeah, practically a pervert."

He brushed past the slur like it was background noise. "Purely for research purposes, of course. Consider it a field test. Science. Maybe stimulation hits the factory reset."

Baekjin blinked slow and appalled. The logic was so warped he couldn't even find the words to tear it down. "I'm actually talking to a functioning psychopath right now." He said to the room.

"You're the one with a medical-mystery pussy Baekjin-ah, I'm just offering to help you run the first diagnostic."

Baekjin glowers. "Convenient." 

"Considerate." Humin corrected with a grin that was all teeth and zero remorse.

Baekjin breathed through the absurdity. The first time there was a tectonic shift in reality, Baekjin had barely kept his footing. And here Humin was, acting as if the answer was as simple as it was sick.

It was laughably broken.

It was an intellectual atrocity.

It was an ugly, desperate math that Baekjin would sooner die than confess he was adding up. "You think...fucking me will... stimulate regrowth?" He asked, small and self-loathing.

"I mean. Worth a gamble, right?" Humin chuckled. "It's a low-risk trial. Worst case scenario, you're just a virgin with a story. Best case? You're fixed."

"Low-risk and you cannot coexist."

"Don't be a flirt." Humin smiled. "I'm trying to stay objective."

"Objective?" Baekjin spluttered a harsh, airless laugh. "You're a pervert playing scientist."

"A pervert with a plan is exactly what you need right now, so..." Humin backed off,  "Guilty as charged."

He stepped back, just enough to let the cold air wash over the heat of Baekjin's damp skin. Hands coming up in a mock gesture of surrender, like he was the one being reasonable between them. 

He let his gaze drop, lingering and pointed, to the dark, saturated bloom on Baekjin's slacks. His eyes following the curve of his thighs, tracking every tremble. When he finally looked up, he met Baekjin's frantic stare with the calm of a man who had just seen the future. 

"My cabin door isn't locked Baekjin." His voice dropped to a register that made the room ten degrees hotter. "Come find me if you get curious."

Just like that, he was gone. He didn't close the door behind him. He left it swinging on its hinges like an open invitation.

The quiet that followed was unbearable. Baekjin shivered. Every nerve alive. Wet fabric cooling against his skin with the gust of wind. Humin had left him with two doors wide open.

The silence of the room only made the physical noise louder. Baekjin could call it 'system error' all he wanted, but he was standing in a pool of his own biological betrayal. His thighs tacky and hot. The pulse in his groin so insistent it felt like a second heart trying to thud through the floorboards. 

He was a pulse of raw ache. Already clenching around nothing. Over-ripe and slick.

Like his body had already accepted the invitation before logic did.

But the truly dreadful part. The part that made him want to claw at his own skin. Was the suffocating weight of his own silence. 

That hollow space where a 'no' was cued. On the tip of his tongue. The right thing to say.

He said nothing. And in that silence, Humin's experiment had already begun. 

———

Four hours and three wineglasses for sedation later, Baekjin found himself sprawled on Humin's bed. In one of Humin's compression gym tees that was too form fitting and boxers so sheer, they felt like indecent exposure.

He lay with his knees hiked, thighs falling open just enough to accommodate Humin's sober presence. The gracious host, who lured him in with a sense of safety, now loomed between his legs in a surgical crouch. Eyes scanning him over with mechanical curiosity. 

Baekjin's gaze scattered everywhere but Humin. 

Eye contact was out of the question. Not with Humin's strong arms framing his legs like a trap he'd willingly walked into. He could feel Humin's gaze like a touch tracking lower, with stunned, focused intensity. Looking for all the world like he expected Baekjin's slick intruder to sprout a mouth and start explaining its own biology. 

"Strictly for research." Humin insisted, his voice chilled to a professional edge that didn't belong in a bedroom. The words stiff as a rehearsed script. 

