A lullaby for a butterfly
ITZY Chaeryeong x m reader Word count: 14k
There’s a message in a bottle, and it has your name on it. You could probably open it if you tried. You weren’t the one that hid it, all you did was find it.
Now, you could break it. Burn it. Get rid of the whole thing altogether. But you can’t bring yourself to read it.
For now, you just leave it where it is.
—
Early June, and summer is off to a head start. The sun is beating down on you relentlessly. Chaeryeong doesn’t seem to notice, skipping ahead like the earth isn’t turning fast enough for her.
“Can you slow down? It’s way too hot for you to be this energetic right now,” you call out in a failed attempt to keep her near you.
“Absolutely not. Can you speed up, instead?” she retorts, and you can’t blame her. Turning twenty-one and no longer having to sneak around to get drunk is a big milestone, after all. Nothing past your first sip the day you celebrated your birthday made it into the permanent memory bank.
Go figure she’s brimming with the same kind of anticipation, the kind that makes her shine. Blonde hair swaying in the wind like rays of the sun itself as she turns to look at you with mock anger. You. The one who promised to treat her to a drink of choice, after all.
“If I die of heatstroke, I can’t buy you anything,” you grunt.
“I could just take your wallet off of your body if you die.”
She’s always been like this. Sharp, faster and more deadly with a comeback than you could ever be—when she’s paying attention. Relentless in her teasing, and most certainly one of those weirdos that has ragebaiting as their lovelanguage.
By the time you reach the liquor store, you’re drenched in sweat. But that’s just you. Chaeryeong—unlike you—looks pristine, like she’s made out of porcelain, like sweating is below her, but still chooses to wrap her arms around one of yours like she doesn’t care about any of those observations, she’s just happy to usher you inside.
“So, what are we looking for?” you ask as you browse the seemingly endless shelves. Chaeryeong is scanning each shelf, her pace significantly slower, like she’s in no rush to decide. A joke is begging to burst out of you, but you keep it locked up, lest you speed up her process and waste precious, air-controlled minutes inside.
She hums as her eyes scan up and down, thinking it over until she brings you up to speed. “Iunno,” is all she gives, though.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” you ask, kind of incredulously.
“I don’t know. What? Can’t a girl pick her first drink based on vibes?” she asks back.
“I don’t know. I guess? I knew what I wanted my first drink to be long before I got to it.”
She stops walking, holding you in place with her as she turns her gaze away from the endless bottles towards you. “Really? What did you get, again?”
“Whiskey,” you answer with a misguided sense of pride, like it’s supposed to be a cool answer. “You know, like, a real man’s drink.”
She just stares at you, one corner of her lip curling upwards into a smirk, and she doesn’t need to waste any words on mocking you. “I just figured I would find a nice bottle of something screaming at me,” she teases, poking you in the side with a finger, the rest of her hand still wrapped around your arm. “And if it’s expensive, that’s your problem.”
“Your plan is to let the bottle choose you?” you question, again.
“Worked out fine with you.”
That gets you. A chuckle escapes you, and she looks up at you, proud of herself. Worst part is that she’s completely right. She gave you shit for weeks for how long you waited to ask her out.
“Brat,” you sigh, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
She adjusts the black bow tied into her hair like she’s checking to see if you didn’t boorishly ruin her pristine sense of style, shrugs her shoulders when she’s satisfied with its current fit and smiles up at you. The intent is all too clear. She gracefully accepts your admission of defeat.
Finding something that suits Chaeryeong's taste might prove impossible. She’s got high standards for her likes to clear. Nothing really seemed to strike a chord with her, that is, until you reached the wine department.
“Oh. My. God. That is the one,” Chaeryeong exclaims with glee, rushing towards a black and pink bottle of rosé champagne, adorned with pink, red and lilac ribbons etched into the glass. She grabs it off the shelf, carefully turns to you and holds it up for you to inspect. “Isn’t it so fucking cute?”
It’s just north of a hundred dollars, a lot more expensive than the cheap forty dollar whiskey you celebrated your coming of age ceremony with, but that thought gets shoved down the moment you see the joy on her face.
“It suits you,” you say as you take the bottle in your hands.
“You think?” she questions back, and you just nod to answer.
Bottle in one hand, her hand in the other, you head towards the register, making good on your promise. A fine bottle of champagne for an even finer girl. She kisses you on the cheek the moment the cashier hands you back the bottle.
—
There’s an empty black and pink bottle of rosé champagne, adorned with pink, red and lilac ribbons etched into the glass. Inside, there’s a piece of paper, rolled up, and it would only make sense to have your name on it.
Chaeryeong must have left it for you to find.
Three years have you had it like this. Three years since she vanished from your life—and, as far as you can tell, hers as well.
Three years since you’ve worked together on turning that bottle from full to empty.
Looking at it makes the taste linger on your tongue.
—
"It's so fucking good," Chaeryeong practically moans. "It tastes like the world's most expensive cherry is making love to fizzy grapes on a bed of flowers, somehow?"
The shade of her favorite red lipstick paints the edge of her paper cup—courtesy of the room and wildly unfit for the quality of the drink—and she hands it to you. There’s still some champagne left at the bottom. You press your lips to the edge, already tasting a small hint of cherry from where Chaeryeong’s lips left a stain, and finally take a sip.
The fizz tickles your nose, teasing floral notes, a sharp contrast to your first drink, which could only be described as sandpaper fucking mudwater on a bed of burnt wood.
“Well?” she asks, tilting her head. She’s already claimed the center of the bed, lounging back on her elbows with a light grace that makes the room feel classier than it has any right to. “Did I pick the perfect drink or what?”
“It’s alright,” you lie, obviously, even though you’re already making a mental note to buy this exact bottle for every future celebration. You take another sip, finishing the paper cup, crinkle it in your fist and throw it in the trash can.
“Liar,” she chirps, kicking out a leg. Her foot, encased in a soft, ivory-colored wool thigh-high sock, pokes you right in the chest. “You can’t try to act nonchalant while also going for a second sip.”
You catch her ankle, the fabric soft and surprisingly warm against your palm. You don't let go. She doesn’t want you to, either. It’s obvious in the way her pupils are as big as they’re allowed to be, unwaveringly fixated on you. Every inch your hand slides up her leg causes another twitch in her calves.
She knows exactly what she’s doing. She's known ever since she wore this exact pair for the first time and you both lost your virginities. She wore these specifically because she fucking knows they turn your brain into mush, that seeing the little stretch of skin on her thigh between where the sock ends and her miniskirt begins makes you simply obsessed.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” you mutter without making eye contact, gaze fixed at her legs. Throw her a smirk, and pull her closer to the edge of the bed.
She’s won, celebrating her birthday with all the right beats. She hooks one of those wool-clad legs over your shoulder, the texture dragging against your neck, pulling you closer into her, into the mattress she reigns over.
“You’re so pathetic when I’m wearing these,” she whispers. Her tongue pushes through her lips, wets them, and leaves her mouth just slightly agape long enough for you to nearly close the distance. Those cherry covered lips should be on you, but instead they continue to taunt. “I wore them in a heatwave just to—” she huffs, smiling when your grip tightens, “—see you look at me like this. Like a dog waiting for permission to eat.”
“You’re a brat, you know that?” you growl, but you’re already leaning in, your hands sliding up the back of those socks to the soft, squeezed skin of her upper thighs. “A horny, attention-seeking brat.”
“I’m your princess,” she corrects, her eyes beaming with contradictory hunger. She reaches down, her fingers brushing against your knuckles before she pushes your hands away so she can take over. “And princesses get what they want. Right now, I want to see how much of a mess I’ve made you.”
A sly smile plays on your lips as you slide her leg off of your shoulder, and steal the bottle of champagne out of her other hand, taking control of the pace.
“Not so fast, princess. I’ve paid for three hours off this room, we can take our time,” you retort in a competitive growl. She watches you with wide, surprised eyes as you take a long, deliberate swig, letting fruits dance on your tongue. Swallowing would be a waste now.
No. You reach out and snag the black bow in her hair alongside some of her silken strands, and grab a nice fistful.
With a firm tug on it, just enough to jerk her head back, you force her gaze off of your straining bulge and onto your face. Her mouth falls open in a small gasp of shock, corners of her lips going up into a defiant smile. The distance between you two melts away with reverent intention until you press your lips against hers. You let the sparkling liquid seep into her mouth, sweet and fizzy flooding her mouth and catching her off-guard.
