ESCHATON

I was twenty-two. I knew these things. I knew how to hit a mark, and I knew how to count an eight-beat, and I knew that a girl who wants a girl is a dead idol

Gawon, Diary 1:

Yes. I would look out the practice room window and count the girls reflected in the glass that once had fives faces and now seemed to have too few. Is that all? No.

There were other attempts, comebacks: stages bright -

and carried away. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I like the feel of my microphone. More than the contract? Yes, and I liked the waiting in the wings, watching the seats fill with people. I liked the eyeliner and hairspray of it, and soft floors in any light. I wanted to be wanted and visible.

That sounds overly desperate - like an idol. And my hands? My hands keep reaching for a girl whose body was warm and is now on the other side of a screen. Her being Anna. Yes. Do I love her? I dont have to answer that. This is where I trot out my sadness. Black coat, black eyeliner, mussed hair. I miss the point: the face in the camera is a little traitor. I want in, I want out, I want the five back. I miss my group.

I stand in front of the mirror with a tape recorder, hoping to catch something. I want to move forward but I can’t. Everyone in this group got here somehow and everyone in this group had to leave. So what’s left? Sing a song about the room we were in? Hammer in the pegs that affix us to the stage? The voice wnats to be a hand and the hand wants to hold something living. What did I really want? Someone to be seen by. I wanted more. I want what everyone wants.

I raise the lightboard and shine it on the empty practice room. Was there no one else anymore? Left-handed love, right-handed career, there’s no pure way to keep both. The company calls and it makes a noise. Anna makes a noise, cinched into my arms. The company tells us to leave and never come back - but Anna is cinched to me - give us a minute, please, give us a minute. We cry on the bathroom floor and it makes a noise. Was there no one else? My hands keep reaching for Anna, and Anna is always on the other side of everything. The hands must land. The hands must land.

I had a dream about Anna. We were in the gold room where everyone had schedules and stylists. Anna was eating kimbap and not making a sound. There’s nowhere to go, I thought. Anna said Do you think they’ll let us come back? And I said No, and I meant it, and Anna kept eating.

It’s all complicated. My dreams, these are dreams I shouldn’t be having, I shouldn’t have to clean them up like this. A man who’s going grey with warm palms and a dead wife is making me...

ego

I had dreams in a row where Anna called, about to call or on the line already - here I am in a wrong room, feeding the wrong life, i still want your gossamer lips, your teething bites on me. I wake up and I remember what she said: have a nice life, have a nice life, forget about me. The tape is already peeling off my walls - when will you come back?

id

I have to get off this train. I wanted to get off right here but I knew the doors wouldn’t open because the group is dead. I swallowed alcohol - the group is dead. Anna is a fever I am learning to live with - everything is happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.

egoid

I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the hums of the city. I can’t write, can’t settle, or paint walls and I wake up and the group’s still gone. Whatever. Burn the practice room down.

idego

I don’t really blame them for disbanding but they can’t have my voice back. So, I said, now that we have our dead careers, what are we going to do with them? There’s a barstool and there’s a train seat, depends on which you sit in, depends on which damn seat you live with.

iidddd eooog

I have coats all over my body, it’s November, it’s cold, I feel so damn cold. And there’s a man at the bar, a landscape full of him. You can sit now, he said. You can sit now. He said that. I had a dream where he said that. I realized I had been standing the whole time.

What did I really want?

Gawon and Anna - lovers. Lovers who broke a group apart. For what? You’re unsure - differences, code of conduct, et cetera et cetera - your mind is considering the first option and it’s all so demanding that you shuffle back a little.

Why would she have this out.

She could’ve kept it a secret, yet it’s open-faced and the sunlight poured out in this exacting way - as if this was a revelation worth having - Gawon attached to Anna’s gossamer lips.

it’s all so confusing.

Later you were in her bed, under the sheets. She was on her stomach, your thumb on the ridge of her spine.

You read it. She asked.

Yeah.

And you didn’t say anything. I left it out for you

She continued, propping herself up on her elbows, I thought it’d be easier to - you know - keep it all out instead of explaining.

You nodded again.

She’s funnier than me, meaner than me. The camera doesn’t do her justice - she’s a princess on camera. She commanded so much power on her own.

So they couldn’t drop her.

Correct, she was outspoken on creative differences, prioritized her members - humanity over stockholders, as they say.

But they gave up on you, you both.

Correct too, we were attached to eachother and that was enough.

She continued, dropped her head further down:

The rest of the members don’t talk to us. Anna and I met before. I’ll elaborate on that later - the members dont talk to us. That’s important. Anna and I were together because we trained sixteen hours a day and we were told our bodies didn’t belong to us and the one person who made me feel like mine did -

is the one person the industry punished me for wanting.

She sat up, the sheet pooled at her waist. The light hit her collarbone - the ridge, the hollow of it, the scars of an idol, these hollow ridges of her collar.

And you know how it ended. Seoul, after everything collapsed. we were lying in bed - like this, almost like this - and I said I loved her. And she said she loved me. But it didn’t ring the same anymore. It didn’t land right. After all this fighting, we were tired.

Tired beats soulmates.

This performance became a way of method acting to us - sneaking and timing and stealing miutes in practice rooms stippling each other with red kisses underneath the clothes that inched too close to the red blooms we left on eachother. Take away the sneaking, the stakes, the company breathing down our necks? Two exhausted girls in a hotel room who love each other and can’t move.