It was a lie so transparent, it practically glowed and Baekjin didn't buy a single syllable of it. He glared at Humin's hovering form, anticipation stifling him mute. Hands knotting in the fabric of the stolen gym tee that smelled too much like Humin and a missed wash cycle.

The spread of his legs was humiliating enough to spark a flush red as summerwine, with Humin between them, the rest of his skin drank it eagerly. Kindling along his inner thighs. 

"I've checked my feelings at the door. I promise." Humin murmured, unprovoked. "My ancient crush on you is currently removed from the equation. I'm a professional and this is just science."

"Please. You're literally starry eyed right now." Baekjin bit out, voice cracking.

"Can't blame me." Humin snickered somewhere inappropriate. "They stuck a pussy on my favourite idol. How did you expect me to react?" 

Baekjin coughed out a choke before it seized his throat. "With professional distance."

"Let's redefine that, shall we?" Baekjin could hear the smug in his voice without seeing it.

Still he offered no resistance when those fingers, warm and terrifyingly familiar, found the hem of his boxers. For all his eagerness, Humin didn't grab, he just mapped. He traced the inseam with the patient, agonising precision of a man following a blueprint. Applying steady, constant pressure that lingered like a brand. Right where the timeline of his life had fractured into a before and after.

His head dipped for a closer look and his breath drew slow. 

"It's so..." He whispered, struck. Baekjin caught the glint in his eyes. Feral, thrilled like he'd just discovered his favourite new toy, only it wasn't on a shelf, it was strategically installed between his boss's legs. 

And he stared. With a kind of glee that suggested he was never focusing at work again.

"Don't start." Baekjin warned. Summerwine flush flaring aggressive red.

"Lifelike." He finally got out. "And like pink, offensively pink. Is that because it's factory fresh or?" 

"Jesus Christ." Baekjin clamped his hands over his eyes, wishing for the floor to open. "Take me now."

"And it looks so...velvety? I'm still in the observation phase and it's already doing this—this thing." Humin's hand drifted closer, his palm pressing into the damp, yielding heat. "You're burning up, Jin-ah."

"Park Humin." Baekjin groaned, voice a pale imitation of his managerial tone. It felt thin under the context. Mocking. Like he wasn't allowed to use it with a lap-full of colleague. 

"And definitely a little slick." He observed on like a formal report.

"Humin!" 

"Baku, and you will." Humin said sharply, thumbnail dragging against the throb until his pelvis lurched. Baekjin didn't just shudder. He resonated. And choked. 

"Oh my god." He buried his face into his forearm. The sensation was sharp and blunt. And frying every defence mechanism he had in place.

"Not God." Humin gave another caress that made Baekjin's heart suspend a beat. "Baku."

Baekjin tried to kill it, swallow it down, choke it back, but it hurtled out all the same. "Baku—" He panted. "You son of a bitch!"

"Language." Humin tutted, half-defensive and entirely delighted. "I'm still being a gentleman. I haven't even gone under the hood yet."

"Fuck you." Baekjin hissed, head lolling back against the pillow like the minor friction taxed all his energy reserves. 

"So hostile." He teased. "Not very leadership-forward of you, boss."

Humin didn't look offended, he looked fed. He took the 'fuck you' like it was a performance bonus, leaning in until his lips were inches away from the wet, jumping heat of fabric. 

"If you want to keep your authority, boss," He whispered, "You're going to have to stop vibrating for me here first."

His protesting kick was just wasted effort, weak and pathetic against Humin. Caught by the ankle and easily reinstalled firmly onto the mattress with athletic reflexes.

"I love it when you play rough but I'm trying to conduct a tactile assessment here." He muttered, brow furrowed in fake academic frustration. "It's not like there's a manual for when your boss becomes a biological plot twist. But hold on—" He trails off, a new, dumber thought clearly taking flight. "Legally speaking...is it your pussy? Like, do you have to return it to the Gods by Monday or something?"

Baekjin made a noise like his soul was leaving his body. 

