Characters/Ship: Taeyeon/Jessica Tags: Canon Compliant, Exes to Lovers, Unresolved Feelings Permission to Remix: Yes AO3 Link -
It’s almost midnight when Jessica’s plane lands at Incheon. Mercifully, there are no fans or camera lenses waiting to greet her when she exits the transit area. No one knows that Jessica was intending to come back to Seoul.
The truth is, Seoul hasn’t featured on her travel plans ever since she left the Kpop idol life behind. For almost a decade now, Jessica splits her time between New York, Hong Kong, and a hundred other cities on the world map. But never Seoul. The city she had once called home, where she had lived through the meteoric rise of all her dreams and then somehow survived all of them shattering at once, is a place Jessica actively runs away from.
Yet, here she is, in a cab winding down the city streets. She feels oddly unbalanced, like she’s caught in between pages of her past as SNSD’s Jessica, and the Jessica that she is now, older and more weary, and still nursing a weather-beaten heart. Some wounds, she’s learnt over the years, never truly heal.
Her heart throbs unpleasantly beneath her ribs as they pull up in front of the Four Seasons Hotel. Jessica retrieves her carry-on suitcase from the kind driver and musters a fleeting smile to thank him.
She can’t quite bring herself to enter the hotel’s swanky lobby, needing a minute to steel herself. Once again, she’s seized with paralysing uncertainty. Is this yet another mistake she’s about to make?
Jessica exhales roughly, pulling out her phone with trembling fingers. It takes her three tries to dial the right number.
Tiffany picks up after the first ring, voice loud and exuberant. She’s the only one who knows Jessica was planning to come, readily giving Jessica all the details when Jessica had texted her last week. “Jessi! Are you here?”
The nickname cuts straight through Jessica, scraping her heart raw. Tiffany hasn’t called her that in years. And there was a time when Jessica had thought she’d never hear those same syllables folded into the cadence of Tiffany’s voice again.
She swallows hard. “I’m here. I’m – I’m not sure this is a good idea after all. Maybe I should just –”
“Jessi,” Tiffany begins, and her voice is softer now, laced with a gravity that draws an ache into the rhythm of Jessica’s heartbeat. The last time she had heard Tiffany so serious was at that fateful meeting that sealed Jessica’s fate as a former member of the Nation’s Girl Group. “You’re already here. After a sixteen-hour flight. Even if you don’t want to stay long, at least come up and say hi.”
“She’s not going to want to see me.”
“She invited you,” Tiffany says simply. As if things can ever be that simple.
“She was drunk,” Jessica breathes. “I’m not sure she even remembers –”
“Does it matter?” Tiffany cuts in. There’s a hard edge to her voice. And even now, on the other side of a decade of missed conversations and separate lives, Jessica knows that Tiffany will not take no for an answer. “Maybe Taeyeon was drunk when she called and invited you to come. But you still came anyway, right? You can’t just leave when you’re literally just twenty floors below us.”
“If she hates me,” Jessica begins tremulously, forcing her feet to move, forcing herself to enter the lobby. “If she hates me for crashing her birthday party, I’m blaming you for making me do this.”
Tiffany huffs, and Jessica can almost see the pinched scowl on her face. “No one is making you do anything.”
After an agonising beat, Tiffany heaves a deep sigh. Jessica’s hand tightens reflexively around the handle of her suitcase. She braces herself for whatever Tiffany is about to say.
“She can never hate you, Jessica. Even after everything that’s happened, she can never hate you.”
Jessica had been expecting it, but all the air still wheezes out of her lungs anyway.
She curls up on one end of the sofa, legs tucked underneath her, as she sips slowly from the glass of wine in her hands. There’s a documentary on a mountain disaster playing on the television, but Jessica is barely watching it, mind drifting off to designs for next year’s Blanc & Eclare Spring Collection. Her phone rings and Jessica picks up without looking at the screen.
There’s a rustle on the other end, the sounds of quiet shuffling, and then, inexplicably, her name nestled within a voice she hasn’t heard in years.
“Sooyeon,” Taeyeon says, slipping over the syllables like she’s relearning how to say Jessica’s name, the name that only Taeyeon has ever called her. “I didn’t think you’d pick up.”
