Archive of Our Own ^beta

The traces of her. Which perfume means which day it is - Sana doesn’t need a calendar because Jeongyeon has five, and Jeongyeon has her scent-coded week all laid out by season, along with her color coded lingerie drawer (yes, okay, so Sana actually had known about The Drawer years before they actually got together. Sana was not a fucking saint at sixteen, and she had went through that drawer when she was bored and Jeongyeon wasn’t home. She wanted to have some kind of idea, some sort of image, because God knows she had never thought she would get to see Jeongyeon-- ). And her copic marker collection sorted by values.

How she tilts her head differently in different moods - there’s a language to the angles, the contexts, the exact amount of squint. Jeongyeon’s head all the way to the left means she’s happy happy happy, means her fists are tight in her pockets and her chest is shuddering a little with the way there’s sudden laughter inside of her. A little to the right, jerking to the back almost imperceptibly - Jeongyeon will not cry here, now, but she will take three minutes to wait it out and smooth it over before she locks herself in the nearest bathroom and ignores Sana’s knocks and questions against the door.

Because Sana knows her. Because that’s how it is with Jeongyeon: everything important inside. She can do callous jokes and biting sarcasm loudly just fine - Sana can feel that eye roll burning into her skull if she were a mile away. But if it’s close to Jeongyeon’s heart, then that’s where it will stay.

It’s funny, Sana thinks again, heaving a sigh and turning a little in her seat to get some kind of cold comfort. When it comes to Jeongyeon, how quiet is too quiet? there should be a library dedicated to how Jeongyeon communicates. Sorted by decibel, Sana snorts to herself. Yeah. How quiet is too quiet?

Jeongyeon hides behind other people’s noise. She waits, because as much as she will yell and stall and beat anyone to the offense if it comes to activism or etiquette, Jeongyeon is a coward for all the small things. Jeongyeon’s armor comes off when it’s just Jeongyeon in a corner, trying and failing against herself, and wanting.

And how many years has it been? It’s a bit of a running joke now, except there’s nobody to joke with, so Sana usually ends up smiling to herself.

 

 

2005. "So,” Sana says, wheeling her computer chair over to Jeongyeon’s side of the office. It was originally a store room in their apartment, but between Sana’s new minimalism phase and Jeongyeon’s unchangingly lavish tastes - persistent in spite of her pretty average grad research stipend - they’d managed to balance it all out and repurpose the store room for an office.

"Mm.” Noncommittal grunt from Jeongyeon, no surprise there. But that’s the fun of it. Getting in there. Making her squirm. Sana leers a little at the thought, reminiscing their last weekend. Then she snaps to the present.

"What happened to those new shoes you were gonna get me?”

Jeongyeon raises an eyebrow. "They’re scheduled for when you email your final draft.”

"Hmm,” Sana says, voice trailing high before fading, twirling on her chair. On all accounts, that is to say, acting like a twelve year old trying to scheme stealthily and failing.

Jeongyeon side-eyes her, glasses slipping a little down her nose. "Out with it.”

"Hmm,” Sana says, again, this time even higher, the way she knows annoys the hell out of Jeongyeon. "It would seem… as if… I have in fact emailed my final draft.”

 

Sana knows Jeongyeon, now. Feels strange whenever she considers a time she hadn’t known her. Feels safe knowing she always will. Sana knows Jeongyeon, now, and knows that it’s usually when there’s something else to detract from Jeongyeon, that Jeongyeon actually speaks the truth.

Not that her congratulatory make out session was not truthful. That’s something about Jeongyeon - sometimes her sincerity bleeds through her skin, instead. It’s taken Sana a long fucking while to get here, where Jeongyeon is open with her smile and open with her wants and open with her body -- ("Nice legs,” Sana always makes a point to tease-and-compliment, when she’s about to go down on her, regardless of the occasion, and has since become an expert at dodging the knee-jerk kick response that Jeongyeon seems to have to Sana’s bodily compliments) -- but they’ve gotten here. Jeongyeon, open and pliant and turning to Sana when what’s important inside is something Jeongyeon deems good, deems worthy of having Sana’s attention.

