Chapter Text
Every single inch of his body hurt.
There was a bruise over his eyebrow, blood already dried-up in a red-brown crust. Jongwoo’s jaw was pounding up into his skull, and he had definitely spit out blood at least three times since returning home.
Jongwoo’s vision swirled around, slightly fuzzy at the edges, and he had trouble walking in a straight line up the stairs to his office.
A normal day if he will, investigations like these usually ended with a brawl, a few bruises or perhaps a cracked rib. He’d come accustomed to it, he supposed, the ache that kept him awake most nights, and the pity his fiancée felt for him.
“Jongwoo, dear, why aren’t you trying to get a different job? You’re so intelligent and resourceful, maybe you can go work for the government. It’d be so much more reputable than this.”
“I don’t know, I don’t think this is the best occupation for you. You get hurt too much, Jongwoo.”
“I’m worried about you, Jongwoo.”
Jieun was worried, as she always was. Not about him particularly, but about the damage her marriage to a violent, gruesome private detective without a stable income would do to her image as a kind, reputable actress-turned-housewife.
Jongwoo, however, was not angry at her. Not really. He understood, albeit reluctantly.
From dusk onwards, he had spent the day at Madam Jeong’s manor, being lead through the boring arrangements inside the garden for what felt like an eternity before ever even seeing the inside of the manor. Vague and unusable discussions with the staff, leading him to then run around the city center until the day drew to a close, trying to drag together the rest of the clues in his plight.
Madam Jeong was a rich woman, newly become widow of a well-renowned family in Gyeongseong[1]’s heart. Newly widowed, as her husband had cheated on her, and – as opposed to her recounting of the tragic story – murdered his mistress in a fit of guilt before pointing the gun towards his own head and pulling the trigger. That seemed the most plausible answer. A simple but gruesome homicide-suicide.
But to Madam Jeong, her husband’s death felt superficial, instigated. And she paid better than any other client, Jongwoo soon realized, and gladly accepted the high society debacle. Watch the lady of the manor wail about her dear husband, and the wench with whom he cheated with, cigarette in hand and a bottle of wine offered to him, Jongwoo had imagined he would have a pleasant day. Boring but amiable nonetheless.
Two days prior, Madam Jeong had contacted him, via the newly implemented telephone line. The big gadget in Jongwoo’s detective office, situated on the third floor of a more or less deteriorating building in the outer part of Gyeongseong, had rang with a horrendous sound.
Jongwoo decided he hated the sound of it, and perhaps stick to the old-fashioned method of writing letters and utilizing the postal system instead.
“Yoon Jongwoo, private detective,” he introduced himself with a monotonous voice, “What can I do for you?”
Sunlight filtered through the blinds, dust particles glittering in the gleam. The building had long since been redecorated, now fitting a comfortable range of small businesses and offices, but dust coated every inch of surface. Jongwoo hated it, if he was honest, but it was cheap and well-situated in the growing city.
On the other side of the line, a raspy voice answered. The aftermath of cigarettes and tears audible in the strain.
“Hello, yes, this Jeong Youngja. I’ve heard you’re quite the talented detective, no? Anyhow, I have a case you might be interested in. I assure you you’ll be remunerated adequately, I have enough money to spare,” Jongwoo detested the conceited tone in her voice, albeit it was wavering and shaky. The woman was attempting to stand high amidst her grief, which he could respect.
And truth be told, he needed the money. Who didn’t? Who could afford turning a prospective job like this down, when the economy was already declining and tumbling into a deep crisis?
He cleared his throat, uncrossing his legs placed on top of his wooden office desk. Stretching, Jongwoo stood up from his comfortable seat to glimpse past the blinds onto the street below.
“Good morning, Madam Jeong. Would you be able to provide me with further information, concerning the case?”
He also detested the air of flattery and politeness in his voice, but a client was a client, and in her case, she proved great monetary value.
A quick-lived “yes, yes, of course” hushed through the telephone, before the woman composed herself. “It concerns my husband, and his mistress, you see,” the words mistress had been laced with venom and disdain so much that Jongwoo feared his ear suffering acidic burn through the telephone.
