Another one scene chapter. 

I just want to say that this is a chapter that I might actually take back - because it was super awkward to write. But I wanted to share it anyway. I can always change it later. 

So much love.

Chapter 20

She shoves the prints to the furthest corner of her desk, half-hoping they’d fall over and leave her sight completely. The clothes, the camera angles, the venue, the lighting – they were all wrong. Even the model looked wrong - too skinny, borderline unhealthy. She sighs, as jadedly as she feels. Her original ideas were misconstrued beyond recognition and she had little time to mend the situation.

She checks her emails and regrets it soon after. The new timetable for their group activities was so poorly organised, it looked blatantly intentional. She could already see a worrying number of clashes with her personal schedule. Gone were color-coded columns and personalised notes– inadequately replaced by a plain list stating time, event, and venue – all traces of Taeyeon removed.

The clock taunts her, like it did throughout the day. 5 hours…9 hours…16 hours… 23 hours since she last saw Taeyeon. Her apology was still plastered at the tip of her tongue and the discomfort agitated her all day.

“I am never leaving you again.”  She had texted, after returning to an empty room two hours past midnight. She fell asleep waiting for a reply that never came.

Her phone rings, a much welcomed distraction from her thoughts.

“Are you still at the office?” Jessica asks, her voice frantic.

“Yes, what did you forget this time?” Tiffany shuts down her computer, preparing to leave.

“Taeyeon.”

“What?”

“Taeyeon.” Jessica confirms. “She came by to drop our… drop something off after filming. The poor kid was so exhausted, she fell asleep on my couch and I didn’t have the heart to wake her then so I figured I would wake her after running a few errands, but it’s taking much longer than expected and…”

“She’s here?” Tiffany asks, cutting Jessica’s rant short.  

“Yes. Please get her home. Thanks!”

Jessica ends the call before Tiffany could respond – a bad habit that usually drives Tiffany off the walls, but Tiffany just couldn’t muster enough energy to be annoyed today. She collects her things and heads over to Jessica’s office, feeling stupidly nervous.

Even though she had seen Taeyeon less than a day ago, the girl laying on the couch looked notably different - her brunette locks had been straightened and dyed jet black with dark blue highlights, her eyes were heavily lined with eye shadow and her lips were coated cherry red. It was hard to look away.

“Right now, it’s Girls’ Generation.” Taeyeon mumbles, frowning in her sleep, her expression pained.

Tiffany kneels next to the couch and nudges Taeyeon lightly on her arm, wanting to whisk Taeyeon away from all that is haunting her. This brings Taeyeon back from the depth of her dreams. She blinks wearily ahead and shifts her limbs awkwardly, as if checking to see if they function. Moments later, she turns her head towards Tiffany and smiles.

“It’s nice to see you,” Taeyeon murmurs, adjusting her position to face Tiffany, the sofa squeaking in response.

“It’s nice to see you too.” She breathes and brushes Taeyeon’s newly layered fringe away from her eyes. Taeyeon catches her hand and interweaves their fingers in the air, watching intently as she rotates them in various angles, strangely enthralled. 

“They fit.” Tiffany states the obvious, her words stealing Taeyeon’s attention from their hands to her eyes.

“Long day?” Taeyeon asks, brushing off sentiments.

 She nods.

“It’s really nice to see you.” Tiffany reiterates – it means more the second time she says it. She feels Taeyeon squeeze her hand, acknowledging her words.

“Do you have days where you feel so small, it’s like you’re about to disappear?” Taeyeon sighs and Tiffany nods again. She could sense the hopelessness laced in Taeyeon’s voice and it’s almost heart-breaking.

“I think…” Taeyeon lets her incomplete sentence linger in the air, her eyes becoming gradually unfocused. She is looking past Tiffany, as if she were reading the rest of her thoughts at the back of Tiffany’s head.

“Don’t think.” Tiffany mutters, desperately wanting to take her own advice. “I think about you and I think about me and I think about you and me and then I start thinking that this – whatever this is – is going to stop being cute or amusing one day and it’s going to hurt. God, it’s going to hurt so much that I won’t even be able to look at you. How am I going to be there for you then?” Tiffany hyperventilates, feeling tears stinging her eyes.

“Hey… hey… hey…” Taeyeon leaps off the couch and kneels next to Tiffany, one hand pressing the ground (the other still linked with Tiffany’s) to steady herself from the sudden movement. She tries shaking her bangs away from her eyes, but fails as they defiantly fall back into the wrong place. Tiffany runs her hand through Taeyeon’s hair, revealing Taeyeon’s eyes with one swift motion.

“Thanks.” Taeyeon beams brightly and Tiffany feels the need to retrieve some of her words. She can’t imagine not being able to look at Taeyeon, even if it hurts.

