Lipstick Liminality [ 3 of 3 ]
Title: Lipstick Liminality
Pairing: Jongin//Sehun//Luhan OT3
Rating: PG-13
Warnings:[Spoiler (click to open)]language, possible sexual harassment, fem!exo (girl!Jongin, girl!Sehun, girl!Lu Han, girl!Minseok, and girl!Chanyeol), Kris
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, written just for fun.
Summary: First day on the job, and Jongin is already in over her head--in an ocean of hot breath and angry sighs named Oh Sehun. Lu Han’s perfume is also pretty overwhelming.
A/N: loosely based on the lyrics of this and this. Originally posted at the forjongin exchange.
Apparently the department rule is that what happens on weekends stays out of the board room, because no one mentions the events that have Jongin squirming in her chair with three kinds of dread and anticipation. One part dread to two parts anticipation, that is, because Sehun comes in Monday morning smelling like Lu Han’s black orchid shower gel when she leans into Jongin’s breathing space with a raspy “hey, kid.”
“Pastry?” Lu Han asks politely, opening the session with a distribution of the same jelly filled doughnuts they had at the first meeting. Same as the one she handed Jongin on her way out the door Sunday morning, with a kiss to her temple. Jongin had accepted it with a hot blush as Sehun’s long, long fingers straightened the collar of Lu Han’s old polo under the folds of Jongin’s scarf.
Jongin is blushing now, too, as her fingers brush against Lu Han’s and a flurry of powdered sugar ices the bony knobs of Sehun’s knees.
“Do we have actual business to discuss?” Sehun kicks her boots, the untied laces swinging. She’s perched on the edge of the table as usual, between Jongin and the boss.
“Nope!” Lu Han dusts her hands over the carpet instead of the pastry box. “Unless you lovely ladies want to discuss the possibility of checking out that french cake shop, the one that just opened in Apgu.”
“Let’s stick with the jelly.” Sehun wrinkles her nose, tearing her pastry in half and squishing the rosy filling all over her fingers.
“How do you feel about jelly, Jonginnie?” Lu Han leans forward and the heavy pendant of her gold locket swings on its chain.
“I dunno,” Jongin mumbles, looking down from the sight of Sehun’s long, pale fingers curling between her thin lips as she sucks the jam clean.
“Well then, meeting adjourned!” Lu Han slams down the box lid, catty-cornered. “Unless anyone has complaints or snide suggestions to share with us. You would tell us if anything was the matter, right Jongin?”
“Yeah, sure?” Jongin tugs the shoulder seams of her dress forward, into place. Lu Han’s borrowed shirt is still wadded in the basket under her bed, waiting to be laundered.
Sehun leans back, bracing her wrists against the table, until her head drops onto Lu Han’s shoulder. She gives a tiny kitten yawn, nose scrunching, and blinks sleepily at Jongin. “But nothing’s wrong, is it?”
“No,” Jongin says, and shoves the pastry past her lips until the filling bleeds out at the edges of her mouth.
The only thing that’s wrong is that Jongin doesn’t know where things stand. Sehun with her fingers stroking through Lu Han’s coiffed curls during lunch, and Sehun sneaking her fingers up the soft skin of Jongin’s thigh--which one is she supposed to trust, and which one is an illusion? Or are they both--
“Yah! Jongin.” Sehun snaps her fingers in Jongin’s face. Jongin drops her chopsticks with a clatter, spraying yangnyeom sauce across the front of her pullover when they land in her tray.
“Shit.” She grabs the nearest napkin off Lu Han’s tray and rubs at the red stains spattered across the fuzzy cashmere. Now she really has to find a dry cleaning place.
“You weren’t listening to me, were you.” Sehun’s eyes are dark with accusations, as flat as the limp strands of hair tucked behind her ears in a stretchy headband.
“You better go rinse that out before the stain sets.” Lu Han frowns, a distracted pout that flickers between Jongin and Sehun before she bends to dig through her purse. “Here.”
“Thanks, Unni.” Jongin grabs the Tide-to-go strip from Lu Han. Her chair screeches on the linoleum as she jumps up from the table. “Be right back.”
A few minutes of rubbing with the strip and cold water don’t do much, just fade the red to a hideous, greasy shade of orange. Jongin gives up and squeezes the dripping sleeves of her cardigan into the sink. She promises herself with a grimace in the mirror to get it professionally cleaned.
Jongin rushes out of the bathroom to hang the sweater in her office before rejoining her table for lunch. Even if she hurries, Sehun and Lu Han will be finishing up by the time she makes it back down.
“Whoa! Oops!” Jongin bangs her shin into the stack of boxes next to the water cooler and narrowly avoids catapulting into the person rounding the corner.
“Umph,” a deep voice groans when Jongin’s sopping sleeve slaps him in the face.
“S-sorry!” Jongin gathers the sodden mass into her chest and hunches forward in a bow, hoping to scuttle away before anyone can recognize her.
“Hey, are you ok there? You look a little out of breath!”
Jongin gulps down a stray bit of green onion caught in her teeth, looking up to meet the eyes of Kris Wu as he rests a hand on her shoulder.
“‘M fine, thanks.”
“You’re all wet! You’re soaking, what happened?” His gentle touch melts away, grazing the outline of her shoulder.
“Nothing,” she huffs. She’s completely red in the face now, sweaty humiliation starting to dampen the band of her bra. “I’m--fine. On my way to lunch.”
“Well here, take my jacket at least! You’ll freeze in that sleeveless thing. Management is always cutting corners on electricity for heating and….stuff.” He gestures lamely, his long fingers grasping for the words he can’t find.
Jongin starts to protest, that’s she’s totally fine and actually overheating in mortification here, but Kris is already tugging off his blazer and stepping around to drape it over her bare shoulders. The lining is crisp silk, the kind of material that feels a bit chilly when you first slip into the sleeves, but it’s already warm with Kris’ body heat and Jongin flushes even hotter when she realizes it.
“Thanks, I should go down to lunch now. Are you sure you don’t--”
“Don’t embarrass me by refusing my chivalry, mi’lady,” Kris says, retreating with an exaggerated wink that would have Jongin gagging if she weren’t already enough of a mess.
She tosses her sweater over the spare chair in her office and makes it halfway down the hall before she freezes midstep, her chunky heel catching on a wrinkle in the carpeting. If she goes back down to the cafeteria in Kris’ jacket Sehun will--
Shit.
Jongin dashes back to her office to wait, the blazer folded in half and stuffed on the least dusty ledge under her desk. She doesn’t have to wait long, but it feels so interminable she can almost hear the steady descent of dust all around her in the still room.
