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He doesn’t hit her.

Can’t hit her, is how he phrases it at first. Then won’t. Doesn’t want to. That’s not exactly the same as can’t.

She watches him sometimes. Not as often as Ajin would like to do, the way she usually does when somebody catches her particular attention. Her study of Junseo is frequently interrupted by his study of her.

But he’s not watching her for the same reasons— not really, Ajin thinks. He’s sweet, behind that stoic face. Sweet and softhearted and as easy to step on as a doormat. She wonders, every now and then, if he would’ve turned out the same way, had she not entered his life. If that sweetness would be worn on his face, if his heart would’ve spent its time right there on his sleeve.

Probably not. His mother is a real piece of work, and he would’ve suffered for it, sooner or later, and his grandfather hardly any better. Ajin had always considered herself not particularly lucky, but luckier than her mother— and maybe better off, upon reflection, than Junseo.

Unlike him, she’s not all soft and squishy on the inside. He watches her like he’s forced to see all her pain, with his eyes welling up like that all the time, and yet he keeps looking.

It’s not the same as the way other people look at her— everyone else wants, and in his own way, Junseo does too. He wants her to be happy, to be at peace, to stop, to smile and mean it. It’s almost worse, really. Wanting all these things she can never attain. If she owed him anything, it might even make her feel guilty.

In any case, she’s not. Guilty, that is. Ajin doesn’t owe him, or anyone, anything. The world had chewed her up so many times it’s a miracle there’s still anything left to spit back out— she has nothing to give. And she wouldn’t, even if she did. Why should she? Everyone was eager to take and take and take— there was no need for her to expedite that process. 

Everyone except Junseo, it seemed.

It was strange … On some level, she could understand his devotion. It wasn’t entirely unique, after all. Jaeoh had also been a pretty good dog— though of a totally different breed to Junseo. He was a mutt, one who could survive on scraps even after a few beatings. Junseo? He was one of those silly, skinny grey dogs that weren’t even evolved enough to get through the winter without someone putting them in a puffer jacket and ridiculous shoes.

But Jaeoh was a mutt, and a nobody, who had nobody besides Ajin to throw him a bone every now and again, and Junseo was someone who could have everything. He was rich— born rich, and clever, handsome, athletic, gifted and kind. The world was, as they say, his oyster.

And yet, it seemed, somehow, that Ajin was the object of his …? Affection seemed wrong, inadequate. Pity? That made her feel vaguely sick and faintly angry— a resentful kind of anger that boiled in the background but didn’t bubble over if she didn’t dwell on it. No, something else, she thinks. Duty, perhaps. Responsibility, like he owed her something, and maybe he did. Maybe everyone who lived better than she did, owed something to Ajin. Everyone who slept in their own bed, warm, sleeping through the night without interruption, who had never been beaten or pushed or grabbed by the hair. Everyone and anyone who never had to step over their mother’s body laying there on the stairs in the pouring rain, thinking ‘one less person to hit me tomorrow.’

But still, was duty enough? It never was for anyone else, not when it came to Ajin. Her parents had a duty to her, did they not? By every logic and even by the interpretation of the law, they did. And yet …

Desire, of any kind, was much more digestible. That, and hate. Ajin understood those things very, very well.

She sees it in her father when he looks at her, grinning that malicious grin, money signs practically glimmering in his eyes, and if she had anything but her own hate left, that might really, really break her heart.

But whatever life has made her, heartless and hateful and god knows what else, Baek Ajin has never been an ingrate. She’s heard the idea floated around so many times, just vague enough that she doesn’t know what exactly her father had in mind each time he mentioned it— ‘selling’ her. To do what? Or to whom? A child modelling agency? The organ black market? A prostitution ring? She wouldn’t put it past him. But when he looks at her, the desire in his eyes is monetary, not sexual. For that, at least, she’s not ungrateful. 

Ajin isn’t vain— vanity being a luxury like leisure, one she couldn’t afford— but she does look in the mirror sometimes. More often, since becoming an actress. An occupational hazard, and what else was there to do sitting at the salon for hours on end? Ajin stares into the mirror and studies her features with an appraising eye, knowing just as well as her father did, that her looks will take her a long way.

