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This is so fucking embarrassing, Wonwoo thinks as she absently runs her fingers over the thick cotton fleece in her hands. It’s a nice hoodie, a comfortable one, well-worn around the neck with a cigarette burn at the bottom of the sleeve. There’s stains of hair dye around the neckline, every colour in the rainbow—each colour a memory pulled up from the ether. It makes her chest constrict.
By all accounts, Wonwoo should stop looking at it. She should stop touching it. Still, every now and then, she pulls it from the dark recesses of her closet to run her fingers along the fabric. Once, many months ago, Wonwoo’s therapist called her an emotional masochist. She stares at the purple stain right along one of the seams.
It’s something of a routine, and Wonwoo likes routines. She likes cycles, no matter how often Mingyu tells her that she should let sleeping dogs lie.
According to the routine, Wonwoo sends a text. I still have that grey hoodie. You can come pick it up if you’re in town.
It’s psychotic, probably, or hysterical at the very least. But Wonwoo likes routines. She likes when she knows what’s going to happen, even if what happens is never good. There’s solace in knowledge, even if the knowledge is haunted.
(And maybe, sure, there’s a part of her that’s a little enamoured with repetition, too. She’s mature enough to admit it to herself.)
Her text garners a response within three minutes, a thumbs up emoji with omw in 10, and Wonwoo smiles to herself. Hook, line and sinker. Although, really, she uses herself as bait every time, so she’s not sure there’s much to be proud of.
Rather, many of her friends think she should be ashamed of this routine of hers. Wonwoo is no stranger to shame—in high school, she lost every superlative and her only friends were the ones from debate club that had no choice but to spend time with her. She spent her time with her nose in a book or immersed in her carefully built Sims 3 world, and she pretended she didn’t hear laughter. So, in short, Wonwoo knows shame intimately. This isn’t shame.
(It’s close, though. Uncomfortably close. Too twisted with perverted nostalgia to be shame, exactly. But the closeness is there and the closeness is scary sometimes.)
Wonwoo knows how this goes, though. Because she knows this routine down to the very last fine detail, she gets up from her bed and changes her bra into something nicer—a lacy, sage thing that was gifted to her eons ago. She pads over to her bathroom and brushes her hair, feeling strangely at peace about everything. Maybe it’s the repetition. She’s been over this so many times that it doesn’t feel like a big deal anymore.
Maybe that should hurt. Who knows anymore?
She makes sure to file her nails before she hears the heavy knock.
—
“Mmm, nah, just keep it on. Looks cute on you.”
Wonwoo burrowed further into the cotton fleece wrapped around her, the hood flipped up and loose in front of her eyes. The dumb hoodie was way too big for either of them—a men’s extra large, but it suited them just fine.
Junhui used to call them a pair of cats, and Wonwoo supposed she wasn’t entirely wrong. She felt quite cat-like in this position, burrowed in fleece with her girlfriend’s hands idly messing around in her hair. It was peaceful.
She took in the smell of cigarettes and coconut breeze body spray, sighing contentedly.
—
Jihoon looks different than she did two months ago.
Two months ago, her hair was dyed a soft lavender with short sides and long bangs. Now, it’s a shock of platinum blonde, curling behind her ears and falling just to the nape of her neck. It’s nice. It reminds Wonwoo of years ago, when Jihoon’s hair reached her shoulders. Her hands are in the pockets of her black terrycloth hoodie—something she used to wear to bed, all those years ago. Wonwoo bought it for her.
“Nice hoodie,” Wonwoo says. It sounds ridiculously giddy, and if this were anyone but Jihoon, she might be embarrassed about it. But Jihoon has seen all of Wonwoo—her in all of her shameful forms—so, really, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about anymore.
(Jihoon saw her and loved her anyway, a superhuman feat that Wonwoo will never understand. It’s strange to think of Jihoon in relation to love, and how that love is now permanently in the past tense.)
Jihoon smiles. It’s one of those private ones that means she doesn’t really know what to say. She’s always like this when she comes here, always under the guise of picking up her grey hoodie. Somehow, it always gets left behind. It is less a hoodie and more a tether. Mingyu once suggested that Wonwoo throw the hoodie into a bonfire. “Thanks,” Jihoon says.