"Of all people..." He wheezed, to the ceiling, to his new stupid anatomy, anyone in the heavens that might take pity on him, "This is who it invited between my legs. Have mercy."

"On us all. Amen. Now that the praying's over, shall we focus up?" Humin chuckled, too besotted. "First order of business. Seeing how this thing handles a little attention."

Baekjin tensed. Waiting for the sky to fall.

When Humin made contact, he touched him with intent. No more hovering, no more fabric, just warm, focused fingers tracing the searing, wet heat between his legs. The friction was slight, but the effect was catastrophic. Baekjin's hips bucked into an arc, a frantic squirming sensation taking root deep in his belly.

Humin's hum was low, vibrating with a terrible kind of realisation. "Wow."

Baekjin risked a glance through the shield of his fingers, voice a humiliated rasp. "Don't be a freak. It feels crazy."

"I'm a man of science, Baekjin." Humin countered. "Just appreciating the subject's...response time. I haven't even gone internal yet and it's already blinking."

He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of the boxers, eyes searching Baekjin's face. Not in unspoken request, no, to test the limits of Baekjin's shame. Pushing to see if he would really play the 'subject' until the very end. 

Baekjin stayed silent. Heart hammering against his ribs.

Then the fabric dropped and something fundamental did too. The chill of the room hit his skin but the vulnerability came with the stinging intensity of Humin's stare. His eyes didn't just wander, they anchored until his composure cracked.

"Fuck." He whispered, the word heavy with unfiltered greed. "Fucking hell, Baekjin. That's...devastating. There's no way the universe just handed me this."

"Baku, don't—"

"I'm serious." Humin leaned back, expression borderline religious. "It looks...shit. It looks custom-built to ruin my life. It's like God saw how much I wanted you and split you open just to show me you're even prettier and pinker inside than I imagined."

"You're fucking insane." Baekjin forced out, insult losing its teeth as he looked down at the man worshipping his thighs. With so much devotion it sent his heart reeling.

His fingers returned, stripped of any hesitation. Bold and brave. Dragging his nails lightly over the swollen edges, just enough to make Baekjin spasm and tremble, before hooking two fingers in and slowly, relentlessly, spreading him open.

Baekjin's head snapped back, a broken gasp muffled into his forearm.

"You're so fucking tight." Humin breathed, eyes fixed on the way the skin stretched. "Like circulation cutting tight. It's filthy how you're gripping me."

His fingertips worked in tiny, agonising circles just past the entrance. Spreading the wet sheen. "You're...fuck." Humin rasped, winded. "You're so warm in there, Baekjin. It's like a fever taking years off my life."

Baekjin was a wreckage of shaky breaths and swallowed sounds. Humin leaned in, his shadow falling over Baekjin's lap, like he needed a portrait check to know he wasn't hallucinating. 

Then a single finger breached inside, sliding home with a slow, experimental drag. Baekjin's teeth clamped down into the skin of his forearm to keep any decibels from breaking past his lips.

"Make the sounds Jin-ah." He rolled his finger, practised and so precise, Baekjin felt it in spirit. "You're only going to get fuller from here, so just make the sounds."

Baekjin trembled, "I don't make any sou—" 

Humin introduced a second finger. And Baekjin's composure didn't just slip, it shattered.

A whine was wrenched from his throat, full and unguarded. His hips arched up into the rhythm with a starved sort of desperation. No longer running, but seeking. Humin met him halfway without rush, movements agonisingly languid and punishing. A slow, deep curl of his knuckles that felt like he was trying to reach Baekjin somewhere theoretical. 

"The way you're squeezing me." Humin groaned, stilling his fingers a moment so Baekjin can see the way his own hips chase. "You're so fucking responsive. Like you were born to be used."

Baekjin couldn't manage a jab back. He couldn't manage any sound that wasn't jagged. All his cognitive functions had dissolved to static.

"I'm looking at this and I can't imagine you any other way." Humin said, breathless. "I'm kind of hoping you're stuck like this."

