In Between Tangled Lines

The first time, it was in her kitchen.

You don’t remember whose idea it was to cook dinner together. Probably her, Jimin made suggestions that did not sound like suggestions work and made it happen out of the blue. I was thinking samgyeopsal tonight. And somehow that becomes you standing in her apartment at eight in the evening, your sleeves rolled up, slicing garlic while she tends the grill pan on the other side of the island.

She’s wearing an oversized shirt, where one side keeps slipping off her shoulder. You try not to think too much about it, but your eyes keep going there.

You’re doing fine. You’re completely fine. And then she rounds the island to check on the banchan in the pot beside you, leans across you to grab the ladle, her hair brushes your jaw.

You turn to her, your eyes drop to the curve of her neck, your eyes drop lower, and you notice her cleavage is showing, but does nothing to cover it.

Neither of you move.

She’s close enough that you can smell her shampoo. Her arm grazes yours, skin warm even through your sleeves.

You are definitely not fine.

She stirs the pot. Twice. Doesn’t step back.

“You’re cutting those too thin,” she says, voice low and even. You turn, knife hovering above the garlic, and catch her gaze, her pupils are dilated, but her smile's playful.

“Then cut them yourself.”

She glances at you sidelong. The corner of her mouth. “I like watching you do it wrong.”

She steps back. Just like that. Returns to the grill pan like nothing happened.

You look down at the garlic. Your knife has been still for about fifteen seconds and you both know it.

Dinner is easy after that, two bottles of soju, her legs folded under her on the couch, the TV on but unwatched.

She laughs at something you say, head tilting back, and the light catches the line of her throat.

I'm so deep in this.

“Stay,” she spoke, when you reach for your jacket.

You stay.

You don't remember who moves first. One moment you're beside her, the next her lips crash into yours, messy, warm, tasting like soju and the salt of the banchan you'd both picked at all night. She kisses like she argues: certain of herself, not asking. You kiss back and she makes a sound against your mouth that unravels something in your chest.

She pulls back, breathing hard, red across her cheeks. Her eyes are dark.

"You taste nice," she says, voice husky.

You don't answer. You pull her back in by the jaw.

Her hands find the front of your shirt and she walks you both backward until the backs of your knees hit the bed and you sit, and she follows, climbing into your lap without breaking the kiss. Her hair falls around both of you. You get a hand into it, tilt her head back, and drag your mouth down the line of her throat.

She shivers.

"Y/N—"

"Mm."

She tugs at your shirt in answer, impatient, and you let her pull it over your head. Her palms press flat against your chest, warm, and she looks at you for a moment in the lamplight, something considering in her expression, like she's deciding how much of this to let herself have. Then her jaw sets and she reaches for her own shirt and pulls it off.

Red lace. The lamp beside you still on, shading the curves of her in amber.

You go very still.

She lets you look. Her chin is up slightly, that normal composure of hers, but there's color in her cheeks and her breathing isn't quite even and she is, despite everything, not as unaffected as she wants to appear.

You reach for her slowly.

Hands on her waist first, thumbs tracing the soft skin above her waistband, and she exhales. You rise from the bed and walk her back until she's the one sitting on the edge, and then you drop to your knees in front of her and drag your mouth from her collarbone, slow, following the line of her sternum down. The red lace catches under your thumb, you slide it aside, and her breath hitches, sharp.

She arches up.

You take your time. Mouth at the curve of her breast, teeth grazing gently, your thumb still holding the lace aside. She rolls her hips once against yours, a restless shift, and her fingers slide into your hair and grip.

You take her nipple into your mouth.

"Hagh—" you lay her down on the bed.

Her back curves off the bed. Her grip in your hair tightens to the edge of pain and you feel the sound she makes more than hear it, the way it goes through her, the way she can't quite contain it. You stay there, patient, learning the sounds she tries to swallow, until she's pulling at your hair with intent.

"Up," she breathes. "Up, come here—"

You come up to her. She kisses you hard, hands framing your jaw, and you feel her working at her own bra clasp behind her back. You reach around and help her, your lips still on her, and when it falls away, you pull back to look at her and she turns her face slightly to the side, like she can't hold the eye contact right now.

"Hey." You put two fingers under her chin, gentle. Bring her back.

She meets your eyes. Something there, too full, too exposed, and then she pulls you back down by the neck and decides with her hands what she can't say out loud.

You ease her back against the pillows. She goes, arms looping around your neck. The lamp casts everything amber and warm and you look at her, really look, no pretending no looking away, and she watches you do it with that complicated expression, the one she doesn't know how to put away.