In front of the floor length mirror in her bedroom, she undresses, seeing every curve and dip and scar with a cold detachment, looking at the swell of her breasts, her slender waist and pretty legs and feeling reasonably satisfied. Her dad wasn’t wrong— she would make a pretty penny at a hostess bar, but Ajin wants much, much more than that. She’s owed so much more than that.

But, as any good kicked child knows, one must always prepare for the worst even when hoping for the best. She’s been at the feet of too many people who were bigger and stronger to imagine herself big or strong enough— yet.

So, maybe, against all of her schemes and plots and her unshakeable faith that Baek Ajin will end up somewhere so high that no one can touch her … Ajin still keeps the worst case scenario in mind. It’s there, always there— the fear never leaves.

And while she hasn’t really experienced this particular kind of desire for herself, Ajin is no stranger to it. She sees the looks men give her on the street, reads the comments about her online, and Korea is enough of an incel breeding ground that she’s been followed, harassed, groped and catcalled more than once in her life.

She kept to herself enough at school that people usually give her a wide berth, content with paying attention to the girls who really want it (Shim Sunghee), though there had always been whisperings in the halls about how pretty Ajin is. Ajin looks at herself in the mirror and thinks she understands why people want her.

 “Would you fuck me?” she asks one day over at Junseo’s place. He had offered to cook for her while they debriefed about Heo Inkang, and though she felt impatient, Ajin knew that the best plans took time. Junseo was trying out a new receipe, something with fresh tomatoes, leaving a pleasantly tart taste in her mouth, washed down with the dry, sweet flavour of an eye-wateringly expensive Reisling.

She didn’t drink often— or perhaps one should say that Ajin didn’t drink much, but it was expected of her to imbibe every now and again (or every time she showed her face at an event with a bar or dinner), and almost never to intoxication. Ajin preferred to keep her wits about her, but with Junseo, it was less of a concern, and she needed to improve her tolerance and her ability to function even under the influence. So between the two of them, the Reisling was down to its dregs, and she was feeling pleasantly warm but clear-headed.

He had been sitting there on the floor after they’d abandoned the table, with his legs extended, sipping from his glass, and Ajin had lain there with her head on one thigh, stretched out and flipping through one of the books on his coffee table. Not exactly the most fair position for them to be in when levying that question at him, but not once in her life had Ajin ever wanted to play fair.

It’s only his stringent commitment to caring for her that keeps Junseo from jumping up or reacting strongly to her question, not wanting to jolt her with her head on his lap in case she banged her head on the floor and hurt herself. Still, Ajin can feel the muscle that jumps in his thigh, the tension that had taken over his entire body the moment those words left her mouth.

But she also knows him enough to know that it’s not a guilty reaction— that he hasn’t been harbouring a burning desire or a burgeoning erection all this time. She wouldn’t have asked if she suspected that to be the case. In fact, they wouldn’t have been here at all.

And maybe Junseo knows her enough to know that too, because he’s slowly putting his glass down, and he’s always been clever, but not cleverer than she is, especially not in this way. Ajin can tell, clear as day, that he’s trying to find the perfect thing to say, the right response. It disappoints her. One of the best things about Junseo— and the worst— is how infrequently he cared about that. He was usually so honest, at least to her, even if he was kind.

Ajin sits up, irritated, and leans against the same wall, rolling her eyes. She could make him want to fuck her, and it wouldn’t really take much effort, despite them never even having floated near that boundary before.

“I …”

“You…?”

 Junseo clears his throat, trading the wine for some Chilsung cider, drinking fast enough that the bubbles rising into his nose almost makes him sneeze. “I would if you wanted me to.” It comes out steadily enough that Ajin is almost impressed.

She looks at him and sees for a second, flashing behind her retinas, what it might be like if she wanted him not to, if he just took, if .. She blinks and the sight is gone. Junseo wouldn’t do that. Against all odds, she really, honest-to-goodness doesn’t think that he would.

“If you needed me to,” he adds after that beat.

