Chapter 3.6

When Dan woke up, the sound of water was ringing from all around, he was facing the window framed in a lattice design. Only after a good while did he realise he was inside the enormous bathroom’s bathtub, the size of an indoor swimming pool.

A bubbling sound came from the bathtub. Jets of water were massaging his body. He noticed that too only belatedly. The bathtub was churned up with water bubbles.

Dan just tilted his head this way and that. Through his unclear vision Chris Paul’s face came into view.

“You’re up?”

“Sleepy.”

He barely moved his lips as he spoke. Chris held the sleepy cheek and chin and kissed the mumbling lips.

“If you’re sleepy just sleep.”

Dan listened to the man’s words with his eyes closed. Chris pulled away from the nodding face and lay face down by the bathtub. Watching the body swaying in the bathtub, he asked the one about to fall asleep:

“Shall we date?”

The face he thought had fallen asleep smiled with its eyes still closed. At the face only smiling without answering Chris frowned.

“Why are you laughing?”

“My type is bad ones.”

Dan mumbled, still with eyes closed, moving his lips just a little. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Hearing his words Chris thought whether he himself wasn’t bad enough.

While weighing up whether to be pleased about that or displeased, the lips moved slowly again.

“Strange.”

How many times had they exchanged that word today?

“Strange?”

“Whether girls or guys, everything I like is bad ones.”

“That’s too bad.”

A perfunctory answer came.

“The girl I dated when I was fourteen had done it with all my friends. She did it while dating me too. It didn’t matter, I liked her. But the winter before starting high school she said she was pregnant and told me to take responsibility, so I ignored her.”

The face that had been talking with eyes closed turned to the side.

“I’m not a good person either. Even though I’m not good, I wanted to date someone good. After I stopped doing bad things, a girl I met at the library was really good. But when I tried to do it with her it wouldn’t work.”

The face listening to Dan’s words had gone seriously stiff.

“The next week when I did it with a girl known for eating men alive it worked just fine and I was really devastated.”

The heavily frowning face asked:

“That pregnant girlfriend, what happened to her?”

“Don’t know.”

Dan closed his eyes again.

“Don’t know?”

“I told her to go find the baby’s father and sort it out and get lost.”

“Are you sure you weren’t the baby’s father?”

Chris said with a slightly different frown.

“Sure.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because I used protection.”

“There are exceptions.”

“The other guys didn’t know what protection was.”

“And?”

Chris put his face over the bathtub and said it as if asking. The half-asleep face smiled bitterly and opened its lips. The heavily sunken voice murmured.

“My type is bad ones.”

“Girls and guys alike.”

“Really only bad ones are my type. Do you want to be one of those bad ones?”

Chris didn’t answer the calm question that carried several emotions. Only the sound of water bubbles popping continued for a good while. Chris raised the body that had been lying face down near the bathtub and called to Dan.

“Dan.”

“…”

Dan didn’t answer.

“Sleeping?”

Chris said to the sleeping face and kissed the wet cheek.

“You need to remember everything that happened today.”

He recited it like an incantation to the sleeping face. Whispering over and over that he mustn’t forget a single thing that had happened, that he wouldn’t forget.

Dan let out a weak sound from within the water bubbles as if in reply. Chris stopped the jets and lifted the sleeping body out of the water.

Chris carefully laid Dan, dressed in a shower gown, on the bed. The lips that had seemed completely asleep moved slowly.

“A world without chocolate.”

The hand arranging the sheets stopped.

“…”

The face with its eyes closed murmured quietly.

“Macarons. Krispy. Cheese. Honey bread. Fresh cream.”

“Pfft.”

The hand pulling up the sheets flew up with a laugh. Chris couldn’t laugh freely for fear of waking the sleeping Dan.

As if responding to the suppressed laughter, the eyebrows of the face with its eyes closed twitched. And the lips moved again, mumbling. Low and quiet, as if protesting to someone who had taken those things away.

“Cupcakes. Nutella. Apple pie.”

Chris laughed with his brow creased at the precise clear words.

