Work Text:
At the seams (we fall apart)
~reckless noona~
Joong-gil sat in his office late at night. There was something in the air that bothered him. It had never so before. Deprived of sleep, he functioned at the edge of his sanity most of the time. The nightmares would come and go, like ghosts visiting an empty dwelling. That’s what he felt like – an abandoned house – left vacant by people that he had driven out himself. To find respite, he threw himself into his work. That’s how he got to his position.
After working till late, he was slowly falling into another trance when some fast-approaching footsteps woke him up. The person came into the view, and he looked up.
“Why are you here?” He asked her, the uneasiness in his mind fading away at the sight of her face.
“I wanted to deliver a file,” she replied, placing one on the desk. Her face betrayed no expression. Of course, she was excellent at controlling her emotions, considering she had hidden them for far too long. He wondered how she did it – to look at him so nonchalantly, while sporting that crimson eyeshadow like it had no meaning to her at all.
Nonetheless, he had his own façade to hide his demons. He looked at her pointedly, picking up the file. ‘Incident Report: Minor Soul Infraction’, it read.
“I doubt delivering reports of minor incidents like this is a team leader’s job.” His voice was crisp. “Why are you here?"
“We don’t have many people in the RM team.”
His eyes met hers. They both knew it was an excuse, and after a pause, Ryeon admitted it.
"You are still unable to sleep? Even after the memories returned?” She finally asked. Satisfied with her answer this time, and knowing he was expected to be equally frank with her, he replied in a low voice.
“The nightmares became clearer,” he said. Ryeon noticed his knuckles had turned white, from gripping the file too hard. She stayed silent.
“I will go through this report and get it filed tonight. You can leave,” he said, dismissing her. His gaze shifted to the papers strewn on his table. Nothing good will come out of talking about the past.
“What do you dream about?” She questioned him. He clenched his jaw, unwilling to mention it. “If I am the one appearing in your nightmares, I think I have the right to know.”
He sighed, knowing that this is exactly why she was here. Ryeon, even when she had worked under him, was way too stubborn for her own good. She had been like that when they were alive too, but he preferred not to think about that.
He leaned back on his chair and sighed. “It…it’s after you left.”
“Right after?” She asked again. She knew that the wounds she had given him were painful, and talking about them hurt him. She had been avoiding it for centuries, but now? She had to know. She couldn't quite place where she got the courage from, but she was feeling a bit too impatient.
“It’s after the argument we had. I enter the courtyard.” Every tremor in his voice pricked her heart with a hundred needles. “They covered you with a burlap cloth.” Every word he said made it seem more real. He had long wanted it to be a nightmare but it wasn’t. He eyed her wrist, covered by her long sleeves. The place where she had cut herself – the shape of her scar was still fresh on his mind.
“I hope that it isn’t you, but I see your wrist and I uncover the cloth.”
Ryeon had a difficult time listening to him. She had heard his cries in hell, as he had mourned her over and over. He didn't need to tell her that.
“And it is always you.” He said, now looking straight at her. His eyes were watery and red – marking another incident where her obstinacy injured him by forcing him to talk about something he could never forget.
Ryeon had to close her eyes to keep herself composed. It is not easy listening about your own death. It’s even more difficult to accept that you are responsible for giving someone a scar that never healed, even after centuries. For her, the story ended that miserable, sad night. The man in front of her, though, was haunted by her lifeless body to this day.
She observed him - the bags under his eyes, the visible exhaustion in the way he was seated. She knew he had a horrid temper, which erupted like flames and left everyone singed. He only reacted explosively if someone broke the rules, or a criminal soul acted out of line, but in those moments, his presence would feel deeply oppressive. She had worked under him for a couple of centuries, and she was the only one who could hold her own under him.
Everyone was scared of him, but to her? Even when he had his hand around her neck, she could not, for the life of her, fear him. That strange sense of trust, that he will never harm her.
And even then, she had spent days telling herself that he was not her husband, that she was not the reason he was here, that she was not his nightmare. That he just looks like him, he sounds like him, he breathes like him, but it isn’t him.
But it is him.
She opened her eyes, and he was still looking at her. She balled her fist.
“I am here,” she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear. “I am always going to be here.”
He didn’t say a word. It felt wrong, so wrong to be standing here, after what she had done to him. She had no right to reassure him or heal him, but she was the only one who could do it. The Jade Empress had known it all along, considering she had set up this whole elaborate scheme to bring them to this point.
In all of the cryptic answers that she gave Ryeon, not once did she tell her how to make up for what she had done. Should she explain why she made her choice? What to say?
All the reasons she killed herself felt like mere excuses tonight. Her mother-in-law, whose face she didn’t even remember. The vile comments spread by the villagers. The day her friend died protecting her, getting stoned. The way she had lashed out at him that night. He had pleaded with her to eat, to not give up on staying by his side. He had woken up several nights, patiently murmuring reassurances to drive away the ghosts of the past that haunted her. All he had asked from her was to survive.
