Chapter 18: Afterparty Drinks
The night of Dino’s party came. And they all had a blast.
The private room at the Korean barbecue place was a cacophony of sizzling meat, clinking soju bottles, and overlapping laughter. Dino, beaming under a paper crown, held court at the head of the table, telling an animated story that involved a misplaced passport and a very confused taxi driver in Bangkok. Joan watched it all from her seat, a warm, full feeling in her chest that had nothing to do with the galbi.
One thing Joan was thankful for was that she never really told Jeonghan how she felt about him. So apart from her hurting for him not liking her back, everything was normal. He was his usual annoying mischievous self, currently trying to sneak a piece of uncooked garlic onto Jun’s plate when he wasn’t looking.
As the dinner wound down and the group migrated to the quieter, more intimate bar next door, the ease persisted. They claimed a deep corner booth, a fortress of worn velvet and dim light. The scent of aged whiskey and polished wood filled the air, a sharp contrast to the meaty smoke they’d carried in on their clothes. A low jazz record spun, just loud enough to absorb the edges of their voices.
Cheers rose as a round of old fashioneds and whiskey highballs arrived. The mood was light, celebratory in a way that felt deeper than just a birthday. It was a celebration of survival. Joan felt Cheol’s hand find hers under the scarred table, his thumb drawing a slow, steady line across her knuckles. A quiet anchor.
Jeonghan, sliding into the booth opposite her, caught the subtle movement. His sharp eyes flickered from their hidden hands to Joan’s face. He raised one elegant eyebrow, a silent question and a comment all at once. But he said nothing. Instead, he turned and snatched the shot of tequila from in front of Mingyu.
“A competition,” Jeonghan declared, his voice a sly challenge. “First to flinch buys the next round for everyone. For the rest of the night.”
Mingyu, never one to back down, grinned. “You’re on, you cheater.”
The tension, what little there was, dissolved into the familiar rhythm of their friendship. Joan leaned back into the plush velvet, letting the sounds wash over her: Jun’s crystalline laugh at a terrible pun from Joshua, Wonwoo’s low, thoughtful interjection that somehow made everyone pause and listen, Dino’s booming voice demanding another round of snacks.
It was during a lull, as Mingyu was lamenting his lost shot contest and rubbing his eyes, that Joshua lifted his glass toward Joan. His expression was soft, understanding in a way that didn’t need specifics. “To the end of an era,” he said, his tone light. “No more dice-shaped destiny.”
Joan felt a slight tightening in her throat. She met his gaze, bracing for pity, for awkwardness.
“Yeah of course, no hard feelings at all,” Joshua continued, his smile genuine and reaching his eyes. “I mean we all agreed that anyone can leave anytime and we won’t let it ruin our friendship.”
Mingyu, now blinking tears from the tequila, smiled and nodded in agreement. “I am gonna miss it but, you’re our friend even before the dice and if you say you’re done then we’re good.”
The simplicity of it was a balm. Jun, from beside her, reached over and squeezed her hand in reassurance. His touch was brief, warm. “Don’t worry about it, ok?”
Jeonghan leaned forward, his long hair brushing the table’s surface. A smirk played on his lips. “She’s gonna overthink it.”
A wave of laughter rolled through the booth, comfortable and inclusive. Even Cheol chuckled, the vibration of it traveling through his arm and into her. Joan shot Jeonghan a sulky look, the kind she’d given him a hundred times before. It felt normal. It felt right.
“It is kinda your branding, Jo…” DK managed to say between laughs, wiping his own eyes. This set everyone off again, the sound rich and full in the cozy space.
Joan tried to look offended, to muster a proper scowl, but the warmth in her chest was too expansive. A snort-y, undignified laugh escaped her mouth before she could stop it. The sound was so abruptly silly, so utterly her, that it caused the table to double over in renewed laughter. Mingyu slapped the table. Jun buried his face in Joshua’s shoulder. Jeonghan pointed at her, triumphant.