Wonwoo pulls the door open further, ushering Jihoon inside. Gyepi, the little orange kitten that Wonwoo adopted a month ago, jumps down from the windowsill to curl herself possessively around Wonwoo’s legs. Her ears stand at attention, and Wonwoo smiles softly.
“You got a cat?” Jihoon asks. Her lips part just a little bit as she leans down, extending a hand for Gyepi to inspect.
“Her name is Gyepi,” Wonwoo says, trying desperately to ignore the way her heart kicks into overdrive. It’s stupid. Silly, stupid and shameful. She really shouldn’t have done this again.
But, alas, Wonwoo likes routine. She likes things she already knows, and she knows Jihoon better than she’s known anyone before. She watches Gyepi inspect Jihoon’s hand—nails painted black and chipping, her signature look—and eventually bump her little head up against Jihoon’s palm. Jihoon smiles, clearly pleased.
Jihoon has always valued the opinions of cats more than people. That much is obvious by the way she hums, scratching under Gyepi’s chin. “The Gyepi seal of approval.”
Wonwoo nods, though she chews her bottom lip between her teeth.
The problem with routines is that they’re easier to break than Wonwoo would like them to be. Something as simple as a cat has the power to throw this carefully constructed plan to the wayside where an oncoming car will inevitably crush it into little, pathetic bits.
Dramatic, maybe. But on a typical day, Jihoon would be two knuckles deep in Wonwoo’s pussy by now. That’s how they both normally like it.
Except here Jihoon is, leaning down even further, until she’s on her knees in front of Wonwoo, cooing delightedly at the way Gyepi rolls onto her back, paws in the air. Wonwoo supposes that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree when it comes to winning Jihoon’s affections. Wonwoo, too, would roll onto her back, the most sensitive parts of her on display for Jihoon to do whatever she pleased with.
It’s an illness. One she just can’t recover from.
“When did you get here?” Wonwoo asks.
Jihoon tilts her head. “Friday. I’m here for another week,” she says. “I took some time off to visit my parents.”
(The day they broke up, Wonwoo cried as Jihoon loaded three suitcases into her—ironic, she swore—red Subaru Legacy. Jihoon hadn’t really made an effort to get Wonwoo to stop crying, muttering, I’m sorry, you know I have to go. I wish I didn’t have to.
That had been that.
Wonwoo wore the grey cotton fleece hoodie to bed every night for a week.)
“How are they?”
It’s terrible small talk. Certainly not the kind someone should make with a person they dated for four years, but Wonwoo likes routine. She likes to hear about Jihoon’s father’s embroidery projects and the two birds her mother adopted on a whim two years ago. Maybe Wonwoo just wants proof that the things she remembers still happen, so she can imagine a world where she gets to be there. A fantasy, imaginary world where Jihoon never left for Seoul to produce music for an idol group. Or maybe a fantasy, imaginary world where Wonwoo’s terrible desk job didn’t keep her rooted to Busan, because she didn’t spend all that time climbing the corporate ladder for nothing.
It’s water under the bridge now, though. It’s not like Wonwoo cares or anything.
That would be crazy.
“They’re good,” Jihoon says, and then she pitches her voice up, her smile melting into something reserved only for children under the age of two and animals. “Oh, Gyepi-yah, you’re such a good girl!”
Wonwoo has never been jealous of a cat before. It’s an odd feeling. She wants to do a fucking trick to make Jihoon look at her. See? I can be a good girl too!
“Are you jealous?” Jihoon asks, snickering.
Wonwoo, with petulance written all over her face and her arms crossed in front of her, rolls her eyes. “No. Who do you think I am?”
(It is not lost on Wonwoo that she’s always had a possessive streak a mile long. It was cute when they were dating, but now she just feels like an asshole about it.)
“Uh huh,” Jihoon drawls. She pushes herself to her feet, tugging on the hem of Wonwoo’s crewneck to draw her in closer. Wonwoo goes because she always does. She can’t have Jihoon anymore, not when Jihoon’s life exists in a fancy Seoul apartment surrounded by the hottest people in the country every day, but she’s grateful that Jihoon still comes back to her like this any time she asks.
