i should live in salt
i should live in salt
3,542w; pg-13 (gayoon-centric, doojoon/gayoon, gayoon/jooyoung)
gayoon's midlife crisis all begins when her boss promotes her.
a/n: for kalopsia! this is pretty late but it's still the 18th in pago pago??? i hope you like this and hopefully i did your doojoon/gayoon prompt somewhat justice ♥ /sweats nervously
warnings: profanity. a lot of it.
Gayoon's midlife crisis all begins when her boss promotes her. She's in her office, reporting how the recent social media campaign for their brand went when Gina tells her, "Brand representation needs someone like you." A couple days later, Gayoon gets a new desk on a different floor.
She's at the ripe age of twenty-six, with her "Maserati" brain, as Kikwang liked to put it, and she hasn't gained a pound despite her Saturday night ice cream habit even when the last time she worked out was before her gym membership that Jihyun signed her up for expired a year and a half ago. Probably too young for a midlife crisis, but Gayoon doesn't know how else to put the feeling of deep-seated dread, even though she addresses its inaccuracy.
"You're exaggerating," Jiyoon tells her later that week at the surprise party - really just a gathering between them and some of their friends from college that they were somehow still hanging around - arm slung around Gayoon's shoulders, the smell of beer in her breath. Gayoon scrunches up her nose. "You just got promoted, Gayoori! That's a good thing!"
Gayoon tries her best not to snort, but she's already on her way to getting drunk, so her filter's halfway out the door. "All it means is now I get paid a little more to do ten times more work," she says after she lets out this weird cough-snort that ends up cracking Kikwang up.
Hyuna just hands her another shot. "Are you gonna complain, or are you gonna get drunk?" She has a point.
But it's because of the damn party that things end up going further downhill than Gayoon thought they would. She's locking and unlocking her phone, wondering if it'd be a good idea to drunk text or call Jooyoung, who was probably in the middle of sleeping or working on a new backtrack - there was no in between - and pissing the hell out of him. He was kind of sexy when he was mad, and Gayoon's head felt light, but she wasn't that drunk. That's around the time when Yoon Doojoon, the fucker who got integrated into their friend group the one time he drunk-hit on Hyuna and passed out on Gayoon's couch, a.k.a somehow her one of her best friends now, slides into the seat beside her at the bar.
Gayoon scowls. "And what do you want?" she slurs out, giving him her best inebriated glare. He doesn't look drunk, and she's almost mad, but there was that one time she was designated driver the night Doojoon drank shots with just about anything that had a working esophagus - his cheeks weren't flushed and he didn't slur his words, but at the first red light, he pushed open the car door and threw up on the side of the street. He remembered nothing in the morning but Gayoon made him pay for her gas, anyway.
"Sounds like you missed me," he laughs. Gayoon thinks she's pushing his face away because this motherfucker - always calling her on her department's work phone asking her if she wanted to get lunch with him three days out of a work week because we work on the same street anyway, forcing her to fend off questions like was that your boyfriend? to which she'd have to do her best to reply without cussing no, that's just my clingy friend from college and now all her co-workers thinks she has a stalker - has the audacity to crack dumb jokes that weren't even funny when her work load is about to increase exponentially and her pay by not that much.
"Whatever," she groans. It's, like, the fourth time she's seen him this week. She feels her hand miss his face, frowns and tries again, and then her fingers smack him in the bridge of his nose.
"Fuck, Gayoon," Doojoon says, grabbing her hand and tossing it away from him. He's rubbing his nose and Gayoon kind of wants to say sorry, but she also kind of wants to say serves you right, asshole. In the end, she says neither, just ends up giggling at him, and the alcohol's really hitting her now, shit, how much did she drink? and Doojoon's trying to look pissed off but he's laughing at her. Gayoon thinks he looks fucking hilarious, but she also thinks anything would be fucking hilarious right about now.
She slams her hands onto the table, still laughing, and Doojoon calms a little. "Quiet down, Gayoon," still chuckling. Gayoon keeps laughing, though she doesn't even know what's funny anymore. "Be quiet or I'll - "
"What?" she pretty much yells and it's loud enough to make Doojoon lean away from her. "What?"
