Between Two Tides
PART 3
Word count: 8k Winter x Male Reader
part 1 / part 2 also available on Fanprose
You woke up to the sound of someone trying and failing to be quiet, which for Karina meant clipping a cabinet door shut and a muttered curse that carried up the stairs better than any shout would have.
For a while you just lay there. The ceiling fan whirled above you, the same off-rhythm hitch it always had as light came through the curtains and laid itself across the foot of the bed. Your body had that scoured-out feeling that came after a night where you'd spent everything you had, and underneath it, lower down, the thing that had kept surfacing all night was still there.
Minjeong on the porch. Her head close enough that you could smell the mint and paint in her hair.
You'd buried your hand in Karina's hair after, on the sand, and stared past her shoulder at the beams of the tower, and the word your brain had handed you was fuck. Not because you regretted Karina. You didn't. It was that something had moved in your chest two days ago on those steps and refused to move back. You didn't have a name for it yet, but then again you weren't sure you wanted one.
You got up before the thoughts could settle in.
Downstairs, the house was already in motion. Mrs. Yoo stood at the counter doing something to a chicken with her bare hands, the radio played low, an old station that crackled whenever a truck went by outside. There was coffee, and the smell of it pulled you the rest of the way awake.
Karina sat sideways in a kitchen chair with one leg hooked over the armrest, phone in one hand, a piece of toast she wasn't eating in the other. She had your T-shirt on. She caught you clocking it and lifted her chin as if daring you to say something.
"Morning, sunshine," she said. "You look like roadkill."
"You're wearing my shirt."
"It was on the floor." She bit the toast, finally, like the conversation was over. "Possession is nine-tenths. Right, Omma?"
"I'm not getting involved in your laundry crimes," Mrs. Yoo said without turning around. Then, half to herself, half to the chicken: "The Baineses want their tent on the green again for Saturday. Same spot as last year, where it floods. I'll be refereeing that until I die."
"Tell them no," Karina said.
"You tell them no." Mrs. Yoo sighed. "I'll go round tonight and sort it before it becomes a feud."
You poured coffee. Karina watched you over the top of her phone, and there was something a little too bright in it, a little too on. She'd been like this last night at the fire too, you realized — talking a half-moment faster than the room, the jokes coming quicker, like if she kept the air full enough nobody would notice she'd handed you something real for about four seconds under the lifeguard tower and then snatched it back.
You're in deep now, you know that? she'd said. And then she'd reached for your fly, because that was easier than letting the sentence just sit there.
You took the chair across from her. "You sleep okay?"
"Like a baby," she said. "A baby who's seen things." She set the phone face-down. "You?"
"Out cold."
"Liar," she said pleasantly. "You've got the haunted look. The Jason-is-overthinking look. I can see it from here. It's very ugly. You should stop it."
"I'm not overthinking."
"You're overthinking right now about whether you're overthinking." She pointed the toast at you. "Rule number one, remember? You feel weird, you tell me. So." She raised her eyebrows. "Feeling weird?"
And there it was: the offer, made the way Karina made all her offers, wrapped in a joke so that if you took it seriously she could pretend she hadn't meant it.
"No," you said. "Just tired."
"Good." She seemed to relax at that. "Because I've got plans for you and they require you conscious."
"You always say that."
"And I always deliver." She swung her leg down off the armrest. "Eat something. You're scaring your mother-in-law."
"She's not my—"
"Eat," Mrs. Yoo said, and slid a plate in front of you, and that was the end of it.
-
The plans died before noon.
You were halfway through helping Mrs. Yoo carry folding tables out to the truck — for the meeting, for the signs, for whatever the day's particular fire turned out to be — when Minjeong came down the stairs two at a time with her phone pressed to her ear. Her face set in this specific blankness that meant something had gone badly wrong and she was not going to let it show until she'd decided what to do about it.
"When," she said into the phone. "Okay. And you're sure." A pause. "No, that's— Petey, that's fine, you did the right thing telling me. I owe you." She hung up and stood very still in the middle of the kitchen with her thumb still on the dark screen.
"What," Karina said.
"They moved the council session," Minjeong said. "It was Thursday. It's Tuesday now. Special session." She set the phone down on the table, carefully, the way you set down something you'd otherwise throw. "And Cole filed a letter of intent last week. To buy."
The kitchen went quiet. Even the radio seemed to drop.
"The town doesn't own all of it," Mrs. Yoo said. "The stalls are private. He can't—"
"He's not buying it from the town." Minjeong's jaw clenched. "He's got a seller already. Somebody local. Somebody who held a sign on the green two days ago and let me thank them." She said it flat, but you saw the effort it took to keep it like that. "I have until Tuesday to find out who and get in front of it, or I walk into that room and get blindsided in public, and we lose on optics before anybody says a word about the actual pier."
"So we find out who," you said.