It feels like a favour, sometimes, but Wonwoo is practiced in the art of taking what she can get.
According to the routine, she feels Jihoon’s lips press against her own, hot and open. They never have time for the chaste kisses anymore, or maybe they do and willfully choose to avoid them. Either way, Jihoon’s tongue pushes against Wonwoo’s own and that’s enough to take Wonwoo out of her head for a while.
Sometimes, she tries to convince herself that’s the reason she does any of this in the first place. She feels Jihoon’s hands slide underneath her crewneck, splaying across her stomach, and she lets herself get lost in it for a while. That’s just the best thing she can do.
She breathes in, revelling in the scent of cigarettes and coconut breeze body spray. Some things just never change, do they?
“Thought you were quitting,” she says against Jihoon’s mouth.
(Last time Jihoon came, she had a patch on her collarbone and was chewing on three pieces of nicotine gum when Wonwoo answered the door. The smell of coconut breeze body spray with no cigarettes made Wonwoo’s heart hurt.)
Jihoon runs her tongue along Wonwoo’s bottom lip. “Gave up,” she says. “Jeonghan says I’m nicer when I smoke.”
Wonwoo’s jealous of Jeonghan, one of the many beautiful idols that Jihoon produces for. She’s jealous of anybody that knows Seoul Jihoon, someone Wonwoo has never had the opportunity to learn. Busan Jihoon is totally different—a nerd that collects Funko Pops and knows how to play the Jujutsu Kaisen opening on the clarinet. Seoul Jihoon is a mystery.
At the mention of Jeonghan, Wonwoo digs her nails into Jihoon’s shoulder. Jihoon barks out a laugh against Wonwoo’s mouth, shaking her head. “So fucking predictable,” Jihoon says.
She presses a kiss to Wonwoo’s cheek, then grazes her teeth along Wonwoo’s jaw. Wonwoo likes routine, so it makes sense that she’d be predictable—she doesn’t like change, or things she doesn’t understand. She understands Jihoon just fine, so she grabs Jihoon’s hand and pulls her down the narrow hallway to the bedroom, unchanged since the last visit two months ago.
This is where Jihoon belongs. Not stupid Seoul, but here, home, in Wonwoo’s room. Overtaken with stupid, possessive desire, Wonwoo grips the hem of Jihoon’s hoodie in her hands. “Off? Can I take it off?” she asks.
Jihoon smiles lazily, like the cat who got the canary. “Not going to say please?”
Wonwoo hates her.
(She doesn’t. She wanted to hate Jihoon for leaving for a long time, but it proved too tiring. She yearns instead, now.)
“Please?” she asks, like a dog begging for a bone.
Jihoon raises her arms and Wonwoo pulls the terrycloth over her head. All rational thought leaves with the new expanse of pale skin on display, and Wonwoo smiles at the little tattoo of Saturn peeking out from Jihoon’s waistband. She runs her fingers across it, feeling the way the skin is slightly scarred from Minghao’s poor technique years and years ago.
Every piece of Jihoon’s skin holds a memory, one Wonwoo should let go of. She never does the things she should, though. It’s much easier to hold onto the familiar instead, so she dips her cold fingers beneath Jihoon’s waistband to feel the rest of the tattoo, fingers ghosting over it.
Jihoon clicks her tongue. She reaches for Wonwoo’s crewneck and pulls that off, too, and Wonwoo doesn’t resist because she’s a girl who knows how things go. She wants Jihoon in any way she can get her, and if this is the only way, then so be it.
A smile creeps onto Jihoon’s face when she sees Wonwoo’s bra. “You kept that?” she asks, running the pads of her fingers along the lace.
Wonwoo’s face flushes, embarrassed—it had been a silly fit of nostalgia that made her put the bra on. “Why’s that a big deal?” she asks.
Jihoon shakes her head, still smiling that stupid fucking smile, and fiddles with the button of Wonwoo’s corduroy pants until it pops open. “Good?”
