There’s a rhythm to the way she says it. Inviting, confident, practiced. Her mask, some kind of variation on a decorated venetian mask, hides her eyes but does nothing about the rest of her. A black dress that hugs her curves like it was painted on, chestnut hair tied up in a tidy and professional bun but with a cleavage so deep and tits pushed up and together so tight it would be rude to not at least peek.
She smiles at you like you haven’t been standing here ogling her but instead said something charming already without having opened your mouth.
“Welcome to Peaches & Apricots,” she continues, stepping out from behind the desk, stepping in close—so close her scent fills your nostrils, clean like freshly-pressed linen but with an unmistakably expensive jasmine touch.
“Expecting me?” You snap out of it momentarily, long enough to start asking questions. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” she says, her smile transforming into a smirk, her finger on your chest, slowly dragging across you as she circles you, “that in the history of our establishment, not a single man has ended up here by accident.”
Alarm bells should be ringing. Fear of death, kidnapping, extortion or maybe just a classic organ theft are all reasonable fears to have right now. But the marble pillars catching amber light match her smile in decadence, pulling a lace veil over your instincts to run.
“Okay,” you sigh, not yet fully given in. “Who are you, then?”
“Tonight, I am your host.” She grabs your hand, and starts leading you down the secret palace. Gold veins run through the walls, culminating in the ceiling in a row of elegant chandeliers, illuminating the hall she’s guiding you through.
“What is this place?”
Her head turns towards you over her shoulder. “A place where you can have whatever you want.”
You stop walking, plant your feet in place, and she stops with you, turning towards you the moment she feels you come to a halt. She looks at you puzzled, like you’re going off-script. All of these experiences are far too new for you, this lifestyle too alien, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to fit in.
“What if I want you?”
You can see the colors of her eyes mellow out, followed up by a little laugh. Before she answers, she sinks to her knees, on the floor in front of you, her legs sticking out from the slits in the sides of her dress, smooth and subservient.
“You can have me.”
Her face tilts up towards you, the mask not nearly enough to cover the playful sweetness she unleashes. Her perfectly glossed lips part slightly as she looks up, takes an exasperated breath, the push and pull of her ribcage pushing out her chest, her hands resting neatly on her thighs.
“Right here. However you want.”
There’s nobody else around. Just you and her, in a hallway meant for kings to feast. Your hands leave your sides, doubtfully finding her cheeks.
“But that would mean making your welcome package wait.”
You stop for just a fraction of a second, but she feels it. She pats her hands on her thighs twice, smoothing her dress as if she hadn’t just offered to suck your cock in the middle of a hallways, gets up without help (which is insane, considering the length of her heels), and asks: “Did that catch your attention?”
You nod, despite none of this making sense yet.
She grabs your hand again, takes approximately two more steps with you in tow and stops in front of a door marked with a strawberry. Turns around to you. Puts her hand flat on the door, gives you a final devious smirk, and speaks: “All we ask is that you shower and brush your teeth before the fun.” She pushes open the door, revealing a room that could rival the most expensive hotel rooms, soft rose gold and black mixing on the walls and in the furniture. “Oh, and do have fun.”
And in the center of it all, on a bed with black and white silk sheets, legs dangling off of the edge but not hitting the floor, is possibly the most gorgeous girl you’ve ever seen.
Plump lips. Petite. Cat-eyed. Midnight hair in twin tails. Wearing nothing at all but a bathrobe and white thigh-high socks, the lower end of a bow at the hem of each sock drawing your attention. Currently occupied with eating a strawberry from a bowl on the top of a bar cart parked conveniently next to her. She takes a look at you, lays the half eaten strawberry back in the bowl, and gets a dangerous look in her eyes.
“Hi~ You’re the mega lottery guy, right? I’m Chaeyoung, and I’ll be your canvas for tonight!”
She stays seated on the bed, swinging her legs one by one. Before Chaeyoung can say more, the masked woman next to you speaks: “I’ll let you two get acquainted. And if you still have energy left after you’re done with her, you can still have me.”
You step inside, and the door behind you gets closed, leaving you alone with the self-proclaimed toy.
You look at her. “How did you know I won the lottery? I thought I was keeping that secret hidden pretty decently,” you ask, trying to wrap your head around this whole thing.
She shrugs. “We know everything about our guests so we can give them the best service.” She picks up the strawberry again, and finishes it. “That’s why I’m wearing these socks! You like them, don’t you?”
All you can do is nod, sheepishly. Chaeyoung, in response, jumps off of the bed, and steps towards you, the difference in size growing even more noticeable.
“It’s okay to be a little shy for your first time in a house of pleasure. I’ll guide you, all you need to do is tell me what feels good and I’ll make sure I’ll do it even better.”
“I thought you people knew everything about me? Aren’t you supposed to already know what feels good for me then?” you scoff, brow furrowing.
“Well, if you already had a girl that gave you everything you wanted, you wouldn’t be standing here in front of me, getting hard—” she looks down at your crotch, “—trying to figure out if I’ll be able to lick your balls with your dick down my throat. Which, I can, by the way. You’re welcome to try after you’ve taken your shower. House rules and all that.”
“This is insane,” you mutter. There’s a small step up in a little alcove on the side of the room, a washing basin centrally attached to the wall with a mirror hanging on top of it, and you make your way over to it. On the left side of the basin is an opaque glass door.
You push it open, only to be met with marble walls, tiled floor, a massive rainfall showerhead and enough hygiene products to provide a beauty influencer with a year's worth of content.
So, first things first, you brush your teeth, all the while catching Chaeyoung’s reflection in the mirror goofing around, staring at you as if to say “hurry up!” Your shirt comes off first, she raises her eyebrow, and the rest of your clothes follow fast as you disappear into the shower.
It doesn’t take long for you to see her outline appear in the opaque door, leaning against the doorframe.
“So, do you want me to keep these socks on the entire night or should I be fully naked at some point?” she asks through the door.
“I’d prefer if you kept them on,” you shout back over the running water.
“Mmm, socks stay on. Got it.” You can see her silhouette shift, her back now against the glass as she slides down. “They’re the comfy kind anyway.”
There’s only a couple of seconds of silence before she speaks up again: “So what was that first week like? What’s the first thing you bought?”
You chuckle, knowing how dumb you’re about to sound. “A toothbrush.”
The same silence washes over the conversation, only this time you wish she’d break it.
“Not like, a new car or a fancy watch or anything?” she asks, finally.
“I needed a new toothbrush.”
“See,” she begins, turning towards the door, “that’s what makes me curious about you.”
“That I needed a new toothbrush?” you ask, you yourself turning towards the door as well as you let the shampoo run from your hair.
“No, that everything in your file and everything you’re saying suggests you’re the type of guy to take it slow.”
“And you don’t think I am?”
“Nah,” she laughs. “I think you're the type that thinks they need to hold back but can barely keep themselves from grabbing a girl like me by the hair and shoving your cock straight down her throat.”
You don’t answer, don’t bother to humor her with the truth. You can hear her shift again.
“And the fact that they chose me as your first girl,” she continues, another giggle, “must mean you really love getting your dick sucked.”
“That your specialty?” you ask, trying to not sound too flustered.
“You could say that. I don’t have a gag reflex and I do have an insatiable desire to get manhandled, so.”
It’s hard not to touch yourself with all the profanities she’s spouting, but you’re going to have to settle for a simple cleaning for now. Would be a waste otherwise.
“Besides,” she continues, “you have that pent-up ‘I want to fuck a pretty face’ energy. Like you’ve never dared dream of being with a girl like me before.”
“I’ve been with hot chicks before,” you grumble as you rinse off the last bit of soap.
“Okay hotshot,” she says. “Whatever you say.” Before you know it, her face is pressed against the opaque door, like she’s willing herself to see through it. “But seriously, how long do you intend to stay in there? Do you want me to come in with you?”
She taps on the glass, silhouette showing her clearly crossing her arms.
“I’m bored, and if I have to come in there to get some action going, these socks are coming off, and we both lose. I’m not walking around in wet socks all night because you want shower head, so just tell me what you want and I can start sucking your cock.”
You towel off, and considering the circumstances, don’t bother with the robe they hung on a hanger. Your cock is refusing to subside, anyways. The cold air that hits you as you open the door does nothing to hide any of it, doesn’t help you calm down, not when faced with Chaeyoung’s face snapping from glassy boredom to joyous hunger so all-consuming it feels like a threat.
There’s a thought, for the first time tonight: She must be like this with everyone. This is customer service, the talent of an escort dedicated to secrets and depravity. It elevates the nerves, doesn’t lessen them, actually.
“Wow, so this is that working class physique, huh?” she smirks, eyes sharp, tongue resting loosely at the edge of her incisors. She’s leaning back casually, too casual for someone who’s repeatedly insinuated you should fuck her throat, legs spread, but her feet together like she’s not already showing you her cunt dripping on her bathrobe.
You stop right in front of her, cock standing straight above her head. “You talk too much.” You expect her to recoil, to flinch or just have any kind of reaction, but she doesn’t. She just sits there, like she expects you to change the fact she, well, talks too much.
So, you grab her by the twin tails, both hands tight at the roots, and bend her head back with sharp jerk. She relents, folds her hands behind her back neatly, so obviously practiced as a way to let you know, yes, you can go right ahead, not resisting at all as your cock disappears all the way in her mouth.
She doesn’t gag. Doesn’t blink. No, instead, she moans, she smiles, presses her tongue flat against the bottom of your dick like a red carpet welcoming its entrance.