She looked at you. For a second something flashed across her face, relief, maybe, that someone had just said we.
"So we find out who," she agreed.
Karina pushed up off her chair. "Okay," she said, and you could hear her recalibrating, finding the solution, the way she'd found it on the stage with the camera around her neck. "A traitor's actually good. People don't riot over zoning. They riot over a Judas. We lean into it. I can have something up online by tonight, get people angry, get them in that room Tuesday—"
"No," Minjeong said.
Karina stopped.
"Not yet," Minjeong said, gentler, but not by much. "If you blast it online before I know who it is, we burn the wrong person and it backfires and we look exactly as unprofessional as Cole keeps saying we are. I need to keep it quiet first. I need to talk to whoever it is before the whole town does." She rubbed her forehead. "This part has to be careful, Rina. Not loud."
It wasn't a cruelty. You were sure of that much. But you watched the words on Karina, and you watched her absorb them, and decide — fast, the way she decided everything — not to let it show.
"Sure," she said. "Careful. Right. Not my department." She picked her phone back up."I'll do the loud part when you're ready for it. You go be a detective." She tipped her head toward you. "Take him. He's good with sad old people. They love him. It's the face."
"Karina," Minjeong started.
"I'm serious, it's a compliment," Karina said, already drifting toward the back door, already halfway to somewhere else. "He's got a trustworthy face. People confess to him. It's annoying." She pulled the door open and let the morning in. "Have fun. Solve the crime. I'm going to go take pictures of something that doesn't make me want to scream."
The screen door clapped shut behind her.
For a second nobody said anything. Out the window you could see her crossing the yard toward the path down to the beach, phone already up, framing something: the water, the light, anything that wasn't this kitchen.
"She wants to help," you said.
"I know she does." Minjeong was already gathering her bag, her keys, the manila envelope she carried everywhere now as a shield. "That's the problem. She wants to help in the one way that would blow this up." She stopped, hand on the strap. "She's not wrong about you, though. With the face thing."
"I don't have a face thing."
"You absolutely have a face thing." She slung the bag over her shoulder. "Get your shoes. We're going to see a man about an arcade."
-
The truck's AC had died sometime during a previous administration, so you drove with the windows down and the hot wind doing most of the talking. Minjeong sat with the envelope on her knees and a legal pad on top of it, and she didn't fill the silence the way Karina would have. She just looked out at the road, at the crooked mailboxes and the sliver of sea, and let the quiet be.
You'd ridden in cars with both sisters a hundred times across a hundred summers. Karina narrated. She pointed at things, she made you slow down so she could yell something at someone she knew, she changed the music every ninety seconds. Minjeong navigated. She watched the turns coming before you did and told you about them a second early, and the rest of the time she let you think.
"It's Hal," she said eventually, when you were nearly there. "I'm ninety percent sure. The arcade. His lease runs longest, his building's the biggest single private piece, and his knees gave out two summers ago so he can't even get up the pier stairs anymore. It makes sense.”
"You knew before Petey called."
"I suspected." She turned the legal pad over so she wasn't looking at her own handwriting. "I've been not-thinking about it for a week. It’s the same as knowing." She glanced at you. "Don't tell Karina I said it makes sense. She needs him to be a villain. It's easier for her if people are villains."
"And for you?"
She paused for a few moments. “It's worse if they're not," she said at last. "Villains you can fight. Hal I have to—" She gestured vaguely at the windshield. "I have to go sit with an old man who's broke and scared and not wrong, and ask him to stay broke and scared for the good of a town that's never once fixed his roof. That's the job today." She looked back out the window. "Pull in here. Don't park out front, he'll see the truck and pretend he's not home."
The arcade was dark inside, the machines dead, a single portable fan pushing warm air across a folding chair where Hal Brenner sat like he'd been expecting you for a week and dreading it the whole time. He saw Minjeong and didn't get up. His knees, you remembered.
"Minjeong," he said, and sighed, a long whistling sound through his nose. "You here to yell at me, sweetheart?"
"No," she said.
You braced yourself for the argument. You'd seen her on the stage alongside Karina; you knew she had the speech in her, the splinters-and-first-kisses speech, the one that made Mrs. Yoo cry and shut Scout up. You expected her to deploy it.
Instead she pulled the second folding chair across the worn carpet, legs scraping loud in the dead quiet, and set it down directly in front of him, close, knees almost touching his, and she sat. She put the envelope on the floor. She put herself down at his level, in the dark, and she didn't say one word about the pier.
"Tell me about Denver," she said.
Hal blinked. "What?"
"Your grandkids. They're in Denver. You show everybody the pictures every Christmas." She leaned in, elbows on her knees. "How old are they now?"
Hal started talking — slow at first, suspicious, then less so — about a granddaughter who'd made some team, a grandson he hadn't seen in fourteen months, the cost of a flight, the cost of everything. And Minjeong listened. Not the fake listening that's just waiting for your turn. She listened as if it was the only thing she'd come to do.