Humin didn't break his rhythm. He wasn't rushing, wasn't being rough. He was just agonisingly consistent. His fingers dancing inside with a slow, clinical curiosity that felt like torture. Baekjin tried to build on it, pick up the pace, sate the hunger metastasizing in his belly.

But Humin, the unrepentant bastard, just curbed him every time. When Baekjin's hips rolled, he pulled out slightly, just to plunge back in when he stilled. Like Baekjin was a dog learning to sit still.

And he did it all with a stupid, content grin on his face. 

"I seriously. Hate you." Baekjin whispered, low and mean. Not trusting it to turn suggestive at a higher pitch.

Humin didn't say anything. Just served him one of those cordial waxed smiles that kept him charming. Then shoved his fingers in even deeper, burying them to the hilt. 

Baekjin's brain hit a wall of static.

His arms felt like lead, resistance draining away, thighs quivering beyond his control, and his heart skipped too many beats to be viable. The fingers that had been teasing and scientific, now shed their curiosity, to stop testing and start taking. 

Humin started fucking into him the way he grovelled for, and Baekjin balked. The gentle touch vanished, replaced by brutish, insistent thrusts that came to occupy, not visit.

Baekjin's eyes fluttered shut. His thoughts were a shouting match of unfiltered panic. The reality of having a pussy was closing in on him, but Humin was doing his damnest to pry it back open, to slip inside and set himself in stone until Baekjin's body felt nothing except the shape of him. 

That stupid, amused smirk returned, like Humin's default 'I'm having a blast' facial setting. Then he hummed, an obscene, indulgent sound. "You asked for it, now you're mewling." He gave an airy laugh. Angling his invading fingers deeper. "Damn, you're tight. It's like, an ethical contradiction how you're holding onto me like your life depends on it at the same time."

"Baku, I swear to God-" Baekjin whimpered, knuckles white where he clutched a fistful of his jumper sleeve. "If you don't just shut the fuck up—"

"In a minute." Humin chirped, the words a sharp contrast to the blunt-force of his fingers. "I need to know the physics of it. Does it feel weird-bad or weird-good? Because you're milking my hand like you were born for it."

Baekjin was disintegrating. His thighs were a vibrating mess against the mattress, his knees pinned wide and useless by the weight of Humin. Every drag of those fingers felt like a chemical burn of pleasure, sending his pulse rebounding. 

Humin was stalling on purpose, working him open with the cruel precision of an archeologist mining for gold. He was being excavated. And then like little metal detectors that struck true, Humin's fingers twisted just right until something inside Baekjin rattled off the shelf. 

He tried to stifle his shameful noises, tried to find his voice amongst the havoc, but the coiling fire in his gut was too loud and only getting louder. Not in waves, it wasn't a gradual progression, he was reaching higher altitudes at erratic speed. 

He opened his mouth. Poured out a rushed, "Humin. Fuck— Wait—" 

But Humin never waited.

Where others saw a boundary, he found an accelerant. He bottomed out, leaning into it, putting the full weight of his shoulder behind the intrusion like he knew exactly what he was doing. 

And then Baekjin glitched. The escalation was instant and total. He was suddenly launched into a sensory stratosphere beyond his own nervous system's ability to process and he reached fever pitch. Then the dam finally burst. 

Every wall Baekjin had left just liquefied into overwhelming release. A hot, torrential gush that seemed impossible for one body to hold. It soaked Humin's hand up to the wrist and seeped into his sleeve, running hot down his own trembling thighs.

"You just..." Humin blinked, like this was the most impossible part of the entire ordeal. "Oh my god. You just fucking squirted, boss."

Shame slammed into Baekjin like a brick wall. He recoiled behind his own forearm to not look at it. Or Humin. Or open his eyes ever again for that matter. 

"Humin." He tried to reach for a managerial tone, but it came back flat, a stripped wreck, like even his vocal cords knew he wasn't in charge anymore.