As the laughter subsided into happy sighs and sips of drinks, Joan thought to herself how lucky she was that nothing changed. They were all still friends. The dice had been a fever dream, a shared secret that had burned bright and fast. The embers were cool now, but the circle around them remained, unbroken.
The evening stretched on, a tapestry of old stories retold, gentle teasing, and the comfortable silence that only exists between people who know each other’s bones. Cheol’s hand never left hers. His presence was a steady, solid warmth against her side, a new element seamlessly integrated into the old formula.
Later, as they spilt out onto the sidewalk, the neon signs painting their faces in pulses of pink and blue, the group fragmented into clusters for taxis and ride-shares. Hugs were exchanged, Dino was clapped on the back one more time, promises were made for next week’s football watch.
Jeonghan gave Joan a casual, one-armed hug. “Don’t be a stranger, overthinker,” he murmured, his breath a cloud in the cool night air. There was no hidden meaning in his eyes, just the usual playful glint. It was, somehow, the final confirmation she needed. The chapter was closed. He had never even known there was a book.
“Never,” she said, and meant it.
She climbed into the back of Cheol’s car, the leather seats cool. The city lights streamed by in ribbons of colour. He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on her thigh, a possessive and comforting weight.
“See?” he said, his voice quiet in the hum of the engine. “Still yours.”
She wasn’t sure if he meant the friends, the night, or himself. Maybe all of it. She looked over at his profile, etched in the dashboard lights, and felt a surge of something clean and strong.
“Yeah,” she said, turning her hand over to lace her fingers with his on her leg. “They are.”
The car moved through the sleeping city, carrying them away from the laughter and the light, toward the quiet possibility of everything that came next. The past was settled.
The future, for the first time in a long time, felt like an open road.
The city lights blurred outside the car window, smears of gold and neon against the black. Cheol’s thumb traced idle circles on her thigh, a rhythm as steady as his breathing. Inside the quiet capsule of the car, Joan felt the solid contentment of the evening begin to morph into something sharper, a specific and pressing need.
She watched the familiar landmarks approach, signaling the turn onto her street. The grand, glittering facade of her building loomed in the mid-distance. Her stomach tightened. The penthouse awaited, all cold marble and floor-to-ceiling windows holding the ghost of every reckless decision. It was a museum of a person she was trying to outgrow.
The hollow echo of that space, so vast for just one, felt suddenly unbearable. She didn’t want to walk into that silence alone. She didn’t want the hollow grandeur. She wanted the worn hardwood and the single, non-judgmental plant. She wanted the smell of his soap and the weight of a shared blanket.
Cheol’s indicator clicked, preparing to merge for the turn.
“Um, actually,” Joan said, the words leaving her in a rush. She looked over at him, her voice softening. “Can I stay with you tonight?”
His hand stilled on her leg. He glanced at her, his profile sharp in the dashboard glow, then back at the road. The turn signal continued its metronomic click, a persistent question. With a smooth, decisive motion, he silenced it and guided the car straight through the intersection, passing her street entirely.
“Yeah,” he said, the word simple and full. “Of course you can.”
He didn’t ask for reasons. He didn’t make a joke. He just changed their course. The quiet acceptance unlocked something in her chest, a final, trembling breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She sank back into the seat, watching her building recede in the side mirror, its lights growing smaller until they were swallowed by the city grid.
They drove the rest of the way in a comfortable silence, the kind that didn’t need filling. It was different from the tense quiet after the dice games, or the heavy quiet of her shame. This was just peace. The hum of the tires on asphalt was a lullaby.
When he parked in his building’s underground garage, the concrete stillness was absolute. He came around to open her door, a habit she’d noticed and hadn’t yet teased him about. His hand found hers as they walked to the elevator, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous space.
The elevator doors slid shut, enclosing them in a soft, electric light. He leaned against the wall, pulling her gently to stand in front of him, his arms circling her waist from behind. He rested his chin on her shoulder. She could feel the steady beat of his heart against her back.