You hold her head right where you want it, and pump your cock in and out, slow at first, then faster, not caring if she’s ready for it, because that’s the service. That’s the VIP treatment. That’s Chaeyoungs specialty.
“Fuck,“ you groan into the air. “You actually like this, don’t you?”
She nods best she can, lips stretched across your shaft, spit dripping down between her legs mixing with her pussy’s slick, and you barely manage to make a mental note to force her out of that robe when your motor functions allow for anything but bucking your hips forward and backwards in rhythm with your hands.
The mirror by the sink is catching everything, and you glance at it, seeing the shape of you in her windpipe, a vision as obscene as it is enthralling. Her eyes haven’t left yours for a second, and when she catches you looking away, she follows, seeing you extending her in the reflection.
“You want—” she coughs, hoarse, as she pulls off with a wet gasp, hands now steadied against your thighs not bothering to wipe any of the bubbly saliva away, “You want to feel something you’ve never felt before?”
Her hand flies up towards yours, interlaces her fingers with your right hand and guides it towards her throat. The other hand makes sure your left hand is planted on the back of her head. She wraps your palm around her slender neck, gives your fingers a squeeze, then releases them, lines herself up and plunges your cock back down her gullet.
You can feel yourself through the wall of her neck, bulging her throat, and she holds you there with her nose pressed to your skin. She looks up at you like she’s expecting something, but you’re not sure what to give. Does she want you to pull her off? Did she misread some kind of signal that you might cum soon?
No, instead, she grabs your wrist, guiding your palm to stroke up and down forcefully against her skin as you stay buried in her mouth, letting you control her from the inside and outside.
She gurgles, the sounds might have meant something but all they are right now are vocal vibrations wreaking havoc on your mind.
Your hand massages the both of you, and you’re so close already, but you slow it down, savor the feeling, savor her gaze, savor the view off her. Maybe even command her to take off the robe.
Which she does. She shimmies one shoulder and the robe falls open with ease, exposing her tits; small and impossibly perky, perfect on her, pink and dusky nipples blushing at your intense stare. She pushes it off, and it pools beneath her, on the floor, a practical rag for catching any stray filth.
“Touch yourself,“ you command further, voice hoarse and rough.
She moans around you, like a sigh of relief, and obeys instantly. Her hands slide down, take a little detour to her tits, squeezing then further gliding down, making it all the way to in between her thighs. She spreads just a little wider, showing you how hairless and shining she really is, cups her cunt in her palm and presses to fingers to her slit, forfeiting a slow rhythm and just instantly falling into yours.
You’re already at the edge with the way she’s sucking your dick, but it’s when she proves she hasn’t lied a single time; her tongue slipping out, wiggling side by side, gaining ground on your shaft until she reaches your balls. With your cock buried in her throat.
There’s no other follow up but to groan her name, and unload pulse after pulse of cum straight into her stomach. It earns you her first gag, but nothing you could do could make her pull off of you. Not when she’s rolling your balls between her fingers and her tongue, convulsions of her throat constricting your cock until you’re dazed, dizzy and dried out.
To say she swallows it all would be redundant. There’s no need to swallow most of it, only the last couple of drops that spill out of you as you retreat from her mouth. The worst part is that she just looks at you as if nothing about this was exceptional, this is the standard she set.
“Any more commands?” she spurts out, voice ragged.
You can’t answer, not with your legs jelly, staggering back, barely finding the edge of the bed before crashing down hard. She, on the other hand, is still playing with herself, dutifully, like you commanded, fingers idly circling her clit, as if she’s keeping herself warm long enough for you to speak again.
She follows you to the bed. Her hand never leaves her clean-shaven pussy.
“I’ll take that as ‘just lie down with me for now‘.“ She tosses one leg over you, the other splayed beneath her, giving her plenty of space to keep herself entertained, her torso pressing into the side of your arm.
Your hand drops onto her thigh with a slap, amplified by gravity, connecting you to her like she connects to you. Her skin is soft, velvet, impossibly perfect to the touch; musculature trained from sitting on her knees and working her neck, everything taut with athleticism, nothing about it unhoned.
She fits alongside you like she belongs there.
There’s nothing clever to say, nothing you’d waste your breath trying to communicate, no sound escaping you except for a couple of exasperated expletives. She leans in, face flushed, way more reason than you to be exhausted, breaths fast and tiny but under control, lips pressed together for a quick peck on your cheek.
“Better than your last blowjob?” she whispers, grinning at the ceiling.
Your head is so fucking empty, every thought you had emptied into her mouth, all you can do is answer honestly. “I didn’t even know half of that shit was humanly possible.“ You try to stop the laugh from coming out, but once you catch her smirk in the corner of your vision, you can’t help but let it escape you.
Chaeyoung joins you, laughing with pride, glancing down at your now soft cock with an expression of professional satisfaction, a job well done. “It’s all about practice. We do drills.“ A giggle, this time. She’s still working her clit with mercenary fingers, perfectly aware of her own needs, just keeping herself ready. “You want to help?“
In about ten minutes there would be nothing more you’d want, but right now, your body is as limp as a cumrag and twice as useless. She must see it in your face because she laughs once more and rolls herself upward so her legs straddle your ribs. There’s basically no weight to her, her knees splayed wide on each side of you, socks still immaculate, soft on your skin where her thighs squeeze you.
This is, incidentally, also the moment her fingers no longer take refuge between her thighs, their job being replaced by soft rolls of her hips against your stomach, spreading slick all over you. Her eyes are trained on you, waiting for you to say something.
“Actually, I’d like something to eat, I’m feeling kind of low on energy,“ you groan up into her, turning your face away in a fluster.
She lights up at your request, rolling her hips one more time, then dismounting you. “I think we have just the thing,“ she chirps, landing with a sock-muffled bounce on the floor. From the bottom shelf of the little bar cart, she produces a quaint little glass jar with a grape motif on the label along with a tiny brush, like something you’d use for calligraphy. Pops open the jar with her teeth, dips the brush in it and paints a diagonal stripe across her wrist. “Grape sugar is supposed to be the best for recovery, right?“ she muses, stretching her arm out towards you.
You push yourself off the mattress a little, accept her invitation, and lick the stripe off of her. Artificial grape, but not offensively so; and the sweetness hits your bloodstream like a purple thunderbolt. She asks if you’re feeling any better, with a voice as syrupy and honeyed as the edible body paint.
You nod, licking traces your lips caught before your tongue could clean. “A bit.“
A grin overtakes her. “Good. We’ll dose you up, good as new.“ She reloads the brush, this time drawing two stripes across her collarbone. She leans in to give you easier access, her lips inches from your ear, and moans a little as you lick it off of her. You lap at her hungrily regardless, the last detonation still too fresh in your mind.
The next stripe turns into a lazy S down the stretch of skin between her small, perfect tits, beading along her sternum. As she’s painting and you’re cooling down, the opportunity seems to present itself to ask her some questions you should have asked the first second you set foot in this building.
“So, what is this whole stunt going to cost me?“
She winks at you, finishes her painting, and leans in, hands on either side of your head, presenting your next platter. “Free of charge.“
You stop halfway in between her tits. “And now a real answer.“ You look up at her from under her, and she looks down back at you, her gaze saccharine and amusingly pouty.
“That is the real answer. Next visit you’ll have to pay, but consider this an amuse-bouche to get you familiar with what we do.“ She presses her body against you now, forcing you to finish your meal. You can’t help but lap at her hungrily, the sugar and the promises reinvigorating you. Your cock is starting to feel it too, slowly returning back to life.
“This doesn’t feel real.“ It’s a little too honest to divulge, and not in a solely fucked-out-of-your-mind way.
“Recurring theme for you, mega lottery man?“ she asks with a chuckle, pushing herself back up, presenting your clean plate.
“Can you call me something other than mega lottery man?“
The edge of her lip twirls up, and her eyes focus on you. “Alright, daddy. Your turn.“
It does something to you that you didn’t know it could. It sounds so fucked up coming from her, and you’d sworn to every past girlfriend that came in your palm before that you hated it and it gave you the creeps and here you are, thinking of how great she’d look and sound, moaning daddy in your ears as you fucked your seed into her.
She places the concoction in your hands, brush accompanying it. She plops off of you, and lies down on her back next to you, presenting herself as a fresh canvas.
You paint your first stripe on the inside of one of her armpits. She gets a little giggly as it hits her, but manages to maintain composure as you lick it off of her, the taste mixing with her sweat, enhancing the sweet with saltiness, an alchemical love potion making you go for another lick, just for good measure. You move down her body, paint a circle around her belly button.
“You know,“ she speaks, unprompted, as you’re feasting. “You’re keeping your composure surprisingly well.“
“Yeah?“ you respond, kissing her belly button before removing your latest creation.
“Usually, new customers freak out and try to, like, wife me immediately or something.“ She tilts her head up slightly. Winks at you. “Should I be offended?“
“No, because asking you to marry me after a single blowjob would be insane. Your previous customers were insane.“
She doesn’t argue with that. You move further down, and paint multiple stripes on each of her thighs, connecting her hips to her socks, stopping just shy from making what little you’ll allow her to wear to turn sticky.
Sit up, admire your own work for a second, cock rapidly reinvigorating. “So, what happens now?“ you ask, a little surprised by the sound of your own voice. You dip your head down, licking her thighs clean while she gets the time to answer.