And then he's leaning back in and she can smell the alcohol on his breath and he can smell the alcohol in hers. Gayoon can see the dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling behind her in his eyes and then his lips crash against hers. It's kind of the worst kiss ever, because the ones she got in junior high so do not count, and she remembers feeling the hardness of his teeth like their mouths weren't even aligned or something, and it's Yoon Doojoon, and their relationship consists of giving each other shit, but this isn't shit, it's a shitty kiss -
That's when she thinks her midlife crisis really begins.
In between scrutinizing where exactly she wants to set the plastic drawers on top of her desk - because redecorating can be a kind of therapy, some stress relief book Jooyoung got her for her birthday told her - Sohyun from her old department comes over, frowning.
"Your stalker is calling again," she tells Gayoon, rolling her eyes, looking like she has better things to do (Gayoon knows she doesn't). "Can you please just tell him your new work phone number?" Her gaze pointedly lands on the phone sitting on Gayoon's desk. Maybe that's where Gayoon should place her drawers.
It's Monday, three days after Doojoon kissed (if that could be called a kiss) her, and she hadn't called him since. Usually, she'd drag herself over to his apartment when they were both getting over grueling hangovers, on the grounds that it was so much better to suffer together (lies, they just liked bitching to each other), but she'd woken up to Jooyoung's arm around her waist and the fuzzy memory of the alcohol in Doojoon's breath and thought, fuck it. Doojoon didn't get pissed about things like that, especially when he was friends with Kikwang, who couldn't keep any of his appointments and get-togethers straight, but she knew he'd notice. She just didn't want to face him until she made sense of the situation. They'd been drunk, sure, but they were also friends, and Doojoon knew she was dating so -
"Gayoon?" Sohyun says, tapping her fingers against Gayoon's desk in an impatient rhythm. They're painted black, and it kind of reminds Gayoon of how dark Doojoon's eyes looked in the dim lighting of the bar. She pushes her phone a bit to the side and puts her drawers in the place it occupied.
"Yeah," she breathes out, sounding breathless to her own ears. "Yeah, I'll call him, don't worry."
She doesn't.
Gayoon's in the middle of a meeting with a buyer in a showroom when Doojoon calls her cell. It's the most mortifying situation she's ever been in because Doojoon never calls her cell and she totally forgot to change the "Gee" ringtone back to the default. It keeps ringing and Gayoon scrambles to dismiss the call before setting her phone on vibrate.
"Sorry about that," she says, when she manages to compose herself again. The store manager just smiles politely before continuing on.
The next time Doojoon calls her cell is five minutes later and it scares the shit out of her because she hasn't put her phone on vibrate in forever and forgot how loud it actually gets. She's about to rip through her bag and throw the damn thing across the room when the store manager says, "You should probably answer that." Bless his soul.
"Are you avoiding me?" Doojoon asks as soon as she picks up. Gayoon almost hangs up immediately but instead remembers breathe in and out, deeply from that same stress relief book Jooyoung got her that's currently being used as a coaster in her kitchen and decides to stick it out and tell him a thing or two.
"And shouldn't you be working? Because in twenty years, no girls are going to let you crash on their couch, even if you beg," she hisses in response.
She hears Doojoon whistle on the other line. "Who spit in your coffee this morning?"
Motherfucker. "I'm in the middle of a meeting right now," Gayoon snaps. "So I'm sorry that I can't eat lunch with you three times a week anymore. I have shit to do and I haven't slept more than two hours a night, so if you really need your daily-person-to-annoy fix, Kikwang should do the trick."
The other line goes silent. Gayoon's breathing hard, and she feels her heart pounding in her chest - this is what Jooyoung meant about you're going to die from a heart attack sooner or later if you keep this up and actually bought her a bottle of aspirin, along with the stress relief book - when Doojoon speaks again.
"Well, I wouldn't know because you haven't been talking to me, like, what the fuck, really, Gayoon - "
She decides it's better for her heart's well-being to hang up on him.
Drowning in emails and setting up appointments to meet potential buyers for their clothing brand and editors to preview their new designs also translated to Gayoon having less sex, not that she and Jooyoung had been going at it often before her promotion. Their "honeymoon phase" had fizzled out within a month of their relationship because Gayoon tended to bitch about her job afterwards and as a result, Jooyoung looked into her eyes one night over a romantic apartment dinner of almost-burnt pasta (her fault, too busy thinking about how to market the new line of clothes oriented towards teenagers, and just how do you market to hormonal adolescents who were stressing over their futures?) and told her I get it, and I won't stress you out thinking we need to have sex all the time, because our relationship means more to me than just that. I understand your burden as a working woman of modern society. It was half-sweet and half-weird, but Gayoon had heard stranger things from her exes, so she just took it and gave him a handjob that night.