“Or rather ex-husband and ex-mistress. He had been having an affair with her for the past six months, and suddenly I come home from a friend’s speakeasy to find him and the woman lying on the floor, blood pooling around their bodies, a gun in my sweet husband’s hand,” she explains, voice turning erratic as her retelling progresses.
Jongwoo sighed. With the growing pace of Gyeongseong’s Nouveau Riche, nearly every other case felt like an overdramatic insight into the city’s high society and their family feuds. His fingers itched for the shaft of a cigarette, the emitted smoke pleasantly searing his amounting headache.
“But, sir, I tell you, my husband would not have killed himself. You have to find out who the perpetrator was! It had to have been that wench of a woman he’d been sleeping with, she was an entertainer at one of those bars you know,” Madam Jeong finished, breathy with perspiration and anger. Jongwoo wanted to cut the phone call short at the bizarre intonation, laced with disgruntlement – which he supposed was adequate given the situation – and disdain for the lower classes, if he will.
He imagined the lady to hold her nose up high when passing by the street in front of his office building. Lest the stench of the common folk, of the working glass penetrates her bourgeoisie-ranked senses. A roll of his eyes, and Jongwoo let the blinds snap shut as he withdrew his fingers.
If he had the choice, he’d have liked nothing more than to decline. People died all the time, especially in Gyeongseong, and especially when the rich and influential were involved.
But money, unfortunately was money. Made the world go around, and food come onto the dinner table.
Jieun had been moaning and nagging about his declining income anyways. She couldn’t be expected to provide for the both of them, not in her mounting desire to leave the world of showbusiness and acting behind for the quiet, simplistic life of a housewife.
He found professionalism held tightly in his clenched fist, though he would have preferred an icy glass flute filled to the brim with Bordeaux. Or perhaps Sauvignon. Or something inexpensive, given his financial burdens. Beggars cannot be choosers.
“Of course,” he thus answered with a melancholic state of mind, “You needn’t be worried, Madam. I will be sure to find the answers you desire.”
Sweet-talk the customer, make their knees buttery until they give up more money than necessary. Jongwoo wasn’t proud of his dirty tactics, but then again, the rich had plenty of cash to spare in places that weren’t consumerist paradises or gambling dens.
Disappointingly, once he had arrived at the grand manor two days later, the evidence was lacking. Or rather, as the word was graciously utilized – rose-colored glasses set high on Jongwoo’s nose bridge – the scene was completely devoid of evidence.
The room in question had been scrubbed clean, a maid clamoring around her bucket and broom, futilely attempting to explain her wrong-doings. Jongwoo could feel the headache building and expanding, pressing against his temples and threatening to burst out. Blood poured into his ear, and he felt sick.
It was barely past 8 ‘o clock in the morning. He would have been content with the blood and the gore, followed by interrogations of the staff and neighbors.
“I’m so sorry!” she cried, tears and redness flushing her chubby face, “Madam Jeong told me to clean the house, and – and she said to take care of this room. She didn’t want to have you see the grizzly mess!”
The girl must have been young, word-vomit erupting from her as Jongwoo could only stand in the doorway. Leaning against the wooden frame, head in his cramped up hand.
He shushed her, trying to stop her from crying.
“Don’t worry, I’m not angry at you for following orders,” he was a little, but his energy to argue with the teary-eyed maid had already been depleted long since. “Would you mind escorting me to Madam Jeong? I’d like to speak to her directly.”
At this, the maid blinked slowly, tears getting caught in her eyelashes. She bit her lip, then let her gaze fall to the floor.
His headache worsened, now dragging its pounding towards the front of his forehead, burning against the back of his eyeballs.
“Actually- uhm, Madam Jeong is not around, be-because she has been taken into custody by the police.”
His head exploded.
Figuratively. The blood was oozing out of his ears, dripping onto his carefully put-together suit, soiling the expensive fabric.
“Why?”, Jongwoo asked dryly.
He would need to pass by the bar on his way home, drink something to get his mind off things. This had to be an elaborate joke, a theatrical exposition of his own personal hell, his own body burning in raging flames in its middle.
“Ah, the police officer said she was suspected of having murdered her other two husbands, and the prospective pattern of three made them take action,” she explained, strained voice now replaced with a calm sense of indifference.
