he’s not one to be excited for social outings. if anything the prospect of being trapped among humans with the unending chatters and thoughts tie knots all over his insides. and for this occasion, sangwoo can already feel the non-existent weights tying his ankles down as he left the safety of his apartment.
which ironically, has seen the demons inhibiting his mind during late night for the past few weeks.
he tries to direct his attention elsewhere during the bus ride, anywhere but the growing irritation that begins to show upon his features. maybe thinking of going grocery shopping after he gets this done and over with. or maybe wishing that his boss would be this attentive towards him next time before he decides to give sangwoo overtime would do.
concerned my ass.
he also thinks about flaking altogether, but that’s impossible without getting his pay cut.
the first thing that he does when he reaches their rendezvous point--a small coffee shop--is to text saebyok. partly to make sure he’s in the right place, and mostly because he’d rather buy more time. it’s not even a legitimate therapy session but sangwoo already dreads being psychoanalyzed. he doesn’t like being psychoanalyzed. heck, people won’t like him when he’s psychoanalyzed.
[ ✉️ mr. dr. shrink ]: i’m here
[ ✉️ mr. dr. shrink ]: where are you seated at?
there’s nothing to say. at least, none that she can think of. not a word that better describe what just transpired. but—that’s normal. this is normal. charlotte kang not having a single bone of resistance (heart weak for former flames) in her body? totally normal. and then? what happens next?
also expected.
walk of shame or something like that.
nothing big. it happens. it happens but she’s vaguely upset anyway, a waning ache in the crux of her hearth as she steps out of the complex and onto the lonely streets of seoul. it happens. yeah. fucking stings though. that’s why you don’t sleep with your exes, idiot. the voice chimes in, ringing familiar, parts her best friend and parts her own. she knows. but just because she knows, doesn’t mean she’ll do better. charlotte hasn’t before and by the looks of things—likely won’t in the near future.
it’s not that big of a deal. not so much that she’ll cry. at least, not when she knows there isn’t a single person out there that’ll sympathize. so the witch opts to settle instead. buys herself a strawberry shortcake cone (and a couple other snacks) and calls it a night.
at the very least, to the miracle of god, no one is awake by the time she makes it home. steps slow toward the flight of stairs, a bit quickly past the giggling door of her parents, then straight to her bedroom toward the hall. safe. charlotte slips in with a small sigh, flicking on the lights to notice (too little too late) the familiar head of hair in her chair. ish.
and when he swivels around, she merely gasps. cone missing its mark and smearing pink cream across her jaw. suddenly cautious, stomach twisting with nerves, as if a child caught stealing from the cookie jar.
“hayden,” shit. “i—what are you doing here?” shit.
The advice goes: if you're tossing and turning, get up and do some physical activity to chase the restlessness out of your limbs. Unfortunately, that's not an option. It would look incredibly strange for a young, married, professional to be strolling on the sidewalk of their quiet, quaint, neighborhood at 2:47am in the morning--without her charming, handsome, husband by her side at the very least.
Thinking about him makes her want to roll over and curl in on herself. Would she feel safer in that position?
Earlier--that'd been a trap. A set-up if she's ever been trained to spot one. They were lucky, she supposes, but she wonders why them. They weren't fresh faced by any means, but she always thought they seemed too young still. Was it their youth and by extension--their adaptability? Or maybe it was the fact that they were young enough to still be disposable?
Her eyes were burning; it'd been a while since she blinked. The darkness made the action seem less important. Gahye thinks that maybe, she forgot to, mistaking the absence of light at this time of night for the dark behind her eyelids.
Would she feel safer if he were here next to her?
The doorknob is cold against her palm, the air is too on her bare legs. She opens the door soundlessly, and she can tell that he's not asleep, either. It's hesitation that keeps her feet rooted where they are, but it dissolves when his shoulders seem to relax.
For the longest of times, she'd always thought that missions were hard, and that the decompressing after was easy. Tonight, it's a bit of an inversion (but not completely).
She slips under the covers, shivering at the cold sheets against her warm skin. Strangers, but not quite. Right now he's the closest thing she's got to home. He's the only one she comes close to trusting, right now.
Gahye curls up on herself on the opposite end of the bed.
It’s hard to pinpoint what had done him in—the seconds ticking down to then, or the aftermath. Whatever it is, whatever it had been, it followed. From the scene of the crime to trailing right at their heels. To the back of their four-seater, as they drove into the night. And now, it pads through the silence, the confines of their home. Inertia creeping.
Motionless, Taesik has nothing more but the company of shadows and the thoughts that slip through the expanse of the room, oil-slick. He’d be foolish to think sleep would wash over him by now: two hours and counting with his eyes wide open, fixed to the slow spin of the ceiling fan.
A close call. The closest they’ve ever been to being slit over a knife’s edge. Fear is a notion that’s long drained out of him—that, or it’s morphed into a different shape entirely. It’s hard to tell if it’s this numbing sensation he wants off his chest, or the weight of the memory itself. Dichotomies of choice that come around in full circle.
The sudden creak of the door startles him. Immediately, Taesik turns on his side, held tense, bated breath. Waiting. It’s the sound that follows that has him recoil slow. Exhale, then relief. He carefully sinks back against the pillows.