Jooyoung wasn't really Gayoon's type - she preferred a man with a more stable ambition, stable as in monetary - and while Jooyoung was passionate about his music, he was always working some minimum wage side job that changed every few months. They'd met at one of Gina's parties and she couldn't stop staring at the tattoo on his forearm, so when he asked for her number before she left, she gave it to him.
Other than sexual activities and the occasional propping his outstretched legs on top of hers when they were watching bad television, Jooyoung always gave Gayoon her personal bubble. She'd stiffened the first time he tried to cuddle with her, and the next, not because she didn't like it (see: how often Jiyoon clung to her), but because intimacy wasn't something that came naturally to her. But after the second time, Jooyoung didn't really attempt it again, seeming to get the idea that she needed "space," and Gayoon didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise.
So when she finally gets to see him for the first time in three weeks, after countless suggestive back-and-forths, Gayoon's surprised when she's straddling Jooyoung on her couch as soon as they get back from dinner and he tries to get her off him.
"C'mon, Gayoon," he says, laughing at a loss, when she holds him down. His hair in the front is still sticking up like he didn't even brush it after he woke up and it bothered Gayoon the entire time they were eating. She hesitates before doing her best to slick it down.
"What?" she says, and her voice is everything - confused, annoyed, slightly angry - she doesn't it want it to be. "You said you wanted to - "
Jooyoung sighs and sits up. Gayoon doesn't push him back down this time. He rubs his face with the palm of his hand. "Maybe we should take a break."
She feels like she's just been slapped across the face. "A break."
"You shouldn't be stressing about seeing me when you've got so much on your plate, you're busy and I'm busy and I don't know, I just don't think..." Jooyoung trails off, lips pursed, like he doesn't want to, or that he's scared to, say it.
Gayoon grits her teeth. "You don't think what?" Digs her nails into where she's still holding his sides and Jooyoung reaches over and detaches her hands from his torso, holding them in his hands instead. They feel warm and soft and real, and it makes Gayoon wonder when the last time they held hands was.
"That this is even working," he says, frowning. "You've always been...I don't know." Gayoon takes a sharp breath and tries to comfort herself by realizing this is the unsexiest straddle she's ever been in. "Distant, and it's hard for me to just wait for you to actually trust me, Gayoon."
There's a part of her waiting to cry, burning in her throat, but she forces it down because she doesn't want to cry now, in front of Jooyoung when he's kind of really breaking her heart because Gayoon did trust him - she trusted him to just be there as her token boyfriend or something and god, now she feels like a bitch - but she doesn't know how to tell him any of that without breaking down. Instead, she stands up and looks down at him and says, "Get out."
Jooyoung's eyebrows knit together. "What did I say?" he asks, and fuck, he really wants Gayoon to cry, doesn't he, so she goes and unlocks the door and throws it open and says it again, louder and more like a scream.
"Get out!"
Some part of her hopes that he'll bring up her heart rate and aspirin and that stress relief book he gave her for her birthday, but he doesn't. He stares at her for a moment like he doesn't understand, and then he gets up off her couch and puts on his shoes in silence and walks out her door. Gayoon slams it behind him.
She sinks against it, half-wanting to cry, half-wanting to get really plastered with Doojoon, because he was good at pushing drinks at her that she knew she shouldn't finish, but would eventually. Then Gayoon remembers that the last time she talked to Doojoon was maybe more than a month ago, when she hung up on him, and he never called her back or bothered her for lunch or anything, and she feels even more like a bitch now - like her name, Heo Gayoon, would be right under a female dog in a dictionary.
It's a Saturday, and she still has a half-full tub of neapolitan ice cream in her freezer, so she cries into that instead.
"So, when's the last time you talked to spiky head?" Jiyoon asks through the last spoonful of the strawberry ice cream. Gayoon doesn't even fight her for it. Spiky head was Jiyoon's unfortunate nickname for Doojoon, a constant reminder of a tragic haircut during their junior year of university.