The words kept smudging. I had all this language from the books. I wanted to say: you are the only person who has ever seen me and also the person who cost me everything and I love you, I love - I love you! But what I actually said was: I’m tired.

And that was it. You reply.

That was it, she flew back the next morning because all her fashion deals went through and the company had the dignity to not blacklist us across industries. Atleast. I stayed in the hotel room that Anna paid in advance for and I ate ice cream for as long as I could muster. I didn’t cry because I thought I’d used it all up.

She turned to you, with those beautiful eyes.

So now you know. Beyond the diary, beyond the - I loved somebody and the world said no and we broke each other trying to say yes. Right person wrong time but it was all so palpable, so close.

You pulled her toward you. She came - straddled you, knees on either side, her hands splaying across your warm chest.

She kissed you, her mouth slightly open dragging against your lips.

You were running out of breaths to give to movements that don’t kiss her.

Her body rocked just so, her bare nipples pebbled onto your skin, dragged across you; the graininess of her panties rubbing onto you.

Tell me about your wife. She gently tongued at your mouth, this fixation that wouldn’t leave her.

You want me to talk about my dead wife while you’re -

Yes. I want her in the room. I don’t want to replace her. I want to be the thing that exists next to her.

Her laugh. You said. That involved her whole body. It bent her forward at the waist and she’d put her hand on whatever was nearest. My knee. My stomach.

We’re all trying to be holy here, she said into your neck, tongue painting wet stripes along the tendon. Butterflies all throughout your spine.

Is that what this is. You reply, holding her tighter, grabbing one breast and gently pinching a nipple - a moan.

Just mash your lips against me. Her mouth opened and you took it. Her hips ground against your tented shaft.

You pressed your waistband down, just enough to get your rock hard erection out, and she similarly shoved her panties aside - wet and honey-stained. And slowly, she descended.

You entered softly, and you held still inside her. Forehead to forehead - her breathing was heavy but she started moving forward, then backward, grinding your cock into her glistening folds.

This rolling motion, hips tilting. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.

Say them. You reply.

I think about you in the morning before I think about anything else. I think about your hands on the beer glass. I think about the way you told me about the boy and the Pocky and your voice didn’t break once -

She moved faster. Your hands slid up her back, feeling the knots of her spine, the wings of her scapulae, toned, taut; body desperately attached to you.

I think about your wife laughing and her hand on your stomach and I want to kill the universe for taking that from you. I think - her breath hitched, - I think about moonlight making crosses on your body and putting my mouth on every one -

Gawon -

Is that too much to expect? She was gasping now, the words fragmenting. That I would name the stars for you? That I would - take you there?

You rolled her onto her back without breaking the kiss. You reached down and dragged two fingers through her folds, to feel her hiss, to feel her pebbled clit - the smallest touch making her arch off the mattress.

You pushed your fingers inside her. The first knuckle, the wetness coating it all. Just ah-ah-ah against your mouth.

You pulled your fingers out slowly so you could watch. Her labia parted, pink and dark and glistening, and a thin string of her slick stretched between your fingers and her body. You brought your hand to your mouth and licked her off yourself.

That’s mine she said.

Come and take it

She scrambled up and pushed you onto your back. You were already flushed and leaking at the tip and she dragged a finger along the slit to catch a bead on her tongue.

She lowered herself on you. The head of your cock pushing past her, her cunt gripping your shaft like a tight fist.

You grabbed her ass and lifted her up to slam her back down. She began meeting you thrust for thrust, wetness slapping this sickly sweet sound.

You flipped her onto her stomach and drove into her from behind. A meaner angle where you buried your cock deeper, arching her back, balls slapping against her clit with every thrust. Each thrust more wet than the last. You burled over now, your chest against her body and you pressed her hard into the mattress. She moaned these shrill stutters, turning louder when you slotted your fingers on her clit as you gave her one long stroke after another.

Her cunt clamped down on you, violent contractions that milked you from root to tip.

The splash of my tongue, she breathed a broken laugh, I can’t believe I’m quoting Siken during sex, this is - this is the most pretentious -

Don’t stop.

-melting you like a sugar cube -

You grabbed her cheek and kissed her to finish the line. She moaned into your mouth and her fingernails sank into your shoulders and you held her there, at the top, in that suspended second before you broke inside her - pulse after pulse of hot cum delivered to her womb.

You cooked for her because the kitchen amenities were too good to pass up on. Better yet, she watched you with her legs swinging off the counter barefoot.

Plating for two became a habit again, and tables for two, too. The table cleared itself of books in increments.

One night you were prepping some marinade and she stood behind you, chin on your shoulder, arms around your waist, and she stayed for so long that you thought that she fell asleep.

Gawon

Mm

What are you doing

Just enjoying you

And without a good segue, you:

I want to touch you the way Anna did. I want to try it

Why, was the natural question.

Because you flinch sometimes when I touch a specific spot and I wanted to know if Anna’s diligence caught it before I did. And I’d rather know.

It might feel wrong Her hand found your fingers. You’re both different, different body, different hands, different ways of -

Of?

Loving

But let’s just try. What if it feels right?

Okay, she said.

Bed:

‘Close your eyes,’ you say. ‘And tell me.’