On the night she last talked to him, he looked perplexed, not even for a moment realizing what he had done so wrong. What else was he supposed to do, if not kill someone who talked about his wife like that? She’d do the same today, herself. She wondered what had come over her that night when she said her last words to him.
“It would have been better if I had never returned. At least then, our end would have been better than this.”
Better than what? Her spending centuries in hell? She didn’t regret that for a moment back there. She was certain she did it for him.
“Sometimes the truest words cut the deepest.” Jade Empress’s voice rang in her ears.
Her words and the way she had left him that night had irreparably shattered him into so many pieces that even after four centuries he was still trying to put himself together. She was the one who had dealt the devastating blow.
She had her share of regrets, and the thought of bearing these feelings without understanding the source of them terrified her. How did he do that? Why did he do that? Was she so precious to him?
She didn’t deserve to be loved as much as he had loved her, and if she had it her way, he’d have recovered, remarried, reincarnated, and found someone new. Someone who could love him as he had loved her.
Life, and even death, has its own way of wrecking all her plans.
Today, shamelessly, she stood in front of him, reassuring him of her well-being, because that is all he had ever wanted.
Fucking irony.
“You are here,” he said, putting down the report. He shifted his gaze back to the table, his refuge.
“I am sorry for leaving,” she said. He didn’t look up.
“What is done is done,” he quipped.
“You can let go of the pain now,” she said. “You…tried your best, even if I didn’t listen.”
“If I could do that, I would have done it ages ago,” he replied, turning over a page. His wall was creeping up. Ryeon knew this man like the back of her hand.
“Can I help?” Her voice was filled with guilt, losing the determination with which she had barged into his office tonight.
“We can go back to being colleagues,” he answered, sounding cold and professional. “You don’t need to worry about it, I will handle my issues on my own.”
He was right, like he always was, but that still irked her. She could accept that she had no right to help him out. He should draw a boundary and work on his problems on his own, and not get involved with the source of all those problems.
But what good had it done to him, or to both of them in the last few centuries? She let out an audible sigh and walked over to him.
“Koo Ryeon,” he warned when he felt her standing next to his chair. He didn't look at her. “Don’t cross the line.”
She placed her palm on the table, close enough to graze his wrist, and he immediately pulled back, as though the touch bit him.
She was already feeling bold that night, and something fluttered inside of her.
It scared her how much power she had over him. It scared her so much that one wrong move on her part could affect him this much. Then why did she find it so… enticing?
The most desirable man of Jumadong. Four centuries and two lifetimes and this man was still tormented by her.
And Koo Ryeon found it crazy sexy. All those years in hell must have done something to her brain.
She bent down, putting her face close to his shoulders as he sat there, trying his best to concentrate on the documents in front of him. As she skimmed through the documents he was reading, a few strands of her coral hair fell in front of her face and somehow made their way into the tiny sliver of exposed skin between his collar and his neck.
When the hair tickled his neck, his reaction was electric. He moved swiftly. The chair spiraled. He got up, and grabbed her wrist, turning around and trapping her between the cupboard and himself.
“I told you to cut it out,” he said, clenching his teeth, and appearing as intimidating as he could manage to be in front of her.
Too bad that Ryeon had seen him like that for centuries, and was numb to it. She looked at him with a defiant stare. Her sleeves had slipped, and he could feel her red thread beneath his fingers. The same red thread she had cut all those years ago.
Park Joong-gil liked being in control of the situation, especially ever since he had become a grim reaper, and right now, he had no clue where this was going. All he wanted was for her to back off. He towered over her. He knew that she could easily remove herself from this position if she wanted to.
He had hoped that she would.
“You know better than me that putting up your walls will do you no good,” she said in a harsh whisper.
“And you will be the one to decide that?” He asked her, his tone equally cruel. “You left, Koo Ryeon. I was left to deal with it, and I will do it on my own.”
“It has been four hundred years and you are still dealing with it. Something tells me you are not competent at the job,” she retorted. The grasp on her wrist was painful, but it didn’t cut nearly as deeply as his words did.
“That’s all you have to say for yourself?” He was enraged.
“I cannot erase the past. I can apologize for it, and I tried to keep my distance, but I don’t think that did the two of us any good.”
“I only asked you to leave me alone.” He was so close to her that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her nose.
“Can you honestly say that you have no feelings left for me? None whatsoever?” She questioned him.
She looked at him as he heard her question, and his face changed – a moment of panic, and then back to that same unreadable expression. He immediately pulled back, letting her wrist free. This only served to confirm her suspicion.
