Meet Me Halfway

Kim Taeyeon x Jessica Jung

NB: same universe as Passing By and we don’t talk anymore

 

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Condensation slips downwards, gathering as cool droplets against bare skin as her hand slowly numbs to the cold permeating through green glass. Her knuckles are white from the grip she has around the neck of the bottle, almost as to offset the loose grip of her other hand as she holds the ringing phone to her ear.

 

Call it liquid courage, call it her fear of change, but whatever it is, it’s too late now to turn back. The number is ringing, Taeyeon’s mouth is dry and her fingers are trembling. Her mind screams conflicting thoughts at her.

 

Please pick up. Please don’t pick up.

 

An endless cycle with no end or beginning, until Taeyeon’s not sure the phrases were mutually exclusive anymore.

 

“Hello?”

 

It’s barely anything, but it’s more than she’s heard for the past, what seems like, forever and Taeyeon’s struck dumb, whatever impulsive bravado that had driven her to this slipping away.

 

A silence shifts to fill the space between them—the default.

 

"How did you do it?" Taeyeon finally blurts. Her tongue feels clumsy and the question, fumbled, tactless and a far cry from the thousand other phrases running through her mind—things she thought about a million times but never had the chance to: I’m sorry, I miss you, and Are you happy?

 

"What?"

 

Taeyeon’s surprised Jessica hasn’t hung up yet.

 

"Be all on you own out there?"

 

Jessica sighs—a long drawn out sound, as though she’d half expected the question; one that she had grown weary of answering over and over again, whether it was to herself or to countless others.

 

"You get used to not relying on others so much; not turning around and expecting eight hugs or eight voices or eight other hearts beating with yours."

 

There’s a tinge of a lingering pain in Jessica’s words and as Taeyeon swallows thickly, she regrets foolishly calling—reopening old wounds that never really healed. Both hers and Jessica’s.

 

“Taeyeon?”   

 

It strikes Taeyeon just how lonely she suddenly feels, the alcoholic haze fading with Jessica’s uncharacteristically soft utterance of her name. The emptiness of the dorms echoes the emptiness she feels in her heart and the reality that she’s been delaying for months now, sets in.

 

Tiffany’s moved out.

 

Juhyun and Sooyoung are moving on.

 

Hyo and Sunny just happened to be out tonight.

 

Maybe, it’s just her that was clinging onto the past, afraid of the change. Maybe the others had accepted that this was their fate a long time ago. Maybe it’s because she’s their leader she most afraid, because if they dissolved, shouldn’t she be partially to blame?

 

"Can I see you tonight?" Taeyeon asks tentatively, even though she knew she had no right to.

 

She can almost see the way Jessica’s lips would have pulled into a thin line and a frown would have etched itself onto her forehead.

 

But she’s wrong, because all Jessica does is sigh and give a response Taeyeon isn’t expecting.

 

"Okay."

 

//

 

 

When Taeyeon swings open the door, Jessica’s there, and yet some part of her mind cannot reconcile that this was, in fact, happening and short-circuits.  

 

“You’ve been drinking.” Jessica says as she pushes past Taeyeon and into the dorm they’d once shared.

 

Taeyeon mutely closes the door, letting it click softly behind her. Her eyes flicker to the empty bottle sitting by the couch and thinks of the countless others in her room.

 

“You’re going to regret it in the morning.” Jessica says.

 

There’s a lot of things I already regret. Taeyeon thinks as her eyes find themselves drawn to Jessica, taking her ex-member in—one thing at a time, but paradoxically, all at once too.

 

Jessica’s hair is dark—perhaps a shade lighter black—falling in loose waves down pass her shoulders, her face is minimally done up, her makeup accenting the natural beauty of her features. Dressed casually in a white blouse and denim, likely from one of her Blanc collections, Jessica stands in the middle of the room and strangely, Taeyeon thinks she looks like she’s home.

 

“You’re staring.”

 

“You’re here.”  

 

“You wanted to see me.”

 

“But you didn’t have to come. You didn’t have to pick up the phone.”

 

For a second, Jessica’s face darkens, her features seem sharper, more angular and Taeyeon glimpses the person that the years have molded her into—self-protective defenses at the ready.

 

Taeyeon bites her lip.

 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” She says quietly, an apology curling around her words. “I just never thought you’d—”

 

“Neither did I.” Jessica admits with a sigh, rigid lines of her shoulder softening again and to Taeyeon it feels a little bit like a temporary truce—of the waving of little white flags.

 

“I thought about calling you, but I could never bring myself to do it.”

 

Taeyeon’s imagined how this conversation would go, planned out what she would and should say to Jessica, but none of the words feel right. Her tongue feels glued to the roof of .

 

“Until now.” Jessica whispers.

 

“Until now.”

 

Jessica stares at her for a quiet moment, blinking. Taeyeon wonders who she sees when she looks at Taeyeon—her ex-leader, her ex-girlfriend, her ex-something—and she realizes that everything that tied her to Jessica was a thing of the past; she was just messy history.

 

Something in her chest tightens.

 

“Do you have any more drinks? I don’t think I can do this sober after all.” Jessica says.

 

Taeyeon laughs lightly and after a pause sheepishly says, “Sure, but it’s all in my room.”

 

“Lead the way then.”

 

 

//

 

 

Taeyeon watches as Jessica tips the bottle back, distracted by the column of her slender throat, and the way her lips had been pressed to bottle’s opening. She swallows and take another swig of her own, hoping the alcohol would help her numb the feelings she was finding resurfacing again.

 

The soju burns as it travels down the back of .

 

“What do I do?”

 

“You let go, because it’s what’s best for them and for you.”

 

The words are uttered with such simplicity, that Taeyeon’s head spins. Just how long had it taken her to reach this point of easy acceptance, to be able to sit here with Taeyeon and talk about whatever it was that had happened or was happening.