Kris--see, Kris is a problem. Kris is the type of guy she’s supposed to like: a stable job and obliging manners, a little stiff but in an endearingly awkward kind of way. And he still manages to look cool while slouched in his ergonomic office chair quoting basketball stats over the phone. Slightly sucky posture, but he dresses sharp, like he knows his body type well. His clothes are expensive, too. Designer label. Jongin’s mother would definitely approve.
And maybe that’s why just the sight of him, the smell of his expensive-ass cologne, makes her stomach churn. Jongin can’t stand her mother.
And Sehun--see, Sehun makes Jongin squirm for completely different reasons. Reasons including the dark purr of her subtle lisp and the knobbly joints of her fingers that are long with the unnerving elegance of spider legs.
Sehun makes Jongin want to break the rules. Rules like coworkers shouldn’t kiss coworkers during business hours, and coworkers shouldn’t blush when coworkers kiss them goodbye at the door. Okay, she’ll admit it, Lu Han is a tempting influence, too.
Jongin should be fine though, because Jongin is usually quite good at rules. She never drank underage, and she consistently earned near perfect grades. Even once she realized her parents had no idea how she was doing (Jongin found the rubber-banded stack of unopened progress reports in her father’s desk when she went “home” to Switzerland one Christmas) she kept it up, her push for perfection. Maybe it was out of habit, or maybe because that’s who she was, who she had become.
Up til high school graduation, Jongin only broke one rule in the entire history of her upbringing. His name was Taemin. He was pretty, gorgeous in a bit of eyeliner with the rosy flush of wine in his cheeks. He had a smart mouth that made more than one teacher blush in class, and Jongin knew her parents would have hated him if they knew how unsuitable he was. She wasn’t supposed to date anyone, regardless.
Basically, he was perfect for her. Or at least for her purposes.
They spent the first weekend of winter break junior year in a ski lodge up in the Swiss alps, instead of going straight home as planned. Jongin was terrified of facing her parents upon her return, but also thrilled at the chance to reveal her rebellion. You don’t give a fuck about me, so how does it feel when I jet off and leaveyou behind, fuckers.
She arrived on Christmas Eve, during the annual gala her parents hosted for her father’s work associates. Jongin’s mother just pulled her into the hall and whispered, dark red manicure biting into Jongin’s wrist, “I hope you’re being careful. Don’t do anything foolish.”
Translation: don’t get knocked up and embarrass the family. Because that’s all Jongin was to them, is to them--a reputation linked to theirs, a connection governed by propriety and rules.
And Jongin is usually quite good at rules, but operating by these ones--Sehun’s fucked up sense of humor, or is it affection? and Lu Han’s casual intimacy--make no sense to her. But maybe that’s okay, Jongin thinks as she logs into her email with trembling hands. After all, isn’t the reason she moved here to escape rules? What’s the harm in breaking a few more.
It’s Thursday afternoon and Jongin is three sticks of gum away from cracking her jaw in two. She’s been chewing more furiously than she’s been typing, which is quite a feat considering the tension that zings through her carpal tunnels when she flexes her wrists. Two spreads of the special feature down, just a few pages to go. She can just make it before the deadline if--
“Crap!” Jongin yells as the computer screen shorts out on her. “Fucking hell!”
She slams her heel into her desk drawer, a sudden burst of hot anger evaporating through her flared nostrils--anger at the black screen for suddenly ruining her life for no apparent reason, anger at the sting in her wrists, and mostly anger at herself for letting it happen. Because she forgot to turn her power strip back on after lunch. The battery must’ve died while she was absorbed in her work.
Cussing under her breath with every seething inhale, Jongin plugs in her computer and powers it on. It loads, slowly, but the document she was working on is gone, completely blank.
“Fuck,” Jongin says again, a bitter laugh of disbelief rattling her chest. She rises out of her seat halfway, then sits down hard.
Hard enough enough to knock a bolt loose, or something, because the next thing she knows, she’s on the floor with a broken chair back digging into her throbbing ankle, staring up at Kris who is hanging through the doorway with a worried expression clouding his face.
“Are you ok? I heard some loud noise and…”
“I’m fine,” Jongin squeaks, hands immediately flying to her hair to smooth down her bangs. “Just some technical difficulties, you know, computers.”
“Oh,” Kris says, his face relaxing a bit as he steps into the room. “Well I’m no expert, but do you want me to take a look?”
“I’m not sure if you can do much.” Jongin bites her lip and stands to kick the shambles of her chair aside. “I’m just a complete dodo muffin and somehow managed to delete my entire article, right before the deadline, and--”
“Oh,” Kris says, nudging her aside with his shoulder to take control of the mouse. “In that case, no problem. Just call IT and they can resurrect it from the intranet graveyard. They’ve saved my neck so many times.”
“Ok,” Jongin says through a tremulous giggle. “I don’t know what that even means, but if you think it’ll work, then.”
“Just relax, Jongin. It’ll be ok.” He flashes her a gummy smile and picks up the phone, already dialing. “Just tell me the name you saved the file under and they can find it.”
“Ok…” Jongin scrambles for a post it, a discarded envelope, anything to scrawl a note on because--
“What’s the name?” Kris mouths between charming responses to Kyungsoo, the scary chick in IT Jongin’s always hearing rumors about.
“I--” Jongin’s desk is bare, not even a crumpled receipt in sight. She keeps her work area spotless in drastic contrast to her living space.
“Hurry!” he whispers, waving his free hand.
“The big...dawg,” Jongin chokes out.
“Big dog? What?” Kris repeats, followed by a snappish request from Kyungsoo to “just spell it, for goodness sake.” Jongin can hear her clearly over the line.
“...B-I-G underscore, D-A-W-G…” Jongin’s face is flaming, licking flames of flaming fire all the way down to her collarbones. She’s looking at the floor, not at Kris, but the amusement is clear in his voice as he repeats it back to Kyungsoo between muffled snickers.
“Thanks a mil, Kyungsoo,” Kris says, and hangs up the phone. Jongin can hear the ticking of his expensive gold watch in the silence, or maybe that’s her own heartbeat in her ears. Either way, it sounds like the countdown to her own demise.
“Thank you,” Jongin whispers to the floor. “Like, a lot. Thanks a Miltank. I’m so horrible with digital things that I just breathe on them and they start imploding, and and--”
“No problem.” Kris stretches up, flipping back his poofy blonde bangs with a head toss. “They’ll email you the file. There might be a few paragraphs missing, but better than nothing, eh?” He nudges her shoulder again, just a friendly brush, and Jongin nods quickly.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, and Kyungsoo says to take your computer down to IT when you’re free, something about an update that corrupted the interfacing for that design software you guys use.”
“Oh, sure,” Jongin says, nipping at a hangnail. “Thanks again!”
“You know right where to find me if you ever need me!” Kris trips out the door with a mock salute, nearly crashing into Sehun as she strides into Jongin’s office.