“Hurry up,” Wonwoo says, and if she’d give Jihoon anything, it’s at least a comfort to know that the feeling is entirely mutual.
It seems to be only seconds that pass before they’re both heaving, flushed and panting into each other’s mouths, stripped only to their underwear. Wonwoo’s head leaves her when Jihoon is in front of her like this, so ready to take and be taken in return.
(Wonwoo is obsessive by nature, but only slightly. She used to wish she could crawl inside Jihoon’s skin and live there with her so they’d never be apart. Now she only wishes that Jihoon would answer her text messages more than once a day.)
Jihoon pulls away for a moment, her hands still like an iron vice around Wonwoo’s waist. She looks down and snickers, Gyepi curling around her calf. “She likes me!”
Wonwoo should just die. Really, that would be the only solution to this problem. She glowers at the little traitor wrapped around Jihoon’s leg and tries to communicate telepathically she is supposed to think we’re nonchalant, you little slut. Gyepi only blinks owlishly right back at her, as if she’s saying fuck you, I like her.
Jihoon backs up for a moment, gently nudging Gyepi towards the door and closing it, pouting when she hears the mrow! of absolute indignance that follows. “Ah, sorry, Gyepi-yah,” she says. “I’ll play with you later, alright?”
No. Jihoon will do no such thing. Wonwoo decrees that Jihoon will fuck her brains out, cuddle for twenty minutes and then fuck off back to Seoul like she always does. There will be no cat playing unless the cat in question is—
Well, you get the picture.
“Lay down,” Jihoon says, and she smiles to herself when Wonwoo does, like she’s pleased that her loyal dog still knows a few tricks after all these years. “Stay there, okay?”
Wonwoo could move if she wanted to. Jihoon doesn’t have it in her to scold Wonwoo, not anymore, not when this is the only time they get together. Still, Wonwoo wants to bring joy. She wants to remind Jihoon of all of those years ago, when she could do nothing but bend to whims because that is what love is, sometimes. Staying on the bed just because she’s asked, just because she knows it would make Jihoon happy. So she stays, her limbs feeling free of her body, completely unattached. Is that normal?
Wonwoo wouldn’t know normal if it punched her in the face. Not anymore.
She watches Jihoon rifle through her drawers. Wonwoo has been meaning to move things around, have the panties in the top drawer instead of the bottom, but she never has. Jihoon knows exactly where everything is, this way. Wonwoo, unable to do anything else, shivers when she sees Jihoon pull out the red harness they bought together many years ago.
(Wonwoo, ever the pervert, chose the colour. Deep red and pale skin had always been a tantalizing sight.)
“Want the pink one?” Jihoon asks. She doesn’t turn around to ask, still poking around in the drawer of toys. Wonwoo would be embarrassed if it were anyone else. But it’s Jihoon, after all.
“You pick,” she says. In her head, she says anything you want. It's always been anything you want, hasn’t it? You’re happier that way. I’m happier when you’re happier. It’s all fucked up.
Jihoon pulls out the pink dildo, the one that’s curved upwards just a little bit. It’s Wonwoo’s favourite—she hasn’t touched it in two months, not since the last time they were together like this. It’s a special treat. She made that decision when they broke up. It would only ever fall into Jihoon’s hands.
Wonwoo has always been good at watching. She’s the sort of person who prefers her life lived in the slow lane, prefers it when she has time to catch up to something if she feels so inclined. In her head, it used to be called the carpool lane. Now it’s something else. She chews her lips as she watches Jihoon fasten her red harness.
“Told you the red and pink look stupid together,” Jihoon says, and she fastens the dildo to the harness, grinning down at it.
Wonwoo doesn’t care that the colours don’t match. She doesn’t care about anything, not when Jihoon is right fucking here and Wonwoo has been so goddamn lonely for two months—no movie nights with Mingyu and Seokmin can help that sort of loneliness. It’s the sort of loneliness that only Jihoon can cure. “I don’t care, come here,” Wonwoo says.
She kicks off her panties and spreads her legs, knowing Jihoon can never deny her something so simple.
