A/N: Originally posted November 2013.

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After one performance of One Year Later, Jessica notices that Jinki is practically sweating through his shirt and he has a death grip on his hair that makes her worry he’s going to tear it out.

“What’s wrong?” she asks gently.

He glances at her, his eyes wide and almost wild. “Nothing,” he says quickly, and lets go of his hair like it’s suddenly burning him. He makes a move to tuck his hands into his pockets, except he doesn’t have pockets, and his hands hover awkwardly in the air for a while before he laces his fingers together and put them on top of his head. It makes him look awkward and ridiculous and yet utterly endearing.

Jessica bursts into laughter. Jinki reddens and looks away, returning to clutching his hair with white-knuckled fingers.

“You look like you really have to go the bathroom,” she remarks offhandedly.

“Thanks.” He still won’t look at her.

“Yah, Lee Jinki, tell me what’s the matter.”

“Let me ask you something,” he says quickly. “Do you think we did a good job? With the duet?”

Jessica’s eyes narrow, but she answers him honestly. “Yes, I think we did.”

Jinki’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes seem to brighten a little. “Do you think we sound good together?”

“No, I think our voices clash terribly,” she deadpans, “and that’s why they had us sing this song together – so we could bring the album sales down.”

His mouth quirks up at the corner, but it’s not quite a smile. “I love your sense of humour, you know,” he says, sounding strangely wistful.

“Thank you.” She blinks. “I’ve been told that I don’t have one.”

“You definitely have one,” he chuckles, “a great one.”

“Yeah, that’s why people love me,” she snorts. “Not because of my legs or my chest.”

Jessica swears that Jinki’s eyes flicker to her chest for a second, and when she raises an eyebrow at him, he clears his throat hurriedly and jerks his eyes away, cheeks reddening.

“Case in point,” she says wryly.

“I’m sorry!” He looks horrified. “I just—you have a… You’re really pretty.”

“Thanks.” She almost rolls her eyes. “Wow, this is the first time anyone’s ever told me that.”

“No, I mean, I—” Jinki takes a deep breath. “You’re not just pretty; you’re beautiful. Not because of your legs or your ch-chest, but because of you. Your sense of humour, and your awkward aegyo, and your assortment of smiles, and your voice. Your voice is just…”

Jessica stares at him, wide-eyed and completely stunned. She’s had people confess to her before – many times, in fact, it wasn’t exactly a novelty occurrence – but none of them had been quite so…eloquent, and none of them had been a good friend like Jinki.

“I like you,” Jinki continues. “I really like you, Jessica.” He braves a smile. “I’m sorry, I know this is the lamest confession ever, but it went a lot better in my head.”

Jessica finds her voice. “It’s not lame. I think it’s sweet of you, actually.” She smiles at him, wondering which smile this was in her ‘assortment’ (the word reminds her of a fruit platter), and he smiles back, small and hesitant. “But Jinki, I don’t—I don’t like you that way. I’m sorry.”

His smile fades, and his face falls, but he looks more resigned than disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, and she is. She may not have romantic feelings for Jinki, but he’s a good friend and a good person, and she doesn’t want to hurt him. “You’re a great guy, I just—”

“—aren’t into me,” he finishes. “It’s all right. This isn’t the first time someone’s told me that.”

“I mean it.” Jessica puts her hand on his shoulder; a light, apologetic touch that she has a feeling will only weigh him down. “I don’t just mean oh you’re a great guy; it’s not you, it’s me. You really are a great guy, and I hope you find someone who deserves you.”

“Yeah,” Jinki sighs. “I hope so too.”

“Although please remember that girls like to be looked at in the eyes, not the chest. And if you’re going to be a ert, don’t think I’ll hesitate to punch you.” As if to make a point, she raises a fist. “I’ve been told that I hit very hard. Although it was followed by ‘for someone who looks like a Barbie,’ but I assure you, I hit a lot more like Ken than Barbie.”

He laughs. “Who said that? The Barbie thing?”

She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter who said it. What matters was how quickly he took it back after I punched him.”

“Jessica.” Jinki’s eyes have gone all soft and liquid, and she swallows, takes a step back, having a good idea of what he’s going to say next.

“Jinki. Please don’t—”

But Jessica doesn’t get to finish her sentence, because just then a blur of black hair and pink dress slams into her, and she finds herself with an armful of Tiffany.

“Jessi!” Tiffany beams. “I’ve been looking for you forever.”

“Well…” Jessica clears , trying not to think about how closely Tiffany is pressed against her, how much of her she can feel. “You found me.”