"It's not about the money," Hal said. "I'm seventy-one. I can't fix that roof. The town can't fix that roof. Your signs are real pretty, but they don't fix the roof either." He spread his hands. "Cole showed up with a checkbook. Everybody else showed up with a casserole. You want me to turn down the only person who came with a check, for a town that's let me rot in here for ten years."
You watched Minjeong take all of it in without as much as a flinch.
"You're right about the roof," she said.
Hal tilted his head.
"You're not wrong about any of it," she said. "We've been broke for ten years and I've been pretending three weeks of grant paperwork could fix what ten years didn't. So no. You're not the bad guy, Hal. You're the only honest one in this whole thing." She let out a breath. "But you sign with him and he doesn't fix your roof. He knocks the building down and pours a new one with somebody else standing under it. You're selling him the door. And every single thing that comes through it after you're gone."
Hal looked at his hands.
"Tuesday," Minjeong said, "you can stand up in that room and say everything you just said to me. The roof. The money. The casseroles. And I won't fight you on one word of it, because it's all true, and you deserve to say it to the town's face. I'll stand up and back you." She leaned in another inch. "Or you let Cole stand up and use your name like a crowbar, and never once say it the way you just said it to me. Your call. But you should get to be the one who says it. Not him."
The fan whirred. Somewhere outside a gull complained.
Hal didn't say yes. But when you left, he didn't say no.
In the truck she didn't put her seatbelt on right away. She sat with her hands in her lap and stared through the cracked windshield at the brick wall of the building.
"That was the most impressive thing I've ever seen," you said.
She huffed. "It was begging. Dressed up nice."
"It was not begging." You turned in the seat to look at her. "You gave a scared old man a way to be brave instead of ashamed. That's not begging. That's—" You stopped, because the word you wanted felt wrong on your tongue.
She was silent for a second too long.
"Don't," she said.
"What?"
"You're doing the face." She finally reached for her seatbelt, pulled it across, fumbled the buckle. You watched her hands not quite work — Minjeong, who folded receipts and wrote attentive notes and did six things at once without looking — and without thinking about it you reached over and took the buckle out of her fingers and clicked it home.
She froze.
Catching her off balance felt wrong, especially with something as mundane as fastening a seatbelt. But there she was, looking at the place where your hand had been wearing a look of pure, stunned confusion.
And that was when you understood. Nobody did this for her. Ever. She was the one who buckled other people in. She was the one who carried the envelope and made the calls and sat in the dark with the scared old men. There was no version of Minjeong's life where someone reached over and did the small thing so she didn't have to.
"Thanks," she said, and it came out rough, like she'd had to find the word in a drawer she didn't open often.
"Yeah," you said.
She started the truck. Neither of you mentioned it, but the temperature inside the truck had changed, and while you both knew it, neither of you said anything.
-
You reached the community center somewhere in the afternoon, where time was broken into tasks instead of hours.
You needed the relief, frankly. The truck had left you with a feeling you didn't want to examine in detail, and the center was loud and full of people who needed things carried, which was exactly the kind of problem you knew how to solve.
Scout found you within ninety seconds.
"Dude." He skidded up on his board, shoes untied as always. "Okay so I heard Cole moved the meeting because he's scared, is that true, did Min make him scared—"
"Min makes everyone scared," you said.
"I heard that," Minjeong called from across the room, where she was up on a chair pinning a banner and directing two middle-schoolers and Nana Lou simultaneously without even glancing at them.
"It's a compliment," you called back.
"It better be."
Nana Lou cornered you at the brush-washing sink twenty minutes later.
"You went to see Hal," she said, and you were pretty sure it wasn’t a question.
"Min did the work. I was just there for moral support."
"Mm." She rinsed a brush, watching the water go gray. "She handle it gentle?"
"Very."
"Good." Nana Lou shook the water off. "That girl. You know she hasn't taken a real day off since the spring? I keep telling her, Minjeong, the pier'll fall in the ocean with or without you, you might as well sleep." She set the brush in the rack. "She thinks if she stops moving the whole thing comes down. Has thought that for about two years now." She gave you a sideways look. "You know how draining that is, to carry a town and never set it down?"
"No," you said honestly.
"No," she agreed. "Nobody does." She dried her hands. "She won't let you carry any of it, either. So don't bother offering. Just—" She paused, and for once the gossip-gleam was gone from her eyes. "Just notice when she's tired. Most people don't. She's real good at not letting them."
You dried the last brush in silence and didn't tell her that you'd noticed in the truck, with a seatbelt buckle, the exact flinch of a person who'd never once been allowed to be the one who got taken care of.
-
Your phone buzzed late in the afternoon. Karina.
how's the great detective work. solve it yet
You typed back: we think it's hal. min talked to him. went ok i think.