Jongwoo rolled his head back to rest against the doorframe, his black hat shielding his tired eyes from the chandelier light. Like water slipping through his digits, he could sense the money getting dragged away by the tidal waves. Jieun would be livid.
He needed a cigarette. And a bottle of wine. And whiskey. Altogether, and then a 12-hour nap in his bed.
Needless to say, his conscience and professional persona had gotten the better of Jongwoo, resulting in him marching to the police office in offense, to at least inquire another talk with Madam Jeong. How the woman couldn’t even find the kindness in her heart to either inform him about the cleaning of the grizzly aftermath of a homicide-suicide – which should have been done after he had gotten the necessary information – nor her being displaced into custody due to accusations of serial murder, was beyond him.
Jongwoo was tired, bones dragging themselves across the cobblestone street in the feeble cast that was his skin.
The patrolling officer was more than delighted to get into a brawl with Jongwoo’s scrawny appearance, though the latter was proficient in fighting with his bare hands and horribly bad at containing his anger if provoked.
Subsequently, Jongwoo left the station without further knowledge, not even having gotten a glimpse at the rich widow, bruises across his face and metallic tang of blood in his mouth. His counterpart had been reduced to a whimpering pile of limps on the floor, possibly with a broken leg.
Jongwoo couldn’t care less.
As he stepped past the threshold of his office, his view was flooded by the visage of Jieun, contorted with worry and then, upon noticing the banged-up state he was in, anger and disappointment.
“Jongwoo!” she spoke. It was both a warning, that he should not again pass the door looking like this, blood drying on his skin, and that he shouldn’t leave her so worried the next time he went out; and a sign of relief. Albeit brief and riddled with the discontent fatigue Jieun often exhibited nowadays.
She smelled of nicotine, he noted, and the perfume her acting friends often wore. A combination of floral scents and licorice, heavier notes of wood lathered throughout – a masculine smell that did not dare lose its feminine roots.
He sighed, falling down onto the roughly made leather couch in his office.
“I’m sorry, Jieun,” he murmured, out of reflex, routine, a habit he had adopted. Not really genuine, and both of them knew. Although neither of them spoke out about it.
“Jongwoo,” she cooed despite the stern tone to her words, sitting down next to him. “I’m worried about you; you cannot keep getting into fights like this.”
Her hand reached for a first-aid kit conveniently placed atop the shelf. In silence, a short reprieve of her scolding which Jongwoo enjoyed, she rummaged through the box’s contents, fishing out a cotton pad and disinfecting wipe. Her soft hands placed the lathered pad on the scratch over his eyebrow, dabbing away at the blood.
It coated the white cotton red and brown, clumps sticking onto the cleaning pad.
“I’ve told you; you should maybe search a different occupation. A less violent one, perhaps. You could definitely work for the government, dear.” Jongwoo got déjà vu, slowly dissociating as Jieun cleaned the blood off his face.
He only nodded, barely noticeable. It was enough of a sign for Jieun to continue talking.
“I love you, Jongwoo. And I want the best for you,” she reached for a bandage to wrap around his head, neglecting the blood still collecting to a puddle under his tongue. He knew, but not the contents of her love, the conditions which he had to fulfill to be worthy of her devotion. But he didn’t want a conditional love, couldn’t bring himself to adapt to her visions of their future.
“I’ll even let go of my own dream to become a doting housewife. Love and marriage needs compromises, Jongwoo. I’d leave my job as an actress for you, but you wouldn’t search for a better job for me. For our prospective children, our future?,” her words hurt.
Not like the wounds he had sustained just hours ago, but like a knife slowly pressing its blade through the patches of skin on his body most sensitive, drawing forth blood and vitality at an agonizing pace, and Jongwoo didn’t say a word. Did not utter any of the hundreds of insults and harsh accusations building behind his tongue, firing up inside of him.
Jongwoo did none of that.
Instead he stood up, ripped the bandage, half-way done, from Jieun only to see her stunned expression before he left the office again. Outside the room, he spit left-over blood accumulating behind his teeth onto the corridor, the liquid not even showing amidst the dusty, grimy floorboards.