(Jihoon tries to meet Wonwoo where she is, always has. Jihoon lives her life in the fast lane, though, jumping on opportunities as they pass her by. She moves like a bullet train. Wonwoo moves like a pontoon boat. Those two things just aren’t very compatible, are they?)
Jihoon moves across the room quickly, pinning Wonwoo by her shoulders. She presses her lips everywhere, consuming, and Wonwoo is just—she is a simple woman. She takes what she’s given and relishes in it, because the other options seem too bleak. Jihoon’s lips are familiar against hers. “Missed you,” Jihoon says against her mouth, just in case Wonwoo didn’t want to die before.
There’s only so much a girl can take.
There is no part of Wonwoo that remains untouched by Jihoon. If she were a betting woman, which she has proven time and time again that she is not, she’d place money on her bones bearing Jihoon’s name, crudely carved into them, never to be discovered until she’s six feet under. It’s embarrassing to be known so completely.
Jihoon presses a kiss to Wonwoo’s collarbone, her hand skirting down her front. She tugs on Wonwoo’s navel piercing, just to relish in the way it makes Wonwoo gasp. “So pretty, Wonu-yah,” she says, and if Wonwoo ever wonders why she keeps doing this, well, there’s her answer.
“Take your stupid bra off,” she breathes out. Dogs don’t give orders, but dogs don’t walk on two legs either. Wonwoo is not a woman and not a dog, but she isn’t not those things either. A wonderful picture of incompleteness she makes.
Jihoon pulls her sports bra off and Wonwoo wants to salivate. She wants to run around on all fours and howl at the fucking moon, but that would be weird, wouldn’t it? Wonwoo is a weird person, but even she has a line, so she cups Jihoon’s tits in her hands instead. Jihoon smiles down at her like she’s looking at something precious.
It’s all just far too much to bear. Jihoon fucks like she’s in it for the long haul, and Wonwoo can’t separate these things. She has never been able to.
“Hurry up,” Wonwoo says, because she can’t stand to look at Jihoon’s face when she’s like this. She squishes Jihoon’s tits in her hands, pinching a nipple between her fingers and rolling. Jihoon hisses, always sensitive there.
(Wonwoo has a fantastic memory. Always has. She imagines that the recesses of her head are filled with nothing but Jihoon. It is no way to live, she knows, but some things just can’t be helped.)
Jihoon’s hands skirt lower, ghosting between Wonwoo’s legs, feeling as if she’ll never get another opportunity. What a fucking ridiculous notion. Wonwoo bucks her hips down, urging Jihoon to just get the fuck on with it, but Jihoon only laughs.
“Ah, so impatient,” Jihoon says. “Are you angry that it's been two months? I’m sorry, Wonu-yah.”
There’s a teasing lilt to her tone that makes Wonwoo want to flip every table in existence. Some things are just shameful, and the fact that she waits for Jihoon like a dog awaiting its beloved human’s return from work is one of them. Pathetic, though Wonwoo has never claimed to be anything else.
“Yes, I’m fucking mad about it,” Wonwoo says. She tries to bite the hand that still presses against her shoulder, and Jihoon pulls away, tsking.
“Yah, be good.”
Wonwoo melts. Pathetic. A poor fucking excuse of a person, just a puddle on a bed.
Jihoon’s fingers finally reach Wonwoo’s clit, and she goes completely boneless, powerless when she’s up against pure sensation. Jihoon knows how to touch her, always has—she is innately good with her hands. Talented at piano, guitar, pussy, all of it. Wonwoo misses her so much it really hurts to keep doing this.
Wonwoo likes routine, though. So she gasps into Jihoon’s mouth.
“So wet,” Jihoon hums. “Shouldn’t have left you for so long. You’ll forgive me after I fuck you good, won’t you, my Wonu-yah?”
My Wonu-yah. It is now that Wonwoo realizes that there is only so much the human spirit can endure, and she’s been testing her own durability for years. She lets out a shaky breath, the feeling of Jihoon’s fingers circling her clit the only thing tethering her to reality.
There’s pinpricks at the base of her skull, marching upwards and onwards. Her whole head is fuzzy with it, and it always happens this way. Jihoon is in her sights, and Wonwoo loses all form of sense. There’s nothing that could tear her eyes away from Jihoon, not now.
