Work Text:
i’m coming home, Haseul texts.
So Jinsol leaves her on read until her phone vibrates with enough angry emojis that it’s very likely to either a) overheat, or b) fall off her desk until she answers. She swipes at the screen, pulling up Haseul’s barrage of messages.
i know, she texts back. The emojis immediately cease. Then, is it too late to extend your stay?
Haseul’s immediate reply: i’m breaking up with you.
Jinsol grins as a minute later, Haseul starts sharing her location on the cab ride home from the airport. She keeps the screen open by her desk and gets back to work.
*
Haseul bursts into their one bedroom apartment, the door near ricocheting off the wall because she slams it open even though entering the key code makes it gently open ajar on its own. Rent is unethical but Jinsol feels a little bad for their landlord.
She pulls her headphones down to her neck, pausing her Spotify playlist with a flick of the wrist. Jinsol’s workspace is in their bedroom (because, Haseul likes to remind her, she’s insane), but she can still hear the soft rustling of shared space being used, the sound that’s surely Haseul dropping her carry on on the closest available surface. It filters through their apartment like the beat of a whisk on Sunday mornings and the overpriced record player that sits in their living room, home made of sound and song and the girl behind it all.
“I’m back,” Haseul declares, launching herself onto the bed behind her. Jinsol continues to type.
Haseul’s voice booms louder. “Sol, I’m home.” It turns whiny in approximately two seconds. “You don’t even pick me up and this is how you greet me?”
“You literally texted me, ‘error 404, do not come, there’s another delay, if I don’t see you tonight it’s because I murdered the airport staff.’” Jinsol replies, swiveling in her chair. Haseul’s hair is messy from her flight, ash brown and curled over her forehead, and with arms splayed out on the comforter, she’s looking up at Jinsol like she’s one of those sad dogs in the shelter commercials.
Her gaze lingers just long enough to sweep over the rest of her—reflex as quick as her pulse, does she look okay from the last time I saw her, and the answer is yes. A knot in her chest unravels, relaxing. The twitch in her fingers ease.
It’s why Jinsol turns around, because as exhausted as she knows Haseul is, it spikes energy into the other woman if only from indignance. “Ya, Jinsol!”
She clears her throat and types out a quick reply to an e-mail. “You were only gone for two days.”
Haseul’s whine sounds so affronted, Jinsol barely manages to turn her snort into an ill-timed cough.
“You didn’t miss me?” she looks accusingly at her back, or more specifically, the sweatshirt Jinsol’s wearing, Haseul’s own college logo emblazoned across the front.
Her mouth quirks at one corner, but Haseul can’t see it. Jinsol peeks at the time in the lower right side of her monitor. “Give me literally, like, two minutes, Seul.”
“This is neglect.” Haseul rolls on their bed, flopping onto her back. “I feel like I deserve more. Who else will support your lifestyle?”
Jinsol rubs underneath her glasses. “Haseul, I also work.” She pauses. “And you were at a work retreat. To Jeju Island.”
Without missing a beat, she carries on, Jinsol’s eye roll more prompting than preventing the swell of her ego. Just like her smile, Haseul knows it’s there without seeing it. “Yes, I think you’re very lucky, too.”
Jinsol ignores her, and with a growing sense of satisfaction, she closes each of her work tabs as she logs off for the day. She pushes herself away from her desk, until she wheels herself to the edge of their bed. Haseul blinks at her from upside down, starfishing with her limbs spread out.
Affection pools in her chest. “You have my attention, your highness,” she lifts an eyebrow, “What can I do for you?”
Haseul grins, her hair splayed out behind her. She looks ridiculous. She looks beautiful.
“I’m glad you asked,” Haseul says smugly, and Jinsol reaches for a pillow to smack her across the face.
*
When people ask, they say they met at an office party. It’s not a lie: Jinsol does meet Haseul at a holiday party, the year after she graduates university.
It’s at an office job she only gets because her cousin works in admin, but Haseul doesn’t work there. She’s the date of the CEO’s son, who is a year younger than her but stands in as her supervising boss. Jinsol’s not sure what he does exactly other than leer at her every time she dashes into the lunch room for snacks.
She thinks she does a good job of masking her dislike. That is, until Haseul approaches her by the punch bowl and asks, “Hey, do you want to really piss off your boss?”
She’s a little drunk, and Haseul has never left her periphery since she walked into the room, emerald green dress and shimmering gold underneath the fairy lights strung around the office. Maybe she’s always liked the girl a little out of reach. Maybe she looks for trouble.
Maybe trouble finds her—Haseul tilts her head up at her, the truth on her mouth and dare written in her eyes. Maybe she likes trouble if it looks like this.
It’s Haseul who takes her by the hand, after all, leading her out into the street. By the time they reach her apartment, Jinsol is fumbling with her keys, and Haseul laughs at her.
“First time?” she teases like she’s done this before, and of course she has. The thought makes her a little stir crazy, so Jinsol kisses her, swift and pressing her against the door to both shut Haseul up and her own thoughts before they stray into overthinking panic.
Haseul fists a hand into her collar, and Jinsol finally works the door open to lead them inside, losing her pants and her phone somewhere between the foyer and the couch. She ends up deleting all her unread texts and voicemails in the morning.
She never liked that job anyway.
*
“Seul,” Jinsol hums, knees digging into the fuzzy bathroom bat, twisting the knobs until the water from the spout comes out just the right temperature. Haseul latches around her middle from behind, fingers sliding underneath her hoodie. She squirms, ticklish.
