Chapter Text
Yoonji’s half-asleep when Soojin creeps in. She's been sort of lying there, drifting, for hours, too tired to get up and go back to the studio, too caffeinated to really drop off. She’d tried taking advantage of the rare privacy of Jin being out by slipping her vibrator out of its hiding place and reading stories on her phone, but she hadn’t been able to focus on anything and had given up, so now she’s both dead tired and pointlessly horny.
Soojin tries to be quiet as she closes the creaky door and slips out of her jeans and sweatshirt, but it all goes to shit when she stubs her toe on the same bedpost she always does, and yelps.
Yoonji snorts. ‘Okay, unnie?’ she calls across the shelving units that divide their room.
Soojin hisses through her teeth at the pain and then says, ‘Sorry, Yoonji-yah, unnie didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘Wasn’t really asleep.’
‘A growing girl like you should be getting eight hours a night, Yoonji-chi,’ Soojin says automatically, and Yoonji hears that swoosh of fabric as she pulls her giant sleep tee over her head.
‘I’m only three months younger than you, unnie,’ Yoonji says, just as automatically. ‘Where were you, anyway?’
Soojin hesitates. Interesting. Yoonji smells blood in the water.
‘Were you… out with your ‘92 friends? Or, uh. What’s his name? Perm guy? Or who’s the other one - the one with the square head? Or -’
‘Oh for - fine, I went to dinner with Sangook, okay?’
Yoonji rolls over and switches on her bedside lamp. ‘Which one is he?’
Soojin makes an exaggerated humph noise and comes around the shelf-barrier, hair pulled over her left shoulder so that she can braid it. ‘The fact that you genuinely can’t remember doesn’t make it better, you know.’
Yoonji shrugs.
‘He’s the one with the highlights.’
‘Oooh, him. He asked you out?’
‘I’m one of the top five most beautiful women in Korea, of course he asked me out.’
‘And you… said yes? Oh my god, stop hovering and get in with me.’
Soojin wriggles in beside Yoonji and immediately shoves her cold feet on Yoonji’s calves.
‘You fucker, you think you can distract me - oh my god, were you out barefoot or something? What the fuck.’
‘Ungrateful dongsaeng,’ Soojin says, ‘I raise these girls on my back and they can’t even warm my feet for me -’
‘Shut up, tell me about your stupid date.’
Soojin withdraws her feet. ‘It was fine. He’s nice.’
Fine. Nice. That’s as much as she ever says. That’s okay, Yoonji always tells herself. Soojin likes privacy when she can get it. It’s not really Yoonji’s business. But it’s the middle of the night, and she’s frustrated and so tired that nothing feels real. So: ‘What did you do on your fine date with your nice boy, unnie?’
Soojin curls into herself a little more, tucking her nose under the covers so that Yoonji can only see her eyes. As if that won’t give anything away. ‘Dinner. He cooked.’
‘Dinner at his place? Unnie.’
Soojin stiffens and glares. ‘You know i can’t go to a restaurant alone with a man anymore, Yoonji-yah, I’m the nation’s daughter-in-law.’
‘Uh-huh. What did he cook for you?’
‘Steak.’
‘Steak? Oh, he’s serious. Were you impressed?’
Soojin does a weird little shoulder-shimmy under the duvet which Yoonji knows means I could’ve cooked it better. Yoonji snickers. Then, before she can really think about it, before she can wonder if it might be too far, she says, ‘Unnie… did you have, uh. Dessert?’ and bites her lip sleazily.
Soojin huffs and makes to get out of Yoonji’s bed, but Yoonji is too quick for her. ‘No, unnie, you woke me up so you have to make it up to me.’
‘You said you weren’t asleep! Don’t make those eyes at me!’
‘Pwease?’
Soojin flops back down. ‘Ugh. You’re not gonna leave me alone until I tell you, are you?’