The world grinds to a cruel, unforgiving halt. And then Jessica feels everything; every last frayed strand of emotion, every frosted crack over the iced surface of her heart fractures all over again. On screen, an avalanche crashes down the side of the mountain, wreaking devastation in its wake as it buries an entire camp of climbers alive. In much the same way, Taeyeon’s voice, Taeyeon, crushes Jessica beneath layers and layers of unresolved feelings she thought she’s long forgotten.
It’s hard to draw breath, but Jessica tries anyway, the air rattling inside her lungs. “Taeyeon,” she breathes. “I wasn’t expecting – Why are you calling me?”
“I missed you,” Taeyeon murmurs. Jessica can barely make out the words. Taeyeon’s drunk, she realises. She must be, because if she wasn’t she would have never admitted that out loud, a damning confession she can’t take back. Jessica knows, with a painful kind of clarity, that if Taeyeon was sober, she would have never called Jessica in the first place. “Did you know your number’s still the same? I deleted it from my phone years ago but when I thought of you, my fingers just remembered and it’s good that your number’s still the same, you know?”
“Taeyeon-ah,” Jessica manages, voice somehow steady despite the panic rising steadily in her veins. “What have you been drinking?”
Taeyeon hums for a few long moments, and Jessica hates how she can picture the way Taeyeon’s face scrunches up in concentration. Things would be so much easier if her mind is anything but a treacherous wilderness full of abandoned memories.
“Soju,” Taeyeon says after a while. “A few bottles I think. And some wine. Tiffany brought the best wine over. It’s very good.”
You shouldn’t drink that much. You can’t hold your alcohol well, Jessica thinks. But she swallows the words back down. She lost the chance to nag at Taeyeon years ago.
“Maybe it’s time to stop,” she says instead.
Taeyeon hums again. “My birthday’s next week.”
Jessica sighs. If life was less cruel, she would have forgotten this detail too. But memory is an everlasting thing, no matter how much of it Jessica’s tried to bury away. “I know.”
“I’m having a birthday party with the girls. Will you come?” Mercifully, Taeyeon pauses, giving Jessica a fraction of a second to collect herself. “I want you to come.”
The wine glass slips from Jessica’s fingers because Taeyeon’s words sound too much like a plea and –
Numbly, Jessica registers the way dark, crimson liquid is seeping into her white carpet. It’ll leave an unforgiving stain behind, like the way her heart has been tainted by Taeyeon in unspeakable ways.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“But I miss you.” Taeyeon’s voice sounds so small, Jessica’s heart aches.
“Taeyeon,” she exhales roughly. “Are you even going to remember you called me in the morning?”
“If I forget, will you still come anyway?”
Jessica closes her eyes, leaning back against the sofa cushions. She feels dangerously close to tears. Everything with Taeyeon always hurts. And sitting here, with all her feelings unravelling at her feet makes Jessica feel like she’s twenty-five again.
The heartbreak doesn’t hurt any less a decade later.
But it’s Taeyeon.
And Jessica has never been able to say no to Taeyeon, no matter how broken her heart feels.
Stunned silence greets Jessica’s appearance at the hotel’s penthouse suite. The agonising moment drags on, until Jessica feels the awkwardness and tension start to itch beneath her skin.
She swallows hard. “Hi.”
There’s another beat before Tiffany moves first, crushing Jessica into a warm embrace. Jessica laughs shakily, and then she finds herself in the centre of a flurry of hugs and quite a few tears. She doesn’t bother to wipe her own tears, not when there are gentle fingers brushing them away for her. It brings back memories of the end of their last concert together, before the world as they knew it had splintered apart. They had all been a mess of tangled limbs and tears backstage, clinging on to each other just like they are now.
When the last person – Yoona – finally releases her with a sniffle, someone else steps into view and Jessica feels all the air rush out of her lungs at once.
“Jessica,” Taeyeon greets, staring up with a dark, shadowed gaze. Her expression gives nothing away, and Jessica wonders if Taeyeon has gotten better at hiding her emotions or Jessica’s just long lost the ability to make constellations out of the scattered thoughts that graze Taeyeon’s face.
“Hi, Taeyeon-ah,” she says softly.
Taeyeon’s expression flickers for a second, a hint of something that looks remarkably like hurt flashing across her features before it dissolves into a look that’s all tempered steel.
Taeyeon is a frosted winter now and that, out of everything else, hurts Jessica the most. She misses Taeyeon’s warmth so unbearably all of a sudden, and she yearns to fall into days coloured by the light of Taeyeon’s spring.