"That was fucking holy." Humin held up his fingers with too much fascination for what they glistened with. "Like once in a lifetime cinematic. I'm talking top-tier fountain display."

"Do you ever stop talking?"

"You geysered Baekjin. I've seen squirting before but I've never seen that." He stared at his own hand as if he was memorising the density. Then he brought them up to his lips. Sucked them clean, and proceeded, like nothing was amiss. "That was a masterclass. Do you feel any better? Any changes?"

Baekjin's breath broke into a high, humiliated hitch. He shook his head against his forearm. All he felt was relentless pressure, like his heart decided that was its new escape route and tried to push out. His pulse was heavy where it felt the absence of Humin's fingers, like some distress signal for more tampering. He decisively kept that fact private.

He tried to scramble for a throw blanket, anything to reclaim some modesty. But Humin was already pinning him down with his gaze.

"You're leaking again." He whispered, leaning close to feel the steam rising off Baekjin's skin. "You're still not tapped out. Look at you."

Humin's fingers shifted tactic when they reached a second time. Rubbing slow, coaxing motions into the folds like they were trying to pry honesty from him. Baekjin flinched on instinct. Muscles tensing then releasing like his body remembered what to do even though he was consciously still in white-out territory.

"You feel that?" He mused rough with arousal, poking a finger against Baekjin's entrance so the suction became a physical, material shame. "Beneath all that corporate posturing you're just greedy, Baekjin. Look how desperate you are."

"End the fucking narration." Baekjin wheezed, trying to disappear into the bedding.

"Stop hiding your face. Look at me." He wheedled, tone dropping to something too affectionate for all that spilled out of him in the heat of the moment.

Baekjin didn't shift an inch. Shame refused him on any level that mattered. Because facing Humin meant acknowledgement. 

Acknowledging that his juvenile underling, with his stunted moral compass, pathetic transparent crush, and his brazen motorbike riding hands were the ones to break him. It was the ultimate indignity. And Baekjin struggled to breathe around it.

His glass walls were caving in, and his stupid, traitorous body, still pulsed like it wanted the whole highrise.

"Hey." Humin said gently, softly pinning his forearm down into the mattress. "Just breathe. I'll take care of you. I always have."

Baekjin blinked up, eyes glazed with overwhelm. Humin had nothing but sincerity in his gaze, something fragile, almost more consuming than any physical gesture that transpired. It looked like devotion, absolute and complete, like he was a man who struck lucky by faith alone. And his religion was Baekjin.

"It's okay." He whispered. Small and honest. "I would never hurt you. Here or anywhere."

And for some reason, Baekjin believed it, truly. Deep as the marrow of his bones.

But when he looked down between them, his optimism shook. He didn't know when Humin shed his sweatpants, or when he'd positioned himself between Baekjin's legs. But it was a systematic collision. 

The visual was almost graphic in distinction. Humin's dick, as he'd once imagined it on the last-ditch effort of a particularly lonely night, stood arrogant, thick and disgracefully bigger than anything Baekjin ever packed. Stationed next to his own, raw, rose-hued vulnerability. It was almost a study in impossible opposites.

The contrast was so warped that it was outright filthy. And hilarious. In a way that made Baekjin feel like maybe his whole life was just a skit leading up to this porno thumbnail moment.

Humin's eyes flicked up to his own, compassion distorted into something crooked. "You love your logic don't you? Just look at how well we're about to fit. Proportions don't get it wrong."

Baekjin braves a storm of shudders to find his voice. "You're morally corrupt." He glares, less barbed than usual. "And you watch too much porn."

Humin huffed a chuckle. "That was me buttering you up. I had a lock and key analogy lined up. You would've hated it."

Baekjin laughed. Real. Overindulgent, because Humin was a thorn in his side with dulled edges and all he needed to do was press to know, he wouldn't hurt. He wasn't unwelcome. Just overlooked until cosmic intervention forced Baekjin to pause on him.