Even after saying that he wished for the crisis management team to fail, he appeared at the last moment to help them countless times. The bus - she had heard rumours about that as well. The veteran farewell. He was the same man she married all those years ago. He pretended to not care how her mother-in-law treated her so his mother wouldn't rage at her when he was not around. After which he would hide with Ryeon in the store room, and listen to her rants for hours.
Yes, she had run away from this for far too long. Yes, she had been incredibly apprehensive about confronting him about the past. Yes, she was the one who had cut their red thread.
“How shameless.” Her mother-in-law had told her when she had returned.
If that shamelessness is why she is standing in front of her husband right now, then so be it.
That was the moment when she decided that shame... Shame was never her thing.
And something inside her broke free.
She took a step forward.
“Park Joong-gil,” she said, and she didn’t use honorifics. Joong-gil might have been caught off guard once, but this time he stood firm, steeling himself.
“Koo Ryeon,” he said. “If you leave now, I will pretend that none of this happened.”
Park Joong-gil didn’t know what was going to happen, but he knew that there was no turning back after this point.
“I am not letting you go this time,” she replied.
“Choosing to leave, and choosing to barge in whenever you please.” His tone was cruel. “I wonder why it had to be you out of all people.”
“Can't help it now, can we?" She pulled his collar and crashed her lips into his.
Joong-gil had been barely able to maintain self-control. Her scent had alone sent his mind reeling. He knew that he was falling into her trap, and he knew she read him like an open book, and he knew that she knew she had him wrapped around her finger.
If she knew it already, what is the use of hiding it anymore? His self-restraint crumbled like a castle of cards.
He froze for a moment to let the softness of her lips sink in and then responded equally fiercely. His mind went blank. All he could do was feel her lips, her scent, her breath – and it was just as he had remembered.
Her hands snaked around his collar, leaving traces of her touch everywhere as she wrapped her hands around his neck. He tilted back, finding support in the table as she leaned further, wanting to taste more of him. She felt his tongue on her lips, seeking entrance. There was nothing she wouldn’t give him.
Cupping her jaw with a palm, he wrapped his other hand around her waist as he firmly held her close to him. Their chests heaved, and they took a moment to breathe, after which their mouths were on each other again. They opened their eyes now, only to see each other blushing and panting.
Her fingers ran through his hair, grasping at whatever they could find. She could feel her toes curl in her boots as the kisses intensified. They stopped to take another breath, and this time, his lips found her neck. The way he left a trail of kisses on her neck – the way he knew exactly the point that would make her breath hitch, with his memory as fresh as the day she first melted in his arms - it didn't feel like four hundred years, it felt like they had done this last night.
She could not resist anymore as her hands now found his shirt buttons. They clawed at them, roughly opening each one of them with a vengeance. She felt enmity for the offending piece of cloth that separated her from her husband. She saw him lean backward to separate himself from her, and looked up.
“Here?” He asked, almost sitting on the desk at this point, the reports and documents crumbling under him. His voice was teasing, filled with mirth. She stopped manhandling his shirt.
Ryeon felt frustrated – what was this tactic? She furrowed her brows. “Way to kill the mood,” she spat, and as soon as the words left her lips, he tightened his grip on her waist.
What happened next felt like a blur. He leaned forward, shifting his weight fully on his feet, and turned. He twirled her around. She closed her eyes, bracing for the impact as she crashed on the desk, but the blow never came.
Her heart skipped a beat and she noticed the air around her change. Then, she felt a soft bump as she landed on a soft mattress, with him on top of her. He put his hands on both sides of her head to avoid falling on top of her. His knees trapped her legs between them.
“This is better,” he said. She opened her eyes to find his face close to her. He had teleported them to his apartment and right on his bed.
She blushed, and then realized her hands were on the last button of his shirt. She pulled them back, and his shirt fell open.
Their gaze met for a moment, and that’s all they needed. He found her neck again, his kisses now turning into bites, leaving faint red marks on her nape. He felt her hands on his belt buckle, which opened with relative ease.
“A little too eager, aren’t you?” He asked, seeing her gaze travel down to his abdomen.
“Shut up,” she replied, kissing him again to quieten him herself. Leaning on one of his hands, he also found a way to hike up her shirt, leaving a trail of fire as his fingers ran across her stomach, up to her ribs, and the strap of her bra, and on top of it.
One minute,” he mumbled and leaned back. Balancing himself on his knees, he removed his clothes. His pants slipped a little, and that is where her eyes traveled as well.
He leaned on one knee, removing himself from the top of her to remove his pants.
A mistake.
He had hardly dealt with them when she took one of his hands, entwining their fingers. He thought she was being romantic when she caught him off guard for the second time that night, and pulled him towards herself. Using that momentum, she twirled and switched their positions, with her now sitting on top of him.
“You know your moves well,” he whispered. His smile – a mixture of pride and helplessness, made her heart beat faster.