She used to start here Gawon said. Her hand founds yours on her ribs and moved it, to the sphere of her breast, to her collarbone, all the way to her nack. ‘She’d put her mouth right here,’ she pressed your fingers to the spot below her ear, and she’d stay. She wouldn’t move for a long time. Until I couldn’t stand it.

You pressed your mouth to that very spot.

She made me ask for everything. More patient than you.

You remained, letting your mouth feel the pulse of her neck

Then here, she guided your mouth lower. To her collarbone. She’d bite hard enough to leave a mark that the stylists would have to cover in the morning.

Your teeth grazed her collarbone. And she gasped out a name - half yours, then ending in -na.

Her hands were smaller than yours, she said. These quick hands that knew where to go, pressed up against spots that would stop me from breathing.

Your hand slid down her stomach. Callused against her smooth navel. Her hips lifted - granting invitation.

You were touching her the way another woman had touched her, a map drawn by someone else’s mouth, and it should’ve felt like secondhand desire. But it felt like what it was - pleasing a goddess. Your wife’s laugh in your head. Anna’s hands in Gawon’s mind. All these ghosts sharing the room. Making a room more crowded.

She was wet, breathing these shaky breaths that were for Anna first - now for you. She turned her face to the left, this embarrassment at presenting her wetness, her hips. You sunk in one finger, the pucker of it, the slickness of it - her hips moved in this rolling way. This woman with her eyes closed resolving mistakes with someone else while feeling you - it’s insanity exhibition.

She’d use her mouth, Gawon said, to the left, talking to you but not wanting to look for the fantasy. She’d go down and she’d - directly, just directly -’

You tore the blanket away from beneath and your tongue traced the peaks and valleys of her body until you were at her stomach, then her hip, the crease where her thigh met pelvis. She was shaking.

She’d hold my hips down, she said. Because I was impossible to -

You pressed down on her lower navel, just above her wetness - and she groaned - and you didn’t let go, pressed harder the harder she shook.

And how the angels sing when entangled with earth

Your tongue met her folds, this too-hot feeling of her pussy - you flick one time and she weeps. It always starts low, this thing, it escalates and unlike the frog-in-bowl experiments she grafts a pillow across her face to stop all this weeping.

You say it’s music and she shakes harder.

Her hand found the back of your head, her thighs tightened on the sides of your face.

Diary entry #2:

A woman I loved held my head underwater because she was trying to save me - ‘save yourself, save yourself, I’m no good’ - and I deserved it, I did, and I knew this, and I was ready to drown in that practice room because I wanted to touch her hands and her mouth and her chest and this meant my career was over anyway. I was twenty-two. I knew these things. I knew how to hit a mark, and I knew how to count an eight-beat, and I knew that a girl who wants a girl is a dead idol, unless she keeps her mouth shut, which is what I didn’t do, because I am weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.

A dark-haired woman in a hotel room is pressing her lips to the inside of my wrist. She feels everything, keeps her schedule, peels a tangerine all in one go - goes ‘let this be a bowl’ and we’d laugh - while I sit cross-legged in an oversized t-shirt drinking matcha.

A little death in your resume - the industry on top of you is teaching how to disappear, see you as a piece of real estate, another trainee lying underneath like sacrifice. Building your body into a product, bleach-stained you press forward with a new name, new identity, new soul - and yet I loved you, Anna, I really loved you. Affection degenerates into scandal. A little death in your resume.

Anna says to herself: the girl’s no good. The girl is just no good. But she takes me in her arms and pushes my hair around to see if I could ever be ugly to her. But you’re beautiful she says to me. Who gets the contract and who gets the flames? Those who can withstand the bleach. I loved and I loved and I met flames that burned me. She holds me she holds me and she holds me. Desire-full hands that drove into my body. Hush, my sweet, Anna says - these scandals are for you.

I wanted to think of myself as someone who did these kinds of things. I wanted to be in love and Anna -

You pulled back. tongue-tired from pressing at her folds, excavating - these glistening folds, sickly sweet honey.

God.

The diary entry you say, your chin resting, blowing these cold winds at her pussy that get her to seize by bits. about being underwater in that practice room.

I want to know what happened, you add.

One of the members walked in while Anna had me against a mirror - I was buttoned-open and one of my breasts flowed out and it was self-explanatory. The mirror we rehearsed in front of everyday, she wanted to see me naked against this mirror - ‘I see you everyday dancing, smiling, frowning, I want to see more’ - the member stood there watching, didn’t say anything... and left.

And did she tell anyone?

She told a member, they kept it between themselves. They couldn’t look at us in the face. The member who didn’t know pried and got it - I suppose that’s when the rotten interior was exposed. This enormous knowing between us broke loose.

She fell back onto the pillow, her breaths calmer and she let her knuckles rest against her forehead.

There was a day. After the first breakup - the company had put us through this reconciliation process. Like corporate mediation but for young girls caught kissing. They brought in a consultant to fix the gay out of two idol trainees. She finally laughed - but after, she confronted me telling me that she’s no good and I could only see the galaxy in her eyes - we made love that night

And I must say: this... this was it.

I wanted to be held under her. I wanted to drown in everything about her. There was no alternative because of the galaxy in her eyes.

You moved up the bed, laying beside her, pressing a warm palm against her stomach. You wanted to be in love

And she happened to be in the way, she replied, but that wasn’t it.

You’re hard, she adds.

I’m aware.

She rolled onto, thigh swinging over over you, the heft of her settling right under your shafft. She was still wet, still swollen, her wetness spread onto your still-clothed tip.

