Where the Heart Waits: Home with You, 2

The company had run long.

It ran long the way it ran long in the second week of February, which was the kind of long that had nothing to do with the work and everything to do with the particular accumulation of small things that wore at a person who had been managing other people’s needs since he was eighteen. A label dispute that had been running since November. A broadcast scheduling conflict. A contract clause that had come back with new language at ten at night when he had been trying to leave.

He had not left at ten.

He had left at twelve fifteen.

He drove home. He parked. He sat in the car for one minute and looked at the strip of grass between the two houses and thought about his own house, which was dark, and her house, which had one light on, the particular warm low light of a candle in her bedroom.

He got out of the car.

He crossed the strip of grass.

He punched in his birthday at her keypad.

He stopped.

He punched it in again because the first time he had not been sure.

Green light.

The lock unlatched.

He stood at her door for one second.

His birthday.

She had changed it back to his birthday.

He pushed the door open. He stepped in. He took his shoes off at the door and lined them up. He walked through the dark living room and down the dark hall toward the single warm light under her bedroom door.

He pushed it open.

The room was dark except for the candle on her nightstand. The strawberry one, burned down a third from where it had been when she had lit it. The warm low light of it moved over the ceiling and the walls and the pink bedding and her.

She was asleep.

On her stomach. Her hair loose across the pillow. A soft white tee, the kind she slept in, and nothing else below it that he could see. She was breathing the slow steady breath of someone who had been asleep for a while.

He stood in the doorway for a moment.

He walked to her vanity.

He took off his suit jacket. He laid it over the vanity chair. He loosened his tie. He set his watch on the vanity beside the small dish of rings and hair clips she kept there. He rolled his sleeves up.

He walked to his side of the bed.

He got in.

The bed shifted under him.

She stirred.

Her breathing changed. She came up from sleep the way she came up from everything, not slowly, not gradually. One moment asleep, the next moment present.

She turned her head.

She looked at him in the candlelight.

“What time is it.”

“Past one.”

She looked at him for a moment.

“It was a long day,” he said.

She did not say anything.

She reached over.

She took his arm and pulled.

He let her pull him. He moved toward her and she positioned him the way she wanted him, which was his head at her collarbone, his body beside hers, his arm across her middle. She settled his weight against her the way she had settled it in October in her Seoul house and on the jet and in Fresno and he went where she put him because he always went where she put him.

He breathed out.

The candlelight was warm on the ceiling.

The room smelled like strawberry and the particular warm smell of her that lived under everything else.

He was quiet for a moment.

“You changed the code.”

“Yes.”

“Back to my birthday.”

“Yes.”

He looked at the candlelight on the ceiling.

“When.”

“When I came back from Fresno.”

He lifted his head.

He looked at her.

She was looking at the ceiling.

He looked at her for a long moment.

She turned her head.

She looked at him.

He kissed her.

She kissed him back.

It started the way it always started with them, which was not soft exactly but measured, the particular measured quality of two people who had been learning each other’s mouths for a month and had gotten very good at it. His hand came up to her face. Her hand came to the back of his neck.

The kiss went from measured to the other thing in the space of about thirty seconds.

He kissed down from her mouth to her jaw.

He kissed her neck.

She tilted her head back against the pillow.

She gave him the neck the way she always gave him the neck, unhurried, making space, her chin going up and to the side to give him the full column of it.

He kissed further down.

He shifted.

He moved over her, settling between her legs, his weight coming down onto her, and he felt it immediately, the particular heat of her under him through the thin fabric of his dress shirt and his trousers.

He grabbed her hip.

His hand slid around from her waist to her hip and his fingers felt the edge of fabric and then the edge of skin and then just skin, the warm smooth skin of her hip under his palm, and he registered all at once that there was nothing below the tee except the thin cotton of underwear.

The sound that came out of him was low and involuntary and pressed against the side of her neck.

He was already hard.

He pressed against her and the friction landed and he had to stop himself from chasing it immediately, had to hold still for one second and breathe, because he was not going to be easy about this, he was going to—

He was easy about it.

He pressed into her and his hips moved and he made the sound again.

He kissed her neck harder.

He bit.

The bite landed where all his bites had landed, the curve between her neck and her shoulder, and he bit down and held it and her hips came up to meet his and the friction made his jaw tighten.

He pressed harder.

He bit harder.

She made a sound.

Her hand came between them.

She slid it down from his chest, past his waist, past the waistband of his trousers, and she found his hand where it was gripping her hip and she took it.