“You were so great,” Tiffany says emphatically. “That was such a beautiful performance. Did you hear me cheering?”

“Yeah, it was kind of hard to miss considering how loud you are.”

Tiffany puts her hands on her hips. The action makes her dress ride up slightly, and Jessica is treated to an eyeful of smooth, creamy thigh. Not that she looks or anything.

“People are going to think you’re my biggest fan,” Jessica teases.

“Then they’d be right,” Tiffany returns with a grin.

Suddenly, Jessica hears a cough, and she remembers that Jinki is there. Somehow she had completely forgotten his existence. She does that quite a bit, to be honest – it’s part of the Sica effect – especially around Tiffany, because it’s kind of hard to focus on other things when Tiffany’s smiling at her.

“Oh.” Tiffany holds her hand to , her eyes wide. “I’m sorry. Was I interrupting?”

Jessica doesn’t know what to say, but Jinki beats her to it. He looks between her and Tiffany for a long moment, and then he smiles a slow, sad kind of smile; again, more resigned than disappointed.

“No, you weren’t interrupting. Nothing important anyway.” Jinki runs a hand through his hair, which sticks up in little tufts like bird’s feathers. “I should go, anyway. Taemin is supposed to help me with our new choreography.”

“Good luck with that!” Tiffany says brightly. “I’m sure it’ll be great. Your dances are amazing.”

“Thank you, Fany-ah.” Jinki’s smile is less sad this time, although it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Hey,” Jessica says softly, and when he turns to her, she gives him a quick but tight hug. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Okay.” He nods. “See you around.”

This time, Tiffany looks between the two of them, but even though she’s usually so expressive, Jessica can’t tell what she’s thinking at all.

“We should be going too, Sica,” Tiffany says, and Jessica wonders what happened to Jessi. “Taeyeon is doing her worried ahjumma thing again.”

“That’s just her natural state.”

Tiffany rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling, and then she loops her arm through Jessica’s and starts leading her to the exit.

“What’s your natural state?” Tiffany asks, after they’ve walked a certain distance. She doesn’t seem like she’s going to let go of Jessica any time soon, and Jessica doesn’t mind.

“I don’t know – ice princess?”

“Jessi,” Tiffany sighs, and something warm spreads in Jessica’s chest at the return of the nickname. “You’re not icy.”

“Cold, then?”

“Only when you’ve been hugging the air conditioning for too long.”

“I don’t hug the air conditioning!”

“You would if it was huggable.”

Jessica can’t argue with that, and she can tell from Tiffany’s grin that she knows it.

“Are you a princess, though?” Tiffany muses. “Well, you’re pretty enough to be one.”

It’s the second time someone has called her pretty in the span of half an hour, and not just anyone, but Jinki, who’s a good friend with no shortage of female fans, and Tiffany, who’s—well, Tiffany.

“Thanks.”

Tiffany smiles. “I’m just telling the truth. You don’t need to thank me for that.”

“Well, continue with the truth-telling then. What do you think my natural state is?”

Tiffany looks at Jessica for a very long time with those eyes of hers, eyes that Jessica’s found herself falling into for the better part of a day, for years since they were trainees, and wondered if she ever wanted to come out.

“What does Jinki think it is?”

Jessica wants to ask why Tiffany’s bringing up Jinki all of a sudden, but for some reason, she holds her question back. “He said that I…have awkward aegyo, and ‘an assortment of smiles,’ whatever that means.”

“You do have awkward aegyo,” Tiffany agrees, “but it’s adorable.”

Jessica’s face feels slightly warm, and she clears . “I don’t do aegyo. I’m not Sunny.”

“I know. You hardly ever try to do it, but you’re still cute.” Tiffany smiles and pokes her cheek. “It’s a gift.”

“I guess I’m just that gifted.”

Tiffany laughs, her eyes disappearing into crescents in that way of hers, and Jessica wonders if she tries to be mesmerizing, or if she just mesmerizes without effort simply by being herself. She’s pretty sure it’s the latter.

“And as for your assortment of smiles…” Tiffany hums contemplatively. “You do have a lot. I sometimes wonder if you can tell the difference between them.”

“I just smile. What’s the difference?”

“There’s a difference between smiling with your mouth and smiling with your heart, babo,” Tiffany tells her.

“Well, your smiles make everyone fall over their own feet, but do you always smile with your heart?”