---
The rain was pouring in buckets outside, sloshing over the cobblestone streets, dirtying Jongwoo’s shoes as he walked. His destination was clear, like a lightning bolt his body moved towards the familiar building, lanterns flaring in bright colors and attracting all sorts of clientele this time of day.
His beloved friend and companion, the young bartender who had moved in across from his office building immediately pushed a glass of translucent liquid in his direction, sympathetic look gracing his features.
In one move, Jongwoo drowned the whiskey and relished in the burn vanishing down his throat. Along with it, the metallic taste lessened as well. He went in for another shot, Seokyoon grinned with an awkward sense of empathy as he fulfilled Jongwoo’s wish, before continuing to dry the glasses the previous customers pushed back towards him.
“I fucking hate it all,” Jongwoo rasped, head hanging low. With another sigh, he pulled his hat off his head to set it aside. All of a sudden, his suit felt restricting, making him someone he was not. Someone Jieun did not want him to be.
“I feel like you’re exaggerating, hyung,” Seokyoon answered.
He circled the glass around in his hand, watching the liquor slosh like a calming wave. Jongwoo sighed, before tipping the rest of the alcohol down his throat. “No, I actually hate my life. My job, and the fucking audacity of these rich bastards. Can’t they at least inform me properly, is that too much to ask?”, he seethed, balling his hands into fists.
And he hated Jieun. He thinks.
“Yeah, they’re horrible. They don’t even tip nicely either.” Seokyoon’s voice was low, trying to hide from the set of wealthy businessmen chatting animatedly on the other side of the bar, making Jongwoo grin a little.
“Mhh,” he hummed, already itching for more alcohol. It made his vision fuzzy, and the problems mounting on his back dissipated into nothing in comparison. The whiskey was burning too much, scratching against his insides, and he spared no time in asking Seokyoon to fetch him a bottle of wine instead.
Three barstools to his left, another man, dressed to the nines in a dark navy suit and white collar blouse, sat down at the bar. Sagging shoulders, like the rain from the outside had accomplished its task in weighing him down. Tussled locks of black hair, gelled back in a manner befitting those of higher societal standards, glistening in the wetness of rain.
Jongwoo paid him no further attention. Or at least he tried, despite finding his drunken mind being drawn to the extravagant and assertive appearance of the seemingly also wealthy man.
The man ordered a glass of whiskey as well, though refraining from drinking it in a swift motion like the feral animal Jongwoo was mere minutes ago. The detective cleared his throat softly, then continued giving his attention to the task at hand; getting drunk enough to forget his problems or leave the world of the living due to intoxication.
Whichever came first, he supposed.
“You look like you’ve had a rough day, huh?”
Jongwoo looked up, then to his left, deer caught in the headlights. The man was turned towards him, lounging on the stool with an air of charisma that had Jongwoo’s cheeks reddening, one hand grasping his whiskey glass, as the other was draped onto his thigh.
He wanted to laugh at the man talking to someone so visibly out of his social circle. But the man was too intimidating, his effect making itself apparent in the way Jongwoo’s stomach fizzled.
“Oh, yes, I did”, he spoke with an exhausted timbre.
The stranger nodded politely, dragging his hands through the wet hair atop his head. The locks fell down in an almost excruciatingly perfect manner, curling around his sharp features in a way that made Jongwoo’s breath hitch.
The stranger seemed to be not only wealthy and interested, but also attractive.
Jongwoo’s gaze returned to the alcohol in front of him, trying to drown out the other man’s presence. But the attempt proved futile as he heard the stranger get up and – for a concise moment Jongwoo felt relieved at being left alone again – sitting down not less than one stool away from Jongwoo. The distance between them having been drastically shortened, Jongwoo found his thoughts straying into two different directions as he stood upon the forked road.
His nose was greeted with the strong perfume, cologne, scent of the stranger. Wood and charcoal, nicotine and a hazy breath that felt too close for comfort at their first meeting.
“Would you be inclined to share your tragedy?” he mused, drowning the alcohol in his glass in favor of keeping his eyes trained on Jongwoo’s reclining form.
He was not. Perhaps talking to the stranger, that he could be persuaded to do; but not to retell the miserable encounters he has lived through since arriving at Madam Jeong’s abode. It felt embarrassing to do so in front of someone like him.