She guided it.

She moved his hand from her hip, sliding it slowly, deliberately, across the flat of her stomach and then lower, her fingers over his, guiding him inside the waistband of her underwear.

He lifted his head from her neck.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

The candlelight was between them.

Her hand was still over his, holding it in place, his palm flat against the soft skin below the waistband, his fingers where she had put them.

He looked at her face.

Her face was not the flat thing.

It was the other thing. The thing he had been watching appear and disappear for two years and had been seeing more of in the last month. The real one underneath the flat one. The one that lived there when she had decided to let it.

He watched it for one second.

He pressed his palm down.

He felt her.

Warm and soft and the particular warmth that was specifically her and specifically now and his jaw went tight and a sound came out of him that he did not try to stop.

“Lou.”

Her name came out low and rough against her collarbone, pressed into her skin, and his hand moved and she made the small sound that was not small anymore, the one she could not entirely manage, and he kept going.

The candle on the nightstand had burned down another quarter inch.

He felt it the moment his fingers slid inside her.

The warmth of it. The particular warmth and the particular softness and the way her body pulled his fingers in and he felt the slick heat of her around them and the sound that came out of him was not the low involuntary moan from his hair being pulled and not the rough sound from the bite and not any sound he had made before in his life. It was something that came from a place he had not known was accessible until this month and it came out of him pressed against the side of her jaw and he could not have stopped it and did not try.

He had never touched a girl before.

He had known that about himself in the abstract, the same way he knew other operational facts about himself, catalogued and filed and not particularly examined. He had known it in Fresno when she had asked him and he had said no. He had known it in the shower in October when he had named what he felt for her. He had known it every time she had been on his lap in the last month and every time she had pulled his hair and every time he had pressed his mouth to the mark on her neck and breathed through the wanting.

He had known it in the abstract.

It was not abstract anymore.

His fingers were inside her and she was warm and she was wet and she was pulling his hand deeper with hers and every single thing he had ever filed in the cabinet in his head had collapsed into this bed in February and he was completely without composure and he did not care.

He started to move his fingers.

He did it slowly at first. Carefully. The way he did everything, methodically and with attention, reading what happened when he moved and adjusting. Her hips shifted. He adjusted. She made a sound, the small one that was not small anymore, and he felt her around his fingers and the sound made him press harder into the mattress beside her hip, his hips seeking friction that was not there.

“Lou.”

Her name pressed into her collarbone.

She made the sound again.

He moved his fingers deeper and she chased his hand and he felt the slick heat of her increase, felt how wet she was getting, felt it on his fingers and his palm and he lifted his head and looked at her face because he needed to see her face.

Her face.

Her face was not the flat thing.

Her head was back against the pillow. Her lips were parted. Her brows were pulled together in the particular way they pulled when something was landing exactly where it was supposed to land. The candlelight caught her jaw and her throat and the mark he had left on her neck an hour ago that had not faded.

He looked at her face and his fingers moved and she made the sound and his hips pressed into nothing.

“Jin.”

His name.

Low. Slightly wrecked. The same way she had said it in Fresno when the wall had come all the way down and the wall was all the way down now and he was not putting it back up.

He kissed her.

He kissed her while his fingers moved and she kissed him back and he could feel her getting wetter around him and the sound of it was audible in the quiet of the bedroom, the soft wet sound of his fingers working, and the sound went directly to his spine and he made a noise against her mouth that was embarrassing and he did not care that it was embarrassing.

She pulled back from the kiss.

She looked at him.

“Jin.”

“What.” His voice was not his voice. It was lower and rougher and had lost the regulation he usually maintained.

She looked at his face.

“Your face,” she said.

“Lou.”

“You are coming apart.”

“I know.”

“Completely.”

“I know, Lou.”

She pulled his hand deeper.

He felt her clench around his fingers and his jaw went tight.

“Lou.”

“What.”

“You are very—”

He stopped.

She tilted her head. The corner of her mouth. Even now. Even like this.

“Say it,” she said.

He looked at her.

He looked at her face and the candlelight and the mark on her neck and her hand over his guiding him and the wet heat of her around his fingers.

He said it.

“You are very wet.”

She made the sound.

Not the small one. The real one. The one she had been making more of in the last month, the one she could not manage, and it came out of her and went directly into him and his hips pressed hard into the mattress and he made his own sound, lower, rougher, the sound of a man running out of things to hold onto.