“What was he doing in here?” Sehun slams the door. Her eyes are hard behind the portcullis of iron suspicion barring any glints of amusement lurking in their depths.
“Helping me.” Jongin sinks onto the edge of her desk. She’s feeling a bit woozy and her chair is still in pieces on the floor.
“Helping with what?” Sehun’s voice is hard too as she approaches, uneven footfalls pummeling the floor.
“I was dumb. Deleted a file. Kris helped me call IT to recover it.” Jongin refreshes her inbox with shaking fingers. A wave of relief turns her stomach when the file from Kyungsoo pops up.
“You call him Kris? You’re on first name basis?” Sehun sounds almost angry, the sharp line of her jaw clenched until her lips poof out in a comical pout.
“Yeah?” Jongin opens the file with a double click as soon as it downloads. She lost a few changes from the end, but nothing she can’t rework. Praise Pikachu. Kris is awesome.
“If there was a problem why didn’t you just ask Lu Han?”
“Because Lu Han is giving a report to Outreach & Development today and Kris was here?” Jongin saves the file to her desktop, twice, and then to her flash drive. “Hey, do you know how to get ahold of maintenance? My chair is--”
“So you just go with whatever’s convenient for you?” Sehun’s voice is sliding up into an unbearable pitch, her lisp even more pronounced when she’s angry. “What about departmental loyalty? Did you forget about that, Ms. Kim?”
“He was helping, Sehun, he helped me. Saved my ass, to be exact. All of ours.” Jongin stabs a finger at the computer screen, at the cursor blinking near the top of her rescued work. “And now I need to finish this before--”
“You know what?” Sehun blinks rapidly, the bags under her eyes flushing a deep red. If Jongin didn’t know any better, she’d think Sehun was about to--
“Just--whatever.” Sehun waves her hands, an agitated splay of angles in a series of intersecting planes, opening and closing before Jongin’s eyes have a chance to gauge the degrees of their anger. “When you make up your mind who you really trust, let me know!”
The door slams again, bouncing back from the frame to swing open on the creaky hinges. Jongin blinks at the Rilakkuma bear propped next to Doraemon on the shelf until her shaking knees give way. She sits down on the broken chair back on the floor, hard, and rubs her swelling ankle with curse because dammit, it’s not fair that Sehun’s mad at her. Nothing about Sehun is fair.
Jongin hasn’t cried over the unfairness of the world since she was four. Okay, maybe it’s more like fourteen, but either way she’s an adult now. An adult with a grown up job and her own apartment, and how dare Oh Sehun talk to her like she’s trash, like she doesn’t know things. All minor incidents aside (and no, she’s not counting almost sabotaging their department’s weekly submission, because that was an accident and it’s all fixed now), Jongin is doing great at her job. Minseok even said so.
So why Sehun’s bitter words leave her feeling all hollowed out, just enough emptiness between her ribs for a rain cloud of tears to form, Jongin has no idea. Sehun’s just a colleague, after all. A confusing and emotionally stunted colleague who coincidentally happens to look sinful in dark red lipstick. No one Jongin cares about.
Jongin skips out on lunch the next day, not because she’s avoiding someone, but because she has a lot to get done before the weekend. She doesn’t bother sending a message to let Lu Han and Sehun know, just sits tight in her replacement chair and watches the clock tick through the designated meeting time. A twist of rancorous glee tightens in Jongin’s chest as she imagines Sehun impatient by the elevator, jittering her clunky boot against the tile while Lu Han texts on her phone.
But when twenty minutes pass and no one’s come to bang down her door with hangry whining or assault her phone with strings of dubious emojis, Jongin realizes they must have left without her. Hot guilt stabs into her gut, probing between her intestines, but she tightens her abs in resolve.
Jongin thought for sure Lu Han would come to lure her into compliance with promises of ddeok bokki and french fries and Sehun’s head--ahem--apology on a platter. Lu Han is the perfect unni after all, sophisticated perfume and comforting shoulder squeezes and force fed jelly doughnuts.
But no, she’s not worth even one generic emoji in a text today. Jongin feels more abandoned than she has in years, since the night she broke up with Taemin on Christmas and he told her with a dry laugh he’d only been dating her because Onew sunbae dared him too.
Jongin feels a searing leak at the seam of her eyes, hot emotion threatening to spiral out in a radioactive active wash of despair. She grabs two handfuls of kleenex from the box on her desk and mashes them against her eyelids because no, Jongin doesn’t care. She’s not going to give them the satisfaction of--
“Fuck,” she sobs into the messy wad, darting into the hall intent on reaching the sanctuary of the bathroom. Jongin rounds the corner as Victoria Song, Health & Beauty editor with flawless skin and flawless makeup and flawless everything, is disappearing into the ladie’s room. Jongin scuds to a stop with a groan of frustration. Sehun and Lu Han suck, yeah, but she isn’t going to cry in front of Victoria. Departmental loyalty, and all that.
The elevator dings, announcing an arrival. Jongin spins away with a fleeting burst of gratitude that Kris isn’t at his corner desk to witness her melt down. She dives for the emergency exit, out the door to the narrow balcony where the trash bins are stashed.
Cold droplets needle Jongin’s shins through her nylons and she realizes with a shaky laugh that’s it’s raining. How fitting. And she forgot her umbrella this morning.
“I am a rock, I am an island~!” she mumbles into her disintegrating tissues, wincing when her voice cracks on the highest note.
“Bad day?” Jongin starts at the low murmur behind her, wiping bits of soggy kleenex from her eyes as she turns to gape at Kris. “Or did you delete another ‘dawg’?”
“I--” Jongin swallows hard. She blinks through the sting of rain, transfixed by the glowing cherry of the cigarette Kris is sheltering under the narrow overhang. His leather jacket is dripping and his bangs are getting damp.
“Sehun’s an ass.” She kicks the wheel of the nearest garbage bin. “It doesn’t matter though, I don’t care what she thinks at all.”
“That’s good to know,” Kris says, and drops his butt into a puddle. The heel of his shiny left shoe grates the roll into the concrete. “Hey, you’re all wet again, come here.” He beckons Jongin closer, making a space for her under the overhang.
“I--” Jongin’s voice falters as his long, long fingers skate over the planes of her face, trace the streaks of tears and rain and rage.
“You want a smoke?” He pulls one from a nearly empty pack but Jongin shakes her head.
Kris lights up with a curse and a shaky puff, exhales downwind of her then leans in to swallow her exhales. His lips open, flutter closed with a tremble that echoes her fingers. Her fingers vibrate with the restrained intensity of a seismograph needle and Jongin closes her fists around the tremors til her nails bite into her palms.
Damp fingers find their way into her hair, graze the continent of her scalp and the horn of her ear. He’s staring at her lips, glancing up to her eyes with a question on the hint of tongue flicking between his lips.