No, her mouth on Sana’s spine, kissing, kissing, always sweet, always burning, is honest. It’s tongue on skin, that’s why. When it’s words in the air -

 

Sana’s laughing, near tears, even after Jeongyeon leaves off tickling Sana. It has been hours of Jeongyeon touching her, loving her over and over. Sana feels loopy and absolutely out of it, just happy, just floating. She almost misses what Jeongyeon says, smiling, under her breath and meant to go unheard under Sana’s peals of laughter.

"I’m always so proud of you.”

Sana laughs a little more, turns over to clasp Jeongyeon - who has the indecency of still having her boxers on - to her whole, sweaty, bare body. Jeongyeon smiles into her shoulder.

"Yeah, baby,” Sana whispers, and Jeongyeon doesn’t have to know Sana heard her. This can just be a sweet little nothing-something. Sana can say it anyway. Sana talks enough for the both of them as it is.

Like this, Sana collects these quiet little things from Jeongyeon. These quiet big things. Pearls in the night.

 

 

2013. Jeongyeon keeps looking at her. Sana is not opposed to this, obviously. She preens a bit and even picks up squats again to make sure her ass is even more impeccable than ever. If Jeongyeon keeps looking like that, Sana will just have to bend and snap. For funsies. Jeongyeon doesn’t blush easy, but Sana knows how that pretty face works. Sana especially likes when that pretty face gets caught, flustered and a little embarrassed, staring at Sana’s ass.

Okay, stop. Some days Sana just steps back from her own thought process and thinks, Woman. You may as well be Gollum. Still, Jeongyeon is Sana’s extremely hard earned girlfriend. Sana gets to be smug about it. That’s how relationships work.

 

"You know how relationships work?” Jeongyeon comes in the doorway of their room to say, one day.

"Me being cute and you eating me out, babe,” Sana says, absently, trying to write an email to VT Cosmetics with a complaint about how absolutely awfully their latest batch of lipsticks pigments. Maybe it’s not polite enough. She backspaces the entire email, thinking hard.

Jeongyeon clears her throat. Sana looks up, grinning, expecting that caught-out pretty face. She is right.

"You are wrong,” Jeongyeon says. "Relationships work with a respected and cherished chore wheel. When’s the last time you actually let out our laundry to dry? No, wait,” Jeongyeon raises her finger to stop Sana from trying to say something. "When’s the last time we haven't managed to grow mushrooms in our bras because you forgot everything in the washing machine for five days?”

"Never,” Sana says, sighing. "Those weren’t mushrooms. I’m telling you, they were - ”

Neither of them really find out what garbage Sana was going to pull out of her ass to say what they ‘were’. The phone rings downstairs, and Sana rushes to get it before Jeongyeon can so much as turn around.

"I was closer to the phone!” Jeongyeon calls, a little despairing.

"By three measly feet!” Sana calls back, already at the landing. "Go sit on the bed, you know your ankle shouldn’t have so much strain on it!”

"I’m just standing,” Jeongyeon complains, and Sana picks up the receiver.

 

Jeongyeon has gone back to looking at Sana, for which Sana is thankful, because that means less washing machine talk. Though Jeongyeon does have a point. Sana will have to set up reminders for Tuesday afternoon washing cycles now. Which is weird, because she’s so sure she’s already gotten an assortment of at least five washing cycles alarms.

Anyway. Jeongyeon’s looking at her, and eventually, while Sana launches into some careless, futile rendition of a Taeyeon solo for the hell of it, Jeongyeon says something.

Sana catches her reflection in the mirror, and does everything not to freeze. She’s not an expert lip reader. She’s probably wrong. As it is, her voice cracks on a note that isn't even that high, and they’re both laughing, both nervous, for different reasons. Jeongyeon, hoping she hadn’t heard. Sana, hoping she’s pretending well enough that she hasn’t heard.