“Wow, don’t want to come off as too eager,” Ajin returns sarcastically, still annoyed, more by his tentativeness than anything else. It would’ve been different if she had asked Jaeoh. (“Really?” He would’ve said. “Right now?” Like he thought she was just joking, because she could joke, with him.)

Junseo is serious, and Ajin is too— has to be, really, but sometimes it borders on solemn for some reason, and that is a little bit too close to pity for her comfort.

But pity or no, she doesn’t need to pretend with him, and there’s no real blow to her pride, because at the end of the day, he’ll always be there, eating right out of her hand.

The apartment is silent for a few moments, then Junseo is there, switching their positions, pulling her by the hips to swivel her around slightly, so her back is properly against the sofa like his was, and he’s lowering himself until he’s the laying on her lap, looking up at her like he’s stargazing.

“We can, if you want,” he offers into the silent air, his gaze flicking to the ceiling as he speaks.

“Have you? Done it already?” She’s surprised at the sudden surge of jealousy she feels. Ajin doesn’t want him, not in that way, not for those purposes, but she absolutely does not like the idea of him with someone else. Lending him to Lena was acceptable only because it was a ruse, and there was no way in hell …

“No.” Junseo shifts slightly, his foot dragging against the ground. “I haven’t.”

“But you could’ve.” 

“But I didn’t."

Ajin looks down at him then, stroking lightly over his forehead in an imitation of tenderness. Would he have, if not for her? How different would his life have been, had she not been brought into it? She looks at him, idly wondering if he would’ve been normal without her, if he would’ve dated in high school, and university, and whether or not he’d follow his girlfriend with that same puppyish devotion.

Perhaps not.

Junseo’s particular brand of loyalty belonged only to her.

She turns him, slightly, her movements gentle and without force, the way it always was with them. Turning onto his side, Junseo buries his face in her shirt without needing instruction, not burrowing in needily, but simply closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of her detergent.

His mother was always going on about how Ajin was from bad stock, how lowly her birth was, what kind of scum her parents had been. Junseo bites his tongue in those moments, not wanting to endanger Ajin further by fighting these meaningless battles. He’s not her knight in shining armour, much as it pains him to realise, so Junseo bites his tongue and thinks about exactly what kind of stock he was from, whose blood was really running through his veins. Ajin was born from garbage, his mother said, but there was something warm and sweet about the way she smelled, even over the scent of detergent, the way she had always been, even as a kid.

Standing over his bed when he was ill, Ajin had cared for him, wetting cool towels even though her own hands were frigid from the effort, and there— for the first time— Junseo had experienced the sensation of coming home. He pokes her stomach gently with his nose as he inhales, wanting to ruck up her shirt to get closer in a way that far superseded the sexual.

Ajin watches him, feeling his breath warm her there, thinking about what it would be like if she spread her legs, if he went lower, if he kissed her down there … Her hands return to stroking his hair gently like that.

The issue was that Ajin really, really liked control. Needed it, even. And for all her ignorance on the subject, sex seemed to be one of the few surefire ways to make somebody lose control, and that ignorance did bother her. She hated not knowing, not being ahead, not being able to predict her response to something and consequently have the ability to determine it.

And she wasn’t a complete ignorant— the bare minimum barrel scraping that was South Korean sex education had been supplemented by watching pornography online, all conducted in the privacy of her room and viewed with a critical eye. But porn was not the real thing, and experience was the best teacher, and Junseo was as out of his depth as she was— maybe more so, so…

“Why not?”

She’s not a sadist, promise— and most of the time that promise holds true. Ajin usually only bothers to go after the roadblocks in her way, but there is something about twisting the knife every now and again that comes intriguingly close to enjoyment.

What could he say to that? The truth, preferrably. Junseo always wanted to tell her the truth, but when it came to this? They don’t typically talk about them. It’s all left unsaid, and why shouldn’t it be? She owned him. That was all.

“You never asked before,” is what he goes with in the end. It’s ambiguous, intentionally so. Ajin hadn’t been curious before, true. Ajin hadn’t asked him to fuck her before, also true.