It is a longing that feels like it’s cleaving her heart in two. And once again, Jessica can’t help the fear that curls into a knot in her gut; is this yet another mistake she’s about to make?
They end up on the balcony. Taeyeon had the sense to bring her padded jacket and a knitted scarf out but Jessica had left her coat draped over the sofa inside. She crosses her arms, trying not to shiver.
Taeyeon studies her from a few feet away, gaze sharpening as she takes in the way Jessica is trying not to tremble from the cold winter breeze. With a rough sigh, Taeyeon unwraps her scarf and then, before Jessica can even blink, Taeyeon is right in front of her, closer than she’s been to Jessica in years. Jessica freezes at the sudden proximity.
“You should have brought your coat out,” Taeyeon chides, looping the scarf around Jessica’s neck. She lingers, hands curling around Jessica’s shoulders. This time, Jessica isn’t sure if the tremble that runs up her spine is from the bitter winter cold or from the woman in front of her.
“Do you hate me for coming?” Jessica can’t quite meet Taeyeon’s eyes.
It’s Taeyeon’s turn to go completely still. Slowly, she drops her hands from Jessica’s shoulders. “How can I hate you when I asked you to come,” she says quietly.
Jessica lifts her gaze, surprised. “You were so drunk when you called, I thought –”
“I remember,” Taeyeon cuts in with a wry smile. “You’re not easy to forget, Sooyeon-ah.”
Jessica inhales sharply. The nickname and the way Taeyeon’s words sound like a confession, throw her backwards through their shared history, to the last time Taeyeon had said more or less the same thing.
There’s always something about early mornings, especially the ones where nothing ever happens and Jessica gets a chance to curl up in bed with Taeyeon as dawn breaks around them. Neither of them are early risers but filming for their new MV had stretched through the night; it was almost 5am by the time they were allowed to head home.
Jessica shifts, curling into Taeyeon’s side and resting her head on Taeyeon’s chest. Filming had exhausted her more than usual, and coupled with the endless string of meetings and negotiations for her hiatus with multiple company executives, Jessica feels nothing but drained.
At Jessica’s rough exhale, Taeyeon pulls her closer, sweeping her palm up and down the staircase of Jessica’s spine. Jessica exhales, breathes Taeyeon in, and lets the steady rhythm of Taeyeon’s heartbeats sink into her, a soothing lullaby that calms the weather-beaten waters of Jessica’s heart.
“We should get some sleep.” Taeyeon sounds exhausted too and Jessica wonders how much longer they can do this; seven years as a kpop idol feels like an eternity with punishing schedules and the heavy price of fame hanging over their heads.
“Do you think we can still do this when I’m on hiatus?” Jessica murmurs, words muffled in the fabric of Taeyeon’s shirt.
They haven’t really talked about what would happen with them when Jessica goes on hiatus to focus on Blanc. It was an unspoken decision that their relationship would continue despite Jessica’s absence. She’s far from done with Taeyeon and Jessica knows, as surely as the sun that rises every day, that Taeyeon feels the same way too.
But in moments like this, when she’s enveloped in Taeyeon’s arms and falling asleep to the sound of Taeyeon’s heartbeats, Jessica can’t help worrying about their future together.
“We’ll make time,” Taeyeon says, pressing a kiss to Jessica’s temple.
Jessica exhales slowly, fingers curling around Taeyeon’s shirt, seeking a life-long anchor. “It’s two years, Taeyeon-ah. That’s a long time. And I’m not – I’m not going to be around a lot. I’ll be travelling to different cities and – What if we drift apart? What if you get tired of waiting or forget about –”
Taeyeon shifts suddenly, cutting off the rest of Jessica’s sentence. Gentle fingers cup her face, coaxing Jessica to look up.
“Sooyeon,” Taeyeon breathes, right before she closes the distance between them. Jessica melts into the kiss, letting herself fall into everything Taeyeon pours into the kiss. It’s more than enough to reassure and soothe Jessica’s worries. But when they break apart to breathe, Taeyeon is looking at her so fiercely, so sincerely, that Jessica’s heart stutters in her chest.
“You’re not easy to forget, Sooyeon-ah,” Taeyeon says quietly.
And Jessica can do nothing else but believe her and pull her in for another sweet kiss.
Months later, everything falls apart and Jessica’s hiatus, once something transient and fleeting on their horizon, turns into a permanent separation – an untimely end of Jessica’s kpop idol career. And a painful unravelling of everything she holds dear with Taeyeon.