Chaeyoung stretches herself out, props herself up on her elbows. “That’s up to you, daddy. If you want to stay after dinner and want to go for dessert—“ she shrugs, “—I could probably make you cum again in, like, nine minutes? Or, if you’re one of those sentimental types, we can just talk. I do that too. I could also just wash you. There’s a jacuzzi behind one of these doors, if you like water. Or, you can leave. If you’ve had enough, you don’t have to stay.“
You sit upright on your knees. Cock standing straight up now, presenting itself to her, finally in her view, and you groan: “I’m not fucking leaving just yet.“
“Oh wow. See what a little sugar can do, daddy?“ She spreads her legs wider, as if she’s already decided for you how this goes.
You don’t let her.
You wrestle her onto her stomach, pin her wrists with one hand above her head and draw a thick, unbroken line from the dip above her ass to the nape of her neck, then toss the brush aside along with the jar and follow the same track with your tongue, savoring every vertebra, every little shiver she offers.
By the time you reach her neck, you’re lined up perfectly, ready, pressing against her slick folds. She raises her hips, inviting you in with a wiggle. You don’t even need to bother guiding yourself with a hand. She’s so slick, so open, so ready that you just slide right in. Guess her fingers did their job after all.
You disappear fully into her in one stroke, balls pressed flush to the split of her thighs, and she hisses through her teeth like she’s been waiting her whole life for this instead of however little time you’ve known each other. She turns her head sideways, half her face visible to you now, eyes looking back at you like she’s making sure you’re as much of a wreck as she seems to be.
Her pussy locks you in, velvet and curling and impossibly snug, and for a moment you swear you can’t move at all. You can’t be sure who breaks the stillness, but someone does, you grunt and groan and she moans and mewls and it all culminates in something unholy.
“Do I feel good, daddy?“ she murmurs, voice muffled by black silk pillows.
It deserves to be said that at this point, you’re way past one of embarrassment. It might be a script or her truth, it doesn’t matter, not with the way she throws her ass back into you, not with the way she drools every time your cock throbs in her like it’s ready to burst. All that matters is making her yours, for now.
So, you let her set the pace for now, admiring her muscles stretch and squash under her pale skin, the white socks braced against the sheets for traction as she pushes back, the barely perceptible twist and turns she makes at just the right moment to make your nerves jolt.
But you want to break her open and see what filth comes pouring out.
You lean over her, chest to her back, pinning her down fully and keeping her there. Your hips pick up the pace, brutally hard thrusts repeat themselves into her, the sound of your hips against her ass slap louder than any sound she could produce muffled by the bedding. It doesn’t matter that this is what she does for a living. She sounds so damn hungry right now it’s as if she’s never had cock before.
And with a whimper, it announces itself. The staccato clench of her cunt around your cock, the twitching and shaking of her thighs, the tensing of her calves kicking into your backside, the curling of her toes as if she’s being electrocuted from the inside. You fuck right through her release, as if this is just a detour from your pleasure; after all, you are the current, the cause, the storm cloud coming down on her.
You pin her down harder, pressing her ribs into the mattress, her ass comes up flush into your hips and you rut into her like you’re trying to break her.
She’s raw and wrung out, her voice gone hoarse, but she still spews filth like no other: “Mmm— you’re so much meaner than you look, daddy. I can—fuck—“ you shift the angle, hitting her deeper, higher. “—I can feel you in my stomach.“
Chaeyoung tries to crawl forward a little, grant herself a short break, a relief from the pressure, but you catch her at the waist and yank her back, pinning her down between her shoulder blades and not relenting. The noise she makes starts as a gasp, turns into a giggle and ends in a fucked-out and delighted moan, tongue lolling between her teeth.
It’s then you reach for one of her twin tails, winding it around your fist and making a makeshift leash, hauling her head up from the pillow.
The angle opens her up, your other hand on her chin tilting her so you can watch the smile go bliss-fuzzy, watch her pupils dilate as you show her just how little control you have.
“O-oh, fuck, yes, use me how you want,” she babbles, her words the spark you needed for your superheated flash of lightning to start crackling. “Break me in, daddy, show me what you need, I’ll take it, I’ll take it all—”
You might die if she stops speaking now, so you tell her to never stop. She doubles down, filthier, meaner, calling herself your toy, your cumrag, your slut, your canvas to paint and destroy.
Her hair slips from your wrist, both your hands needing to find the bed to have something to hold you upright, and you don’t last much longer after that, can't, not with the tightness of her pussy, the way she moans daddy between every breath, not with her hand flying back to claw your back (because she can’t reach your ass) to force you in as close to her womb as you could possibly get as you spill inside her.
You can feel your cum leak out around your cock as you collapse forward, resting your face in the crook of her neck.
She, on the other hand, is still giggling, still squirming, still twitching around your softening cock, pressing her ass up to keep you plugged in. “Wow,“ she sighs pleased, “I can see why they scheduled you for two hours.“
You snort, and feel the laugh reverberate in your bones. “That’s how long we have?”
She reaches back, pats your thigh with a sticky, small hand. “If you want more, I’ll always want more. But, for now—” She rolls off of you, dragging you by the arm so you’re face-to-face, side-by-side on the pillow. Turns around for a beat, finds the jar of body paint on the floor, dips her finger in it. “Open,“ she demands, and you do, letting her wipe a stripe of grape across your lips before kissing it away.
You half expect her to say something witty or seductive, but instead she just looks at you, unguarded, and you blink, dizzy with the intimacy. The novelty of it is almost as overwhelming as the sex had been. You’ve never felt so seen in your life.
It’s only the sticky line of grape sugar drying on your chin that breaks the spell. Chaeyoung wipes it off with her thumb, then licks her thumb clean, taking her sweet time. Under the table you suspect the House has taught her to prolong silences like this: let the guest rest, let the moment stretch, so the next escalation hits all the harder.
She stretches, her whole body flexing, begging for attention. “You want to shower again before we go for round three? Or do you want to keep my scent on you?”
Her tone is teasing, but you hear a different game at play in her question. You think of the way the masked woman had spoken, the way this whole place seems to anticipate you, to reify your unspoken wants before even you know them. A couple of hours ago, you found that creepy. Now you find it exhilarating. You want to be known like this, down to the most humiliating, sub-animal detail.
You answer: “I want to keep it on me.”
She smiles, more satisfied than you expected. “Good. I think it’s kind of hot when I can smell myself on a guy. Like I marked my territory as their favorite whore.” Then, without a pause, “Do you want to eat my ass, daddy?”
You don’t recall being asked a question so abruptly direct before. For a split second, you’re sixteen again, browsing porn you don’t understand with the volume off, afraid your parents will come in and see you looking at something degenerate. But you’re not sixteen, you’re a man who just came into a girl’s throat so hard you nearly blacked out, and you are in a palace of hedonism where every taboo is contained under glass, invited.
“Yeah, actually. I’d love to eat your ass.“
Chaeyoung spins onto her stomach, popping her ass up into the air and folding her arms under her head, eyes resting on you in the bed-side mirror. She wiggles, playfully, and says, “Take your time. It’s always better when you take your time.”
You didn’t expect this to be so intimate, so utterly nonchalant, but maybe that’s the point.
After, you share the bowl of strawberries, her laying across your chest, sticky and spent, head pillowed on your arm.
She gathers the details of your life, the brushstrokes of your past, the reasons you never thought you’d be rich, or here, or capable of pleasure on this scale. She catalogs your secrets with surgical precision, then files them away with a kiss.
It’s not love you’re feeling, far from it, but there’s a certain affection that you can feel already ensuring your return here.
Before you leave, she helps you dress. Socks first, then underwear, then every button fastened one by one. She kisses your jaw, then the softest spot behind your ear, leaving her scent as a calling card, as your favorite.
At the door, she pauses. “Don’t be a stranger, daddy.”
You nod.
The masked woman is waiting for you at the exit, arms folded, her gaze appraising.
“Did you enjoy your stay?” she asks, though you imagine she’s never gotten an unsatisfied response.
You hesitate, but confirm, with more word-vomit than you’d ever given even when just a simple yes would have sufficed.
She grins, and the lamp light catches the edge of her mask, gold and black all at once.
"It’s fifty-fifty. It either happens or it doesn’t."
You set your glass down on the table so hard it nearly cracks. "It is not fifty-fifty."
She shrugs—Chaewon’s quintessential uncaring attitude about anything you say—as she falls down into the couch. "But it is, though." She pops open another beer like she hasn’t had enough to drink already.
She always does this. Chooses some ridiculously wrong position to dig her heels in. Like if she just believes it to be true, the universe will bend to her will out of sheer exasperation. You should just ignore it, and just let her believe what she wants to believe. There really is no point to it with her. You drag a hand down your face, because you've been here before. You’re always here. There is a universe where you’ve been having this argument since the dawn of time. Monty Hall sits upon his cosmic throne and watches you suffer.
"You pick a door," she says, holding up one finger like she's making a serious mathematical point and not actively committing a war crime against logic. "And then Monty—whoever the fuck he is—opens another door. And now there’s two left. So, you know. Fifty-fifty. You either win the prize or you don’t win shit."
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
And she still doesn’t care. If anything, she revels in your frustration, grinning and taking a lazy sip from her beer.
“I thought you liked your girls a little stupid,” she muses. You like Chaewon. Always have; since before her rejection and until now.
She might be onto something.
“That’s what I saw earlier at the club, anyway,” she mumbles, and it’s pointed, a sharp dagger concealed by a hushed voice.
You pay it no mind. It’s just Chaewon being Chaewon. Doing everything in her power to annoy the fuck out of you. You shake your head. “I like my girls with a basic understanding of probability.”