"Five weeks ago?" Gayoon sighs, settling for a heaping scoop of chocolate. She hadn't even invited Jiyoon to come over, but as she was flipping channels, Jiyoon burst in with extra food that she wanted to store in Gayoon's refrigerator, (apparently, Gayoon was good at slamming doors, but not good at remembering to lock them behind her) and she ended up telling Jiyoon everything.
Jiyoon takes her eyes away from the shopping program on TV for a moment to glance at Gayoon with her eyebrows raised. She expects - no, hopes - Jiyoon will take her side, like she did with the whole Jooyoung thing (that bastard! though there was a tacit understanding between them that Jooyoung had been pretty spot on. Jiyoon was usually good at taking her side), but she doesn't. "I mean, you should just talk it out with him," she says, reaching for some of the vanilla that's farthest away from her. "He's one of your best friends, anyway. It'll be fine."
Gayoon doesn't know how Jiyoon can talk about it so fucking calmly. She moves the ice cream tub so it balances between them. "I bet he doesn't remember shit about it," she laughs bitterly, though nothing's funny about her life crashing and burning over the span of less than two months. Puts out the burn with more ice cream. Thank God it was Saturday.
"So?" Jiyoon says to that, like Gayoon's making a big deal out of nothing. Gayoon opens her mouth to defend her position and Jiyoon just sticks a mouthful of chocolate ice cream in the place of her words, and that's when she realizes Jiyoon might be right.
Gayoon weighs herself on Monday morning before she goes to work. She's one pound heavier.
Motherfucker.
She decides it's better to get it over with, so Gayoon forces herself to walk into the building where Doojoon's interning, leaving her name through clenched teeth to the receptionist, who looks at her suspiciously (like Gayoon could be a rabid ex of Doojoon's who stalks him now - she wonders if she should insist it's - or used to be - more the other way around) as she makes a call. He makes her wait ten minutes, the nerve, and the take-out's getting cold, but Gayoon sticks through it even though she has to egg herself on through if he's not here by the next minute -
He looks like he's slept as much as she has (see: not at all), and the collar of his shirt is sticking up on the left a bit, but otherwise, Doojoon looks exactly the same as he did when Gayoon saw him last. He doesn't apologize for making her wait for an unnecessary amount of time under the judgemental gaze of the receptionist, but he does take the bags from her hands, and Gayoon thinks maybe this won't be so hard after all.
That's until Doojoon says, "Is the almighty Heo Gayoon trying to apologize to me?" and then Gayoon can practically hear the nice, adult conversation she was going to start hit the fan.
"The fuck?" she says. "You should be apologizing to me, you dipshit."
He opens the box of jajangmyeon and Gayoon refrains from slapping the chopsticks out of his hands. She's still seething when he slurps up some noodles and asks, as if she hasn't been stressing about it for the past six weeks: "Is this because I kissed you?"
Sees the look on Gayoon's face before he continues. "Hyunseung told me about it. I didn't remember shit until my hangover was gone." He opens the box of side dishes next and helps himself to that, too. "Is that why you stopped talking to me?"
Gayoon glares at him. "What do you think?" and he just makes this face that says sorry I even asked. She doesn't know how Doojoon can talk about this like it's not a big deal, because it was to her and why was it such a big deal to her?
"I mean," Doojoon says, putting down his chopsticks. "I was drunk, and you were drunk. It's not like it meant anything, you know." His eyes are dark, as dark as they were in the dim lighting of the bar even though the sun's shining above them, and they're looking at Gayoon, looking for something in her clenched fingers and poker face, serious for once.
"Did you want it to mean something?"
Oh. And it all clicks in Gayoon's head.
"What if I wanted it to?"
Doojoon's not bothering with the food anymore, and it occurs to Gayoon that maybe it was never about the food, or the free meals somedays because he "forgot" his wallet. She watches as a teasing grin spreads across his lips.
"Well," he says. "What about Jooyoung?"
Gayoon accepts his challenge. "We broke up."
"Oh, really?" Doojoon questions, smile growing bigger and more smug on his face and Gayoon kind of wants to punch it off, but then she'd lose. She won't lose this time.
Instead, she leans in. Doojoon doesn't smell like alcohol this time and for a moment, Gayoon doesn't breathe.
