miss right [GIRLS REMIX]
Title: miss right [GIRLS REMIX]
Pairing: fem!Jiho/fem!Jaehyo
Group: Block B
Rating: PG-13?
Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAR taeillow HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! I'm sorry I couldn't finish the other thing in time, please accept 8.5k of girls jaeco in its stead. I hope your birthday (was) is great and lovely and there's cake and not too many maths~ you are now old like me o yeah. NOTE: Miracle is the (only) lesbian club in Seoul, in Itaewon on the hill next to all of the other gay clubs.
Summary: How to Not Get a Date with a Hot Girl: A Guide, by Woo Jiho. Yeah, she could write the manual.
The first girl comes up within five minutes of Jiho’s arrival to Miracle. The club is packed, as per usual, but the girl manages to slip between people squashed up against the bar until she’s at Jiho’s arm.
She’s cute, all curves stacked on a short frame, like she’d be able to slip from Jiho’s arms if she looked away for a second.
Jiho looks over at her as she sucks the alcohol out of her drink, not assessing or judging, merely curious, and something in the girl’s posture immediately quails a bit at the scrutiny. Jiho raises one dark, pierced eyebrow.
Jiho knows she’s exciting for the traditional girls, with the spread of tattoos over her chest that spirals out of the cut sleeves of her top, and the designs shaved into the undercut at her right temple, but the girl almost flinches when Jiho reaches out to touch her arm.
With an inaudible sigh, Jiho pats her wrist and calls over the music, “I’m not dancing tonight, sorry.”
The girl purses her pink lips, shiny with gloss. Her eyes flick over Jiho’s dark eyeliner one more time and then slips away without a protest.
Jiho turns back to her drink, sad to discover that it’s been taken away.
“Did you have to give her the look?” Kyung asks from her side, and she turns to give her best friend a glare. Kyung has a drink in her hands that looks suspiciously like Jiho’s drink, and she snatches it back, sticking the straw in her mouth.
“What look?” she asks around the straw, suspicious.
“The I can see all of your secrets and am secretly judging you look,” Kyung says, dropping her voice low in a creepy imitation of Jiho’s own. “You should probably stop doing it. It scares the children.”
Jiho snorts, shaking the ice away so she can get to the remnants of alcohol in the bottom of the glass. “Children. People who can’t handle my face shouldn’t be out looking to get laid.”
Kyung rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but who can handle your face on a daily basis?” She cocks her head to the side, suddenly contemplative. “Other than me, of course. But then again I’m almost legally bound to.”
Jiho makes a face, especially when Kyung reaches over and flicks her ear. “Be kind to the shy ones, alright?”
“She wasn’t shy,” Jiho says, rubbing at her ear.
“Still. Try to leave a couple alive for the rest of us, okay?” Kyung indicates the packed space of the club with one small hand.
Jiho shrugs, indicating to the bartender for another drink. “She was scared of me,” she says lowly, so that Kyung at her side can’t even hear her.
“What?” Kyung yells, almost in her ear.
Jiho just shrugs, not wanting to explain again why being a nearly six-foot lesbian with tattoos and a propensity for dark eyeshadow might make it difficult to date someone in Korea. Kyung has heard it all before, and all the advice she’s ever given in return is distinctly unhelpful. (Get shorter! Yeah, okay.) Jiho just flicks her gaze out into the dance floor.
A minute later, another girl comes up to them- to Jiho- and she repeats the same routine again, seeing the flinch, the pull-back as she reaches out one hand to touch their shoulders, their hands, their wrists.
They want her- that’s obvious- but what’s also clear is their uncertainty, the way their eyes dip over Jiho’s tattoos and around the shaved curve of her hair. The idea of a bad girl is intriguing to the girls stuck in floaty skirts and pink tops, but none of them seem able to get past their deep-seated aversion.
Jiho sighs at Kyung, feeling her skin throb with the increasing decibels of the music. Mixed with the soju and questionable foreign alcohols of Itaewon, she feels ready to dance or punch somebody in the face, whichever opportunity comes up first.
Or maybe she’s just ready for another drink.
She turns to Kyung to ask if she wants one as well, but Kyung is peering over her shoulder with an expression oddly intent. Jiho waves a hand in front of Kyung but she doesn’t flinch.
“What?” Jiho asks, turning to look the way Kyung is. There’s a new group of girls near the door, obviously just arrived, all crowded together.
Jiho narrows her eyes at them, too, trying to figure out what Kyung is staring at. They are the standard girls out in Seoul, high heels and skirts barely skimming the tops of their thighs. It’s not really standard for Miracle, though, where half the clientele is foreigners on vacation or boys pouring in from the collection of gay clubs down the hill. Compared to everyone else, the group of girls making their way to the bar are way too dressed up.
A second later, the two girls in front split and the one behind them emerges.
A jolt goes through Jiho at her. Fuck. She’s pretty- too pretty, Jiho thinks. And tall, even without the skyscraper heels she’s tottering forward in. She could easily be Jiho’s height.
The three head up to the bar, two shorter girls framing the pretty girl and seeming to almost usher her there. The girl smiles weakly at the bartender, but it widens into a full laugh at something she says. The pretty girl almost looks stupid laughing, her whole body suddenly into it, but damn even that is endearing.
Jiho turns to Kyung, finally able to get her attention with a pinch to an arm.
Kyung looks at her in disbelief. “Are you seeing this? Three new girls.” She indicates them as if Jiho had no idea. “Wow.” Kyung shakes her head, eyes fastened on the girls at the bar.
“How much you want to bet it’s their first time? Especially-” Jiho clears her suddenly tight throat, “especially the tall girl in the middle.” Jiho’s eyes trace over her face.
Kyung scoffs and nudges at her side. “Don’t start. We’re here every other day and every weekend. Of course they’re new.” She knocks her glass against Jiho’s empty one and takes a drink. “Nice try, though.”
“No, I mean,” and a girl comes up to the pretty girl, slipping neatly between one of the friends and her. Pretty Girl laughs, nervousness back across her shoulders, but she watches the girl talking to her with interest clear across her fine features.
In the end, though, she smiles and waves to her friends, and the girl slips off alone. Jiho lets out a long breath that nearly gets choked back up. Almost as soon as the first girl leaves, another girl touches Pretty Girl’s shoulder and spins her around. She already has a hand on her arm, right below the pale wrist, as she arches up towards Pretty Girl’s ear.
“Do you see that?” Jiho says, voice embarrassingly high pitched. Her heartbeat kicks up in her chest as the girls lean close to speak.
Kyung laughs loudly next to her. “She’s hot, dude. You should go for that.”
But Pretty Girl turns down the second girl as well and leans up against the bar. Her smile is wider now, more relaxed, and her friends seem to congratulate her, holding their drinks up to her.
“Ugh, she’s probably not even into girls,” Jiho groans, taking an ice cube and popping it into her mouth. She crunches the ice, the sharp burst of cold dispersing the bitter taste in the back of her mouth from the whisky. “She probably only came with her friends and just likes the attention,” she grumbles.
Kyung is silent next to her, watching, but Jiho decides that she is done with the Pretty Girl Show and turns away.
She switches her gaze out onto the dance floor, hoping for someone she hasn’t seen a million times before. But everyone there she already knows, or she has no interest in knowing. Crunching the ice in her back teeth, she watches the monitors on the wall play an odd montage of remixed Madonna videos that don’t fit with the pounding club music.
She wonders if it would be sad to go home so early. It probably isn’t the earliest she’s ever gone home, but they’re been there less than an hour.
Kyung hits her arm and points out towards the bar. “Hey, hey, I think your lesbian-dar has failed you for once, Jiho-yah.”
Jiho raises her eyebrows and follows Kyung’s finger across the club. The space between the two friends is empty and Jiho can just make out Pretty Girl being pulled away into the crowd, somewhat unsteady on her tall heels.
Relief and another, less happy, emotion bloom in her chest. Jiho frowns.
She honestly doesn’t know why it matters who this girl dances with, or if she dances with any at all. Jiho watches the pair of them- the other girl is so short, she can’t even see her at first- as they push into the small dance floor, the shorter girl appearing to keep Pretty Girl upright when she lurches sideways.
“Can she even walk in those heels?” Jiho asks, scoffing, but Kyung has found something else to amuse herself with and doesn’t respond.
Jiho’s radar must have been way off because Pretty Girl dances with the other girl for a long time, until Jiho has made her way through one drink and is contemplating if she’d be sick if she had another.
Watching Pretty Girl makes her anxious and annoyed for a reason she can’t explain, beyond the oddly unsettled feeling she gets at the other eyes that track Pretty Girl’s moves, the other girls who flit around the dancing pair as if waiting for them to break apart.
But they don’t break apart, and the other girl must have a good idea of how hot Pretty Girl is, because she keeps close up against her as they dance. Or as close as they can, despite Pretty Girl’s long limbs that are laughably out of proportion with her dance partner’s.
“She needs someone taller to dance with,” Jiho mutters, the third time Pretty Girl’s chin clunks with the other girl’s forehead.
Me, she thinks, unbidden. Immediately, she cuts that thought off. No, no no and no.
She’s just turned resolvedly away from the pair when there’s a sound of annoyance from behind her.
“Ugh, I am ashamed to know you,” Kyung says, and with two small hands and a ridiculous amount of force, she shoves Jiho off her barstool.
Jiho huffs and turns back, only ending up with a finger in her face, an inch from her nose.
“Go ask her to dance!” Kyung yells, obviously a little drunk already. She grabs Jiho’s shoulder and spins her until she faces the dance floor again.
It is seriously only because of the drinks that Kyung will owe her for this little stunt that Jiho allows Kyung to push her away from the bar.
Jiho feels distinctly off-kilter, and she’s not sure if its the music and lights or standing up after so much alcohol. But she isn’t going to dance or talk or even get near Pretty Girl, especially seeing as how she’s wrapped up in another girl’s arms, shoulders bent awkwardly down to accommodate it.
Despite it’s awkwardness, the embrace looks intimate, the two girls swaying towards each other as if moments away from making out. Jiho scoffs again, her chest feeling tight.
Instead of going towards the middle of the dance floor, Jiho starts pushing through the crowd towards the bathroom, wobbly feet coming straight again the further she pushes in. She skirts most of the crowd, glad for her height so she can see over their heads.
A hand grabs at her waist, pulls her flush with the curve of a hip and just the barest crush of a breast against her side, but she disentangles herself without a word, smiling at the girl at her side before slipping from her grip. She really doesn’t want to dance, now.
She’s halfway through the crowd before she looks up and over- and Pretty Girl is staring straight at her, dark eyes locked in on Jiho’s, her head dipping above the swell of the crowd. Jiho feels a hot flush spread over her skin.
Jiho looks away, trying to ignore the slam of her heart, but curiosity drags at her before she has taken two more steps. Reaching up to scratch at the side of her neck, she looks over and Pretty Girl’s eyes are still on her, tracking her through the crowd. Her small mouth has fallen open and her features flash in and out through the strobe lights and Jiho wants to go over there and-
“No,” Jiho whispers to herself, turning away. “Fuck t-that, no.” She pushes her way through the rest of the crowd in front of the toilet, feeling Pretty Girl’s eyes on her the entire time.