 

"I feel like my world's falling apart, pieces I was so sure of—my foundations are crumbling away."

 

"Don’t be dramatic, you still have them." Jessica counters.

 

"It’s changed though, as much as we don’t want to admit it."

 

“You don’t have to tell me that.” Jessica says pointedly, her grip on the bottle tightens almost imperceptibly. "But you still have them. After that night, I didn’t even have any of you.”

 

“I’m—”

 

“Sorry. I know, Taeng.”

 

Taeyeon frowns, as Jessica waves a hand dismissively, cutting her apology off. She felt like Jessica should still hear the words, it was the least she could and needed to offer.

 

"I’m still sorry."

 

"Don't be—I don’t really have any use for those words anymore."

 

Taeyeon glances at Jessica, sitting beside her on the edge of her bed, looking so close yet so far away.

 

“Tiffany called me you know, asking almost the exact same things as you.” Jessica says out of the blue.

 

“What did you tell her?”

 

“To follow her heart, because the only way you’d be able to weather the storm is to know that you’re doing what you want to.”

 

Taeyeon lets the things she’d suppressed for so long well up again, maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was the way the world had already changed, whether she liked it or not, the equilibrium had shifted, and she finally lets herself admit what she couldn’t all this time.

 

She doesn’t think she just does, because all her thinking has left her broken in ways that she can’t understand.

 

Jessica startles and jerks slightly when she feels Taeyeon’s hand on her arm. Eyes watch Taeyeon warily as she slowly trails light fingers up her arm and over Jessica’s shoulder to gently tangle into strands of her dark locks.

 

"What are you doing?"

 

Jessica sounds nervous, and her voice is laced with a tinge of something that Taeyeon can’t quite place.

 

Taeyeon wets her dry lips, before parting them and allowing her confession to fill the air between them.

 

"What I wanted to do and couldn't do every single time I laid eyes on you."

 

Slowly, lets her eyes dip down to Jessica’s lips, her intention clear. Jessica doesn’t move away, and Taeyeon takes this as permission to close the gap and she leans in to cover Jessica’s lips with her own. Jessica sighs into the kiss, her lips warm and supple, tasting familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. Taeyeon’s vaguely aware that Jessica’s probably spilt soju on her floor, but she can’t bring herself to care.

 

She gently pushes Jessica until she lay flat on her back, hair sprawled out on the covers with Taeyeon’s body blanketing her. Their lips still connected, tongues brushing and breathing heavy.

 

"Taeyeon...?" Jessica says when they finally break away. Her voice is thick with confusion and want.

 

They face each other, having rolled onto their sides, still drawn close enough to feel each other’s breaths

 

"I didn't want you. I don't regret not asking you to stay. I didn't love you. I—" Taeyeon begins to say, momentum gathering with every word she uttered.

 

Jessica's finger presses on her lips, cutting her off.

 

"What's this...?" Her eyes are dark with a heavy wariness, as though she had an inkling of what was happening, and it triggers loud warning bells in Taeyeon's mind, but Taeyeon can't seem to stop it all from spilling out; the lies she'd kept locked up within herself, and had clung onto until they'd sounded like the truth.

 

“All the lies I've told you." Taeyeon says, letting her words undo everything she'd tried so hard to construct all those years ago. "I'm taking them all back, because you deserve the truth."

 

"Taeyeon..." Jessica pleads, as though she was afraid of what she'd just willingly walked herself into—into Taeyeon’s self-destruction and she'd just happened to be caught up in the blast radius.

 

"I lied to you, I hurt you, because I thought it was the right thing for us. To put the company first...It was what I've been trained to do all my life, and then you come along and ruin me."

 

"If you're looking about an apology, you're not going to get one Taeyeon." Jessica says through gritted teeth, turning her head away, "I'm not sorry for loving you, I'm not sorry for fighting for us when you clearly didn't and I'm not sorry for leaving."

 

"I know. I didn't and I will never ask you to be."

 

At this, Jessica softens, her anger and aggressive hostility melting away into a weak resignation. Her eyes seek out Taeyeon’s again.

 

"I don't know why you're saying this now...Why are you rocking the boat when everything's just settled for me?"

 

"I-I don't want you to settle—not without me."

 

The selfish words spill out of her hearts, seemingly robbing Jessica of her words and her rationality, her eyes flicker with a strange vulnerability and Taeyeon wonders if she was thinking of reasons for why this was wrong! And dangerous! And stupid! Just like Taeyeon once had.

 

“I should’ve called a long time ago.” Taeyeon says sighing into Jessica’s neck. “Tell me I’m not too late, Sica?”

 

Jessica reaches out and her fingers brush against the slope of Taeyeon’s cheek and the look in her eyes is a mixture of longing and for a brief second, Taeyeon thinks she’s too late.

 

“Taeng, I’m here, aren’t I?”

 

“Sica…”

 

“We can start again.” Jessica says simply.

 

Then they’re both leaning in and their lips are melding together again.

 

Jessica makes a soft sound and somewhere deep inside herself Taeyeon feels something that had been long buried slowly awakening again—maybe it was love, maybe it wasn’t—but in the moment, it didn’t matter, because this felt a lot like meeting each other halfway, and it just might be what they needed.

 

(Besides, Taeyeon would have a lot of time to figure it out later.)

 

 

//

 

AN: trying to stretch my writing muscles after such a long hiatus/break; I have a thing for canon-verse-but-not-really fics so lol.

This is sort of a taengsic 10/09 fic that I started writing before my Jeti feels took over spawned one of my other fics (and I didn’t really want to touch anything to do with 10/09 since I’d already addressed it lmao)

If I feel up to it, I might write a few more shorts on their relationship prior to Sica leaving.