I want you inside me.

I thought you were talking about Anna. Is it a guy now?

She giggled, it’s an ambiguous situation, let’s say

Mm, you reply, a gentle hand on her thigh as she pulled on the waist-band of your garments hastily. Then, moving closer and upward, then: the hiss of first-entering, this slick intermission until she finally sank onto you.

She pressed her hands firmly on your chest.

The consultant came more times. He brought charts and projections on what would happen if this leaked or went public - it was all negative - nothing went up - and ultimately: disbandment. I couldn’t care less about money when I saw the stars in her eyes.

She started to move. faltering upward with a gentle moan then sinking back down, slick, tight, hot. Rocking gently, back and forth, her clit grinding into you with each roll.

And the whole time, her breath caught, I’m thinking about the mirror. Anna against the mirror pressing me half-clothed into the mirror, devouring the skin off my bones, pressing blooming purple flowers all over my body.

She leaned down, forehead on yours, bracing herself. Falling hair curtaining her head. Gentle squelches as you held her, pressing gentle kisses on her nose, right on the mole - and her grinning bit.

After all that, when we disbanded, the members stayed back watching, maybe some executives were still there. We both left together, hand-in-hand. It’s anticlimactic because after we left we broke up at the hotel. You felt a hot tear down her cheek and connect to your cheek.

She continued, Your breath on my neck like a music that holds my hands down. Your hand went to wipe a tear but she looked into your eyes - the stars that Anna described - Anna was right, Gawon was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her hips slammed down and you groaned and she said -

‘I’m here. I’m waiting.’

You flipped her onto her back without pulling out, drove deeper, her legs wrapping around your waist. Her cunt clenched around you, sucking you in. You grabbed her ankle, lifted her leg, and dragged your tongue from her heel to her arch, entire sole. Then you spanked her, while holding her leg up, a sharp crack against her ass cheek that left a red print, and she yelped, bucking into you.

Pulling her closer, chest to chest. You pistoned your cock into her, the whole length of your cock into her tight channel until she began crying out your name, and the fateful -na began disappearing from her vocabulary.

Her nails scored your back as she came - spine curled and you held her tighter, letting her ride it out - until she got over the hump of it and you pressed farther - kissing her cervix until you sprayed your cum all inside her womb. You fell first and she followed, still connected, cum seeping out of her, onto the bed sheets - these stains that marked this day.

You remember everything, she said.

Diary Entry 3

There was sex of course, and fancy clothes - Anna in a hotel room pressing her lips to the inside of my wrist. The two of us in the Aman on the forty-second floor, the outside shrouded in fog as if we didn’t deserve any more than the four thousand a night room.

I got into NYU while I was still a trainee. My grandfather: get into a good college, and fuck off with that trainee shit. I wrote the essays. Got in - showed my grandfather that I could get in and that was that - what are you doing? he’d ask and I reply - with the devil on the tip of my tongue - become a kpop idol. He tipped over 7 months later and had nothing else to say to me.

And so, with a failed career I resumed my studies again - a professor said: the camera is a predatory instrument and I thought: I have been a prey.

Anna was in Tokyo by then. Chanel wanted her face, Dior wanted her walk, Issey Miyake wanted whatever was left. Wearing things that cost more than... anything - and god could she walk.

But the clothes. I want to talk about clothes because that’s the mess that separated us. She was resilient and head-strong, stippled me across mirrors in front of cameras - but the industry does what it does - it takes a woman who would bleed for her art and makes her obedient to the wrinkle of a blouse.

This twelve-thousand-dollar thing that draped over her naked body was now off and it made me angry - I kissed her and it made me angrier.

Kissing turned to biting. Around her stomach, the soft of it, and she hissed with her hands threading through my hair as if to let me continue - I bit harder, lower, lower than the navel where the muscle was all-taut and firm. She was melting into pleasure. Eros.

Stop trying to hurt me, she said, and I wasn’t trying to hurt her, I said, Youre biting me like you want to a piece of me and I said: aren’t I. She replied, yes if you want, take a piece. But everytime I get airbrushed I’ll think of you and I think that’s no good for us, baby. I’ll fly to Tokyo tomorrow - and god does it always sting when she says she’ll fly to tokyo tomorrow, two days for us please!

She flipped me while I was processing. She was insistent on the hatefuck because I wasn’t there and all I did was bite her when she was here.

She said: you wanted to feel something.

I said: anything.

Her free hand lodged itself into my pussy, my legs, and she just went - this entry into me and I was already tearing up - her fingerfucking me like I didn’t know her and the first thing I did was hurt her.

I said stop treating me this way and then I came (excuse my hypocrisy) this ugly kind where she held me through it and was still fingering me, hooking into my folds, whispering: my love, my love, if i had you for 2 days you’d be a skeleton. I’d devour you.

I would say: and be inside you for eternity? be processed by you? dont threaten me with a good time.

Realization would come faster than we both wanted it to. Side by side she’d tell me about her next booking: saint laurent.

My face on a building in Paris.

You already have one in Tokyo.

Paris sounds good for change.

I always want to diagnose her emptiness in more ways than one - that I was the context of her life - was she more career-minded? Do I remind her of a time that she’d rather forget - then why does she fingerfuck me within an inch of my life and drink the juices of it?