There’s only one girl in front of her at the toilet, and when Jiho shoves the door closed behind her, she feels she can finally concentrate in the relative silence. Music thumps through the walls, but the shift is so sudden as to make Jiho’s ears ring.
The image of Pretty Girl’s eyes on her returns so suddenly Jiho’s heart jumps in surprise.
“No,” Jiho repeats to herself, back against the stall door, before she forces herself over to the toilet. Pulling the seat down, she flops down on the lid and pulls the phone from her back pocket. She flicks through the screen and opens KakaoTalk, her fingers hovering over the buttons.
But there’s no one she can ask for advice on this. She can’t even explain it.
With a frustrated noise, she flicks the phone off. “No,” she repeats once again.
When she opens the stall door, the bathroom is empty. Music thrums through the walls and the sticky floor to her feet, but she has no desire to go out there again. She goes to stand in front of the sink and washes her hands, adjusting her smudging makeup with damp fingers.
She tries to make the face Kyung said she was making before, the I will judge you, look, but she can’t see why it’s so intimidating. It’s mostly just the way her face is, sharp eyes and high cheekbones. Judgmental is her default look.
The door to the club opens behind her, letting in a blast of music- and Pretty Girl.
Jiho freezes, hands on her face as she watches Pretty Girl in the mirror.
Pretty Girl looks up and stops, eyes catching on hers in the mirror. Jiho drops the intimidating look immediately, but the sharp points of her eyeliner manage to make even her resting face somewhat scary.
Fuck.
Jiho feels the slightest bit trapped, and she spins around. This is revealed as a bad idea almost immediately, because Pretty Girl is in front of her with those ridiculous doe eyes of hers and Jiho makes a second mistake down at her legs.
Damn. The heels might be impractical but miniskirts are definitely- definitely. Something.
“Hi,” Pretty Girl says, and her voice is too soft and deeper than Jiho anticipated. She looks fragile and entirely too close at turns.
No, Jiho thinks.
Instead, her mouth opens of its own accord. “Hey.”
Pretty Girl shuffles a little closer on those skyscraper heels and Jiho isn’t used to being short. It’s kind of nice, once she gets past the weirdness of it.
“I saw you out there,” Pretty Girl says. It might be stating the obvious but Jiho’s brain isn’t working well enough to do much more.
“Yeah,” Jiho says, unsure of what to say. This has never been a problem before, but her throat feels closed up. “I saw you, too.” With all of your girls.
A jolt goes through her at the reminder. “What happened to your dance partner?” she asks, leaning back on the sink.
Pretty Girl laughs and it’s so awkward and endearing to see up close, the way her pretty face screws up in genuine amusement. “Found someone else, I suppose? I was a little too tall for her in these heels.” She looks down at her feet and Jiho does the same, if only to focus on something other than the little moue on her lips.
“They look nice,” Jiho says instead. “You’re not that much taller than me, anyways.” The implication hits her a moment too late and she can feel her face screw up at it. Like that matters, Jiho, shut up.
Pretty Girl looks at her in surprise, then smiles. “I’m Ahn Jaehyo.”
That was fast. Jiho raises an eyebrow, but Jaehyo just smiles at her. Now she’s stuck.
“Woo Jiho,” she says, bowing a little. It feels oddly formal for an introduction in the toilet of a lesbian club.
Jaehyo steps forward and touches her arm, fingers just barely below the last swipe of Jiho’s tattoo. She doesn’t think about how the skin is warm and soft, or how Jaehyo doesn’t look at all scared.
“Want to dance?” Jaehyo asks. Those dark eyes cut into Jiho and the warm scent of Jaehyo’s perfume is sweet enough to entice her forward.
Yes, sticks in her throat and, “I don’t do first timers,” comes out instead.
Jaehyo’s face crumples a little, just at the brow. “What?”
Jiho feels like she can’t breathe, her stomach dropping straight through to her boots.
Jiho’s breath whistles through her throat as she tries to take a breath. That’s not what she meant at all. “Nothing,” she says quickly, reaching up to cup Jaehyo’s elbow but the girl shuffles back, the touch drifting past her.
“First timers?” Jaehyo repeats, voice trembling just a little. She looks like she’s about to laugh or cry.
“I didn’t-” but what Jiho did or didn’t mean, she honestly has no clue.
Jaehyo steps abruptly back into her space and she looks angry. “What is your problem?”
“What?” Jiho asks, voice weak.
Jaehyo frowns at her, pink lips drawn thin. “You stare at me for forever and then you just-” she huffs, tossing her hair over her shoulder in a motion so clearly habitual. The dark mass of it nearly hits Jiho in the face, and she probably shouldn’t be intrigued by the fact that it smells like coconut. “Whatever. I don’t have to deal with you.”
Jiho stares at her, the only words her mind are capable of making being oh and fuck.
Jaehyo spins and storms towards the door, but with one hand pressed on the handle, she turns and glares at Jiho one final time. “Excuse me, Woo Jiho, I have to go and fuck a bunch of girls now to be as cool as you.”
As far as comebacks go, it’s not the greatest, but Jiho still feels like she’s been punched where her stomach used to be. She opens her mouth to come back with a reply, a sound, anything, but her words fail her.
The door slams behind Jaehyo and Jiho is left alone.
Jiho slumps against the sink and drags a hand through the top of her hair. There’s a heavy beat in her ears but it’s no longer the music, and her throat hurts when she tries to swallow. She feels distressingly sober. This night sucks and she doesn’t care if Kyung thinks she’s lame, but she’s going home.
When she finally manages to pull herself from the toilet and back to the bar, Kyung looks at her face and laughs.
“It’s the look, right? I told you it scared people.” Kyung smirks at her, and normally Jiho would tease back, but she has no energy left.
Kyung narrows her eyes, then juts her chin out to point behind Jiho. “They’re really coming in fast, aren’t they?”
Jiho almost doesn’t want to look, but Miracle is small enough that it’s hard to miss the clump of girls now surrounding Jaehyo. They oscillate around her as she starts moving in towards the dance floor, and a particularly forward girl with dyed blonde hair sidles up and wraps her arms around Jaehyo’s shoulders.
Jiho grits her teeth, wanting to look away but not sure how, when the low twist in her gut says something more than she wants to admit.
Jaehyo doesn’t push the girl away, but puts her hands on the girl’s small waist. The pair dances, close, and the blonde girl is obviously a better dancer than the previous one. She manages to keep Jaehyo from flailing or knocking their body parts painfully together, for one, dragging their hips together as they sway to the music. Or maybe Jaehyo is trying harder now, too, her look intent on the other girl’s lips, movements smoother.
Jiho’s gut twists further as the girl slides fingers into Jaehyo’s long hair. She pulls through the smooth strands and Jaehyo tilts her head back into the hold, putting her pale neck on display. Even far away, the long expanse of skin is enticing.
Jiho sucks noisily at the drink Kyung has handed her, trying to ignore the pull of want in her gut. Jaehyo twists to almost lazily to the music, allowing her partner to pull at her waist until their legs are intertwined. Jiho can see the other girl sliding her hands up, up, just barely skimming the rise of Jaehyo’s breasts until the hands can slip around Jaehyo’s neck again, pulling her down.
That could be you, Jiho thinks to herself. She sucks at her drink, but it’s empty already. Idiot.
With considerable effort, Jiho turns away from the crowd and looks over at Kyung, who is surveying the bar with that half-smirk.
“Wanna dance?” Jiho asks over the music, and Kyung looks back at her for a moment before shrugging and setting her drink down on the bar. Jiho doesn’t know what she’s doing.
“Sure,” Kyung says and hops down from her barstool.
But when they push to the edge of the dance floor, whatever small desire Jiho has to dance is lost.
Jaehyo is on the far side, close to the wall. Her long, dark hair is pushed back over her shoulder, leaving her neck exposed- Jiho swallows- for her dance partner to kiss down the skin, over the rise of her collarbone.
Jiho goes still, wondering if it’s the image or the throwing back of a drink in less than a minute that makes her feel ill.
From behind, Kyung tweaks her neck between two small fingers and Jiho flinches, slapping a hand over her stinging neck.
“What the hell?”
But then Kyung is grabbing Jiho’s arms and throwing them over her shoulders and pushing up against Jiho. Her breasts press up under Jiho’s and the roll of Kyung’s hips so suddenly against her own makes Jiho stumble back a step.
“Try harder,” Kyung admonishes into her ear, sliding her hands into Jiho’s back pockets. “You’re trying to make her jealous, remember?”
Jiho almost screams when Kyung gropes her ass, hard, but gamely shimmies her hips as well as she can. The music pounds through her chest, but it’s at odds with her heartbeat and she can’t get into it. Her mind is spinning, and not just with the alcohol.
The hair on the back of her neck prickles and curiosity over what’s happening on the other side of the dance floor almost makes her look over, but Kyung grabs her chin and pulls it down until Jiho’s face is almost burned in the curve of her neck.
They used to dance together, ages ago, and it’s easy enough to slip back into the rhythm. Kyung, though, has always danced a bit too aggressively for Jiho, the roll of her hips and her hands grasping a little too tight. Jiho can’t relax. She wants to know what's happening at the wall.
Kyung spins them slowly, until Jiho’s back is to Jaehyo and it isn’t at all helpful as awareness spreads over Jiho’s shoulders. She wonders what Kyung and Jiho dancing looks like to Jaehyo, if she’s even noticed.
Jiho jerks when Kyung slides her hands down her waist and into her back pockets again, hitching her forward. She grabs the wrists from behind her and pulls them off her ass, ignoring Kyung’s moue of discontent.
“Not my ass, alright?” Jiho yells over the music, waiting for Kyung’s nod to drop the grip. Kyung immediately grabs her waist, small fingers digging into the sensitive skin under Jiho’s ribs.
She doesn’t even know if Jaehyo is still watching, and Kyung won’t let her look until the song is over.
“Ugh, I’m done,” Jiho says, dropping her arms from Kyung’s sweaty shoulders and heading back to the bar. Kyung shrugs and rolls her eyes.
When Jiho gets to the bar and looks over, Jaehyo is no longer against the wall.
Something clenches in Jiho’s stomach as she drags her gaze through the crowd. But Jaehyo isn’t anywhere, even though her two other friends are still there, propped up against the windows, chatting and sipping drinks.
The blonde girl is nowhere to be seen, either. Disappointment twists her gut.
The bartender, a tiny girl named Taeil, slides over. “What do you want now?” she yells, and Jiho is about to order when she just shakes her head. Her stomach hurts and she’s tired and done. She just wants her head to clear and to go home and sleep.
On the way out, she ducks by Kyung, who is dancing with one of their friends.
“Did you see where she went?” she asks, and the smile on Kyung’s lips is telling. Jiho doesn’t even know why she’s asking.
Kyung doesn’t even need to ask who. “Yeah, she went outside with that girl she was dancing with,” Kyung says, her smile dropping a fraction at the look that must pass over Jiho’s face.