[FILL] you, another winter of mine
Tags: Canon Compliant, Exes to Lovers, Unresolved Feelings
Permission to Remix: Yes
AO3 Link
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It’s almost midnight when Jessica’s plane lands at Incheon. Mercifully, there are no fans or camera lenses waiting to greet her when she exits the transit area. No one knows that Jessica was intending to come back to Seoul.
The truth is, Seoul hasn’t featured on her travel plans ever since she left the Kpop idol life behind. For almost a decade now, Jessica splits her time between New York, Hong Kong, and a hundred other cities on the world map. But never Seoul. The city she had once called home, where she had lived through the meteoric rise of all her dreams and then somehow survived all of them shattering at once, is a place Jessica actively runs away from.
Yet, here she is, in a cab winding down the city streets. She feels oddly unbalanced, like she’s caught in between pages of her past as SNSD’s Jessica, and the Jessica that she is now, older and more weary, and still nursing a weather-beaten heart. Some wounds, she’s learnt over the years, never truly heal.
Her heart throbs unpleasantly beneath her ribs as they pull up in front of the Four Seasons Hotel. Jessica retrieves her carry-on suitcase from the kind driver and musters a fleeting smile to thank him.
She can’t quite bring herself to enter the hotel’s swanky lobby, needing a minute to steel herself. Once again, she’s seized with paralysing uncertainty. Is this yet another mistake she’s about to make?
Jessica exhales roughly, pulling out her phone with trembling fingers. It takes her three tries to dial the right number.
Tiffany picks up after the first ring, voice loud and exuberant. She’s the only one who knows Jessica was planning to come, readily giving Jessica all the details when Jessica had texted her last week. “Jessi! Are you here?”
The nickname cuts straight through Jessica, scraping her heart raw. Tiffany hasn’t called her that in years. And there was a time when Jessica had thought she’d never hear those same syllables folded into the cadence of Tiffany’s voice again.
She swallows hard. “I’m here. I’m – I’m not sure this is a good idea after all. Maybe I should just –”
“Jessi,” Tiffany begins, and her voice is softer now, laced with a gravity that draws an ache into the rhythm of Jessica’s heartbeat. The last time she had heard Tiffany so serious was at that fateful meeting that sealed Jessica’s fate as a former member of the Nation’s Girl Group. “You’re already here. After a sixteen-hour flight. Even if you don’t want to stay long, at least come up and say hi.”
“She’s not going to want to see me.”
“She invited you,” Tiffany says simply. As if things can ever be that simple.
“She was drunk,” Jessica breathes. “I’m not sure she even remembers –”
“Does it matter?” Tiffany cuts in. There’s a hard edge to her voice. And even now, on the other side of a decade of missed conversations and separate lives, Jessica knows that Tiffany will not take no for an answer. “Maybe Taeyeon was drunk when she called and invited you to come. But you still came anyway, right? You can’t just leave when you’re literally just twenty floors below us.”
“If she hates me,” Jessica begins tremulously, forcing her feet to move, forcing herself to enter the lobby. “If she hates me for crashing her birthday party, I’m blaming you for making me do this.”
Tiffany huffs, and Jessica can almost see the pinched scowl on her face. “No one is making you do anything.”
After an agonising beat, Tiffany heaves a deep sigh. Jessica’s hand tightens reflexively around the handle of her suitcase. She braces herself for whatever Tiffany is about to say.
“She can never hate you, Jessica. Even after everything that’s happened, she can never hate you.”
Jessica had been expecting it, but all the air still wheezes out of her lungs anyway.
She curls up on one end of the sofa, legs tucked underneath her, as she sips slowly from the glass of wine in her hands. There’s a documentary on a mountain disaster playing on the television, but Jessica is barely watching it, mind drifting off to designs for next year’s Blanc & Eclare Spring Collection. Her phone rings and Jessica picks up without looking at the screen.
There’s a rustle on the other end, the sounds of quiet shuffling, and then, inexplicably, her name nestled within a voice she hasn’t heard in years.
“Sooyeon,” Taeyeon says, slipping over the syllables like she’s relearning how to say Jessica’s name, the name that only Taeyeon has ever called her. “I didn’t think you’d pick up.”
The world grinds to a cruel, unforgiving halt. And then Jessica feels everything; every last frayed strand of emotion, every frosted crack over the iced surface of her heart fractures all over again. On screen, an avalanche crashes down the side of the mountain, wreaking devastation in its wake as it buries an entire camp of climbers alive. In much the same way, Taeyeon’s voice, Taeyeon, crushes Jessica beneath layers and layers of unresolved feelings she thought she’s long forgotten.