Three bubbles stacked up:
HAL. the ARCADE GUY. i let that man win me a goldfish in 2019
ok wait is min ok. she always acts like she’s fine but then doesn't sleep for a week
tell her i said the goldfish died btw. it died of betrayal
You stood in the noise of the center, kids and paint and Scout's terrible music, and looked at the phone. Karina had no idea you'd spent the day three feet from Minjeong, watching the woman unravel in increments only you seemed to be counting. She trusted you with her sister the way you hand over a knife blade-down, never thinking about whether it could turn.
she's tired but ok, you wrote. i'll make sure she eats.
good boy, Karina sent back. that's literally why i sent you. ten points.
A second later: not coming home tonight btw. party out past the point, i'll crash wherever. don't wait up
You put the phone in your pocket. Across the room, Minjeong climbed down off the chair, pushed her hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist, and checked if a banner was straight. It was, but she straightened it again anyway. She caught you looking. You waved at her, grinning. She waved back, but her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
You thought back to what Nana Lou had said. Just notice when she's tired.
You'd noticed.
-
The detective work wasn’t over. While the Hal situation was ninety percent solved, that wasn't a number Minjeong could just sit on until Tuesday came. So the rest of the day became a slow grind of phone calls she made from the corner of the center. Who else holds a private lease. Who's been quiet lately. Who stopped showing up. By six the building had emptied out, the kids dragged home by parents, Scout off to terrorize the skate park, and Nana Lou gone with a casserole dish she'd arrived with full and left with empty.
It was just the two of you now.
"You should eat," you said.
"I'll eat at home."
"You said that at noon. You didn't eat at noon."
She looked up from her phone. "Are you keeping track of my meals now?"
"Apparently." You had found a vending machine in the hall. It took three tries to register a dollar, but you eventually managed to buy a sad little packet of crackers and a granola bar. You set them on the table in front of her. "It's this or nothing."
"I'm fine. I'll eat when I get home."
"You won't, though. You'll get home and there'll be one more thing, then one more thing, and then it'll be midnight." You pushed the crackers an inch closer. "It's a dollar's worth of crackers, Minjeong. You're allowed to lose this one."
She stared at the crackers like they were a riddle, not saying anything for a good while.
"Thanks," she said finally, and opened them, and ate one, and you pretended not to watch her do it.
-
You walked back instead of driving. The truck stayed in the lot; she said she wanted the air, and you didn't argue, because the truth was you wanted it too.
The sun was doing what it did at the end of all these days, going gold and then bruised at the edges. The breeze brought to you the smell of hot tar cooling and salt. You walked a half-step behind her, your mind racing in circles as you tried to find the right question.
"Can I ask you something," you said, "and you promise not to make it weird?"
She snorted. "Very funny. You’re copying me now?"
"You’re not the worst person to copy."
"True, I am not.” She kept walking, sandals slapping on the warm pavement. "Fine. Ask. But I’ll make no promises about the weirdness.”
You walked another few steps before you found the right words.
"How long has it been since something wasn't your job?"
She slowed. The fence behind the post office came up on her left, the one you'd both hopped a hundred summers, and set her hand flat on the top rail without climbing it.
"That's a strange question."
"You said you'd eat at home. You said it twice and meant it neither time. You fed half that center today and the only thing you put in your own mouth was crackers I had to argue you into." You stopped. "I'm not trying to lecture you. I'm asking. When was the last time you let the heavy stuff be someone else’s problem?"
A car went past, headlights dragging across you both and gone.
"You're going to laugh," she said.
"I won't."
"I don't actually know the answer." She chuckled. "I keep waiting for an example to pop up and it just doesn't." She tilted her head, considering it from the outside. "That's bleak, isn't it?"
"It's pretty bleak."
She turned, putting her back against the fence, and in the porch-light coming on down the row her face seemed to… loosen up, some bolt she kept torqued down giving a quarter-turn.
"Everyone thinks they know the sad part of the cliffs," she said. "They think it's that Karina hated me after. And she did. But that's not it." She crossed her arms. "The sad part is I found out I was good at it. Being the one person who stays calm while everyone else comes apart. I'd never been good at anything Karina wasn't better at, and then there was this one thing, and it was that, and people started looking at me like I could handle the difficult stuff. And there's no putting it down after. Once you're the one who carries it, you carry it. Nobody reads you the terms. You just sign the first time and that's the rest of your life."
"That sounds more like a sentence than a contract.”
"I'd take it back if I could take back only the part where I'm good at it," she said. "But I can't, because that's the only part that's ever felt like—" She stopped herself, heard the sentence coming and refused to finish it. "And now I'm saying too much on a dark street and tomorrow I have to look at you across the table. This is why I do this type of stuff."