“I wasn’t ready for the quiet,” she confessed to their reflection in the brass doors, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I know,” he murmured into her hair. His breath was warm on her neck. “You don’t have to be.”
His loft was dark and still, familiar now. He didn’t turn on the main lights, just a small lamp by the sofa that threw a pool of amber across the floor. The city painted shifting patterns on the high ceilings. Joan toed off her heels, the cool hardwood a relief under her soles.
“I should probably borrow a shirt again,” she said, nodding toward his bedroom.
“Bottom drawer. Help yourself to anything.” He was already at the kitchen island, filling a glass with water. He drank half of it, his throat working, then filled it again and brought it to her.
She took the water, her fingers brushing his. “Aren’t you having any?”
“In a minute.”
She padded to his bedroom, the space felt different tonight. It wasn’t a refuge she was visiting; it was a space she was entering with permission. She opened the bottom drawer of his dresser, finding stacks of perfectly folded t-shirts. She chose a soft grey one that smelled irrevocably of him.
When she came out, having changed, he was still by the island, watching her. He had removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. The casual intimacy of the scene—her in his clothes, him waiting for her in the semi-dark—struck her with profound force.
“What?” she asked, a small smile touching her lips.
“Nothing.” He shook his head, a barely-there movement. “Just looking.”
He pushed away from the island and walked toward her. He didn’t stop until he was close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. He brought a hand up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, his knuckles grazing her cheek.
“I’m really glad you asked to stay,” he said, his voice low and rough at the edges.
“Me too.”
He leaned down and kissed her. It was not the hungry, desperate kiss from the aftermath of her breakdown, nor the slow, exploratory one from his sofa. This was something else—a kiss of arrival. It was deep and sure and tasted like whiskey and belonging. His hands framed her face, holding her with a reverence that made her knees weak.
When he pulled back, they were both breathing heavily. He rested his forehead against hers. “We should sleep,” he said, but it sounded like a concession to practicality, not desire.
“We should,” she agreed, not moving.
He smiled, that rare, full smile that transformed his entire face, and took her hand. In the bedroom, they slipped under the covers in a routine that was already becoming theirs. He turned off the lamp, plunging them into a deep blue dark. He lay on his back, and she immediately curled into his side, her head on his chest, her leg hooked over his.
His arm came around her, his hand splaying wide across her back, holding her firmly to him. She listened to the strong, steady drum of his heart beneath her ear.
“No scripts,” she whispered into the dark, a callback to his promise from the other night.
“No dice,” he replied, his chest vibrating under her cheek. His hand began a slow, soothing track up and down her spine. “Just this.”
She drifted off to the rhythm of his breathing, the solid reality of him a fortress against the quiet. The open road wasn’t ahead of her on some distant highway. It was here, in the dark, in the steady circle of his arms. And for tonight, it was exactly where she needed to be.
And for tonight, it was exactly where she needed to be.
Joan wakes up an hour later to find Cheol still awake just staring at the ceiling while still mindlessly drawing circles on the small of her back. The room was dark, but not so dark that she couldn’t make out the focused, distant set of his jaw.
“Did I wake you?” Cheol asks, stopping the soothing gesture.
She shook her head against his chest, the sleep in her voice already gone, replaced by a liquid warmth. She reached for him, finding his mouth in the dark for a lazy kiss that eventually deepens. They make out taking their time, a slow, wet tangle of tongues that had no destination, just the pure, simple pleasure of connection.
Her hand drifted from his cheek, down the column of his throat, over the hard plane of his chest. It traveled through his abs and down his length, palming him through his sweats. He was already hard, thick and hot against her hand, and he groaned into her mouth, his hips pushing up involuntarily.
Cheol breaks off the kiss, his breath ragged. “I thought you said you wanted us to go slow.”