She scrambles for purchase on your shoulders, tongue mixing with yours as she takes all you can give, letting out a muffled and desperate sound as she swallows the mouthful you’ve gifted her.
“There,” you mutter as your lips part, your thumb swiping a stray drop of rosé from her chin. “Happy birthday. Now we can be a mess together.”
“I’m going to cry if you don’t take your pants off soon,” she moans as drops of champagne that you couldn’t quite get into her mouth spill down her chin. No time is wasted licking them up from collarbone to jaw. “I’m making you buy a new bottle and doing this every birthday I have from now on.”
That earns her a muffled laugh against her skin.
“Every birthday?”
“Every single one,” she answers without a drop of hesitation. “Even yours.”
—
There’s an empty bottle that still faintly smells of cherry, grapes and spring flowers.
It’s also the last bottle you bought her.
The note inside is still there. It’s impossible not to think about, and what it has to say, why it has your name on it.
If you open it, the memory of that June afternoon finally breaks. The memory of the wool against your skin and the cherry on your tongue will have to face whatever reality she wrote down.
For now, you just leave it where it is. Because as long as the bottle is sealed, she’s still in that love hotel room, smiling up at you, waiting for her next drink.
Despite all that, you still had to learn how to live without her.
You’re not good at it.
Not when you’re losing her over and over again. See, the thing about a person vanishing from your life without an explanation—or, in your case, an explanation you don’t think you can deal with—is that it’s not a one time thing.
Sure, you lost Chaeryeong the morning she didn’t come back to your place. Then, you lost her again the first time you saw a funny video and wanted to share it with her. Again when you found a strand of her dyed blonde hair on your winter coat.
You’ve been constantly losing her in small increments. Three years of small losses, compounding interest, your mind begging you to keep her memory intact.
It’s not as oppressive during the day. It’s the nights that are the most silent. It makes sense, those were your favorite times as a couple. You still can’t bring yourself to sit in her spot on the couch.
So, nights require distractions now. Hobbies that don’t stick, endless scrolling of short-form content to beat your brain to death with, midnight snack and alcohol runs.
Tonight isn’t one of the worst nights. Tonight is just a Tuesday in late May, and you need milk for your coffee tomorrow morning, and the only convenience store still open is a 7-Eleven on a forty minute walk away. The distance doesn’t bother you, it fills time that way. Earbuds in, a nice long walk, and check out a undoubtedly similar store to all of their other locations, but it keeps you occupied all the same.
Meditation, you call it. Obsession is what your friends call it. The way you spend every moment you’re not occupied thinking about what you’d say to her. It’s all painted on the inside of your skull, flashing before you the moment you close your eyes.
The way you wouldn’t give an inch. Ask her to explain herself. The way you’d hold yourself when you asked it, having practiced the exact beats for “where did you go” and “did it ever occur to you how I felt.”
But most importantly, you practiced not letting her know that all she had to do was ask and you’d forgive her like nothing happened.
You’re so lost in it again you almost miss her entirely.
She’s crouched at the bottom shelf of the snack aisle, picking out different cans of pringles, examining them and putting them back one by one. Her hair is black now, shielding her line of sight from you. Her lips peek through, a similar shade of midnight, not something you’ve ever seen her entertain.
You have about ten seconds to walk away and she would never know. You stand there, three years of questions disappearing in the span of two seconds.
She shifts her weight, the hem of her coat rides up, and you see the nail in your coffin.
Black lace. Same strip of skin at the top of her thigh. A floral pattern engraved. Three years clearly not enough to erase a decade of habits.
“You trying to find a snack that’s just screaming at you?”
She freezes.
Her head turns slowly, eyes finally meeting yours, trembling in place like she’s seen a ghost.
“Oh,” she breathes. Her fingers clench and then unclench around the canned snack. “It’s—hi.”
“Hey,” you respond, arms now crossed. Just like that, three years of questions, righteous anger and rehearsed confrontations evaporate into stale air.
“I didn't—" she starts, then stops to fidget with the hem of her coat. It’s a nervous habit of hers, once she’s had since she was little. You instantly pick up on it like you’d stumbled over a tripwire you’d laid for yourself years ago. “You shop here now?”
“No, I don’t,” you respond curtly. She can’t meet your eyes when you say it. “But the one we used to shop at is being renovated. And I needed some milk for my coffee tomorrow morning.”
She nods, gaze flickering between your face and the floor. “That makes sense.”
None of this makes sense if you think about it. Has she always been here? Just out of reach, less than an hour walking from your normal life? Just—what? Living her life without you?
It only raises more questions you never rehearsed. Also stretches a silence between you, filled only with the humming of refrigerators and flickering of fluorescent lights. All you manage to do is blurt out something mundane.
“You stopped dyeing your hair.”
Her hand reflexively touches the ends off her hair draped over her shoulder. “Yeah. Do you, ehm, you like it?”
Any color Chaeryeong has ever had has instantly become your favorite color, only occasionally dethroned by the shade of her lipstick. Telling her was never a problem when you were still intertwined, but what if this is just temporary? A stroke of misfortune for her, a blip on the radar, and all you’d accomplish was making her uncomfortable.
“Yeah,” is most you can start with. “I like it.”
The black color of her lips contrasting against her pale skin helps you spot the faintest of smiles, disappearing as fast as it came.
She shifts her weight around and looks down at the can in her hand like she’s forgotten why she’s even picked it up. It couldn’t be more clear, whatever brought her here tonight did not account for seeing you again.
You both go through the motions, asking how you’ve been, and you lie that you’ve been good. Maybe her “I’m doing okay,” the truth, maybe it's a lie, and both would sting just the same. Where you’re working now, if you still live in the same place, and how nothing has changed and you’re practically been frozen in time since she left.
It’s not the same for her, obviously. She looks like you could never have even begun to imagine her.
She shifts again, her coat follows the movement, and you just can’t help but catch another glimpse of those fucking black lace stockings. Some things never change. Stop yourself from wondering why that detail hasn’t. If you do, you might get a lump in your throat so big no more words could come out.
Thankfully, she breaks the mold. “Um,” she starts, then stops. Takes a breath, and her shoulders stiffen up. “Can I ask you something stupid?”
“Sure,” you answer, impossibly bracing yourself.
“Do you remember that champagne bottle we shared on my birthday?”
Of course you remember. The champagne bottle with a message in it. But she’s not asking about the message, the note.
“The rosé one? Yeah, what about it?”
She takes a deep breath, meeting your eyes properly for the first time, brow knitted together. “I was just wondering if you still had it. I liked the way it tasted.”
“I’m not sure,” you lie. “Maybe? I could check when I’m home.”
There’s something you can’t quite make out playing across her face, not with everything new about it. Is it relief? Disappointment? It’s gone before she nods again.
“No, that’s okay. You don’t have to go through the trouble,” she assures you.
You nod. There isn't much else you know to do.
“Yeah,” you say, even though there’s nothing to agree with. “If you say so.”
The silence that follows is different this time. It’s about as obvious as the void in your chest when you look at her. There’s no awkwardness or sensitivity to it. It’s merely there to kill a story.
She swaps the can from one hand to the other, forcing her focus to change, to do anything to not drown. “I should probably, y’know,” she gestures the can towards the register. “Pay for this.”
“Right,” you answer. “Yeah.”
You stand there frozen, unmoving, freezing her with you.
For a second, it’s almost like one of you is supposed to say something else. Like you’re missing the pop-up for another dialogue option, like there’s a version of this reunion that ends with you and her in each other's arms but you just can’t see the bridge that connects the now to that.
And it fades, gone as soon as it arrives, draining through your fingers like water.
She nods to herself, more than to you, and steps around you. Not too close. Not too far either. Just, around you.
Her scent gets trapped in your nose.
It’s hard to snap out of the scene, and you linger longer than you can respect yourself for. Just staring at the spot she just was now isn’t, before reluctantly moving on to what you came for.
Milk.
Stupid fucking milk, that you just grab any carton of, whichever comes first, and just rush with towards the register in the most delusional hope of catching up to her.
By the time you reach the register, she’s already left the store.
It’s when you step outside she surprises you again.