She hums, her gaze dragging over you, and it lingers. Long. Too long. So long it’s causing the alcohol induced haze to retreat from your brain. Then she just smiles again, takes another sip, and the buzz is back.
Chaewon stretches, arms flexed into a peak above her head, sliding against the backrest of the couch, her head landing against the armrest of the couch opposite of where you're sitting. Her legs stretch out off of the floor, her dress riding up, clinging to and stretching on her hips.
It’s a performance, designed to squeeze out resistance from any sap that would dare defy her. It’s impossible to tell if this is just Chaewon’s purest form, her instincts kicking in to naturally make any man submit, or if it’s a carefully crafted weapon, deliberately utilised and aimed with immaculate precision. Either way, it’s fucking lethal.
Lace-trimmed thigh-high covered feet land in your lap, crossed. You glance down at them. Stifle a thought of fucking the exposed part of skin right below her dress and above her socks. Breathe out through your nose, annoyed.
She sees. She was waiting for you to see, to be more exact.
“What?” she asks, but she knows the answer. Feigning innocence, but the chances of it convincing you are slim. “Is the view not to your liking?”
You flick your eyes up to meet hers. Flat. Unamused. Stern. “Jesus, Chaewon.”
She cocks a half smile, hands up in the air like she’s being put under arrest but confident she can flirt her way out of it. “Relax. It’s just a joke.‘
Right. Just a joke. One she’s been playing at for far too long now. One you’re absolutely not in the mood for tonight. One that is quintessentially Chaewon. Mean. Sloppy. Reckless.
That’s what alcohol does to her. She gets all handsy and touchy and feely, disregarding any feelings or reservations you’d have about being touched meaninglessly by the girl that didn’t want you.
And the joke is not exclusive to you either. You’ve seen her like this before, with other guys. Hands on their shoulders and theirs on her hips, leaning in too close, laughing too loud. It’s just her usual mess. It doesn’t mean anything.
She’s warm, just warm enough that you can feel her through your clothes. But warm enough to make you fear the sparks could ignite something that shouldn’t be. Before you can have any more prohibited thoughts, you shift, trying to nudge her legs off of you.
She doesn’t budge. Deliberately. Straight up refuses to even acknowledge the attempt.
You sigh. “Get your legs off of me.”
Chaewon blinks at you, lashes fluttering faster than your heart can beat, her lips pouting— a poor substitute for saying she can’t believe you’d say that to someone this cute. She chuckles, transforms it into a smirk, and tilts her head.
“Make me.”
She presses the arch of her foot against your crotch. It’s right on target. Light. Testing. Provocating.
It’s impossible not to react. You could sit here, not do anything, let her rub your hardening cock through your pants a bit, enjoy the feeling of her getting you worked up. But that’s not what this is about. You know this pattern. As soon as you acknowledge it, it stops, and even if it didn’t, it would all be meaningless.
So you react. You grab her ankle, and shove her legs off of you.
She lets out a soft “oh,” before laughing, low and amused. She works herself back up right, shifting her legs underneath her, but she doesn’t look the slightest bit deterred.
“Wow,” she mocks. “Sensitive.”
You roll your eyes, reaching for your drink. It’s water. Unlike Chaewon, you know when to quit, much to her annoyance. “Stop being weird and focus.”
“I am focused!” she retorts, all tension and energy. “Are you focused?” she says finally, slow, saccharine, like honey that's taking its sweet time to drip from a spoon into your mouth. “Not too distracted by how fuckable I look in this dress?”
You don’t acknowledge it. Again, no point. You set your glass down with a deliberate clink— any noise to replace what she just asked—then reach for three random objects on the coffee table; her phone, a book, and a coaster.
“We’re settling this tonight.”
She puts her beer back on the table, folds her hands in her lap, and sits with her whole body pointed at you. She shakes her body loose with slight movements. Then, slowly, she smiles.
“Please,” she says, voice sultry and teasing. “Teach me a lesson, professor.”
You’ve probably explained the theory to Chaewon more times than there are episodes of the show that inspired the discussion. It’s time for a practical run-through. You grab the three nearest things you can find and leave standing upright to function as make-shift doors—your phone, your glass of water, and a book Chaewon has been quipping from for the past month, How to Date Men When You Hate Men—and you form a neat row of three. “Let’s drill it into your skull. Three doors. One has a prize. Pick one.”
And for all the effort you put in, she barely looks. Eyes on you, finger pointing in a different direction. “The book.”
“Right, and that was a random choice out of three, meaning—”
“That I was either right or I was wrong. Fifty-fifty.” She shrugs, and shuts the door on this method of having her understand.
She’s perfectly frustrating. “it’s not fifty-fifty—”
She shifts the opposite way from her previous slide, her head landing in your lap. Her cheek rests against your thigh, and her provocation pokes at your heart. She gazes up at you, lashes fluttering a hypnotic rhythm. “This is more comfortable. Keep going.”
How could you?
“Chaewon.”
She hums, but she doesn’t acknowledge your protest. “What? Does having a cute girl’s face this close to your dick make you nervous?”
Ignore it. If you acknowledge it, it only gets worse. You push it down, she’ll eventually grow bored, and as long as the boulder doesn’t slip from your hands, you’ll be done with this forever. “Okay, so now, Monty—”
“You’re looking a little serious,” she muses, herself looking anything but. “Would you look like that while getting head? All furrowed brows, all focused?” Her lips curve deviously like the curveballs she’s throwing you. “Or would you be more relaxed? I can go deep, you know. No need to worry about me.”
Every cell in your body is telling you to push back, take her up on what she’s offering, and let her ruin this night. But you know. You’d get your hopes up, but she’d just call it a silly joke. Keep ignoring it. She’ll get bored.
You take a slow breath. Slow down your rhythm. “Are you done? Monty opens a door that isn’t the prize. That leaves two doors with potential. Your first pick was only right one-third of the time, so if you switch—”
“Aaaah.” Her mouth opens, tongue peeking out like a landing strip, eyes fluttering shut like she’s waiting for you to shove your cock inside.
That’s it.
You shove her off, not rough, but firm, standing up from the couch you might have sunk in immediately. “Can you cut it the fuck out?”
She’s back upright, giggling, back landing against the couch, legs curled beneath her. “What’s wrong? Blood rushing away from your head?”
“Do you ever stop?”
Her arms stretch over her head again, and you’re starting to see a pattern with the way her dress is stretching against her hips. “Not when I’m having fun.”
It’s maddening. Talking with Chaewon is selecting a door, continuing to talk with her is being shown the wrong door and choosing to take it willingly. “You really don’t care how frustrating you make the Monty Hall problem, do you?”
She smirks. She must think she has it all figured out. “I already told you. Either something happens, or it doesn’t. Fifty-fifty, dude.”
“That’s really not how probability works.”
“That’s how life works.”
You shake your head, and accompany it with an equally disappointed sigh. “You just don’t want to admit when you’ve made the wrong choice.”
She stills, and it’s eerie. It shouldn’t have happened. Then, like a mask slipping back, she recovers with a sly grin. “Or maybe I just like my way better.”
Before you can argue, she makes her move, getting up, pressing against your arm, chest squishy, warm and deliberate against you. “But you can explain it to me as many times as you want.”
She’s impossible. “Chaewon—”
And she leaves no room for response. “Go on,” she purrs, pushing her tits smush against your bicep, molding around the way your muscles tense. “Teach me.”
Your patience and her dress have one thing in common. They’re both razor-thin. “I mean it.”
She hums, and she smiles, and she’s convinced you’re going to give in any second now. “Not a fan anymore of me touching you?” Her voice drops, all warmth and provocation. “Would you rather reverse the roles, have you touch me? Be careful. I’m sensitive.”
Your fingers wrap around her wrist, pulling it high with a firm and stern motion. “Cut it out.”
She clicks her tongue, and scowls in return. The joke is over, and you ruined her fun. “You liked it plenty when that slut at the club was all over you.”
“That’s different,” you say, your jaw tightening up. She knows it is, and it’s not fair. Does she think she can get away with it just because you’ve got a thing for her? Or, used to have, you try to convince yourself.
She’s so clearly unimpressed it’s almost hurtful. It wasn’t a lie though. It was different, that girl at the club never tore your heart out. But none of that matters when Chaewon wants to have her fun. She scoffs. “Must’ve been nice. You didn’t even flinch when she touched you. Just leaned into her, didn’t push her away like you do with me.”
You don’t answer. You let go of her wrist, sit back down, unsure what to make if anything yourself. You could have gone home with ‘that slut’. Had a great evening. Instead, you’re here, keeping your promise to Chaewon that you’d make sure she got home safe, wasting another night on a girl that should have long been in your past already.
That same girl plants both her knees next to yours on the couch, dress creeping above her hips, exposing the slightest hint of black and lace panties straddling your lap, settling against you.
You hate how right she feels here.
She rocks her hips down, just slightly, just testing the waters. And like an experienced professional, the joke’s back on. “You sure you don’t want to have a little fun?”
Your hands clamp around her waist—not pulling her closer. Pushing her off.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t resist. Just concedes as the distance grows.
“Come on,” she murmurs, trying to make sense of it all. “You used to love looking at me.”
Your arm extends fully, pushing her as far as your body allows. “That was a long time ago.”
She lets out a small scoff, more hurt than the lost one, finally relenting and shifting off your lap. The joke is no longer fun for anyone in this room.
You just have to bite the bullet. Separate her from yourself, let the alcohol fade from her system and figure out what to do after that. “Go to bed,” you exhale sharply, a forced sense of finality in your voice. “I’ll sleep here, and be gone before you wake up.”