Tiffany pauses, her tongue flickering out to wet her bottom lip, and Jessica just looks at her, openly and intently and unabashedly, wishing that she could swallow Tiffany with her gaze, or at the very least take a little of her to keep for herself.

“I don’t have that much heart, Jessi,” she says, sincere in a bared-open, bone-deep kind of way, and Jessica wants to tell her that she’s wrong, that she has the biggest heart out of anyone Jessica knows, but before she can say anything, Tiffany smiles at her, just smiles, and she loses her breath and thoughts and pretty much everything that doesn’t belong to Tiffany already, which isn’t a lot. “But when I’m with you, do I smile like that? Yes.”

“Really?” Jessica breathes, and she knows she’s smiling, with and her heart.

Tiffany chuckles, quiet and intimate. “Yes. All the time.”

“Why?”

Tiffany tilts her head to the side. “Why do you think?”

“You’re always answering my questions with another question,” Jessica says, frustrated. “Why can’t you just tell me the answer?”

She almost expects Tiffany to just answer with a question yet again, but instead Tiffany smiles, small and melancholic. “Maybe because I’m afraid.”

“Afraid?” Jessica echoes. “Of what?”

“You.”

“Me?” Jessica stares at Tiffany who looks back at her steadily, eyes soft and weary. She can only think to say, “But I’m not scary.”

Tiffany’s laugh is uncharacteristically soft and uncharacteristically sad. “I shouldn’t say that I’m afraid of you. I should say that I’m afraid of what you can do to me. What you already do to me.” She leans in and tips her forehead against Jessica’s. “I can’t breathe around you. The air, the light, the world… It just becomes you.”

Jessica’s eyes widen and then slip shut, and she falls forward, against and into Tiffany, who catches her, anchors her, the solid warmth of her body reminding Jessica that she’s still in this world rather than one from a fantasy.

“Then what’s the problem?” she murmurs. “I’m yours, so you can have all the air you want – you can breathe.”

She opens her eyes, and she’s looking right into Tiffany’s, into stars and fires and a world that’s brighter and warmer than the one she knows.

“You’re…mine?” Tiffany repeats, the words rolling off her tongue like she isn’t sure she’s allowed to say them.

“Yours,” Jessica confirms, and there’s more that she could say here, more reassurances and promises, but she just smiles and knows that Tiffany will hear them anyway.

“I didn’t like seeing you with him today,” Tiffany whispers. “The way he was looking at you. Standing so close to you.”

Jessica blinks. “Is that what brought this on?”

“I want you to be mine,” Tiffany says, so very Tiffany in her earnestness. “Mine, and not some other guy’s, even if that other guy is sweet and funny and sounds so great with you.”

“Steph.” Jessica clucks her tongue. “I don’t care how sweet and funny Jinki is, or how great his voice is, because—I look at so many people every day, talented, attractive people, and some of them might be interested in me, I don’t know, but. I don’t care. I don’t see them, not the way I see you.” She takes Tiffany’s hands, feeling them tremble in her own, and she pulls them close to her heart, so that Tiffany can feel it beating as they speak. “I see you, even when I’m not looking at you.”

Tiffany blinks, and their faces are so close that Jessica almost feels her lashes brush against her cheek. They seem thicker than usual and they feel—wet.

“Are you crying?” Jessica asks anxiously.

Instead of answering, or maybe this is her answer, Tiffany closes the miniscule distance between them and presses her lips to Jessica’s. She doesn’t taste like tears; she tastes like the strawberry candy that she’s so partial to, and the mints that they have by the boxful in the dorm. It should be a light, sweet taste, but the kiss doesn’t feel light and sweet to Jessica. It feels like she’s been struck by something heavy and hot right between the eyes, and she’s dizzy and breathless and dazed, but she wouldn’t want to move away for the life of her.

“I’m not crying,” Tiffany says, her breath ghosting along Jessica’s lips. “I’m happy. So happy.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive, you know,” Jessica says casually, but she feels exactly the same way: that bared-open, bone-deep sense of joy, almost too warm and vibrant to be real. “I’m happy too,” she breathes, and Tiffany smiles against when she kisses her, the kind of smile that holds too much for words, the kind of smile that Jessica’s sure she’ll see and taste many more times.

And she breathes, and sees bright flashes lightning across the back of her eyelids, and Tiffany’s right – the air, the light, the world, it’s her, it’s them, it’s this, and Jessica takes it all in, sure that she’s the luckiest person in the world.

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A/N: If I dig up more old JeTi fics, I'll probably add them here, unless they're longer, in which case I'll probably post them individually like I did with my 4+1 times fic.