"Really."
3,542w; pg-13 (gayoon-centric, doojoon/gayoon, gayoon/jooyoung)
gayoon's midlife crisis all begins when her boss promotes her.
a/n: for kalopsia! this is pretty late but it's still the 18th in pago pago??? i hope you like this and hopefully i did your doojoon/gayoon prompt somewhat justice ♥ /sweats nervously
warnings: profanity. a lot of it.
Gayoon's midlife crisis all begins when her boss promotes her. She's in her office, reporting how the recent social media campaign for their brand went when Gina tells her, "Brand representation needs someone like you." A couple days later, Gayoon gets a new desk on a different floor.
She's at the ripe age of twenty-six, with her "Maserati" brain, as Kikwang liked to put it, and she hasn't gained a pound despite her Saturday night ice cream habit even when the last time she worked out was before her gym membership that Jihyun signed her up for expired a year and a half ago. Probably too young for a midlife crisis, but Gayoon doesn't know how else to put the feeling of deep-seated dread, even though she addresses its inaccuracy.
"You're exaggerating," Jiyoon tells her later that week at the surprise party - really just a gathering between them and some of their friends from college that they were somehow still hanging around - arm slung around Gayoon's shoulders, the smell of beer in her breath. Gayoon scrunches up her nose. "You just got promoted, Gayoori! That's a good thing!"
Gayoon tries her best not to snort, but she's already on her way to getting drunk, so her filter's halfway out the door. "All it means is now I get paid a little more to do ten times more work," she says after she lets out this weird cough-snort that ends up cracking Kikwang up.
Hyuna just hands her another shot. "Are you gonna complain, or are you gonna get drunk?" She has a point.
But it's because of the damn party that things end up going further downhill than Gayoon thought they would. She's locking and unlocking her phone, wondering if it'd be a good idea to drunk text or call Jooyoung, who was probably in the middle of sleeping or working on a new backtrack - there was no in between - and pissing the hell out of him. He was kind of sexy when he was mad, and Gayoon's head felt light, but she wasn't that drunk. That's around the time when Yoon Doojoon, the fucker who got integrated into their friend group the one time he drunk-hit on Hyuna and passed out on Gayoon's couch, a.k.a somehow her one of her best friends now, slides into the seat beside her at the bar.
Gayoon scowls. "And what do you want?" she slurs out, giving him her best inebriated glare. He doesn't look drunk, and she's almost mad, but there was that one time she was designated driver the night Doojoon drank shots with just about anything that had a working esophagus - his cheeks weren't flushed and he didn't slur his words, but at the first red light, he pushed open the car door and threw up on the side of the street. He remembered nothing in the morning but Gayoon made him pay for her gas, anyway.
"Sounds like you missed me," he laughs. Gayoon thinks she's pushing his face away because this motherfucker - always calling her on her department's work phone asking her if she wanted to get lunch with him three days out of a work week because we work on the same street anyway, forcing her to fend off questions like was that your boyfriend? to which she'd have to do her best to reply without cussing no, that's just my clingy friend from college and now all her co-workers thinks she has a stalker - has the audacity to crack dumb jokes that weren't even funny when her work load is about to increase exponentially and her pay by not that much.
"Whatever," she groans. It's, like, the fourth time she's seen him this week. She feels her hand miss his face, frowns and tries again, and then her fingers smack him in the bridge of his nose.
"Fuck, Gayoon," Doojoon says, grabbing her hand and tossing it away from him. He's rubbing his nose and Gayoon kind of wants to say sorry, but she also kind of wants to say serves you right, asshole. In the end, she says neither, just ends up giggling at him, and the alcohol's really hitting her now, shit, how much did she drink? and Doojoon's trying to look pissed off but he's laughing at her. Gayoon thinks he looks fucking hilarious, but she also thinks anything would be fucking hilarious right about now.
She slams her hands onto the table, still laughing, and Doojoon calms a little. "Quiet down, Gayoon," still chuckling. Gayoon keeps laughing, though she doesn't even know what's funny anymore. "Be quiet or I'll - "
"What?" she pretty much yells and it's loud enough to make Doojoon lean away from her. "What?"