Chaeryeong hasn’t left.
She’s standing just past the automatic doors, under a particularly strong lamp, scanning the horizon. She looks at you the moment the doors hiss shut.
“Found your milk?” she asks, squeezing together her lips.
“Yep,” you blurt out without much thought spent on what to say next. She fills in the void pretty quickly.
“Which way are you headed?”
“Same as always.”
She nods slowly. Clicks her tongue, her eyes dart up and down, hoping you figure something out without having to spell it out for you. She speaks when you don’t.
“It’s really late,” she says, and the tone of her voice is the same one she used when she really wanted you to get up from the couch and go grab her a snack.
“Is your new place far from here?” you ask, and you pray you don’t come off as a creep.
“It’s not super far,” she answers in the same tone.
You sigh. “Will you make it home safe?”
“I’d feel safer if you walked me.”
You agree like you’ve always agreed to anything Chaeryeong asked of you. Old habits dying hard, or maybe it’s you forcing them alive despite the weathering of time. It’s all the same in the end, a simple excuse to talk some more to her.
“Which way are we headed?” you ask.
She tilts her head left, and you fall in beside her.
For the first couple of hundred meters, nobody says anything that made it into your practiced conversations. It used to be so easy and comfortable to be in silence together, and now it feels like you’re both asking permission for just that. Some light conversation does happen. Chaeryeong asks if you’re still working the same job, which you are. You ask the same, which she obviously isn’t, you’d have found her. She works in childcare now, and you tell her it suits her.
It takes a while for the first thing you can latch on to surfaces. Chaeryeong asking if you still have the same phone number. She asks it carefully too, like she’s bracing herself for a lie from you. “Yeah,” is all you say.
She slows down half a step, grabbing her phone from her coat pocket. She fiddles with it, and you feel your phone buzz as she stashes her away again.
“Now you have mine,” she smiles, and skips once or twice to catch up to you.
You don’t grab your phone to read what she sent, trusting it’s not as important as just making sure you have her number. You’d rather be here, on this street, in this fragile thing, hoping she tells you she made a mistake and wants you back.
She notices. It’s obvious in the way she looks at the pocket you’ve kept your phone in since you were fifteen for a second longer than necessary, and then back at the road ahead. There’s no figuring out Chaeryeong when she has an idea or what that entailed, but it was never a secret from you whenever she had one.
That’s when the conversation starts to move. It almost tricks you, moving the way it used to, simple thoughts flowing from one into another.
But it’s not the same.
It flows the way a river flows when a natural catastrophe has changed the lay of the land, quietly rerouting, touching different banks.
You can feel yourself swim against the current, trying to close the distance with a reference only she would get—something about how she’d totally zone out any time you started talking about your day—and she smiles, she gets it, she even picks it up and runs with it for a sentence or two. But then it trails off. Lands somewhere just shy of where it would have, three years ago. Where she would have grabbed your arm, leaned into you, kept teasing you until you were so annoyed you’d stop her from talking by kissing her.
Instead, she just smiles, and looks ahead.
You do the same.
Her phone lights up in her hand. She glances at it briefly, types something without breaking stride, and pockets it again. You notice. You don’t say anything about it. It’s the second time since you left the store.
By the time you turn onto her street, you’ve both made peace with the gaps. Or you’ve both agreed, silently, to pretend you have.
The building she stops in front of is narrow and clean, a row of small potted plants lined up outside the entrance like she had a hand in that. It’s nice to believe she did.
She stops, turns to face you. Pulls her coat tighter. Her eyes shine , but it’s soft and careful, like she’s been working up to what she’s about to say a few times over.
“I’m glad I ran into you,” she says, and you believe her. That’s not the problem. “And I—“ a small pause, “—I hope we can talk again sometime. If you want.”
If you want.
The words land somewhere low in your chest and turn upside down.
Three years of losing her in pieces, of practicing what you’d say, of sitting on the side of the couch that was always yours because you couldn’t bring yourself to take hers, of carrying a bottle you can’t open because opening it means it’s real. She has the audacity to stand here, putting it in your hands. Like it was ever up to you. Like you were the one who needed convincing.
“If I want,” you repeat, and you hear the edge in your own voice before you’ve decided to put it there.
She blinks, takes a step back. “I didn’t—“
“No, I just—“ you interrupt. Stop to collect your thoughts, resurface the script you’ve practiced over and over. Start again. “I just don’t think that’s fair of you to say. Not after everything.”
She doesn’t move. Her expression has gone still in the way it does only when she doesn’t know what to say, and you know she’s not going to fight you on it, which somehow makes it worse.
Already stepping back, already putting distance between you and the bottom step and her face, which is doing something complicated that you can’t afford to look at for very long before your lungs are ready to work again. “I’m glad you’re okay. I am.” You shake your head. “I’m not.“
You don’t wait for her to respond. There’s a final “Goodnight” you throw out hastily after you turn, walking away, and the night air hits you cold and immediate and you don’t look back. Your hands find your pockets. Everything blurs, your feet keeping your pace even, controlled, the same way you’ve controlled everything since she left, and you keep walking.
You don’t stop. Not until you’re back in your building, up your stairs, through your door and in your bedroom.
She’s on your mind until exhaustion finally lets you drift away.
—
It’s the morning after seeing Chaeryeong for the first time in three years. You’ve got three messages on your phone. Chaeryeong sent them to you.
All from yesterday evening.
The first: “i hope you dont mind me having kept your number lol“
It’s unfair to open with that, as if her having kept your number isn’t cause for celebration, to open a fancy bottle of champagne. You save her to your contacts and leave the bottle closed for now.
The second, sent maybe ten minutes after the first: “thanks for walking me home btw, im not usually out this late and it makes me feel a lot more at ease to have you here“
You stare at the screen. The time gap between the second and final message proves the last one is from just after you stormed off yesterday. It reads as follows: “im not good at this. i understand if you dont reply to this“
Eventually, the screen dims. You put the phone down on your chest and look at the ceiling for a while. From where you're lying you can see the bottle on the shelf where you keep it. Black and pink, the ribbons etched into the glass catching the flat morning light. The note still inside it, rolled tight, a different kind of taunting aura now. It holds your gaze for a long time. Then you look back at your phone.
There's a version of you that opens the bottle today. That finally breaks the seal and reads whatever she couldn't say to your face and lets that be the thing that decides it.
You pick up your phone instead. Stare at the messages she sent you. Sit with the blank text field for a moment, write a couple of words that don’t feel right, delete them, stare at that stupid fucking bottle again and almost put your phone away. There’s a million questions you want to ask her, but there’s no point in even pondering them if you can’t even ask the simplest question first.
“Can I see you?”
You put the phone face-down on the mattress and go make coffee, because you need something to do with your hands, something to distract you from checking your phone every two seconds to see if she answered.
You’ve barely picked out a cup when your phone rings.
“now?”
It’s conveniently inconvenient. The timing alone is enough to spike your heartbeat for the rest of the morning. A response that’s way too fast for someone that’s supposed to be a closed door, so fucking fast that you realize you won’t be able to put your phone down the moment you figure out how to respond.
Because there’s an even more annoying question being asked back to you now. What the fuck does she mean? Just that, no further context, infuriatingly drives you to consider two totally opposite possibilities, two divergent interpretations.
But that’s the trick of it. It doesn’t matter. It’s been three years. It is that urgent. A second without her or at least a resolution longer is one too many. So you just take a chance on it being the second choice, and fire back.
“Whenever you can”
You send another text almost instantly, correcting yourself.
“Now, actually, if thats not too weird”
You hover over the send button, delete “if thats not too weird” and just send the first part.
She doesn’t take much longer to respond. Says she’ll be over in an hour, if that’s not too weird. You instantly respond to her, letting her know it isn’t.
What follows is not an hour of pacing, not an hour of relaxed waiting, casually preparing. No. It’s an hour of the worst kind of anticipation, with every minute making your heart beat faster like it still could accelerate, driving your anxiety to a point it makes you feel like you’re going to shit all your organs out on the floor and die there.
See, running into her unexpectedly is one thing, but doing the inverse—meeting with her at an agreed upon time—is far worse.
It’s an hour of cleaning everything in your apartment—or at least the part you expect to host her and her apology. Any sign that could give away a hint that you are not in control has to be eliminated. All of the conversations you planned start flowing again, and you try to force them away knowing damn well none of them will matter the moment she shows up at your door.