“If it makes you feel any better, it was more like the other girl was following her, not like they were together,” Kyung says, not unkindly, reaching up to pat Jiho on the cheek. “Don’t worry, she might be next week?”
Jiho just shrugs with one shoulder. Kyung might well be right but it’s not that comforting.
In retaliation for earlier, she tweaks Kyung’s cheek, a little too hard, between her fingers. Before Kyung can react, Jiho dives into the crowd and pushes her way out onto the street.
She’s glad of the summer warmth as she ducks outside. The heat of the day has faded but the humidity is still heavy enough to cling to her skin as she clomps down the narrow street lined with gay clubs.
It’s still early in the night, so when she crosses the road into the restaurant area, most places are still shuttered up or just starting to open.
Her head is spinning slightly from the alcohol and there’s a pit of nausea growing in her stomach that (might) have little to do with that girl. Jaehyo.
Jiho grabs the end of her ponytail and drags it across her mouth, growling lowly into it in frustration. She is going to forget about it. It’s over. Jaehyo is gone, Jiho missed her chance. That’s it.
She doesn’t feel much better about it at all.
A minute later, the front door of her favorite restaurant comes into view and she ducks inside, frowning when she sees how crowded it is. The ahjumma in charge comes up a moment later, patting at Jiho’s shoulders.
“There’s no room right now, can you wait by the door?” she starts pushing Jiho towards the front door, where a cluster of drunken couples are slumped together on a bench. The glow of the aquarium next to them sets them in an unflattering pallor, and some look way too close to the vomit threshold for Jiho’s comfort.
But over the ahjumma’s shoulder, Jiho sees a familiar head of long, dark hair and her heart skips a beat- Jaehyo.
She doesn’t even think. Her stomach thinks for her. “Ah! My friend!” Jiho says, dashing past the ahjumma and kicking off her shoes into the general pile.
Jaehyo is staring intently into a bowl of doenjang stew, so she doesn’t look up until Jiho has thrown herself into the empty seat opposite and yelled her order out over her shoulder.
Jaehyo stares at her for a long moment, and the frown between her eyebrows is not encouraging.
Jiho’s heart, on the other hand, is kicking up a storm in her chest. Another chance!
“Go away,” Jaehyo hisses, frown deepening when Jiho raises a finger to her lips. Her voice rises. “Excuse me, but what are you doing here?”
Jiho tries to smile, but Jaehyo’s reception makes it hard. “I’m here to apologize,” she says. That’s not really what-
Jaehyo tosses her hair over her shoulder in a practiced motion and stares- it’s almost a glare.
“Okay, fine,” Jiho concedes, slumping down. “I’m here to eat.”
Jaehyo’s spoon clatters at the edge of her stoneware bowl, and she points one unmanicured finger at Jiho’s face. “Get your own table. And preferably someone else to bother.”
Jiho tilts her head to the side and tries to look cute. “But I like bothering you.”
Jaehyo rolls her eyes, but says nothing.
“Okay, look,” Jiho says, “I’m super hungry and there’s a huge line- so can you please take pity and let me sit here? I won’t even talk, if you don’t want me to.” Jaehyo’s lips twitch, and Jiho’s voice slips into something more sincere. “I really am sorry about earli-”
“Okay! You can sit here. Just- just shut up.” Jaehyo picks up her spoon again and starts to dig into her stew, dropping her head to so the shining mass of her dark head drapes over her shoulder and along her pale, rounded cheek. In the uneven, harsh light of the restaurant, Jaehyo is even more attractive.
Jiho swallows back another apology. Her eyes dip past Jaehyo’s cheek and down to her collarbone, but there’s no mark there. A small swirl of satisfaction makes her grin.
The ahjumma drops off Jiho’s soup and bowl of rice. Jiho is just starting to eat and sure that the meal is going to pass in awkward silence, when Jaehyo looks up. She looks suspicious.
“Did you follow me here?” The makeup around her eyes is smudged, making her dark eyes seem larger.
“No,” Jiho snorts, ignoring the thump of her heart. “This is my favorite restaurant.”
Jaehyo looks unimpressed. “Oh, I forgot that you own all of Itaewon. Anywhere else I need to avoid in the future?”
Jiho smirks around a mouthful of kimchi, just to keep from getting riled up. “Nescafé, all of the chicken restaurants down this street, Miracle. Oh, and the FamilyMart next to Exit 1.”
“Are you serious?”
Jiho levels Jaehyo with a flat look. “No.” Just as Jaehyo’s features soften a little, Jiho continues, unable to resist. “Really, I own all of Itaewon, not just those stores.”
Jaehyo huffs, looking away, and Jiho can’t tell if she’s really annoyed or at least a little amused.
Jiho leans on the table towards Jaehyo, trying to catch her gaze. “Hey, I said that I was sorry. In the bathroom, before, you kind of caught me off guard.” She swallows, not wanting to say the next words. “That wasn’t what I meant to say.”
There’s a tremor of interest in Jaehyo’s features as she looks over, but she maintains a commendably level voice. “Oh?” She swirls her stew with her long-handled spoon, nearly indifferent. “What did you mean to say, then?” she says a moment later, when Jiho hasn’t elaborated.
Jiho ignores the leap of her heart. Even though she’s normally so forthright, she feels the words stopper up in her throat, letting the silence run long. Jaehyo drops her spoon and stares at Jiho, expectant.
“I meant to say ‘yes’,” Jiho says, scratching her collarbone in an awkward motion. Her skin feels prickly. Jaehyo’s gaze has weirdly reactive properties. Maybe Jiho is allergic.
A smile blooms across Jaehyo’s face, a little smug but mostly pleased.
“Really?” she asks. She must not mean to sound that eager, since she coughs and looks away.
Jiho struggles not to smile, even as her cheeks warm. “Really.”
“So why were you such an asshole?” Jaehyo asks and Jiho chokes.
She can’t deny it.
“I got distracted.”
The memory of Jaehyo’s long legs in that ridiculously short skirt comes to mind, along with the thought-stoppering qualities they have. She wonders how Jaehyo is managing to sit cross-legged at the floor-level table.
Propping herself up slightly, she tries to surreptitiously peer over the table, but can see nothing but the slight drape of Jaehyo’s pink skirt.
She can tell Jaehyo is staring at her, and tries to blink and look away.
“You got distracted? By what? We were in a toilet.”
Jiho’s mind spins wildly and she says the first thing that comes to mind. “Your face.”
Jaehyo raises her eyebrows. “My face?” she repeats.
Jiho waves her hands, unwilling to go any further down this path. “What happened to your- uh, partner? I heard you left together.”
The surprise on Jaehyo’s face tells her she shouldn’t have said that. “She wanted to go to a hotel, but I didn’t really want to go.” Jaehyo laughs a little in the back of her throat, as if self-conscious. “Guess I’m not ready to be as cool as you, after all.”
It’s a cut at Jiho and it feels like it. “Nah, I was just being an asshole,” Jiho says, shaking her head as if to get rid of the entire incident.
Jiho likes the little laugh Jaehyo gives at that, the way it cuts up a little of the sadness at the corners of her mouth that Jiho is sure she helped put there. “It’s hard, your first time out. I mean- is this your first time, uh, out, then?” Jiho scratches at the table with one finger.
Jaehyo nods, looking a little shy to admit it. It’s irrepressibly cute, and Jiho resists the urge to make a pained face.
“Did you have- fun? Despite me being an asshole?”
Jaehyo smiles, a little dorky. “A lot of girls wanted to dance with me. That’s good, right?” she looks up at Jiho eagerly.
Jiho astutely ignores the twist of jealousy in her stomach and tries to smile. “Yeah, that’s really good. You are- you know.” She waves her hand towards Jaehyo’s face.
“Am what?” Jaehyo looks at her, eyes narrowed as if expecting another slight. She must have read Jiho’s inability to talk about her face as some sort of insult. But when Jiho looks at her, she’s biting her spoon and the corners of her lips quirk up. Jiho bites back the apology before it reaches her lips.
“Ugh, you know.” She stuffs soup into her mouth and ignores Jaehyo’s ‘I’m what? What?’ until Jaehyo smacks her hand with her spoon lightly. Jiho grabs the spoon before Jaehyo can pull it away, and glares at Jaehyo.
“You’re pretty, okay? And you know it.”
Jaehyo laughs and Jiho hates the way her heart kicks up at the sound. She releases the spoon, her face heating up.
“You’re not, you know, bad yourself,” Jaehyo says, smile firmly pressed onto her lips but tone wicked.
“Thanks,” Jiho replies in a flat voice, glad to be back in the realm of sarcasm. “Your concern for my ego is great.”
Jaehyo laughs and nearly chokes on a mouthful of stew. “I don’t think you need help with your ego,” she coughs, voice breathless with laughter.
Jiho pouts, trying to ignore everything that is so attractive about this girl. “Now I do.”
There’s a wicked gleam in Jaehyo’s eyes at that. “I’m glad I have so much power over you.” When Jiho doesn’t relent in her pout, though, she seems to falter a little bit. “Um, okay, you’re- you’re cute, too.”
Jiho’s stomach swoops. “Cute?” That’s a word Jiho has never heard anyone call her except for Kyung, who has only ever used it for joking purposes. She wonders if her tattoos would beg to differ. “Cute?” She braces her hands around her cheeks and purses her lips, fluttering her eyelashes.
When Jaehyo says nothing, she presses a kiss to her fingers and blows it in her direction.
Jiho thinks she’s going to laugh again, but she blushes instead. It’s obvious all across her pale cheeks and might well be the cutest thing Jiho has ever witnessed.
Oh, no, Jiho thinks.
Jaehyo makes a sound of frustration, her cheeks bright pink. “You’re gross,” she says, stuffing stew into her mouth.
“I should take your picture right now,” Jiho teases.
Jaehyo stiffens for a moment, then sniffs. “Okay, if you must. I am good looking.”
But she falters a little bit when Jiho makes to reach for her phone, dropping her spoon and covering her face. “Not right now! I probably look gross and bloated and stuff from drinking!”
Jiho laughs at Jaehyo’s distress. She shouldn’t, but it’s so cute.
“Okay, okay,” Jiho agrees, dropping her phone on the table. When Jaehyo still refuses to drop her hands, Jiho reaches over and pulls them down. She resolutely does not think about Jaehyo’s embarrassed face or the warmth of Jaehyo’s fingers.
Jaehyo looks suspiciously at her for a moment, before she flicks her hair over her shoulder again and looks haughty. “I probably look fabulous, obviously. I am, as you say, pretty.”
“Want to prove it?” Jiho asks, reaching for her phone.
Jaehyo shrieks and throws her hands over her face again. “Nevermind, nevermind! I yield.”
Jiho is laughing, which is the only reason she can’t stop Jaehyo when the girl reaches over to grab Jiho’s phone. “I’m confiscating this,” she says, the moue on her lips tempting as much as the smell of her coconut conditioner that floats close to Jiho.
