smoke.
@idtaeho itaewon, alleyway.
smoke curls around her temples. sinks into her pores.
it’s an off hour on a low traffic night and even the distant sound of cars on the main hill is muffled, a slow crawl. it’s the twilight hour inn between, when the buses aren’t running yet and the last train is long gone and you’re left relying on kakao taxis to get you home. kakao taxis that are, notoriously, hard to get ahold of around itaewon, given the reputation of the area.
it almost feels planned.
her lips feel bruised, her head spins, cheeks flushed. she’s taken his hoodie and pulled the hood up around her head, her ears, the rest of it hanging down long. it obscures everything about her that could be identifying, unless someone is going to take a look at her legs and make a play to recognize her from that.
she shouldn’t be here, and she shouldn’t be here with him.
but what better way to fuel that twist in her chest, that aching chasm of self-loathing, than to follow after him, slide into his car. the silence is tense, cut it with a knife. she takes his phone and fiddles with his playlist to kill the quiet. pulls a cigarette from the pack she’s found in his pocket and lights up, prompts the window half cracked down. it’s not often they spend time together in this suspended limbo state. liminal, tenuous, and she pulls a long drag of the cigarette, smoke filling her lungs acrid, still a poor match for the burn in her marrow.
she exhales out the window.
“you don’t mind me smoking in here, right?” she drawls, clearly not intent to give half a fuck if he does, perhaps goading him towards a more familiar anger, ill content in a quiet moment. she doesn’t want to think of him as a person, as dynamic and variable. she wants him angry or hungry and desires only the constant grasping and clawing at her skin, at her senses. “thanks for the ride.” she pushes the hood of his sweatshirt back down now, as the car zips over the mostly empty highway, rocketing back over the river towards gangnam. he looks almost soft, serpentine features rounded out in the honeyed street lights, soft golds that paint his skin in flashes between the inky dark of the river, of the waves, of the sky. “must be rough going tonight if you’re headed home with me,” she drawls, at her own expense, a knife that cuts two ways.