You buzz her in almost exactly an hour after her last text.
Yesterday’s black was not an accident. She’s still all winged liner, smoky eyes and inky black lipstick. Your eyes zip down once and spot the same poison as yesterday. A single strip of skin, with a floral pattern slightly further down. You don’t ask. You can’t manage much more than a “hi” anyways.
You let her in.
She knows your place blind. Like a cat who just returned from her evening stroll, she walks straight to the couch and sits, knees together to the side and feet half tucked under her, hand clutching her phone. It’s far too familiar how she sinks in.
Before any of the conversational explosions that have their fuses lit in your chest come out, you make your way to the kitchen, pouring both of you coffee. You speak loudly, letting her know that you happen to have some milk, if she still takes her coffee the same way she used to, which she lets you know she does.
You pour your own and join her, but on the opposite end of the couch. You fit into the memory better there, after all. Now that she’s here, you don’t even know where to start, or how to even explain without sounding desperate why you invited her over.
She puts her cup down, turns to you and says, “I want to apologize again for last night. I was—I’m really bad at this. I didn’t mean to make you feel like shit.”
You don’t turn. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you apologize to me before.” Take another sip of your coffee, then put it down. “The sound of it is just all wrong.”
She blinks. “I’m sorry?”
“Yeah, no, please stop,“ you say, your whole face tightening with cringe. “It’s like hearing a cat bark or something.“
“Shut up?“ she responds just a bit too much like she used too.
“Chaeryeong.”
“Ew?” she responds in instant and total disgust.
“What do you mean, ‘ew’?“
“Don’t say my name like that.“
“Like what? Chaeryeong?“ You turn to face her properly for the first time since you sat down.
“Please fucking stop,” she says, recoiling and scrunching her nose as if you just mentioned hating puppies. “It’s horrible.“
“I’m literally just saying your name.“
“I know, and it’s horrible, and I hate it.“ She shifts on the couch, pulling her knees tighter to her body. “You never used to say my name. I literally think the last time I heard you say my name, we might have been like, I don’t know, eleven years old?“
“Chaeryeong,“ you say with a smirk.
“I’m going to punch you.“
“For saying your name?“
“Yes! You used to call me princess.” She physically winces at the sound replaying in her head. “Hearing you say my name just makes it sound like you’re so upset with me.“
You face her head on with a smile you can’t seem to stuff down. “I am upset with you!“
“I already tried to apologize!“
“I’m upset because of you apologizing, idiot.“
“You know what, actually? Call me an idiot. That’s much better. I prefer it over you saying my name.”
You stare at her for a long moment.
“You’re actually an idiot,” you say, flatly, because some things never change.
“Thank you.”
You shake your head, pivot back toward the conversation before it escapes you entirely. “My point is—you don’t apologize to me. That’s not a thing you do. You apologized to your dance instructor for being late when your subway literally broke down. You apologize to delivery guys when they’re late because—” you raise your fingers to form air quotes. “It’s not their fault we live so far away.“
She tries to stop you, but you raise your finger like you’re scolding her and continue: “You’ve apologized to your mom for weed Chaeyeon hid in a cookie jar. I’ve watched you do it. You’ve never smoked in your life.” You gesture vaguely in her direction. “You apologize to everyone. Everyone except me. Or—“ you catch yourself, measured, “—at least, never with words.”
A beat passes. Then she laughs. Not the polite kind, not the deflective kind she’s been deploying since yesterday like a smoke screen. The real one. The one that starts low and tips forward and makes her press a hand over her mouth when it gets too loud, the one that used to make you feel like you’d won something.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she says, riding out the coattail of her chuckle, tucking a strand of black hair behind her ear. “I won’t apologize for yesterday if you tell me why you really invited me over. Clearly, it wasn’t to hear me say sorry.”
You take a long sip of your coffee. “I wanted to talk.”
“You wanted to talk,” she repeats, flat.
“Catch up.”
“Catch up.”
She watches you, waiting, eyes taunting you to start ‘catching up’. You set your cup down on the coffee table, link your hands together, and decide to just walk straight into it.
“Yeah, catch up,” you start carefully. “Like, for example, ask you questions like—“ you pause, roll your eyes trying to think of an easy transition into the barrage you’ve prepare, “—ever since we broke up—“
“Wait,“ she interrupts you, holding up a hand and furrowing her brow with theatrical precision. “We broke up?“
All you can do is stare. Blankly. It’s so utterly tactless, shot straight from the hip and missing its mark by a mile.
“I’m just saying,” she continues, utterly oblivious to how unable you are to laugh this joke away, “I don’t remember a breakup conversation happening. Technically.”
“Chaeryeong.”
“There it is again,” she mutters, scrunching her nose.
“You disappeared,” you say, and the word lands heavier than you intend it to. “For three years. That’s the conversation.”
“I’m sorry,” she scrunches her mouth, and looks away. “And you said my name just now so we’re even for me apologizing.“
You exhale through your nose, letting out a single chuckle in hopes of preserving some of the earlier momentum. “Idiot.“ You look back at her, and she can feel it, turning to meet your gaze. “As I was saying, ever since we broke up, have you been seeing anyone?“
It’s not the first question you wanted to ask. It mostly just slipped out, some kind of honest response to her eyes connecting with yours. It’s the question you’re stuck with now, forced to to face whatever answer she gives.
She tilts her head, wiggles her toes. “Have you?“
You should have known she would never answer before you. “You’re unbelievable,“ you say as you tilt your head towards the ceiling, hands dragging down your face.
“It’s payback. I deserve an answer first,“ she says simply, and before you can even question it—because she knows you will—she already continues, “because you called me an idiot.“
A big sigh escapes your lungs. There’s no point in arguing with her. At this point, the only outcomes are nobody answering, or you answering first, so you do. “No,“ you say. “I haven’t been seeing anyone.“
Her gaze burns on the side of your face like it always has when she’s going to ask you a barrage of questions you can’t avoid. You resist turning towards it.
“No one?” she asks.
“No one.”
A short pause. “Not even like, a one night thing? Someone you met at a bar, charmed your way into her pants and then never have to talk to her again?”
“What? No.”
“Didn’t pay anyone?” She says it carefully, measuring it. “Like, even just for—“
“No.” You say it before she can finish. “No.”
“Not even a kiss? Holding hands?“
You finally turn back to her. “Not even that. Not once. Nothing.”
She sits with that for a moment. The apartment is very still around you. You fear to move, lest the couch makes a sound and ruins this fragile moment you don’t know what to do with.
“Don’t you miss it?” she asks, and her voice has lost the teasing edge. It’s just a question now, plain and without judgement.
And the thing is, the word ‘it‘ is doing a tremendous amount of heavy lifting. She might be asking about the abstract concept of physical intimacy or the general act of human contact.
But you can’t help but be hit by a flood of ‘its‘. It’s the wool against your palm. It’s the cherry on your tongue. It’s a black bow coming loose in your fist and sifting through your fingers like sand only for strands of blonde to remain. It’s legs hooked over your shoulder like an anchor you never got tired of keeping steady. It’s the wiggle of toes anytime anything exciting happened. It’s countless nights spent whispering that you still think she’s the prettiest girl in the world.
You miss it the way you’d miss breathing.
You don’t say any of that.
You don’t say anything for long enough that the silence becomes its own kind of answer.
She watches you. Then, softly, she offers you an exit: “You probably don’t miss having a girlfriend that never apologizes, right?”
It’s a joke. It’s meant to be a joke. She’s giving you the out, the laugh, the reset.
The bad ending.
“I miss all of it,” you say, and it comes out with so little air, quiet and meek. Like something you’ve been keeping in a locked room for three years that just walked out on its own while you were still figuring out if it could stand.
She goes very still in response.
Not the kind of stillness she’d couple with contorted faces to buy her more time to think of something clever. A kind you’d never seen before. One that starts in her eyes and slowly creeps all over her body.
You catch yourself staring at her, but it’s impossible to stop. She blinks once—no, twice—and then shifts, chuckles, breaks the silence.
“All of it,“ she repeats, hollow. Like she’s not allowing herself to taste the words. She shakes her head, looks down at her cup and smiles softly. “I’m sure you could go without a lot of it.“
That’s when you see it. Clear as day, eyes wide open. The next hour, the next week, the next three years. The whole thing passing you by like the trail of a bullet that barely missed.
