This is just something I found in one of my many folders (I swear, I could hide a corpse there and no one will ever find it because there's so many). Quite short but hope you enjoy!

“Why don’t you tell her about your feelings?”

“Because I want to be someone who deserves her first.”

“What if you do become someone like that but someone else has already gotten her first?”

“Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true! You’re not the only one who’s going to like—”

“Not that. I was pertaining to how you equate her to some prize or trophy that someone gets to win after landing first place in a contest. She’s more than a piece of conquest or a source of bragging rights. Worse, she’s not there to validate whatever it is you want to be validated. She’s Tiffany and she deserves love and respect.”

Sunny was left silent, speechless. When she did manage to reply, it wasn’t verbal. What she gave is a deep, long stare that Taeyeon could feel trying to probe into her thoughts. The thing is, Sunny is no Tiffany. Tiffany doesn’t need to stare long and hard to glimpse into Taeyeon’s own soul. She doesn’t even need to take a look. All she needs to do to have Taeyeon lying on the floor, bare and open, is to simply be there by her side. Probably even smile at her while she’s there too.

Still, Taeyeon gradually felt uncomfortable.

“What is it?” she asked, unable to take it anymore.

“And you say you don’t deserve her.”

“Because I really don’t.”

“With the way you value her, it’s hard to convince me otherwise.”

“Those are just words, Sunny. Anyone can say them.”

Besides, Tiffany deserves the world and more. All I could give her is my reality, which is not even whole, to begin with. Actually, I don’t think I could even give that much to her. Probably just pieces of my fractured self.

But Taeyeon doesn’t dare say it because she knows that Sunny likes to believe that Taeyeon is finally okay. That she doesn’t have to worry when Taeyeon is alone. That she doesn’t have to lose sleep over the fact that Taeyeon could do so much to herself and that none of those things are good. That she has finally gotten her best friend back. And Taeyeon does want that for her. And she tries to give that, but she’s broken, tiny pieces making up herself. Even if she tries to piece herself together, all she’d end up with is a mound of shattered glass and scattering sands.

She will never be whole again. Taeyeon has long swallowed that. But she can lie. So she does.

Taeyeon lies to Sunny because, at the very least, that way she managed to do something for the woman who would gladly throw everything for her. She wishes God for Sunny because the woman deserves at least that much.

“But only a few can mean it,” Sunny mutters all the sudden, which confused Taeyeon for a second. But when she did understand, she didn’t bother to say anything else, in fear she’d speak all of her previous thoughts.

Why couldn’t she have just loved Sunny?

Then again, there’s just something about the way her name rolls from Tiffany’s tongue that answers that question. Because, in the end, and even at the very start, Sunny was no Tiffany.

Sunny doesn’t hold her heart the same way Tiffany cuddles hers.

Sunny can’t possibly hug the sun the way Tiffany can because Tiffany knows what it feels to be burned alive.

Besides, Taeyeon knows she was destined to love Tiffany in some sort of way because the pain she feels in her chest feels eerily familiar. As if she had been alive eons ago and had fallen in love with another Tiffany Hwang.

The way Taeyeon’s heart beats for Tiffany sounds like echoes that had traversed multiple lifetimes, only for it to fall on deaf ears. But, that’s okay because Taeyeon is hard of hearing too and she knows it’s not something a person can voluntarily do something about.

So she goes and turns her head back to the direction of the television so she could watch cartoons — and there Tiffany was.

The girl was standing on the doorway with the globes she calls her eyes wide with surprise, and her cheeks rapidly turning red.

Taeyeon would have involuntarily and inwardly cooed at the adorable sight if it wasn’t for the hole that opened up in her ribs.

Her heart stops…

…splatters to the ground…

…gurgles one last time…

…then, silence.

Because Tiffany heard. She heard.

Maybe, Tiffany wasn’t as deaf as Taeyeon initially thought she was.

Taeyeon’s brain screeched like a crow because everything seemed to happen too fast.

Sunny gaped, Sunny stood up, Sunny excused herself, there was a click as the door closed, Tiffany stammered — ing stammered — then turned the television off, Tiffany walked closer to the couch, looking like the goddess that Taeyeon knows she really is, Taeyeon was a dead weight on the couch, inner Taeyeon was trying to close outer Taeyeon’s slack jaw because wow, then…then…THEN!

“Y-You like me too?”

TOO?!

And then there was…

…there was…

…was…

…and then there was Taeyeon and Tiffany.