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It’s Saturday night and Namjoo is hanging out with Jackson because they haven't seen each other in a while, and Jackson insisted they marathon this show his girlfriend got him into because it's supposedly hilarious and also "really woke and shit, Namjoo-yah, you'll love it". So here they are, watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine with her laptop hooked up to the TV.
She is enjoying it a lot, and they've almost made it through the first season by now. It's getting close to 2 AM, but Jina declared she was going to have her own BFF day with Yoonji and has probably fallen asleep on her couch by now, so they don't have to worry about being too loud.
Namjoo feels kind of bleary though, the way you do when you focus too much on one thing for too long without any breaks, so she’s thinking about how they should really call it a night soon when the realization hits her like a freight train.
It’s such a shock that she drops the bowl in her hands. It bounces awkwardly on her knees, spilling popcorn everywhere, before it clatters onto the ground, loud against the hardwood floor.
Jackson yelps, jumping a little and whipping his head around to stare at her. “What the hell, dude?” he asks. “You okay?”
Namjoo isn’t even hearing him, too busy trying to process the thought that just blew her mind.
“Holy shit,” she says, too loud in the sudden quiet when Jackson hits the mute button on the remote. “Holy shit, Jina!”
“Gina?” Jackson repeats, throwing a look at the TV screen, where the character of Gina Linetti is currently digging into a giant sandwich that appears to have mac and cheese on it. “What about her?”
“No, no,” Namjoo says, waving her hands around. She probably looks a bit crazy, eyes wide and her short hair messy from lying around for hours on end. Jackson is way too used to her and her idiosyncrasies though, so he just grabs a handful of stray popcorn from the couch cushions and pops it into his mouth while he waits for Namjoo to start making sense.
“My Jina,” Namjoo stresses, fumbling to grab a picture frame from the windowsill behind them and shoving it in Jackson’s face for emphasis. It’s a picture of her and Jina on their trip to Jeju last year, big sunglasses and even bigger smiles as they stand barefoot on the beach. Jackson jerks back before she can accidentally hit him with it, and she appreciates his reflexes. It’d be a shame if she broke the frame. Or his nose.
“My Jina,” Namjoo says again, because for once in her life words are failing her, “And that Gina!” She points her finger at the TV frantically, willing Jackson to understand.
She can practically see the gears turning in his head as he looks between the picture and the TV a couple of times before he gasps out loud. He turns wide eyes on Namjoo and blindly grabs for her hands as he all but shouts, “Holy shit! They’re the same!”
“I know, right?” Namjoo says, and then, for a weird moment, they both just kind of yell and flail around together on the sofa at the magnitude of their discovery.
Namjoo’s tired as fuck though, and a bit delirious at this point, so eventually she has to catch her breath. She slumps back against the headrest, burying her face in her hands.
“I can’t believe this. Oh god. Oh my god, Jackson. The love of my life is literally a sitcom character. This is— can you believe that’s what I’m attracted to? Did I watch too much Friends as a kid? I just thought it would make me good at English, it wasn’t supposed to give me some sort of complex, I— Jackson. Jackson, please.”
She interrupts her crisis to look back up at Jackson, who is fumbling his phone back into his pocket as he tries and fails to contain his laughter. He probably just texted his girlfriend while Namjoo was having a serious break-down, the jerk.
“This is the greatest moment of my life,” Jackson says happily, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. Namjoo shoves him in the shoulder for that, but he doesn’t even seem to notice.
“Jina can never know about this,” Namjoo says seriously. Jackson just starts laughing even harder at that, and doesn’t stop even when she starts hitting him with a couch cushion, their TV marathon all but forgotten.
1.
Namjoo ends up watching the entire show over the next couple of weeks whenever she can make some time - during dinner if she’s eating alone, or when she needs a break from grading. Jina has to go on a business trip at some point and Namjoo watches seasons four and five in two days because the apartment is too quiet.
It’s maybe another two weeks later when they meet up for lunch not too far from the campus where Namjoo teaches. It’s a place they frequent a lot, at least when Jina has time to take a bit of a longer break. She and her brother have been thinking about expanding lately, opening more restaurants, so there’s meetings with contractors and the bank and all sorts of other things keeping her busy. She even hired JK to help out part-time, though Namjoo suspects that has less to do with any actual increase in workload and more with the fact that JK mentioned having trouble finding a job that didn’t interfere with her class schedule.
In any case, today Jina decided she’d had enough of it all, left JK to deal with the phones, and came by to pick Namjoo up after her 11 AM class.
(Namjoo has never said it out loud, but she thinks it’s hilarious to see the awe-struck expressions on her students’ faces when Jina passes them by.)
By the time they make it to the restaurant Namjoo has her caught up on all the latest faculty gossip. There’s a big conference coming up, and Namjoo thinks by the time it actually happens half her colleagues might die from stress.
Jina makes a small ‘Hmmm’ noise and gives her a look that Namjoo knows means Jina is going to check in on her more frequently to make sure she’s not overworking herself, too. She laughs and tells Jina not to worry, but just then the waiter comes over to take their order, and the topic is dropped.
Namjoo is familiar with the staff here, so she’s pretty sure the guy is new. He’s nice though, joking around with them while Jina orders what feels like half the menu.