It goes like this: You don’t say anything meaningful to respond. She doesn’t dare push. You try one more safe attempt to reach out, and it doesn’t connect, the conversation swerving to something safer, more mundane, decidedly not dangerous. You’ll finish your coffee first, and she’ll check the time on her phone and say something along the lines of her needing to get going. You’ll walk her to the door, and she’ll say it was really good to see you, and she’ll mean it, and you’ll mean it back, and she’ll leave, and you’ll close the door, and you’ll stand in your kitchen for a while staring at her cup before eventually deciding to wash it, and you’ll sit on the couch wondering what the message inside the bottle is and not opening it, and nothing will have changed. The weeks pass. Maybe she texts, maybe you do, and it won’t matter who does, because all it will be is something simple and dismissible, a meme she thinks you’d like or a check-in when a song on the radio reminds you of her.
But the door between then and now stays shut, and the time between texts grows, and you’re losing her again like you did over the past years except this time you watch it happen and choose it anyways because the bridge looked too burned to cross.
And that’s the current trajectory of the reality you’re allowing to come to pass.
So you reject reality.
You close the distance.
It’s not graceful. It’s fucking desperate, moving too fast, the cushion shifting under you, and she turns at the movement, shifts back slightly but doesn’t move further than that, holds her breath with her mouth open, clutches her hand into a fist and you blink and—
You stop.
A centimeter. Maybe less.
That’s the full distance left between your faces the second the bottle—engraved on the inside of your eyelids—freezes you in place. What if her answer was no, and still is no?
“Why did you stop?“
You look down. You can’t look her in the eyes, because frankly, there’s not an answer you can give her after boldly lunging at her only to stop right before impact. Your eyes land where they always do. The strip of skin left untouched, like a line stopped before completion to make sure you know she still can stop wherever she wants. The floral pattern woven with near equal artistry to the squish of her thigh where the hem of the sock bites into her skin.
“Why are you wearing those?“ you ask.
She’s quiet for a moment. Long enough for you to let your eyes find hers.
“Because you like them,“ she says.
You close the distance, and your lips find hers.
It lands a little off-center, your nose bumping hers, and she makes a small sound of surprise that dissolves almost immediately. It’s compounded interest all paid back at once, your hand finding the side of her face and her hand finding the front of your shirt, and the taste of her is coffee now instead of champagne but the mechanics of it are so familiar.
You pull back just far enough to look at her. Her eyes are still closed for half a second longer than yours, and when they open they’re darker than usual, a little undone, intently focused on you. The black lipstick has migrated, a small smear at the corner of her mouth, and you have the absurd, overwhelming urge to fix it and ruin it further at the same time.
Her other hand comes up and finds your jaw, thumb tracing the edge of it, the same way she used to when she was in a particular mood, a quietly possessive habit she’d never have admitted to.
“Are you sure about this?“ Her thumb has stopped moving. Her voice quieter, barely audible over your own heartbeat.
You look at her, and she doesn’t look at you.
“I was gone for so long,“ she continues, and she tucks some hair behind her ear, then fixes it immediately. “I don’t want you to regret—“
“You’re here now.”
It’s unbelievably trite, and the Chaeryeong you knew would have wasted no time at all giving you shit for it, but it’s also completely, undeniably true and that makes the instant lack of response that much scarier.
She blinks, her surprise barely masked before she bursts into a laugh that’s mostly exhale, then leans in so her forehead rests against yours. “That’s genuinely the corniest thing you have ever said to me, and I still remember the poem you wrote for me in high school.”
“Thank god,” you respond with an embarrassed smile, “I was worried that I might have had another Chaeryeong in my home if you didn’t make fun of me for that.”
“I had to, no matter how sweet it was,” she whispers, and before you can feel any more stupid about it she’s swinging a leg over you and settling into your lap in one fluid motion, and then her lips part and so do yours again. Her mouth is on yours, open and needy, tongue’s clashing unlike the first one and beneath the coffee there is—absurdly—the faintest taste of cherry coating her.
How dare she.
You level the playing field. Hands finding her hips, planting themselves there, keeping a firm grip on her, and you can feel the way she melts into it, her spine relaxing as she sinks slightly forward. She shifts again when your hands slide up. Her waist first, then onto her ribs, accompanied by the small jump of muscle she always has when you graze a particularly sensitive spot just beneath her ribcage, your thumb pressing into flesh.
There’s a fast rise and fall to it, and you let it linger, stopping there, causing her to look down at you after breaking the kiss, hair falling over her face.
“You stopped again.“
“Look,“ you say, and it starts deadly serious. “There’s a lot we haven’t talked about yet. I know that—like, it’s bad,“ you stop, and she pulls back ever so slightly, her hands drifting. “And, I want to talk. I do.“ You stop to breathe. She holds her breath.
“But right now, I just really—really want to fuck you.“ She exhales, and you don’t stop. “Like, desperately. That’s kind of where I’m at.“
She looks weirdly relieved at that. Then she smiles, her eyes narrowing but staying focused on you. “I don’t mind not talking right now,“ she says. “I’ve been thinking about not talking ever since you lunged at me the first time. So.“
"You sound pent up."
She doesn’t bother denying it. Instead, she turns, shifts her whole weight around in your lap like she's decided its time for you to drown in troubled waters—although they’re only thigh-high—and settles her back against your chest. Your arms close around her, and her head tilts back over your shoulder so she’s looking up at you from below, her eyes looking even more dark and enticing with the long line of her throat exposed.
She grinds her hips into you, your hands dig into her skin, and she exhales into your neck.
"You also feel pent up," you say.
"I haven’t fucked in three years," she says simply, finally answering your earlier question you’ve already long exposed yourself to. You tighten around her waist, slightly squeeze the air out of her, and pull her as close as she can possibly be. "Keep that in mind, because I am going to be—" she pauses, eyes hooded and looking up at you—"sensitive. Everywhere. I will probably cum embarrassingly quickly."
Her head tilts, and her mouth finds your neck. She speaks into your flesh. "That’s not a warning, by the way."
She lightly nibbles on your skin, teeth teasing but never with any pressure.
"No?" you ask.
She settles back against you. Completely at ease.
"I'm bragging."
You move your hands carefully around all the safe spots. It might be you savoring the moment, or maybe you’re just asking permission. Either way, she can tell, and after a moment slides her hands over yours.
“You can touch whatever you want,“ she says, and then her hands are moving yours, guiding them up and under the hem of her top. “I won’t stop you.“
She looks forward again. Shifts, making herself easier to reach, accommodating in a way that feels almost pointed. She’s exactly the same as you remember, which is to say, still a perfect handful, her hands resting atop yours, perfectly cooperative.
"You're being very good about this," you say.
"I know," she says with a smirk, like you haven’t yet figured out the price you’re going to pay for this. A soft moan escapes her as you find her nipples still fit perfectly in between your digits. "I'm very well behaved when I want to be."
"And when you want to be is—"
"Right now," she says. "Obviously." Her fingers press down lightly over yours, guiding without urgency. "You should take advantage of that."
“You’re just making excuses. I think you’re just being needy for my fingers to curl inside of you.“
She doesn’t dignify that with a verbal response just yet. Instead, her fingers interlace with yours, dragging the combination downwards. Off her ribs, past the soft give of her stomach, lower still, until the hem of her skirt glides under your fingertips, not stopping until she lets your palms rest on that strip of skin right between the hem of her socks and the—if the sensation of lace against your thumb is correct—same material panties.
She presses your hands down, makes sure you feel how much they still mold to your grip.
“Okay,“ she says with a smile, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “So what if I am needy?“
She spreads her legs a little, her hands letting go off yours. Her right arm wraps around and her hand finds an anchor point on the back of your neck, keeping her steady as she slides ever so slightly down. Her left hand bunches up the damp fabric of her underwear to the side.
“So what?“ you chuckle once with disbelief. “I told you I wanted to properly fuck you, not just give you princess treatment in my lap,“ you correct her, and push your hips forward once, letting her feel what her provocations have done to you. There’s no way she can miss it, the way your cock is straining against her ass, pressing up into her.