She drops the phone in her lap with a playful smirk and the image of Jiho reaching for it comes to mind. In the struggle, her hand might slip up against that pale thigh, probably as soft as Jaehyo’s hands-
Jiho swallows, suddenly breathless. “Take care of my baby, then,” she says, trying to shrug off the imagined sensation of Jaehyo’s warm, trembling skin against her palm.
Jaehyo smiles at her, a little wicked, like she knows what Jiho is thinking. “Oh, I will.”
For once, Jiho is at a loss for words. She settles for stuffing more spoonfuls of her rapidly cooling stew into her mouth instead.
Jaehyo, however, stirs the little that’s left of her own soup with her long spoon. “So,” she says, tilting her head, “do you make it your habit to follow newly inducted girls at Miracle around during their first night, then?”
Swallowing hard against a mouthful that wants to go down the wrong way, Jiho makes a face. “I told you, this is my favorite restaurant.”
“Hm, okay. But-” and here Jaehyo stops, pressing her lips together. She looks troubled, and its odd to see on her normally cheerful features. “Is everyone like you?”
Jiho’s stomach twists, and not in a good way. “Like me how?”
“‘I don’t do first timers,’” Jaehyo quotes back at her in a deep voice like Jiho’s, and her following laugh is a tiny bit hurt, or worried. Jiho feels even worse. “Is that really a thing?”
Jiho clears her throat, uncomfortable now that the alcohol has started to wear off. Her skin throbs and she doesn’t know if she can explain this in a way that doesn’t come off completely callous. “No-” she starts slowly, but she figures she can’t lie. “Well, I mean, I was just being an asshole. When I said it like that. I kind of didn’t expect you to be-”
“Gay?” There’s a touch of sharpness in Jaehyo’s tone, like she’s heard it before.
“No-” Jiho resolutely doesn’t think of her previous comments to Kyung. “So forward. But maybe- well, a lot of girls have problems with stuff like this. There are a lot of them who have had girls approach them, or they’ve approached girls who are just, you know, fucking around. Experimenting?” Jaehyo’s expression shuts down. “It makes them wary, I think,” Jiho finishes slowly.
There’s a quiet pause, and Jaehyo’s eyes are uncharacteristically fierce when she speaks. “I’m not just- I am. A lesbian.”
The couple at the next table look over at the raised voice but Jaehyo ignores them. Jiho’s heart soars a little at the way Jaehyo looks so proud, and she swallows past the lump in her throat.
“I know, I mean- that’s great.” She’s so bad at these sorts of things. “Um, have you dated a girl before?”
Jaehyo narrows her eyes. “It’s not really any of your business,” she starts, her voice almost dangerous, before something seems to catch her up and she shifts in her seat. “But no.”
Fuck, Jiho really is an asshole. What’s even worse than the realization is that the thought thrills her, just a little.
After a moment in which Jiho cannot speak, Jaehyo’s voice dips low and she flicks her spoon with two fingers, staring at the cutlery with feigned enthusiasm. “Is it really that bad? Do I really need to sleep with a bunch of girls before people will take me seriously?”
She looks disheartened by the idea, and Jiho wants to reach over and touch her cheek, make her laugh again.
“No, not if you don’t want to. Maybe if you go to Miracle more regularly, you might find someone you- uh, want.”
Jaehyo smiles, just slightly. “I did find one,” she says, quiet and sincere.
Jiho wishes she could stop feeling like someone has punched her in the chest. She tries to smile but it feels unnatural.
A moment later, Jaehyo laughs and picks up her stainless steel cup. She sips water from it, still chuckling a little bit at Jiho’s face. “I was just kidding, don’t look so serious.”
She reaches across the table and flattens out Jiho’s crumpled brow with two cool fingers.
Jiho chuckles past her discomfort, overly aware of where Jaehyo’s hands have pressed. Though Jaehyo’s fingers were cool, her forehead feels unnaturally warm now.
“I’ll probably find a hotter girl next time, anyway,” Jaehyo says, smirking a little.
Jiho’s heart clenches. Irrationally, she wants to say, You don’t need to, but she can’t. She let the moment pass anyway, and Jaehyo doesn’t want her coming onto her.
“Yeah, I bet.” She shrugs, trying to pass it off as casual, even though she feels a little sick.
Jaehyo pins her with an odd look for a moment, then shrugs.
“Do you have any hot friends you can introduce me to?” Jaehyo cracks a wide smile. She looks endearing-ly like an idiot.
“All of my friends are rubbish,” Jiho declares, “but I can give you backgrounds on some of the girls if you go to Miracle again. I know almost everyone who goes there regularly.”
Jaehyo’s eyebrows dip up. “Is that a proposal?”
Jiho’s heart squeezes tight. She tries to shrug nonchalantly, but is afraid her face is starting to burn. “If you’re there, and I’m there.”
“Alright!” Jaehyo sounds entirely too gleeful.
Jiho tries hard not to think she’s just made a date to give a cute, hot, sweet girl she would gladly press up against a wall and kiss the breath out of, dating advice. For others. She’d be better off actually stabbing herself in the foot.
It doesn’t help that when they pull themselves from the table an hour later, close to the time for the first train, and Jaehyo presses herself up against Jiho’s side as she pays (“For my asshole-ishness,” Jiho explains, trying not to think how it’s almost a date.)
Jiho looks over in surprise at the soft warmth at her side, and has to concentrate hard on something other than the close brush of Jaehyo’s chest against her arm, in order to give the ahjumma the right change.
Jiho has never liked girls as tall as her before and finds that it puts Jaehyo’s face embarrassingly close to Jiho’s own. She gulps and looks away, trying to ignore the sweet smell of coconut.
“Wait right here real quick?” Jaehyo asks, almost in her ear.
She waits for Jiho to nod jerkily before she trots off towards the toilet. Her short skirt flutters around her thighs as she walks, and Jiho might actually be a pervert but she can’t look away. Jaehyo looks soft all over, the pale planes of her shoulders and the curve of her inner arm as she reaches out to balance herself as she slips her heels back on- it all tempts Jiho with ideas of how she could make that skin a little less pale, how the warm skin would feel under Jiho’s lips.
Jaehyo wobbles over and slips her arm through Jiho’s. Exhaustion is clear on her face, and the way she leans slightly on Jiho’s side. “Show me where the subway station is?”
Underneath the coconut smell is the warm musk of her natural skin, and she’s standing close enough for Jiho to easily slip a hand under her jaw and kiss over the slope of her neck. Jiho tries to concentrate.
“Can’t you find it yourself?” she teases, but it comes out too affectionate.
Jaehyo grins back. “I’d rather have a guide, to be honest. I hear you’re a native.”
Jiho sighs but acquiesces. She helps Jaehyo step up to the street and when Jaehyo leans on her slightly as they totter up the road, Jiho can’t help but enjoy it. The sky is already starting to lighten behind them as Jiho leads them up the hill and then back down the main road.
Jaehyo is quiet as they walk, obviously tired. Jiho, though used to going out a lot, can feel exhaustion pulling on her as well, and doesn’t mind the silence.
Normally, she’d never take a girl to the subway- all of her friends know where it is, and everyone else she has hooked up with has never stuck around for a guide- but she doesn’t want to let go of Jaehyo’s soft warmth against her side or the slight stumbles she takes on the uneven road in those heels.
They stop in front of the subway entrance entirely too soon. The soft light of the coming dawn is kind to Jaehyo’s features, making the dark of her eyelashes thick against her cheekbones as she blinks sleepily.
Jaehyo tugs on her arm, just a little. “Help me down the stairs?” she asks in a quiet voice.
Jiho sighs, mock-annoyed, and Jaehyo starts to tug her arm away.
“If you don’t want to, it’s-”
Jiho holds Jaehyo’s arm fast in hers, and tugs her towards the handrail, so she has something to hold onto other than Jiho as they traverse the stairs.
“I’m joking, idiot, come on,” Jiho says, and feels Jaehyo relax against her. Her long hair brushes over Jiho’s arm, and she wonders how they look: two women, one tattooed and undercut designs in her hair, and the other with traditional long, black hair and a floaty, light dress, arm in arm as they descend into the subway.
It doesn’t much matter how much they don’t seem to fit. They probably won’t see each other after this night anyway. Jiho tries to ignore the way her chest hurts at the thought, pressing her lips together. She should be glad Jaehyo is even talking to her, that she didn't just immediately get the ahjumma to kick Jiho out of her seat when she first sat down.
Jiho shouldn't want more, but she does.
They make it down three sets of stairs and are in front of the turnstiles when Jaehyo pulls her arm free. Jiho feels odd, cold almost. It must be the air-con of the subway station that they always turn up as high as they can during the summer.
Jaehyo turns to her and smiles a little bit, seemingly unaware of how it makes the ache in Jiho’s chest grow.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” she says, at first so sincere. Jiho tries to smile, but stuffs her fists into her pockets and tries to concentrate. “Even if you were a bit of a twat,” Jaehyo continues.
The ‘you’re welcome’ is choked back by incredulous laughter in Jiho’s throat. The pain in her chest eases slightly, but not enough.
“Anyway, I just wanted to give you back your phone,” Jaehyo says, digging Jiho’s phone out of her bag.
Jiho starts, having completely forgotten Jaehyo had taken it at the restaurant.
She reaches out a hand, ready to end this transaction and probably never see each other again. It should be quick and painless, so she doesn’t know why Jaehyo hesitates. Jiho’s heart freezes, along with her brain. She needs to do something in the next few seconds.
But Jaehyo presses the phone into her hand and smiles at her. Her cool fingers brush over Jiho’s palm, and her expression has shifted, just a little. It’s no longer so guileless.
Jiho’s heart thumps, one, two, in her chest. It can’t end like this, she thinks desperately. But all of Jiho’s many words, in all the languages she knows, are dried up, too far away. Jaehyo is going to step through the turnstile and be gone.
And then Jaehyo enclasps her hands around Jiho’s right and the phone, and she is stepping forward. Those long eyelashes flick down, her eyes half-lidded as she steps into Jiho’s space. Her lips press softly against Jiho’s.
One free hand comes up to cup Jiho’s jaw, her fingers cool against the flushed skin and just slightly trembling. Jiho can barely press back against her mouth before Jaehyo is slipping away.
“I’ll miss my train,” she says, breathless.
She smiles wide at Jiho, who still can’t speak, before she turns and disappears into the subway.
What a knockout, Jiho thinks, a little bittersweet.
END
Epilogue
It takes about fifteen minutes of dazedly walking back to her apartment before the thought occurs to Jiho. Her heartbeat kicks up in her chest at the possibility that maybe Jaehyo was sly enough to- and there, in her phone, under ‘Pretty Girl Jaehyo,’ is a phone number.
I’m not giving you advice on any other girls. They’re all rubbish. Jiho types in without thinking.
Her phone chirps a moment later. Fifteen minutes, huh? Jaehyo has replied.
Jiho laughs outright, walking alone through dawn-lit streets. Date me. I’m the best out of them.
Oh really? You seem a little biased. Jiho can practically see Jaehyo’s teasing face.
Why don’t you test the theory out for yourself? Are you free Sunday?