She pushed off the fence and started walking. You didn't catch her arm, didn't reach for her hair, didn't do any of the things hands reach to do at a moment like that. You only failed to step out of her way, so that forward meant going past you. She didn't go past you.
"You don't have to keep it in," you said. "You can leave it here on the street. Carrying things is the one thing we’re both good at. So maybe we can carry it together."
She didn't answer. You'd handed her a way to leave it unfinished and she took it, slowly, like setting down something she'd already half-lifted.
"This is exactly why I avoid walking back home.” She pushed her hair back. "Forget everything I said."
"I'm not going to forget it."
"Of course you’re not."
-
You came up on the house from the back. The windows were lit, but you could tell it was empty — no shadows behind the curtains, no sound. Four doors down, the Baineses' was a different story. You could hear it. The whole street could; a dozen people and Mrs. Yoo, arguing about a square of grass.
Minjeong stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. She looked at the lit, empty house, then down the street at the noise.
"They'll be there for hours," she said, not quite to you.
"Probably."
"Mom won't leave till the tent's resolved. And that's not happening." Her hand found the railing, the one that dipped on the left. "I should go help."
She looked at the noise down the street for a moment longer. Then she took her hand off the railing.
"They don't need me for a tent," she said, and went up the steps.
She put the kettle on first thing. You stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her fill it, set it, click the burner. Even now, her hands needed a job.
Then she pulled out a chair, sat, and opened the laptop.
"You're working?" you asked.
"I'm always working." The blue light put hard shadows under her eyes. "I want to get everything prepared before Tuesday. I know it’s Hal, but I still need the lease records pulled, and the office is closed tomorrow, so it has to be tonight, and—" She was already scrolling. "I have to lead with him being sympathetic instead of letting Cole frame him as a partner. But I have to get the timeline perfect or it falls apart."
"Minjeong."
"What."
"It's almost ten. You've been working since six this morning."
"I know what time it is." She didn't look up. "I do this every night. If I don't have the timeline by Tuesday I lose the room, and if I lose the room Cole wins on optics, and if he wins on optics the council folds, and then it doesn't matter how many people I get on the green—"
You crossed the kitchen and closed the laptop.
Not slammed. You just reached over her shoulder and brought the lid down, slow, until it clicked, and the blue light went out. The kitchen was just a kitchen again, the kettle starting to tick as it heated.
To your surprise, she didn't snatch the laptop back. She just sat there looking at the closed lid like it had been taken from her by someone who had no right to and she couldn't work out whether she should kill you swiftly or take her time with it.
"It can wait an hour," you said.
"It can't, though. That's what nobody—" She stopped. Her hands were flat on the closed laptop. "Nobody ever lets me explain that it actually can't."
"I'm not saying it doesn't matter. I'm saying you can sit down for one hour and it'll still be there." You took the chair beside her. "You've stopped for thirty seconds now. Look around. Nothing happened. The townspeople are still out there arguing about the tent. The roof didn’t fall on us. You're allowed to sit in a chair for one hour and none of it vanishes."
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "That's annoying. You being right."
"It happens occasionally."
"It doesn't have to happen to me, though.”
Her hands slid off the laptop and settled into her lap. She leaned back into the chair, staring at the closed lid like it belonged to somebody else tonight.
The kettle began to whistle.
"You can sit there," you said. "I'll get it."
She leaned forward, almost arguing back and getting up from the chair, but you got up first, grabbed her shoulders, and pushed her back down. “I said I’ll get it,” you repeated.
“This is going to be very annoying, isn’t it?” she asked. “You being like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like me.”
You went to the cupboard, got two mugs down, and filled them with tea.
After you made sure the mugs were cool enough to hold, you set her tea down in front of her. She had both hands around the mug before it even touched the table, then gave you an appreciative look before sighing:
“I have a question… Why did you come back this summer?”
You shrugged. “Well, there isn’t much to it. I just needed a job.”
“You needed a job?”
“People do, occasionally.”
She set the mug down and looked at you properly. “You’ve got a whole life waiting outside this town, a degree and all, but you threw that away to check bolts at two in the morning for a pier that might not exist by September. So. Try again.”
You turned the mug in your hands, which bought you a few seconds, but nothing more. She waited, her gaze locked onto you. She was good at waiting, you’d seen it with Hal.
So you had to give her an honest answer — a truth, or at least a half-truth — anything else and she’d call bullshit on you. You weren’t going to give her the whole, messy story, because that story had two halves, and one of them sat across the table with her small hands around a mug while the other was out partying. You couldn’t hand over the first half without the second coming up.
"I didn't like who I was out there," you said. "I was always halfway out the door of wherever I was. Already gone before I'd even left." You cleared your throat. "Here I'm just here. I don’t have to overthink whether I’m in the wrong place."
She didn't say anything for a second. Just played with her mug, raised it to her lips and took a small sip.
