Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jini picks Chanwoo up at his usual stop, fifteen minutes past six. She’s dressed in a skirt today, the velvety hem of it curved over her thighs. Chanwoo’s never quite been the type of guy to notice (Bobby’s usual affair had involved something torn and denim, and usually had enough room for Chanwoo’s hand anyway), but with Jini, it’s always indicative of something else.

“Had to get gas after practice,” she says, flashing Chanwoo a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. He’s gotten good at distinguishing those from something else altogether. “What’s on tonight?”

Chanwoo pauses in the middle of sliding into his seat, and settles down with a thump. “It’s gonna be a surprise, because I forgot to check,” he says, returning her smile with a grin of his own.

He remembers the first time they’d set this up. He’d picked her up then, in the car he’d borrowed from his father. It wasn’t a date as much as Chanwoo trying to prove to himself that he wasn’t attracted to her at all. There were laws about these kinds of things, and people like Jung Chanwoo didn’t date people like Kim Jini.

Of course, he’d spent the movie uncomfortably aware of her presence, the faint hint of citrus hanging in the air, the gleam of her profile when the movie flashed white and yellow and red. And then she’d turned to look at him and grinned, and his breath had caught and he’d forgotten that there was a movie running entirely.

They’d fucked in the driver’s seat, Chanwoo’s hand slipping under her ass as she fumbled with his dick, rolling on a condom that she’d magicked out of the smallest purse he’d ever seen. He remembers being surprised that she was warm to the touch, remembers being surprised when, for a moment, her face had contorted in pain, like she didn’t quite know what she was doing. Assumptions had been made, but Chanwoo rewrote them entirely, gripped her by the back of her thighs and slowly eased into her. Lesson one: Kim Jini always comes in swinging even if she doesn’t quite know what she’s aiming at.

But for the first time in the two months they’ve been going there, the drive-in is closed, a large poster rolled over the worn out WELCOME sign. They look at each other; the unspoken rule between them says that their flimsy excuse to hang out for the night is gone, so the next logical step is to go home. But then—

“I’m starving,” Jini says, head still ducked to peer at the signage. What do you want? Chanwoo thinks, resisting the urge to brush away the loose curl of hair that had fallen onto her neck.

“I’m calling burgers,” Chanwoo says, decisively, without missing a beat. “The ones we had last time, remember?” Jini makes a face; they’d gone to grab a bite after fucking, because they’d started placing bets on the couples at school, but she could barely finish the greasy cheeseburger. Afterwards, she’d kissed him goodnight and tasted like strawberry milkshake. “I’ll cut them up into bite-sized pieces for you.” That earns him a smack in the shoulder, but she laughs, eyes crinkling in a way that makes Chanwoo beam.

They make small talk all the way to the diner—an ongoing piece of drama with A Friend of hers (Nam Taehyun; it’s easy to put together the pieces after a while), her sister’s flurry of a proposal (boyfriend had presented the ring while he was dressed as Santa can you imagine how tacky?), and in return, Chanwoo’s tells her about his latest escapades with the injured bird they’d found on Junhoe’s lawn. It should feel like a farce; they both know what people think they’re here for, and for the first time, people would be right. Someone like her doesn’t date someone like me, he repeats to himself, just as Jini asks him, with genuine interest, if he’s going to name the bird.

“Jini’s a nice name,” Chanwoo answers with a straight-face, just as she’s turning into the parking lot. “Small. Birdlike.”

“I’m going to pretend that’s a compliment—” she pulls the car to a stop “—right?” and Chanwoo earns another smack for laughing. But it sets the equilibrium right again. They push and pull and they laugh about it. There’s no reason to make it any harder than it has to be. (Right?) “Order something for me. It’s too cold and I didn’t bring a jacket.”

“What, you want us to eat in your car?” Chanwoo mock gasps, and Jini’s eyes narrow. “Yes, ma’am. What do you want?”

“Surprise me,” Jini says. Then, with a split second of hesitation, she reaches across his lap to push his car door open and tries shoving him out. Citrus, Chanwoo thinks, and he doesn’t know what overcomes him, but he places a hand at the nape of her neck and kisses her, right on the corner of her mouth.

“A thank you would be nice,” he says, and then slides out of the car, trying not to think about what he’d just done. It’s a 5-minute walk from the lot to the restaurant. When he glances back, Jini’s car is the only one sitting in the flat space, lit by the neon billboard advertising a new theme park. She’s right—it is cold out, and Chanwoo shoves his hands deep in his pockets even when he’s inside the too-bright store, ordering cheeseburgers for two.

He catches her smoking in the backseat on his way back, because she isn’t looking in his direction. Her gaze is a million miles away, pale hand sticking out of the window despite complaining about the cold before. When she finally does spot Chanwoo, she stubs her cigarette out and drops it onto the concrete, meeting his eyes like she’s expecting him to comment. But one of the rules of the game they’re playing stipulates that he shouldn’t, so he doesn’t, not even to make a joke.

“One triple–decker cheeseburger,” Chanwoo sing-songs instead, dropping the plastic bag into the space between them, setting the drinks down behind the gearshift, “served.”

“You’re an asshole,” Jini shoots back lightly, rummaging in the bag as though she doesn’t quite believe that Chanwoo would pull that on her, but finds a burger the size of her head. His gaze sweeps across the car; the cigarette’s long gone. “Bet I can finish this before you.”

“And come out alive?” Chanwoo questions, looking at her skeptically.

Her eyes narrow for a second, and then, “Bet you an orgasm I can finish this before you.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Have you heard of blue balls?” she asks, unwrapping her burger to take a bite from it, and she looks so smug about it that something flips in Chanwoo’s chest, unwarranted and unwanted.