She kissed my forehead whenever I was thinking that. This maternal thing. And she’d say: i forgive you for biting me and I forgive you for wrinkling my blouse (I was always careful with it) and then she’d stop there and leave.

She’d text in morning time, when I was always busy with study-work she’d pop in at 3 AM and then I’d remember her beautiful face. Oh, Anna. Oh, Anna. Please be frank with me.

I pressed the phone to my chest and I closed my eyes and in the dark behind my eyelids I could see the practice room, the mirrors, the five of us in formation, and Anna’s eyes finding mine in the reflection, and the reflection was closer than we were allowed to be, and the distance between the reflection and the real was the distance between the sweet and the bitter, and the distance was shrinking, and the creature was stealing up, limb-loosener, impossible to fight off, and it was already too late, again, always again, and the tired was coming but not yet, not yet, the tired was still miles behind us, and for now there was only the reach, the ache, the beautiful stupid reach across six thousand miles and fourteen hours for a woman who was already living a new life, who was already wearing my bruise under her clothes in a city I’d never seen, who was mine and not mine and never mine and always mine and I was so in love with her my teeth hurt.

I’m so in love with her my teeth hurt.

The hurt is the engine. Remove the hurt and the engine stops and you’re just two people in a hotel room who can’t move.

Anna came over 3 days later. She was always coming every month or so but only for a day. Gawon was frank with you how they’d spend the time - fucking eachother until their limbs couldn’t move but they still had so much to say and resolve, but by then the first class caddy had come to pick Anna up.

Purple-blossomed, bruises that’d heal partway into the long month - and it hurt Gawon to feel totems Anna left behind healing away.

But she was here now and that’s all that mattered:

You greeted Anna with a nod and Gawon pulled the both of you to the bedroom.

Let’s not waste any time, Gawon said.

Anna kissed Gawon in this tilting way, pressing her hands all between her collarbones to check for a pulse - as this was all real and palpable and she could just - just for a second - find herself in Gawon’s arms again. Their mouths met and Gawon’s spine softened against your chest and this low sound - a mumble.

Your hands held the waist of Gawon as she found herself melting under Anna - whose fingers now found interest in her hair, pulled it away to reveal Gawon’s neck, exposing the side of it, the pulse line - the spot. Gawon tilted her head so far back it rested on yoru shoulder as Anna worked the tender of her neck. The precision of it - she kissed the skin and then opened her lips against her neck and bit. Gawon held the back of your thighs for support.

Anna lifted her mouth away from the bruise she’d left. She pressed her thumb to it, testing.

I can’t believe you’re so turned on by this. It’s a new development. Anna stared at you as she made that comment, Gawon mewled at the comment. Her legs were shaking and already half-way gone.

Anna kissed her again, thumbs under Gawon’s jawline, her tongue finding hers. Each time Anna dug deeper, Gawon’s fingers dug into the back of your thighs.

And you leaned down to kiss the long line of Gawon’s neck. Her sweat, the sweet perfume of her. Your hands traveled up from her waist, counting ribs, lying just on the line of her breasts - another mewl from Gawon. Your hands went back to pull the hem of her shirt up.

You can’t help yourself, Gawon said. To both of you.

And this was true: Anna went onto her collarbone, then to the sternum, kissing down the center, leaving this line of kisses between her breasts - your hands came up and cupped them, thumbs over the pebbled nipples. Gawon made this small, broken noise at being at the mercy of both of you.

Hush, my sweet - Anna said - how this love ruined us.

We’ll never get used to it. Gawon replied.

Louder.

We’ll never get used to - Anna sealed off the last word by kissing her. Then moved down, all the way down the plane of her stomach to her jeans. She pulled the zipper down then whole thing. Anna paused there for a moment, staring at her underwaer.

Anna paused for a second, staring at her underwear. She looked too long and Gawon opened one eye: ‘What?’

I’m acclimating, haven’t.. you know had sex in a while.

Acclimate faster, please

Please, I flew for hours - I need a minute

Anna, still on her knees between Gawon’s legs, hooked a finger on the waistband but didn’t pull - she leaned forward, put her mouth on the cotton where Gawon was already wet - and breathed out gently - a no-good gesture that made Gawon weak in the legs.

You are an unserious person

I am deeply serious, I am reacquainting myself with the terrain.

And this terrain... she sighed, will evict you if you dont get on with it.

After another minute of stubborn mouth through cotton, her thumb pressed the cloth into her folds in a slow rubbing motion that made Gawon’s hips lift. Your hand slid from under her breast to her throat - Gawon swallowed and halted when Anna finally pulled the underwear down at last.

She tossed it over her shoulder, hooking onto the lampshade -

‘It’s going to catch fire.’

‘It’s not.’

She bent and put her mouth on the side of Gawon’s thigh -

And maybe it was one of those secret spots that only Anna could appreciate - Gawon’s hand found the back of your thigh and closed hard. You made a sound of your own - a small hah at the grip - and Gawon, eyes closed, said sorry but didn’t loosen.

You brushed the hairs that fell across her face and Gawon pressed into your palm gratefully -

Good hands, Anna said - Don’t get smug she’s paying you in attention and she’s stingy with it. Stay humble.

You and Gawon share a chuckle - another story that you would have extract from Gawon: the stingy princess.

Anna, finally, went to Gawon’s pussy. Another moment of Gawon’s knees giving out - this time a small cartilage complaint, a crick that you hadn’t heard before. And Anna’s hand slid under her knee and lifted it gently aside, thumb pressed into Gawon as she settled her mouth on her clit.