Jongin turns her head with a gasp, snatching the cigarette and splicing it through her lips to hold him off. His head knocks against the brick but he inches closer. Jongin takes a drag, closes her eyes and lets the darkness invade her lungs as Kris palms the rain from her neck.
“Hey,” he says, tucking rivulets of hair behind her ear and guiding her cheek to rest on his shoulder.
“Fu--” Jongin chokes on the smoke. The acrid burn of disappointment curls to the depths of her lungs til she’s doubled forward. Kris drags her up by the shoulders and snatches the cig away.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers between rasping coughs, and her lips are wet with rain as she pulls away. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok.” His brows dip in concern as her fingers slip from his grasp. “You know where to find me if…”
“Yeah,” Jongin says. The heavy door echoes as it slams behind her.
Jongin spends all weekend in her apartment, only stepping out for ice cream and extra kleenex. On Monday, she tells herself, things will be better.
But on Monday morning Sehun is still ignoring her. She talks right over the top of her in their meeting when Jongin tries to answer Lu Han about ordering delivery for lunch. Jongin tries again four times but with each interruption she sinks lower in her seat, a tiny hermit crab retreating into it’s last defense.
Lu Han is at least civil to her, but does nothing to correct Sehun. Jongin feels like an imposter as she slinks out of the meeting room, a kid playing dress up in her mother’s lipstick and heels. Except the pumps on her feet fit her to a tee, her own purchase, and Jongin’s mother would never wear discount leather.
When the door to her office clicks shut behind her, Jongin feels the empty gap spreading inside her harden, calcify into permanence. Or maybe it was there all along, long before this recent mess. Maybe she missed some crucial stage of development when she a skipped two grades in middle school, when she grew up too fast under Taemin’s greedy hands and her parents’ indifference.
Jongin finishes her first assignment of the week with leaden fingertips on a dusty keyboard and takes the file up to Minseok.
“Thanks,” Minseok says, smiling when Jongin hands her flashdrive over. “Did you and, um--” Minseok clears her throat, licks her teeth. “Did you all work things out in your department?”
Jongin flinches at the implication in Minseok’s vice, one hand already on the door knob. “It’s ok. Sehun is--” Jongin stops herself with a sharp puff of air. Airing her dirty laundry in Minseok’s cubicle isn’t going to make any difference probably, and tattling is for kids and lameasses. “It’ll be fine.”
“Did Sehun...say anything?” Minseok hands back the storage drive with a sidelong glance that gives Jongin a sudden rash of goosebumps under her cuffs. “About why she’s upset, or?”
“It’s…” Jongin sucks in a deep breath. “It’s my fault. I broke some departmental rules, or, or something. It won’t happen again. Seriously.”
“I won’t bring up the, um, issue,” Minseok says, “what happened when Chanyeol resigned, because I assume Lu Han filled you in on all the necessary bits, but--” Minseok twirls her heavy black ballpoint and drops it to the legal pad spread across her desk. “You do realize those departmental rules are there for a reason, yes?” She pauses for a few blinks, as if waiting for Jongin to nod.
“Right, of course,” Jongin says quickly, tugging on the loose second button of her cardigan.
“I won’t say names, but Sehun’s not the only blonde bastard around here with ridiculously long legs, as I’m sure you’ve figured out.” Minseok scoffs, her lips curled in a tight half smile. “Anyway, I’m sure it will all blow over, just get back to work. And try to get along with Sehun, yeah?”
“Yes ma’am!”
Minseok makes a shooing motion and Jongin scrambles to close the door behind her. She waits til the coast is clear to take the elevator back down and slips into her office, relieved to be alone. She needs time, sleep, to unravel this information. Minseok’s explanation just added more facets to the mirror maze in Jongin’s of confusion, but first--work. She can worry about loyalty and gut instincts after her deadline.
Jongin plugs in her laptop. Her computer’s up and running fine today but she can’t seem to focus on work, like the corrupted code is her heart this time instead of her software. No, it’s bigger than that, bigger than just her feelings. Her heart, her brain, all the electrical circuits that fire along her nerves--they’ve all gone wonky and Jongin can’t get her hands to still around a mug of lukewarm coffee, let alone type 150 wpm.
It’s like a vicious Trojan horse, a worm. The same window keeps replicating on the screen of her consciousness faster than she can close the duplicates: Sehun’s empty eyes and open lips. Jongin can’t tell from the image seared into her cortex if the black voids of Sehun’s disappointment are being swallowed down like poison, or are emerging from the frame to absorb her.
Or maybe it’s both, because Sehun is the queen of mixed signals and Jongin can’t keep up anymore.
It’s dark outside the taxi window and the night air smells like rain. This trip feels like a bad life decision, one her younger self definitely wouldn’t indulge in...does that mean she’s growing up, getting braver? Or just giving up on her standards? Jongin has no idea what’s she’s doing, what she’ll say, but she pays the driver and climbs out of the cab with jelly filled knees. Too late now to go home without trying.
She takes the elevator up and punches the bell. If her fingers are shaking it’s just because of the cold. She grabbed the wrong coat on the way out the door this morning.
Sehun answers Lu Han’s front door, a bottle of acetone reeking in her hand. “If you’re here to say sorry--”
“That wouldn’t cut it, right?” Jongin’s laugh is small, gets lost in the draft wafting over the threshold. Sehun is silent but Jongin can’t tell if she’s actually listening. Maybe she’s just blinking over Jongin’s shoulder at the hall light while deciding on a pizza order.
“Ok,” Jongin says, and folds her arms across her chest to distract them both from the way her lips wobble. “So I won’t say it then.”
She leans forward and kisses Sehun, presses in til she reciprocates with a sharp nip and a breathless gasp. Sehun pulls back with a smile, all coy, fluttering lashes. Tight fingers around Jongin’s wrist pull her into the house, past the entry and into the front room where Lu Han is sprawled on the sofa.
Lu Han’s messy waves spill over the shoulders of a lacy night dress more suited for June than almost-December. She looks up when Sehun clears her throat, a soft smile warming her lips.
“Welcome home, Jonginnie, baby.” Only half of Lu Han’s toenails are coated the in same carmine red as her faded lipstick, but Lu Han sets the nail lacquer on the coffee table and stretches to her feet. “We knew you’d come.”
And Jongin can barely swallow down the lump in her throat before Lu Han’s fingers catch Sehun’s around her wrists and Lu Han’s mouth is hot against her own. Nothing makes more sense to Jongin than it did three hours ago, worrying the chain of her dented flash drive alone in her dusty office, but Sehun’s long arms wrapping up her waist and the tang of black orchid in her nostrils definitely, finally, inevitably feel like home to Jongin. The place Jongin has been longing to grow into.
“Thanks for waiting,” she says, and leans into their embrace.