“It’s not worth your time I assure you,” Jongwoo turned around to face the other, for politeness’ sake. “Being a detective may sound swell to some, but I’ve been through enough fights and unnecessarily complicated murder cases for two lifetimes.”
The stranger’s eyebrow quirked up at the statement, his grin widening. He looked even more handsome with his pearly white teeth on display.
“You don’t look the type, I must say. Delicate fingers, although, I suppose, a detective’s job requires not brute strength but strength of the mind, no?” he mused, voice quieter than before, and – perhaps through the haze of wine and whiskey – smoother.
Jongwoo chuckled ever so slightly, shrugging his shoulders in what he hoped to be a relaxed manner.
“Often I find myself thinking how stupid some people are, that they have nobody fooled but themselves,” he thinks back to painfully obvious cases of murder, and attempted one, “Or perhaps I have read too many crime novels to fall for the high society’s superficial wails.”
Now it was the strangers turn to emit a low chuckle, and Jongwoo found a sense of pride growing in his chest at the noise. He dared to continue, “If I were to kill somebody, I’d plan it out better, you know. Make sure I have a clear alibi, and not have it somebody people know I’m close to. Or I’d make it look like an accident.”
“Really?”, the stranger seemed intrigued, if his body language was one to tell. As if conversing with an old companion, he leaned against the bar counter with one side, stray parts of his wet hair falling into the piercing gaze he bestowed upon the detective.
Jongwoo had never seen a man looking at him like that. Nor a woman.
“How would you do it, exactly, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Jongwoo felt the sparkle light up his own eyes at the question before he turned around fully to ramble on about the tales Jieun never wanted to hear whenever he came home in the evening. The tales and his own fantasies that inevitably followed.
“Jongwoo, god no, I don’t want to hear those details, that’s disgusting!”
And
“Aren’t you hearing yourself? People are killing others, this isn’t funny. You’re really a bit sick in the head, my dear.”
Or variations thereof.
“Did you know that most-“
Almost, he faltered in his speech, at first for fear of rejection again, but then he stopped for an entirely different reason. The stranger was looking at him through down-turned eyes, silent and waiting.
Upon further inspection, there was a gleam in the stranger’s eyes.
“Mon coeur,” he purred, foreign words veering into spell-binding enticements to Jongwoo’s ears. It was unrecognizable whether the lilt came from alcohol or interest, but the stranger soon continued after a brief pause; “I think you and I are of the same kind.”
The same kind. Jongwoo gulped as time seemingly came to a stop. Three words chosen to convey vagueness and brevity all together. Up to him to elucidate their meaning.
He tilted the wine glass to his mouth, keeping the eye-contact as the red fluid drippled into his mouth. It left a stain on his lower lip, barely noticeable in the dim lighting. With his other hand, the stranger moved an alit cigarette back to his lips to puff out a languid cloud of smoke.
The smell of their close confinement grew pungent now, burning Jongwoo’s eyes.
Nowadays, wherever he went, the streets were full of smoke-eaters, making it ever-so hard to resist temptation. Even Jieun had taken to smoking one or two cigarettes to get her mind off things. Occasionally, they found themselves sitting next to each other, relishing in the calmness the nicotine brought with, and drinking wine, the evening passing by in solemn quietude.
They had troubles talking. Always had. Nothing to change the tense foundation upon which their engagement was built.
Caught up between intoxication and arousal himself, Jongwoo could not do much beyond uttering a dumb “yes”.
The stranger was intriguing. Attractive, horribly so. Heavy sugar[2], probably more money than Jongwoo had ever received in his entire life. His pin-stripe suit was tailored, hair sleeked back in an elegant manner, and his wrist bore an expensive, Western watch.
The repercussions, he would burden his future self with, in the morning after his haze of alcohol and lust had been slept off. He had never considered himself to belong to the lavender[3] kind, but the stranger sitting beside him - vaguely blowing clouds of smoke in his direction, his appearance sending jitters down Jongwoo’s spine - may prove what Jongwoo long since suspected.
Jieun was not the one for him.
It was the idea of her that he loved, not her. Sweet, dear Jieun, who was so sweet and kind he could not marry her and continue living as himself. He hated her if he was honest. Her superficial love for him, when her true love was the stage, she promised to give up for a life of misery by his side.