"Okay," she said. "That I believe. Honestly, sometimes I also feel—"
She didn't get to finish.
The mug slipped through her fingers. Maybe her hand was tired — it had been a fist around a phone all day — or maybe she'd just stopped paying attention to the one thing she always paid attention to, which was holding herself together. Either way her grip went, the mug rolled off the side of her palm before either of you could reach for it, and it hit the floor between your chairs and came apart.
The handle skittered off under the table and the rest of it burst into pieces, tea fanning out across the tile in a dark spreading shape.
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath. Then she dipped down and, maybe on reflex, reached for whatever was left of the mug.
“Wait—” you said, too late.
Her fingers closed on a piece of it wrong.
She made a small sound, more surprise than pain, and pulled her hand back, a line of red opening up across the side of her thumb where the edge had caught her.
"Okay," she said to the cut. "That's—okay. That's fine."
"That is not fine.” You were already up, already moving the chair back, crouching to get between her and the mess before she could go after the rest of it barehanded. "Leave it. The mug can wait. Give me your hand."
"It's a kitchen accident, Jason, I've just cut myself on—"
"Give me your hand."
She gave you her hand.
The cut wasn't bad. Shallow, an inch maybe, already beading up along the edge of her thumb. You turned her hand toward the light over the table to see it better, and her fingers were cold in yours, the way you’d expect her touch to feel, the cold of someone who never quite warmed up because she never sat still long enough to.
"It's not deep," you said. "You'll live."
"I know," she grimaced. Then she tried to pull her hand back, but you didn’t let go. “I already told you I’m fine.”
"There's a first-aid kit somewhere in this house. Don't move."
"I wasn't going to clean it up," she said, which was a lie, and you both knew it was a lie.
"You were absolutely going to clean it up. You were going to bleed onto the floor while you did it and then pretend everything was fine." You found a clean dish towel hanging off the oven door, ran the corner of it under the tap, and crouched down in front of her chair so you were looking up at her. "Hand."
She put it back in yours.
You pressed the cool cloth to the cut and held it there, gentle, your thumb bracketing her wrist to keep her steady. She didn't pull away. She didn't say anything either. The kitchen had gone very quiet — the tent argument down the street had finally died, or you'd stopped hearing it — and there was just the small wet sound of the cloth and the tick of the cooling kettle and her breathing, which had gone uneven.
You looked up at her.
She was already looking at you.
"Jason," she said quietly.
"Yeah."
"Why are you doing this?"
"You're bleeding."
She lowered herself next to you, hand still in yours and said, "That's not what I'm asking and you know it isn't." She peered at your face in that serious way of hers.
The bleeding had already stopped; you were just keeping her hand because keeping her hand was the only honest thing you'd done all night.
"Nobody does this," she said, almost to herself. "I do this. For other people. I'm the one who finds the towel and tells everybody it's fine." Her eyes went over your face, cautious, like she was reading something off it she didn't want to find. "And I keep landing on two reasons a person would be down on a kitchen floor holding my hand. One of them's nice. The other one I don't—"
She trailed off.
"Minjeong. There's something I should—"
"Don't."
Her free hand came up — not to your mouth, not even touching you, just up, flat in the space between you.
You stopped.
"Whatever it is, it can wait till morning. I've had the whole town in my hands since this morning. The pier, and Hal, and Cole, and the meeting, and—everything. All day. And for about five minutes, on this floor, I got to put it down." Her thumb moved against yours, careful of the cut. "Don't give me one more thing to manage tonight. Please. Just this once let me not know something."
You could hear your heart pounding in your ears.
She thought she was asking a friend to spare her one bad night. She didn’t know that what she was asking you not to tell her about had a name and that name belonged to her sister, who was out past the point at some party, trusting you to look after Minjeong.
You could stop it. One word. You knew the word.
You didn’t say the word.
"Okay," you said.
She pressed her forehead against yours. “We’re really doing this?”
Another out.
You should have used it. You should have pushed her away, and taken a deep breath, and splashed cold water over your face until you regained the slightest bit of self-control.
A better man would have.
Instead, you lifted her hand and pressed your lips to the inside of her wrist, her pulse jumping hard under your mouth.
“Only if you want us to,” you said against her skin.
“I do.”
You walked her upstairs, every creak of the old steps ringing louder than you remembered. On the fifth step she tugged on your shirt and stopped you in your tracks before pressing your back against the banister.
“Minjeong,” you said.
Apparently, she took the word as a sign of hesitation, because she didn’t give you any time to think. Her fingers twisted in the back of your hair, pulling your mouth into hers and whispering into your mouth, “Just–let me have this.”
That’s when the last drop of hesitation disappeared.
You kissed her back, hands sliding under the hem of her sundress to grip her waist. It was wet, and messy, and it felt both so wrong and so right. That was how you led her to her bedroom, where the moonlight cut across the room, illuminating the grey bed sheets.