It’s hard to draw breath, but Jessica tries anyway, the air rattling inside her lungs. “Taeyeon,” she breathes. “I wasn’t expecting – Why are you calling me?”
“I missed you,” Taeyeon murmurs. Jessica can barely make out the words. Taeyeon’s drunk, she realises. She must be, because if she wasn’t she would have never admitted that out loud, a damning confession she can’t take back. Jessica knows, with a painful kind of clarity, that if Taeyeon was sober, she would have never called Jessica in the first place. “Did you know your number’s still the same? I deleted it from my phone years ago but when I thought of you, my fingers just remembered and it’s good that your number’s still the same, you know?”
“Taeyeon-ah,” Jessica manages, voice somehow steady despite the panic rising steadily in her veins. “What have you been drinking?”
Taeyeon hums for a few long moments, and Jessica hates how she can picture the way Taeyeon’s face scrunches up in concentration. Things would be so much easier if her mind is anything but a treacherous wilderness full of abandoned memories.
“Soju,” Taeyeon says after a while. “A few bottles I think. And some wine. Tiffany brought the best wine over. It’s very good.”
You shouldn’t drink that much. You can’t hold your alcohol well, Jessica thinks. But she swallows the words back down. She lost the chance to nag at Taeyeon years ago.
“Maybe it’s time to stop,” she says instead.
Taeyeon hums again. “My birthday’s next week.”
Jessica sighs. If life was less cruel, she would have forgotten this detail too. But memory is an everlasting thing, no matter how much of it Jessica’s tried to bury away. “I know.”
“I’m having a birthday party with the girls. Will you come?” Mercifully, Taeyeon pauses, giving Jessica a fraction of a second to collect herself. “I want you to come.”
The wine glass slips from Jessica’s fingers because Taeyeon’s words sound too much like a plea and –
Numbly, Jessica registers the way dark, crimson liquid is seeping into her white carpet. It’ll leave an unforgiving stain behind, like the way her heart has been tainted by Taeyeon in unspeakable ways.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“But I miss you.” Taeyeon’s voice sounds so small, Jessica’s heart aches.
“Taeyeon,” she exhales roughly. “Are you even going to remember you called me in the morning?”
“If I forget, will you still come anyway?”
Jessica closes her eyes, leaning back against the sofa cushions. She feels dangerously close to tears. Everything with Taeyeon always hurts. And sitting here, with all her feelings unravelling at her feet makes Jessica feel like she’s twenty-five again.
The heartbreak doesn’t hurt any less a decade later.
But it’s Taeyeon.
And Jessica has never been able to say no to Taeyeon, no matter how broken her heart feels.
Stunned silence greets Jessica’s appearance at the hotel’s penthouse suite. The agonising moment drags on, until Jessica feels the awkwardness and tension start to itch beneath her skin.
She swallows hard. “Hi.”
There’s another beat before Tiffany moves first, crushing Jessica into a warm embrace. Jessica laughs shakily, and then she finds herself in the centre of a flurry of hugs and quite a few tears. She doesn’t bother to wipe her own tears, not when there are gentle fingers brushing them away for her. It brings back memories of the end of their last concert together, before the world as they knew it had splintered apart. They had all been a mess of tangled limbs and tears backstage, clinging on to each other just like they are now.
When the last person – Yoona – finally releases her with a sniffle, someone else steps into view and Jessica feels all the air rush out of her lungs at once.
“Jessica,” Taeyeon greets, staring up with a dark, shadowed gaze. Her expression gives nothing away, and Jessica wonders if Taeyeon has gotten better at hiding her emotions or Jessica’s just long lost the ability to make constellations out of the scattered thoughts that graze Taeyeon’s face.
“Hi, Taeyeon-ah,” she says softly.
Taeyeon’s expression flickers for a second, a hint of something that looks remarkably like hurt flashing across her features before it dissolves into a look that’s all tempered steel.
Taeyeon is a frosted winter now and that, out of everything else, hurts Jessica the most. She misses Taeyeon’s warmth so unbearably all of a sudden, and she yearns to fall into days coloured by the light of Taeyeon’s spring.
It is a longing that feels like it’s cleaving her heart in two. And once again, Jessica can’t help the fear that curls into a knot in her gut; is this yet another mistake she’s about to make?