He had been holding onto things for two years.

He was not holding onto anything right now.

He curled his fingers.

She gasped.

The gasp was sharp and real and the most unguarded sound she had made and it went through him like something physical and he curled his fingers again and she chased his hand, her hips rolling up to meet the movement, and he could hear how wet she was, could feel it, warm and slick around his fingers.

He kissed her neck.

He bit the same spot.

She made the sound and her hips rolled and he felt her clench and the combination of the sound and the clenching and the wet heat of her made his whole arm tighten.

“Lou.”

“What.”

Her voice had gone to the low unsteady version. She was not going to acknowledge the unsteady part. She never did. But it was there and he could hear it and it was doing things to him that were going to be very difficult to manage.

“I can hear you,” he said. Into her neck. Low. “How wet you are. I can hear it.”

She made the sound again.

Louder this time.

He felt her hips roll up harder.

He pressed his palm down and his fingers worked and she chased his hand and he listened to the sound of her and felt how wet she was getting and his breathing was not regulated, had not been regulated since his fingers first slid inside her, and he was pressing his hips into the mattress with the particular desperation of a man who had nowhere to put what was happening to him.

He lifted his head.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

She looked at his face the way she always looked at his face when the wall was down. The way she had said that is what you actually look like in her dad’s house in January.

She looked at it for a long moment.

“You are losing it,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Fast.”

“Yes.”

“Jin.”

“What.”

“You have never done this before.”

It was not a question.

He looked at her.

“No,” he said.

She looked at his face.

She reached up.

She put her hand in his hair.

Not the pull. Not yet. Just her fingers in his hair, soft, the way a person held something they were being careful with.

“Jin.”

“What.” Rough. Low. The voice that was not his voice.

“Your heartbeat.”

“I know.”

“It is the loudest it has ever been.”

“I know, Lou.”

She pulled his hair.

The sound that came out of him was not dignified. It was not composed. It was not anything Jin Park had ever let out in front of another person in his life. It was the sound of two years of the cabinet and the bread bear and the keypad code and Dongdaemun and Fresno and the painting and every filed thing landing all at once in this specific room at this specific moment with his fingers inside her and her hand in his hair.

She felt his fingers falter.

She pulled his hair again, softer this time, and he breathed out through his nose in a long unsteady exhale and pressed his forehead to her shoulder.

“Lou.”

“What.”

“I need a second.”

She said nothing.

She kept her hand in his hair.

She kept her hips moving slowly against his hand, unhurried, patient, and she felt him breathe and felt the breath slow by degrees and his fingers found their rhythm again.

After a moment, very quietly, against her shoulder:

“You are going to have to be patient with me.”

She was quiet for a long second.

Her hand in his hair moved.

She stroked once, slow, from the back of his skull to the nape of his neck.

“I know,” she said.

She said it the way she said things that were true and did not need decoration.

He pressed his mouth to her shoulder.

He kept going.

The candle had burned lower.

He was hiding in her neck the way he hid in her neck when things were happening to him that he could not put on his face, when the wall was gone and the composed thing was gone and there was nothing left between him and whatever he was feeling. He was breathing hard against her skin, the breath short and unsteady in a way that he had stopped trying to regulate because regulation was not available to him right now.

He felt her hands at his shirt.

Her fingers at the first button.

He did not move. He stayed in her neck and let her work, felt the buttons come undone one at a time under her hands, felt the shirt loosen around his shoulders. She was unhurried about it. Methodical. The way she did everything.

She pushed it off his shoulders.

He lifted himself enough to let it go and then he was back in her neck, his forehead to the curve of it, his breathing against her skin.

Her hands came to his chest.

Flat palms, both of them, pressed to the center of his chest and sliding slowly outward to his shoulders, reading him the way she read everything, which was with full attention and nothing wasted. She ran her palms down his arms. She ran them back up. She felt the tension in his shoulders, which was considerable, and pressed her thumbs against it and he breathed out hard through his nose.

“Jin.”

“What.” Rough. Pressed into her neck.

“You are shaking.”

He was.

He was aware that he was shaking. He had been aware of it for the last several minutes and had been managing it the same way he managed everything, which was by not acknowledging it and hoping it resolved itself. It was not resolving itself.

“I know,” he said.

She said nothing.

She ran her hands back up his arms.

Then she reached down and took the hem of her own shirt.

She pulled it over her head.

She dropped it somewhere off the side of the bed.

He lifted his head.

He looked at her.