Yoonji probably would, actually, if she thought Soojin really wanted her to. She shakes her head anyway.
‘I mean… I don’t know if you’d call it dessert, exactly.’
Yoonji looks at her sharply. She doesn't know what that’s supposed to mean, coming from a straight girl. ‘What was it, an after-dinner mint?’
That surprises Soojin into a squeaky laugh, slightly too loud for the lateness of the hour and thinness of the walls. ‘It was more like… he had dessert. And I got to try a little bit of it.’
Yoonji doesn’t understand men at all, and says so.
Soojin shrinks down even further into the covers. ‘It was just. I had some wine. And he was nice, and we were kissing, and I was in his lap…’ she squeezes her eyes shut in embarrassment.
‘You were turned on.’
‘Well!’
‘Unnie…’ Yoonji doesn’t really know how to say the things she’d say in daylight, to a maknae maybe. Making out is supposed to feel good or it’s normal and healthy to get turned on. Maybe she is too tired for this conversation. Maybe it’s really easy to imagine Soojin straddling someone’s lap, trying not to rock her hips because she’s shy.
‘Anyway, things. Escalated. I gave him a handjob and then he was. Touching me. And then I felt weird and faked it and left! So, there it is! Hope that was as titillating as you hoped!’
Yoonji blinks at her. Soojin obviously wants her to play along, make a joke or change the subject or even just go to sleep and pretend they never had this talk. But it’s the surreal middle of the night, so Yoonji says, ‘That sucks, unnie. I’d be really frustrated, if it were me.’
Soojin huffs. ‘I’m fine, Yoonji-chi. I’m going to sleep.’ And she does, right there and then in Yoonji’s bed, while Yoonji lies awake, trying not to think about how Soojin sneaked out to a mediocre boy’s house and didn’t even get to come.
**
There are few groups of people more obsessed with sex than women in their early twenties whose job is to look fuckable and who aren’t supposed to fuck.
They’ve won a music show, and it’s been a long fucking day but this is still a novelty, and Jimin and Taehee pestered Namjoo until she said fine, we can have a drink when we get back. So here they all are, sprawled across the living room, sickly peach soju and seaweed snacks, packets of makeup wipes being passed around. Even Hosook can’t be bothered with the full ten-step routine tonight. The amount of product in Yoonji’s hair has been driving her slowly insane for hours, so she slips into her and Soojin’s room for a hairbrush. (She’s not washing her hair tonight. She just isn’t.)
When she gets back, the talk has gone in the direction it always goes. ‘Do you think he’d understand if I said no strings?’ Namjoo is saying, anxiously. ‘Like, would he still respect me?’
‘I thought the point was you wanted him to disrespect you?’ says Hosook, who is taking sleepy-cute selfies leaning against the couch, Jungha’s calves over her shoulders.
‘I - I told you that in confidence!’
‘No you didn’t, unnie, everyone heard you,’ says Taehee, helpfully.
Namjoo groans into her glass. ‘I just - I just need to get laid sometimes, okay? That’s normal, I shouldn’t have to feel like a pervert about it!’
Yoonji intervenes before anyone can bring up the fate of the old shared computer. They just won. She’s feeling generous. ‘If he can’t treat you like an equal when you ask for what you want he’s not worth it, Joo. You know that.’
Namjoo groans again. Yoonji pats her shoulder on the way back to her seat on the big armchair with Soojin. ‘I know it’s hard to stay feminist when you’re horny. You can do it though.’
‘I don’t know if I can,’ Namjoo whines.
‘I got a new vibrator, unnie, you wanna try it?’
‘Tae, that’s not very sanitary -’
‘Well obviously I'll clean it. Jimin didn’t mind!’