They end up on the balcony. Taeyeon had the sense to bring her padded jacket and a knitted scarf out but Jessica had left her coat draped over the sofa inside. She crosses her arms, trying not to shiver.
Taeyeon studies her from a few feet away, gaze sharpening as she takes in the way Jessica is trying not to tremble from the cold winter breeze. With a rough sigh, Taeyeon unwraps her scarf and then, before Jessica can even blink, Taeyeon is right in front of her, closer than she’s been to Jessica in years. Jessica freezes at the sudden proximity.
“You should have brought your coat out,” Taeyeon chides, looping the scarf around Jessica’s neck. She lingers, hands curling around Jessica’s shoulders. This time, Jessica isn’t sure if the tremble that runs up her spine is from the bitter winter cold or from the woman in front of her.
“Do you hate me for coming?” Jessica can’t quite meet Taeyeon’s eyes.
It’s Taeyeon’s turn to go completely still. Slowly, she drops her hands from Jessica’s shoulders. “How can I hate you when I asked you to come,” she says quietly.
Jessica lifts her gaze, surprised. “You were so drunk when you called, I thought –”
“I remember,” Taeyeon cuts in with a wry smile. “You’re not easy to forget, Sooyeon-ah.”
Jessica inhales sharply. The nickname and the way Taeyeon’s words sound like a confession, throw her backwards through their shared history, to the last time Taeyeon had said more or less the same thing.
There’s always something about early mornings, especially the ones where nothing ever happens and Jessica gets a chance to curl up in bed with Taeyeon as dawn breaks around them. Neither of them are early risers but filming for their new MV had stretched through the night; it was almost 5am by the time they were allowed to head home.
Jessica shifts, curling into Taeyeon’s side and resting her head on Taeyeon’s chest. Filming had exhausted her more than usual, and coupled with the endless string of meetings and negotiations for her hiatus with multiple company executives, Jessica feels nothing but drained.
At Jessica’s rough exhale, Taeyeon pulls her closer, sweeping her palm up and down the staircase of Jessica’s spine. Jessica exhales, breathes Taeyeon in, and lets the steady rhythm of Taeyeon’s heartbeats sink into her, a soothing lullaby that calms the weather-beaten waters of Jessica’s heart.
“We should get some sleep.” Taeyeon sounds exhausted too and Jessica wonders how much longer they can do this; seven years as a kpop idol feels like an eternity with punishing schedules and the heavy price of fame hanging over their heads.
“Do you think we can still do this when I’m on hiatus?” Jessica murmurs, words muffled in the fabric of Taeyeon’s shirt.
They haven’t really talked about what would happen with them when Jessica goes on hiatus to focus on Blanc. It was an unspoken decision that their relationship would continue despite Jessica’s absence. She’s far from done with Taeyeon and Jessica knows, as surely as the sun that rises every day, that Taeyeon feels the same way too.
But in moments like this, when she’s enveloped in Taeyeon’s arms and falling asleep to the sound of Taeyeon’s heartbeats, Jessica can’t help worrying about their future together.
“We’ll make time,” Taeyeon says, pressing a kiss to Jessica’s temple.
Jessica exhales slowly, fingers curling around Taeyeon’s shirt, seeking a life-long anchor. “It’s two years, Taeyeon-ah. That’s a long time. And I’m not – I’m not going to be around a lot. I’ll be travelling to different cities and – What if we drift apart? What if you get tired of waiting or forget about –”
Taeyeon shifts suddenly, cutting off the rest of Jessica’s sentence. Gentle fingers cup her face, coaxing Jessica to look up.
“Sooyeon,” Taeyeon breathes, right before she closes the distance between them. Jessica melts into the kiss, letting herself fall into everything Taeyeon pours into the kiss. It’s more than enough to reassure and soothe Jessica’s worries. But when they break apart to breathe, Taeyeon is looking at her so fiercely, so sincerely, that Jessica’s heart stutters in her chest.
“You’re not easy to forget, Sooyeon-ah,” Taeyeon says quietly.
And Jessica can do nothing else but believe her and pull her in for another sweet kiss.
Months later, everything falls apart and Jessica’s hiatus, once something transient and fleeting on their horizon, turns into a permanent separation – an untimely end of Jessica’s kpop idol career. And a painful unravelling of everything she holds dear with Taeyeon.
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cont'd on AO3