She grinds back, riding the pressure, exposing your own sensitivity. “You think I couldn’t tell how hard you already are?“ She rolls her hips again, slower, more precise, like she’s making a promise for later.
“I know what you want,“ she says. “I want that too, especially if you keep calling me princess.“
“I didn’t call you—“
“But I’ve imagined your hands on me again and again and again,“ she continues. “Every time I closed my eyes.“ Her hips shift. “Yesterday, too. You crossed your arms and I just—“ She moans. She fucking moans, right in your ear. “I came so fucking hard, thinking of them on everywhere. My waist. My throat.“ Her left hand finds yours again, slides it up until you can feel her pussy press against your palm. “Here.“
She’s absolutely soaked.
“Chaeryeong.“
“Don’t say my name like that,“ she protests, whiny, and bites your neck in retribution.
“Okay, princess,“ you smirk and she’s already shaking. Two of your fingers push in, slow, your palm pressed against her clit and her precious little spine curves, her lower back getting pushed away. Her hands hang on tight, like they need the stability.
“Fuck I missed—“ she pushes through an inhale, a small moan follows out, and after an exhale she manages to say the rest. “All of that.“
"You can have this one," you say, unhurried. "You're going to remind me how much after I’m done with you."
She’s writhing in your lap now, hands clutching your flesh and you’re sure she’s going to leave a mark, pulling your head to hers so she can bite your lip between words. “I told you—” she pants, and you want to tell her to go ahead, but she beats you to it—shudders, legs kicking out, and clamps around your fingers so tight you think you’ll never get them back.
“Embarrassingly fast.“
You keep going. Not nice, not considerate, not gentle. You want every ounce of her, want her to lose herself, and the more you work her, the more she gives.
Her spine curves further, impossibly. She’s so small against you like this, tucked in and shaking, and you push both fingers fully in her and she jolts, her breathing going shallow, bitemarks being made in your neck, your thighs getting battered by her heels.
“Tell me when,” you say quietly.
“When,” she says immediately, and you waste no time using the base of your palm to press down on her above her cunt, fingers trying to curl back into your hand inside of her, holding her through her tremors. You can feel it in your own chest, your ribs quaking like a second heartbeat overlapping yours. She looks beautiful. She always did, but it’s easy to miss this; the way she falls apart fully, the way she whimpers your name, the way she smiles after like a radiant goddess.
Her orgasm mellows out eventually, and she’s breathing hard, lifeless limbs hanging against you, and you keep her steady. Let her come down at her pace. You let fingers glide out slowly, slipping free, and she mewls involuntarily, whimpers something pathetic about the loss of your touch.
She lays there, slumped into you, and you’re staring at her lips.
Not just because she’s smiling, or they’re black, or that their hue is clearly infinite with how perfectly coated the still are despite the many traces she’s left on your body. No, you’re just staring because she’s got you so worked up that you’re lost in the memory of her lips wrapped around your cock, back when her lipstick was a shade of red or nude, and those never left any marks.
“You’re staring,“ she says, hopelessly out of breath.
“Just thinking that I like the color.”
“I doubt that’s the full extent of it.” There is no chance Chaeryeong lets you off the hook. “You’re staring at my mouth like you want to fuck it.“
Nobody could ever come close to knowing you like she does. Call it a side-effect of growing up together. There’s no point in denying it. It’s harder to find a way to confirm her observation without feeling like you’d waste the chance, but apparently staring at her does the trick. “You want your dick in my mouth so bad you’re not even pretending to listen to me.“ Her hand draws tiny circles on your wrist, limp fingers brushing skin lightly.
“I’m listening, I’m just visualizing all the ways I can appreciate your lipstick. It’s a beautiful shade,“ you say, eyes drifting towards the ceiling in mock consideration.
she lifts your hand by the wrist to kiss your knuckles, the slightest stain of black remaining on you. “You want to see what it looks like on your cock?“ she asks and you look down at the disgusting sincerity she brings it with.
“Can I?“
“Sure,“ she muses. “You can mark your territory, or whatever. I don’t mind.”
She doesn’t let you consider it. That’s the thing with Chaeryeong. There’s no pleasing her if she’s not teasing you. She needs you to know that it’s her choice when she slides down out of your lap, onto the floor, splitting your legs and staying there, head tipping back at the edge of the couch to look at you as she delivers the sucker punch.
“Seems like you need it.“
You chuckle wryly, bend over forwards and plant a kiss on her forehead. "I hope you know I'm not stopping until there's a black ring around the base of my cock."
“Good.“ She smirks. You stand up, walking around the coffee table, savoring the moment. “I’d prefer you doing all the work right now.“
“You’re really going to just sit there and let me fuck your mouth?“ you tease back, stopping to loom over her.
“Are you complaining?“ she pouts, flutters her eyelashes. “It’s not my fault you fingered the fine motor controls right out of me.“
You put your hands on your hips, cock your head and bend slightly forwards, over her. “Still a brat, huh?“
“Yep!“ she responds, gleefully, proud with a smile, tilting her head. “Which means that this offer expires soon. Whip out your cock you’ve been harassing my ass with, or I’m keeping my mouth shut until I’ve cummed on your face.“
It can’t be overstated how fast you switch up and wrestle with your belt, trying to maintain a facade of composure. “I thought you were supposed to be a princess?“
She opens her eyes, shrugs, and drifts her eyes towards your belt. “Princesses have to eat.“ She lets her head hang back, opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue. It’s like she’s asking you to lose control.
Your cock is out before either of you even process it, stiff and aching, veins bulging like never before, as if ready to explode.
“Jesus,“ she says with reverence bordering on worship, no intent of hiding her awe, “I forgot how hot your dick is.“ She stays perfectly still, leaning back against the couch, hands slack next to her on the carpet, the very picture of defiance and submission contradicting herself with minimal effort. “I might actually cum just from choking on it.“
“I forgot how much you talk,” you reply, and admittedly, its a bit snarky. But you know Chaeryeong, and that gambling with a line like this always has a payout.
“Then make me shut up.“
You answer by pressing your cock to her lips, pale pink to her beckoning black. She opens, wide and compliant, her tongue flat and eager, and you glide in. It’s impossible to play this cool, not with her on the floor and your pulse ticking in your ears, not when the black of her lipstick makes her mouth look like a void designed to swallow you whole.
The first pass into her is slow. Her lips slip easily over your cockhead, soft and cold on her lips and then suddenly impossible warm inside. You steady yourself with a hand on the couch cushion behind her, fully leaning over her and she—despite years of proving to you she couldn’t let a single opportunity to take control over you go unchallenged—just lays there, letting you push at your pace. She’s making sure her lips are pressed to the full circumference of your cock, every inch of skin covered, spare the sides she just can’t help but skip—courtesy of the smile pulling the corners of her mouth up.
“You look so fucking good with my dick in your mouth,“ you groan, making sure to put extra emphasis on how possessive you sound. Her eyes do a slow half-blink, satisfied.
You hold her there, cock halfway buried in her, hips already shaking, and pull out slowly. You want to watch the lipstick smear, the drag of her color a tangible scar tracing your shaft. Her eyes squint as she figures out what you’re doing, lips sucking tighter around you, and she hollows out her cheeks.
The black sticks, two perfect half-moons adorning your cock’s top- and underside, stretching in different intensities across your shaft.
“Good fucking girl,“ you hiss, twitch in her mouth, and her eyes close, her eyebrows getting that little wrinkle in pleasure. It’s hard to know whether that’s from the praise, the sight of you losing it or both. And normally, you’d find pleasure in the current state of affairs. It’d be enough, feeling your cock halfway down her throat and seeing her enjoying herself.
But right now, there’s a combination of something you can’t deny and a reckless streak that allows you to explore it. She doesn’t gag. Not yet, at least, but you want to see if you can make her; you want to see how much she’ll let you take, how far you’re allowed to conquer.
So, deeper you push; past the first point of resistance, past the point where she looks up at you with eyes that are looking for something carrying tears in the corner, past her limp hands choosing to grip the fibers of the carpet instead. It’s all too much, she’s right there with you, neither of you able to think straight each time you slide back into her mouth, fucking her face like you need it to survive, Chaeryeong totally passive and not resisting.
Not helping, just letting you help yourself.
“You can take it, right, babygirl?“ you ask, but you don’t care to let her answer. She tries to, though, bobbing her head ever so slightly, letting out a throaty, gurgling sound about as close to a yes as she can manage.