And then he's leaning back in and she can smell the alcohol on his breath and he can smell the alcohol in hers. Gayoon can see the dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling behind her in his eyes and then his lips crash against hers. It's kind of the worst kiss ever, because the ones she got in junior high so do not count, and she remembers feeling the hardness of his teeth like their mouths weren't even aligned or something, and it's Yoon Doojoon, and their relationship consists of giving each other shit, but this isn't shit, it's a shitty kiss -
That's when she thinks her midlife crisis really begins.
In between scrutinizing where exactly she wants to set the plastic drawers on top of her desk - because redecorating can be a kind of therapy, some stress relief book Jooyoung got her for her birthday told her - Sohyun from her old department comes over, frowning.
"Your stalker is calling again," she tells Gayoon, rolling her eyes, looking like she has better things to do (Gayoon knows she doesn't). "Can you please just tell him your new work phone number?" Her gaze pointedly lands on the phone sitting on Gayoon's desk. Maybe that's where Gayoon should place her drawers.
It's Monday, three days after Doojoon kissed (if that could be called a kiss) her, and she hadn't called him since. Usually, she'd drag herself over to his apartment when they were both getting over grueling hangovers, on the grounds that it was so much better to suffer together (lies, they just liked bitching to each other), but she'd woken up to Jooyoung's arm around her waist and the fuzzy memory of the alcohol in Doojoon's breath and thought, fuck it. Doojoon didn't get pissed about things like that, especially when he was friends with Kikwang, who couldn't keep any of his appointments and get-togethers straight, but she knew he'd notice. She just didn't want to face him until she made sense of the situation. They'd been drunk, sure, but they were also friends, and Doojoon knew she was dating so -
"Gayoon?" Sohyun says, tapping her fingers against Gayoon's desk in an impatient rhythm. They're painted black, and it kind of reminds Gayoon of how dark Doojoon's eyes looked in the dim lighting of the bar. She pushes her phone a bit to the side and puts her drawers in the place it occupied.
"Yeah," she breathes out, sounding breathless to her own ears. "Yeah, I'll call him, don't worry."
She doesn't.
Gayoon's in the middle of a meeting with a buyer in a showroom when Doojoon calls her cell. It's the most mortifying situation she's ever been in because Doojoon never calls her cell and she totally forgot to change the "Gee" ringtone back to the default. It keeps ringing and Gayoon scrambles to dismiss the call before setting her phone on vibrate.
"Sorry about that," she says, when she manages to compose herself again. The store manager just smiles politely before continuing on.
The next time Doojoon calls her cell is five minutes later and it scares the shit out of her because she hasn't put her phone on vibrate in forever and forgot how loud it actually gets. She's about to rip through her bag and throw the damn thing across the room when the store manager says, "You should probably answer that." Bless his soul.
"Are you avoiding me?" Doojoon asks as soon as she picks up. Gayoon almost hangs up immediately but instead remembers breathe in and out, deeply from that same stress relief book Jooyoung got her that's currently being used as a coaster in her kitchen and decides to stick it out and tell him a thing or two.
"And shouldn't you be working? Because in twenty years, no girls are going to let you crash on their couch, even if you beg," she hisses in response.
She hears Doojoon whistle on the other line. "Who spit in your coffee this morning?"
Motherfucker. "I'm in the middle of a meeting right now," Gayoon snaps. "So I'm sorry that I can't eat lunch with you three times a week anymore. I have shit to do and I haven't slept more than two hours a night, so if you really need your daily-person-to-annoy fix, Kikwang should do the trick."
The other line goes silent. Gayoon's breathing hard, and she feels her heart pounding in her chest - this is what Jooyoung meant about you're going to die from a heart attack sooner or later if you keep this up and actually bought her a bottle of aspirin, along with the stress relief book - when Doojoon speaks again.
"Well, I wouldn't know because you haven't been talking to me, like, what the fuck, really, Gayoon - "
She decides it's better for her heart's well-being to hang up on him.
Drowning in emails and setting up appointments to meet potential buyers for their clothing brand and editors to preview their new designs also translated to Gayoon having less sex, not that she and Jooyoung had been going at it often before her promotion. Their "honeymoon phase" had fizzled out within a month of their relationship because Gayoon tended to bitch about her job afterwards and as a result, Jooyoung looked into her eyes one night over a romantic apartment dinner of almost-burnt pasta (her fault, too busy thinking about how to market the new line of clothes oriented towards teenagers, and just how do you market to hormonal adolescents who were stressing over their futures?) and told her I get it, and I won't stress you out thinking we need to have sex all the time, because our relationship means more to me than just that. I understand your burden as a working woman of modern society. It was half-sweet and half-weird, but Gayoon had heard stranger things from her exes, so she just took it and gave him a handjob that night.