Maybe Sana hadn’t, really. Maybe Sana had imagined it. Maybe --

 

Marry me.

 

God, she’s going to stand there the entire time the washing machine does its cycle so she makes sure she has the laundry out the second it’s done. She will never mess up again. She will be the perfect laundry dryer and Jeongyeon will never regret saying that a moment in her life ever ever ever.

 

"You okay?” Jeongyeon mumbles, around her miserably dry lunch toast. Sana does not understand how anyone could like what is essentially voluminous, sandy, cracked paper, and call it bread. Jeongyeon makes sure that stuff comes out the toaster somehow still looking like bread and yet feeling like charcoal.

Sana thinks about matching rings that stay on forever. Thinks about kissing the inside of Jeongyeon’s wrist, kissing every knuckle. Kissing every breath out of her until they’re both just sharing exhales and inhales. Thinks about an underwater bubble where everything is perfect and she can just hold Jeongyeon so, so close.

"Yeah,” Sana smiles, a little silly. "Peachy.”

 

 

2008. Sana heaves the last carton into Jeongyeon’s room, tumbles into the mattress, rolls face down, and doesn’t move an inch. Not when Jeongyeon calls out, “Sana? You there?”, not when she hears Jeongyeon huffing up the steps, not when Jeongyeon laughs and pokes her in the side with the toe of her shoe.

 

"Watch it,” Sana mumbles into the mattress, but it probably just sounds garbled and stupid from where Jeongyeon’s standing.

"Babe,” Jeongyeon says, and her voice is warm and honeyed and Sana shivers, still so happy, still always so happy at the sound of it. "You sound garbled and stupid.”

Sana groans. Still so happy, fuck, it almost hurts. It scares her, sometimes. She raises her arm, blindly, bats about for Jeongyeon’s hand, and drags her down. It’s unceremonious, and Jeongyeon comes tumbling. Comes willingly. Comes laughing.

 

Eventually, while Sana grumbles for the eighteenth time about how she hates everything and she can’t move and her body’s aching and Jeongyeon can just attend Sana’s funeral on this mattress because Sana’s going to die soon, Jeongyeon says something into the mattress.

Sana’s lucky she’d taken a breath, otherwise she wouldn’t have caught it. "Let’s share.”

Sana knows what Jeongyeon’s talking about. It comes with a head tilt, with the thoughts Sana knows weigh on her girlfriend from time to time. Sana smiles to herself. How many years has it been? Jeongyeon being hers still makes Sana smile so big. God.

Jeongyeon has always been the slower, steadier, more cautious of the two of them. More private. More boundaries, more walls, more lines in the sand. Not that Sana minds. Jeongyeon is worth it because - and in spite of - and regardless -

But Jeongyeon hadn’t meant for Sana to hear, really. So Sana takes a breath and continues yammering. What had she been talking about? It doesn’t matter, she’ll talk about something else. "I’m thinking about Christmas lighting,” she says, casually, as if she hadn’t heard. The tense line in Jeongyeon’s shoulders (Sana raises her head up from the lumpy mattress to see) relaxes. Sana smiles again.

 

Later, at night, when they’ve set up the bed and Jeongyeon’s settled into bed with her usual book of the evening, Sana slides in, brings her pillow, and doesn’t budge. Jeongyeon tenses a little again. Sana looks at her, blinking from under the blanket. Sana knows she looks cute as hell. Just blinking, blanket right above her nose.

"What’s this?” Jeongyeon asks, sounding slightly amused.

"Your girlfriend in your bed,” Sana says, a little louder than perhaps necessary. She squints to make it goofy. "Yes or no?”

Jeongyeon smiles, and puts her book away, turning the lamp off immediately. "Yes,” she mumbles, closer to Sana now, both of them underneath the blanket and blinking like owls in the darkness. They can barely make each other out. "My girlfriend, my bed.”

"Good,” Sana intones, and wiggles around until she’s more comfortable. "Feel free to use my legs,” she adds. "I know your toes get cold.”