“Mhm,” Wonwoo says, and it’s another pathetic sound, gasped out like a drowning woman finally finding air.
“I know you will,” Jihoon says. She circles Wonwoo’s entrance, collecting wetness with two of her fingers. It’s all so easy this way.
If only it could always be like this. Wonwoo is too sentimental, though. She knows this well.
“You’d forgive me for anything, wouldn’t you, Wonu-yah?”
Wonwoo’s face burns with humiliation as Jihoon’s fingers breach her, shallow at first, and then deeper. She likes it this way, with Jihoon peeling back layers until there is only a shrivelled thing of a woman remaining. Wonwoo likes being reduced to her barest parts and reminded that Jihoon loves those parts despite how ugly and fucking demanding they are.
“I would,” Wonwoo says, and greedily, she rolls her hips, begging Jihoon to go deeper. “Unnie, please?”
It’s the right switch to flip at the right time. Wonwoo prides herself on knowing Jihoon in and out—something of a scholar, really. The curse Jihoon lets out makes Wonwoo feel triumphant for all of two seconds until Jihoon pushes on the underside of her thigh, bringing it up so that Wonwoo is basically folded in half.
“You’re so greedy,” Jihoon says, laying a soft slap against Wonwoo’s ass. “Since when did you become such a brat? Did someone else make you this way?”
Wonwoo doesn’t like it when it hurts, but she does like the implication that Jihoon could hurt her if she really wanted to. She’s comforted by the notion that Jihoon treats her like precious diamonds every time. Maybe that’s why she acts out—just to see how much love for her is still hidden away in there somewhere.
There’s a lot of it. The revelation feels like a stab in the gut every time, but Wonwoo is gluttonous for punishment.
“Nobody else, unnie, you know that,” Wonwoo says.
Her entire soul laid bare, right there. There’s nobody else, and it will likely stay that way forever. As Jihoon pushes into her with the head of the pink dildo, Wonwoo knows this will be it for the rest of her life. She’ll work her office job in Busan, she’ll wait for the odd months when Jihoon decides to come home, and she’ll use those precious days to get her fill of sentimentality.
Jihoon kisses her hard and deep, tongue running along the jagged edges of Wonwoo’s teeth. Being underneath Jihoon is all Wonwoo has ever wanted, so she’ll take it when she can get it. Wonwoo breathes in the scent of cigarettes and coconut breeze body spray, wondering if it will be another two months before she gets to smell it again.
When did she become this way? It’s hard to tell.
Jihoon bottoms out, and Wonwoo locks them together with ankles crossed against the small of Jihoon’s back. For a blissful moment, there’s nothing else except for this.
“I love you,” Jihoon says like she always does.
Wonwoo breathes the words in, lets them fill her lungs to near busting. Jihoon loves her and always will, and there’s a sick part of Wonwoo that revels in it. There are pieces of Jihoon that no girl will ever be able to have, because Wonwoo has taken them and keeps them close to her heart, guarded away from anyone else.
“I love you, my Jihoon-ah,” Wonwoo says.
And she does. Wholeheartedly, with everything in her. She knows it as Jihoon pulls back and pushes back in, groaning into Wonwoo’s mouth as if she can feel it. She pretends that she can’t see the tears welling up in Jihoon’s eyes as she starts fucking Wonwoo in earnest, pushing on her legs so she’s still folded totally in half.
There is nowhere Wonwoo would rather be than at Jihoon’s mercy. It is the sick, perverted truth of her very being.
“Faster,” Wonwoo breathes out. The physical feeling comes second to the internality of it all.
Wonwoo has always been the type of person to internalize things. She feels things more deeply than she should, and the sentimentality is shocked right out of her when she feels Jihoon slip a hand between them again, rubbing small circles over Wonwoo’s clit. Wonwoo arches her back using her crossed ankles to pull Jihoon flush against her.
“Please?” she asks, pressing her mouth to Jihoon’s. There is something so intoxicating about fleeting connections.