(part one here) (part two here)
Pairing: Jongin//Sehun//Luhan OT3
Rating: PG-13
Warnings:[Spoiler (click to open)]language, possible sexual harassment, fem!exo (girl!Jongin, girl!Sehun, girl!Lu Han, girl!Minseok, and girl!Chanyeol), Kris
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, written just for fun.
Summary: First day on the job, and Jongin is already in over her head--in an ocean of hot breath and angry sighs named Oh Sehun. Lu Han’s perfume is also pretty overwhelming.
A/N: loosely based on the lyrics of this and this. Originally posted at the forjongin exchange.
Apparently the department rule is that what happens on weekends stays out of the board room, because no one mentions the events that have Jongin squirming in her chair with three kinds of dread and anticipation. One part dread to two parts anticipation, that is, because Sehun comes in Monday morning smelling like Lu Han’s black orchid shower gel when she leans into Jongin’s breathing space with a raspy “hey, kid.”
“Pastry?” Lu Han asks politely, opening the session with a distribution of the same jelly filled doughnuts they had at the first meeting. Same as the one she handed Jongin on her way out the door Sunday morning, with a kiss to her temple. Jongin had accepted it with a hot blush as Sehun’s long, long fingers straightened the collar of Lu Han’s old polo under the folds of Jongin’s scarf.
Jongin is blushing now, too, as her fingers brush against Lu Han’s and a flurry of powdered sugar ices the bony knobs of Sehun’s knees.
“Do we have actual business to discuss?” Sehun kicks her boots, the untied laces swinging. She’s perched on the edge of the table as usual, between Jongin and the boss.
“Nope!” Lu Han dusts her hands over the carpet instead of the pastry box. “Unless you lovely ladies want to discuss the possibility of checking out that french cake shop, the one that just opened in Apgu.”
“Let’s stick with the jelly.” Sehun wrinkles her nose, tearing her pastry in half and squishing the rosy filling all over her fingers.
“How do you feel about jelly, Jonginnie?” Lu Han leans forward and the heavy pendant of her gold locket swings on its chain.
“I dunno,” Jongin mumbles, looking down from the sight of Sehun’s long, pale fingers curling between her thin lips as she sucks the jam clean.
“Well then, meeting adjourned!” Lu Han slams down the box lid, catty-cornered. “Unless anyone has complaints or snide suggestions to share with us. You would tell us if anything was the matter, right Jongin?”
“Yeah, sure?” Jongin tugs the shoulder seams of her dress forward, into place. Lu Han’s borrowed shirt is still wadded in the basket under her bed, waiting to be laundered.
Sehun leans back, bracing her wrists against the table, until her head drops onto Lu Han’s shoulder. She gives a tiny kitten yawn, nose scrunching, and blinks sleepily at Jongin. “But nothing’s wrong, is it?”
“No,” Jongin says, and shoves the pastry past her lips until the filling bleeds out at the edges of her mouth.
The only thing that’s wrong is that Jongin doesn’t know where things stand. Sehun with her fingers stroking through Lu Han’s coiffed curls during lunch, and Sehun sneaking her fingers up the soft skin of Jongin’s thigh--which one is she supposed to trust, and which one is an illusion? Or are they both--
“Yah! Jongin.” Sehun snaps her fingers in Jongin’s face. Jongin drops her chopsticks with a clatter, spraying yangnyeom sauce across the front of her pullover when they land in her tray.
“Shit.” She grabs the nearest napkin off Lu Han’s tray and rubs at the red stains spattered across the fuzzy cashmere. Now she really has to find a dry cleaning place.
“You weren’t listening to me, were you.” Sehun’s eyes are dark with accusations, as flat as the limp strands of hair tucked behind her ears in a stretchy headband.
“You better go rinse that out before the stain sets.” Lu Han frowns, a distracted pout that flickers between Jongin and Sehun before she bends to dig through her purse. “Here.”
“Thanks, Unni.” Jongin grabs the Tide-to-go strip from Lu Han. Her chair screeches on the linoleum as she jumps up from the table. “Be right back.”
A few minutes of rubbing with the strip and cold water don’t do much, just fade the red to a hideous, greasy shade of orange. Jongin gives up and squeezes the dripping sleeves of her cardigan into the sink. She promises herself with a grimace in the mirror to get it professionally cleaned.
Jongin rushes out of the bathroom to hang the sweater in her office before rejoining her table for lunch. Even if she hurries, Sehun and Lu Han will be finishing up by the time she makes it back down.
“Whoa! Oops!” Jongin bangs her shin into the stack of boxes next to the water cooler and narrowly avoids catapulting into the person rounding the corner.
“Umph,” a deep voice groans when Jongin’s sopping sleeve slaps him in the face.
“S-sorry!” Jongin gathers the sodden mass into her chest and hunches forward in a bow, hoping to scuttle away before anyone can recognize her.
“Hey, are you ok there? You look a little out of breath!”
Jongin gulps down a stray bit of green onion caught in her teeth, looking up to meet the eyes of Kris Wu as he rests a hand on her shoulder.
“‘M fine, thanks.”
“You’re all wet! You’re soaking, what happened?” His gentle touch melts away, grazing the outline of her shoulder.
“Nothing,” she huffs. She’s completely red in the face now, sweaty humiliation starting to dampen the band of her bra. “I’m--fine. On my way to lunch.”
“Well here, take my jacket at least! You’ll freeze in that sleeveless thing. Management is always cutting corners on electricity for heating and….stuff.” He gestures lamely, his long fingers grasping for the words he can’t find.
Jongin starts to protest, that’s she’s totally fine and actually overheating in mortification here, but Kris is already tugging off his blazer and stepping around to drape it over her bare shoulders. The lining is crisp silk, the kind of material that feels a bit chilly when you first slip into the sleeves, but it’s already warm with Kris’ body heat and Jongin flushes even hotter when she realizes it.
“Thanks, I should go down to lunch now. Are you sure you don’t--”
“Don’t embarrass me by refusing my chivalry, mi’lady,” Kris says, retreating with an exaggerated wink that would have Jongin gagging if she weren’t already enough of a mess.
She tosses her sweater over the spare chair in her office and makes it halfway down the hall before she freezes midstep, her chunky heel catching on a wrinkle in the carpeting. If she goes back down to the cafeteria in Kris’ jacket Sehun will--
Shit.
Jongin dashes back to her office to wait, the blazer folded in half and stuffed on the least dusty ledge under her desk. She doesn’t have to wait long, but it feels so interminable she can almost hear the steady descent of dust all around her in the still room.
Kris--see, Kris is a problem. Kris is the type of guy she’s supposed to like: a stable job and obliging manners, a little stiff but in an endearingly awkward kind of way. And he still manages to look cool while slouched in his ergonomic office chair quoting basketball stats over the phone. Slightly sucky posture, but he dresses sharp, like he knows his body type well. His clothes are expensive, too. Designer label. Jongin’s mother would definitely approve.