Gawon’s head dropped back and you put your mouth on it - the taste of perfume, the salt, the floral of her detergent - you kissed the length of it up to the ear and then

don’t - not yet - i’ll go too fast.

You went back to the shoulder, mouthing at the mole at the end of her collarbone; your hand moved down to her breast and cupped it, thumb over the nipple in this torturously slow sweep.

When she’s close. She’ll try to push you off. Don’t let her. Anna said

He doesn’t need to know that

You always push us off when you’re close. You’ve done it to every -

I’m going to murder you

Later

Anna went back down on her, as did Gawon’s grip on the back of your thighs. Your hand kept on her breast, mouth at her shoulder, and Anna did whatever Anna did - a thing you could not see but the way Gawon reacted: spine going liquid, legs giving out, and at one point, tried to push Anna off, threading fingers through her hair.

But Anna held her wrist: See?

Shut up

Anna continued until Gawon shuddered throughout her entire body - a signal now to stop before she goes insane.

Anna came up, wiped her mouth on her wrist.

I want both of you. Gawon finally said.

Pulling Anna toward herself, positioning Anna’s hand on her navel.

Back?

Back.

You sure? You ask.

Yes. Stop asking.

Gawon got a bottle of lube and pressed it into your palm. And Gawon, kissed you gently - I want this.

You nodded, her hands went to your waistband pulled out your shaft - and let the lube drip as she massaged it into your cock before finally turning around to Anna, whose lips were turning purple from how hard she was biting.

Anna’s hand arrived between her legs - two fingers poised to enter, a thumb over her clit. Then slowly, Anna pushed her fingers in - Gawon hissed tilted forward and that’s when you began pressed into her asshole.

Pressing in stages. You were being careful, and Gawon felt this, and her hand came back to find your hip and pulled you in another quarter-inch, impatient with your carefulness. Anna, watching her face at two inches’ distance, made a low sound of recognition.

there she is

shut up

She does this thing with her chin. She lifts it half an inch, signals being taken care of. I’m surprised by how long her chin’s been raised this entire time.

You are doing this to torture me Gawon replied, embarrassed

You’re right, I am doing it to torture you.

You were all the way in. Gawon’s hand on your hip, her other arm curled around Anna’s as she worked her fingers into her pussy. Your mouth at the nape of her neck, leaving faint blooms as you began to move, very slightly, and Anna adjusted to your rhythm.

Your hand had moved from her hip to her waist to her ribs to the underside of her breast, cupping it from below, your thumb stroking the side-swell in time with the roll of your hips into her ass. Anna had her mouth on Gawon’s mouth intermittently, not kissing so much as breathing against it, catching sounds as they came. Gawon was making a continuous low sound that was nothing.

You pulled back slow, the head of your cock remaining inside the tight ring of her ass. Her gripping you, slick with the lube you worked in earlier. The taut grip. You slammed in again and Gawon cried into Anna’s mouth. The shaft of your cock withdrawing slowly, glistening then slamming back into the hot velvet. Grabbing her ass hard enough to leave prints. And Anna matched your pace, fingers into Gawon’s sopping cunt working her over to heaven.

She came again, into Anna’s mouth. Anna held her through it and then said, into her jaw, ‘enough?’ and Gawon nodded without opening her eyes, and you stopped on the moment Anna stopped. You stayed inside her another minute because she had not asked you to leave. Pulled out in the careful reverse of entry.

The three of you sprawled across the bed with Gawon between you two.

The lamp did not catch fire, despite the cotton flag still hung on it, slightly askew. Anna, lying beside Gawon now, looked up at the lamp.

Gawon: Try him

No. What the fuck?

Why not?

That’s... yours to deal with, and I like girls - if you haven’t got the memo, Gawon.

Anna was sitting up now, sheet at her waist, bit gently swollen from how hard she’d been biting it.

And? Are you admonishing my tastes.

Not admonishing, what I see now is a man.

and

I like girls.

Anna...

Fine. Alright. Come here Anna gestured you over. You closed the last of the distance and she placed her cool palms on your cheeks to pull you in - and kiss you.

It was the first time that Anna kissed you.

This is how Gawon bends me, dear.

Her mouth tasted of Gawon, and you could observe the habits of hers to complement Gawon: she leaned the opposite way that Gawon kissed, and the way her tongue moved - she was good, of course she was good at it, but took a much more standstill approach to kissing. Maybe Gawon was the initiator of it.

Anna’s hand moved from your face to your chest. THen pushed you onto your back, swinging a leg and was above you, straddling you.

Look at her Gawon said to you Look at her face - this is vindication

Gawon, I will kill you.

Gawon smiled. Anna bent, kissed your sternum first. She was smaller than Gawon, her mouth was slightly warmer, teeth sharper.

Her hair spilled across your ribs and you pressed a hand into her scalp, to reassure her. Anna, without lifting her face, reached up and took your wrist to the side where she wanted it.

Mouth on the hip bone now, she was taking her time, holding your cock with a soft grip, breathing humid breaths. Then: her lips kissed the tip of your cock before descending, just below the tip, suctioned well.

Gawon made a soft sound of recognition, hand between her legs.

Anna pulled back. Held you at the base. Looked at your cock with this expression of interest.

What, you said.