Chaewon stares at you like you just suggested the unthinkable. Her eye twitches, a habit you’ve long learned to associate with her being so upset that something is going to break. Then, she exhales sharper than you did, standing up. “Fine. Whatever.”
She turns, stomping toward her bedroom, her pumps exploding with sound every step of the way. “It’s still fucking fifty-fifty, by the way!” she yells, right before she slams the door.
It’s suddenly silent. Silent enough to hear your heartbeat going crazy.
She’ll calm down soon enough. Hopefully.
The heat of her body still burns against you, scorching where she was pressed against you. But if you ran after her now, you’d get burned alive. You rub your hands down your face, sinking into the couch, staring into the ceiling as you mentally prepare for what’s bound to be a sleepless night. There’s no escaping those as long as Chaewon is a part of your life.
----------------------------------------
Sleep doesn’t come.
You want to blame it on the horrible way this couch is digging into your back. Or the sounds of the city being ever present. Or the dim glow of some street lights seeping into the living room through Chaewon’s curtains that never managed to fully close. But comfort isn’t the issue.
It’s your damn mind, that can’t shut the fuck up.
Too many thoughts, all tangled together like a string of memories that wrapped around itself far too many times. Her hands, her voice, her weight in your lap. Her unusually prickly temper, and her enhanced sloppiness.
It all feels too fucking familiar, and the moment you admit that, there’s no holding it back.
It started as a night much like this one. You and Chaewon, at her place, sitting too close for friends but too far apart for lovers. Laughing at everything and nothing. Drinking just enough to make the lines blur. You had thought—maybe. Hopefully.
And for a moment, you know, you had been right. It seemed like the kind of night you’d eventually be able to tell your kids about. An edited version, to cut out the once-in-a-lifetime pounding you intended to give her, but still, magical in its own way.
The way she let you kiss her. The way she kissed you back. The way her eyelashes fluttered to pull you into the kiss. How her left thigh rode up yours. The way her fingers locked behind the nape of your neck. The way you told her you liked her.
Then the way she pulled back. The hesitation in her eyes. The way her voice broke when she said “I don’t think we should do this.”
The way a crack formed on your heart, barely being pushed together by the rest of your more logical organs as you forced yourself to nod and agree, to act like it was fine. Like you were fine. Like you hadn’t just managed to secure the right door, only to be forced to step into the wrong one.
And the way your heart formed a second crack when you saw her again. She was still the same. Still Chaewon. Like nothing had happened.
But something did happen to you.
Your phone buzzes.
It’s not easy to ignore. Chaewon is an addiction to you, the next hit of this sweet obsession entering your veins as your screen lights up.
Chaewon: You awake??
You know you should just be failing at sleeping again. This can only lead to misery.
You: Yeah.
It’s quiet for a bit, but a new message makes its way to you all the same.
Chaewon: Cant sleep
If only she knew how she cursed you with the same fate. If not for her you’d be sound asleep in your own bed right now, or even better, in the bed of that chick you met at the club. What did she say her name was again? Kazuha? Instead, you’re here, repeating old patterns with exhausted probability.
You: That sucks.
Your answers are curt. Too perfect with punctuation for your usual back and forth. She doesn’t respond right away. She might be stubborn and annoying about things she’s convinced she’s right about, but she’s never been oblivious.
Then:
Chaewon: Are we okay?
You’re upset, but not heartless. It tugs.
You: We’re fine, Chaewon
Chaewon: Thats not a yes…
You might just scream out of frustration, your phone dropping on your chest, but obviously you can’t. She’d hear. She’s impossible. So fucking stupidly impossible. And yet, you find yourself typing anyway.
You: Do you want me to lie?
The pause is longer this time. Should you feel bad or just so tired that it doesn’t matter anymore?
Chaewon: No
Chaewon: Idk
Chaewon: I just get nervous when ur like this
You: Like what??
Chaewon: Distant
Chaewon: Careful
Chaewon: Upset with me
Your fingers hover over the keyboard without action. She’s not wrong. You are being careful. It’s her fault. She’d break your heart a second time in less time it took for it to beat. That’s dangerous.
You: Idk what you want me to say Chaewon
Chaewon: Idk either…
Chaewon: But I miss how we used to talk
The memories flood in of the two of you just shooting the shit, countless evenings. Still…
You: We’re talking now.
Chaewon: U know thats not what i meant
And she’s right. You do know, but this is just easier. For you, for her. For the both of you.
Chaewon: Cant you just come over here and talk w me?
Chaewon: I miss you…
And before you can even overthink it—
You move.
----------------------------------------
There is a thought that creeps into your mind as the door creaks open and you step into her room. Something about a lion’s den, and then another one following it up about it actually being the lionesses that do the hunting. There’s no point to it. They all fade in an instant. She’s no huntress right now. She’s vulnerable, like prey, enticing you to be the hunter, looking so ready to be pounced on; curled up beneath her blankets, only the soft shape of her against the sheets to lure you in.
“Hey.” It’s a solid way to start a conversation, but you can’t help but expect more from her after calling you in.
You nod, eyes fleeing from hers, shifting awkwardly by the door. “Hey.”
It takes a while before you move. The same goes for her. She’s squinting, her eyes getting used to the darkness. She’s always been stubborn about letting you help her get a blue light filter on her phone.
She finally stops, and for a moment, your eyes meet hers. She carries a soft smile, the kind that made you fall for her in the first place. But there’s a difference in it; barely perceptible; most definitely flown under the radar by people not so obsessed with her face. There’s precaution sewn into it. The sides of her smile are constantly shifting and trembling, like she doesn’t know whether to keep it there or to switch to a more neutral expression. Then, she shifts, her left arm pulling out from under the cover and tapping the sheets next to her, an unspoken invitation.
You sit down with a sigh, back turned towards her. You’re not far, but you’re not close either. A safe distance, you think to yourself. The mood isn’t tense, but also not comfortable. Just… unsure.
You can hear her laps part, exhale, almost say something, and then close again a couple of times. It’s not until you finally turn to face her that she speaks.
“Do you remember that summer at the beach?”
Your eyebrows raise on instinct, disbelief unmistakably painted across your face, impossible not to notice, not even in this darkness. “How could I forget?”
The muscles on her face relax as her eyes drift away from your eyes, seemingly getting lost into her pillow, which she clutches tight. “You remember how you were so worried about me you gave me a piggyback ride back to the house?”
“No,” you scoff, “I remember you guilt tripping me into carrying your soaking wet ass across the sand.” Your face turns away from her again, hands clutching the side of the bed as your eyes veer off into the distance past the window; letting the glass serve as a canvas to project your memories onto.
You hear the sheets rustle behind you as she works herself upright, before reminding you exactly why you helped her back then in the first place. “You weren’t complaining back then! You were way too busy copping a feel of my ass.”
“Okay, now that’s not fair,” you snap back much too fast, much too flustered. “I wasn’t copping a feel, I was keeping you from falling. And besides, you weren’t helping either! Just hanging there all limp, mumbling you’d never be able to walk again.”
“I mean, it just hurt so bad. That jellyfish really fucked me up,” she chuckles back, and you can feel the pressure of her back leaning against yours.
There’s a soft silence, the one drenched in feelings you’d much rather stay in, instead of moving on to an uncomfortable reality. So you keep painting, hoping the window holds your memory-scape just a little longer.
“Do you remember what we kept talking about? To keep your mind off of the pain?”
You can tell she knows in the way she responds with an “Oh my god.”
Both of you say it at the same time.
“The fucking Monty Hall problem!”
There’s a beat of silence. First it’s a chuckle. It turns into laughter, and it quickly grows uncontrolled, unstoppable. The kind that makes the memories seem brighter, makes your body feel lighter, the kind that makes you throw your head back as she does hers. You both open your eyes staring at the roof, now sharing the same canvas to display footage of past days.
“God,” you breathe, your head locked in place but your eyes drifting over towards her face. “I miss those days.”
She giggles, nose scrunching. “I don’t miss what that jellyfish did to me.”
The laughter fades, and you think that maybe, just maybe you could forget about earlier and go to bed without feeling like shit. You shift, and she does too, turning towards her as she moves back to her original spot, leaning against the headrest, crawling underneath the blankets with her legs.
Your breath catches as you look at her. Your stomach turns. “Chaewon.”
She blinks, glancing up at you. “Hmm?”
“Did you—” You inhale sharply, but you can’t afford to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Did you seriously invite me in here just to talk un-dressed like that?”
Her brows furrow. Then she follows your gaze, shifting slightly, and—
Fuck.
Black lace, delicate, thin. Your favorite.
She freezes. "Oh."
Oh? Fucking oh?
“Why the fuck are you like this?” you explode.
Her eyes widen. "No! I—" She scrambles, tugging the blanket back up over herself. “I wasn’t—”
“You said you wanted to talk, Chaewon.”
“I do!” Her voice pitches up. She’s pulling the sheets up hurriedly, using them as a shield from you, all you can see is her cheeks changing color ever so slightly. This time because of the embarrassment instead of the alcohol. “I promise… I do…”
It’s hard to believe that. It’s all so familiar, and all so fucking frustrating. “You know, this is just like you to do,” you ramble, and it’s hard to stop once you get going. “Always so fucking obsessed with getting a reaction out of me, never stopping to think for a second about how I feel!”
Her face softens, and the way she looks at you makes you sick. Like she thinks you’re right. “That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?”