Jooyoung wasn't really Gayoon's type - she preferred a man with a more stable ambition, stable as in monetary - and while Jooyoung was passionate about his music, he was always working some minimum wage side job that changed every few months. They'd met at one of Gina's parties and she couldn't stop staring at the tattoo on his forearm, so when he asked for her number before she left, she gave it to him.
Other than sexual activities and the occasional propping his outstretched legs on top of hers when they were watching bad television, Jooyoung always gave Gayoon her personal bubble. She'd stiffened the first time he tried to cuddle with her, and the next, not because she didn't like it (see: how often Jiyoon clung to her), but because intimacy wasn't something that came naturally to her. But after the second time, Jooyoung didn't really attempt it again, seeming to get the idea that she needed "space," and Gayoon didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise.
So when she finally gets to see him for the first time in three weeks, after countless suggestive back-and-forths, Gayoon's surprised when she's straddling Jooyoung on her couch as soon as they get back from dinner and he tries to get her off him.
"C'mon, Gayoon," he says, laughing at a loss, when she holds him down. His hair in the front is still sticking up like he didn't even brush it after he woke up and it bothered Gayoon the entire time they were eating. She hesitates before doing her best to slick it down.
"What?" she says, and her voice is everything - confused, annoyed, slightly angry - she doesn't it want it to be. "You said you wanted to - "
Jooyoung sighs and sits up. Gayoon doesn't push him back down this time. He rubs his face with the palm of his hand. "Maybe we should take a break."
She feels like she's just been slapped across the face. "A break."
"You shouldn't be stressing about seeing me when you've got so much on your plate, you're busy and I'm busy and I don't know, I just don't think..." Jooyoung trails off, lips pursed, like he doesn't want to, or that he's scared to, say it.
Gayoon grits her teeth. "You don't think what?" Digs her nails into where she's still holding his sides and Jooyoung reaches over and detaches her hands from his torso, holding them in his hands instead. They feel warm and soft and real, and it makes Gayoon wonder when the last time they held hands was.
"That this is even working," he says, frowning. "You've always been...I don't know." Gayoon takes a sharp breath and tries to comfort herself by realizing this is the unsexiest straddle she's ever been in. "Distant, and it's hard for me to just wait for you to actually trust me, Gayoon."
There's a part of her waiting to cry, burning in her throat, but she forces it down because she doesn't want to cry now, in front of Jooyoung when he's kind of really breaking her heart because Gayoon did trust him - she trusted him to just be there as her token boyfriend or something and god, now she feels like a bitch - but she doesn't know how to tell him any of that without breaking down. Instead, she stands up and looks down at him and says, "Get out."
Jooyoung's eyebrows knit together. "What did I say?" he asks, and fuck, he really wants Gayoon to cry, doesn't he, so she goes and unlocks the door and throws it open and says it again, louder and more like a scream.
"Get out!"
Some part of her hopes that he'll bring up her heart rate and aspirin and that stress relief book he gave her for her birthday, but he doesn't. He stares at her for a moment like he doesn't understand, and then he gets up off her couch and puts on his shoes in silence and walks out her door. Gayoon slams it behind him.
She sinks against it, half-wanting to cry, half-wanting to get really plastered with Doojoon, because he was good at pushing drinks at her that she knew she shouldn't finish, but would eventually. Then Gayoon remembers that the last time she talked to Doojoon was maybe more than a month ago, when she hung up on him, and he never called her back or bothered her for lunch or anything, and she feels even more like a bitch now - like her name, Heo Gayoon, would be right under a female dog in a dictionary.
It's a Saturday, and she still has a half-full tub of neapolitan ice cream in her freezer, so she cries into that instead.
"So, when's the last time you talked to spiky head?" Jiyoon asks through the last spoonful of the strawberry ice cream. Gayoon doesn't even fight her for it. Spiky head was Jiyoon's unfortunate nickname for Doojoon, a constant reminder of a tragic haircut during their junior year of university.