She is not kind, not truly, but Ajin is no stranger to mercy, and Junseo is perfectly aware that she’s granted it more times than other people realise. But when she pins him there, with a gentle hand on the crown of his head, is she being merciful, or cruel?

“I think I’m going to sleep with Heo Inkang.” 

Maybe it’s the wording, sleep with, and not get fucked by, or let Heo Inkang fuck me, or whatever she said when propositioning Junseo in the first place, which really hurts, just the way it did when she said she was going to try to love Inkang. Like these tender things were really going to be that tender.

And if she had meant it, those words the way they sounded, Junseo would’ve jumped up and clapped for the whole world to hear, even if they were about another man. He would’ve squealed and cheered the way he hasn’t since Ajin got into law school all those years ago, but he knows that isn’t the case.

If they didn’t know each other so well, if he was just her guy best friend who secretly pined for her all along, if they were normal, if they had ever been … He would’ve said something like, ‘Well, I can’t stop you,’ and stewed jealously as they did in the movies.

“Okay.” It’s all he can manage, in the end.

It’s strange, how big this feels. It was just part of her scheme, like any other, and losing your virginity to someone for the wrong reasons was hardly worse than manoeuvring an innocent man into killing your father, after all.

“He’s going to expect a good show— he’s definitely slept with Lena when they were dating …” Ajin continues talking, but for the first time, Junseo can barely focus on her words, his attention diverted by the blood rushing in his ears.

He snaps back to reality when she touches his lips, nearly hooking her slender fingers into his mouth, her short nails scraping briefly against the enamel of his teeth.

“... So, will you?”

Junseo is staring at her now, but it’s different, somehow, like he’s looking through her at the ceiling, and Ajin hates it. The same disgust turns her stomach now as it did so long ago, when he stood over her father with a brick in his hands and lacked the strength to use it.

The asking, however tedious it may be, is the point. Ajin could take, and he wouldn’t object. But she wants him to give.

After a moment of silence, Junseo’s gaze shifts, boring right into her eyes like he’s trying to find one sliver of goodness left in her. 

“Yes.” 

Yes, just yes, and nothing else. Because everything else was inadequate or extraneous. Because the devotion was all he had, so why explain what they both knew?

But when Ajin shifts them away from the wall so that she can get on top of him, and when she leans down to kiss him, Junseo turns his head away, and not just to hide the tears pricking at his waterline.

Ajin draws away again, annoyed for real this time, and he knows she’s not far from walking out the door and asking Jaeoh instead. Junseo chokes down his hypocrisy and gives into his jealousy for once, letting it wash over him, giving him the strength to stand and pull Ajin up with him. 

His eyes are burning the entire time, brimming with unshed tears, as he leads her up the stairs and into his bedroom, tugging at her sleeve the way they had done as children in his father’s house.

He can practically hear her thoughts, laughing at him for taking it so seriously, for wanting to do it on a bed, their first time, done right. Well, it was never going to be rose petals and candlelight, but it didn’t have to be there on the living room floor, in the half-light of dusk.

Junseo waits for Ajin to get on the bed before crawling on himself, wondering how he’s ever going to sleep there again after this, torn as he always was between burning it all down and keeping it forever. He tries to get there between her legs, wanting to push her skirt up, make it good for her as much as he knows how to.

Ajin slaps his hand away and pushes him into the cushions, making Junseo lean back as she slides down to come face to face with his belt buckle. She fixes him with a look that reads, don’t move, before making to undo it. The action is slow, a little stilted, and awkward for the first time from this angle, which makes Ajin’s lips twist in an expression of displeasure. The belt is then redone, and then undone again with ease, and then redone once more before she looks up into his eyes again, her hands seemingly clumsy with a mix of anticipation and apprehension, but managing to get it done with one smooth movement. If Junseo didn’t know better, he might’ve thought it was real.

With that out of the way, Ajin makes short work of the zip and button of his trousers in a similar fashion, and while Junseo’s head knows better, his body does not.

Should he be embarrassed? Then again, what shame was there to be had, that she had not witnessed already? Isn’t this what she wanted, anyway? 