“I swear!” She shouts, looking panicked and it’s enough to finally get you to shut up. “I was still out of it all, too mad and too drunk when I got back here. I just wanted to sleep. I didn’t—” and a big, shallow breath interrupts her, the kind that just appears and leaves you with less air than before. “I wasn’t thinking, okay?”
You want to believe her. But tonight has been too much. Too many provocations, too many lines blurring that she would turn back from, and in turn, you would let form scars.
Then you sigh, sitting back down. “Okay.”
“Are you…” her voice trembles as she tries to figure out the specifics of your answer. “You’re shaking. Are you mad?”
Your mind is still trying to slow down, and answering gets forgotten. She takes that as an answer, obviously. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not so mad that I’d be shaking, you idiot.” Your voice is quiet. “It’s just way too fucking cold in here. And I was thinking.”
There’s no hesitation, because that’s just how Chaewon is as she shifts, making room. “Get under the covers.”
“Chaewon, please—” you start, but she’s not having it.
“I won’t try anything, okay? I promise,” she interrupts you, sounding calmer already. There’s a touch of pleading in it, but not the whiny kind she uses to get you worked up. It’s more desperate, more real. “Just give me a chance to prove I’m being serious.”
You don’t move at first. Stubbornness is inherent to both of you, after all. She tugs on the sheets impatiently. You sigh, but it’s obviously performative, a last jab at her to let her know you’re only doing this just because you’re cold. And she wasn’t lying. She properly keeps her distance, just sharing the warmth of the bed. It’s immediate and comforting, but you don’t allow yourself to sink into it.
“See?” she murmurs. “Not a trap.”
Not yet. You don’t dare say it, but you don’t have to. She sees the thoughts in your eyes. So she shuffles, turning away from you.
The silence stretches so long you start focusing on the noises it can’t beat into submission. Your breathing. Her breathing. The creaking and crumpling sound of the bed and the sheets as you move.
“I wanted to talk, and we talked so… that’s—that’s good. I guess,” she whispers. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind talking some more.” She lets a little space in between for you to insert yourself into. You never do. “But if you’d rather pretend like I’m not here, I get that too. I’ll shut up.”
It’s endearing, and your response is a little mean, letting her wait in silence for just a little longer before replying.
“I’m not pretending. I need somebody to blame the lack of space I have in this bed.”
She smiles, soft. You can’t see it, obviously, but you feel it. Somehow. She shifts under the blanket, closer but not touching. She’s apprehensive. And she meant what she said.
“Is this the first time we’ve slept in the same bed?” she asks, but she masks her tone enough that she could play it off as talking to herself if you decided to not respond.
“Nope,” you correct her. “There was that one time in sophomore year. You showed up at my door at, like, three in the morning. Absolutely shitfaced, mind you.”
She lets out a small, embarrassed groan, and you know you’re on the right track.
“I remember that,” she mumbles. “Barely.”
“You couldn’t figure out how to get to your dorm. Said not even Monty Hall could help you find the right door.”
“How do you remember all that?” Chaewon questions, like you had no right to have that memory.
“Are you kidding me? How could I forget? I told you to take my bed, and that I was gonna crash on the couch,” you continue explaining, your lips curling upwards.
“But I didn’t let you?”
“Nope. You didn’t trust my roommate worth shit. Which, fair.”
She doesn’t say anything. You keep going though, less for her alone or you alone, both for you both.
“You grabbed my wrist when I tried to walk away. Looked me dead in the eye and said, and I quote, ‘Don’t leave me alone with that guy here, he smells like crusty socks and assault.’”
Chaewon lets out a strangled sound that’s half mortified laugh, half groan. “Oh my God.”
“So I gave in. Got in bed next to you. Fully clothed. On top of the covers. Like a gentleman.”
“You didn’t sleep for a second that night, did you?”
“Of course not. You starfished. One arm across my chest, one leg thrown over me like a fucking seatbelt. You had me trapped, dead to rights. Didn’t help you made me paranoid that my roommate was actually going to do something.”
She laughs—really laughs. Warm, unguarded. Then she rolls onto her side, facing you again. Her eyes search yours. "It was easier, wasn’t it? Back then. In college. At the beach. You carrying me like an idiot, me acting like I couldn’t walk, and you trying to turn probability into a personality trait."
You laugh, but it’s not really a laugh. More like one of those nose breaths that accompanies an abbreviated text. “Because it was.”
Her smile fades. “You never needed me to ask. You always just… stayed.”
You shift slightly, your fingers brushing the edge of the blanket. Her eyes drop there, then rise again.
“I think I’m a leaver,” she says. No warning. No lead-in. Like she had to say it fast before she lost the nerve.
“What?” It leaves your mouth before you can even blink.
But Chaewon swallows, her eyes retreating downwards. “I think that’s just who I am. Some people stay, and some people leave. You’re the kind of person that stays, and I’m a person that leaves. Because if I go first, I don’t have to wait until you become a leaver just like me.”
She looks at you like she’s afraid you’ll flinch. Like she’s already bracing for the recoil.
“I know it’s selfish,” she adds quickly. “But that night… when you kissed me, and then said you really liked me—I panicked. I did what I always do. You were giving me a choice, and that scared the hell out of me. So I picked the choice I always make.”
She breathes in. Exhales slow. Really takes her time, her eyes drifting slightly upwards now.
“And for a while, I told myself it was just another fifty-fifty. You know? Just a game of chance I lost. You either leave or get left. You either lose something or end up lost. And I thought—" she breaks off, swallowing again, part of her voice getting swallowed with it, "—that it would go away like the rest. That I’d forget. That it’d stop mattering."
You stay quiet.
“But it didn’t. It stuck. You stuck.”
She shifts again, knee brushing against yours beneath the blanket. Her voice cracks a little.
“And I started noticing things,” she says. "Little things. Like the first time you didn’t wait for me to text goodnight. Or when you were with someone else and you had that smile that I thought was reserved for me. Or when you stopped arguing with me about dumb shit just to keep talking."
Her voice wavers.
“And then I realized I didn’t just pick wrong. I watched the right door shut. And then I heard it lock. And that’s why I know your stupid fucking Monty Hall problem is wrong. I should’ve had another shot. Another choice. But life didn’t open a wrong door—it just took the right one away. And that’s why I know it’s just fifty-fifty. And I lost my coin toss at happiness.”
There’s a second of silence where your brain short circuits.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” you mutter.
She blinks, but it helps her to finally look at you. “Ouch?”
You sit up, tossing the blanket off like it offended you. “No, I’m serious. You think my door shut? You fucking locked it.”
She opens her mouth, but you cut her off, your pace quickening. “The fact that I stayed around all this time is proof enough that my door is still unlocked. It wasn’t up to me to reopen that door.”
“I—”
“But you had to try.”
Chaewon’s eyes flicker—not away, but deeper. Her breath hitches, and you swear it’s the first real sound she’s made in a while that didn’t have a smirk behind it. She shifts forward just slightly, only enough that her leg brushes against yours again, like she’s testing if the signal’s still green.
“You’re saying… it’s still open?”
You drag a hand through your hair, eyes rolling ceilingward before locking onto her again. “It was never fucking closed.”
Her lips part. They’re trembling now. She’s not teasing this time. “Then why—why didn’t you ever—”
“Because I’m not gonna beg,” you cut in, sharper than intended. “I’m not gonna crawl through the fucking keyhole when you slammed the door in my face.”
She flinches. Just barely. But enough.
“I didn’t need you to beg, just…” she says, softer, like she’s going over the math again in her head. “I don’t know… I—” Her voice dips, trails, then steadies. “I’m here now. I’m trying.”
You look at her. Clear as day in the middle of the night. She's curled up next to you, defensive and ashamed and stubborn all at once. Her eyes are too glossy, her hands fidgeting with the edge of the comforter like they’re looking for somewhere to hide.
And then she breathes, and her voice breaks.
“I just wanted you to want me still.”
And that? That fucking cracks something open.
You reach for her—no grand gestures, no cinematic swoop—just firm, necessary motion. You cradle her jaw, fingers sweeping her hair back, and when you speak, it’s low and final and absolutely everything you’ve been holding back.
“I never fucking stopped.”
There’s no pause this time.
No “but what if—”
No “are you sure—”
No more fucking Monty Hall.
Just her lips crashing into yours, messily, hungrily, like the apology she couldn’t say and the forgiveness you weren’t ready to offer have decided to cancel each other out with tongue.
It’s not careful. It’s not gentle.
It’s honest.
She’s on your lap again, only this time it’s not a joke. Her knees bracket your thighs and she grinds down with purpose, gasping when she feels you through your boxers. Her hands slide beneath your shirt, nails catching skin, and you curse under your breath as heat swells in your gut, undeniable and urgent.
You break the kiss, forehead against hers. “Still cold?”
Her laugh is shallow, much too distracted with making sure she can properly share in your body heat. “Yeah. Make me warm.”
“And here I was thinking you were hot enough as is.”
She smirks, and it’s real this time. Like the one you saw when you barely knew her, but knew enough already. Not a mask. Not a trap. Just her.
And she whispers, “Don’t stop this time.”
Like you could. Besides, you’re not even sure it’s only meant for you. With the way she’s tugging and removing your clothes, kissing your shoulders and pulling you tighter, it’s like she’s making up for lost time. For every second spent being careful. Your hands trace her body, taking your time to really make sure every curve and beauty mark is stuck in your mind forever.
“God,” you mumble under your breath, pressing your lips to her cheek, her neck, her shoulder, working your way down until you’re kissing the edge of a black lace bra that was almost the reason you stormed off earlier. “I can’t believe how beautiful you really are.”
Her breath hitches. “I know.”