You bottom out, cock fully enveloped by her tight throat, tears running black down her cheeks, and she takes it with a focus that’s almost meditative, eyes drooped and drunk on your pleasure, drowning together with you in desperation.
And that’s when you feel it, the heat in your core, the jolt up your spine, the embarrassing and traitorous tingle of only managing one pump deep down her mouth before you too succumb to your sensitivity. You try to slow, try to savor just a couple seconds more, and she looks up at you like she’s asking if she’s doing something wrong and her throat contracts as if to push you out despite her head staying perfectly still, consciously fighting the subconscious to hold herself open for you.
How could you not comfort her, give in to what you both want by rutting into her face? It’s inevitable at this point, and when the first shock of it hits you, you try to pull away, try to get ready to paint her face white and see how it mixes, but she holds you, moves for the first time since hitting the floor and dives deeper, nose pressed against your stomach, hands flying up to grip the back of your thighs, swallowing the first spurt like she’s starving.
“You fucking—“ you grunt, hands finding the back of her head and tangling her hair into a fist, “slut!“
You yank her off forcibly, she gasps and you hold her there. She’s got this look in her eyes like she’s won a prize off of you, easily wiped out when the second rope of cum hits her in the cheek, across her lips, then down her collarbone and finally a weak spurt dripping out of your cock onto the squish of her thighs, perfect white streaks against her tear-shed mascara, smudged lipstick and porcelain skin.
“Good to know you still cum like a firehose,“ she says, accompanied with a smirk, unbothered by the mess.
“You always knew how to bring out the worst in me.“
She pushes you down into the couch. Turns around with her stomach against the couch cushion and drapes her arms over your legs, cheek resting against your thigh. “The worst of you tastes pretty good,“ she muses, licks her lips, and brings a hand to your cock. “You want me to clean you up?“
You can barely breathe, so a nod must suffice.
She leans in, laps at the slit of your cockhead, down the shaft for any stray drops, then her own wrist, her thumb, and finally the gooey mess she scooped onto her hands from her thighs. The rest of her face stays as is, wearing your cum like jewelry.
“Mmmh, like, so fucking good,“ she moans, excessively.
“There’s something wrong with you,“ you shoot back, and it lands in her chest, a laugh joining her. “Did you miss that too?“ she teases. She climbs up, into your lap again and burrows her nose into the crevice between your neck and your shoulder.
“All of it,“ you reaffirm with a long exhale, reality dawning back on you now that the heat of the fuck-fever subsides.
She stays that way for a while, snuggling closer to you, silently just making herself small on top of you.
“Hey,“ you whisper, fingers twirling with strands of her hair, soft strokes matching her breathing. “You’re getting cum all over my shirt.“
“Don’t care.“
It’s kind of cruel. Not what she says, no, that’s just Chaeryeong like you know her. It’s how it reminds you of the Chaeryeong you don’t know. And it shouldn’t bother you, not with the world outside collapsed into a void and her wrecked against you and the warmth you both share. It should be enough.
But there’s a message in a bottle, and it undeniably has your name on it. Or she wouldn’t have asked yesterday. And you could try to ignore it, and just throw it away when she’s not looking and act like you know no better and you never find out why she left and let it eat at you every single day and let it ruin your fucking—
“Are you going to tell me why you left?“ you ask, stopping the idle patterns you were tracing on her thigh, going dead still.
She freezes too.
“Did you read the message I left?“ she asks, voice thin.
“The one in the bottle?“
“I knew you were lying,” she answers, with only half a smile. She gets up from your lap, turns your back towards you and starts walking towards your bathroom. “Give me a minute. I’m not having this conversation with cum on my face.“
You don’t try to stop her. You just wait for her, find your pants and get somewhat dressed again, settling back into the couch when you hear the faucet stop running and the door open again.
She emerges eventually, her skin wiped clean, any trace of the revelation you just shot onto her face removed. She sits down, next to you instead of on top of you, a little further tucked into the corner than before.
“So? Did you read it?“ she asks again, staring blankly ahead, undecipherable.
You stop looking at her. Sigh, rub your eyes. “No.“
“Why not?“ she follows up, her voice breaking a little. It’s hard to stop yourself from derailing the conversation.
You think about lying, and then about the consequences of instantly being caught lying, because Chaeryeong could always tell and the truth comes out easier than you expected it to anyways. “I wasn’t sure if I could still believe you’d ever return if I read it,“ you say, shaking your head. “I don’t think I could handle that.“
You turn slightly towards her.
She nods. Pulls her knees up to her torso, and rests her cheek on them, turning towards you. “Can it stay that way?“
It’s the kind of question that needs time to think about. What exactly is the question asking, what is the full context, what happens if “it“ does not stay “that“ way?
When the silence stretches past a point she can bear, she starts to retreat.
“You know what, never mind,“ she crumbles. “That’s an insane thing to ask, obviously it can’t,“ she rambles, unfolding like she’s about to give up, obvious in the fake smile you’ve managed to see through ever since first learning about it. She unfolds slightly like she’s about to bolt for the door—the nuclear option. “You can read it, obviously you’d want to—“
“Can you just chill the fuck out for a moment?“ you intervene. You grab her wrist. It’s cliche, but you’d rather be cliche and hold her here now then let her walk out.
She stops.
“What happens if I read it?“ You look at her, grip unwavering.
She can’t meet your gaze. She tries, but she can’t. She just mumbles a couple of words. “I’ll probably cry again.“
It’s a simple reason, one that doesn’t really let you know anything specific, but when it comes to Chaeryeong, do you really need more to listen to her?
“Why?“
Her eyes manage to reach yours. “I don’t want you to see that version of me,“ she answers. “Because once you do, that’s all I’m afraid you’ll see.“
The room is very still around you. You swallow the questions coming up in your throat, the parts of you that want to pry anyway, and allow the truth to stay in her chest for now.
She trembles in your wrist, you sigh and release your grip. She doesn’t move away.
“I’m not asking you to just—let it go forever,” she says, hands clutched to her chest. “I just need it to come from me. Not who I was. When I’m ready, if you can wait for me.“
A single laugh—breathy and pushed through your nose—escapes you, and it’s almost a cosmic joke. If you can wait for her. You look at her, this idiot of a woman you've been losing in small increments for three years, who showed up in a convenience store at midnight and walked back into your life like she'd only stepped out for a moment, who is sitting here trembling with her hands clutched to her chest asking if you can wait for her like she genuinely doesn't know the answer.
“Idiot.”
She looks genuinely staggered by this. “What?“
“I have kept the one thing that could give me closure on you locked away for three years—maybe would have been locked away until the day I fucking died if you hadn’t shown up—only to be able to hope that I could see you again one day,“ you ramble, voice growing as you stand up and face her.
She blinks, searching across your face, something fragile inside of her breaking.
This could be temporary. A mistake, a pattern that might repeat itself, a karmic miscalculation that will cause you to be locked in an endless repeating chase of losing and finding and losing and finding her again. There’s a real chance hurt is waiting on the other side of the door, and there’s no way of knowing until you figure out why she even left in the first place.
But that doesn’t matter. It’s worth it, for the moments where Chaeryeong fits into your arms, however fleeting or forever.
“What makes you think I can’t wait for you to be ready to tell me, you idiot?“
She looks at you like she’s experiencing every possible emotion all at once with just a slight tinge of disbelief heavier in the mix, eyebrows pinching together upwards.
A laugh gets stifled by her, then resurfaces louder, and she lovingly calls you an asshole. Then, as if genuinely blindsided by it, her eyes fill and stray tears slowly fall down her face, blinking like she can’t quite account for where they came from, hands scurrying to her cheeks to wipe them away with yet another laugh and even more shocked “What the fuck?“
You let it all happen. The laughing, the crying, the attempts to get it under control. She succeeds, eventually. Mostly succeeds. There’s still evidence of it in both the corners of her eyes as well as the corners of her lips, and when she finally looks back up at you, she looks slightly mortified and slightly luminous, entirely a wreck.
“Don’t you dare,“ she says, her eyebrows furrowed at you and her head tilting downwards mockingly.
“Excuse me?“ “You did this.“
“I did?“
She drops her hands. Looks at you with wet eyes and the most unguarded expression you've ever seen on her face in twenty something years of knowing her.
