The man’s beautiful eyes were furrowed ever so slightly. A foul smell rose from the turpentine bottle he had taken and set aside. Even though Seowoo hadn’t drunk it, it felt as though the same stench was coming from his own body.
“……I’m sorry.”
“For what.”
The lips where Lee Hyeon’s gaze landed felt like they were tingling.
“For someone like me to have taken on your exhibition work…… I’m sorry for doing that so carelessly.”
Seowoo boldly took hold of the front of Lee Hyeon’s clothes with both hands. The scent that washed over him made his head swim. With Lee Hyeon giving no response, he rambled on with his excuses.
“I shouldn’t have done it that way. It was an insult. I didn’t mean for it to be like that — but I was part of it, so I bear some fault too.”
Yoon Kangwoo’s sneering voice rang fresh in his ears.
“Does Haein Art sound crazy enough to have handed Lee Hyeon’s work to someone like you? Think about it. If you marry Director Lee Wooseok, they’ll put the gallery and Han Sooyeon’s paintings all under your name as a wedding gift. How good is that? On top of that, watching that guy pant after you means Haein Group will obviously look favorably on our company going forward. That’s the one and only way you’ll ever be useful to this family.”
Beneath the faint glow of moonlight, Seowoo looked at Lee Hyeon in silence.
He was, when it struck him anew, a staggeringly beautiful person. Something like a living embodiment of some artist’s obsession with beauty. A being born already standing in the spotlight — so accustomed to it that ordinariness was simply not possible for him. He was a man who was, in himself, a work of art.
The outline of his cold, refined smile stood out even more sharply in the darkness. Lee Hyeon was someone who had gathered every blessing the stars had to offer — without a single fragment of the bleak poverty that so often followed artists around.
And yet what made Lee Hyeon’s work shine was that it stripped away all that radiance and glowed entirely on its own. The works that had appeared behind an unidentified mask and stunned the world had seen their value skyrocket after the artist’s identity was revealed — carried now on the back of the narrative that was ‘Lee Hyeon.’
Seowoo felt a sudden dizziness. His scent felt softer than ever before, and Seowoo’s thoughts only grew more tangled.
“Did you know? That this whole exhibition was nothing more than a cheap wedding gift. That your paintings were being used as props in Director Lee Wooseok’s show.”
This is Lee Hyeon, of all people. He should have been suspicious the moment someone suggested that a greenhorn like him handle the exhibition planning for his work. Even if the reasoning was simply that he was the son of the painter who had built ‘Suryeon,’ it would have been an insult to Lee Hyeon — and on top of that, it had been entrusted to Yoon Seowoo as an omega.
Seowoo felt an unbearable shame in front of the person he had admired. It was as though the aura that had filled Suryeon was pressing him flat.
“I’d like visitors to see this painting first, the moment they step inside. The blue you use cuts right into the heart. And then after that, I was thinking of placing this one here……”
Whenever he rambled on like that, Lee Hyeon would wear an expression he couldn’t quite read. Looking back now, he had never once looked down on him — a person with not a single impressive credential to his name. He always spoke in that unbelievably low and warm voice, exhaling slow breaths like a fragrance.
“Alright. Let’s do it the way Seowoo wants.”
The tone of Lee Hyeon’s voice when he called him ‘Seowoo’ came back to him unbidden.
“Did you know?”
Once more, barely above a whisper, voice on the verge of tears — and only then did Lee Hyeon blink.
The dark blue-violet irises gave nothing away about what he was thinking. What remained was only the impression that he was extraordinarily beautiful.
A year’s worth of work had all been a deception, and yet Lee Hyeon appeared completely unmoved. Seowoo, on the other hand, felt like the more he spoke, the more tangled his words became, and he could barely follow what he was even saying anymore. The alcohol and pheromones mixed together, pulling him deeper and deeper into a haze.
Several minutes had passed with Seowoo pressing his forehead against Lee Hyeon’s chest and rambling — when suddenly, Lee Hyeon laughed out loud.
“Oh? You’re laughing right now? This is hardly something to laugh about.”
Why would he laugh at a time like this, when he barely ever laughs.
What a strange person.
“Seowoo.”
Lee Hyeon took hold of Seowoo’s chin and tilted his face up. He drew him away from his chest and made him look directly into his eyes.
“Did I look that easy to you?”
“……No.”
Oh. He’s laughing again.
“Good that you know.”
“……”
“I’m not someone who works alongside people who produce ugly results.”
“That’s true. You hate ugly things.”
“That’s not what I——”
Seowoo pulled him into a tight embrace before he could finish. At that, Lee Hyeon quietly closed his mouth. Why is he so gentle today of all days.
