A/N: I had a prompt post here and later did one here. I took some of the drabbles and expanded them. Here are three of them and I might have more coming up!

1) Prompt: "... taengsic" (I just went freehand with this one and it turned into fake dating AU)
2) Prompt: "Taengsic. SNSD's 15th anniversary"
3) Prompt: "Taengsic, reincarnation"

---

Yes and Yes

Taeyeon’s eyes go wide. “You want me to…what?”

Jessica looks at her imploringly. “Just for one family dinner. Please, Tae? I never ask you for anything.”

That is possibly the largest lie ever since Tiffany said she only kind of likes pink, but Taeyeon can’t resist that look.

“You know I’m a terrible actress.”

Jessica doesn’t even bother to deny it. “Well, I’m not asking you to give a grand monologue declaring your undying love for me or anything. Just…act like you like me. Is it that hard? Am I not likable?” She uses the pleading eyes again.

Taeyeon doesn’t want to admit how effective they are, so she purposefully puts on a gruff tone as she says, “What, have you been taking aegyo lessons from Sunkyu or something? Why didn’t you ask her to be your fake girlfriend?”

“Sunkyu’s great but she’s not my type.”

Taeyeon gives her an incredulous look. “You do know this is a fake girlfriend, right? Why does she have to be your type?” She holds back the question she really wants to ask, bites it down even as it strains to leap from : Am I your type?

“Well, I have to be able to sell it too,” Jessica says reasonably. “Imagine if Sunkyu did aegyo at me, I’d just give it away on the spot.”

Taeyeon laughs at that. “Yes, I’d imagine the vomit would give it away.”

“I did think about asking Tiffany or Yuri.”

“Oh,” Taeyeon says, her stomach feeling hollow. “So they said no?”

“No, I didn’t ask them.” Jessica lowers her eyes. “You’re the only one I wanted to ask.”

“Oh,” Taeyeon repeats, her voice coming out strange, airy. “But – what if I’m not convincing? I think either of them would sell it better.”

“I believe in you,” Jessica says, looking at her unwaveringly. Then she wrinkles her nose. “Plus, can you imagine what Tiffany might do? I might have to stab myself with the carving knife.”

Taeyeon laughs. “Also, she’d never let you forget the huge favour you did her.”

“Yeah, oh my God, she’d hold it over my head for the rest of my life.”

“What about Yuri?”

“Ugh no, my mom already loves Yuri. She’s ready to adopt her into the family. They’d like her too much.”

“So they don’t like me that much?” Taeyeon says wryly. “That’s my big selling point?”

Jessica grins. “I like you. Isn’t that enough?”

I like you. I-like-you. Ilikeyou. The words repeat through Taeyeon’s mind, an echo she’s already afraid of forgetting even though she just heard it.

Jessica’s grin falters. “Tae?”

“You really want me to do this? You really think it can work?”

“Yes, and yes,” Jessica says. “But you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I don’t want to push you into it.”

“You push me all the time,” Taeyeon says wryly.

“Well, I pull you too,” Jessica says, which makes no sense but is such a Jessica thing to say that Taeyeon somehow finds it endearing. She’s so gone. She knew she had no chance as soon as Jessica asked her. Even if Jessica didn’t repeatedly use the imploring eyes, Taeyeon would have agreed. She’s always been terrible at saying no to Jessica.

“Well, you don’t have to push or pull me anymore. I’ll do it.”

Jessica’s face lights up. “Really? You will?”

Taeyeon feels like she’s already regretting this, but how could she say no to Jessica’s hopeful face? How could she say no to Jessica?

“Yes, and yes,” she says, and Jessica’s smile leaves no room for regret.

 

Going Forward

Taeyeon exhales. “I can’t believe it’s been fifteen years.”

“Has it?” Jessica asks, and Taeyeon can’t tell if she means it generally or in the sense that it hasn’t been for me.

Jessica looks at her, and for a moment Taeyeon sees the eighteen-year-old her, fresh and unsure, but then she’s gone. There are many things that Taeyeon doesn’t miss from back then: the uncertainty of whether they’d make it, the lack of sleep, the weight of being the leader, but she misses the raw innocence of that time, the thrill of debut and the joy of first victory. She misses the small, cramped dorm with nine girls constantly bumping into each other and sharing everything from makeup to secrets. She misses Jessica.

Or maybe, she just misses the Jessica she thinks she knew. That she painted an image of in her mind. It’s been so long and they’ve both changed, matured in some ways and regressed in others. Maybe the Jessica she’s been stubbornly clinging onto is just a reimagining of her, edges softened and hollows filled, the way that fans mentally airbrush them.

“I’m old now,” Taeyeon says.

“You don’t look it,” Jessica says, and the teasing tone of her voice is still the same. “And don’t say that. If you’re old, then I’m old too and I’m not ready to be old yet.”

“You’re not old,” Taeyeon says impulsively. Jessica can’t be old. “You just have the energy of an old person.”

Jessica laughs. “You mean, or lack thereof?”

“Sure. But you’re not old.” It somehow seems important for her to assert that.

“Well, I will be one day.”

“No. You’ll always be young.”

Jessica’s eyebrows draw together. “Taeyeon?”

“You can’t be old because-because our happiest times were when we were young. We were close then. We were happy.”

We were foolish, she thinks. Foolish with the careless confidence of youth. But aren’t fools some of the happiest people around?

Jessica’s lips press into a thin line, her jaw quivering slightly, but then it sets. “We can still be close and happy,” she says softly.