“Choco muffins. Scones. Macarons. Macarons. Macarons. Macarons.”

Chris whispered quietly that macarons had already come up earlier. Dan called macarons, macarons, macarons in succession.

He called out each one carefully as if distinguishing between them, the red macaron, the yellow macaron, the green macaron, the blue macaron, the white macaron.

“Vanilla éclair. Plaisir sucré. Ice cream.”

The world of sugar was infinite. Chris sent his laughter out on the breath he exhaled.

‘Samgyeopsal.’

Dan mumbled, rubbing his cheek against the pillow.

“What’s that?”

Chris whispered asking, lying down beside the sleeping face. He held out his hand to the mumbling lips as if offering it. Every time Dan’s lips murmured, they rubbed against Chris’s fingertips.

‘Soju.’

The sleeping mouth smacked its lips. An astonishing case of sleep-talking, or perhaps it was drunken muttering.

“Guinness. Tequila. Vodka. Champagne.”

“You drank that much and you want more?”

“Ireland is the land of Guinness…”

Dan grumbled and kissed Chris’s fingertips. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] He had just been voicing his complaints, but because the man’s hand was right in front of his lips, Dan kept kissing Chris’s hand without realising it.

‘Jokbal. Sweet and sour pork. Meat.’

The murmuring full of longing had no end.

‘Meat.’

Chris quietly chuckled. Without realising it he kissed the mumbling lips.

‘Meat.’

The desperate murmuring spread over Chris’s lips.

‘Meat.’

Chris pulled away from Dan.

“Apricot jam. Grape jam. Strawberry jam. Apple jam.”

The sleeping face sank into the infinite world of sugar. Pulling Dan, who was desperately dreaming of sugar and sugar and sugar, into his arms, Chris chuckled again and again for no reason. Against the chuckling Chris’s chest, Dan whispered in his dream.

“A world without chocolate.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Espresso. Chocolate. Milk. Condensed milk. Syrup. Sugar. Sugar. Sugar.”

Chris licked the sugar-singing lips once and tried to sleep.

“Choco milk. Strawberry milk. Banana milk. Melon milk. Grape milk.”

The lips that had been desperately longing for sugar whispered all manner of sugar milks.

“I’m sorry.”

At the halfhearted apology, a resentful breath was exhaled.

“A world without chocolate.”

Dan poured the endless infinite world of sugar into Chris’s ear all night long. Chris fell asleep using the things that made his ears go sweet just from hearing them as a lullaby. It was sleep-talking so sweet it was hard to stay coherent.

******

The first sensation Dan felt was soreness. That place on his backside hurt so much, the place that was even awkward to mention, and the moment he wondered why, massive memories came pouring down on him in a rush.

He tried to say something like ‘this can’t be,’ but because of the absurd unbelievable memories his already open eyes went wider.

“No way.”

Those words too circled inside his mouth.

“For god’s sake.”

In the morning, Dan woke up and couldn’t move for about a minute with his eyes open, and he wanted to curse himself fiercely for not stopping the Absolut vodka the day before.

‘Deduct the additional allowances, how does that make sense?’

He had fulfilled Chris Paul’s wish of wanting him to throw up, right on his chest.

‘Damn.’

He had called strange employer Chris Paul ‘master,’ and the guy was completely rotten. Someone apologises to you and obviously, you were wrong, fine is all you can say back.

He had held Chris Paul’s that and done those things.

‘For god’s sake! For god’s sake. For god’s sake!’

He had done those things with Chris Paul.

“…”

He remembered all of it, every single thing, not one thing forgotten, and Dan tried to grab his cheeks with his hands and tear at them.

He had caused trouble drunk before but never this bad.

“Why…”

Dan silently groaned and resentfully, with personal feelings involved, questioned how Chris Paul had not been a human pine tree pointed at big-chested women, why he had gotten tangled up in his own pathetic messing around the day before, and what kind of human pine tree does that.

He slowly turned to look beside him.