‘Tae -’
Yoonji slumps back into her seat. She doesn’t really like sweet drinks, but each sip of soju helps bring her gently down to a place where she might actually be able to sleep for a couple of hours. The others are making her think that an orgasm would be nice as well, but that’ll have to wait. The talk continues. She blinks, lazily, happy to feel Soojin leaning against her and listen to her members talk about mostly-theoretical sex. Soojin never really joins in with this, but Yoonji knows without looking that her ears are red. Jungha, too, is silent, and Yoonji always pays a little extra attention to her. It’s one of the rules she has for herself, that she never lets anyone make Jungha uncomfortable.
‘Unnie, maybe you should try hooking up with girls,’ Jimin is saying to Namjoo. ‘Ask Yoonji-unnie to teach you.’
‘Yah,’ Yoonji says. ‘Park Jimin.’ Jimin does this, during these conversations. She nudges boundaries, testing to see where ‘normal’ ends and ‘not normal’ begins. Trying to see where she fits. Realistically, Yoonji thinks she has about six months max before Jimin is coming to her for an altogether more serious kind of conversation, but she’s not going to push it.
Hosook reaches out and prods Jimin with her socked foot, then says, ‘Oh, but I have a better idea - Soojin-unnie should just introduce Namjoo to Byulyi-ssi!’
Soojin, in the absence of anything better to do, splutters indignantly.
‘I just mean - she knows everyone, right? She has a reputa - not in a bad way!’
Yoonji has rolled her eyes so hard she worries they might not roll back. As if Moonbyul needs to go around taking pity on hard-up straight girls.
‘Byulyi,’ Soojin says, forbiddingly, ‘has plenty of suitors already. I will not be throwing her to the - the sexually-frustrated wolves!’
Namjoo’s eyes have gone kind of unfocused in a way that could mean she’s had too much to drink, or that she’s kind of into the idea of being thrown to the sexually-frustrated wolves. Maybe both. Namjoo has eclectic tastes.
Despite everyone’s grand ambitions, it’s late, and they don’t last much longer. A sleepy Jungha is cajoled out of her spot on the couch and away to her room by Hosook, who takes Jungha’s clinging and dragging of feet in stride. ‘Unnie,’ Yoonji hears as they shuffle into the hall, ‘do you have a vibrator? Does everyone?’
Yoonji snorts, happy to leave that one to Hosook. She and Soojin drag Jimin and Taehee to their feet and shove them in the direction of the door. ‘Brush your teeth, you disgusting little munchkins,’ Soojin says, following them out of the room. ‘I’ll check your toothbrushes if I have to.’
That leaves Yoonji and Namjoo to clear up the debris of sticky glasses and seaweed packets. ‘Go to bed, Joo,’ Yoonji says, when she catches Namjoo staring blankly at the empty soju bottles, as if she has no idea what she could possibly do with them.
‘Huh? Oh. Sorry, unnie. I’m. I’m gonna shower and then sleep.’
‘You’re gonna shower.’
‘I’m a hygienic person.’
‘Mm. don’t drop the showerhead this time, ‘kay?’
’Unnie…’
Yoonji snorts as Namjoo, bright red, makes a beeline for the bathroom. One day, she thinks, gathering up the bottles that had stumped Namjoo, they’re going to make it so big they’ll all have a bedroom each - no, their own apartments - to masturbate in whenever they want. That’s the dream. This music show was only the beginning.
When she judges that the kitchen is tidy enough for Hosook not to have a fit in the morning, Yoonji wanders to the other, unoccupied, bathroom to brush her teeth, then, finally, to her and Soojin’s room.
Soojin is sitting up against her headboard, book in hand. she‘s been on the same one for weeks, because she only ever reads it in the handful of minutes between getting into bed and falling asleep. ‘Joo okay?’ she says. She always does that, checks on whoever Yoonji was with last. She always did a headcount back when they were all crammed in one room, and she still seems to get the urge.
‘Joo is having some special alone time in the shower.’
‘I -’ Soojin pinches the bridge of her nose. ‘Well. Fingers crossed for no concussions.’