And maybe that’s why just the sight of him, the smell of his expensive-ass cologne, makes her stomach churn. Jongin can’t stand her mother.
And Sehun--see, Sehun makes Jongin squirm for completely different reasons. Reasons including the dark purr of her subtle lisp and the knobbly joints of her fingers that are long with the unnerving elegance of spider legs.
Sehun makes Jongin want to break the rules. Rules like coworkers shouldn’t kiss coworkers during business hours, and coworkers shouldn’t blush when coworkers kiss them goodbye at the door. Okay, she’ll admit it, Lu Han is a tempting influence, too.
Jongin should be fine though, because Jongin is usually quite good at rules. She never drank underage, and she consistently earned near perfect grades. Even once she realized her parents had no idea how she was doing (Jongin found the rubber-banded stack of unopened progress reports in her father’s desk when she went “home” to Switzerland one Christmas) she kept it up, her push for perfection. Maybe it was out of habit, or maybe because that’s who she was, who she had become.
Up til high school graduation, Jongin only broke one rule in the entire history of her upbringing. His name was Taemin. He was pretty, gorgeous in a bit of eyeliner with the rosy flush of wine in his cheeks. He had a smart mouth that made more than one teacher blush in class, and Jongin knew her parents would have hated him if they knew how unsuitable he was. She wasn’t supposed to date anyone, regardless.
Basically, he was perfect for her. Or at least for her purposes.
They spent the first weekend of winter break junior year in a ski lodge up in the Swiss alps, instead of going straight home as planned. Jongin was terrified of facing her parents upon her return, but also thrilled at the chance to reveal her rebellion. You don’t give a fuck about me, so how does it feel when I jet off and leaveyou behind, fuckers.
She arrived on Christmas Eve, during the annual gala her parents hosted for her father’s work associates. Jongin’s mother just pulled her into the hall and whispered, dark red manicure biting into Jongin’s wrist, “I hope you’re being careful. Don’t do anything foolish.”
Translation: don’t get knocked up and embarrass the family. Because that’s all Jongin was to them, is to them--a reputation linked to theirs, a connection governed by propriety and rules.
And Jongin is usually quite good at rules, but operating by these ones--Sehun’s fucked up sense of humor, or is it affection? and Lu Han’s casual intimacy--make no sense to her. But maybe that’s okay, Jongin thinks as she logs into her email with trembling hands. After all, isn’t the reason she moved here to escape rules? What’s the harm in breaking a few more.
It’s Thursday afternoon and Jongin is three sticks of gum away from cracking her jaw in two. She’s been chewing more furiously than she’s been typing, which is quite a feat considering the tension that zings through her carpal tunnels when she flexes her wrists. Two spreads of the special feature down, just a few pages to go. She can just make it before the deadline if--
“Crap!” Jongin yells as the computer screen shorts out on her. “Fucking hell!”
She slams her heel into her desk drawer, a sudden burst of hot anger evaporating through her flared nostrils--anger at the black screen for suddenly ruining her life for no apparent reason, anger at the sting in her wrists, and mostly anger at herself for letting it happen. Because she forgot to turn her power strip back on after lunch. The battery must’ve died while she was absorbed in her work.
Cussing under her breath with every seething inhale, Jongin plugs in her computer and powers it on. It loads, slowly, but the document she was working on is gone, completely blank.
“Fuck,” Jongin says again, a bitter laugh of disbelief rattling her chest. She rises out of her seat halfway, then sits down hard.
Hard enough enough to knock a bolt loose, or something, because the next thing she knows, she’s on the floor with a broken chair back digging into her throbbing ankle, staring up at Kris who is hanging through the doorway with a worried expression clouding his face.
“Are you ok? I heard some loud noise and…”
“I’m fine,” Jongin squeaks, hands immediately flying to her hair to smooth down her bangs. “Just some technical difficulties, you know, computers.”
“Oh,” Kris says, his face relaxing a bit as he steps into the room. “Well I’m no expert, but do you want me to take a look?”
“I’m not sure if you can do much.” Jongin bites her lip and stands to kick the shambles of her chair aside. “I’m just a complete dodo muffin and somehow managed to delete my entire article, right before the deadline, and--”
“Oh,” Kris says, nudging her aside with his shoulder to take control of the mouse. “In that case, no problem. Just call IT and they can resurrect it from the intranet graveyard. They’ve saved my neck so many times.”
“Ok,” Jongin says through a tremulous giggle. “I don’t know what that even means, but if you think it’ll work, then.”
“Just relax, Jongin. It’ll be ok.” He flashes her a gummy smile and picks up the phone, already dialing. “Just tell me the name you saved the file under and they can find it.”
“Ok…” Jongin scrambles for a post it, a discarded envelope, anything to scrawl a note on because--
“What’s the name?” Kris mouths between charming responses to Kyungsoo, the scary chick in IT Jongin’s always hearing rumors about.
“I--” Jongin’s desk is bare, not even a crumpled receipt in sight. She keeps her work area spotless in drastic contrast to her living space.
“Hurry!” he whispers, waving his free hand.
“The big...dawg,” Jongin chokes out.
“Big dog? What?” Kris repeats, followed by a snappish request from Kyungsoo to “just spell it, for goodness sake.” Jongin can hear her clearly over the line.
“...B-I-G underscore, D-A-W-G…” Jongin’s face is flaming, licking flames of flaming fire all the way down to her collarbones. She’s looking at the floor, not at Kris, but the amusement is clear in his voice as he repeats it back to Kyungsoo between muffled snickers.
“Thanks a mil, Kyungsoo,” Kris says, and hangs up the phone. Jongin can hear the ticking of his expensive gold watch in the silence, or maybe that’s her own heartbeat in her ears. Either way, it sounds like the countdown to her own demise.
“Thank you,” Jongin whispers to the floor. “Like, a lot. Thanks a Miltank. I’m so horrible with digital things that I just breathe on them and they start imploding, and and--”
“No problem.” Kris stretches up, flipping back his poofy blonde bangs with a head toss. “They’ll email you the file. There might be a few paragraphs missing, but better than nothing, eh?” He nudges her shoulder again, just a friendly brush, and Jongin nods quickly.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, and Kyungsoo says to take your computer down to IT when you’re free, something about an update that corrupted the interfacing for that design software you guys use.”
“Oh, sure,” Jongin says, nipping at a hangnail. “Thanks again!”
“You know right where to find me if you ever need me!” Kris trips out the door with a mock salute, nearly crashing into Sehun as she strides into Jongin’s office.