“Been taught by the best,” she said, and her mouth found his neck.
Taking advantage of the new mobility, he put his hands to extensive use. They traveled up her waist, opening that blouse and taking it off her.
“May I?” He said, his hands on the clasp of her bra.
“Did you ever need permission?” she asked, her own hands skimming across his chest.
The cold air hit her breasts and she shuddered. She felt his hands on them, leaving goosebumps as they swept across her sensitive peaks. He was extremely gentle with her, even if he pretended not to be – his calloused hands explored her body.
Back when they were alive, he'd always look at her with those eyes of desire, as though he would swallow her whole. Each night, he would bite her chest in little nibbles, just enough to push her over the edge, but never leaving a mark.
He did it now as well.
Every touch felt so familiar that before they knew it, they had their lips on the sensitive region of the other. His hands traveled to the small of her back, unzipping her skirt. Her fingers found their way to his lower region as well.
All their remaining clothes came off in rapid succession, amidst kisses and fondling. She leaned forward and felt something hard pressing against her. Everywhere their skin met felt scorched in flames.
Just looking at him was enough for her, two days ago and now she felt as though she would not be satisfied without him inside her.
Joong-gil indulged her. Sucking her at places which drove her insane, she was hardly able to breathe when she suddenly shuddered, feeling a finger slip through her folds.
Her breath hitched. She was already wet – how could she not be? Memories of their affectionate rendezvous as a married couple, those twelve years of intimacy – had been her sanctuary for all these years. They were the sort of dreams she found strength in, at her lowest points. His touch, rough – tender – greedy – hesitant, all at once was still the same. His expression - a shade darker.
Joong-gil was losing control, fast. Her soft lips landed on his scars, trailing on his skin. Each soft, wet touch felt like rain pouring over his charred remains, bringing it back alive.
Some wounds take an eternity to heal if left alone to fester. Sometimes, the same bruises are healed by fluttering kisses and murmurs.
She rubbed herself against him. He moaned.
His fingers slid across her nether regions again, and she mewled, losing balance. That was all he needed, and she was again under him, with now his body weight pressing on her.
As his firmness nudged her folds, she couldn't bother finding places in which she would tease him. There was a desperation in his eyes, and he parted her legs with a knee.
She tried grabbing his shoulders, but he pinned them on her sides, breathing heavily.
One frayed tip of his red thread tickled her wrist. She looked into his eyes and nodded, and he entered.
After centuries of exile, she found herself back in her kingdom. The moans and purrs, growing increasingly louder with time, echoed across the room.
Having him inside her felt reassuring. It made her feel like nothing had changed. His thrusts, his pace, rough but so pleasing - the rhythm they had adjusted to over the years returned, and not one note was missing.
It was no surprise to either of them how quickly she came, waves breaking in to meet their shore. He did as well, engraving himself inside of her.
He rolled over, their bodies were still intermingled. Their breaths slowed down, but they were still exhausted.
There was not much to say, and none of the two were particularly concerned. She laid there, still, exposed to the cold air – feeling the chill now that she was covered in sweat.
He turned, covering her with a blanket. He had always done that. His hand snaked around her waist to bring her close, while gently nudging her to use his arm as a pillow.
All those nights ago, she would lie on her back, while he would have turned towards her, observing her as she slept. How many nights has she fallen asleep to that face, looking at her as though she was the most priceless treasure in the world? Even after everyone called her broken?
The feeling of his bare skin against her felt like home.
She peered at him, and their eyes met. His cheeks reddened. “Oh?” She murmured, amused. He just pulled her even closer, to rest his chin on top of her head. His eyes glanced across the room, with their clothes strewn around, and saw a glimpse of the scar on her wrist.
He took it and kissed it. She knew what this gesture meant. He would not let it happen again.
Exhaustion came over Joong-gil soon enough. Perhaps a side effect of decades of insomnia, or perhaps a side effect of centuries of release. More likely than not, it was the privilege of having her in his arms after so long, knowing that she was safe, living and breathing - in his embrace.
How much his hands had craved her warmth when his mind had refused to remember?
“Don’t go anywhere,” he murmured. She nodded, leaning forward to give him a peck on his lips, and he fell asleep.
He didn’t get any nightmares after that night, and he never woke up alone after that day.
Over the next few weeks, everyone noticed the gradual change in his demeanor. He was strict as ever, but now he had a certain calmness about him. He walked across the hallway, and his eyes met hers.
She bowed – he was still her superior. “Team Leader Koo,” he replied, acknowledging the greeting.
And amidst the morning rush, only a blonde-haired intern in the escort team noticed their fingers brushing against each other as they passed by, and his tiny smile when he felt her skin against his.
It didn’t matter if his scars would take an eternity to heal. She was not going to go anywhere.