You kiss down her stomach. She tenses, then releases it deliberately, like she's making a decision to let you. When you get to the waistband of her shorts you look up at her.

She holds your gaze and lifts her hips.

You take your time with her. She tries to stay quiet and fails at it, a soft "ah—" first, bitten back, then less contained. Her hips shift under your hands, restless, and her fingers twist in the sheets when she can't reach your hair anymore. You find the spot that makes her breath stutter and stay there.

"There—"

Low. Involuntary. Like she didn't mean to say it out loud. You stay exactly where you are. Her hips roll up toward you and her grip on the sheets tightens.

"Don't stop."

Hushed. A little desperate. You don't stop. You learn every sound she tries to swallow, what makes her exhale and what makes her gasp, and what makes her say your name low and broken like that, twice, the second time softer than the first, and you take note of all of it, file it away, revisit it until she's trembling.

“Please,” she says. Her voice has gone hoarse. “Y/N, I nee—”

You come back up to her.

She looks at you, chest heaving, hair a mess against the pillow.

"I need you to fuck me."

You stand and strip the rest of the way, jeans, boxers, pooling at the ankles. She watches you from the pillow, cheeks still flushed, and doesn't look away.

You come back to her. Both hands planted either side of her head, hovering over her, close enough that she has to tilt her chin up to hold your gaze.

You align yourself. Push in slow.

“Hmph—!”

You bottom out, all of you, inside her, warm and slick.

Neither of you move for a moment. Just breathing.

"Okay?" you ask, quiet.

"Yes." The word comes out strained. "Don't stop."

You don't stop.

You move slowly, letting her adjust, letting her take in the shape of you. Her breath comes in shallow pulls. Before giving you a nod.

And you do.

The pace builds. The sound of skin fills the room, louder than either of you expected, and you drop your head.

“Ugghh—”

The warmth of her. The weight of everything that led here. You press your forehead to her shoulder and just feel it for a moment, all of it, before you find the rhythm again.

She pulls you down into a kiss. Messy, uncoordinated, neither of you fully stopping. You feel small sounds against your mouth that she keeps trying to swallow. Her legs wrap around you, ankles locking at your back, pulling you deeper, and you feel the shift in her breathing immediately.

Your body feels larger than it should around her frame. Like you could fold her into you completely and she'd let you.

Then the lamp beside you decides to go out.

The amber disappears. The room settles into blue, that particular late-night blue that comes through curtains from the city outside, and suddenly she looks different. Softer. Less guarded. Like the dark gave her permission.

You pull back. She looks up at you in the blue.

You sit up on your knees and bring her with you, hands at her waist, turning her, cradling her in front of you, her back against your chest, both of you upright on the bed. You're still inside her. She exhales at the new angle, a slow, shaking breath, her head falling back against your shoulder.

Your arms wrap around her. One hand flat against her stomach, holding her to you.

"Y/N—"

Nothing else. Like that's the only word she has left.

You let her breathe. Moving slowly now, barely moving at all. Your lips find her jaw, her cheek, then you pull her chin gently to face you.

She turns.

You don’t from all sex you’ve had with Jimin, but it always ends up the same way, you two can put a name on the current relationship you have, without making it complicated. Unsure if it was all just because of the sex. Or was it something else.

You kiss her. Slow this time. Like you have nothing to prove and nowhere to be.

She kisses you back the same way, and that's almost worse.

You don't know, from all the nights you've had with Jimin, all the times it's ended up here, you still don't know. You two could put a name on this. You've been close enough to say it out loud more than once. But naming it means deciding what it is, and deciding means one of you has to go first, and neither of you ever does.

So it stay nameless.

Her hand comes up and covers yours where it rests flat against her stomach. Her fingers lace through yours and she holds it there, pressed between your palm and her skin.

You rest your chin on her shoulder.

Is it the sex? You've told yourself that before. That it's just this, your body on or with her, her distance from you, the habit of being together like a couple with no label. But her fingers are laced through yours and she's holding your hand like it's something she doesn't want to put down.

You reach for the pillow beside you.

She watches over her shoulder as you fold it and slide it beneath her, just below her stomach, where she'll need it. She doesn't say anything. She just looks at you for a moment with that expression you can't name, then turns back around.

You ease her down onto her belly.

She goes slowly, settling over the pillow, her cheek pressing into the mattress. Her hair fans out around her. You follow, one hand beside her head, lowering yourself behind her.

You push in deeper.

"Ah—"

Low. Drawn out. Her fingers grip the sheets.

The angle is different now, fuller, closer, and you feel every small sound she makes against your chest. You drop your mouth to the back of her neck, her shoulder, breathing her in. One arm slides around her waist, pulling her back into you, and she arches into it.