“You wouldn’t. That’s evil.” Chanwoo contemplates his own burger, but then abandons it in favour of gently grabbing her wrist, adding, “But I guess I should give you a head-start,” and bites off a chunk next to hers triumphantly.

“Show-off,” Jini mutters under her breath, even as she grins, swivelling around so her back’s pressed against the window, her feet in Chanwoo’s lap, presumably to give her maximum access to kicking him, should he say something she disagrees with. “We’ll see who’s the winner when we’re too full to fuck.”

Chanwoo pauses in the middle of sticking his straw into his cup—something hard settles in his gut at that jibe—and then continues like he didn’t just experience a small-scale epiphany, because right then she meant– and that means Chanwoo should–

“You know we can just hang, right?” he asks, carefully, like he’s about to enter shark-infested water for whatever stupid, delusional hope he might harbour that he’s going to come out in one piece.

She snorts and digs a toe into Chanwoo’s thigh, saying, “Right, because we’re doing something else right now.”

“I meant in daylight.” Got to keep his tone light—Chanwoo knows she likes him, he just has to believe he’s right so he doesn’t regret this conversation entirely. Maybe he needs a handjob more than he’d expected.

Jini stays quiet, the silence somehow exacerbated with her face thrown into sharp relief by that stupid goddamn billboard flashing above them. This is where she gets bored, he thinks. This is where he loses. And yet, he doesn’t even have time to embarrassingly backpedal when Jini tugs him in for a kiss by the front of his hoodie. It’s sloppy and greasy and tastes like cheeseburger, which, as a kiss, is frankly pretty disgusting. But then she abandons her burger somewhere, to drag him in by his shoulders, tilting him enough that the drink in his hand sloshes dangerously, condensation dripping between his fingers.

“You’re bad at talking,” Jini says, and Chanwoo swears he can detect a hint of amusement in her voice.

“It’s not what you keep me around for anyway,” he retorts, and it’s meant to be banter, it’s meant to be funny, but her expression sobers up even as she slides a thigh between his legs and he finally finds a place to set his drink down. Then he has both hands free to do what he’d wanted to the second he’d set his eyes on her today: slide his palms up her thighs, listen to her suck in a breath. (“Here,” she’d told him once, when they’d been in their experimenting stage, and dragged his hands up across her belly, across her breasts, and then preened into his touch.)

“Zip,” she instructs, already pushing up against him to divest herself of her skirt. He sits back to tug his shirt off, waiting for her to keep pushing, but then she lies back, expectantly staring up at him. What do you want? he thinks again, drinking in the sight of her, shifting in the melee of colours, like a chameleon unable to decide what it wants to be. This should be the easy part—they’ve practiced this so much that Chanwoo could probably do it blindfolded. But there’s something fluttering under his skin and he has to force himself to focus. What do I want? As if she’d heard him, Jini wraps her legs around his hips, sliding her panties against the rough denim of his jeans.

She gasps when he slides in her slowly, and Chanwoo swallows his own moan in favour of watching her tip her head back, neck bared up for him to kiss. Her hair spills against the leather and she’s so beautiful that Chanwoo’s breath catches with the unbelievability of the moment. “Chanwoo,” Jini breathes, his name trapped between them. The world narrows and sharpens all at once and he resists the urge to fuck her against the seat, to draw his name from her lips again and again like she can’t help herself.

Dragging things out isn’t really their style, but the moment seems so quiet that Chanwoo can almost see it tangibly, and how fragile it really is. He’s going to come if he keeps watching her with her eyes closed, completely drawn into the moment, so he presses his mouth to her ear, letting her hear his minute gasps every time she grinds up to meet his hips. But then she touches his neck, lightly, her hand curling against the back of his shoulder. He looks up questioningly, but there isn’t an answer: just Jini with her lips parted and her eyes fixed on him.

Shit, he thinks, reaching down to slide his arm under her knee, hitching her leg up to change the angle, and she lets out a high-pitched moan, fingers digging into his skin. Fuck.

It doesn’t take her long to come after that, with the bright lights dancing in patterns across her face, with her features all screwed up as she fucks herself up against him like she’s determined to make him come with her. If he wasn’t too busy trying to keep his balance in the small width of the seat, he’d realise that it’s still all a fucking game to her.

Afterwards, he chucks the condom out of the window and turns to find her still watching him, like she’s trying to figure him out. I’m not the one who’s a closed book, he thinks, even as he tugs her closer by her hips so he can kiss her, pushes her bra above her breast and presses his lips under the curve, down her stomach and towards her clit and stops only when she gets into a fit of giggles and complains about being sweaty enough.

“Plus,” she adds, already adjusting her bra and pulling on her panties, “I didn’t even get to watch a movie.” Scoffing, Chanwoo props his leg up on the back of the driver’s seat.

“That’s easy,” he says, letting her settle in against him after she puts her hair back up into a ponytail. Kim Jini likes to cuddle, he wants to tell someone. “I’ll make you a movie.”

“Alright,” she says, sounding bemused, grabbing his cup to drink from it, “go.”

“Okay, picture this. A vast desert of redness. The sun’s scorching hot. One astronaut, stranded on another planet—“

“That’s The Martian and we saw that last week,” Jini points out, unimpressed. “Plagiarism kills, Jung Chanwoo. I thought the school had hammered that in by now.”

“I never said I was good at it,” Chanwoo disagrees with a shrug, catching her hand before she smacks him again. There’s a question on the tip of his tongue and it’s times like this it feels like he can almost say it, but it’s late and his burger’s getting cold and they’ve just fucked. Excuses ad infinitum.

“You’re good at some things.” Her eyes drift down south and she laughs, like her joke is unquestionably hilarious, and Chanwoo thinks he wants to keep her. Not just in pockets of times like this, but for everyone to see.

Maybe he’ll ask her tomorrow.

—