Dont rush me. I flew for hours and now I have a dick in my mouth. The day’s been a journey. She licked a stripe up the underside. I’m going to need feedback. I dont have native speaker’s intuition here.

You’re doing fine, Gawon said from behind her, fingers still moving lazily between her own thighs, He’s gripping the sheet.

That could mean anything: pain, pleasure, existential dread.

Its not pain, you said.

Then stop making that face. You look constipated.

You offer a quick laugh and Anna laughs in turn, her tongue still grazing your cock, but with a grin.

Men concentrate with their whole skull. It’s horrifying. She play scoffed then took you in her mouth again. Tonguing at the frenulum, suctioning off the tip - your hips lifted off the bed and Anna had to press you back down while using the other hand to hold the base of your cock.

Gawon crawled closer, watching Anna form inches away.

She’s better than she thinks, Gawon said.

I can hear you replied Anna

Good. You’ve always underestimated it.

My mouth has done fine.

Yes, in a career of kissing girls. This is... a sideline.

Anna pulled off, wiped the corner of her lips with her thumb and pressed it to Gawon’s tongue - which she gladly took - Stop making me regret sucking a dick.

Im providing moral support

You’re shit at it.

Gawon grinned. She leaned forward and kissed the head of your cock, quickly, a small wet press. Then she kissed Anna’s mouth. You watched them kiss over you, both their faces inches from your body, and the visual short-circuited something in your chest. Anna pulled Gawon in by the jaw and kissed her deeper, tongues visible for a second before they sealed, and your cock was between them, pressed against both their chins, abandoned temporarily in favor of each other.

You two are going to kill me, you said.

Gawon broke the kiss and looked at you. 0

That’s the idea, she said, and pressed your cock into Anna’s mouth again, feeding it to her, her fingers wrapped around the shaft, guiding.

Gawon whispered into Anna’s ear, directing her with her hand on your shaft: slower, slow down, he likes it when you twist at the top, yeah, there, hear him?

You made a sound that came from the soul.

Heard, Anna said, muffled.

Gawon kept her hand on the shaft, stroking what anna’s mouth couldn’t reach and pressed her lips against the side where Anna’s were stretched. Both their mouths on your cock, one on the tip, one on the side, then trading, this sharedness, they kissed around you, against you, your cock as a surface their mouths met on.

Im going to

Not yet Gawon’s hand squeezed the base, and your climax retreated by steps.

That’s cruel, Anna said as she pulled off.

You just deep-throated a dick. Gawon replied, you kiss girls for a living.

Dedication to your happiness. I’m selfless. Also does he use your shampoo?

Yes. forty seven dollars down the drain.

Can we stop talking about shampoo, you finally add.

He’s impatient, Anna said

He’s always impatient. Showed up the moment I sent him a letter, paint pants, one in the morning.

Anna laughed. I understand now

Understand what?

He’s a person you can make a house out of.

Cryptic, but okay. Gawon replied.

I’ll explain later. But now, I’m going to - she swung her leg over and pointed at you - ride you. Because Gawon wants to see it and I want to give her soemthing to see.

She was wet, had been for a while and it was obvious the moment she pressed her folds to the tip of your cock, sliding along the length of you without taking you in, this slowness, the folds gently catching on the veins.

How do you want me, she said

However you’re comfortable

Anna rose up on her knees. Reached between her legs and aligned your cock to herself. Then, sank the first inch. Her jaw clenched.

Oh, she said.

She’s saying you have a great cock, Gawon said.

Im going to seriously kill you.

Another inch down and her breaths went shallow, hands on your chest, fingers spread, nails gently digging into the muscle of your chest. Her hips tittered until Gawon held Anna from behind. Gawon consoled her: Breathe and move when you’re ready.

I’m ready.

You’re clenching, relax Gawon said, gently steering her down until she hissed at how deep your cock was in her pussy.

Right there, feel it?

Anna looked at Gawon again, kissed her. She was just a woman on top of a man she barely knew, being held by the woman she’d loved for eight years.

She started moving. A rhythm that was rough and imprecise, thighs slapping against yours. Pussy working you down. Gawon’s hand slid from Anna’s hip to between her legs, down to her clit and she began rubbing.

Fuck, ANna said, Fuck off

There she is with the chin.

I swear to god, Gawon -

Gawon pressed harder, and Anna’s moans turned shrill. Grinding now, messy, desperate, chasing a sensation that broke her piece by piece. You held her hips as she pathetically ground her pelvis against you.

Then: cumming with her eyes open, and she was looking at Gawon over her shoulder, mouth open, inviting her to kiss her as she experienced bliss - after all, she still loved Gawon.

Well, she said. Her voice was wrecked.

Well, Gawon said.

I’m not changing my orientation.

Nobody asked you to.

But that was. She looked down at you. At where you were still inside her. Substantial is accurate.

Gawon rolled toward you. Her hand found your cock, still hard, slick with Anna. She stroked once, twice. Then she crawled over you, straddled you, sank onto you in one smooth motion without preamble, without adjustment. Her body knew yours the way a key knows a lock.

Gawon rode you with her eyes on yours. SHe braced her hands on your chest and moved in these deep rolls that became native to Gawon. Sloppy and urgent, hips stuttering, working your cock into her body, letting it find that specific spot that makes her cry out in bliss. Anna sat up and held her form behind, but Gawon didn’t look at her, she arched but her eyes still stayed on you.