She had taken her underwear off at the same moment, he registered it a half second later, the small shift of fabric, and then she was below him and she was not wearing anything and the candlelight was moving over her and his brain went to a place it had never gone before.

She was small.

He had always known she was small. He had known it in Dongdaemun when her hand was in his and her hand was small in his. He had known it in October when he had carried her on his back in the parking lot. He had known it in every room they had been in together for two years where the top of her head came to his shoulder.

Below him she was small in a different way.

Small and the candlelight moving over her and her eyes on his face watching him look at her and her hair loose across the pillow and he had always looked. He had always tried not to look and always looked anyway. Every cami. Every morning in her kitchen. Every time she had been on the couch in her shorts and her feet tucked under her with the book. He had been looking and filing and not saying anything for two years and now he was above her and she was not wearing anything and he was looking.

He was not hiding that he was looking.

He could not hide anything right now.

“Jin.”

He looked at her face.

The corner of her mouth.

“I know,” she said. Quietly. Flat. Warm underneath the flat.

He kissed her.

She kissed him back.

She reached down.

She found his waistband with both hands and pulled.

He went.

He was frantic about the kiss in a way he was not usually frantic about anything. He kissed her with the particular desperation of a man who had been waiting for something for a very long time and had run out of the capacity to pace himself about it. She kissed him back with the precision she brought to everything and the combination of his frantic and her precise was something he felt in his entire body.

Her hands went to his trousers.

She started on the button.

He did not wait.

He took them off.

He got them off fast, faster than was composed, and he did not think about whether it was composed because composed was not in the room anymore. He had left composed in the parking structure at Starfield two weeks ago and it had not come back.

He settled between her legs.

He felt it now.

He felt how close he was to her, the heat of her, and he was aching in a way that had moved past the Fresno aching into something that was its own category, specific and urgent and right there, and he could feel himself already leaking at the tip and he pressed his forehead to her shoulder and breathed.

“Lou.”

“What.”

“I need—” He stopped. He breathed. “I need a second.”

“Take it,” she said.

He breathed.

He took the second.

He felt her hands in his hair again. Not the pull. Just there.

He breathed.

She reached between them.

She found him.

He made a sound into her shoulder that he was going to think about later, the particular sound of a person whose body had made a decision about what it was going to do regardless of what the brain was managing, and she guided him.

She said, very quietly, very flat, the way she said the real things:

“Go slow.”

He lifted his head.

He looked at her.

She was looking at him with the brown eyes and the candlelight and the real thing underneath the flat thing fully visible.

He held her eyes.

He pressed forward.

The moment he went inside.

His forehead fell to hers.

He felt her. Warm and wet and tight in a way that went through every nerve he had at once, the particular tight warmth of her around him, and his breathing stopped for one full second and then came back ragged and uneven against her face.

He had never felt anything like it.

He had nothing to compare it to and nothing he had filed in the cabinet in his head came close to being adequate preparation for this specific warmth and this specific tightness and this specific moment and he pressed his forehead harder to hers and tried to breathe.

She was small.

He had known she was small.

He felt it now in a different way, felt the resistance of her around him, felt how much of him was left to go and how much room there was not, and he went still.

He was not all the way in.

He was not close to all the way in.

She was adjusting.

He could feel her adjusting around him, the small shifts of her body, and he stayed still because Lou had said go slow and because every operative instinct he had said stay still and because the alternative was forward and forward was not something he could do to her right now without knowing she was ready.

He bit her shoulder.

Not a kiss. Not the testing graze. He bit down on her shoulder with the full focused intention of a man who needed something to do with his jaw while he fought every urge he had, which were considerable and all pointing in the same direction.

The bite was the only thing between him and forward.

He held it.

He was shaking.

He was shaking against her shoulder and breathing in short clipped increments that were not regulated and not going to be regulated and his hands had found her hips and were gripping and he was fighting.

He was losing the fight.

He pressed his mouth flat to the bite mark he had left and breathed against it and stayed still.

“Lou.”

Her name came out rough and pressed and not entirely a word.

She felt how hard he was fighting.

She put both hands on the back of his neck.

She held him there.

“Slow,” she said again. Quiet. Steady.

He breathed.

He breathed again.

He went a little further.

He felt her stretch around him and the sound that came out of him was muffled in her shoulder and his whole body shook once with the effort of staying slow and staying still and not doing what everything in him was telling him to do.

He had never wanted anything the way he wanted to move right now.