"Five weeks ago?" Gayoon sighs, settling for a heaping scoop of chocolate. She hadn't even invited Jiyoon to come over, but as she was flipping channels, Jiyoon burst in with extra food that she wanted to store in Gayoon's refrigerator, (apparently, Gayoon was good at slamming doors, but not good at remembering to lock them behind her) and she ended up telling Jiyoon everything.
Jiyoon takes her eyes away from the shopping program on TV for a moment to glance at Gayoon with her eyebrows raised. She expects - no, hopes - Jiyoon will take her side, like she did with the whole Jooyoung thing (that bastard! though there was a tacit understanding between them that Jooyoung had been pretty spot on. Jiyoon was usually good at taking her side), but she doesn't. "I mean, you should just talk it out with him," she says, reaching for some of the vanilla that's farthest away from her. "He's one of your best friends, anyway. It'll be fine."
Gayoon doesn't know how Jiyoon can talk about it so fucking calmly. She moves the ice cream tub so it balances between them. "I bet he doesn't remember shit about it," she laughs bitterly, though nothing's funny about her life crashing and burning over the span of less than two months. Puts out the burn with more ice cream. Thank God it was Saturday.
"So?" Jiyoon says to that, like Gayoon's making a big deal out of nothing. Gayoon opens her mouth to defend her position and Jiyoon just sticks a mouthful of chocolate ice cream in the place of her words, and that's when she realizes Jiyoon might be right.
Gayoon weighs herself on Monday morning before she goes to work. She's one pound heavier.
Motherfucker.
She decides it's better to get it over with, so Gayoon forces herself to walk into the building where Doojoon's interning, leaving her name through clenched teeth to the receptionist, who looks at her suspiciously (like Gayoon could be a rabid ex of Doojoon's who stalks him now - she wonders if she should insist it's - or used to be - more the other way around) as she makes a call. He makes her wait ten minutes, the nerve, and the take-out's getting cold, but Gayoon sticks through it even though she has to egg herself on through if he's not here by the next minute -
He looks like he's slept as much as she has (see: not at all), and the collar of his shirt is sticking up on the left a bit, but otherwise, Doojoon looks exactly the same as he did when Gayoon saw him last. He doesn't apologize for making her wait for an unnecessary amount of time under the judgemental gaze of the receptionist, but he does take the bags from her hands, and Gayoon thinks maybe this won't be so hard after all.
That's until Doojoon says, "Is the almighty Heo Gayoon trying to apologize to me?" and then Gayoon can practically hear the nice, adult conversation she was going to start hit the fan.
"The fuck?" she says. "You should be apologizing to me, you dipshit."
He opens the box of jajangmyeon and Gayoon refrains from slapping the chopsticks out of his hands. She's still seething when he slurps up some noodles and asks, as if she hasn't been stressing about it for the past six weeks: "Is this because I kissed you?"
Sees the look on Gayoon's face before he continues. "Hyunseung told me about it. I didn't remember shit until my hangover was gone." He opens the box of side dishes next and helps himself to that, too. "Is that why you stopped talking to me?"
Gayoon glares at him. "What do you think?" and he just makes this face that says sorry I even asked. She doesn't know how Doojoon can talk about this like it's not a big deal, because it was to her and why was it such a big deal to her?
"I mean," Doojoon says, putting down his chopsticks. "I was drunk, and you were drunk. It's not like it meant anything, you know." His eyes are dark, as dark as they were in the dim lighting of the bar even though the sun's shining above them, and they're looking at Gayoon, looking for something in her clenched fingers and poker face, serious for once.
"Did you want it to mean something?"
Oh. And it all clicks in Gayoon's head.
"What if I wanted it to?"
Doojoon's not bothering with the food anymore, and it occurs to Gayoon that maybe it was never about the food, or the free meals somedays because he "forgot" his wallet. She watches as a teasing grin spreads across his lips.
"Well," he says. "What about Jooyoung?"
Gayoon accepts his challenge. "We broke up."
"Oh, really?" Doojoon questions, smile growing bigger and more smug on his face and Gayoon kind of wants to punch it off, but then she'd lose. She won't lose this time.
Instead, she leans in. Doojoon doesn't smell like alcohol this time and for a moment, Gayoon doesn't breathe.
"Really."