Wet heat still sheathed around you. Then your cock slipped free as she lifted herself off.

Lay down

You let yourself fall backward as Gawon watched. Your erection stood straight up, veined and hard, swollen. She lifted her own right foot and placed the sole flat against he underside of your cock. She pressed up, mashing your shaft against your lower belly, The arch of her foot cradled your glans for a second before the heel pressed against the head of your cock. Precum smearing across her soles.

She brought her left foot up too and trapped the cock between both soles. Squeezing them together and sliding them up and down yoru shaft in a rough rhythm. She spat down to relieve the dry heat. She was fucking you with her foot now. Sole pressing hard down on your lower belly with each downstroke. Head disappearing between her feet over and over.

She sped up when you were right on the edge. She stopped pressing your shaft down to let your shaft sit upright as she pressed her big toe on the slit of your tip before you started releasing rope after rope of cloudy cum all across her soles.

Anna was staring.

What was that?

What was what.

with your feet -

It’s a foot thing. Dont make it weird.

It’s objectively weird.

You never asked.

Asked? Who asks for that?

He likes it. It happened once by accident and he made a sound and I thought: oh. and then i did it again and it became a thing.

a thing.

a thing.

You two are disgusting

Thank you, replied Gawon

Wasn’t a compliment.

It’s always a compliment coming from you.

Anna sighed, Go to sleep. Both of you. Before someone deploys another appendage.

Gawon placed her head on your chest, and the both of you fell gently to sleep.

By morning Gawon was still at your side. But she handed you her phone to let you see what she’d been looking at:

Gawon,

I have been trying to write this for too long. What I needed was to be at thirty thousand feet and figure out what to say to the person I love most in this world about why I cannot love her the way she needs. Not in the way that builds a home.

I’ve been rationing myself out to you, I haven’t been truthful. And the truth is that I was afraid. I was afraid that if I opened the bottle all the way, what came would not be love anymore. It would be need. The same need that broke us apart at the hotel. But scars stay longer than I thought.

Here is what the Greeks knew about desire that I have spent years refusing to learn: you can only want what is gone. Desire is for the missing thing. The woman on the other side of a practice room mirror who you can see but cannot touch because the entirety of a company is between you, that was desire.

I wanted you most when I couldn’t have you. In the practice room at three in the morning when the mirrors showed our reflections closer than we were allowed to be. In hotel rooms where we had blocks of time for eachother. Sweet then bitter. The sweet first because it’s less surprising. Then bitter, which crushes your soul.

I loved you bittersweet.

The bitter was this: I was most myself when I was reaching for you and least myself when I held you. The secrecy, the minutes we had in closets and the simple not-touching in public - that was all the fuel. And when the company closed all of that for us, allowing us to finally be there for eachother - it was all gone.

I know how this sounds. I know it sounds like I’m saying I only loved the chase. The chase was the shape of our love. Other people’s love is shaped domestically. Ours was shaped in all the bad ways: 3 AM hatefucks and a company who wanted us dead. That shape was beautiful. I will defend that shape until I die. But you cannot live inside one like that. You can write about it in a diary, but you cannot make a life in it.

You tried. I watched you try, you had an unfinished apartment waiting for me. But what restarted while I was gone was your life.

You sat next to a man in a bar.

That’s living, Gawon. That’s the house. I know you think you can live in both, I know you think thtere is a version where I come back every few months and we sit on opposite ends watching terrible netflix shows and pretend what we are is friends who once, incidentally, destroyed a five-person career over the inability to keep our hands off each other.

I am tired. Not of you, never of you, of the reaching, of the wanting that comes back everytime i see you, it crushes me - it really does. Always again, and again, and again - and I cannot do it anymore.

Tired beats soulmates. I know that’s ugly but it’s true. The love was light but everything else weighed us down and we couldn’t move.

Wanting you was a beautiful cage but I am out of the cage. Let me be out.

Everyone needs a place. And it shouldn’t be inside of a ruin. Your walls are yours now. You’re painting them, or you will, perhaps he’ll hold the tray, maybe he’ll do the corners wrong and you’ll have to fight about it and it’ll all be ordinary and you will finally, for a second, love the ordinariness of love. This will be love that you deserve, Gawon. I cannot chase you any longer because it’ll ruin the both of us. I can ruin myself by myself, but I cannot stand ruining you. Live this ordinary love.

I am the broken half that will break the other. You found a normal half. Please keep me away.

I want you to know that I threw the key away. I don’t think I’ll be able visit again but we’ll see. I looked at it before throwing it away, it had your address stamped on it and I cried because you gave it to me before I even asked. I wanted to keep it, Gawon. I wanted to keep it, but I’m dangerous.

Someone will find it. Someone will try it on every door in the building and it won’t open any of them. Or maybe it will open one and someone will walk into an apartment and find a woman with paint on her walls and a man asleep in her bed and two chairs at a kitchen table and eggs burning on the stove and a life so ordinary it could make a dead girl weep.

That’s my wish for you.

You need to stop wanting me because I will always want you. If you step forward I remove the hairs off your face and find you as beautiful as the day I lost you and I’ll break you. So stop wanting me. I will never text again.

Let the ice in your palm melt, let it melt, let the water run through your fingers and into the ground and let the ground have it.

I love you. I will always love you. I loved you bittersweet and the bitter won and the sweet is what I’m leaving you with and tired beats soulmates. I’m sorry, but it does.

Anna