In a swift move, he lets the rest of his wine glass flow down his throat, bitter taste alleviating the anxious pounding in his body. Alcoholism. That too Jieun had talked to him about, his supposed problem with the legal drug. If she could see him now, two bottles of wine and a bottle of soju, sharing a cigarette pack with an attractive stranger.
“Then, do you want to leave?”, he slurred, in his haze nearly smashing the glass base against the wooden pane. The stranger, yet to be named, merely smiled with a blink-and-you-miss-it nod of his head. Not much later did he get to his feet in an elegant manner and inquire the waiter about their bill.
As he left, Jongwoo was left to sit in silence, brooding over the decisions that had lead him to this moment, and those that would lead him through the night.
The same kind. The kind parents warned their children about, the kind that was deemed morally wrong. Already floating in the clouds – inebriated on liquor, nicotine and the man’s dazzling smile, Jongwoo could not bring himself to care about the implications.
His day had gone all kinds of horrible, and for once in a while, Jongwoo felt the thrill of excitement shoot through his nervous system.
The stranger had lead him to a hotel, expensive and ostentatious in the way the chandelier hang proudly in the entrance hall, too ritzy for the ride they were about to embark on. Jongwoo stood by his side and trailed the man in silence, fists clenched in a flush of embarrassment, though the alcohol aided him.
Behind the closed door of one of their rooms – the stranger had bought two, two expensive hotel rooms in a lavish establishment. Too much money for Jongwoo to think twice about the feeling of indecency bubbling up in his chest.
Like a woman of the night, he shuddered, lower lip caught between his chittering teeth, before the man turned around again.
The musky scent of cigarettes and pricey perfume filled his nostrils as the man sauntered closer. Dark navy suit that left little to the imagination about the stranger’s body, tailored to fit the nip of his waist. Almost in a feminine manner, but Jongwoo would never dare to think him weak or womanly, if anything it made the hairs on his nape stand up in apprehension.
Intrigue. Need.
“You’ve never done this before, have you?”, the man read his thoughts like an open book, the flush creeping past Jongwoo’s collar and spreading out over his face and neck stating the obvious.
There was a voice, eerily similar to Jieun’s loving tone, begging him to avert himself from the dangerous temptation in front of him, like he told himself constantly to stop smoking, to stop drinking.
And another, mixed with the entrancing look in the stranger’s dark eyes, the pleasant scent of wood, smoke and alcohol filling his senses and superseding any rationality left in him, that begged him to continue.
Honeyed touch of the stranger’s fingers trailing over his arm. He waited, anticipating Jongwoo’s answer. It only made the heat sear hotter in his gut.
“I’m engaged to a woman,” he explained, then quickly adding, in a sort of desperation for the stranger to take the lead, “I haven’t done this before.”
It elicited a raised eyebrow from the man, action nearly dripping with sensuality as his gazing eyes raked over Jongwoo.
“Don’t tell me I’m your first, sweetheart,” he mumbled, leaning down into Jongwoo’s personal space, blowing soft clouds of left-over smoke into his face. It made Jongwoo want to drag him impossibly close, never cease their embrace and deal with the consequences of tasting forbidden fruit afterwards.
He gulped, and did just so, dragging his hands to fist the lapels of the stranger’s dark navy suit. Barely a breath away from each other, Jongwoo could do nothing but rake his own eyes over the pristine, enchanting features of the man.
Plump lips and a heart-shaped cupid’s bow, soft eyelashes grazing his pale skin. Feminine but horribly attractive, only amplifying the sultry look the stranger regarded him with.
“You will be.” Three words to seal the deal.
---
Obscene noises filled the room not soon after.
In the midst of it, Jongwoo, splayed out on the grand bed, felt akin to a trophy waiting to be claimed. He was only clad in his pair of underwear and an ivory linen shirt, despite being unbuttoned, giving way to his lithe upper body.
The stranger, still unnamed – though he did not know Jongwoo’s name either, as if preserving themselves in the face of sexual deviance they displayed – had taken to pestering the younger man with a pleasant juxtaposition of kitten licks and playful bites to his upper body. A latticework of the stranger’s artistry, who turned out to be quite talented in causing pain and letting it melt into blinding pleasure.