Humin positioned himself, slow and teasing. Nudging against Baekjin's entrance with that blunt insistence that defined him.

He was an invader, yes. But not to conquer, just to play house. And right now, he was set on rearranging the furniture.

Then it took all of Baekjin's willpower to stifle the moan that pushed out at the same moment Humin pressed in, practised and tentative, inch by violently blessed inch. Baekjin's eyes snapped shut on instant, body dissolving pliant against the sudden pressure.

The first few inches were an overwhelming excess that rewrote the way air worked. A sharp, strained inhale reminded Baekjin he was still present, still bound to breath.

And Humin metered his momentum. Steadied. Knew how much space he occupied in a room and fit himself accordingly. Paced himself with a patience that knew how to break something in.

There was no pain to the stretch, only an easing discomfort that was soothed with every feed of more Humin.

"You're a natural." Humin hummed. "Always polite but you have no manners here."

Baekjin broke off a defiant sound like he wanted to lie against the testimony of his own body. But the more of Humin he took in, the more words died in his throat.

"Taking me so well and shivering for more." He exhaled, winded by it.

Baekjin wanted to deny. Stem the bleeding tremors. Bitch. Kill Humin. Instead, all he did was take it, twitching.

The sensation was a total system override. The fullness, the slick heat Baekjin produced just to make him feel welcome, the tight latching that tried to keep him from ever leaving. It defied every law of logic Baekjin ever kneeled to.

Logic couldn't explain how seamless the fit was. As though Baekjin was carved out to the exact impression of Humin's weight. Like their geometry was fated. Like the hex had an endgame and this was it.

Humin moved with fluent ease, like their bodies were a language he was well versed in. Tame and steady, eyes never leaving Baekjin's face as he monitored the slow, structural destruction of his authority.

He was fucking the demotion into him, inch at a time. Every pump stripping off his supervisor suit, article by article. 

Slow and controlled was the total collapse. The moment a historically composed superior was hollowed out, reduced to a breathless, receptive mess that only knew how to ache and clench.

"You're doing amazing, baby." He praised in an appreciative grunt. "So tight. But making room for me. You're a fucking dream."

Baekjin couldn't keep his voice grounded in a frequency that didn't sound laboured. All he offered were shuddering pleas. Hands finding purchase on Humin's shoulders to not roll with the tide as his hips snapped forward, deepening their connection until Baekjin felt the heat of him against his soul.

"So fucking beautiful." He panted, voice thick with infatuation. "So snarky and mean, buttoned up and porcelain. So uptight its almost a metaphor. You were magic before the trick, Baekjinie."

Baekjin clamped down around him with a rhythmic, trembling desperation that felt like both a welcome and a protest. And it was perfect in its harmony. In its personification of them.

Every slight twitch inside him was Humin's calculated torture, a teasing friction that turned the quiet air of the room into a symphony of Baekjin's unravelling. Wet degrading, squelches, the slick, suctioning gasps of his new body. It was his emasculation made soundtrack.

Note by note, he was debased. And Humin knew it too. Revelled in it. Suppressed his own sounds to savour it.

"So wet. So vocal." He gives another thrust just to hear it sing. "That's no sound a gentleman should be making, Jin-ah."

Then, as if he'd unearthed something buried, Baekjin moaned. A breathy whine, like his humiliation was missing a closing note.

Humin chuckled, a smitten sound. "Solid denial."

And it was hard to tolerate Humin, it always has been, but there was something entirely too convincing about the feel of him. He didn't feel like a stranger between Baekjin's legs, he felt like someone his organs were always poised to embrace.

Baekjin's knees go weak and fall pliant against the mattress, and his thighs spread open to house more of Humin. He's deeper now, bottoming out and every fibre in Baekjin's body tuned into the sensation. He's aware of Humin's length in unfathomable depths. And his walls throb, clench, like they were trying to memorise the shape of him.

"So pretty, Baekjin-ah." Humin's hands on his hips gripped him possessively. "I wanna dress you up like the girl you are. Lace and lingerie."