“This is slow.” Joan breathes, squeezing him firmly through the fabric. She could feel the precise shape of him, the heavy weight. “And technically I said no sex. This isn’t sex.” She continues palming him, her touch growing more deliberate, rubbing the heel of her hand against the head of his cock where a damp spot was already blooming.
A rough, torn sound escaped his throat. “Fucking semantics, Joan.”
“Your favorite kind,” she whispered, and slipped her hand inside the waistband of his sweats. Her fingers closed around him, skin to skin, and he jerked as if shocked. He was velvet over steel, impossibly hard and already slick at the tip. She began to stroke him, a proper hand job, her fist moving from root to crown with a twisting motion that made his breath hitch.
Then this escalates to a blow job. She shifted down the bed, her hair trailing over his thighs, and took him into her mouth without ceremony. He tasted clean and male, a faint saltiness that was all him. She engulfed him, using her tongue flat against the throbbing vein underneath, hollowing her cheeks as she worked him deeper.
“Jesus Christ,” he gasped, his hands fisting in the sheets. His hips lifted off the mattress, a shallow, helpless thrust. “Your mouth… fuck, your mouth is so good.” She reveled in it, in the raw, filthy praise, in the way his control completely shattered. She sucked him hard, bobbing her head, one hand cupping his balls, rolling them gently as she took him to the back of her throat.
Cheol stops her before he could cum. He sat up abruptly, his body trembling. “Wait. Stop. I’m too close.” His voice was a wreck.
He pulled her up, maneuvering her until she was sitting between his legs, her back to his chest. He started caressing her breasts through the thin cotton of his t-shirt, his palms rough and knowing. He pinched her nipples until they were tight, aching points, then slid his hand down her stomach, under the waistband of her panties.
He found her clit, already swollen and wet, and started rubbing her with deliberate, circling pressure. “This isn’t sex either, right?” he asks as he pushes a finger in her pussy.
She cried out, her head falling back against his shoulder. She was so wet his finger slid in to the knuckle without resistance. He began to finger her, a slow, torturous in-and-out that quickly became unbearable. He added a second finger, stretching her, scissoring them gently inside her heat.
“Cheol,” she whimpered, her own hands gripping his thighs.
“You set the rules, baby,” he murmured against her ear, his voice dark with want. He curled his fingers, finding that spot inside her that made her vision blur. He rubbed her clit with his other hand, the dual sensation a sensory overload. He kissed her neck, biting down on the tendon, and suddenly she’s overstimulated.
Pleasure coiled, tight and screaming, in her core. It wasn’t a build; it was a detonation. Her body seized, a raw, silent scream tearing through her as she came, clamping down hard on his invading fingers. Waves of it crashed over her, relentless, each one wrenched from somewhere deep and untouched.
He held her through it, his fingers still working inside her, milking the last violent shudders. When she finally went boneless against him, gasping, he slowly withdrew his hand. He brought his glistening fingers to her lips. “Taste,” he commanded, his voice gravel.
She opened her mouth, tasting herself on his skin, salty and musky and profoundly intimate. He watched her, his eyes black in the dark, then kissed her, deep and possessive, sharing the taste.
He shifted her then, laying her down on her back. He loomed over her, his cock jutting against her thigh. He was still painfully hard, the head flushed and wet. “My turn,” he said, and it wasn’t a request.
He hooked his fingers in the sides of her panties and pulled them down her legs. He pushed his t-shirt up over her breasts, baring her completely to the cool air and his heated gaze. He settled between her thighs, his weight a delicious anchor. He didn’t enter her. He just rubbed the head of his cock through her soaking folds, coating himself in her release.
“Look at you,” he breathed, watching where they connected. “So fucking wet for me. Dripping.”
Dripping.”
The word hung in the dark, a filthy, worshipful truth. He dragged the broad, wet head of his cock through her slick folds again, a slow, maddening stroke that made her hips jerk off the mattress. She was hypersensitive, still pulsing from the climax he’d wrung from her, but a deeper, emptier ache was already building beneath the oversensitivity.