“No, it’s not the same.” Taeyeon’s eyes suddenly burn and, mortified, she casts them downwards. “Those times are gone.”

“They are,” Jessica says carefully. “Those times are gone and they can’t come back. But there’s a lot of time ahead of us. We’re not old yet.”

“We’re not?” Taeyeon asks, eyes flickering to her, hopeful, seeking reassurance.

“We’re not,” Jessica says. “Or well, I’m not. I don’t know why you make yourself sound like an ahjumma, or halmoni, even. I mean, I don’t mind older women, but if you’re going to sound like you’re eighty all the time, it really kills the mood.”

That gets a laugh out of Taeyeon. “What about when we’re actually eighty? Will that kill the mood still?”

“I’ll tell you in forty-seven years,” Jessica says. Then she grins like a child asking for a candy. “See how fast I calculated that? Aren’t you impressed at my arithmetic skills?”

“Yes,” Taeyeon says, smiling softly. “I’m very impressed.”

“So no more of this old talk, okay? You’re going to make me have a mid-life crisis ahead of schedule.”

“You have it scheduled?”

Jessica gives her a look. “You have to plan for these things, Taeyeon.”

“Life doesn’t always go according to plan.” A note of bitterness slips into her voice, unbidden.

“No, it doesn’t,” Jessica says. “But that’s not always a bad thing, is it?”

Taeyeon looks at the woman in front of her and thinks about the life she once had planned, how firmly Jessica was part of those plans and then how harshly Taeyeon had crossed her out of them. And then she smiles, because she doesn’t know what her plans are or even if she has any, but she knows that, plan or not, Jessica will be with her going forward.

“No,” she agrees. “It’s not.”

 

Love at Every Sight

Taeyeon swallows. “Why do you think that all eight lifetimes we’ve had so far have ended so badly?”

Jessica takes a moment to reply. “Maybe because…this is the one that’s finally going to turn out right.”

“Really?” Taeyeon asks skeptically. “The ninth one?”

“Yes,” Jessica says quietly. “The ninth one.”

“You’ll forgive me if I find that hard to believe at this point.” Taeyeon closes her eyes and finds herself swept up by memories again. Jessica bleeding out in her arms, Jessica crying by her bedside as Taeyeon tried to speak through the tube in , Jessica smiling at her groom as Taeyeon helplessly watched on, Jessica firing a gun point-blank at Taeyeon, Jessica walking past Taeyeon with no recognition in her eyes, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica…

The memories came to her gradually, in what at first she thought were nightmares and then realized were too vivid and too powerful for that. She was never one to believe in something like reincarnation or destiny, but she couldn’t not believe in it. Her feelings for Jessica were too vivid and too powerful for something as trite as love at first sight. Love at every sight, maybe.

“What was the worst lifetime for you?” Jessica asks.

“That’s like asking what’s the worst out of the ten plagues.” Jessica just keeps looking at her expectantly. “The lifetimes where I outlived you were worse than the ones where you outlived me.”

“Funny, I have the opposite opinion, but I guess it’s really the same opinion.”

“I just… I can’t lose you again,” Taeyeon croaks. “How am I supposed to believe that things will go right this time when they didn’t the eight times before?”

“You don’t have to believe it,” Jessica says calmly. “Maybe this lifetime won’t turn out right either. Maybe we should just stay away from each other. Maybe we’re meant not to be together.”

“Meant not to be together,” Taeyeon repeats with a wry chuckle.

“Some people are meant to be together, and some people are meant to be apart. Maybe it’s overly optimistic or just plain stupid to believe that we’re the former rather than the latter, but I still believe it.”

Taeyeon stares at her. “How can you still believe it?”

“I don’t know.” Jessica pauses. “But I didn’t believe in multiple lifetimes either and look where we are.” She drops her eyes for a second, and then fixes them on Taeyeon with unrelenting focus, not letting her look away. “Tell me you don’t believe it then.”

Taeyeon’s mouth goes dry. “W-what?”

“Tell me you don’t believe it, tell me there’s no chance.”

Taeyeon opens . It should be—not easy, per se, but doable. Not something she wants to do, but something she has to. God knows how many of those things she’s done in her life. In all her lives. However, no matter what, she just can’t get the words out of .

She looks helplessly at Jessica. “I can’t.”

“Isn’t that how you feel?” Jessica asks. She seems so calm, so composed, and if Taeyeon didn’t know better, she would have believed Jessica was actually as impassive as she seems.

“It’s how I think.”

Jessica looks questioningly at her.

“I think, I assess, I evaluate, with my intellect, my mind, my brain, whatever you would call it, that this is a terrible idea. There’s no reason this ninth lifetime would go better than the eight before it. If anything, since we both remember our past lives for the first time, it’s probably just a sign that it’ll go worse than any lifetime before. Who knows, maybe instead of just one or both of us dying, the whole world is going to explode or something.”

Jessica doesn’t say anything, just listens and waits.

“But I feel…” Taeyeon bites down on her lip so hard she almost draws blood, and then releases it. “I feel that if I let you go, I’ll regret it for the rest of all my lives.”

And Jessica’s face crumples. Her eyes glisten, but if there are tears in them, they don’t spill over.

“I don’t know if we’re meant to be together or apart or whatever else. But even if the world explodes because of this, screw it.”

“You’re always so articulate,” Jessica says with a watery chuckle. “And so optimistic.”

When Jessica reaches for her, Taeyeon holds her so tightly and then kisses her so fiercely that even if the world did explode, she wouldn’t have noticed.