Perhaps it wouldn’t feel so earthshattering if Wonwoo were comforted with the knowledge that Jihoon is only hers. It hurts her heart to know that there is probably someone waiting in the wings, hoping for the day Wonwoo will retract her claws and let Jihoon go.
Luckily enough, a day like that will never come. Wonwoo breathes in, burying her face against Jihoon’s neck.
Jihoon slams into her, fast and hard the way Wonwoo wants it. There’s no room for lovemaking, not for truth, not for anything aside from something hard and messy. Wonwoo won’t have it. It would be easier, she thinks, if they didn’t love each other.
“You know I’ll always give you everything you want,” Jihoon says.
It’s a lie. A bleak one, because Wonwoo wants things Jihoon can’t give. It’s just the imbalance of it all. Jihoon has a career to get back to, and Wonwoo has Jihoon.
“Tell me you love me,” Wonwoo says. “Say it again. Please?”
“I love you, Wonu-yah,” Jihoon says. “All mine, yeah?”
She’s panting, now, hovering over Wonwoo as her hips slam forward, and Wonwoo is once again struck by the fact that she’s never seen such a beautiful sight.
Luck. It’s sheer, dumb luck that Wonwoo gets to see it. Wonwoo kisses Jihoon again, can’t help the way her heart swells as she does. It’s adrenaline, all temporary, but Wonwoo has learned to revel in the temporary.
“You can’t go for two months again,” Wonwoo gasps.
Jihoon’s hand speeds up and Wonwoo arches into it, gasping as the knot inside of her draws tight. Her eyes flutter as Jihoon presses a kiss to her forehead, and it’s really all she’s ever wanted. She’s not greedy. Just desperate. Just a person who takes what she can get because she can’t be bothered to go out and look for something else.
(She wonders if Jihoon finds her pathetic. She wonders if Jihoon feels held back. All questions with answers that Wonwoo can’t bear hearing.)
“I’m sorry,” Jihoon says instead of I won’t. She’s so pragmatic. She never says things she doesn’t mean.
Wonwoo used to like that about her.
“Are you close, baby?” Jihoon asks, and Wonwoo arches into her touch again, nodding fervently. “Ah, so pretty like this.”
Jihoon sucks right underneath Wonwoo’s ear, the soft piece of skin where her jaw begins, and Wonwoo bows completely off the bed, her toes curling. It’s so fucking embarrassing that it’s the words that do it for her more than anything else.
She ought to be ashamed of herself, really. But she isn’t. So it goes.
“Fuck!” Wonwoo gasps. She’s never been all that talkative in bed, but Jihoon draws it out of her so easily.
Jihoon smiles, slowing her thrusts and her hand, the movement tapering off until Wonwoo is shoving at her chest in overstimulation. “Yah,” she says, her voice hoarse, lip worried between her teeth. She’s shaking everywhere, the enormity of the routine leaving her feeling disconnected from her body. It’s just the way it is, sometimes.
She watches through half-lidded eyes as Jihoon unbuckles the harness and tosses it to the side, clambering forward onto Wonwoo’s waiting hand. It’s muscle memory, really. Wonwoo slides her index and middle finger into Jihoon, crooking them just the way she likes, and Jihoon does the rest of the work.
She’s always been something of a control freak. Wonwoo smiles as she watches Jihoon grind her hips, her clit rubbing against the heel of Wonwoo’s hand. “Missed you,” Jihoon blabbers as she cants her hips forward and backward in a rhythm that makes no sense to anybody but her. “Missed you so much, Wonu-yah, I can’t—fuck, I can’t take it—”
She always does this. She always says things she doesn’t—can’t—mean. Wonwoo has learned to deal with it as she’s learned to deal with everything else, but shoving it so far into the back of her mind that she forgets it’s there for the most part.
Things can never be simple for someone like Wonwoo. She’s used to it by now.
“Feel good?” Wonwoo asks. She grips Jihoon’s hip with her other hand, rubbing lazy circles into the Saturn tattoo with her thumb. “So cute.”
“Shut the—mmmmh,” Jihoon gasps. It never takes much to get her over the the hump after she fucks Wonwoo. She’s so easy for it, always has been.
It’s one of the very few things the two of them have in common. Go figure.