He leaned down, kissing her, his tongue mimicking the deliberate rhythm of his hips. She could taste herself on his lips. His weight pressed her into the mattress, a delicious confinement. The thick length of him, hot and solid, rubbed insistently against her clit with every shallow grind of his pelvis.
“Cheol,” she gasped against his mouth, her hands sliding down his back to clutch his ass. She could feel the muscles there flexing with each movement.
“I know,” he murmured, biting her lower lip. “I feel it. You’re throbbing. Begging for it.” He ground down harder, the friction a bright, sharp shock. Her back arched, a silent plea.
Then, the memory of her own rule, spoken in the clear light of day, sliced through the haze. It felt distant, theoretical, a policy made for a different version of herself. But she’d said it. He was respecting it. The conflict twisted inside her, a knot of desire and stubborn principle.
Her hands came up, flattening against the solid wall of his chest. She pushed, just enough to create a whisper of space between them.
“Wait.” Her voice was strained. She swallowed. “No sex.”
He went perfectly still above her. The only movement was the rapid flare of his nostrils and the pounding of his heart under her palms. He searched her face, his eyes black and unreadable in the shadow. The sexual tension crackled, a live wire about to snap.
Slowly, deliberately, he reached between them. He didn’t move his hips away. Instead, he hooked his fingers into the soaked cotton of her discarded panties, which were tangled around her thigh. He pulled the fabric back up, over her mound, a faint, absurd barrier.
He aligned himself again, the blunt head of his cock pressing against her now through the thin, drenched cotton. He rubbed. A slow, circular grind that set every nerve ending on fire. The wet fabric dragged against her swollen clit.
“I’m just rubbing over,” he said, his voice a low, controlled rasp. His hips moved in a lazy, torturous circle. “This isn’t sex. That ok? Or should I stop?”
The sensation was obscene. The cotton was a frustrating veil, muting the direct heat of him but amplifying the friction, the promise. She could feel every ridge, every vein of him through the pathetic fabric. Her breath came in short, sharp pulls.
“Ok,” she whispered, her eyes closing. “Just rubbing.”
He took his precious time. He experimented with angle and pressure, rocking against her, sometimes soft and slow, sometimes with a harder, driving rhythm that made her moan into the crook of her own arm. He kissed her neck, her collarbones, her breasts, his mouth hot and demanding even as his hips maintained their deliberate, maddening tease.
Then, his hand slid between them again. He gathered the soaked cotton of her panties, pulling the fabric to the side just enough. He hooked the edge over the swollen head of his cock, trapping it there. The sensitive crown was now pressed directly against her bare, slick flesh, separated only by a thin band of lace. He resumed rubbing.
“Oh, god,” Joan choked out. This was worse. This was better. The direct, silken slide of his skin against her labia, the barrier now just a ridged line of lace that caught and tugged at her with every movement. The pre-cum leaking from him mixed with her own wetness, creating a slippery, shameless mess.
She was impossibly wet. A small, choked sound escaped her each time he rocked forward. The world narrowed to the brutal, exquisite friction between her legs and the strained sound of his breathing above her.
He shifted his weight, adjusting his angle for a deeper grind, and in that moment, the hooked lace slipped.
The thick, flushed tip of his cock, slick and seeking, breached her.
Just an inch. A sudden, shocking invasion of heat and fullness where there had only been pressure. They both froze.
He stopped instantly, his whole body tensing. He began to pull back. “I’m sorry.”
The loss was catastrophic. A physical pain. The empty, aching need she’d been stoking roared into a screaming void.
Her legs, which had been tangled with his, snapped around his waist, locking him in place. Her heels dug into the small of his back. “No.” The word was a raw command. “Please. Put it in.”
He was trembling with the effort of holding still. The tip of him remained just inside her, a tantalizing, unbearable promise. “You sure?” The question was gritted out, his forehead damp against hers.
