we don't talk anymore

Taeyeon-centric [465 words]

 (same universe as Passing By)

The blue light of her phone bathes Taeyeon’s face in the darkness.

"You're busy but you look happy—you look good…”

She closes her eyes and yet the images have already burned themselves into the back of her eyelids, and wormed their way into her mind until the name that had etched itself into her heart falls from her lips.

It still curled around her lips the same way it always had, despite the fact she barely said it anymore.

She didn’t have a reason to.

She didn’t really have a right to, anyway.

Jessica. Jessica. Jessica.

Jessica in Hong Kong. Jessica in LA. Jessica in Seoul.

Jessica in pictures, interviews and events—without them.

Jessica everywhere but here—with the eight of them on tour.

"Are you happy, Sica?" Taeyeon whispers into the darkness as though her words could traverse across the silence that followed their separation.

She hadn’t heard from Jessica—none of them had.

Part of her wonders if it was part of the conditions imposed on Jessica by their company (or maybe Taeyeon prefers this to the alternative—that Jessica just didn’t want to hear from them.)

And it’s not like any of them had reached out either, too wary to break the silence. There was too much to say, but it was all in the past, a distant memory of something that had once been and no longer existed, making it seem like there was nothing they could actually say, because it would never be enough.

Jessica had left, but Taeyeon hadn’t stopped her, and because of it, in a way, Jessica probably felt like she’d—they’d—kicked her out. 

In their circumstances, was there even a difference?

Taeyeon wonders where Jessica was now, perhaps asleep, quiet breaths escaping her parted lips, the way they had. When they’d been together, Jessica’s breaths had tucked themselves into the crook of Taeyeon’s neck, ghosting over skin and Taeyeon had never felt closer to another person.

When she dreams of those times (and she does, too much for her own good), she always wakes up feeling empty—hollowed out where her heart was supposed to be.

“Please say that you are… so at least one of us is."

But of course, Jessica doesn’t—can’t—hear her question and thus the only answer Taeyeon gets is the sounds of her own muffled sobs crawling up the back of and spilling out.

Even after everything that had transpired, Taeyeon still cared, Jessica still filling up her heart and spilling over into her thoughts—the only place she'd never left in the first place.

But, like the countless times before, Taeyeon just settles for what she has now—pictures and memories—and never musters up enough courage to press the dial button.

Her screen eventually flickers to black, plunging her back into the darkness.

/

an: [unbeta'd] trying to get past writers block for Once, Again by writing other random stuff...so this was the result haha

sort of inspired by this [x]; thinking about how Jessica threw herself into work to avoid feeling sad...:c and sort of taking that idea into this ficitional universe too