He stayed still.

He went a little further.

His forehead pressed harder to her shoulder.

He was not going to last.

He knew he was not going to last and he was going to manage it anyway, he was going to stay slow and let her adjust because she had said go slow and she was small and he was not, and those were the only facts that mattered right now.

He bit her shoulder again.

Harder.

He stayed still and bit down and shook and breathed.

It took a long time.

He stayed still for longer than he thought he could stay still, his forehead on her shoulder, his teeth marks on her skin, his whole body running a current he was managing by degrees. He went in increments, shallow and slow, each one a negotiation between what his body wanted and what she needed, and each one pulled a sound out of him that was getting less and less managed.

She was tight around him in a way that made rational thought difficult.

He went a little further.

He felt her squeeze around him, the involuntary clench of her body adjusting, and the sensation of it made his jaw go tight against her shoulder and his hips stutter forward a half inch without permission.

He pulled back.

“Sorry,” he said. Rough. Into her shoulder.

She said nothing.

She held his neck.

He went slow.

He went further and further and each increment was its own particular test and he was leaking inside her, had been leaking since the moment he went in, and he could feel the warmth of it and could feel her around him and his breathing was the breathing of a man who had lost the ability to regulate anything a long time ago and was operating entirely on will.

And then he was all the way in.

He went still.

He was all the way inside her and she was all the way around him and his forehead was on her shoulder and he was shaking and the sensation of her, tight and warm and wet and squeezing around him, was the most overwhelming thing he had ever felt in his life.

He stayed still.

He could feel her squeezing him.

The involuntary clench and release, her body accommodating him, and every clench sent something up his spine that made the shaking worse.

He was already leaking inside her.

He felt it. Warm. And she was warm around it and around him and he pressed his mouth to her shoulder and breathed through his nose and did not move.

He could not move yet.

If he moved right now he was not going to be able to be slow about it.

“Lou.”

Her name was barely a word.

“What.” Her voice was the low unsteady version. She was not going to acknowledge the unsteady part but it was there.

“I need—” He stopped. “A second.”

“Take it.”

He breathed.

She squeezed around him.

The sound that came out of him was involuntary and loud in the quiet bedroom and he pressed it into her shoulder and his hips pushed forward with nothing left to push into and came back.

“Lou.”

“What.”

“Stop doing that.”

A pause.

He felt her squeeze again.

Deliberately this time.

“Lou.”

“What.” The corner of her mouth was in her voice even now.

He lifted his head.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

Her eyes were dark in the candlelight and the real thing was all the way on the surface of her face and she looked at him looking at her and squeezed around him again and watched his face do the thing.

He breathed out.

He moved.

Slow. He pulled back slow and went forward slow and the sound she made was not the sound from before. It was the discomfort sound, the small sharp catch of breath that meant he was too much and she was adjusting and he stopped.

“Keep going,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Keep going, Jin.”

He moved again.

Slow. In and back and the sound again, the discomfort threading through it, and he stayed slow and stayed steady because she had said keep going and he was going to give her exactly what she could take and nothing more than that.

She made the sound again.

It went into him sideways. The discomfort of it. The knowledge that he was causing it. He kissed her jaw. He kissed her neck. He moved slow and steady and felt her around him and felt himself leaking and breathed through all of it.

He did not stop.

She started moving.

He felt it before he registered it, the small rise of her hips to meet his, the first tentative counter to his thrust, and then again, more deliberate, her hips coming up on the forward stroke and the sound that came with it was different from the discomfort sound.

It was the other sound.

He felt her meet him a third time.

He lost it.

He had been holding it for the entire time it had taken him to get all the way inside her and the entire slow build after and he had been holding it with everything he had and she met his thrust and he lost it.

He said:

“I am sorry.”

It came out rough and already moving because he was already moving, his hips driving forward without the slow, the pace breaking open into something that was not slow and was not measured and was everything he had been fighting.

He thrust into her.

Fast. Deep. His hips driving and the headboard and the sound of them and the sound of her and the wet sound of him inside her and all of it filling the bedroom with the candle burning down on the nightstand.

She met him.

Her hips came up to meet his and the sound she made had the discomfort in it still, the sharp edge of too much, but threaded through it now was the other thing, the pleasure threading through the discomfort, real and building, and she made the sound and he drove forward and she made it again.

“Lou.” His voice was not a voice. It was something that had been a voice once. “You feel—”

He could not finish.

He drove forward.