The man was completely at ease despite having done something far from ordinary, as if nothing had happened at all, and the handsome man was sunk in a lazy carefree sleep.

‘How can you sleep…?’

Nothing came out of Dan’s mouth but sighs and laments.

‘Why is my luck two days in a row like this?’

He bowed his head deeply and drew a long breath, and a light milk chocolate coloured hand came toward the hunched nape, and long fingers tangled in at Dan’s grumbling lips.

Dan’s eyes flew open and he looked up.

Chris smiled and put force into his hand, and Dan, who had been sitting at the edge of the bed, was swept just like that into the man’s arms.

He resisted for a moment but the strength of a man who handled F1 race cars like toys was not something a rough past could overcome, and Chris showered Dan’s cheek with kisses.

“Excuse me.”

Dan tried to turn his face to the side and avoid the lips showering kisses.

“Hey.”

Chris paid no attention and sucked the open lips.

“Mmph.”

A rounded piece of flesh parted his lips and lewdly swept inside his mouth, and Dan was startled by having his lips and tongue sucked but was even more startled by the large hand naturally kneading his bare backside.

The hand of Chris that had been fooling with Dan’s backside soon felt its way over the swollen wrinkled entrance.

“Ugh.”

Dan let out a moan.

‘Do you want to die?’

He wanted to say that instead of moaning.

“It hurts.”

Dan said as if pleading.

“It hurts!”

He complained in irritation but Chris only laughed, and he stopped touching the wrinkled entrance and stroked upward over Dan’s half-swollen penis, and Dan was more flustered and startled than when his mouth had been sucked or when Chris’s hand had been working between his buttocks.

“You, ha, ugh!”

The large hand touched the penis that was starting to respond with a flesh-on-flesh sound.

“Ah! Are, are you crazy?”

Chris smiled and kissed the moaning him.

“Hey, hmm!”

Every time he tried to say something properly Chris scratched at the tip he was holding, and every time Dan moaned not knowing what to do, and the hand holding and kneading the testicles was as unconstrained and wilful as when kneading the backside.

Dan, held in Chris’s arms moaning, had to wonder whether Chris Paul’s hands were not two but three or four.

The sound of gasping breath rose in the room.

Chris smiled pleasantly every time Dan’s breath quickened, and in the dizziness Dan had to face the smiling handsome employer coming into his field of view.

The man’s lips hovered around Dan’s mouth as if tickling it, and Dan swallowed what seemed like a curse and kissed Chris’s lips, and soon Dan ejaculated into the large hand.

“…”

Looking at the whitish fluid spreading in Chris’s hand, Dan despaired. He wasn’t a slave to desire, and it was embarrassing to pour his fluids into another person’s hand from just a few touches and scratches, and on top of the memories he wished would cleanly disappear remaining perfectly intact without damage, to be doing this the moment he opened his eyes.

He was faced with despair and fear and shock even worse than the morning before.

“Morning.”

Chris said quietly.

“…”

Dan only frowned.

“Are you alright?”

“Don’t laugh…”

“Doesn’t seem like you’re in pain.”

Chris smoothed the smile that had been hanging at the corner of his mouth and muttered as if to himself.

“Is it funny?”

Dan looked up sharply and asked at the man’s smile.

“Do you want an honest answer?”

Chris asked, coming toward Dan sitting there unguarded, and there was no threat, no frightening expression, no scary words, yet the air suddenly settled into an awkward stillness.

Dan rolled his eyes to avoid answering, and Chris, placing a hand over the bare waist, whispered with a smiling face.

“Don’t say anything?”

“Say it.”

Dan truly wanted to act like normal and tried to behave bluntly and without emotion.

“I want to have sex.”

Chris said in a soft low voice.

“Excuse me…”

The face pretending to be unbothered turned back to the man with a squint, and Dan couldn’t tell what was different about his attitude just now compared to when he said things like I’m hungry, bring water, handkerchief, prepare the meal, run a bath. It was a voice that held not even a scrap of tension or difficulty, and the man who said what he wanted without embarrassment became a little frightening.