One particularly harsh graze of teeth to his left nipple made Jongwoo writhe, arching his back and letting out an almost wanton moan at the pleasure accompanying the pain. His entire body flushed red, but the stranger seemed content with the sounds he coaxed out of him.
Pleased even, even if all he had been doing was tending to Jongwoo.
With an annoyed huff, Jongwoo fists the stranger’s hair to drag his head, that pair of inviting lips, back up to his own. A kiss, tongues swirling around each other, although both parties are more content with licking clumsily into each other’s mouths, occasionally biting in desperation rather than properly kissing.
“Take your clothes off,” he moaned in between, not ceasing the hold on his partner’s black locks, fingers catching in the gel keeping the strands in place. Unlike the majority of men Jongwoo knew, the stranger kept his hair long, wonderfully abundant for the situation, enough hair for Jongwoo to tangle his digits into in favor of raking them across the man’s body.
He was still clothed, the pin-stripe suit agitating Jongwoo more than he admired the craftmanship of it. Dark navy was straining his eyes, it felt repugnant, offensive, in the moments he desired to glimpse at nude flesh and prospective bruises of red and purple covering it.
Cigarette burns. Thin, fading scars enfiladed across the pale skin, and flexing muscles feeding the heat in Jongwoo. A sweet scent of dark spice comes with, making Jongwoo sigh in contentment, and then reach upwards to touch the stranger’s bare upper body.
The other’s breath hitched for a brief moment.
Jongwoo stilled, hand spread out over the man’s beating heart, skin surprisingly hotter than he would have guessed.
“Is this alright?” he asks, albeit being unsure of what exactly he’s asking for. His thumb reaches lower, encircling the other man’s right nipple, slow and tantalizing.
Above him, the stranger hisses, then falls into a pleased moan before rolling his hips against the younger man’s exposed thigh. “Of course, ma chèrie,” he rasps, voice strained, unlike the previous honeyed tone it possessed. Jongwoo is allowed to continue his ministrations, letting his hand graze across the taut muscles and almost picturesquely placed scars without guilt.
At an array of enticing thoughts surfacing, he forcibly bites down on his lips, attempting his very best at avoiding the redness returning full-force to his complexion.
Visual imagery of the older man ridding himself completely off his expensive garments, strong hands holding onto Jongwoo as his head went down, down, down. Hollowed mouth around his member, sight obscene and yet arousing, despite something akin to danger and lust swirling around in the stranger’s irises. Or perhaps because of it. Continuing until Jongwoo arched his back and buckled his hips into the stranger’s mouth, fisting his hair to get a better grip.
Another flash, and now they were but a mess of entangled limbs, the stranger settled between the inviting embrace of Jongwoo’s legs, buried deep inside Jongwoo, just like the stories Jongwoo had heard of former colleagues, then working as policemen who had taken to raiding those kinds of bars. In his imagination, they’d look each other in the eyes, intimacy mixing in with the searing pain at being split open. And like the cherry on top, the stranger kissed away stray tears rolling over his cheeks, in tandem with the languid grind of his hips against Jongwoo’s groin.
Jongwoo only grew redder, splaying his other hand across his face to hide the bright flush.
“I- I’ve never done this before, right.”
Voice weary, a little embarrassed to vocalize it. Jongwoo hesitates, placating pecks against the stranger’s sternum, hiding his face in between the other man’s pecks, listening to the beat of his heart. Then, he attempted a tentative graze of his teeth to the breastbone, swiftly finding that the older man gripped his hair sharply with a pained hiss.
Jongwoo cried at the harsh grasp, his head being forced away, tears building in the corner of his eyes.
“Ah, honey, didn’t you say you were unknowledgeable? Quite feisty, my dear,” he purrs, mouthing and biting against the younger’s exposed neck.
Jongwoo huffs, hypocrite, but his body cannot seem to comply with his thoughts, instead reacting to the stranger’s touch, yearning to take off all their clothes and finally get to what he had been somewhat afraid of for the entirety of their encounter.
“Shut up,” he moaned, the stranger able to feel vibrations of his words through the skin he was lathering with bitemarks.