Jeongyeon pinches her. Sana knowingly reaches forward to lick her on the face. This usually shuts Jeongyeon up.

It works.

 

 

 

2015. Sana comes home from the subway, tired, feeling pretty grubby and useless. She goes straight for the shower, then straight to bed, not even in the mood for dinner.

Jeongyeon looks at her with slight confusion. "Bed so early?”

"Missed you,” Sana says, arms reaching for Jeongyeon’s waist. How many years has it been? Not enough.

Jeongyeon goes forward easily, soft as ever.

"You know what I want, baby?” Jeongyeon says, and Sana clings harder, smiling already.

It’s funny, Sana thinks. There I was, on the subway. Thinking all that.

"Tell me,” Sana whispers, into Jeongyeon’s neck. She leaves a kiss there. Leaves three kisses, and a little lick, and Jeongyeon gasps and curls towards her even more.

"Wanna walk into work every day, and go to places, and meet people, and I want - ” Jeongyeon’s choked up a little.

"It’s okay,” Sana says, sitting up, seriously. "Tell me, baby. I’m here.”

"I want you here,” Jeongyeon says, and the way her voice breaks around it, like in their dark little bedroom, in this bubble they’ve made for themselves, having this secret ripped out from silence and safety, into sound and in front of Sana, hurts her.

Sana reaches out for Jeongyeon’s hand and holds it to her own beating heart.

"Want you back, baby,” Sana whispers. "Want you every day.”

"Want you,” Jeongyeon says again, and Sana’s so proud, for a white-hot second. Her baby, trusting her. Jeongyeon, always the best, always the smartest, always patient and keeping to herself, really fucking trying right now. Really telling Sana something she’d rather keep to herself, but wants to share anyway.

Sana inches closer, pulls Jeongyeon to her, until Jeongyeon’s head is against Sana’s shoulder. "Come here, baby. I’ll wait, you know that, right? You can say it whenever? I’m right here.”

"Want them to call me - want everyone to see me and say, Mrs. -”

Sana’s heart stops and she squeezes Jeongyeon, shaking herself, now. Her baby. God. Jeongyeon.

I love you so much, Sana thinks. I love you more than anything.

"Want them to call me Mrs. Minatozaki,” Jeongyeon laughs, shakily, and Sana can feel Jeongyeon’s tears on her own skin, can feel Jeongyeon’s shoulders trembling, Jeongyeon’s fingers gripping tight in her shirt. "Please,” Jeongyeon whispers, and now she’s full on crying, and they both are, God, Sana loves this woman so much. "Please, I -”

"Love you,” Sana says, fiercely, holding her close. She can sense it’s not just something Jeongyeon had wanted to say. Jeongyeon must have had an even longer day, an even tougher one. Jeongyeon. Jeongyeon, the fire in her eyes and her hair soft like water, her breath so sweet and trusting every night into Sana’s neck as they fall asleep. "I love you, I love you, I love you, I thought we’d mash our names together, but hey, hey, Mrs. Minatozaki. My Mrs. Minatozaki, hey. I think you’re hot as hell and the most perfect woman I've ever met and I love you to death, darling. I love you in everything you are and everything I am.”

"Want to be,” Jeongyeon says, voice so quiet, so scared. Even after all these years, so scared. Sana wants to cry, holds her as tight as she can. Loves her as hard as she can. "Want to be yours,” Jeongyeon makes it out. "Don’t care about anything else, wanna be yours.”

"You are, baby,” Sana says, hands slowly sliding down Jeongyeon’s back, holding her waist, firm and sure. She draws back, and Jeongyeon looks at her, the lamp light glittering on her tear-tracked face. "And you got everything of me. You’re mine,” here, she gathers Jeongyeon even closer her. "And I’m,” she pulls Jeongyeon’s hands, still curled up against Sana’s chest, down to her stomach, to her waist, up to her face again, to her thighs, her knees. Jeongyeon’s just looking at her, swallowing. "I’m yours.”