“You feel so tight,” he said, into her neck, rough and unmanaged and filthy and completely true. “So tight around me. You are so small.”

She made the sound.

He felt her clench around him and the clench made him thrust harder and the thrust made her clench and he was going to lose his mind.

He pulled back enough to look at her face.

He looked at her.

He thrust forward.

He watched her face take it.

He did it again.

He watched.

“Look at you,” he said. Low. Rough. The voice he had no name for, the one that only existed in this room in this dark. “Taking all of me.”

She made the sound that was not entirely discomfort anymore.

Her hands found him.

Her hands went to his back and her nails went into his skin and she pulled him tighter, pulled him harder against her, and said against his jaw, low and slightly wrecked and completely Lou even now:

“Harder.”

He looked at her.

“Jin.”

He looked at her face.

“Harder.”

He buried himself in her.

He drove forward with everything he had been holding since the slow and since Fresno and since the shower in October and since the bread bear and since the cabinet and since the November he had not slept and since the tarmac and since every moment he had filed and not said and held back and waited and she arched up into him and he felt her take it and the sound she made was the pleasure one, all the way through now, the discomfort there but underneath it.

“Jin.” Her voice against his ear. Rough. Real. “Like that.”

He kept going.

His forehead dropped to the pillow beside her head.

He kept going and she kept pulling him closer and he was making sounds that had no name, low and continuous and pressed into the pillow, and he felt himself getting close in a way that was going to be very fast and very complete.

He said, into the pillow, low and rough:

“You are going to make me—”

He could not finish it.

She pulled him harder.

He thrust deeper.

He pressed his mouth to her neck.

He said:

“I cannot stop.”

She said nothing.

She pulled him tighter.

He kept going.

She felt him driving into her and she watched his face.

She was always watching his face.

She had been watching his face for two years and she was watching it now, in the candlelight, with him above her and inside her and completely without composure, and what she saw on it was the thing that had been under the wall the whole time, the thing she had been pulling out of him since September of two years ago one small piece at a time.

It was all the way out now.

She tilted her head back.

She said:

“Look at you.”

He drove forward and did not answer.

“Jin Park.”

He kept going.

“Has completely lost it.”

He pressed his mouth to her jaw.

“Lou.” Rough. Pressed into her skin.

“You have,” she said. Flat. Even. Slightly breathless and not acknowledging the slightly breathless part. “You have completely lost it.”

He thrust into her.

She felt it and made the sound and his hips chased the sound and he made his own, low and continuous, the sound that had no name, the one that only existed in this room.

He did not care.

She could see that he did not care.

That was the thing about his face right now. Not just that the wall was down. Not just that the composed thing was gone. It was that he was not trying to get it back. He had stopped trying somewhere in the last ten minutes and what was left was just Jin, twenty-four years old, above her, and the only thing on his face was what he was feeling and where he was going and he was not managing any of it.

She felt him shift.

He went deeper.

She moaned.

She heard herself and felt him feel it, felt the way he responded to the sound of her, the immediate change in his rhythm, the way her sounds drove him forward the way nothing else did.

She said his name.

“Jin.”

He made a sound that was not a word.

“Jin.”

He thrust hard.

“Lou.” His voice pressed into her neck. Rough. Unrecognizable from the voice he used in meetings and with the label and in the company hallways. “Say it again.”

She said nothing for one beat.

He thrust.

“Please.” The word came out low and wrecked and not composed and he did not seem to know he had said it. “Say my name.”

She looked at his face.

She said it.

“Jin.”

He pressed his forehead to her shoulder.

“Again.”

“Jin.”

“Lou.” A sound that was not quite a word after it.

“Jin.”

He was begging.

Jin Park, Level Eight, the wall, the man who ran every room he walked into, was above her in a dark bedroom in February with the candle burning down and he was begging her to say his name and she watched him do it and she watched every piece of the composed thing be entirely absent and something in her chest did the thing it had been doing more and more in the last month, the thing that was not the data collection anymore, the thing she was going to have to name eventually.

She said his name again.

He drove forward.

She felt it building in her, the particular build that was different from anything that had come before it in the last hour, and she pulled him tighter and he went deeper and she felt herself reaching for it, chasing it, her hips meeting his.

She came apart.

It went through her in a long wave and she felt herself clench around him hard and she made the sound, the real unguarded one, and she felt him feel it.

He followed.

She felt him follow her over, felt the pulse of him inside her, felt the sound that came out of him against her shoulder, low and long and completely undone, and he drove forward once more and went still.