“Darling, tell me what you want me to do. I couldn’t bear to leave you with complaints,” the man murmured against the protrusion of his Adam’s apple. Jongwoo saw stars exploding behind his eyelids at the bite, and the moan that followed surprised even him, action feeling lewd and absurd to him.
“I want you to,” he falters a little, tasting the words on his tongue before spitting them out, “make love to me.”
The smirk against his neck might have felt belittling, yet the stranger soon cradled his face with a pair of strong but gentle hands. They looked each other in the eyes, black into dark brown, both their faces flushed.
“How could I refuse you?” he licks his lips, slow and aware, aware of Jongwoo’s swift look downwards to glimpse the darting tongue, “I’ve never had people ask me to make love to them, you know.”
The smirk elongates, pearly white filling Jongwoo’s sight. It’s edging on insanity almost, but Jongwoo cannot help the fire it ignites in him. Insanity or deviance, devil may care, Jongwoo was turned on.
One night, just one.
A shiver of anticipation ran through him, legs finding their way around the backside of the stranger’s thigh to interlock.
He hoped it wouldn’t end at one, but his sober and conscious self may beg to differ.
“Usually people ask me to fuck them, but for you, I’ll treat you like a deity, make love to you with gentleness beyond your imagination, chèrie.”
And he did, Jongwoo’s befuddled mind mused. A haze of sex and alcohol, and cigarette scent hung tight in the room, Jongwoo’s eyes barely kept open as the stranger told him to coat his fingers with saliva.
The man smirked at the feel of the younger man’s tongue against his digits, though Jongwoo wanted to hide away again at the embarrassing gesture. His mouth made awfully lewd sounds, and an even worse plop resounded, accompanied with a hushed whine as the stranger pulled his fingers out before guiding them to the curve of his ass and prodding the hole gently.
Words left unspoken as Jongwoo’s hips rolled into the touch, suddenly finding his body craving more than the one, two digits pressing inside him.
“Just get on with it!”, he hissed as the fingers stopped scissoring in favor of curling upwards into a bundle of nerves that had stars explode in his vision.
The stranger nodded with a Cheshire cat grin on his face, reaching forward to dip his musky scented fingers back into Jongwoo’s mouth. “Dear, I’m afraid there won’t be any oil to lessen the pain, so I’ll need your saliva as substitute,” the words sent another round of pleasant shivers down Jongwoo’s spine, already arching up into the other man’s touch again.
His tongue swirled around the hand draped over his lips, before the other withdrew it. Jongwoo couldn’t help but follow the motion, seeing clearly how the stranger lathered his dick with the liquid, wrapping his hand around the girth in rugged motions, before leaning forward further to spit saliva onto Jongwoo’s hole as well.
The action had him burning with shame, though his body flamed up with something else. As opposed to the strangers clean and pristine outer appearance, what they were currently doing was dirty, vile, and yet so very heavenly.
And with another smile and sweet nothings whispered through his own drunken haze, the stranger bent down to pepper kisses against Jongwoo’s mouth, hands interlacing with the younger man’s, pressing him flush against the bed. The kisses resembled more so the clashing of teeth against each other, but both parties were too exhilarated on the haze of sex to care about the unpleasantness.
Words dying at the bottom of his mouth, Jongwoo's legs tightened around the other man's hips. An obvious request, words left unspoken.
“As you wish, sweetheart,” the older man moaned into his mouth, guiding his dick into Jongwoo. The younger man’s mouth fell open in ecstasy, lower lip caught in the assault of the stranger’s teeth. It hurt, despite the saliva, but the ache soon gave way to a blinding white, heavenly gates baring themselves in front of his fluttering eyes.
Once again, Jongwoo saw stars, or nebulas or other celestial beings or whatever the astrologists of the Western world were talking about in the newspaper or maybe even entire galaxies - not behind his own eyes’ lids, but in the orbs of the handsome stranger, writhing underneath him and feeling himself longing for the night to never end.
[1] Seoul was referred to as Gyeongseong during the Japanese colonial rule (or Keijo in Japanese)
[2] Slang, (having) a lot of money
[3] Slang, being gay, lesbian, queer