"Y/N—"

Your whole length, fully inside her, knocking at her deepest point with every push.

You reach down and take both her hands, fingers lacing through hers, pressing them into the mattress above her head. You lean down over her, lips finding her shoulder — soft, then teeth, a slow bite that makes her exhale sharply against the pillow.

"Mm—"

Her hands tighten around yours.

You stay like that. Forehead to the back of her neck, your chest against her back, her hands locked in yours. Moving together, unhurried, like neither of you wants it to end. The sheets are damp. The city outside doesn't exist. Nothing does.

Just sweat and her and the dark and the blue light through the curtains.

You feel it building, slow at first, then undeniable. You move faster.

The sound of skin fills the room, louder than before, and you grip her hands tighter. She takes it, all of it, her breath punching out in short gasps against the mattress.

"Hah—"

"Hah—"

Each one knocked out of her. You drop your head, jaw tight, chasing it.

"Ugghh—"

You give her everything. Every last push, deeper, her name somewhere in the back of your throat even if it doesn't make it out. You want her to feel it, not just this, not just the physical, all of it. Every night you stayed in the loop. Every morning you didn't say anything. All of it, translated into this.

She deserves it.

She breaks first, barely, a long trembling cry muffled into the pillow, and you feel her around you, and that's it.

You follow.

You bury yourself to the hilt and hold there, shaking, her name finally making it out this time, low and wrecked against the back of her neck. She spills onto the sheets beneath her. You spill into her. Both of you undone at the same moment, hands still locked together, breathing ragged and uneven in the dark.

For a long moment neither of you moves.

The city breathes outside. The blue light sits still across the room.

Her fingers loosen around yours. Slowly. Like she's coming back to herself one degree at a time.

You press your lips to her shoulder. Stay there.

You don't mean to fall asleep.

You're lying on your back, her beside you, both of you still catching your breath. The blue light. The damp sheets. The city outside doing what cities do. You close your eyes for what feels like a second.

Then her hand is on your chest.

Not idle. Not the half-asleep tracing from before. Deliberate. Her palm pressing flat, fingers spreading, like she's taking inventory.

You open your eyes.

Jimin is propped on one elbow, looking at you. Her hair is a mess. Her lips are swollen. She looks, for once in her life, completely undone — and she's looking at you like she's decided she doesn't care if you see it.

"Again," she says.

Not a question.

You look at her for a moment. "You sure?"

She answers by swinging her leg over and sitting up, straddling your hips. She reaches back and finds you, and whatever she feels there makes the corner of her mouth pull.

"Very," she says.

She straddles your hips. This time she sets the pace.

She rolls her hips, slow, finding the angle she wants, and you let her, hands at her waist, loose, not directing. Just holding.

“Agh—”

Her head drops back, hair cascading down her spine, and she exhales through parted lips like she's been waiting to do exactly this.

You watch her.

The blue light from the window catches the curve of her, the lines of her waist, the full weight of her chest moving with her, heavy and soft. You've been careful not to stare all night. You stop being careful.

You reach up.

Both hands, slow, cupping the full weight of her breasts. She falters in her rhythm, just briefly, a sharp inhale, and looks down at you.

You hold her gaze and squeeze, gently, feeling the warmth of her fill your palms. She's full and soft and more than your hands can entirely hold and you feel her breathing change immediately, her hips stuttering.

"Mm—"

You run your thumbs across her nipples. She makes a sound that isn't quite a word and her hips roll harder against you.

"Don't stop," she says. Her voice has already dropped. "Don't you dare stop."

You don't stop.

You learn her all over again from this angle, the way she moves when you press up into her and hold, the way her breath fractures when your thumbs trace slow circles, the way she tries to keep her composure and loses it in increments. Her hips find a rhythm. Your hands stay on her. The room is quiet except for her breathing and the sounds she stops trying to hide.

"Ah—"

Soft.

"Hah—"

Less soft. Her pace picking up. You sit up slightly, one hand still at her breast, the other sliding to the small of her back, and bring your mouth to her.

She grabs the back of your head and holds you there.

You take your time with her, unhurried, thorough, feeling every shiver that moves through her when you graze your teeth gently, when you suck, when you pull back just enough to make her chase it. Her chest heaves. Her hips keep moving, grinding down onto you, and the sounds she's making have gone from controlled to entirely not.

"Y/N—"

"Right there, don't—"

"Don't move—"

You don't move. You stay exactly where she needs you, mouth at her breast, hands at her back and her waist, letting her use you. Letting her take what she wants. She deserves that too — to just take it, no thinking, no managing, no composure required.