Nothing has made her smile as much as the little smiley emoticon and the word yes.
END END
Pairing: fem!Jiho/fem!Jaehyo
Group: Block B
Rating: PG-13?
Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAR taeillow HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! I'm sorry I couldn't finish the other thing in time, please accept 8.5k of girls jaeco in its stead. I hope your birthday (was) is great and lovely and there's cake and not too many maths~ you are now old like me o yeah. NOTE: Miracle is the (only) lesbian club in Seoul, in Itaewon on the hill next to all of the other gay clubs.
Summary: How to Not Get a Date with a Hot Girl: A Guide, by Woo Jiho. Yeah, she could write the manual.
The first girl comes up within five minutes of Jiho’s arrival to Miracle. The club is packed, as per usual, but the girl manages to slip between people squashed up against the bar until she’s at Jiho’s arm.
She’s cute, all curves stacked on a short frame, like she’d be able to slip from Jiho’s arms if she looked away for a second.
Jiho looks over at her as she sucks the alcohol out of her drink, not assessing or judging, merely curious, and something in the girl’s posture immediately quails a bit at the scrutiny. Jiho raises one dark, pierced eyebrow.
Jiho knows she’s exciting for the traditional girls, with the spread of tattoos over her chest that spirals out of the cut sleeves of her top, and the designs shaved into the undercut at her right temple, but the girl almost flinches when Jiho reaches out to touch her arm.
With an inaudible sigh, Jiho pats her wrist and calls over the music, “I’m not dancing tonight, sorry.”
The girl purses her pink lips, shiny with gloss. Her eyes flick over Jiho’s dark eyeliner one more time and then slips away without a protest.
Jiho turns back to her drink, sad to discover that it’s been taken away.
“Did you have to give her the look?” Kyung asks from her side, and she turns to give her best friend a glare. Kyung has a drink in her hands that looks suspiciously like Jiho’s drink, and she snatches it back, sticking the straw in her mouth.
“What look?” she asks around the straw, suspicious.
“The I can see all of your secrets and am secretly judging you look,” Kyung says, dropping her voice low in a creepy imitation of Jiho’s own. “You should probably stop doing it. It scares the children.”
Jiho snorts, shaking the ice away so she can get to the remnants of alcohol in the bottom of the glass. “Children. People who can’t handle my face shouldn’t be out looking to get laid.”
Kyung rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but who can handle your face on a daily basis?” She cocks her head to the side, suddenly contemplative. “Other than me, of course. But then again I’m almost legally bound to.”
Jiho makes a face, especially when Kyung reaches over and flicks her ear. “Be kind to the shy ones, alright?”
“She wasn’t shy,” Jiho says, rubbing at her ear.
“Still. Try to leave a couple alive for the rest of us, okay?” Kyung indicates the packed space of the club with one small hand.
Jiho shrugs, indicating to the bartender for another drink. “She was scared of me,” she says lowly, so that Kyung at her side can’t even hear her.
“What?” Kyung yells, almost in her ear.
Jiho just shrugs, not wanting to explain again why being a nearly six-foot lesbian with tattoos and a propensity for dark eyeshadow might make it difficult to date someone in Korea. Kyung has heard it all before, and all the advice she’s ever given in return is distinctly unhelpful. (Get shorter! Yeah, okay.) Jiho just flicks her gaze out into the dance floor.
A minute later, another girl comes up to them- to Jiho- and she repeats the same routine again, seeing the flinch, the pull-back as she reaches out one hand to touch their shoulders, their hands, their wrists.
They want her- that’s obvious- but what’s also clear is their uncertainty, the way their eyes dip over Jiho’s tattoos and around the shaved curve of her hair. The idea of a bad girl is intriguing to the girls stuck in floaty skirts and pink tops, but none of them seem able to get past their deep-seated aversion.
Jiho sighs at Kyung, feeling her skin throb with the increasing decibels of the music. Mixed with the soju and questionable foreign alcohols of Itaewon, she feels ready to dance or punch somebody in the face, whichever opportunity comes up first.
Or maybe she’s just ready for another drink.
She turns to Kyung to ask if she wants one as well, but Kyung is peering over her shoulder with an expression oddly intent. Jiho waves a hand in front of Kyung but she doesn’t flinch.
“What?” Jiho asks, turning to look the way Kyung is. There’s a new group of girls near the door, obviously just arrived, all crowded together.
Jiho narrows her eyes at them, too, trying to figure out what Kyung is staring at. They are the standard girls out in Seoul, high heels and skirts barely skimming the tops of their thighs. It’s not really standard for Miracle, though, where half the clientele is foreigners on vacation or boys pouring in from the collection of gay clubs down the hill. Compared to everyone else, the group of girls making their way to the bar are way too dressed up.
A second later, the two girls in front split and the one behind them emerges.
A jolt goes through Jiho at her. Fuck. She’s pretty- too pretty, Jiho thinks. And tall, even without the skyscraper heels she’s tottering forward in. She could easily be Jiho’s height.
The three head up to the bar, two shorter girls framing the pretty girl and seeming to almost usher her there. The girl smiles weakly at the bartender, but it widens into a full laugh at something she says. The pretty girl almost looks stupid laughing, her whole body suddenly into it, but damn even that is endearing.
Jiho turns to Kyung, finally able to get her attention with a pinch to an arm.
Kyung looks at her in disbelief. “Are you seeing this? Three new girls.” She indicates them as if Jiho had no idea. “Wow.” Kyung shakes her head, eyes fastened on the girls at the bar.
“How much you want to bet it’s their first time? Especially-” Jiho clears her suddenly tight throat, “especially the tall girl in the middle.” Jiho’s eyes trace over her face.
Kyung scoffs and nudges at her side. “Don’t start. We’re here every other day and every weekend. Of course they’re new.” She knocks her glass against Jiho’s empty one and takes a drink. “Nice try, though.”
“No, I mean,” and a girl comes up to the pretty girl, slipping neatly between one of the friends and her. Pretty Girl laughs, nervousness back across her shoulders, but she watches the girl talking to her with interest clear across her fine features.
In the end, though, she smiles and waves to her friends, and the girl slips off alone. Jiho lets out a long breath that nearly gets choked back up. Almost as soon as the first girl leaves, another girl touches Pretty Girl’s shoulder and spins her around. She already has a hand on her arm, right below the pale wrist, as she arches up towards Pretty Girl’s ear.
“Do you see that?” Jiho says, voice embarrassingly high pitched. Her heartbeat kicks up in her chest as the girls lean close to speak.
Kyung laughs loudly next to her. “She’s hot, dude. You should go for that.”
But Pretty Girl turns down the second girl as well and leans up against the bar. Her smile is wider now, more relaxed, and her friends seem to congratulate her, holding their drinks up to her.
“Ugh, she’s probably not even into girls,” Jiho groans, taking an ice cube and popping it into her mouth. She crunches the ice, the sharp burst of cold dispersing the bitter taste in the back of her mouth from the whisky. “She probably only came with her friends and just likes the attention,” she grumbles.
Kyung is silent next to her, watching, but Jiho decides that she is done with the Pretty Girl Show and turns away.
She switches her gaze out onto the dance floor, hoping for someone she hasn’t seen a million times before. But everyone there she already knows, or she has no interest in knowing. Crunching the ice in her back teeth, she watches the monitors on the wall play an odd montage of remixed Madonna videos that don’t fit with the pounding club music.
She wonders if it would be sad to go home so early. It probably isn’t the earliest she’s ever gone home, but they’re been there less than an hour.
Kyung hits her arm and points out towards the bar. “Hey, hey, I think your lesbian-dar has failed you for once, Jiho-yah.”
Jiho raises her eyebrows and follows Kyung’s finger across the club. The space between the two friends is empty and Jiho can just make out Pretty Girl being pulled away into the crowd, somewhat unsteady on her tall heels.
Relief and another, less happy, emotion bloom in her chest. Jiho frowns.
She honestly doesn’t know why it matters who this girl dances with, or if she dances with any at all. Jiho watches the pair of them- the other girl is so short, she can’t even see her at first- as they push into the small dance floor, the shorter girl appearing to keep Pretty Girl upright when she lurches sideways.
“Can she even walk in those heels?” Jiho asks, scoffing, but Kyung has found something else to amuse herself with and doesn’t respond.
Jiho’s radar must have been way off because Pretty Girl dances with the other girl for a long time, until Jiho has made her way through one drink and is contemplating if she’d be sick if she had another.
Watching Pretty Girl makes her anxious and annoyed for a reason she can’t explain, beyond the oddly unsettled feeling she gets at the other eyes that track Pretty Girl’s moves, the other girls who flit around the dancing pair as if waiting for them to break apart.
But they don’t break apart, and the other girl must have a good idea of how hot Pretty Girl is, because she keeps close up against her as they dance. Or as close as they can, despite Pretty Girl’s long limbs that are laughably out of proportion with her dance partner’s.
“She needs someone taller to dance with,” Jiho mutters, the third time Pretty Girl’s chin clunks with the other girl’s forehead.
Me, she thinks, unbidden. Immediately, she cuts that thought off. No, no no and no.
She’s just turned resolvedly away from the pair when there’s a sound of annoyance from behind her.
“Ugh, I am ashamed to know you,” Kyung says, and with two small hands and a ridiculous amount of force, she shoves Jiho off her barstool.
Jiho huffs and turns back, only ending up with a finger in her face, an inch from her nose.
“Go ask her to dance!” Kyung yells, obviously a little drunk already. She grabs Jiho’s shoulder and spins her until she faces the dance floor again.
It is seriously only because of the drinks that Kyung will owe her for this little stunt that Jiho allows Kyung to push her away from the bar.
Jiho feels distinctly off-kilter, and she’s not sure if its the music and lights or standing up after so much alcohol. But she isn’t going to dance or talk or even get near Pretty Girl, especially seeing as how she’s wrapped up in another girl’s arms, shoulders bent awkwardly down to accommodate it.
Despite it’s awkwardness, the embrace looks intimate, the two girls swaying towards each other as if moments away from making out. Jiho scoffs again, her chest feeling tight.
Instead of going towards the middle of the dance floor, Jiho starts pushing through the crowd towards the bathroom, wobbly feet coming straight again the further she pushes in. She skirts most of the crowd, glad for her height so she can see over their heads.
A hand grabs at her waist, pulls her flush with the curve of a hip and just the barest crush of a breast against her side, but she disentangles herself without a word, smiling at the girl at her side before slipping from her grip. She really doesn’t want to dance, now.
She’s halfway through the crowd before she looks up and over- and Pretty Girl is staring straight at her, dark eyes locked in on Jiho’s, her head dipping above the swell of the crowd. Jiho feels a hot flush spread over her skin.
Jiho looks away, trying to ignore the slam of her heart, but curiosity drags at her before she has taken two more steps. Reaching up to scratch at the side of her neck, she looks over and Pretty Girl’s eyes are still on her, tracking her through the crowd. Her small mouth has fallen open and her features flash in and out through the strobe lights and Jiho wants to go over there and-
“No,” Jiho whispers to herself, turning away. “Fuck t-that, no.” She pushes her way through the rest of the crowd in front of the toilet, feeling Pretty Girl’s eyes on her the entire time.