For all the time they’ve spent together, what he knows about her is little to none. Perhaps this is inconsequential. After all, it seems, they have heavier things to share in its place. The grievances. The small diamonds in the rough to counter each one: this isn’t home, this is close enough, I don’t need this, I need you as you need me. Necessity is both the mother of invention and the noose that pulls tighter, all without mercy in equal measure.
Tonight he has no stories to spin.
Tonight there’s a knot that neither of them can untie.
His eyes take in the space between them, her face. The thick tangle of hair spilling over the pillow. He only dares to move an inch closer, barely breaking this distance. His voice is barely above a thin murmur, echoing faint.
“Gahye?”
The answer? Yes. Every step closer to this very spot had made her feel safer. As soon as she'd walked through that door, there was no turning back. It's a silly phenomenon, and she doesn't want to examine it too closely. There might be some realizations that she's not quite ready to reckon with--mainly, that she needs him more than she wants to admit.
It's a primordial truth: there's comfort in company, there's strength in numbers.
"I didn't mean to intrude," he's already awake. Her eyes have adjusted to the relative darkness, and she slowly shifts onto her back, as if moving too fast might startle him. "I'm sorry, I thought you might want some company tonight." Because I need it.
With her back completely pressed against the mattress, she allows herself to turn her head to look at him. The moonlight filtering through the gauzy curtains outlines his figure like a halo, and Gahye almost wants to laugh at the irony. "I'll leave if you want me to, though." I know we're not close like this. She's not good at...this. And she feels foolish, backtracking on all those months of being an ice cold bitch, but there are too many sentences jammed into her head to be able to properly convey that. She's also got a little too much pride.
Gahye's body is completely still, save for her hands. Muscles slowly relaxing, there's a few beats of complete silence as they both try to figure this out. Her thumbs are nervously tracing over the shape of her nail, a nervous tick that betrays her so completely. Usually she's good at keeping it under wraps, but right now it's just--idle hands are the devil's playthings.
"Taesik, can I…?" Can I what?
So are idle lips, apparently.
She must think of him to be transparent, what with the way she can unlace him entirely with the single sweep of her gaze. Exposed before he can so much as pull the strings loose himself. Though their target had nearly beat them to the chase. Taesik can still see it now, clear as a picture. The barreling down of bullets. The shattering. Broken glass and metal and a deep, deep red.
"You're not intruding."
Watching her her watching him. There's no animal instinct involved in the act besides the draw of curiosity. Fear too, a quiet kind, that brims beneath the skin. Espionage teaches you the art of stealth, of slipping without tipping over the edge, but it's never ever brushed upon what it means to be vulnerable.
In the dark, she's a figure that cuts in sharp-soft. Pale moonglow and the thinned hardness of her hands.
He remembers the first time they'd interlocked fingers, not because of some magnetic pull of want but the push of a reminder. You have to sell yourselves. His grip had tightened on the spot. Back then, perhaps that was the least passive pretense he'd donned at all in those months.
It's different now. There's not any form of tense to describe their positions, the questions that pool beneath their bodies. His eyes flit between her thumb and the curve of her bare collarbone. Time only exists between the faint pound of their pulses.
"I don't want you to go."
His arm lifts from his side to rest over her waist. Different. Different. A novelty he's not sure what to make of, but is willing to revel in out of none other but sheer, careful need.
Please.
She stills completely, mid-motion, pausing with the tip of her nail still pressing into her fingertip. This feels real. The sensation, it grounds her until suddenly it's insignificant compared to the feeling of his arm around her. He feels primordially close, and her instincts tell her to shift closer-- "I'm not going anywhere," it almost feels like a promise. Her eyes drift closed and Gahye breathes out slowly, body moving with every inhale, exhale, curving closer towards Taesik. "Don't want to be anywhere but here."
Sometimes she's afraid that this is it. That her experiences up to this point are everything she's going to do, everything she's ever going to feel.
It was a silent sort of terror watching their cover slip away, like the sand beneath your feet when the tide sweeps back out. It's a certain brand of relief whenever they come back, together, alive (bruised, bloodied, but not too too broken). It's the particular stillness of them lying together, pressed closer than they'd been before.
Gahye imagines how deeply she might have fallen in love if the circumstances were different. If they weren't brought up in these worlds where everything except for their orders are off limits. "I was a little afraid of losing you tonight." It might even feel somewhat like this.
"I really don't know what I would have done if I did." Her arm slips out from under the covers to mimic the positioning of Taesik's, settling over until her fingers trace over his own.
But she does know. If either of them never came back, the other person would be ordered to pretend to grieve appropriately, then uproot and disappear. They'd be re-assigned. Rinse and repeat until they've wrung every bit of life out of you.
The thought of it gives rise to something unpleasant.
She turns her upper body, eyes searching for him in the dim light. It's been like this for a while. A call and response. This time, she wants to initiate. "Things feel different tonight, don't they?" As much as she wants to live in this role, she doesn't know if she can continue to do so, strategically keeping each touch hollow, empty.
When she lays completely flat on her back, hand reaching up to brush against his cheek, Gahye muses out loud. "I'm going to stay."
