Shadows (spin-off from this)

Jessica is settling down in a piece of shade under a gnarled oak, ready for a nap, when a figure materializes in front of her. She reels back, the sleepiness startled out of her, which takes a lot to do to a child of Hypnos.

The teleporter girl is dressed in black from ponytailed head to Converse high tops toe, and her eyes are a black that look even darker than her clothes, like they’re made of shadows, like they could all the light out of her surroundings.

“Who the Hades are you?” Jessica blurts out.

The girl raises an eyebrow. “You just said, didn’t you?”

Jessica blinks. “I just said…what? I asked who you are. You are a ‘who,’ right? You’re not a monster in disguise?”

“Not the kind you’re thinking of,” the girl says wryly. Jessica squints at her, and quirks up. “Are you trying to see if I’m hiding behind Mist?”

“No, I’m just trying to get a closer look at your nose piercing.”

A smile. “You can come up to me if you want to do that. I promise I won’t bite.”

“That sounds like something a monster would say.”

“How would I have gotten past the barriers if I were one?”

“What are you then, if not one? How did you just…pop here?”

“I’ve gone from ‘who’ to ‘what.’ I’m losing ground.”

Jessica can’t help a smile. “Okay, who are you then, if not a monster?”

She looks at Jessica for a long moment. Her eyes look even darker, like the blackest part of a midnight sky, and Jessica almost shivers at the intensity of her gaze. She feels like those eyes are the light out of her as well.

“My name is Taeyeon, and I’m a daughter of Hades.”

Why (inspired by this)

“You want to go on a road trip?” Jessica repeats.

Taeyeon nods.

“But…why?”

“Why not?” Taeyeon counters.

Jessica’s eyebrows are drawn together, her forehead furrowed. Once upon a time, Taeyeon would have kissed away those lines on her face, lines of confusion, of frustration, perhaps, but now maybe they’re lines of something else. Taeyeon doesn’t know; she’s no longer an expert on the geometry of Jessica.

Jessica’s lips part. “Why?”

“Haven’t you ever just…wanted to get away from everything?”

“Only all the time.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jessica says slowly. “Maybe all of my responsibilities.” She says the last part pointedly, with a loaded look at Taeyeon, like she’s asking, and what about yours?

Taeyeon wants to say, I’m tired of being responsible. Wants to say, that’s how I lost you, how we lost each other, in the first place. Wants to say, please. What she does say is, “Can’t those take a vacation for a little while?”

Jessica looks at her for a long moment, scrutinizing and inscrutable, the face of CEO Jessica rather than Taeyeon’s Jessica. Taeyeon wonders if she’s still around. Something softens in Jessica’s eyes, and Taeyeon dares to think maybe, dares to hope.

“I suppose they can,” Jessica finally says, soft and ragged, like she’s been worn down.

“So you’ll come with me?” Taeyeon asks, voice pulling up with hope.

“Like I can trust you to drive for days by yourself,” Jessica snorts. “Knowing you, you’ll probably end up horribly lost and stranded in the desert.”

“Well, good thing I have you then, right?”

“Right,” Jessica says slowly. “Good thing you have me.”

Rain (start of a longfic)

They meet in the rain.

By the time that Taeyeon finds shelter from the storm, she’s completely soaked through, shivering and feeling the chill all the way in her bones. The bus stop is shabby and looks like it’s standing on its last legs, but she feels like it’s the best thing she’s seen all day.

The wind picks up and she feels like she’s smacked in the back by an invisible hand as she lurches into the bus stop and stumbles right into someone, almost knocking both of them over.

“Sorry,” she gasps, bursting into coughs as she does so.

The person backs up, pulling Taeyeon along into the very back of the shelter so they’re as far from the rain as possible.

“You okay there? You look like you just climbed out of the ocean or something.”

Taeyeon wipes her bangs from her eyes with the back of her hand so she can actually see, and she’s met with a half-concerned, half-amused expression. The girl she had bumped into is a lot drier than she is and a little taller, with light brown hair and delicate features.

“Yeah, I’m actually a scuba diver,” Taeyeon jokes, and the girl smiles.

“Did you find any pearls?”

“If I say I did, are you going to mug me and steal them?”

“And run out into that weather? No thanks.”

“It’s reassuring to know the rain is the only thing stopping you.”

“It’s a strong force. Look what it did to you.”

It’s then that Taeyeon realizes that she’s standing close enough to the girl to basically drip all over her. “Sorry!” she says, reeling back only to bump into the bench and almost trip. The girl has to grab her to keep her up.

“How did you ever make it as a scuba diver? I thought that profession would require some balance.”

“I…” Taeyeon swallows. “Sorry,” she repeats. “I got you all wet.”

A funny look comes over the girl’s face for a second, but then she breaks into a playful smile. “Is that what you do to all the girls you meet?”

Taeyeon feels like running back outside into the rain in the hopes that it’ll put out the fire in her cheeks.

“Sorry, was that overkill?” The girl takes one look at Taeyeon’s face and bursts out laughing.

Taeyeon clears . “I think I liked it better when I thought you were going to mug me.”

“I can still do that,” she says. “Hey, what’s your name anyway?”

“You want to put a name to your mugging victim?”

“I want to put a name to the girl who got me all wet.”

Taeyeon almost chokes. The girl looks at her innocently as she holds out her soaked sleeve and wrings it, drops of water splashing onto the ground, their own little rainfall in an otherwise dry corner.

Taeyeon means to give some kind of witty reply, but what comes out is simply, “Taeyeon.”

“Taeyeon,” the girl repeats, as if testing Taeyeon’s name on her tongue. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to mug you.”

“Sure you aren’t,” Taeyeon mutters.

She smiles. “You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“That’s true.”

Taeyeon waits, but an answer doesn’t come. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

This girl is incredible.

“Your name.”

“Taeyeon,” she says, and at Taeyeon’s expression, laughs again. “Hang on, I wasn’t done talking. Taeyeon, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Jessica.”

“Jessica,” Taeyeon says, and suddenly notices that the rain has let up. “Nice to meet you.”

A/N: I've had the first one written for a while, I just wrote the second one last night and I've had the third one languishing in my hard drive for a while too. The third one is the only one that I have any plans of continuing (and I actually do have a bit more written), but hey, you never know.