There’s only one girl in front of her at the toilet, and when Jiho shoves the door closed behind her, she feels she can finally concentrate in the relative silence. Music thumps through the walls, but the shift is so sudden as to make Jiho’s ears ring.
The image of Pretty Girl’s eyes on her returns so suddenly Jiho’s heart jumps in surprise.
“No,” Jiho repeats to herself, back against the stall door, before she forces herself over to the toilet. Pulling the seat down, she flops down on the lid and pulls the phone from her back pocket. She flicks through the screen and opens KakaoTalk, her fingers hovering over the buttons.
But there’s no one she can ask for advice on this. She can’t even explain it.
With a frustrated noise, she flicks the phone off. “No,” she repeats once again.
When she opens the stall door, the bathroom is empty. Music thrums through the walls and the sticky floor to her feet, but she has no desire to go out there again. She goes to stand in front of the sink and washes her hands, adjusting her smudging makeup with damp fingers.
She tries to make the face Kyung said she was making before, the I will judge you, look, but she can’t see why it’s so intimidating. It’s mostly just the way her face is, sharp eyes and high cheekbones. Judgmental is her default look.
The door to the club opens behind her, letting in a blast of music- and Pretty Girl.
Jiho freezes, hands on her face as she watches Pretty Girl in the mirror.
Pretty Girl looks up and stops, eyes catching on hers in the mirror. Jiho drops the intimidating look immediately, but the sharp points of her eyeliner manage to make even her resting face somewhat scary.
Fuck.
Jiho feels the slightest bit trapped, and she spins around. This is revealed as a bad idea almost immediately, because Pretty Girl is in front of her with those ridiculous doe eyes of hers and Jiho makes a second mistake down at her legs.
Damn. The heels might be impractical but miniskirts are definitely- definitely. Something.
“Hi,” Pretty Girl says, and her voice is too soft and deeper than Jiho anticipated. She looks fragile and entirely too close at turns.
No, Jiho thinks.
Instead, her mouth opens of its own accord. “Hey.”
Pretty Girl shuffles a little closer on those skyscraper heels and Jiho isn’t used to being short. It’s kind of nice, once she gets past the weirdness of it.
“I saw you out there,” Pretty Girl says. It might be stating the obvious but Jiho’s brain isn’t working well enough to do much more.
“Yeah,” Jiho says, unsure of what to say. This has never been a problem before, but her throat feels closed up. “I saw you, too.” With all of your girls.
A jolt goes through her at the reminder. “What happened to your dance partner?” she asks, leaning back on the sink.
Pretty Girl laughs and it’s so awkward and endearing to see up close, the way her pretty face screws up in genuine amusement. “Found someone else, I suppose? I was a little too tall for her in these heels.” She looks down at her feet and Jiho does the same, if only to focus on something other than the little moue on her lips.
“They look nice,” Jiho says instead. “You’re not that much taller than me, anyways.” The implication hits her a moment too late and she can feel her face screw up at it. Like that matters, Jiho, shut up.
Pretty Girl looks at her in surprise, then smiles. “I’m Ahn Jaehyo.”
That was fast. Jiho raises an eyebrow, but Jaehyo just smiles at her. Now she’s stuck.
“Woo Jiho,” she says, bowing a little. It feels oddly formal for an introduction in the toilet of a lesbian club.
Jaehyo steps forward and touches her arm, fingers just barely below the last swipe of Jiho’s tattoo. She doesn’t think about how the skin is warm and soft, or how Jaehyo doesn’t look at all scared.
“Want to dance?” Jaehyo asks. Those dark eyes cut into Jiho and the warm scent of Jaehyo’s perfume is sweet enough to entice her forward.
Yes, sticks in her throat and, “I don’t do first timers,” comes out instead.
Jaehyo’s face crumples a little, just at the brow. “What?”
Jiho feels like she can’t breathe, her stomach dropping straight through to her boots.
Jiho’s breath whistles through her throat as she tries to take a breath. That’s not what she meant at all. “Nothing,” she says quickly, reaching up to cup Jaehyo’s elbow but the girl shuffles back, the touch drifting past her.
“First timers?” Jaehyo repeats, voice trembling just a little. She looks like she’s about to laugh or cry.
“I didn’t-” but what Jiho did or didn’t mean, she honestly has no clue.
Jaehyo steps abruptly back into her space and she looks angry. “What is your problem?”
“What?” Jiho asks, voice weak.
Jaehyo frowns at her, pink lips drawn thin. “You stare at me for forever and then you just-” she huffs, tossing her hair over her shoulder in a motion so clearly habitual. The dark mass of it nearly hits Jiho in the face, and she probably shouldn’t be intrigued by the fact that it smells like coconut. “Whatever. I don’t have to deal with you.”
Jiho stares at her, the only words her mind are capable of making being oh and fuck.
Jaehyo spins and storms towards the door, but with one hand pressed on the handle, she turns and glares at Jiho one final time. “Excuse me, Woo Jiho, I have to go and fuck a bunch of girls now to be as cool as you.”
As far as comebacks go, it’s not the greatest, but Jiho still feels like she’s been punched where her stomach used to be. She opens her mouth to come back with a reply, a sound, anything, but her words fail her.
The door slams behind Jaehyo and Jiho is left alone.
Jiho slumps against the sink and drags a hand through the top of her hair. There’s a heavy beat in her ears but it’s no longer the music, and her throat hurts when she tries to swallow. She feels distressingly sober. This night sucks and she doesn’t care if Kyung thinks she’s lame, but she’s going home.
When she finally manages to pull herself from the toilet and back to the bar, Kyung looks at her face and laughs.
“It’s the look, right? I told you it scared people.” Kyung smirks at her, and normally Jiho would tease back, but she has no energy left.
Kyung narrows her eyes, then juts her chin out to point behind Jiho. “They’re really coming in fast, aren’t they?”
Jiho almost doesn’t want to look, but Miracle is small enough that it’s hard to miss the clump of girls now surrounding Jaehyo. They oscillate around her as she starts moving in towards the dance floor, and a particularly forward girl with dyed blonde hair sidles up and wraps her arms around Jaehyo’s shoulders.
Jiho grits her teeth, wanting to look away but not sure how, when the low twist in her gut says something more than she wants to admit.
Jaehyo doesn’t push the girl away, but puts her hands on the girl’s small waist. The pair dances, close, and the blonde girl is obviously a better dancer than the previous one. She manages to keep Jaehyo from flailing or knocking their body parts painfully together, for one, dragging their hips together as they sway to the music. Or maybe Jaehyo is trying harder now, too, her look intent on the other girl’s lips, movements smoother.
Jiho’s gut twists further as the girl slides fingers into Jaehyo’s long hair. She pulls through the smooth strands and Jaehyo tilts her head back into the hold, putting her pale neck on display. Even far away, the long expanse of skin is enticing.
Jiho sucks noisily at the drink Kyung has handed her, trying to ignore the pull of want in her gut. Jaehyo twists to almost lazily to the music, allowing her partner to pull at her waist until their legs are intertwined. Jiho can see the other girl sliding her hands up, up, just barely skimming the rise of Jaehyo’s breasts until the hands can slip around Jaehyo’s neck again, pulling her down.
That could be you, Jiho thinks to herself. She sucks at her drink, but it’s empty already. Idiot.
With considerable effort, Jiho turns away from the crowd and looks over at Kyung, who is surveying the bar with that half-smirk.
“Wanna dance?” Jiho asks over the music, and Kyung looks back at her for a moment before shrugging and setting her drink down on the bar. Jiho doesn’t know what she’s doing.
“Sure,” Kyung says and hops down from her barstool.
But when they push to the edge of the dance floor, whatever small desire Jiho has to dance is lost.
Jaehyo is on the far side, close to the wall. Her long, dark hair is pushed back over her shoulder, leaving her neck exposed- Jiho swallows- for her dance partner to kiss down the skin, over the rise of her collarbone.
Jiho goes still, wondering if it’s the image or the throwing back of a drink in less than a minute that makes her feel ill.
From behind, Kyung tweaks her neck between two small fingers and Jiho flinches, slapping a hand over her stinging neck.
“What the hell?”
But then Kyung is grabbing Jiho’s arms and throwing them over her shoulders and pushing up against Jiho. Her breasts press up under Jiho’s and the roll of Kyung’s hips so suddenly against her own makes Jiho stumble back a step.
“Try harder,” Kyung admonishes into her ear, sliding her hands into Jiho’s back pockets. “You’re trying to make her jealous, remember?”
Jiho almost screams when Kyung gropes her ass, hard, but gamely shimmies her hips as well as she can. The music pounds through her chest, but it’s at odds with her heartbeat and she can’t get into it. Her mind is spinning, and not just with the alcohol.
The hair on the back of her neck prickles and curiosity over what’s happening on the other side of the dance floor almost makes her look over, but Kyung grabs her chin and pulls it down until Jiho’s face is almost burned in the curve of her neck.
They used to dance together, ages ago, and it’s easy enough to slip back into the rhythm. Kyung, though, has always danced a bit too aggressively for Jiho, the roll of her hips and her hands grasping a little too tight. Jiho can’t relax. She wants to know what's happening at the wall.
Kyung spins them slowly, until Jiho’s back is to Jaehyo and it isn’t at all helpful as awareness spreads over Jiho’s shoulders. She wonders what Kyung and Jiho dancing looks like to Jaehyo, if she’s even noticed.
Jiho jerks when Kyung slides her hands down her waist and into her back pockets again, hitching her forward. She grabs the wrists from behind her and pulls them off her ass, ignoring Kyung’s moue of discontent.
“Not my ass, alright?” Jiho yells over the music, waiting for Kyung’s nod to drop the grip. Kyung immediately grabs her waist, small fingers digging into the sensitive skin under Jiho’s ribs.
She doesn’t even know if Jaehyo is still watching, and Kyung won’t let her look until the song is over.
“Ugh, I’m done,” Jiho says, dropping her arms from Kyung’s sweaty shoulders and heading back to the bar. Kyung shrugs and rolls her eyes.
When Jiho gets to the bar and looks over, Jaehyo is no longer against the wall.
Something clenches in Jiho’s stomach as she drags her gaze through the crowd. But Jaehyo isn’t anywhere, even though her two other friends are still there, propped up against the windows, chatting and sipping drinks.
The blonde girl is nowhere to be seen, either. Disappointment twists her gut.
The bartender, a tiny girl named Taeil, slides over. “What do you want now?” she yells, and Jiho is about to order when she just shakes her head. Her stomach hurts and she’s tired and done. She just wants her head to clear and to go home and sleep.
On the way out, she ducks by Kyung, who is dancing with one of their friends.
“Did you see where she went?” she asks, and the smile on Kyung’s lips is telling. Jiho doesn’t even know why she’s asking.
Kyung doesn’t even need to ask who. “Yeah, she went outside with that girl she was dancing with,” Kyung says, her smile dropping a fraction at the look that must pass over Jiho’s face.