She rolls her hips harder.

"Fuck—"

You flip her.

Not rough, controlled, hands guiding, and she goes with a surprised exhale, her back hitting the mattress, looking up at you with dark eyes and flushed cheeks and her hair everywhere.

"I wasn't done," she says.

"Neither am I."

You reach for the pillow again. She lifts her hips without being asked this time, lets you slide it beneath her, and there's something in that, the small wordless trust of it, that hits you somewhere behind the sternum.

You settle over her. Both hands finding hers, pressing them into the mattress.

You push in slow.

She arches up to meet you, impatient, and you feel her, warm and slick and welcoming, and you have to drop your head and breathe for a second because this, right here, is the thing you've been trying not to want for four months.

"Move," she says against your temple. "Please."

You move.

This round is longer. Neither of you chasing anything, neither of you wanted it to stop. You find a rhythm and live in it, deep and unhurried, her breathing evening out into something almost meditative between the sounds you pull from her. Her legs wrap around you. Her hands, still loosely held in yours, squeeze periodically, like punctuation.

You bring your mouth back to her breasts, you keep coming back, can't help it, they're warm and full and she makes that specific sound every time, the one that goes straight through you. You mouth at the soft underside, the curve, the peak, and she presses up into you like she can't get enough contact.

"Both," she breathes.

You give her both. Hands full of her, thumbs working, and she tips her head back into the pillow and just feels it.

You watch her face.

This is the thing you couldn't look at before, her like this, unguarded, all the careful composure completely gone. She looks younger. Softer. Like the version of herself she keeps behind everything else. You've seen glimpses, the real laugh, the tired honesty in your kitchen, but this is something else.

This is all of it at once.

You pick up the pace.

Her breath fractures. Her hips meet yours, matching, and the sound of skin fills the room again and she turns her face to the side, eyes shut, jaw tight, trying to hold on.

"Y/N—"

"I'm—"

"Don't stop, I'm—"

You don't stop. You drop down over her, chest to chest, her breasts pressed warm against you, your mouth at her ear.

"I've got you," you say quietly.

She makes a sound like something breaking open.

Her legs lock around you. Her hands pull free of yours and grab your back instead, fingers digging in, holding on. You feel the moment it crests in her, the way she goes taut all at once, her whole body drawing tight like a breath held too long — and then she breaks.

"Ah— Y/N— hah—!"

Long and shaking and entirely uncontrolled. She spills beneath you, around you, warm and flooding, and you feel all of it and it undoes you completely. You push deep and hold and follow her over — her name leaving your mouth low and rough, your whole body shuddering — and you spill into her, both of you peaking at the same ragged moment, her arms tight around you, your face in her neck.

For a long moment, neither of you moves.

Her chest heaves beneath you. You feel her heartbeat. The room is very quiet.

Slowly, her legs loosen. Her arms stay.

You make to shift off her and she tightens her hold.

"Stay," she says. Barely a whisper.

You still.

"Just— stay. For a minute."

You settle back down. Still inside her, both of you coming down, the warmth between you impossibly close. Her fingers move to your hair and she holds you there, against her neck, and you feel her breathing slow by degrees.

She wants you to stay.

You stay.

After a while you finally ease apart, gentle, and she makes a quiet sound at the loss of it that she probably didn't mean to make. You don't acknowledge it. You just reach over and pull the sheet up over her.

You get up.

She watches you through half-lidded eyes as you move around the room, quiet, unhurried. You find a clean cloth in her bathroom, run it under warm water, come back. She's still watching when you sit beside her.

"You don't have to—"

"I know," you say.

You take care of her. Gentle, thorough, unhurried. She lets you, which is its own kind of thing, Jimin doesn't let people take care of her easily, you know that much, and the fact that she's lying still with her eyes soft and her hands loose at her sides means something you don't have words for yet.

When you're done you lie back down beside her. She turns toward you without a word, forehead almost at your shoulder, not quite touching.

You close the distance. Pull her in.

She tucks her face against your neck and exhales — long, slow, everything releasing at once, and her hand finds your chest and rests there, open palmed, like she's checking you're still real.

The blue light sits still across the room. The city outside breathes on. You lie there in the quiet.

This woman if going to cost me everything.

Good.

She falls asleep before you do.

You let her.

In the morning she makes you coffee and doesn't mention it.

You don't either.

But when you reach for your jacket she hands you the cup first, and her fingers brush yours on the handle, and she doesn't pull away immediately.

A beat too long.

She looks at her hands.

Then she lets go.

“Get home safe.”