A/N: This is the first fic in this collection that isn't a standalone. This is a continuation of Turn Off the Light and Turn On the Light. Please read those two first if you haven't or you'll be very confused. (And even if you have, you should probably reread them because I posted them aaaaaaages ago.) Well, this was written ages ago - back in early 2016.

Jessica gets home earlier than usual, not early enough to beat the sun but early enough that Tiffany should still be awake and Jessica can properly come home to her for once instead of to her sleeping silhouette. Maybe they can have a late night snack, or watch a movie, or sit on the couch and talk and just—be. Being with Tiffany is a state of its own, something more than being happy or being comfortable or being warm. Something like all of those combined but above and beyond it.

Jessica smiles a little as she fishes her keys out of her bag and opens the apartment door. She had secured an important deal with a supplier, and Blanc’s future is looking bright. She can’t wait to tell Tiffany. Tiffany is always so happy to see Jessica happy.

There’s still a light on when she gets home. Perfect. Tiffany must be up. She used to leave a light on every night so that Jessica wouldn’t have to come home to a dark apartment, but Jessica started coming home later and later, and she told Tiffany there was no point in wasting electricity bills. She didn’t tell Tiffany that it was easier for her to return to darkness, to slip into bed with Tiffany like a ghost and shake off the guilt that clung to her into the shadows.

A/N: Lmao the one time I actually had some kind of outline…

Notices that some of Tiffany’s things are gone but not enough to raise alarms

• Pepero
• Scarf
• Photo
• Shirt
• Bear
• Bed (double, meant for 2; imprint of Tiffany’s head is still on the pillow, strands of dark hair lingering on the fabric, Tiffany’s presence still lingering in the room; Jessica is in the habit of sleeping on half of the bed but there’s too much space for just her body)
• Coffee (Jessica can’t use the coffee maker so Tiffany always sets it up so there’s coffee ready in the morning)

You’re still the only one for me, but I know that I’m not the only one for you, I’ll never be the only one for you. Is it too much to ask for that I want my only?

Jessica stares at the note, black ink against white paper, until the world fades to monochrome and there is nothing except shadows in the backs of her eyes. But then red bursts against her eyelids and she wonders if something is bleeding inside her.

Tiffany used a black pen to write this, she numbly registers. Tiffany never uses black pens. Tiffany likes to use the specialty pink gel pens she orders online, and if she doesn’t have those she’ll use a red pen or at least a blue pen. Tiffany never uses black pens. Tiffany likes colourful things. Tiffany—

Tiffany is gone.

Jessica sweeps blindly through the cupboard, her hands knocking over things left and right, boxes and cans and bags falling over, a domino chain, an avalanche. Where is the coffee? She needs her coffee. She can’t sleep in their bed – her bed, now that there’s no them, only her – tonight, and she’s never been able to sleep comfortably on couches. She needs coffee to be awake, alert – sane, or at least some semblance of it.

Her fumbling dislodges a box from the very back of the cupboard, and it tumbles into the front, almost falling off the shelf entirely. It’s a thin, long, pink box. A Pepero box.

Jessica shuts off the light and sits in the dark, still as a statue except for when her head whips toward the door at the smallest sound, waiting for a figure to slip through and turn on a light.

“Stop,” Tiffany whispers. “Stop drinking. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

“I’m already sick.” A hushed whisper. “I miss you so much.”

Tiffany bites her lip so hard she almost draws blood. “You – you can’t say something like that.”

“But it’s true. I miss you.” There is a transparency to Jessica’s voice that Tiffany hasn’t heard in a long time. This is the open, honest Jessica that only extreme sleep deprival or alcohol brings out, the Jessica who would tell Tiffany “I want you” and “I miss you” and “I love you” insistently and repeatedly, like she has to make up for all the times she doesn’t say it sober. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Tiffany fights to keep her voice calm. “What are you sorry for?”

Jessica is quiet for a long time, so quiet that Tiffany thinks she isn’t going to answer the question.

“All the people who weren’t you,” Jessica finally says, in a voice worn thin by regret. “You don’t know how sorry I am.”

“If you’re so sorry, why did you do it?” Tiffany’s eyes have been wet since the start of the call, but now the moisture is b out of them, spilling past her cheeks, into her voice. “Why did you…”

Cheat on me betray me leave me. Well, the last one isn’t true. Jessica wasn’t the one who left. Tiffany was. She can’t finish the question anyway; the tears have trickled into and left no room for words.

“You’re crying,” Jessica whispers. “Don’t cry, Tiff.”

How could she not? How could she keep her eyes dry or her voice steady when she feels like she’s coming undone?

“All I do is make you cry. I’m sorry.”

Tiffany wets her lips, swallows and tries to speak. She fails and has to repeat the cycle before she can get a word out. “That’s not true. You’ve made me laugh a lot too.”

“I love your laugh,” Jessica says. “You’re so pretty when you laugh. Well, you’re pretty when you don’t too.”

Tiffany means to say something, she doesn’t even know what, but only something resembling a sob escapes her.

“You’re even pretty when you cry. Not that I want you to cry. I’m sorry I make you cry more than I make you laugh.”

Tiffany wonders if Jessica is really saying I’m sorry I make you sad more than I make you happy, and she wants to tell Jessica that’s not true, that Jessica had made her more happy than she could ever imagine, that they had once lived the kind of life she thought only belonged to love stories.

She should have thought about how few love stories get happy endings.

“Do I make you laugh?” she whispers, when she really means, do I make you happy? Did I ever make you happy?

Jessica sounds incredibly sober when she says, “Like no one else ever has.”

“Then why—” Tiffany can’t finish the question again. She’s usually good at finishing what she starts, but when it comes to Jessica, she often has more exceptions than rules.

“I can’t explain it.” She hears Jessica gulp down something, and her heart sinks when she realizes it’s probably more alcohol. “It’s like a sickness, Tiff. It’s. I’m sick.”

“You already said that.”

“This is different. You don’t understand.” Jessica hiccups. “I don’t understand either. There’s something wrong with me, Tiffany. There’s something…”

Tiffany waits for Jessica to finish her sentence, but she stops there. The only sounds between them are the static crackling over the line and the erratic hitches of Jessica’s breathing.

In the end, Tiffany is the one to break the not quite silence.

“I know I’m not enough for you.”

“No! That’s not it all. That’s…” Jessica hiccups again. “It’s not about not being enough. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“Then why?” It comes out as a half-wrecked cry.

“I can’t explain it,” Jessica repeats, her voice damp with tears. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not enough,” Tiffany says, and before Jessica can weaken her even further with a reply, ends the call.

She stays with her phone pressed against her cheek for a long, long time, having no idea that Jessica is doing the same thing on the other end of the line.

A/N: I remember originally I wanted to make this into a fourshot (with the fourth fic being titled - surprise, surprise - With a Light where they get back together). Ultimately, I'm kind of glad I didn't do that because I don't think they should get back together. But wow, reading this again made me really sad for them. Why did 2015/16 me torture JeTi so...