Jihoon finishes with her face buried in Wonwoo’s neck, panting, as she grinds against Wonwoo’s hand. “Love you,” she mumbles into the hot skin, worrying over it with her teeth.
Wonwoo smiles. Tears prick at her eyes, but she smiles anyway. “I love you too, Jihoon-ah.”
—
“I have enough room for Gyepi at my apartment,” Jihoon says.
(“Why don’t you come to Seoul?”
“I’m sure your job would approve a transfer, Wonu-yah.”
“I bought a big bed. You know, just in case.”
“I'm not going to stop asking, so you might as well say yes, right?”)
It always goes this way. Jihoon, overtaken with pathetic sentimentality, asks questions that Wonwoo can’t say yes to. She says things that Wonwoo can’t hedge around, and Wonwoo lets her, because Wonwoo likes listening to Jihoon talk. It’s simple. Too simple.
In life, there’s no such thing as an easy answer. Wonwoo can’t just go to Seoul. Her whole life is here—or, what little of it remains after Jihoon’s big move. It would be too easy. What would she do when she got there? She’d waste away in an apartment that doesn’t belong to her, waiting like a dog for Jihoon to return from the studio at ungodly hours of the night.
“Jihoon-ah.”
“I make enough money for both of us,” Jihoon says. “You could do whatever you wanted. Remember when you wanted to try streaming your games?”
It’s too easy.
(Wonwoo doesn’t deserve it. She never will.)
“I can’t just up and leave, Jihoon-ah.”
They’re cuddled up under Wonwoo’s fleece blanket, Jihoon’s head pressed against Wonwoo’s chest. All wiped clean, there’s nothing left but them. This is the hard part, always is. Wonwoo isn’t as strong as she’d like to be. Jihoon’s ankles tighten where her legs are crossed around one of Wonwoo’s legs.
It’s all so fucked up. Wonwoo has never known a silence to be so loud.
“So you’ve said,” Jihoon says. She’s bitter, of course—always is when they talk about this. Because Jihoon thinks everything can be solved with enough effort, and because Wonwoo thinks some gaps are too big for her to jump over.
Fundamental differences create the largest gaps, she finds.
“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo says. It never feels like enough.
“Need a smoke,” Jihoon mumbles. She goes to her pants and rifles around in them until she finds a half-empty pack of cigarettes and a red torch lighter. Wonwoo sits up, too, and pulls the blanket around her shoulders to join Jihoon on the balcony like she always does.
“Why do you keep asking?”
Jihoon shrugs. Wonwoo watches her puff her cigarette and is comforted by the smell, because Wonwoo likes routine, and she likes the familiar. “I know you. You’ll say yes when you’re ready.”
Wonwoo doesn’t respond to that. Instead, she stares at the clay ashtray sitting on a rickety table at the corner of the balcony. She made it in her beginner’s pottery class a few months ago even though she doesn’t smoke. Jihoon crushes the half-smoked cigarette in it, and Wonwoo doesn’t miss her wry smile.
“Go lay down,” Jihoon says, and Wonwoo does, because it’s times like this when she doesn’t know what else to do but listen. It’s pathetic, sure, yet still, she can’t resist it. Some burdens are too large to bear, so Wonwoo crumbles under them.
Jihoon pulls her clothes on. She presses a kiss to Wonwoo’s forehead before she leaves, muttering, “I’ll see you in a month, Wonu-yah.”
“I’ll see you in a month,” Wonwoo replies, unable to ignore the squeezing of her heart, the way nothing feels right anymore.
Still, she lets Jihoon go.
She listens to Jihoon coo at Gyepi on her way out the door.
She stares at the grey cotton fleece hoodie, still a heap on the floor. Jihoon didn’t even touch it.
Figures.
—
Wonwoo stares at her phone, at the e-mail she hasn’t sent and probably won’t. But it’s there. That’s what matters, right? Baby steps are steps all the same.
Do you think we can set up a meeting for a possible transfer to the Seoul branch?
She worries her thumb across the sleeve of the grey hoodie in her lap and chews her lip.
Sometimes, all you need to do is take the leap.