POUT & PALATE

“I mean, don’t you think,” Hyeju says, wagging a finger at you, “that when you suffer through a bad date, the world ought to owe you something?”

“Like what?” you ask.

“Better taste in women - maybe more orgasms; I dunno, a blowjob?” She shrugs. “The general idea is just that someone gets to cum.”

You nearly choke on the air in front of you. “Jesus, Hyeju, warn a guy.”

“What? I’m trying to commiserate with you,” Hyeju laughs. “Wouldn’t that be funny? Being able to kiss someone who actually, you know, might love you back, and at the same time. Imagine not hooking-up just to forget a shitty day. Sounds wild, right?“

"Utterly deranged.”

“So wild.”

-

The first time you hook up with your roommate, it’s because of genetics - though not in the weird, uncontrollable way your body gets rigid and sensitive to any pretty girl who wears nothing but a towel moving between her bedroom and the bathroom, or how her eyes might flick fast from your chest up to yours - or given that the absolute shape of her is a blessing from one god or another (benevolent, clearly). That’s not why Hyeju and you find yourselves only a few months later grinding on each other after the clock ticked past midnight, making out on New Year’s Eve.

No, it has to do with the fact that Hyeju’s nearly failing the nine AM section of molecular genetics because she’s spent every lecture doodling stars and planets and planets shaped like asscheeks and planet-ass constellations while everyone else writes notes or doom scrolls twitter or whatever and she is somehow simultaneously the only student who never slept with her face on the lab desk or missed an assigned reading and the only one who absolutely needs a tutor.

It’s just cosmic odds that you’d be that one: her roommate, who shouldn’t be talking so loudly in the library about sex (in a sort of non-sexy, Mendelian kind of way) or be thinking the kind of things you’ve started thinking when Hyeju wears one of her more sleepshirt-esque long sleeves, her voice getting lower as you rattle off, “fruit flies and thale cress, definitely, it’s just an error of fate or chromosome splitting…” before trailing off into a question.

“This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” she finally tells you. You listen to her sigh into the binding of her textbook, facedown. “I’m really going to bomb this exam.”

You tap her hand twice with your highlighter across the desk. “Then you’re pretty damn lucky, if you think about it.”

She turns to you, smiles a bit. “Okay, point. The worst thing will be having to retake this stupid fucking class.”

“Why didn’t you ask for help or go to office hours if you knew you were… failing?”

“Maybe because doing anything more than the bare minimum to get through a class I don’t care about is my definition of, failing,” she mumbles. “Why didn’t anyone tell me a single lab is worth half my grade? Or that the TA is this fucking unreliable? How is this the one thing, really, beyond the basics, that can’t be taught by wikipedia, a wikihow article and a youtube video?”

You scoot your seat closer to her. “You really need to relax.”

“Fucking tell me about it.”

You turn it over in your mind a few times, capping the top of your highlighter.

“Want me to get you off?”

And it’s not like you really mean it, when you say it, which is the strangest thing: you wouldn’t actually suggest it, normally, wouldn’t mention it in passing and then leave yourself open to the follow up and cross examination; yet there it is, after three, four hours of cramming notes on heterochronicity and the sloshing of gametes - you actually did propose it.

Hyeju jerks up, surprised.

“Are you serious?” She looks around, nearly snorting. “In the library?”

The face you’re giving her makes her scoff.

“You’re absolutely nuts.”

You have character flaws; the inability to admit wrongdoing chief among them. Hell, maybe it’s from your mother - or maybe all your brains are just scrambled by the fact that Hyeju’s sitting there with her pen against her pretty lips, hair glossier than usual as she scans your face and makes your entire body feel like a reactor core in meltdown.

Maybe you can blame what comes next on that.

“I’m always serious. I’m asking a serious question,” you whisper, closing the textbook and resting your elbows on top. You look around quickly, like you’re sneaking something in instead of this perfectly reasonable exchange, the perfectly platonic - except maybe not so much - way for friends to help each other.

“And I’m wondering what you’re asking.” Her cheeks are definitely pinker, you think, or the way it fills out her face, from the bottom up, is just that easy to imagine.

“I’m saying you haven’t gotten laid in months.” Here, you realize, these blocks of mental logic that definitely weren’t there when you blurted it out start to coalesce into something solid as you go on.

And you hadn’t been wrong when you thought no one had given Hyeju a helping hand in a long, long time: you’ve heard through the walls or the floorboards at odd hours of the morning that she spends far too long fingering herself to a mind-numbing, tear-worthy frustration that leaves her knuckle-deep but never, ever sated or satisfied.

“No one’s around, you’ll feel better. You said it yourself.”

Not a work of your imagination here - her ears are fucking burning.

“Wait a minute.” She pushes her chair back, away from you and your gleaming offer. It clatters on its back legs, and a librarian waves her finger in warning. You wave back, sheepishly, until she stops and Hyeju stands and moves away from the table to talk, hands crossed over her front.

She turns and asks in a hushed-down-voice, “how did you know - did you hear something last night?”

“You couldn’t keep it down even if you wanted to, honestly.”

Hyeju turns further and throws a glare at the library doors, because obviously her noisiness and their collective noisemanship, or whatever the hell the word is, is clearly the root of the whole goddamn problem.

“Look - if not, no big deal - but I’m just saying you’ll probably get over it and at least think less about sex. Or at least the wrong kind of sex.”

You expect her to turn, sigh, and ask if you’ve lost your mind. Expect her to gather her jacket from the back of her chair, take her books and stomp out the room. Or even burst out laughing at the insanity, before slapping your arm lightly, in playful retaliation - anything other than the serious look she gives you in return, tilting her head, pressing her lips.

She turns up at the ceiling for a moment, contemplating something. And it’s cute. It’s so very, very cute, how her mouth pouts as she considers the possibility, right up until she says, “okay, fine.”

The moderate twist of surprise taking hold in your brow must be visible.

“Oh, don’t tell me that was all talk. Get me thinking about the right kind of sex or whatever.”

You laugh, which has the librarian staring at both of you - until the librarian stops staring and probably sees Hyeju sliding back into her chair, the full, pent-up weight of her concentration pointed your way, knees inching apart - you, and Hyeju waiting, your knee bumping into her inner thigh, leaning closer as the textbook hits the floor.

“Don’t laugh.”

“Not laughing, seriously. Not laughing,” you stammer. “I just think you’re just full of surprises.”

She spreads her knees further and sits taller, looking right at you.

“So then, surprise me,” and then presses her cheek to the crook of your elbow.

You slide your chair right into the space next to hers, nuzzling up into the space under her ear. “Keep studying, Hyeju, you’ve got shit to do.” And then you slide your hand beneath the waist of her sweats, knead the swell of her thigh until you find the seam where her leg meets her body, press your palm down on the place just next to her center, your thumb in the middle. All this perfect pressure.

“Fuck,” Hyeju says under a shudder. She’s breathing heavier when your hot, open-mouthed kisses start landing at her neck, and she probably tries to read her textbook for about forty-five seconds longer. But there’s the clench of her jaw right as your middle finger begins tracing circles beneath the fabric of her panties, and her gaze is blurring until she can’t tell the difference between an allele or your fucking name.

“Shh-shh,” you quiet her, finger tapping harder, playing with the slick wetness beneath all those layers of thick cotton and pressing two fingers there until her knees part like they’re not interested in resisting at all. Your lips press a kiss to the shell of her ear and she tenses all at once, hand shooting up to cover her mouth.