“What was he doing in here?” Sehun slams the door. Her eyes are hard behind the portcullis of iron suspicion barring any glints of amusement lurking in their depths.
“Helping me.” Jongin sinks onto the edge of her desk. She’s feeling a bit woozy and her chair is still in pieces on the floor.
“Helping with what?” Sehun’s voice is hard too as she approaches, uneven footfalls pummeling the floor.
“I was dumb. Deleted a file. Kris helped me call IT to recover it.” Jongin refreshes her inbox with shaking fingers. A wave of relief turns her stomach when the file from Kyungsoo pops up.
“You call him Kris? You’re on first name basis?” Sehun sounds almost angry, the sharp line of her jaw clenched until her lips poof out in a comical pout.
“Yeah?” Jongin opens the file with a double click as soon as it downloads. She lost a few changes from the end, but nothing she can’t rework. Praise Pikachu. Kris is awesome.
“If there was a problem why didn’t you just ask Lu Han?”
“Because Lu Han is giving a report to Outreach & Development today and Kris was here?” Jongin saves the file to her desktop, twice, and then to her flash drive. “Hey, do you know how to get ahold of maintenance? My chair is--”
“So you just go with whatever’s convenient for you?” Sehun’s voice is sliding up into an unbearable pitch, her lisp even more pronounced when she’s angry. “What about departmental loyalty? Did you forget about that, Ms. Kim?”
“He was helping, Sehun, he helped me. Saved my ass, to be exact. All of ours.” Jongin stabs a finger at the computer screen, at the cursor blinking near the top of her rescued work. “And now I need to finish this before--”
“You know what?” Sehun blinks rapidly, the bags under her eyes flushing a deep red. If Jongin didn’t know any better, she’d think Sehun was about to--
“Just--whatever.” Sehun waves her hands, an agitated splay of angles in a series of intersecting planes, opening and closing before Jongin’s eyes have a chance to gauge the degrees of their anger. “When you make up your mind who you really trust, let me know!”
The door slams again, bouncing back from the frame to swing open on the creaky hinges. Jongin blinks at the Rilakkuma bear propped next to Doraemon on the shelf until her shaking knees give way. She sits down on the broken chair back on the floor, hard, and rubs her swelling ankle with curse because dammit, it’s not fair that Sehun’s mad at her. Nothing about Sehun is fair.
Jongin hasn’t cried over the unfairness of the world since she was four. Okay, maybe it’s more like fourteen, but either way she’s an adult now. An adult with a grown up job and her own apartment, and how dare Oh Sehun talk to her like she’s trash, like she doesn’t know things. All minor incidents aside (and no, she’s not counting almost sabotaging their department’s weekly submission, because that was an accident and it’s all fixed now), Jongin is doing great at her job. Minseok even said so.
So why Sehun’s bitter words leave her feeling all hollowed out, just enough emptiness between her ribs for a rain cloud of tears to form, Jongin has no idea. Sehun’s just a colleague, after all. A confusing and emotionally stunted colleague who coincidentally happens to look sinful in dark red lipstick. No one Jongin cares about.
Jongin skips out on lunch the next day, not because she’s avoiding someone, but because she has a lot to get done before the weekend. She doesn’t bother sending a message to let Lu Han and Sehun know, just sits tight in her replacement chair and watches the clock tick through the designated meeting time. A twist of rancorous glee tightens in Jongin’s chest as she imagines Sehun impatient by the elevator, jittering her clunky boot against the tile while Lu Han texts on her phone.
But when twenty minutes pass and no one’s come to bang down her door with hangry whining or assault her phone with strings of dubious emojis, Jongin realizes they must have left without her. Hot guilt stabs into her gut, probing between her intestines, but she tightens her abs in resolve.
Jongin thought for sure Lu Han would come to lure her into compliance with promises of ddeok bokki and french fries and Sehun’s head--ahem--apology on a platter. Lu Han is the perfect unni after all, sophisticated perfume and comforting shoulder squeezes and force fed jelly doughnuts.
But no, she’s not worth even one generic emoji in a text today. Jongin feels more abandoned than she has in years, since the night she broke up with Taemin on Christmas and he told her with a dry laugh he’d only been dating her because Onew sunbae dared him too.
Jongin feels a searing leak at the seam of her eyes, hot emotion threatening to spiral out in a radioactive active wash of despair. She grabs two handfuls of kleenex from the box on her desk and mashes them against her eyelids because no, Jongin doesn’t care. She’s not going to give them the satisfaction of--
“Fuck,” she sobs into the messy wad, darting into the hall intent on reaching the sanctuary of the bathroom. Jongin rounds the corner as Victoria Song, Health & Beauty editor with flawless skin and flawless makeup and flawless everything, is disappearing into the ladie’s room. Jongin scuds to a stop with a groan of frustration. Sehun and Lu Han suck, yeah, but she isn’t going to cry in front of Victoria. Departmental loyalty, and all that.
The elevator dings, announcing an arrival. Jongin spins away with a fleeting burst of gratitude that Kris isn’t at his corner desk to witness her melt down. She dives for the emergency exit, out the door to the narrow balcony where the trash bins are stashed.
Cold droplets needle Jongin’s shins through her nylons and she realizes with a shaky laugh that’s it’s raining. How fitting. And she forgot her umbrella this morning.
“I am a rock, I am an island~!” she mumbles into her disintegrating tissues, wincing when her voice cracks on the highest note.
“Bad day?” Jongin starts at the low murmur behind her, wiping bits of soggy kleenex from her eyes as she turns to gape at Kris. “Or did you delete another ‘dawg’?”
“I--” Jongin swallows hard. She blinks through the sting of rain, transfixed by the glowing cherry of the cigarette Kris is sheltering under the narrow overhang. His leather jacket is dripping and his bangs are getting damp.
“Sehun’s an ass.” She kicks the wheel of the nearest garbage bin. “It doesn’t matter though, I don’t care what she thinks at all.”
“That’s good to know,” Kris says, and drops his butt into a puddle. The heel of his shiny left shoe grates the roll into the concrete. “Hey, you’re all wet again, come here.” He beckons Jongin closer, making a space for her under the overhang.
“I--” Jongin’s voice falters as his long, long fingers skate over the planes of her face, trace the streaks of tears and rain and rage.
“You want a smoke?” He pulls one from a nearly empty pack but Jongin shakes her head.
Kris lights up with a curse and a shaky puff, exhales downwind of her then leans in to swallow her exhales. His lips open, flutter closed with a tremble that echoes her fingers. Her fingers vibrate with the restrained intensity of a seismograph needle and Jongin closes her fists around the tremors til her nails bite into her palms.
Damp fingers find their way into her hair, graze the continent of her scalp and the horn of her ear. He’s staring at her lips, glancing up to her eyes with a question on the hint of tongue flicking between his lips.