Junseo knows all this, and yet his cheeks suffuse with colour nonetheless, feeling as virginal as he truly was under her touch. His apprehension rather softened his arousal, eliciting an irritated huff from Ajin.

“You need to tell me what feels good, or at least get out of your head enough to react,” she instructs sharply, her voice hard as it frequently threatens to be but seldom is.

With that, Ajin slips a hand past the open maw of his undone zipper and reaches into his boxers. As cold as she might look, her hands are pleasantly warm, though the touch still makes Junseo shiver and inhale audibly through his nose.

She begins to move her hand, almost massaging his cock in a manner that isn’t displeasurable, but inefficient, nonetheless. A particularly hard squeeze has Junseo sucking in an entirely different kind of breath.

“Not … like that,” he manages, turning his upper body to rifle around in his bedside drawer, trying for all the world not to feel embarrassed for being a grown man who kept lotion by his bed like a horny teenage boy. It was strange, the normalcy that persisted in his life despite everything. “Try … with this. Um— and then … up and down, more … rhythmically. Less squeezing.”

Junseo is supposed to be a writer, he’s supposed to be good with his words, but here, with Baek Ajin’s pretty hands down his pants, he can hardly tell up from down.

Ajin shakes her head and bats the bottle away when he tries handing it to her, and maybe the people who had called her pure evil truly did know something that he didn’t, because she’s spitting, with her characteristic grace, somehow, into her palm and—

“That’s … good.”

“Pants off. I can’t work like this.”

Work. The word serves as a stark reminder of what they were here to do. A surge of bitterness cuts through everything else, and Junseo bites back the urge to ask if he should print out a picture of Heo Inkang and don it like a mask while she ‘works’. Still, he does as she demands and strips off with the utilitarian efficacy she seems to desire before returning to his place against the headboard.

Ajin watches him with slightly narrowed eyes, her expression unreadable. It would’ve been better with Jaeoh, he thinks. And then, with greater resentment, it would’ve been best with Heo Inkang, wouldn’t it? He has half a mind to get dressed again and tell her to play the blushing virgin with Inkang, to actually be the innocent for once instead of just pretending at it.

But then she’s returning to her place on the bed, still fully clothed, lowering her head and taking his cock into her mouth, and it’s not sensical, really, how someone who looks so cold can feel so hot and wet and tight around him like this.

Junseo thrusts up on instinct, catching her in the back of the throat, and Ajin pulls off, coughing slightly and glaring at him.

“That’s not a good look,” he says because he’s still angry. “Try looking bewildered,” like he’s her fucking director or something, but then she actually does it, and maybe getting the book optioned was the right course of action after all.

Ajin slowly takes him into her mouth again, maintaining eye contact the entire time, one hand gripping the base of his cock in a loose fist, and the other laid over his abdomen, feeling the way his muscles jump, tense and relax with each swipe of her tongue.

He gently places a hand on her hair, resisting the urge to tug on it, to use that black mass as a leash— to collar her for once, rather than the other way around. Instead, Junseo carefully gathers the strands in his grip, keeping it out of her face as she ‘works’, and then using it to slowly lead her off when it seems like Ajin needs a moment to breathe. 

“Maybe … We should …” Junseo has a lot of experience with guilt over his feelings for Ajin; he also has a lot of experience tamping down that guilt, burying it, and pretending it never existed in the first place. It’s not so easily done now, because he wants. If he were a good man, he would’ve said no, or found a better way, somehow, instead of capitulating to his desire. It’s in his nature, he thinks. Always to be a slave to something. “... see what you like.”

One of the most valuable lessons Junseo has ever learnt is that a guilty conscience loves to talk. And he wants to talk—  badly, wants to give all these excuses, these thin, flimsy reasons why he thinks she should lay back on the bed while he tongues her between the legs. Junseo says none of that, letting the silence speak to her instead. They’ve always been good at that, since the very beginning. After this, the silence may be all they have left between them.