She looked up at him, all pretense, all rules, all fear burned away in the liquid fire between her legs. She saw not the stoic protector, but the man from the dice game—wild, claiming, hidden no longer. She wanted that. She wanted him.
“Yes.” She tightened her legs, pulling him incrementally closer, feeling him sink another devastating millimeter into her body. “Please, I need you. I want you. All of you.”
A guttural sound ripped from his throat. He surrendered.
He pushed forward, a slow, inexorable slide that stretched her, filled her, completely. There was no more cotton, no more rules, just the shocking, perfect fusion of skin and heat and desperate need. She cried out, a sharp, broken sound as he buried himself to the hilt, his pelvis flush against hers.
For a second, he didn’t move, letting her adjust to the overwhelming fullness. She could feel him throbbing inside her. Then he withdrew, almost all the way, and thrust back in, harder this time.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word shuddering out of him.
That single thrust shattered the last of his control. The careful, teasing rhythm was gone, replaced by something raw and hungry. He fucked her with deep, pounding strokes that drove the breath from her lungs. The headboard began a solid, rhythmic thump against the wall.
“Is this…” he grunted, driving into her, “is this what you needed?”
“Yes,” she gasped, meeting each thrust with a lift of her hips. “God, yes. Just like that. Don’t stop.”
He slid a hand beneath her ass, tilting her pelvis, changing the angle. On the next drive forward, he hit a spot that made her vision whiten. A sharp, electric cry tore from her throat.
“There?” he demanded, hitting it again, and again.
She couldn’t speak. She could only nod, her nails digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders. The coil of another climax, tighter and more violent than the first, was already winding deep in her core. It wasn’t just physical. It felt like an exorcism. Every doubt, every memory of Jeonghan’s careless hands, every echo of the dice clattering on the table—it was all being pounded out of her, replaced by the sheer, undeniable reality of Cheol’s body claiming hers.
“Cheol,” she sobbed, her body beginning to tighten around him. “I’m gonna… please, I want you to… cum inside me. Fill me up. I need to feel it.”
Her words, so explicit, so wanting, tipped him over the edge. His rhythm faltered, turned ragged and desperate. “Joan… fuck…”
He drove into her one last, deep time, and she felt him pulse. A hot, liquid rush flooded her insides as his own release triggered hers. Her orgasm slammed into her, a convulsive, mind-wiping wave that clamped down around him, milking every last drop from him with violent, pulsing spasms.
They crashed together, a tangled, sweating, shuddering heap. He collapsed onto her, his full weight a welcome anchor, his face buried in her neck. Their harsh, panting breaths were the only sound in the room, syncopated, slowly slowing.
He made a move to withdraw.
“No,” she whispered, her legs still locked around him. Her inner muscles clenched weakly around his softening length, holding him in. “Stay inside. Just… for a minute.”
He stilled, then relaxed completely, a heavy, warm presence within and upon her. He kissed her shoulder, a soft, damp press of his lips. “Okay.”
They lay like that in the dark, connected, as their heartbeats slowly decelerated from a frantic gallop to a steady, joint rhythm. The wet heat between her thighs was a messy, intimate reality. The thump of the headboard seemed to echo in the quiet.
In the solid, spent silence, Joan felt something settle. This was nothing like the dice. There had been no audience, no performance, no points to be won. Just two people, stripped bare in every way, finding a brutal, beautiful honesty in the dark. It was terrifying. It was real.
He shifted finally, slipping out of her. She winced at the loss, at the sudden, empty coolness. He didn’t go far. He gathered her against him, her back to his front, and pulled the rumpled sheet over them. His arm was a heavy band across her waist, his hand splayed possessively over her lower belly.
No words were needed. The city glow framed the window. Somewhere, in another apartment, a sink ran. A siren waned in the distance.
She brought her hand up to cover his, lacing their fingers together over her skin. His breath was warm and even against the back of her neck. The road ahead was still unknown, but for now, the journey had brought her here, to this exact point of arrival. It was enough.