Yoonji snorts. ‘I told her not to drop the showerhead this time.’
‘Aish. She really…’
‘The woman has needs.’ Yoonji slides between her sheets. They’re not quite clean, and they’re not exactly Egyptian cotton, but they feel so good against her bare, sore legs that she does a little wriggle anyway.
‘Needs.’
‘Yeah.’
‘They’re not - nobody actually needs. That.’
There is a pregnant pause, like Soojin is realising she’s said too much and trying to work out how to walk it back. Yoonji is too quick for her.
‘But doesn’t it feel that way, sometimes?’
Soojin scoffs, and Yoonji hears her wriggling further under her covers, hears the click of the lamp switching off. She’s a tiny bit tipsy, and she’s been awake for twenty hours, and now is just not the time to examine why she can’t seem to help herself. ‘Isn’t that why you say yes sometimes when guys ask you out? Even if you don’t really like them?’
She holds her breath, waiting to see if she’s gone too far.
‘We have to be up in a few hours,’ Soojin says. ‘Go to sleep.’
**
Yoonji is starting to feel like she needs it.
There are a few days in a row that are just tiring, instead of crushingly exhausting, and that tiny little bit of energy that comes back to her is enough to make her think how long it’s been since she’s hooked up. She takes her vibrator into that bath with her one night, because she’s been wanting to use her lavender bath bomb for months and hasn’t had the time, so she informs the group chat that they can all just use the other bathroom for one measly hour.
It takes the edge off. She’s been so pent up that she comes in a handful of minutes, and then, because she’s worked hard and she deserves it, she works herself slowly towards a second orgasm. She tries to be sensible, and for a few minutes she can keep her thoughts abstract. How good the hot water feels, how luxurious it is to be surrounded by fragrant steam, how slippery and soft her skin feels when she squeezes at her own breast, pinching the nipple. Like meditation, but for getting off.
Unfortunately, Yoonji is pretty bad at meditating.
The thing is, it’s been so long since she had another person touching her like this. That’s the thing she’s craving, having someone pressed up against her, moving with her, her arousal feeding into theirs. She’s had this recurring fantasy lately about grinding with someone. Someone shy, but Yoonji turns her on so much that she can’t help herself, and she has to rub up on Yoonji’s thigh, hiding her face in Yoonji’s shoulder. And if, in the fantasy, Yoonji gets to call that person unnie and stroke her hair when she comes, that’s just not something she’ll be examining.
Yoonji is surrounded by women who are, frankly, gagging for it. Environment informs sexuality. It’s not her fault.
When it hits her, she curls in on herself so hard that water slops over the sides of the bath. She leaves teeth marks on her own knuckles from biting them to keep quiet.
By now the bathwater has cooled. Someone knocks tentatively at the door. ‘Unnie, are you, uh, okay in there?’
‘I’m fine, Namjoo-yah. I’m getting out.’
Wrapped in the biggest towel she could find, clean and warm, Yoonji pads out of the bathroom. She feels like she could sleep, really sleep, for a full night. She has that pleasantly heavy feeling.
When she slips into the bedroom, Soojin is already asleep. Her bedside light is still on, and she must have been too hot at some point because the sheets are bunched around her thighs, and Yoonji can see that she has a pillow between her legs. That’s a thing people do, Yoonji thinks, leaning down to switch off the lamp. It’s good for your joints, probably. They sell specialty pillows for the purpose. Probably, Yoonji thinks, making her way to her own bed in the dark, Soojin’s hips were sore. She’s complained about it before. Fuck knows at least one of them is low-key injured most of the time. Her own shoulder aches so consistently that she forgets it isn’t normal. It’s ridiculous for her brain to just - present her with an image of Soojin. Doing something else with the pillow. Soojin all needy, pressing it right up against herself because it feels so good she doesn’t know how to stop.
This is ridiculous. Yoonji is going to sleep. But first she grabs her phone and opens KKT.