Baekjin's fingers twist into the bedding, chin tipping up to bear his neck, spine arching up into Humin. He was vile, he was filthy, but Baekjin's body listened with ears of its own. And his mind, traitorous co-conspirator, supplied him an unhelpful visual of it.

Himself, his face and his long, masculine legs. Streamlined by casual cardio. Elegant tapered pillars that carried him to success. In slacks. In suit pants. With lingerie peeking at the hip.

"Oh my god, you're fucking into it." Humin gasped in breathless disbelief. "You want to dress the part, baby? Be my bitch? Wear panties I pick out for you?"

Baekjin whimpered. Viscerally humiliated. "Fuck you."

"You are." Humin smirked, fucking into him deep to punctuate. Baekjin's head tilts with it, knocking back into the headboard. "And you should see how good you look doing it with my shirt on."

Humin's hands shift to cup the curves of his under thighs, squeezing down until the blunt of his nails imprinted. Then, in one fluid motion, his hands descend and hike up his knees, bending until they pressed flush against Baekjin's torso.

Baekjin produced a raw, undignified sound at the shift. Humin folded him with mortifying ease, but any protest died a sweet, ruinous death in his throat because Humin was suddenly grinding to a depth that felt like the core of Baekjin's identity.

The new position was humiliating, shameful, and a wickedly calculated slight on Humin's part. Because Baekjin wasn't meant to fold like this. Baekjin once had anatomy that would've resisted. And Humin was pressing into him in ways that lingered eternally so he never forgot.

So that even if he was fixed, he would always feel him.

His centre of gravity shifted. Humin drove into him at a new, steep angle that smothered every functional nerve in his body. He was relentless. Claiming. He had a lifelong crush that Baekjin was going to answer for gut-deep.

Baekjin's pulse fractured, his head now steadily thudded against the headboard, and the fever pitch was now in his marrow.

"Look, Jin-ah." He said softly, luring. "Look down."

Baekjin whimpered his refusal, so Humin lunged forward, thrusting himself so deep Baekjin convulsed back into awareness. Pupils blown and eyes wide.

His gaze fell to where Humin's line of sight was, and transfixed.

It was something that should've been nauseating. A disfigurement. A distortion of the Baekjin he'll never be again. Horrifying, marring, unnatural. A Humin sized bulge pulsing under the skin of his belly.

Every molecule of his being ceased. His eyes widened. He wanted to shriek. He forgot how to breathe, how to blink, how to facilitate himself. And then Humin, the pesky motherfucker, began rocking slowly. Putting on a show.

"See how far you let me in." He exhaled. Giving a featherlight stroke of his knuckle against the swell. "You can't want me this deep unless you plan on babytrapping me, Baekjinie."

Baekjin stared on in morbid astonishment. Struck atomically silent. All he could do was watch as it nudged the surface then disappeared back into him, only to reemerge.

"Is that it?" Humin's eyes flick up to meet his, intoxicated, blissed out. "You want to give me a baby?"

Baekjin balked. "What are you sayi—"

"I'm cosy with your belly button right now Jinie." He chuckled. "Someone didn't listen in biology class."

"Wh-"

Humin rolled into him at a torturous pace. "That how it is? You have a womb now so you spread your legs for me? Did your natural selection radar finally ping on me?"

"I don't—" Baekjin wheezed. "I don't have a womb!"

"Hey, it’s a magically appearing pussy. I'm just covering all the angles." Humin laughed.

Then he leaned in until his breath was hot against Baekjin's neck. "What if you can? Get pregnant with my babies? Can you make them pretty as you?"

Baekjin's hands shot up, nails biting into the skin of Humin's back. Humiliation petering out to something unspeakable. A pulse he shouldn't feel. A throb around Humin that shouldn't be.

Humin's hand cradles his jaw, thumb tracing gentle, teasing caresses. He gazes affectionately into Baekjin's eyes. Drunk on it. Reckless. Wicked.