And you’ve missed that, too. Her confidence. The way she can say things like that without irony, because she knows exactly what she’s worth—she just never thought she’d be worth it to you once more.
You kiss her through the black lace, and she shivers when you nip at the edge of her bra, as close to her nipple as you can get. She doesn’t waste any time herself flicking open the button of your jeans. You’ve always thought she needed a helping hand, both of yours pushing your pants further down. They’re not even off properly when she pauses, eyes blown wide, honing in on the tent in your boxers leaving little to imagination.
“Wow,” she says, and it’s almost weird to hear her say it without sarcasm.
“Wow?” your voice is rough, coming out in a single breath.
She nods, and her lips part as she yanks your boxers down, eyes almost dazed as she takes you in. “Wow.”
It’s a reverent look. It’s a look that suits her as long as it’s directed towards you, you think. Her fingers reach out like she’s about to wrap them around you, but she stops right before she makes contact, and the look in her eyes changes. Smug now. Knowing.
“I need a moment,” she says, and you know she’s up to no good. “You can’t just swing that in a girl's face and expect me to make it easy for you.”
A throb shoots through your cock, hips twitching without your consent. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
But she just smirks.
“Chaewon.”
“Shhh,” she says as she shuts down any and all protest, and her voice is the perfect combination of exasperating and enticing. “I’ve got my own Monty Hall problem lined up for you.”
You groan, but it’s more of a plea for mercy than a protest. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious,” she purrs, fingers grazing the base of your cock before pulling back again, making you hiss.
“Three doors,” she says, and the way she looks at you is obscene. “My front door, my back door, and my... ehm... mouth door?”
You’re gone. You’re fucking gone. “You are so lucky you're fucking hot.”
She keeps going, relentless. Her grin is pure mischief. “Which one have I imagined you fucking me with the most?” She rolls her hips, testing you. “Pick right, and you get to fuck it.”
“And if I guess wrong?” Your voice is rough, needy, everything you never let her hear before tonight.
Her eyes burn. “Then you eat me out first.”
It’s a rigged game and you both know it, but you play along anyway, letting her set the rules and stack the deck and deal each card. You lean forward, drag your lips up the line of her jaw. “That’s an impossible choice. You want all of them.”
She moans, a hiccup of laughter and want, and the weight of her shifts in your lap, urgent. “You wish. You only get one.”
But her hips are grinding now, a rolling, deliberate pressure that tells you exactly what her body needs. The answer is and always has been: every option, at once, and all of them leading back to you.
You palm her ass, fingers splaying underneath the lace edge, and the way she shivers tells you she wasn’t expecting you to touch her with that kind of certainty. For all her bravado and gamesmanship, this is how you win: you move first, and you don’t hesitate.
“Let’s see,” you murmur, mouth against the shell of her ear, making her gasp. “Back door—” a squeeze, a knead that pulls a little yelp from her, “—doesn’t seem like your style. At least not as a first move.”
“Don’t count me out,” she breathes, and you hear the competitive edge in her voice, the same edge that made her stay up all night just to prove you wrong about some irrelevant, beautiful, dumb thing.
You laugh, slow and low, and she shakes against you. “Mouth door,” you say, and you can’t help but grin at the way she’s already licking her lips, hungry, needing to prove something. “Obvious contender. But I think you want it right here.” Your hand finds the heat between her legs, cups her through those ridiculous panties, and her eyes go wide, her breath gone.
You wait a beat. She’s never been great at waiting, but she’s trembling now, lips parted, waiting for your verdict.
“And if I told you it’s definitely not the back door? Does your answer change?” she pants.
You consider your odds. “I think—” you start, but she interrupts.
“Actually,” she says, and the way her voice drips with satisfaction is almost enough to make you lose. “I don’t give a fuck. I want your cock. Right here.”
She grinds against you, and you can’t help but think you’re never spending another day without that feeling.
“Fuck,” you groan, because she won this round, and she knows it. “You don’t play fair.”
She bites her lip, smiling, then reaches between you, fingers wrapping around you with a perfect, firm pressure. “And that’s why you love me.”
She’s right. She’s wrong about so many fucking things, but she’s right about this.
You thrust up into her hand, and she moans, her body arching, her hair falling down her back. You reach for her hips, hooking your thumbs under the lace, and she lifts herself up, letting you pull it down, off, away. She doesn’t care where it lands; she’s already lowering herself back onto you, and you’re closing the distance, guiding your cock to her needy cunt.
“Fuck you,” you breathe, so close to her you can taste it, the subtext of admission against her skin. “I’m not saying it first. I’ll force you to.”
She rocks her hips, taking you deeper, her breath catching with a shudder. “Yeah? You think you can make me?”
You grit your teeth, the friction of her tight around you making it almost impossible to think. “I know I can.”
“Big words,” she gasps, riding you faster, harder. “Think you can back them up?”
You reach between you, your thumb finding her clit, and she cries out, her whole body shaking, her walls clenching around you. “You first,” you growl, and you can tell she’s sensitive. “Say it.”
Her eyes roll back, her lower lip caught between her teeth. You know it, you have her dead to rights, this is your win, and then—”Nuh-uh.”
You thrust up into her, relentless, and the pressure builds, mounting, and she’s so fucking tight around you, and you want her to say it, need her to say it.
She grinds down harder, her nails dragging your shoulder blades, and it’s too much. Too good. Too fucking hot. “You’re gonna say it,” you gasp, your thumb circling her clit faster. “I know you.”
“And I know you,” she pants, her head falling back as she rides you with abandon, her whole body trembling, her breath hitching with every thrust. “I know—oh fuck—you.”
You watch her face as she rocks against you, her lips parting, her eyes wide and desperate and defiant. She’s so close. So close you can feel it, the way she’s fighting it, wanting to hold out, wanting to win.
“Say it,” you growl, thrusting up into her again, harder, not easing up on her clit.
She gasps, and this has to be it. She’s trembling, tightening, drowning in ecstasy and she’s— “I’m—Fuck, I’m cumming, you fucker,” she manages to choke out, and she cums hard. Her head drops forward, no further admission, still no winner as her whole body shudders, her walls clenching around you like she’s weaponizing her orgasm against you, trying to pull the words from you.
You swear, a rough sound that’s almost a surrender, and she laughs, breathless, smug, still shaking in your lap. “You first.”
Your grip tightens on her hips, and you’re so fucking close, but you hold on, hold out, your breath ragged. “I’m not going to give up,” you groan, thrusting up into her in a wild frenzy, loud clapping of flesh colliding now strangling the room. She lets out a strangled sound, and her eyes go wide letting you know she didn’t expect this.
Didn’t expect you to only go harder, to keep fucking her through her orgasm, keep pushing her over the edge again and again and again until she might pass out. You thrust harder, deeper, and her voice breaks, her body wild against yours.
You hold on, and she holds on longer. She’s so tight, so wet, and the heat is building, and you feel her clench around you, feel her mold to your shape. Her mouth opens, and you can’t tell if she’s about to say it or if she’s too far gone, and then—
She pulls off of you. You watch, stunned, as she drops to her knees and wraps her mouth around your cock, and the sight alone is enough to make you lose it. You groan, a deep, ragged sound, and she moans around you, the vibration pushing you over the edge. Your hands tangle in her hair as you come, hot and hard, spilling ropes of cum into her mouth.
“Fuck, Chaewon,” you choke out, the last of your breath leaving your body as every drop of cum you had does the same, her lips still tight around you.
Then she pulls back, and her eyes are on you, wide and bright and triumphant. She cups a hand beneath her chin, opens her mouth, and—
“I love you,” she says, letting your cum spill out over her lips, and there’s a laugh behind it, a tremor of amusement, like she knows exactly what she’s doing to you. Like she knows she just won all over again. She wipes her mouth, cum streaking her chin, her neck, her chest, and she looks so absurdly beautiful you can’t even be mad.
“Chaewon,” you breathe. It’s exasperation and wonder, the way you’ve said her name so many times before. “You’re fucking impossible.”
“Really?” She bats her lashes with a coy look, licking her lips like she’s savoring every last drop of the chaos she’s caused. “Aren’t you supposed to say it back?”
You grab her by the waist, pulling her back up to straddle you past your softened cock, and she giggles, squirming in your lap. “You’re such a fucking brat.”
“And you can’t get enough of it,” she teases, her smile widening,
You stare at her, chest heaving, the words settling into the spaces that were empty for so long. Then you let out a breathless, helpless laugh, pulling her face up to yours, kissing her despite all the filth she let drip out to cover her sweetness.
“Fuck you,” you say between kisses, but there’s no heat behind it, just the weight of relief and joy and everything else you’ve been holding back. “How do you win even when you lose?”
She smiles against your mouth, and you feel it in every part of you. “I guess I’m just smarter than you.”
You do. You say it like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Like you’ve spent the last year waiting for your chance.
“I love you, you idiot.”
She makes a soft sound, and for a second you think she might cry, but it’s just a laugh, bright and giddy and so fucking happy. “I’m glad you do.”
“You’re a fucking nightmare,” you say as you shake your head, trying to hide the cartoonishly large smile she forced upon your face.
“And you’re stuck with me,” she says, kissing you again, her body melting into yours, all softness and satisfaction. Her voice dips, teasing, warm. “Or did you forget?”
“Never,” you murmur, and you mean it. Hell, you’d bet on it.
Her body shifts in response, her being melting into you, her skin sticky but hot against yours. “So,” she says, and it’s light and breezy like that summer day still stuck in your memory, like you’re somehow back in a familiar rhythm, but new nonetheless. “You really think you can handle me?”