Ajin divests herself of her skirt, laying there in just her little cashmere sweater and these functional white panties and her socks, and Junseo wants to cry, just looking at her. It seems perfect and wrong at the same time. Perhaps this scene would’ve played out in the bedroom of her law school dormitory, with peeling paint on the walls, and it would’ve been— not … normal, but sweeter than this…

“Tell me if there’s anything you don’t like.” An unnecessary prelude, but Junseo follows it by lightly stroking over the gusset of her underwear, finding it dry, the cotton slightly textured beneath his fingertips.

He exerts a little bit more force, moving his free hand beneath her body, snaking his arm up under her ass and gripping her waist. Junseo drops his head on the opposite side, feeling the sharp edge of her hip bone poking him. And it’s not the point of this whole exercise, but some kind of madness grips him, and he’s placing a kiss upon her abdomen as he continues to lazily stroke her over her panties.

Ajin shifts, a slight warning, but Junseo ignores it, nipping at the same spot, before soothing it with a kiss. He slips his fingers beneath the cloth and finds her … not dripping wet, but not exactly dry either. There was something to be said about friction, it seemed.

Because he was as much out of his depth as she was, Junseo just petted her there for a while, until a movement of his thumb had Ajin hissing and tensing on the bed.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.” Instead of ‘you couldn’t hurt me’. “It felt good. There. More— ah, pressure.” 

It’s good like this, but not enough for his liking, and he must be completely mad because Junseo impulsively dips two fingers just into her cunt, and then wets her clit with the slickness he finds there.

Ajin says things sometimes that reminds him that she believes in God, the way he’s never quite been able to do so. Odd, almost. One would expect her to be faithless, but he supposes that Ajin has witnessed more than ample evidence of a malevolent God. Junseo is not so certain, but this might just make him a believer, the little moans and huffs of breath that she’s making no attempt to stifle. That, and the knowledge that this is the one and only time they’ll do this.

He knows she doesn’t want it like this, and the excuse of practice is thin, but it’s expansive, and Junseo uses it to push himself up the bed, keeping one hand between her thighs and the other bracketing her jaw, kissing her. It’s not romantic, it’s not sweet, and it’s not even satisfying, but he can’t bring himself to regret it just yet. Ajin is kissing him back, going pliant under his touch, and a sudden wave of nausea washes over him.

Pulling away, Junseo feels terribly cold— this was a mistake, a terrible, terrible mistake. There was something sick and disgusting about Ajin playing this role with him, kissing him sweetly, laying there with her hair pooled out beneath her like a dark bloodstain.

Her eyes snap open after a moment, the air cool without the direct heat from their bodies. She’s been annoyed a few times over the course of the evening, but it’s the first time Junseo has actually seen her angry tonight. Ajin sits up slightly and pushes him roughly, with unnecessary force. He would’ve gone down— even now— with just the slightest touch of her little finger.

“I’m sick of you disappointing me,” she spits, her eyes large and unblinking, the way they get when she’s full of venom, and not even the gleeful kind. One hand pushes down on his sternum, uncaring of the stifled wheeze it squeezes out of him, while the other grips his cock with a tightness that’s punishing, though not unpleasantly so.

Junseo has studied her face so often— in person, and then paused and played and paused again once it started showing up on the big screen. Her features are delicate yet distinct, the slim tip of her nose and the open corners of her wide eyes. He’s seen her face ten thousand times, and this kind of resentful anger, directed at him, only twice before.

And maybe she’s right to be resentful, because despite everything, he’s still hard and leaking into her palm, and really, what did he expect? If her distaste was a turnoff, they wouldn’t have been here in the first place.

“You’re always lying to me. I’m so sick of it.” Ajin pushes down harder, the heel of her palm shifting up to bury itself in the soft divet at the base of his throat, causing Junseo to splutter. “You’ve never done anything for me.”

Like last time, Junseo wants to protest. He’s done plenty for her, hasn’t he? All the examples sound weak and hazy, petulant. And it’s not like they’re going to leave his throat anyway, the way she’s pressing down like that, cutting off his airflow. Maybe that’s the greatest thing he can do for her— be her punching bag.

Junseo couldn’t, wouldn’t hit her. He’s willing to live with Ajin hitting him.