Jongin turns her head with a gasp, snatching the cigarette and splicing it through her lips to hold him off. His head knocks against the brick but he inches closer. Jongin takes a drag, closes her eyes and lets the darkness invade her lungs as Kris palms the rain from her neck.
“Hey,” he says, tucking rivulets of hair behind her ear and guiding her cheek to rest on his shoulder.
“Fu--” Jongin chokes on the smoke. The acrid burn of disappointment curls to the depths of her lungs til she’s doubled forward. Kris drags her up by the shoulders and snatches the cig away.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers between rasping coughs, and her lips are wet with rain as she pulls away. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok.” His brows dip in concern as her fingers slip from his grasp. “You know where to find me if…”
“Yeah,” Jongin says. The heavy door echoes as it slams behind her.
Jongin spends all weekend in her apartment, only stepping out for ice cream and extra kleenex. On Monday, she tells herself, things will be better.
But on Monday morning Sehun is still ignoring her. She talks right over the top of her in their meeting when Jongin tries to answer Lu Han about ordering delivery for lunch. Jongin tries again four times but with each interruption she sinks lower in her seat, a tiny hermit crab retreating into it’s last defense.
Lu Han is at least civil to her, but does nothing to correct Sehun. Jongin feels like an imposter as she slinks out of the meeting room, a kid playing dress up in her mother’s lipstick and heels. Except the pumps on her feet fit her to a tee, her own purchase, and Jongin’s mother would never wear discount leather.
When the door to her office clicks shut behind her, Jongin feels the empty gap spreading inside her harden, calcify into permanence. Or maybe it was there all along, long before this recent mess. Maybe she missed some crucial stage of development when she a skipped two grades in middle school, when she grew up too fast under Taemin’s greedy hands and her parents’ indifference.
Jongin finishes her first assignment of the week with leaden fingertips on a dusty keyboard and takes the file up to Minseok.
“Thanks,” Minseok says, smiling when Jongin hands her flashdrive over. “Did you and, um--” Minseok clears her throat, licks her teeth. “Did you all work things out in your department?”
Jongin flinches at the implication in Minseok’s vice, one hand already on the door knob. “It’s ok. Sehun is--” Jongin stops herself with a sharp puff of air. Airing her dirty laundry in Minseok’s cubicle isn’t going to make any difference probably, and tattling is for kids and lameasses. “It’ll be fine.”
“Did Sehun...say anything?” Minseok hands back the storage drive with a sidelong glance that gives Jongin a sudden rash of goosebumps under her cuffs. “About why she’s upset, or?”
“It’s…” Jongin sucks in a deep breath. “It’s my fault. I broke some departmental rules, or, or something. It won’t happen again. Seriously.”
“I won’t bring up the, um, issue,” Minseok says, “what happened when Chanyeol resigned, because I assume Lu Han filled you in on all the necessary bits, but--” Minseok twirls her heavy black ballpoint and drops it to the legal pad spread across her desk. “You do realize those departmental rules are there for a reason, yes?” She pauses for a few blinks, as if waiting for Jongin to nod.
“Right, of course,” Jongin says quickly, tugging on the loose second button of her cardigan.
“I won’t say names, but Sehun’s not the only blonde bastard around here with ridiculously long legs, as I’m sure you’ve figured out.” Minseok scoffs, her lips curled in a tight half smile. “Anyway, I’m sure it will all blow over, just get back to work. And try to get along with Sehun, yeah?”
“Yes ma’am!”
Minseok makes a shooing motion and Jongin scrambles to close the door behind her. She waits til the coast is clear to take the elevator back down and slips into her office, relieved to be alone. She needs time, sleep, to unravel this information. Minseok’s explanation just added more facets to the mirror maze in Jongin’s of confusion, but first--work. She can worry about loyalty and gut instincts after her deadline.
Jongin plugs in her laptop. Her computer’s up and running fine today but she can’t seem to focus on work, like the corrupted code is her heart this time instead of her software. No, it’s bigger than that, bigger than just her feelings. Her heart, her brain, all the electrical circuits that fire along her nerves--they’ve all gone wonky and Jongin can’t get her hands to still around a mug of lukewarm coffee, let alone type 150 wpm.
It’s like a vicious Trojan horse, a worm. The same window keeps replicating on the screen of her consciousness faster than she can close the duplicates: Sehun’s empty eyes and open lips. Jongin can’t tell from the image seared into her cortex if the black voids of Sehun’s disappointment are being swallowed down like poison, or are emerging from the frame to absorb her.
Or maybe it’s both, because Sehun is the queen of mixed signals and Jongin can’t keep up anymore.
It’s dark outside the taxi window and the night air smells like rain. This trip feels like a bad life decision, one her younger self definitely wouldn’t indulge in...does that mean she’s growing up, getting braver? Or just giving up on her standards? Jongin has no idea what’s she’s doing, what she’ll say, but she pays the driver and climbs out of the cab with jelly filled knees. Too late now to go home without trying.
She takes the elevator up and punches the bell. If her fingers are shaking it’s just because of the cold. She grabbed the wrong coat on the way out the door this morning.
Sehun answers Lu Han’s front door, a bottle of acetone reeking in her hand. “If you’re here to say sorry--”
“That wouldn’t cut it, right?” Jongin’s laugh is small, gets lost in the draft wafting over the threshold. Sehun is silent but Jongin can’t tell if she’s actually listening. Maybe she’s just blinking over Jongin’s shoulder at the hall light while deciding on a pizza order.
“Ok,” Jongin says, and folds her arms across her chest to distract them both from the way her lips wobble. “So I won’t say it then.”
She leans forward and kisses Sehun, presses in til she reciprocates with a sharp nip and a breathless gasp. Sehun pulls back with a smile, all coy, fluttering lashes. Tight fingers around Jongin’s wrist pull her into the house, past the entry and into the front room where Lu Han is sprawled on the sofa.
Lu Han’s messy waves spill over the shoulders of a lacy night dress more suited for June than almost-December. She looks up when Sehun clears her throat, a soft smile warming her lips.
“Welcome home, Jonginnie, baby.” Only half of Lu Han’s toenails are coated the in same carmine red as her faded lipstick, but Lu Han sets the nail lacquer on the coffee table and stretches to her feet. “We knew you’d come.”
And Jongin can barely swallow down the lump in her throat before Lu Han’s fingers catch Sehun’s around her wrists and Lu Han’s mouth is hot against her own. Nothing makes more sense to Jongin than it did three hours ago, worrying the chain of her dented flash drive alone in her dusty office, but Sehun’s long arms wrapping up her waist and the tang of black orchid in her nostrils definitely, finally, inevitably feel like home to Jongin. The place Jongin has been longing to grow into.
“Thanks for waiting,” she says, and leans into their embrace.
(part one here) (part two here)