“If it makes you feel any better, it was more like the other girl was following her, not like they were together,” Kyung says, not unkindly, reaching up to pat Jiho on the cheek. “Don’t worry, she might be next week?”
Jiho just shrugs with one shoulder. Kyung might well be right but it’s not that comforting.
In retaliation for earlier, she tweaks Kyung’s cheek, a little too hard, between her fingers. Before Kyung can react, Jiho dives into the crowd and pushes her way out onto the street.
She’s glad of the summer warmth as she ducks outside. The heat of the day has faded but the humidity is still heavy enough to cling to her skin as she clomps down the narrow street lined with gay clubs.
It’s still early in the night, so when she crosses the road into the restaurant area, most places are still shuttered up or just starting to open.
Her head is spinning slightly from the alcohol and there’s a pit of nausea growing in her stomach that (might) have little to do with that girl. Jaehyo.
Jiho grabs the end of her ponytail and drags it across her mouth, growling lowly into it in frustration. She is going to forget about it. It’s over. Jaehyo is gone, Jiho missed her chance. That’s it.
She doesn’t feel much better about it at all.
A minute later, the front door of her favorite restaurant comes into view and she ducks inside, frowning when she sees how crowded it is. The ahjumma in charge comes up a moment later, patting at Jiho’s shoulders.
“There’s no room right now, can you wait by the door?” she starts pushing Jiho towards the front door, where a cluster of drunken couples are slumped together on a bench. The glow of the aquarium next to them sets them in an unflattering pallor, and some look way too close to the vomit threshold for Jiho’s comfort.
But over the ahjumma’s shoulder, Jiho sees a familiar head of long, dark hair and her heart skips a beat- Jaehyo.
She doesn’t even think. Her stomach thinks for her. “Ah! My friend!” Jiho says, dashing past the ahjumma and kicking off her shoes into the general pile.
Jaehyo is staring intently into a bowl of doenjang stew, so she doesn’t look up until Jiho has thrown herself into the empty seat opposite and yelled her order out over her shoulder.
Jaehyo stares at her for a long moment, and the frown between her eyebrows is not encouraging.
Jiho’s heart, on the other hand, is kicking up a storm in her chest. Another chance!
“Go away,” Jaehyo hisses, frown deepening when Jiho raises a finger to her lips. Her voice rises. “Excuse me, but what are you doing here?”
Jiho tries to smile, but Jaehyo’s reception makes it hard. “I’m here to apologize,” she says. That’s not really what-
Jaehyo tosses her hair over her shoulder in a practiced motion and stares- it’s almost a glare.
“Okay, fine,” Jiho concedes, slumping down. “I’m here to eat.”
Jaehyo’s spoon clatters at the edge of her stoneware bowl, and she points one unmanicured finger at Jiho’s face. “Get your own table. And preferably someone else to bother.”
Jiho tilts her head to the side and tries to look cute. “But I like bothering you.”
Jaehyo rolls her eyes, but says nothing.
“Okay, look,” Jiho says, “I’m super hungry and there’s a huge line- so can you please take pity and let me sit here? I won’t even talk, if you don’t want me to.” Jaehyo’s lips twitch, and Jiho’s voice slips into something more sincere. “I really am sorry about earli-”
“Okay! You can sit here. Just- just shut up.” Jaehyo picks up her spoon again and starts to dig into her stew, dropping her head to so the shining mass of her dark head drapes over her shoulder and along her pale, rounded cheek. In the uneven, harsh light of the restaurant, Jaehyo is even more attractive.
Jiho swallows back another apology. Her eyes dip past Jaehyo’s cheek and down to her collarbone, but there’s no mark there. A small swirl of satisfaction makes her grin.
The ahjumma drops off Jiho’s soup and bowl of rice. Jiho is just starting to eat and sure that the meal is going to pass in awkward silence, when Jaehyo looks up. She looks suspicious.
“Did you follow me here?” The makeup around her eyes is smudged, making her dark eyes seem larger.
“No,” Jiho snorts, ignoring the thump of her heart. “This is my favorite restaurant.”
Jaehyo looks unimpressed. “Oh, I forgot that you own all of Itaewon. Anywhere else I need to avoid in the future?”
Jiho smirks around a mouthful of kimchi, just to keep from getting riled up. “Nescafé, all of the chicken restaurants down this street, Miracle. Oh, and the FamilyMart next to Exit 1.”
“Are you serious?”
Jiho levels Jaehyo with a flat look. “No.” Just as Jaehyo’s features soften a little, Jiho continues, unable to resist. “Really, I own all of Itaewon, not just those stores.”
Jaehyo huffs, looking away, and Jiho can’t tell if she’s really annoyed or at least a little amused.
Jiho leans on the table towards Jaehyo, trying to catch her gaze. “Hey, I said that I was sorry. In the bathroom, before, you kind of caught me off guard.” She swallows, not wanting to say the next words. “That wasn’t what I meant to say.”
There’s a tremor of interest in Jaehyo’s features as she looks over, but she maintains a commendably level voice. “Oh?” She swirls her stew with her long-handled spoon, nearly indifferent. “What did you mean to say, then?” she says a moment later, when Jiho hasn’t elaborated.
Jiho ignores the leap of her heart. Even though she’s normally so forthright, she feels the words stopper up in her throat, letting the silence run long. Jaehyo drops her spoon and stares at Jiho, expectant.
“I meant to say ‘yes’,” Jiho says, scratching her collarbone in an awkward motion. Her skin feels prickly. Jaehyo’s gaze has weirdly reactive properties. Maybe Jiho is allergic.
A smile blooms across Jaehyo’s face, a little smug but mostly pleased.
“Really?” she asks. She must not mean to sound that eager, since she coughs and looks away.
Jiho struggles not to smile, even as her cheeks warm. “Really.”
“So why were you such an asshole?” Jaehyo asks and Jiho chokes.
She can’t deny it.
“I got distracted.”
The memory of Jaehyo’s long legs in that ridiculously short skirt comes to mind, along with the thought-stoppering qualities they have. She wonders how Jaehyo is managing to sit cross-legged at the floor-level table.
Propping herself up slightly, she tries to surreptitiously peer over the table, but can see nothing but the slight drape of Jaehyo’s pink skirt.
She can tell Jaehyo is staring at her, and tries to blink and look away.
“You got distracted? By what? We were in a toilet.”
Jiho’s mind spins wildly and she says the first thing that comes to mind. “Your face.”
Jaehyo raises her eyebrows. “My face?” she repeats.
Jiho waves her hands, unwilling to go any further down this path. “What happened to your- uh, partner? I heard you left together.”
The surprise on Jaehyo’s face tells her she shouldn’t have said that. “She wanted to go to a hotel, but I didn’t really want to go.” Jaehyo laughs a little in the back of her throat, as if self-conscious. “Guess I’m not ready to be as cool as you, after all.”
It’s a cut at Jiho and it feels like it. “Nah, I was just being an asshole,” Jiho says, shaking her head as if to get rid of the entire incident.
Jiho likes the little laugh Jaehyo gives at that, the way it cuts up a little of the sadness at the corners of her mouth that Jiho is sure she helped put there. “It’s hard, your first time out. I mean- is this your first time, uh, out, then?” Jiho scratches at the table with one finger.
Jaehyo nods, looking a little shy to admit it. It’s irrepressibly cute, and Jiho resists the urge to make a pained face.
“Did you have- fun? Despite me being an asshole?”
Jaehyo smiles, a little dorky. “A lot of girls wanted to dance with me. That’s good, right?” she looks up at Jiho eagerly.
Jiho astutely ignores the twist of jealousy in her stomach and tries to smile. “Yeah, that’s really good. You are- you know.” She waves her hand towards Jaehyo’s face.
“Am what?” Jaehyo looks at her, eyes narrowed as if expecting another slight. She must have read Jiho’s inability to talk about her face as some sort of insult. But when Jiho looks at her, she’s biting her spoon and the corners of her lips quirk up. Jiho bites back the apology before it reaches her lips.
“Ugh, you know.” She stuffs soup into her mouth and ignores Jaehyo’s ‘I’m what? What?’ until Jaehyo smacks her hand with her spoon lightly. Jiho grabs the spoon before Jaehyo can pull it away, and glares at Jaehyo.
“You’re pretty, okay? And you know it.”
Jaehyo laughs and Jiho hates the way her heart kicks up at the sound. She releases the spoon, her face heating up.
“You’re not, you know, bad yourself,” Jaehyo says, smile firmly pressed onto her lips but tone wicked.
“Thanks,” Jiho replies in a flat voice, glad to be back in the realm of sarcasm. “Your concern for my ego is great.”
Jaehyo laughs and nearly chokes on a mouthful of stew. “I don’t think you need help with your ego,” she coughs, voice breathless with laughter.
Jiho pouts, trying to ignore everything that is so attractive about this girl. “Now I do.”
There’s a wicked gleam in Jaehyo’s eyes at that. “I’m glad I have so much power over you.” When Jiho doesn’t relent in her pout, though, she seems to falter a little bit. “Um, okay, you’re- you’re cute, too.”
Jiho’s stomach swoops. “Cute?” That’s a word Jiho has never heard anyone call her except for Kyung, who has only ever used it for joking purposes. She wonders if her tattoos would beg to differ. “Cute?” She braces her hands around her cheeks and purses her lips, fluttering her eyelashes.
When Jaehyo says nothing, she presses a kiss to her fingers and blows it in her direction.
Jiho thinks she’s going to laugh again, but she blushes instead. It’s obvious all across her pale cheeks and might well be the cutest thing Jiho has ever witnessed.
Oh, no, Jiho thinks.
Jaehyo makes a sound of frustration, her cheeks bright pink. “You’re gross,” she says, stuffing stew into her mouth.
“I should take your picture right now,” Jiho teases.
Jaehyo stiffens for a moment, then sniffs. “Okay, if you must. I am good looking.”
But she falters a little bit when Jiho makes to reach for her phone, dropping her spoon and covering her face. “Not right now! I probably look gross and bloated and stuff from drinking!”
Jiho laughs at Jaehyo’s distress. She shouldn’t, but it’s so cute.
“Okay, okay,” Jiho agrees, dropping her phone on the table. When Jaehyo still refuses to drop her hands, Jiho reaches over and pulls them down. She resolutely does not think about Jaehyo’s embarrassed face or the warmth of Jaehyo’s fingers.
Jaehyo looks suspiciously at her for a moment, before she flicks her hair over her shoulder again and looks haughty. “I probably look fabulous, obviously. I am, as you say, pretty.”
“Want to prove it?” Jiho asks, reaching for her phone.
Jaehyo shrieks and throws her hands over her face again. “Nevermind, nevermind! I yield.”
Jiho is laughing, which is the only reason she can’t stop Jaehyo when the girl reaches over to grab Jiho’s phone. “I’m confiscating this,” she says, the moue on her lips tempting as much as the smell of her coconut conditioner that floats close to Jiho.