"Wanna be full with my babies, Baekjinie?"

Baekjin's muscles clamp down, in what he can only describe as the ultimate betrayal. His body was a mutiny. Mind of its own. And Baekjin was helpless against its niches. He could only watch as Humin's smile grew sinister.

He leaned back to a kneel, planted his hands back onto Baekjin's hips and pistoned like he was little more than a man of faith. Yielding at Baekjin's altar. And what God willed, God received.

"Order up! One baby, hold the dressing." He laughed, more to himself. "Wait. No baby without the dressing-"

Baekjin swatted at him. Growl at his teeth.

"Play nice," Humin grinned, something untoward behind it. "Or no push present."

"Kill me now." Baekjin whispered.

The sight of their connection seemed to stifle Humin mute again, like every time he looked down, he was hypnotised anew. This time, the observation boundary was broken by a burning need to touch. So he reached out, and pressed an inquisitive, residually wet thumb to Baekjin's clit.

Baekjin shuddered, pressure tightening in his gut. Humin began thumbing at him, in gentle, soul-prying, motions and Baekjin's thighs shook violently.

Then his natural instincts that never read the room kicked in and he quipped, "Have you never touched yourself?"

Baekjin couldn't formulate anything acoustic, the bloodrush in his ears pitching to a deafening degree.

"Here, let me show you how."

Humin took his hand, slack with exertion, and gently led his fingers down. Baekjin had been avoiding his new fixture like the plague. He couldn't bear to look at it, let alone feel it. But Humin separated his fingers with the kind of reverence you might handle an idol, and centred them right where everything had changed.

Baekjin gasped at the dampness, the sensitivity, the heat. It was soft, silky, vulnerable. Nothing about it blunt or ungracious. It was so unlike him it near catapulted him back into a spiral.

But Humin didn't let him stray. He closed his own hand around Baekjin's to direct the flow of his touch. Adjusting the pressure, rotating in a way that made Baekjin's blood run molten.

Then, because Baekjin's laser-like focus was most endearing to him, he tracked their hands down, slowly, momentously.

Until Baekjin felt it. Him. Humin inside him.

He flinched, hand trying to jerk away, but Humin pinned him in place.

"Don't be shy." He coaxed, tone rough but brittle. "Feel the way you're wrapped around me."

Baekjin couldn't think. Couldn't process. Could barely accomplish a coherent thought that wasn't compliance. So he let Humin do with him as he pleased. Pliant with pleasure. Humin guided his hands around their connection and Baekjin didn't think anything more obscene, filthy or vulgar even existed.

"This part of you isn't shy. Feel." Humin moved once to bring the point home. Baekjin felt every mortifying part of it. The pump, the drag, the core-deep pulse his own body responded with.

His hand retreated back up like it was scalded. The truth was a bitter pill to swallow, the feel was something else entirely. A choking hazard he couldn't even begin to chew down.

His body. This disfigured, morbid thing. Was receiving Humin like it was natural inclination. He didn't have to teach it anything. Humin just had to press right and it was willing.

"So beautiful. All of it. All of you." Humin reassured like he was tuned into the horror in his head. He smiled at Baekjin, something fond and tender, enamoured.

Then his hips picked up rhythm because he was a man of action. He wanted Baekjin to feel beautiful in it. In this new absurdity. In a skin that might not have been his own off the outset, but now fit him like the only thing that made sense.

He wanted to flood Baekjin in his admiration. Until he never doubted. Until every time he did, he saw Humin's worship, his devotion, his adoration.

They found a frequency that was the perfect hail of mutual torment, deep, relentless, a smoulder of misfiring nerves and receptive fibres. 

It was filthy, cathartic and so insanely flawed, Baekjin surrendered to it completely. Mind and body alike. And when the orgasm swept him, fierce, white hot and Humin at the edges. 

He thought: not everything — certainly not every single thing yielded to logic.