“When you look at me like this, I no longer feel like I’m fading - It’s nice.” Taeyeon stares into the distance and inhales deeply, basking in this newfound tranquillity. Watching Taeyeon, Tiffany almost feels like she could breathe too.

“Would it be terribly confusing if I kiss you now?”

Tiffany chokes on the lump of air in . She tries to swallow it, over and over, but it stays, lodged somewhere in the middle of her heart and brain, blocking their communication. She can’t decipher what her mind is telling her – it’s all static and she blames the lack of air.

She nods, then shakes her head and rummages for words, words, words.

She only needed one, but both “yes” and “no” seem like a risky answer so she closes her eyes and whispers “kiss me”...

…and Taeyeon complies.

It takes her brain seconds to catch up – to recognise the foreign yet familiar lips pressed against her own, to realise that they actually taste more like strawberry than cherry, to memorise the taste, to fight for air, to savour the moment, the sensation, and everything else in between.   

Taeyeon has her hand on the nape of Tiffany’s neck, occasionally brushing her cheek and tugging at her hair. The warmth of Taeyeon’s lips spread to the rest of her body, right to the tips of their intertwined fingers - it’s paralysing. When Taeyeon’s lips leave hers, she feels the chill almost instantly, projecting shivers to the bone.

She opens her eyes slowly and hesitantly, troubled by what she might perceive in Taeyeon’s. All it takes is one flicker of regret to dance through Taeyeon’s eyes, and this memory will tainted, deemed unsuitable for future retrieval. But Taeyeon’s eyes are gentle and patient as they encounter hers, tinted with a slight apprehension as she waits for Tiffany’s vision to shift back into focus.

“Can we keep doing that?” Tiffany giggles airily, still disorientated. The static clears in some parts of her brain - the message urgently being fired across is that Tiffany should probably talk about this – whatever this is – but Taeyeon’s words are more confusing than her kisses and she can’t drown in their taste when she can’t be sure of what they mean.

“Wait.” Taeyeon utters firmly and her heart skips a beat. It’s still not too late to turn around and call this a mistake – a break from reality. Taeyeon unfolds her legs and stretches them. “My legs are numb. We should probably move to the couch. Also, please lock the door.”

She smiles when nothing in that sentence implies a “no”.

Once they’re on the couch, Tiffany initiates the kiss, making their lips collide fervently - the momentum causing Taeyeon to fall backwards, flinching as their teeth clashed. She brings their coupled hands above Taeyeon’s head and uses the other to support her weight. The strawberry flavour lined on Taeyeon’s lips has now left her, ravenously consumed by Tiffany, as if she was marking Taeyeon’s mouth with something brand new.

“I can’t -” Taeyeon mumbles urgently against her lips and Tiffany extracts herself from the other girl immediately, panicking.  “I can’t breathe.” Taeyeon pants to compensate for the breaths she’s lost and Tiffany does the same. They are both sitting upright now and Taeyeon gets distracted by her futile efforts to push her fringe away.

“It keeps pricking my eyes.” Taeyeon pouts and Tiffany removes a pin from her hair and forces Taeyeon’s fringe to behave. Tiffany knits her hand in Taeyeon’s hair, tracing her blue highlights, feeling the texture. Unknowingly, she’s pulling Taeyeon towards her, one strand at a time.

“Are you doing this for me?” Her words tremble, balancing on a tight rope.

“I love you.” Taeyeon replies, but it isn’t an answer.

Worse, it could easily be the wrong answer.

“What does that mean?” Tiffany wonders aloud, unsure of her own expectations. 

“What kind of a question is that?”

Honestly, Tiffany isn’t too sure herself.

“The kind that if you don’t answer now – I’ll ask again in a week, in a month, or in 10 years, all the while answering it myself differently every night.”

“Can I reply in a week, in a month, or in 10 years? If you’re willing to hold onto a question that long, chances are you’ll hold onto my reply much longer.”

It was a fair response, but as with everything related to Taeyeon - she wanted, needed, more.

“Look,” Taeyeon takes her other hand and untangles it from her hair. “I love you, and it’s okay if you don’t think it’s enough – because I don’t think I’m enough – but it’s all I have. I know it’s confusing as hell when I keep telling you not to treat everything I say as some kind of love confession, but if you take a step backwards – if you stop trying to label and force them into neat little boxes ranging from “friendship” to “love” – they just tell you how I feel about you. If you think it’s enough to qualify as the love you want, then I’d call it love too.”

The realisation hits her – like the final wave that pulls one under.

“You love me,” she concludes. Her mind proceeds to ponder, dissect, and accumulate everything Taeyeon has ever said to her and devours them in a whole new light. “Oh my god, you actually do.” She squeals, bringing a hand to . It brushes her lips as she bares a smile.

“Not that much.” Taeyeon snickers and receives a painful punch on the arm.

“Enough,” she affirms with a quick kiss. “It’s unbelievable how enough you are.”