Seungho didn’t scoff. He just reached for a piece of the meat—thick-sliced boar, still steaming, edges blackened with five-spice and wild honey—and set it with careful precision at the corner of Haneul’s tray. “Boar,” he said, low. “Marinated in sweet wine. Roasted over almond wood. Caught yesterday in the northern hills.”
Haneul stared. Not at the food, but at the distance between them. Like he was measuring whether it could be crossed.
Seungho waited. Voice gentle, never begging, just offered: “It’s warm.”
No command.Just the simple, devastating act of giving.
Haneul glanced down. Silent, sullen, the whites of his eyes sharp in the lantern glow. He poked the meat. Sniffed it—so close his braid tickled the tray. His lips curled, not in disgust, but in calculation. A question flickered across his brow: Is it safe to want?
Seungho refilled his teacup. Did not press.
Haneul’s decision was simple: he bit down.
Chewed.
Stopped.
For a long moment, the room froze. Haneul’s entire body went still, jaw working in slow, stunned rhythm, eyes gone huge—somewhere between the wild animal caught in the open and a god tasting the world for the first time. Then his pupils blew wide, a rush of something feral flooding his veins.
A grin. Savage. Glorious. Wild.
He seized the tray, lacquer screeching on the table, stabbing the boar with chopsticks like it owed him a life debt. Juices splattered—onto his wrists, across his sleeves, onto the king’s own robe. He didn’t care. He waslaughing now, mouth full, eyes shining with the kind of reckless delight that belonged to battlefields and frostbitten dawns.
“How the fuck do I get another piece?!” he roared, mouth glossy with grease, braid swinging as he half-rose from his cushion.
Seungho reached—wordless, efficient—and handed him the carving knife, blade sharp, handle curved. Haneul snatched it with the fervor of a starving wolf. “YES—”
He hacked. Carved. Tore chunks loose. Etiquette forgotten. The pile of meat on his tray grew like a king’s ransom. He bit into a hunk with his bare hands, head tipped back, throat working as he swallowed, lips and chin shining with sweet fat and juice.
The sound he made—soft, broken, half-moan, half-growl—seared the air.
Seungho just watched. Smiling. Because this—this chaos, this joy—this was the real storm.
Mid-rampage, he shoved a pile onto Seungho’s plate, a greasy, steaming mountain, and announced—through a mouthful of meat, utterly unbothered, sticky-fingered and flushed—
“You must need a lot of calories just to hold the weight of your oversized cock…”
He said it like a blessing, like a ritual. Like he was naming something ancient and true, something the world had forgotten but his body remembered.
The words fell between them with the weight of prophecy.
Meat landed with a slap. Haneul blinked, still chewing, nodding as if he’d just delivered the most critical nutritional advice in the five kingdoms. His fingers shone, his cheeks puffed, his eyes wide and shining.
Seungho stilled.
Breath caught.
A stunned, silent beat—a sound not quite a laugh, not quite a groan. He dropped his chopsticks. Closed his eyes. Breathed deep—hot and desperate through his nose.
“Sky…” His voice was low, trembling.
Haneul blinked, oblivious. “What?”
“You cannot say things like that—”
“But it’s true!” He gestured at Seungho’s lap with that same wild innocence, mouth still full, gaze frank. “You’re big everywhere, I saw you in the bath… so I thought—”
“Gods help me—”