You laugh, wrapping your arms around her. “I’ve been handling you for years without the benefit of getting to fuck you.”
She pinches your side, but it’s playful, and you can tell she’s trying not to smile. “Asshole.”
“Yeah,” you say, kissing her forehead. “But I’m your asshole, now.”
She nods, and that alone was worth all the suffering. Because it’s honest.
“Shit,” Chaewon breathes, your skin stuck together with dried cum, pulling loose from you. “We’re a fucking mess.”
“Yeah, well, it’s your fault for trying to be funny,” you say like you’re not covered in it too.
She shakes her head, and it’s like she’s saying it’s your fault for not being the first to say you love her. “We can’t go to bed like this,” she proclaims, trying her best not to get too much filth on her sheets. “C’mon. Shower.”
“Together?” you ask, and she just rolls her eyes like that was the stupidest fucking question you’ve ever asked.
You follow her to the bathroom, the air chilly and the tile cool underfoot. She turns on the water of her shower, letting it heat up as she looks back over at you, one eyebrow lifting like she’s pondering if she should just keep it to showering or not.
“Get in,” she says, pushing you towards the shower. “I’m not letting you sleep until you’re clean.”
She’s already stepping toward the shower when she realizes you’re still standing there. Her eyes narrow, but her lips curve. “What? You’re dawdling now?”
You shrug, and she laughs. It’s not the sound she makes when she’s trying to get under your skin, but the one you’d almost forgotten she could make. Uncomplicated. Real.
She starts taking off the only thing she still has on—her thigh high socks that were the main culprit in why you failed to pick up a girl earlier tonight. You were way too busy admiring how good Chaewon looked, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
“Don’t tell me you’re expecting me to do it for—”
You catch her hand, stop her from peeling them off. She freezes, looks at you like a deer caught in headlights.
“Let’s pretend I lost your three doors challenge,” you murmur, and you hear her breath catch. “It’d be a shame not to eat you out with how good you look in those.”
“So you were staring! I fucking knew it,” she shouts gleefully.
You don’t give it a response. You just hoist her up, and she wraps her legs around you like it’s instinct, gasping, more eager than surprised, as you let her ass meet the bathroom counter. You spread her thighs open to admire, sink to your knees in between them, and look up, getting lost in the way she looks down.
“Oh my god,” she sighs out. “Are you really—”
You don’t let her finish. You drag your tongue up her slit, and her head falls back, the sound of the shower almost drowning out her moan. Almost, but not quite.
“Fuck,” she gasps, the first of many. “Right there. Oh, right—”
You swirl your tongue around her clit, and her hips buck, her whole body trembling. She’s close already, too close, and you know you could end this in seconds, but you don’t. Not yet.
Your hand slides up her thigh, and she shudders as you press a finger against her asshole, teasing, gentle. Her breath catches, and you feel her body tense, then relax, opening for you.
“Shit,” she gasps, her voice breaking. “I’m—fuck, I’m gonna—”
You don’t stop. You don’t even slow down. You work her with your tongue and your fingers and your everything, and she’s shaking.
“Holy fuck,” she gasps, her voice breaking. “You’re—shit—you’re better at this than explaining math problems.”
You groan, a low, rough sound, and the vibration makes her shudder. “Careful, I might bite.”
She laughs, knowing you’re all bark, and her fingers tangle in your hair, not quite pulling you closer, but not allowing escape either. “Don’t stop,” she begs, and she wears it so well that ideas flood your mind. “I’m so fucking close.”
feel her body tense, tight and perfect around you. “Right there. Oh—” You curl your finger, the final bit of tension she needed to release, clenching hard, her hands in your hair, her body on fire. “Oh God, oh—”
She cums hard, her body arching, her legs closing around your head as she cries out, the sound raw and desperate and so fucking good. Your finger slips out but keep your mouth on her, not letting up until she’s shuddering, breathless, her hands tensed up tugging at you.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she gasps, and you feel the last tremors of her orgasm as they ripple through her. “How did you—I can’t—” She’s lost for words, and it’s ammunition for next time you fight over something stupid.
You don’t move until she tugs at you weakly, pulling you up, and the look in her eyes is almost enough to make you drop to your knees again.
You grab her hand, pulling her toward the shower, but she doesn’t budge. Instead, she drops to her knees, fingers splayed on your thighs. “I’ll admit, you’re pretty fucking good,” she says, her eyes gleaming with challenge. Everything’s a competition with this girl. “But I’m better.”
You don’t have time to respond. Her mouth is on you, hot and wet and perfect, and you groan, your head falling back. She works you with a skill you didn’t think she had, her tongue swirling, her lips tight, and all you can do is hold on.
She pulls back, and the sudden loss makes you gasp. “Feel free to cum wherever you want,” she muses, and your mind floods with options. All too enticing.
Her pace is relentless, precise, and you feel her smile around you, a smug curve against your skin. She’s rapidly proving her point.
“Chaewon,” you groan, and you’re not sure if you’re leading into begging or commanding. “Fuck, that feels—”
She hums, a low, teasing sound, and the vibration makes you curse. Her fingers slide down, cupping your balls, and you feel yourself throb against her tongue.
You’re close, too close, and she knows it. You can tell by the way she pulls back again, her lips glistening, her eyes wild. “I’m not done with you,” she says, and you swear you might die.
“Fuck my face,” she says, and you tremble, your whole body going tight.
“Chaewon,” you gasp, but she’s already got you begging for more, her hands on your thighs, guiding you inside.
You thrust, and she takes it, takes you, her mouth so fucking good you can’t believe this is real. She moans and gags around you, and it’s a sound you’ll hear in your dreams for the rest of your life.
She looks up, her mouth full, and the sight is obscene, incredible. She’s not stopping, not giving you a second to catch your breath, just letting you use her, and it’s all too fucking much.
You’re so close, the heat building, your control slipping. You fuck her face, your hands tight in her hair, and she’s caught between you and the counter, letting you use her, letting you lose yourself.
“Oh God, Chaewon,” you groan, your thrusts erratic, desperate. “I’m gonna—”
She pulls back, and you gasp, her lips getting pressed against the tip of your dick. She strokes you, her lips swollen and wet, and—
“Do it,” she commands, tilting her head back, presenting her face and her tits and her abs and every target you could choose, her eyes pleading to cover not one but all. “Come all over me.”
That’s it. That’s fucking it. You cum hard, your whole body tensing, and she moans as your release hits her face, her lips, her cheek, her chest.
“Fuck,” you groan, and she smiles, licking her lips, and you’re so spent you almost collapse right there.
Then she’s pulling you down, kissing you, and you taste yourself on her tongue.
“At least I was worth the wait, right?” she murmurs, and you pull back just far enough to see the way she’s grinning, the way she’s looking at you like she thinks she won. If only she saw herself right now, you’re clearly the winner.
“Think I’m ready for that shower now,” you say, and you can’t help but smile back, because you’re a mess, and she’s a mess, and you came into this room specifically to be less of a mess; and you love it. You love her.
The water is still running, heating up the room, and you both stand up. She pulls you with her, and the water makes quick work of the art you just made. What a waste, but a waste you love to spend with her.
She notices your face change as the cum disappears from her visage, and chuckles lightly. “You’ll get plenty of other chances.”
You wash her and she washes you back, and it’s slow and easy and comfortable. Like you never thought it could be again. But better. No rush, no desperation. She works the shampoo into your hair, but you can’t stand to not annoy her for another second, pulling her under the spray and rinsing her off.
“Hey,” she protests, but she’s smiling, her eyes bright.
“Hey yourself,” you say, dragging your thumb across her cheek, her lips, her collarbone. “Think I like you like this.”
“Wet?” she asks, and she’s teasing, but there’s a softness behind it.
“That too. But no. Mine,” you say, and her expression shifts, her eyes going soft, her hands coming to rest on your chest.
“You know,” she says, her voice quiet, thoughtful, “That makes you equally mine.”
You tilt her chin up, kissing her, and she melts into it, into you. “I guess that means we both won today.”
She laughs, and it’s the best sound, the best feeling, the best everything. “Guess I can get used to it if it’s with you.”
Eventually you turn off the tap, and she shivers as you wrap her in a towel, pulling her close. “Bed?” you ask, and she nods, simple and easy.
She helps you dry off, and you help her, and you just can’t let each other be right now. She tugs at you, at your hand, constantly leading you, hair still wild and just damp enough to be okay going to bed with. She slips beneath the covers fully naked, but it’s too cold to worry about any of that, so you follow.
You pull her against you, or she pushes herself into you. It’s hard to tell who’s more desperate. Point is, her back is against your chest, and it fits perfectly. Like she was made for it.
“So,” she says, her voice a sleepy mumble, “are you gonna lose your shit if I say it’s fifty-fifty again?”
You groan, exasperated and affectionate, and she giggles, burying her face in your neck.
“Chaewon,” you say, and she turns just enough to look at you.
“Hmm?”
You wrap your arms around her, holding her, holding everything. “You’re fucking annoying. Never change.”
She smiles, soft and genuine, and you know this is the real win. Not the game, not the challenge, not the give and take of a thousand heated mathematical arguments—but this. Her. You. Together.
“Promise,” she whispers, and you feel her breath slow, feel her body relax, feel the unlikeliest odds settle in your favor.
You hold her tighter, and the silence this time is comfortable, a weightless, blissful quiet that lulls you both toward sleep. You barely hear her next words, but they seep into you, the last sweet, stubborn thing you need to know.
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.”