“You said you wanted a bath,” complains Jinsol, lifting her arms anyway to peel it off her body.
Haseul slides her top off in one fluid motion, too. “I wanted one with you.”
She’d already showered earlier, but it doesn’t matter. She climbs in first so Haseul can sit between her legs as the water rises and the soap begins to foam into iridescent bubbles around them.
Haseul leans back against her, tension melting from her small frame. “You work too hard,” she tells Jinsol, chiding, “it’s past five. Staring that long at a screen is bad for your eyes.”
Jinsol lets her eyes drift shut. This way, all she hears is Haseul’s gentle scolding, soft as water, affection saturated into each word. Haseul always blurs the line between leading and loving, she’s learned.
*
It’s the beginning.
Does Haseul play her? A little bit.
“Take my number,” Jinsol tells her, leaning against the doorway as Haseul heads out in the morning.
Her brows pinch together, the edges of her eye makeup smudged. Even like this, she looks unfair. Haseul pauses. “I don’t really—”
“Take my number.” Jinsol wrenches up the bravery it takes to pull her phone from her hand, adding her contact information in. She doesn’t call herself to get Haseul’s, putting the ball back in her court. “I don’t need yours.” It’s meant to come out cool, but her nerves make her voice shake.
Haseul softens, stepping forward to look at her up close. “You don’t really do this, do you?” and at Jinsol’s slight shake of the head, she leans up on her tiptoes, kissing her sweetly.
“I’ll text,” she says. Jinsol makes a noise against her mouth, like she doesn’t believe her. Haseul lingers, bergamot and rain. “I will.”
Jinsol’s gaze lowers, and she nods. There is a flicker of hesitance, and then it’s gone.
So is Haseul.
*
“Five more minutes,” Jinsol aims for stern, but it falls flat where Haseul traces circles into her skin, sinking lower into the water. “I’m getting pruney.”
Haseul tilts her head back, the ends of her hair tickling her chest where she leans against her. When they’d first met, Haseul had long, flowing hair, but she likes this just as much too, the short feathery strands that catch light in the glow of their bathroom lights.
“Okay, Jinsol.” She sounds sleepy.
In the fog of her drowsiness, Jinsol finds courage. “Do you ever miss it?” she asks in a whisper, so quiet it might melt away like the bubbles foaming at the edge of the bath, “the business trips abroad, the constant moving…”
Haseul is silent for so long, Jinsol wonders if she’s nodded off. Then, she speaks—and it punches right in the center of her chest, fills empty space with reassurance.
“Did you know,” Haseul yawns, sweet and soft, boneless in Jinsol’s arms, “I have a terrible jetlag? Every time.”
Jinsol swallows. Times like this she remembers Haseul’s gentle teasing, the way she tells her to make her a kept woman, it’s been three years, Jinsol, you won’t do better. She thinks of the ring she keeps folded between her underwear in their bedroom dresser.
“It’s a good thing you only went to Jeju.” Jinsol says quietly, the smell of bergamot and rain filling the air. It soaks into her skin, a reminder.
Haseul settles against her. “It is.”
It’s true: she won’t do better than this.
*
It could’ve gone wrong a lot earlier than this.
Haseul is gone more often than she’s around the first year—a job that leaves her marking x’s on a map and cold coffee on Jinsol’s kitchen counter—and Jinsol does not know what to make of the girl that comes back only to leave again.
To clip her wings feels wrong, so Jinsol stays quiet. It works the way ignoring a wound doesn’t make it go away, or heal on its own without care.
If they broke up before this, Jinsol thinks, she wouldn’t be so upset. There is such a thing as the right person and the wrong time, after all.
Haseul shatters the idea eight months in. A plane ticket sits in the trash. She curls into Jinsol’s side at sunrise.
“How do you feel about meeting my parents?” she says after e-mailing her two weeks notice on her phone, and Jinsol stares. She has a second job interview in a day, but it’s the same old office gig as her last, and Haseul always tells her it’s okay to apply to other jobs she doesn’t feel like she deserves.
She cancels the interview. Perhaps they make their own destiny. If the timing is wrong, they’ll just reset the clock.
“I’ll drive,” Jinsol offers, and Haseul leans her head against her chest, over her heart, as dawn finally breaks.
*
“Did you get the mail?” Haseul asks once they've made it back to bed, muffled into the hood of her sweatshirt, and when Jinsol freezes, her laugh fills her ears. But when Haseul moves to get up, Jinsol’s arms tighten.
“Get it tomorrow,” Jinsol murmurs into her neck. Don’t go, she doesn’t say.
“It was only two days,” Haseul hums, threading her fingers through her hair. Haseul reads her so carefully, a book shared between lovers, thoughtfully picked off the shelf and given, this is my heart, read it and tell me what you think.
“I know,” she mumbles, Haseul’s slow breaths fanning against her skin. Haseul lifts her head to gaze at her, face scrubbed clean of makeup and Jinsol’s arms and their bed home base.
Somewhere in their apartment, a window is half-open, letting a draft in, and their upstairs neighbors are heavy-footed in the unit above, their TV loud enough to be heard through the walls—but Jinsol is warm, and love spools in her stomach like sugar into syrup.
Haseul burrows closer, eyelids drooping shut, and Jinsol’s soft snores follow.