She’s good at the manipulations, and playing pretend. Ajin looking sweet and placid, brimming with consideration and empathy… and it exhausts her. Her machinations are always sloppier when they involve him, her expressions and words more honest. If he can’t give her anything else, at least he can give her this. A place to be ugly and twisted and bare. Perhaps that’s all he would ever be. 

After a few more moments of this, she finally gives him a reprieve. Moving her hand from his throat to his shoulder, Ajin uses it to support her weight for a moment, her fingers hot and forceful against the muscle there as she holds herself in the air, lining them up and … There.

Tears spill over Junseo’s waterline, and that might be what elicits the first real tender look from Ajin tonight. She kisses him, and the saline flavour tastes almost like forgiveness. Junseo forces his eyes open and he sees the slight tension in her shoulders, the little crease in between her eyebrows. He really hadn’t stretched her much, and she wasn’t as wet as she could’ve been, but Ajin was someone who had been beaten within an inch of her life, time and time again in silence, and gotten up every time. For her to wear her pain upon her face, even just for a minute, felt almost like love.

He strokes over the small of her back, trying to get her to relax. He’s tender about it, and it’s worse than if he was rough and uncaring. It almost makes her hate him, but he’s there, beneath her, inside her, stretching her open and entering places no one else had ever been.

Ajin doesn’t regret it now, doing this. It’s only fair, isn’t it? Junseo was there for so many of her firsts. It would hardly be right if he weren’t there for this one. A thought crosses her mind, just a freeze-frame from something akin to fantasy. If she hadn’t come to him first, if she had gone to Inkang, let him take her, with Junseo watching, unable to move or make a sound without betraying his presence, forced to witness as she gave herself to someone else. Ajin doesn’t consider herself cruel, or sadistic, but for a moment there she might be. It feels like recompense. Like what he’s owed her, for all the hatred he’s evoked.

“Move." 

His grip upon her hips is tight and bruising, but Junseo curbs himself and begins to move slowly. He couldn’t bring himself to hurt her. Not yet. He wouldn’t.

The schemes and the pretense of practice has fallen away for now. For a minute, they’re just two young people fucking, or making something that’s not quite love. Junseo fucks into her and snakes a hand up beneath her shirt, with the other one squeezing her ass, trying to give her everything before it’s over.

She’s so tight around him that Junseo almost feels like Ajin has her hands around his windpipe again. He breathes through his nose and nuzzles at her neck, smelling the clean, lovely scent of Baek Ajin beginning to sweat. The tears are still coming, limpid and quiet. Junseo breathes through his nose so he doesn’t sob.

Through everything, Ajin has always allowed him to hug her, sometimes going to him herself. No matter how cold things have been between them at times, her touch was always warm. There had always been something honest about the way she leant into him when they were alone, silent and plodding forward into his arms, unfettered by worries that he might turn her away. Sometimes, she put a hand on his shoulder, or touched his face, and Junseo did wonder beneath the obvious manipulation, if there was something earnest in it. In the desire to touch, to get close.

Did she want to get close? Did she even know? Ajin wasn’t quite sure. This was good, it felt good, now that the initial pain had subsided, and she hadn’t commanded him to do so or given him explicit permission, but his hands roaming beneath her clothes are doing a fair job making her breath catch in her throat. She’s always been quiet, it tracks that she’s the same way during sex. Ajin knows that she should be moaning like they do in movies, or porn, and asking Junseo if it sounds believable. For just a minute, she lets herself forget all of it.

Koroklenko once wrote that ‘man is born for happiness as a bird is made for flight’. Ajin, if she had ever had wings, was a flightless specimen now, constantly tethered to the things she yearned to escape. The past bit at her ankle like a tight cuff, keeping her shackled to the ground.

But now, just for now, she could pretend that she was weightless, and born for flight, like anyone else. Ajin hated lying to herself. A pointless activity which blinded people from the truth, and made them susceptible to pain. Was this a lie? She didn’t want to think about it. 