One of your hands wraps around her waist, the other grabs her hand. You close the distance. Not urgent, not desperate, nothing like when three years came crashing down at once. Just your hands finding her, and you kissing her slowly. Like you have the time for it now. She doesn’t let you pull back the first time you try, just pushing further into your space.
When you eventually do end up separate, the first couple of minutes is just spent staring into each other's eyes, even as you move back to sitting on the couch, her making her comfortable in your lap for a third time.
She bites back a laugh and speaks first: “Okay, so, since we’re already just saying embarrassing shit,“ she says, stops, bites her bottom lip with a full smile and her eyes filled with the same joy. “I have a confession to make.“
“Okay?“ you say, hesitantly. This could go anywhere.
“I actually could have arrived here like half an hour earlier.“ She stops to twist her mouth, eyes flickering everywhere and back at you rapidly. “But when you asked to see me, I went home first. I literally changed outfits because I thought it'd be smart to wear these.“ She flexes her thighs, places her hands on them, drawing your full focus to the fabric taut on her pale thighs. “I didn’t think jeans would be of much assistance.“
You choke out a laugh. “You were already out and went back home just to change for me?“
“I saw the way you looked at me yesterday,” she retorts, but her fingers find your chin and pull you back to her mouth before you can comment.
She nips your lower lip, laugh muffled. “You’d be less assertive if I wore jeans, is what I’m saying. Probably wouldn’t find the courage to fuck my face like you did.”
You consider the counterfactual. There’s no universe where you don’t want her, but the comparison of both images in your head, side by side, has you inclined to agree.
“You might be on to something,“ you agree with a slight smirk.
“Thank god I still have what it takes to make you pathetic,“ she preens, twisting her shoulders to show off. “In fact—“ she tugs at your shirt, pulling you in until you are close enough to count her lashes, “I think we should see exactly how much these new socks help you lose composure.“
You try to kiss her, but she stops you with one finger. Instead, she stands up, not bothering to fix her skirt that’s been riding up. “I’m going to your bedroom,“ she says, walking around the coffee table swaying her hips, knowing damn well where you’d look. “I’m going to take off everything except these socks. You can join me after you’ve cleaned up here.“ She stops right before stepping into the hallway, looks over at you and speaks a final time: ”Don’t make me start by myself, because I will.”
There’s no point to bothering with the facade of taking your time or doing this of your own volition. You sweep the half-empty coffee cups, pick up your phone, trash some scattered napkins and try your best to remove any already dried up cum that made it onto your furniture.
You realize it, then. This is just part of her play. The game. You are never, ever more adored by her than when she’s dangling a reward in front of you and watching to see how fast you shower her in attention for it.
It’s intoxicating.
You make your way to your bedroom door as fast as you possibly can, leaving a trail of stripped off clothing behind, your underwear last to fall. Everything must go, because you’re not the main character in her script unless you’re showing up naked and a little bit desperate.
You swing open the door, and the room is painted in the diffused sunlight of early afternoon, a lazy brightness you’ve never really been around for, not until it snuck in here to illuminate her.
She’s sat against the headrest of your bed, propped up by a pillow, naked except for what she promised to keep on. Reapplied black lipstick and a black choker thrown in as a bonus. One hand between her legs, you can see it barely through the gap in her shins, idly teasing herself, the other hand cupping her tits and rolling them slowly. She’s playing with herself, her pride and your arousal all at the same time.
“Wow,“ she says, in that deadpan, smug way of hers, “not even going to let me undress you, huh? That eager to rail me?“
It’s not long before you are on top of her, wrists in one hand and cunt cupped in the other. “You’re going to help me get what I want,“ you say, and she looks smug, way too smug for someone with slick running down her thighs staining your bed.
She curves her spine at your touch. You drift your hands down to the hollow of her knees, soft mesh squeezing under your grip, and you press up until she’s almost folded in half, thigh’s pressed to her chest.
You’ve got her in checkmate, a press to match it and properly breed her, and you slide in so frictionless that you almost forget you’ve both spent years molding yourselves to each other.
With a single measure thrust, you bury yourself fully in her, pushing her further up the bed, and her head rocks back into the pillow with a thunk. She curses, which turns immediately into a moan.
You can feel her thighs-socked and shaking–the rough texture digging into the sides of your chest.
There’s nothing gentle about your rhythm. It’s desperate, same as her sounds. The bed creaks to complete the symphony. Her tits bounce with every thrust, black-painted nails holding and digging into them, doing the job you can’t as you hold your steady above and next to her head.
She tries to say something, but it comes out as a punched-out “fuck—!“ that loses coherence as soon as you bottom out again. You don’t bother pretending like your sounds are any better.
She breaks first—still embarrassingly sensitive—hands flying to your shoulders, nails digging in and pressing half moons into your skin, her voice cracking as she begs for more, for harder, for anything you can still give her. “Please,“ she whimpers pathetically, “Inside—“ and you realize she’s asking for something she never has before.
“Yeah? Inside?“ you taunt back through your own nearing doom.
“Mmmhm,“ she nods, giving up on words entirely.
“Want me to fill you up, princess?“ you continue, smacking into her harder, surely bruising something. All she can do is throw her head back and look at you like she’s hoping you’ve somehow learned how to read minds. “I’m going to make you walk around full of me for the rest of the day.“
She almost sobs as she cums, a sudden and sharp gasp accompanies her whole body shaking; the vibrations and the begging for you to finish with her causing you to chase her through it, losing your own composure, your strength, your vision.
You collapse on top of her, she lets her legs wrap across your waist, holding onto you as you ride out the aftershocks. Sweat sticks together, and once you think you’ve found the strength to roll off and pull out, she tightens her legs around you, keeping you in place.
“Don’t move,“ she whispers against the shell of your ear, a hand playing with the hair on your head. “Stay inside me until you’re hard again so you can fuck another load into me.“
You don’t talk about much except the feeling of your cock going soft inside her, the smell of her perfume, the lack of proper interior decoration you’ve done in the time she was gone, and then the feeling of your cock slowly stiffening up inside her again.
She rolls her hips when she feels it, speeding the process along. “I want lots of kissing this time,“ she clarifies. It’s a simple order. It’s so soft, and normal, and mundane you don’t realize nobody has even said it until after you’d let it slip.
“I love you, princess.“
Her head falls back into the pillow, she bites her fingertip, and smiles like she was waiting for that.
“I love you, too,“ she hums, kisses you with lots of tongue, and rocks her hips into you to make sure you’re as connected as physics would allow.
It’s hard not to oblige, taking her breath away as you restart with a softer pace.
—
There’s a message in a bottle, and it has your name on it. It’s gone largely ignored for a week now. You’ve made plans with Chaeryeong to throw it out—or at least, just the message inside—today.
She’s been with you every day for the past week, effortlessly slotting back into your life, and you into her new one. The make-up stays dark most days of the week, but some days she lets you see her in red.
A lot of time has been spent on making up for any of it you’ve lost, though. It’s impossible to keep your hands off of each other.
One day, she wakes you up with your cock in her mouth, hoping to have a slow morning, only to find out you can’t skip work and ends up being so frustrated for the rest of the day that she can’t stop herself from spending her entire lunch break in a disgusting bathroom sending you videos of herself dripping, making sure you know you’re expected to get even.
On another day, she texts you that she’s got her nails done, and asks if you want to see only to send a video of her playing with her pussy from the back. You showed her you still have the handcuffs she bought you that evening.
All she cares about is making sure you still are infatuated with her.
Hard to deny, considering the events. So, today, you text her the moment you leave work to let her know you’re on your way. If all is well, she’ll have taken care of things.
She’s already waiting for you when you get home to your little lover's nest. She’s got her hands behind her back, holding something.
As soon as you step inside, she plants a kiss on your cheek, and reveals her little secret.
There’s a present in her hands, with your name on it.
“I wrapped it in a way I thought you’d like,“ she says. Green, with blue ribbons on it, shaped like a bottle.
You take it from her hands and start unwrapping it–revealing a bottle of whiskey you told her about.
She stays quiet while you read the label, connecting the dots, and then she tucks herself under your arm, her favorite spot. She always did prefer watching you discover things she already knew you’d love, and says: “I found it screaming at me.”