You closed the door and turned to her.
She stood there, suddenly shy, arms half-crossed. “This feels… different than I thought it would.”
“Good different?” you asked, stepping closer.
She nodded. “Scary different.”
You kissed her slowly, coaxing her hands down. “We can go as slow as you need.”
Your fingers found the straps of her sundress and slid them off her shoulders. Once the fabric dropped on the hardwood floor, there was a couple long moments where time seemed to have stopped, and you used those moments to take in curve of her body.
“God, you’re beautiful,” you murmured.
Minjeong shifted at the words, an uncharacteristically sheepish smile pulling at her mouth. She took your arm and steered you toward the bed.
You get her down onto the bed beneath the moonlight, your hands already traveling up her thighs and onto her hips. The grey sheets bunched under her back as she lay there, looking up at you with those wide, serious eyes. You sat back far enough to pull your shirt over your head. Her eyes tracked every movement, focusing as they moved over your chest and shoulders. She reached up, palms sliding over your skin, learning your body the way she does everything: deliberate and methodical.
“You’re warm,” she whispered. Her fingers traced the line of your stomach. “I’ve always imagined you to be colder.”
You leaned down and kissed her again, slower this time, while your hands explored her body. You cupped her breasts, thumbs brushing her nipples until she arched into your touch with a soft moan.
“Like that?” you asked.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Harder. I like when you’re a little rough with them.”
You pinched her nipples gently, rolling them between your fingers. She whimpered, legs shifting restlessly underneath you. You lowered your head and took one nipple into your mouth, sucking and flicking your tongue over the sensitive tip while your hand worked the other.
“Fuck…” Her back arched. “You know how to use your tongue.”
You switched between breasts, licking and sucking until she was squirming and gasping. Only then did you swipe one hand down between her legs. She was soaked, slick heat coating your fingers the second you touched her.
“Well aren’t you dripping,” you murmured against her nipple.
“I know… I can’t help it with you touching me like this.”
That’s what you wanted to hear. You circled her clit slowly with two fingers, teasing. She bit her lip, trying to stay quiet, but small desperate sounds kept escaping. You kissed down her stomach, taking your time, until your shoulders were between her thighs.
“Can I lick here?” you asked, looking up at her.
She nodded quickly. “Please. I want your mouth on me.”
You dragged your tongue slowly up her slit. Minjeong’s hand flew to your hair with a loud groan.
“Oh my god. What—what have I gotten myself into—”
You savored her, circling her clit with the flat of your tongue, then sucked it gently between your lips. Two fingers slid inside her tight pussy, curling back and forth as you worked her with your mouth.
“Fuck—right there,” she moaned, hips rolling against your face. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
Not letting up, your fingers kept stroking the most sensitive spot inside her while your tongue flicked and sucked. Her thighs started to tremble around your head, every part of her body tightening in a way that told you she was there.
“I’m gonna come. I’m—”
You sucked harder on her clit and flicked your fingers just right.
Minjeong came with a hushed, shuddering cry, thighs clamping around your head, pussy pulsing hard around your fingers. You kept licking her through the orgasm until she was trembling and tugging at your hair.
When you finally pulled back, she was flushed and breathing hard, eyes wet as she stared at the ceiling.
She took a moment to regain her breath, then reached for your belt with shaky hands.
“Your turn now,” she said. “Let me see all of you.”
Minjeong worked your belt open with careful, shaking hands. The metal clinked as she tugged your jeans and boxers down your thighs, your cock springing free, thick and twitching for her bare body. She wrapped both hands around you without hesitation, giving one firm, testing squeeze.
“Fuck,” she said, laughing. “You’re so hard.”
“Been like this since we kissed.”
She stroked you slowly from base to tip, thumbs brushing over the sensitive head on every pass. “I like how it feels in my hands,” she said, leaning down until her breath ghosted over your cock. “Heavy. Warm. Twitching every time I squeeze.”
She pressed a soft kiss right beneath the head, then another lower down the shaft. Her tongue flicked out, tasting the pre-cum beading at your tip.
You cursed under your breath as she took the head into her mouth, sucking gently while her hands kept stroking the rest of your length. She didn’t rush. She savored it — slow, wet pulls of her lips, tongue swirling around you, eyes flicking up to watch your reaction.
“Does that feel good?” she asked, pulling off just long enough to speak.
“Fuck, yes,” you rasped, fingers threading into her hair. “You’re gonna make me cum if you keep going like that.”
She smiled, a little shy, a little proud, and took you deeper. Her mouth was hot and wet, cheeks hollowing as she sucked. One hand pumped what she couldn’t fit while the other cupped your balls, rolling them gently, massaging with her fingertips.
“Minjeong… fuck, your mouth—”
She hummed around you, the vibration shooting straight down your spine. She bobbed her head slowly, taking more of you each time, getting sloppier and wetter. Spit dripped down your shaft onto her fingers as she kneaded you.