It wasn’t a compliment by any measure, but it was a comfort. His arms were warm, and his scent made Seowoo’s head spin. The alcohol that had risen all the way to the top of his skull had paralyzed his reason.
“Lee Hyeon. No — Hyeon.”
He had always liked that expression too — the slight, displeased lift of an eyebrow. Seowoo took a wobbling step forward, and Lee Hyeon took two steps back. Not wanting the contact to break, Seowoo took three steps — and four legs tangled together as they sank deep into the sofa.
“Ugh!”
His vision lurched wildly, and the leather sofa made a loud noise. With both their pheromones spilling and tangling together in chaos, there was no steadying himself.
“Hnn……”
Seowoo drew in a deep breath. On the verge of a breaking heat cycle, his brain felt as though it had melted away like ice cream. Maybe this is some kind of industry reward. No. Lee Hyeon is the only artist this good-looking — so it can’t be an industry thing……
“I think this might be the first time I’ve ever seen your face this close.”
He was far too close to Lee Hyeon’s dark blue-green eyes.
“Seowoo.”
“Did you know your eyes are genuinely beautiful?”
“Seo——”
The soft press of lips swallowed the sound. The voice calling his name was pleasant to hear, but the feel of those lips was something else entirely. The pheromones spilling out with each shared breath were sweet as honey.
“Ha……”
Afraid he might be pushed away, Seowoo quickly pressed their lips together again. Just brushing against each other wasn’t enough — he swallowed him whole. Pheromones pouring from Seowoo washed over Lee Hyeon, and where the two mixed, a deep, scarlet heat pooled and gathered.
The body beneath him went rigid. The chest against his arm had gone hard as stone, and Seowoo shifted against him. The complicated thoughts had long since dissolved, and the only thing that felt real was the sensation of their bodies pressed fully together.
It was like licking the skin of an apple — sweet, maddeningly teasing. Below had long since made its presence known, swollen and straining. Seowoo didn’t even realize he was rolling his hips.
As though answering the desperate, aching sounds he was making, Lee Hyeon’s lips parted slightly. Startled by a sensation far more intense than imagined, Seowoo’s eyes flew open and he pulled back.
“After all that.”
Lee Hyeon’s voice came out rough and low, a brief complaint. A hand closed around the back of Seowoo’s neck, and his head was pressed firmly downward. Through Seowoo’s startled, parted lips, Lee Hyeon’s tongue pushed inside.
At the same moment, his arm wrapped around Seowoo’s waist. With no room left to move, his lower body was ground against him in a slick, wet drag. When the two hard lengths pressed and rutted against each other through the fabric between them, a helpless, broken sound tore free.
“Hnn — mmn.”
As his tongue was sucked, it felt as though he was growing wet below. The thing being scraped was only the roof of his mouth — so why did it feel like the tip of his cock was about to burst.
Not losing consciousness was the most he could manage. His blood had risen until his head felt ready to split open, and as he strained his neck to hold on, the veins on Seowoo’s forehead stood out sharply. He was so dizzy that he could barely tell where he was — time and space had both gone sideways. The only thing he knew for certain was whose pheromones he was drowning in.
“Hh — ha…… Hyeon.”
While he was out of his mind, the world flipped upside down. Lee Hyeon had climbed over him and leaned down. Seowoo was so overwhelmed he could almost believe the dim gallery had been swallowed by the night sky.
Seowoo grabbed the shoulders pressing him down. Losing the contest of strength was inevitable. Against that large, heavy body, every last bit of his fighting spirit had left him. No — he had been the one to start it, so there was no will to resist in the first place.
As Lee Hyeon twisted his head and came down to kiss him again, his enormous painting was visible over his shoulder. The passion of a man who painted beautiful life holding light and sky — a man capable of creating work of that magnitude — poured over him, and something deep in Seowoo’s soul shook.
“Ha.”
At the end of the long, long kiss, Seowoo’s hand felt its way under the hem of Lee Hyeon’s clothes. As his fingertips traced the warm skin, Lee Hyeon caught his hand and held it fast.
The reluctant lips parted, and their eyes met. Meeting that gaze — carrying a stranger light than usual — Seowoo’s eyes flooded all at once. Flushed and trembling, his lips quivered. Lee Hyeon licked the corner of his mouth — as if to say don’t be afraid — and whispered in a low voice.
“You don’t need to be sorry, and you don’t need to cry. The exhibition was a success.”
“Hh……”
“If this is a celebration, I’m more than willing to take part.”
Celebration.
What was a defeat for him was a celebration for Lee Hyeon.
Seowoo closed his eyes and nodded. That was, in its way, a consent — and a permission.