She drops the phone in her lap with a playful smirk and the image of Jiho reaching for it comes to mind. In the struggle, her hand might slip up against that pale thigh, probably as soft as Jaehyo’s hands-
Jiho swallows, suddenly breathless. “Take care of my baby, then,” she says, trying to shrug off the imagined sensation of Jaehyo’s warm, trembling skin against her palm.
Jaehyo smiles at her, a little wicked, like she knows what Jiho is thinking. “Oh, I will.”
For once, Jiho is at a loss for words. She settles for stuffing more spoonfuls of her rapidly cooling stew into her mouth instead.
Jaehyo, however, stirs the little that’s left of her own soup with her long spoon. “So,” she says, tilting her head, “do you make it your habit to follow newly inducted girls at Miracle around during their first night, then?”
Swallowing hard against a mouthful that wants to go down the wrong way, Jiho makes a face. “I told you, this is my favorite restaurant.”
“Hm, okay. But-” and here Jaehyo stops, pressing her lips together. She looks troubled, and its odd to see on her normally cheerful features. “Is everyone like you?”
Jiho’s stomach twists, and not in a good way. “Like me how?”
“‘I don’t do first timers,’” Jaehyo quotes back at her in a deep voice like Jiho’s, and her following laugh is a tiny bit hurt, or worried. Jiho feels even worse. “Is that really a thing?”
Jiho clears her throat, uncomfortable now that the alcohol has started to wear off. Her skin throbs and she doesn’t know if she can explain this in a way that doesn’t come off completely callous. “No-” she starts slowly, but she figures she can’t lie. “Well, I mean, I was just being an asshole. When I said it like that. I kind of didn’t expect you to be-”
“Gay?” There’s a touch of sharpness in Jaehyo’s tone, like she’s heard it before.
“No-” Jiho resolutely doesn’t think of her previous comments to Kyung. “So forward. But maybe- well, a lot of girls have problems with stuff like this. There are a lot of them who have had girls approach them, or they’ve approached girls who are just, you know, fucking around. Experimenting?” Jaehyo’s expression shuts down. “It makes them wary, I think,” Jiho finishes slowly.
There’s a quiet pause, and Jaehyo’s eyes are uncharacteristically fierce when she speaks. “I’m not just- I am. A lesbian.”
The couple at the next table look over at the raised voice but Jaehyo ignores them. Jiho’s heart soars a little at the way Jaehyo looks so proud, and she swallows past the lump in her throat.
“I know, I mean- that’s great.” She’s so bad at these sorts of things. “Um, have you dated a girl before?”
Jaehyo narrows her eyes. “It’s not really any of your business,” she starts, her voice almost dangerous, before something seems to catch her up and she shifts in her seat. “But no.”
Fuck, Jiho really is an asshole. What’s even worse than the realization is that the thought thrills her, just a little.
After a moment in which Jiho cannot speak, Jaehyo’s voice dips low and she flicks her spoon with two fingers, staring at the cutlery with feigned enthusiasm. “Is it really that bad? Do I really need to sleep with a bunch of girls before people will take me seriously?”
She looks disheartened by the idea, and Jiho wants to reach over and touch her cheek, make her laugh again.
“No, not if you don’t want to. Maybe if you go to Miracle more regularly, you might find someone you- uh, want.”
Jaehyo smiles, just slightly. “I did find one,” she says, quiet and sincere.
Jiho wishes she could stop feeling like someone has punched her in the chest. She tries to smile but it feels unnatural.
A moment later, Jaehyo laughs and picks up her stainless steel cup. She sips water from it, still chuckling a little bit at Jiho’s face. “I was just kidding, don’t look so serious.”
She reaches across the table and flattens out Jiho’s crumpled brow with two cool fingers.
Jiho chuckles past her discomfort, overly aware of where Jaehyo’s hands have pressed. Though Jaehyo’s fingers were cool, her forehead feels unnaturally warm now.
“I’ll probably find a hotter girl next time, anyway,” Jaehyo says, smirking a little.
Jiho’s heart clenches. Irrationally, she wants to say, You don’t need to, but she can’t. She let the moment pass anyway, and Jaehyo doesn’t want her coming onto her.
“Yeah, I bet.” She shrugs, trying to pass it off as casual, even though she feels a little sick.
Jaehyo pins her with an odd look for a moment, then shrugs.
“Do you have any hot friends you can introduce me to?” Jaehyo cracks a wide smile. She looks endearing-ly like an idiot.
“All of my friends are rubbish,” Jiho declares, “but I can give you backgrounds on some of the girls if you go to Miracle again. I know almost everyone who goes there regularly.”
Jaehyo’s eyebrows dip up. “Is that a proposal?”
Jiho’s heart squeezes tight. She tries to shrug nonchalantly, but is afraid her face is starting to burn. “If you’re there, and I’m there.”
“Alright!” Jaehyo sounds entirely too gleeful.
Jiho tries hard not to think she’s just made a date to give a cute, hot, sweet girl she would gladly press up against a wall and kiss the breath out of, dating advice. For others. She’d be better off actually stabbing herself in the foot.
It doesn’t help that when they pull themselves from the table an hour later, close to the time for the first train, and Jaehyo presses herself up against Jiho’s side as she pays (“For my asshole-ishness,” Jiho explains, trying not to think how it’s almost a date.)
Jiho looks over in surprise at the soft warmth at her side, and has to concentrate hard on something other than the close brush of Jaehyo’s chest against her arm, in order to give the ahjumma the right change.
Jiho has never liked girls as tall as her before and finds that it puts Jaehyo’s face embarrassingly close to Jiho’s own. She gulps and looks away, trying to ignore the sweet smell of coconut.
“Wait right here real quick?” Jaehyo asks, almost in her ear.
She waits for Jiho to nod jerkily before she trots off towards the toilet. Her short skirt flutters around her thighs as she walks, and Jiho might actually be a pervert but she can’t look away. Jaehyo looks soft all over, the pale planes of her shoulders and the curve of her inner arm as she reaches out to balance herself as she slips her heels back on- it all tempts Jiho with ideas of how she could make that skin a little less pale, how the warm skin would feel under Jiho’s lips.
Jaehyo wobbles over and slips her arm through Jiho’s. Exhaustion is clear on her face, and the way she leans slightly on Jiho’s side. “Show me where the subway station is?”
Underneath the coconut smell is the warm musk of her natural skin, and she’s standing close enough for Jiho to easily slip a hand under her jaw and kiss over the slope of her neck. Jiho tries to concentrate.
“Can’t you find it yourself?” she teases, but it comes out too affectionate.
Jaehyo grins back. “I’d rather have a guide, to be honest. I hear you’re a native.”
Jiho sighs but acquiesces. She helps Jaehyo step up to the street and when Jaehyo leans on her slightly as they totter up the road, Jiho can’t help but enjoy it. The sky is already starting to lighten behind them as Jiho leads them up the hill and then back down the main road.
Jaehyo is quiet as they walk, obviously tired. Jiho, though used to going out a lot, can feel exhaustion pulling on her as well, and doesn’t mind the silence.
Normally, she’d never take a girl to the subway- all of her friends know where it is, and everyone else she has hooked up with has never stuck around for a guide- but she doesn’t want to let go of Jaehyo’s soft warmth against her side or the slight stumbles she takes on the uneven road in those heels.
They stop in front of the subway entrance entirely too soon. The soft light of the coming dawn is kind to Jaehyo’s features, making the dark of her eyelashes thick against her cheekbones as she blinks sleepily.
Jaehyo tugs on her arm, just a little. “Help me down the stairs?” she asks in a quiet voice.
Jiho sighs, mock-annoyed, and Jaehyo starts to tug her arm away.
“If you don’t want to, it’s-”
Jiho holds Jaehyo’s arm fast in hers, and tugs her towards the handrail, so she has something to hold onto other than Jiho as they traverse the stairs.
“I’m joking, idiot, come on,” Jiho says, and feels Jaehyo relax against her. Her long hair brushes over Jiho’s arm, and she wonders how they look: two women, one tattooed and undercut designs in her hair, and the other with traditional long, black hair and a floaty, light dress, arm in arm as they descend into the subway.
It doesn’t much matter how much they don’t seem to fit. They probably won’t see each other after this night anyway. Jiho tries to ignore the way her chest hurts at the thought, pressing her lips together. She should be glad Jaehyo is even talking to her, that she didn't just immediately get the ahjumma to kick Jiho out of her seat when she first sat down.
Jiho shouldn't want more, but she does.
They make it down three sets of stairs and are in front of the turnstiles when Jaehyo pulls her arm free. Jiho feels odd, cold almost. It must be the air-con of the subway station that they always turn up as high as they can during the summer.
Jaehyo turns to her and smiles a little bit, seemingly unaware of how it makes the ache in Jiho’s chest grow.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” she says, at first so sincere. Jiho tries to smile, but stuffs her fists into her pockets and tries to concentrate. “Even if you were a bit of a twat,” Jaehyo continues.
The ‘you’re welcome’ is choked back by incredulous laughter in Jiho’s throat. The pain in her chest eases slightly, but not enough.
“Anyway, I just wanted to give you back your phone,” Jaehyo says, digging Jiho’s phone out of her bag.
Jiho starts, having completely forgotten Jaehyo had taken it at the restaurant.
She reaches out a hand, ready to end this transaction and probably never see each other again. It should be quick and painless, so she doesn’t know why Jaehyo hesitates. Jiho’s heart freezes, along with her brain. She needs to do something in the next few seconds.
But Jaehyo presses the phone into her hand and smiles at her. Her cool fingers brush over Jiho’s palm, and her expression has shifted, just a little. It’s no longer so guileless.
Jiho’s heart thumps, one, two, in her chest. It can’t end like this, she thinks desperately. But all of Jiho’s many words, in all the languages she knows, are dried up, too far away. Jaehyo is going to step through the turnstile and be gone.
And then Jaehyo enclasps her hands around Jiho’s right and the phone, and she is stepping forward. Those long eyelashes flick down, her eyes half-lidded as she steps into Jiho’s space. Her lips press softly against Jiho’s.
One free hand comes up to cup Jiho’s jaw, her fingers cool against the flushed skin and just slightly trembling. Jiho can barely press back against her mouth before Jaehyo is slipping away.
“I’ll miss my train,” she says, breathless.
She smiles wide at Jiho, who still can’t speak, before she turns and disappears into the subway.
What a knockout, Jiho thinks, a little bittersweet.
END
Epilogue
It takes about fifteen minutes of dazedly walking back to her apartment before the thought occurs to Jiho. Her heartbeat kicks up in her chest at the possibility that maybe Jaehyo was sly enough to- and there, in her phone, under ‘Pretty Girl Jaehyo,’ is a phone number.
I’m not giving you advice on any other girls. They’re all rubbish. Jiho types in without thinking.
Her phone chirps a moment later. Fifteen minutes, huh? Jaehyo has replied.
Jiho laughs outright, walking alone through dawn-lit streets. Date me. I’m the best out of them.
Oh really? You seem a little biased. Jiho can practically see Jaehyo’s teasing face.
Why don’t you test the theory out for yourself? Are you free Sunday?
Nothing has made her smile as much as the little smiley emoticon and the word yes.
END END