Instead, she dug her nails— longer, now that she was a celebrity— into the smooth, unscarred skin of Junseo’s back and bore down again and again, realising that there wasn’t much to practice about sex, if you just followed what felt good. And she was, feeling good. Because of Junseo.

Well— statistically, it should happen, at least once or twice in their long acquaintance.

She didn’t hate him. His devotion didn’t count for nothing. He’s the one person who’s been there through it all, and Ajin had meant it when she said she didn’t want to be the one to hurt him. She had meant it then, at least. Now, she’s not so sure. This will hurt him. The Heo Inkang thing is already hurting him, and maybe that’s a perk.

If this was just science, just data collection, they would’ve talked through it, what felt particularly good, what felt not so good, what was boring, if the moaning was excessive or realistic, if touching her there and there at the same time was too much or just enough. Instead, they’re silent the entire way through after Ajin tells him to move. He doesn’t try kissing her again, first breathing into the crook of her neck, and then resting his chin upon her shoulder, looking at the wall.

Still— friction. Friction, and biology, or physiology, and he’s touching her between her legs while fucking into her, rubbing the little nub that had made her gasp the first time, and Ajin is coming, and Junseo soon behind her. 

For the first time in his entire life, Junseo wasn’t hyperaware of Ajin, desirous of and hungry for her notice. She laid on the bed next to him, and he didn’t even care. The thought almost makes him laugh. Men will chase you until they get that one thing, is what the more experienced girls had said in the halls at school. Maybe they were right. Or maybe it was just teenage girl nonsense, because despite the bodily release, Junseo felt no satisfaction; all he wanted to do right now was roll over and go to sleep, and avoid hearing her leave, or the apprehension of hoping that she would stay. 

And she should leave, Ajin knows. Things would not be the same between them after this, and it didn’t really matter to her either way. Or at least she thinks that’s the case. She didn’t need Junseo anymore. She was doing well enough financially. Her parents were both dead, and recently the person who had been trying to beat her was his mother, over him. He was useful for intelligence, but so was Jaeoh, and there weren’t so many melancholy strings that threatened to hang in the air with Jaeoh. Junseo offered no particular thing that she required and couldn’t be found elsewhere. All they had between them was the past, which Ajin wanted nothing more than to escape.

Still, she gets underneath the duvet for the first time and turns on her side, his spend still slowly leaking out of her. She feels raw there, and there was probably blood on the dark grey duvet cover, if she cared to look. So he had reneged on his promise, in the end. He had made her bleed.

Junseo was over the covers, and Ajin was in them, but she still shuffled back slightly, reaching for his hand and linking their fingers together, holding them close to her chest, right under her chin. He turned, because she could still pull him along however she pleased, and draped his arm over her, though he didn’t bury his nose in her hair the way he would’ve, or really wanted to.

The cashmere sweater was suffocating her under the thick, downy duvet, and for the first time all evening, Ajin properly stripped off until she was just in her bra and underwear and socks. She threw the garment onto the floor even though it would wrinkle, hardly getting out of bed at all to do so, as if moving quickly would allow this bubble in which they resided, to persist a while longer.

She hadn’t washed her face or brushed her teeth, nor taken her makeup off or anything, but it didn’t matter. Despite everything, she didn’t like to sleep alone, and her nights had always been easier with Junseo in the same bed.

Junseo closed his eyes, unwilling, or perhaps unable to (couldn’t, wouldn’t) do anything else. He could not desire to forget, or to turn back time to avoid what had transpired just now, nor could he enjoy it. He was not such an innocent that he could say truthfully that he had never envisioned it before. Of course he had. But unable to reduce her to the object of his carnal desire, and too aware and lucid to fantasise a tender romance, Junseo had always lurched away from these thoughts whenever they arose within him, the way one does when accidentally applying your hand to a hot iron and yanking it away as quickly as possible.

Now, he had just pressed his face right against the iron, burning his skin away and searing his hair to cinders, and there was nothing left except fatigue, and the inclination toward sleep.

He allowed her his hand— her hand, really, as it had always done whatever she commanded— and granted Ajin whatever closeness she desired as they drifted off to sleep with the lowlights still on.