You watched her hair fall around her face. The responsible girl who ran half the town was on her knees for you, sucking your cock like it was the only thing she wanted in the world.
She pulled off with a wet gasp, stroking you fast and with both hands now. “Tell me what you like. I want to make you feel as good as you made me.”
You tightened your grip in her hair. “Just keep doing whatever this is. Keep using your hands while you suck the tip.”
She obeyed immediately, lips wrapping around the head again while her hands twisted and pumped the shaft. The double sensation had your toes curling against the sheets.
“God, that feels so fucking good,” you groaned, legs shaking.
She pulled off suddenly, lips swollen.
“Not yet,” she said, still stroking you slowly. “I’m not done playing with you.”
She leaned down and dragged her tongue up the entire length, collecting every drop of precum she found. Then she wrapped her lips around the head and sucked gently, tongue flicking against the slit.
“Minjeong…”
She purred in response, one of her hands stroking what her mouth couldn’t reach while the other cautiously caressed your balls.
“No–” you moaned, your body giving you half a second’s warning. “Wait, wait–”
She pulled off with a loud pop. “Look at you making all kinds of noises,” she said. “Like your body can’t hide how much it wants me.”
It felt way too good—each flick and slurp and the wetness of her mouth, everything she did made your body twist and tense in ways you didn’t think possible.
“Fuck,” you hissed, hand fisting the sheets.
She released your cock with a wet sound and smiled up at you. “You’re shaking. Am I making you cum?”
“Yes. You’re killing me.”
She took you back into her mouth, deeper this time, nose pressed to your stomach, relaxing her throat and holding you there for a few seconds before pulling back with a gasp. Spit trailed from her lips to your cock. She wiped her chin with the back of her hand but kept stroking you, resolute in her mission to make you fall apart.
“I could stay here all night,” she whispered, thumb rubbing over the head in tight circles. “Just tasting you. Feeling how hard you get for me.”
Your hips bucked involuntarily. She laughed, then crawled up your body until she was straddling your hips. Her soaked pussy rested right against your cock, warm and slick as she rocked once, sliding her folds along your length.
“I need you now,” she said, eyes locked on yours. She reached between you, lined you up at her entrance, and paused. “Slowly, okay? I want to feel every inch of you going in.”
She sank down onto you inch by inch.
The stretch made her gasp, lips parting as she took you deeper. Her cunt was tight and scorching hot, fluttering around your cock as she worked herself down. When her ass finally met your thighs and you were buried to the hilt, she moaned, “Fuck… you’re so deep.”
She started bouncing, every motion dragging your cock along her walls, hitting deep inside her. Her breasts brushed your chest with every roll, nipples hard against your skin.
“Tell me.” She circled her hips. “Does it feel good when I move like this?”
“Yes,” you groaned, hands sliding up to cup her ass.
Minjeong moaned and kept the same careful pace, grinding down on you, clenching around your cock on every downward motion. Her hair fell around both of you like a curtain, and you could feel her getting wetter, the obscene sound of her pussy taking your cock filling the quiet room.
That’s when you peeled one of your hands from her ass and slid it between her legs, groping her cunt until you found her clit.
You rubbed vicious circles around it.
“I touched myself thinking about you this summer,” she suddenly confessed. “After you started working nights at the pier… I’d come home, lie in this bed, and finger myself imagining it was you.”
The words lit something in your groin. You thrust up into her harder.
“Yeah?” you rasped. “How many times?”
“Almost every night.” She tilted her hips to grind harder against your hand. “I’d hear you come up the stairs and get so fucking wet knowing you were right down the hall. I felt guilty… but I couldn’t stop.”
You fucked her faster, deeper, thumb rubbing her clit until her moans turned into broken whimpers against your skin.
“Jason— I’m— fuck—”
You didn’t slow down.
She came hard, thighs shaking around your hips as her pussy clenched and fluttered around your cock. The feeling pulled you under with her, groaning her name and thrusting deep one last time, spilling thick and white inside of her.
Minjeong let out a broken little sound, rolling her hips like she didn’t want to waste a single drop. “I can feel it inside me,” she whispered against your neck. “God, there’s a lot.”
You stayed buried deep inside her as the waves faded, both of you breathing hard, skin sticky with sweat. She stayed draped over your chest, legs still loosely wrapped around you, like she wasn’t ready to let go yet.
The room was silent except for the distant hush of the waves and the faint creak of the bed whenever one of you shifted.
After a while she pressed a lazy kiss to your collarbone. “I don’t regret this,” she said. “Even if everything else gets messy tomorrow… I don’t regret tonight.”
You held her a little tighter, one hand stroking slowly down her back. The moonlight still shone over the sheets, and under it sat the heavy weight of everything you still hadn’t told her.