He dropped.

His full weight came down on top of her and he was heavy, considerably heavier than her, and she took it. She let him drop and she felt him breathing hard against her shoulder, the breath ragged and uneven and not going to regulate itself for a while.

The room was quiet.

The candle flickered.

He was still breathing hard.

She was looking at the ceiling.

After a long moment she said:

“I deserve a medal.”

He breathed.

“For what.” Still catching his breath. The words coming out in pieces.

“For breaking Jin Park’s composure.”

He breathed.

He did not answer.

She looked at the ceiling.

“The sounds you made,” she said.

He lifted his head slightly and dropped it back to her shoulder.

“Lou.”

“Jin Park made those sounds.”

“Lou.”

“In this bedroom.”

“Lou.”

“What would others think.” She said it the way she said things that were facts and did not require decoration. “If they could hear the sounds Jin Park makes.”

He was quiet for a long moment.

She could feel his heartbeat against her chest. It was very loud. She had always been able to hear his heartbeat.

Right now it was the loudest it had ever been.

“Lou.”

“What.”

“Stop.”

“I am just observing.”

“You are always just observing.”

“Yes.”

He breathed.

She felt him breathe.

She felt his heartbeat.

She put one hand in his hair.

Not the pull. Just there.

After a long moment he said, into her shoulder, still not entirely recovered:

“I did not know it would be like that.”

She was quiet.

“Lou.”

“What.”

“I did not know.” He paused. Breathed. “Any of it. I did not know any of it would be like that.”

She looked at the ceiling.

The candle flickered.

She kept her hand in his hair.

She said, very quietly, almost to the ceiling:

“I know.”

He turned his head slightly.

He pressed his mouth to her shoulder.

He stayed there.

She kept her hand in his hair.

The candle burned down.

The room was warm.

His heartbeat was very loud.

She could hear it slowing by degrees.

She let it slow.

He fell asleep on top of her.

She felt the exact moment it happened. The breathing changed first, going from the still-ragged recovery breath to the slow steady kind. The weight of him shifted, going heavier the way weight went heavier when a person stopped holding any of it consciously. His hand, which had been at her waist, went loose.

She lay still.

She looked at the ceiling.

She could feel his heartbeat against her chest. It had been very loud after. It was slower now, the slow steady rhythm of a man who had been running on not enough sleep for a month and had finally found the particular kind of tired that put a person all the way down.

She looked at him.

His face in the candlelight was the sleeping version. The soft one. The one without the wall and without the composed thing, which tonight was not a distinction because the wall had been gone for hours, but in sleep it was different. In sleep he looked exactly his age, which was twenty-four, and he looked like what he was, which was a person who had been carrying things for a very long time and had put them down.

She looked at him for a long time.

She reached up.

She put her hand in his hair, the way she had put it there when he had been above her and she had not been pulling it, just holding. She ran it from the back of his skull to the nape of his neck.

He did not stir.

He was deeply asleep.

She looked at the ceiling.

The candle on the nightstand had burned all the way down. The room was dark except for the faint light from the street through the curtain.

She lay there for a while.

She did not sleep right away.

She lay under his weight in the dark and listened to his heartbeat and looked at the ceiling and said nothing to anyone.

After a while, she slept too.

The room was quiet.

The street outside was the particular quiet of a Seoul street at three in the morning in February.

Neither of them moved until the morning.

He was up first.

She heard him at some level below full consciousness, the small sounds of him moving, and she registered it and went back under. She heard the hallway bathroom. She heard him come back into the bedroom. She heard the shower in her master bathroom start.

She lay still for a moment.

She got up.

She walked into the bathroom.

The shower was running. The glass was already fogged. She could see the shape of him through it.

She opened the door and stepped in.

“What are you doing.”

She picked up her shampoo from the shelf. The cake-scented one, soft and sweet, the one that had been in this shower since she had moved into this house.

“Showering.”

He looked at her.

She started on her hair.

“Lou.”

“What.”

“This is my shower.”

“It is my shower, Jin. I live here.”

He looked at her.

She worked the shampoo through her hair with both hands, unhurried, not looking at him.

“You were inside me about four hours ago,” she said. “I think we are past being naked around each other.”

He said nothing.

“Plus I am confident in how I look.” She tilted her head back under the water to rinse. “So.”

He looked at the ceiling.

She reached for the conditioner.

She worked it through the ends of her hair, the long dark waves of it, and put the clip she kept on the shelf through it to hold it while it set.

She stood under the water for a moment.

She looked at him.

“I am going to Mexico tomorrow.”

He turned his head.

“What.”

“HQ gave me time off.” She looked at the tile. “My dad had a house there. I am going to go.”

He looked at her.

“You are going alone.”

“No, with my invisible friend.”

He looked at her flatly.

She looked at the tile.

“Lou.”

“What.”

“I will come.”

“Luly will not let you go again.”

He was quiet for a moment.

She tilted her head.

“Tell her she can come,” she said. “And the boys too. That will sell it.”

He looked at her.

“You are forgiving her.”

She unclipped her hair and let it fall.

“Not really.” She turned the conditioner over in her hand. “But Luly is easy. Like you.” She set the conditioner back on the shelf. “She will hear that I invited her and she will say yes to Mexico immediately. She will not be able to help it.”

He looked at her.

She stepped under the water to rinse.

She looked at him through the steam.

“Text her,” she said. “Tell her I said she can come. Tell her I said bring the boys if she wants. Then watch how fast she texts back yes.”

He looked at her for a long moment.

He picked up his phone from the vanity that was just visible through the open shower door.

She watched him type.

She rinsed her hair.

He set the phone down.

Forty seconds later it buzzed.

She looked at him.

He looked at the phone.

He looked at her.

“She said yes,” he said.

The corner of her mouth went all the way up.

“I know,” she said.

She turned the shower off.

She stepped out.

She picked up her towel.

She walked back into the bedroom without looking at him.

He stood in the shower for a moment.

He looked at the tile where she had been standing.

He turned the water off.

She was toweling her hair when she said it.

She had the towel over her head, rubbing the water out of the long dark waves, and she said it to the room in general, the flat even voice carrying easily in the small bathroom.

“You two fold faster than Dongmin when he sees snacks.”

He was at the mirror, his hand on the towel at his waist, his hair damp. He looked at her reflection.

She pulled the towel off her head. Her hair fell damp and loose around her shoulders. She started working through the ends with her fingers.

“Tell them to pack work clothes,” she said. “This is not the beach. It is a ranch.”

He looked at her.

“A ranch.”

“My dad’s house in Mexico is on a ranch. There is land. There are animals. There is no pool and no resort and no beach within two hours.” She pulled a piece of her hair straight and let it spring back. “Tell them not to bring anything they will get upset about ruining.”

He thought about Sol7 on a ranch.

He thought about Taeyul specifically on a ranch.

He thought about Dongmin on a ranch.

He said:

“Taeyul is going to have opinions.”

“Taeyul can have his opinions somewhere else if he does not want to come.”

He looked at her.

She walked out of the bathroom into the bedroom.

He followed.

She went to her closet. She pulled out a pair of jeans and a soft gray sweatshirt. She laid them on the bed. She pulled the sweatshirt on over her head. She stepped into the jeans and buttoned them.

She picked up her bag from the chair.

“I am going to get a pedicure.”

He looked at her.

She looked back.

He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket where it was still draped over the vanity chair.

He took out his wallet.

He held the card out.

She looked at it.

“Jin.”

“Take it.”

“I have money.”

He stepped toward her.

He took her jaw in his hand, gentle but not a suggestion, his fingers along the line of her jaw and his thumb at the edge of her chin, tilting her face up.

He looked at her.

“Take it,” he said.

She looked at him.

She looked at the card.

She looked at him.

“Fine,” she said.

She took the card.

He let go of her jaw.

She put the card in her bag.

She turned.

“We leave at noon tomorrow,” she said. “Not eleven fifty-five. Not twelve ten. Noon.”

“Okay.”

“Tell them.”

“I will.”

She looked at him for one moment.

She walked to her front door.

She punched in the code.

She walked out.

He stood in her bedroom.

He heard her front door close.

He looked at the vanity where his suit jacket was. He looked at the bed. He looked at the candle that had burned all the way down in the night, the small pool of hardened wax at the base of it.

He picked up his phone.

He opened the group chat.

He typed.

Mexico tomorrow. Noon. Pack work clothes. Ranch. Nothing you will care about ruining.

He sent it.

He put his suit jacket on.

He picked up his tie from the floor where it had ended up at some point last night.

He looked at it.

He put it in his pocket.

He walked out of her bedroom and down her hall and put his shoes on at the door and went across the strip of grass to his own house.

The phone was already going off in his pocket.

He did no