“Do you think he was hitting on me?” Jina says later, once he’s out of earshot after bringing over all their dishes. The small table is crammed so full that Namjoo is almost afraid to move in fear of pushing something off the edge.
“The waiter? Please.” Namjoo rolls her eyes. “He looks like he’s at least 10 years younger than you and it’s literally his job to be nice to customers. Don’t go ascribing ulterior motives to him.”
“Whatever. Everyone in here is at least 30% attracted to me,” Jina says airily before she starts slurping down a huge mouthful of noodles.
Namjoo takes a look around the restaurant and raises an eyebrow. “Considering that we’re in a pretty gay part of town that seems statistically unlikely. But sure.”
Jina makes an indignant noise. With her cheeks stuffed full of food she looks like a particularly furious hamster. It’s really cute.
“I do not deserve this disrespect,” Jina finally says after swallowing a couple of times. “And from my own girlfriend!”
“I’m not disrespecting you!” Namjoo objects, picking up her cup of tea to hide the grin on her face. “Don’t worry. You’re still the most beautiful person I have ever laid eyes on.” And while her tone might be teasing, that doesn’t make it any less true.
Jina quiets down a bit at that, because she’s great at putting up a front of confidence so over the top it almost comes back around to being self-deprecating, but doesn’t always know how to act in the face of sincerity.
“Yes, well,” she says, busying herself with picking up a dumpling and putting it on Namjoo’s plate. “Try this. It’s really good.”
Namjoo smiles and does as she’s told.
2.
No matter how busy all of them are, movie night is non-negotiable. Jimin would probably disown them if they skipped it without a really compelling excuse.
They usually end up at Yoonji and Hoseok’s place, which is still the same apartment that Jina and Yoonji used to share back in the day. That’s how Namjoo met her, actually: Jina was roommates with Yoonji, who eventually started dating Hoseok, who had been one of Namjoo's best friends ever since he arrived in Seoul age 14, the new transfer kid from Gwangju who liked the same music and didn't make fun of her when she said she wanted to be a rapper.
Hoseok greets them at the door as they arrive and ushers them inside with a big smile, liberating Jina of the bottle of wine she's been carrying. They both follow him to the kitchen, but Namjoo only sticks around long enough to collect a hug and a fond, "Hey, Namjoo-ya," from Yoonji before she makes her way to the living room.
She comes to a stop in the doorway however, face to face with their maknae, who’s wearing a top hat and a sloppily tied bowtie.
“Oh,” she says, a bit taken aback. “Nice outfit, JK.”
“Call me Justine,” JK says, face serious even as she has trouble bringing the unfamiliar name across her lips in what Namjoo thinks is supposed to be a French accent, maybe. “Justine Seagull.”
Behind her Jimin is doubled over with laughter, while Tae is apparently too preoccupied to pay them any attention, drawing a mustache on her face in eyeliner with the help of small hand mirror.
Namjoo decides not to question anything about this.
“Alright, Miss Seagull,” she says, dropping the grocery bag full of snacks she’s been carrying next to the small stack of DVDs and blu-rays on the table. From a glance at the titles, Namjoo guesses the theme for the night is spy movies. She’s not sure where top hats figure into that, to be honest.
“Are we assigning codenames?” Jina says, joining them with Yoonji and Hoseok on her heels, arms full of drinks for everyone. “Good idea. You never know who’s listening in.”
“Yeah? And what would yours be?” Yoonji asks.
Jina thinks on it before she nods to herself and says, “Genie.”
As if on cue, Tae and Hoseok yell, “Girls’ Generation forever!” at the same time, which leads to JK and Jimin dancing what they remember of the choreo before Yoonji shoos all of them over to the sofa.
As everyone is settling down, trying to decide which movie they should watch first, Namjoo figures she’ll go ahead and pass out the snacks. It’s turning out to be a bit difficult, though, because for some inexplicable reason, Jina seems to have tied the plastic bag from the supermarket with a double knot that refuses to budge under her fingers.
“What the hell,” she mutters, trying to find a starting point.
Jina notices her struggling and leans in to take a closer look. “Did I pull it too tight? Hold on, just use this.” And with that, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a pair of big kitchen shears.
There’s a moment of silence as everyone stares at her.
Jina, unbothered, cuts through the plastic in one smooth motion before she looks up at them. “What?”
“You just have kitchen shears in your purse?” JK asks, “Like, all the time?”
“Of course,” Jina says, like it’s obvious, “I’m not an animal.”
Namjoo blinks, reasonably certain that she’s never seen Jina carry scissors of any sort with her. That aside, there’s a feeling kind of like deja-vu rearing its head. There’s something about the way Jina said that, something she can’t quite put her finger on. But before she can try to figure it out, she gets distracted by Yoonji’s long-suffering groan.
“Put them away. You’re giving me flashbacks to walking in on you cutting your fringe with those over the bathroom sink.”
“That was one time!” Jina protests. “And it’s been like, 10 years. Get over it.”
Yoonji shares a flat look with Namjoo. Namjoo answers it with a ‘what can you do’ kind of shrug and offers her a choco pie. Yoonji sighs, but accepts it.
“What else do you have in there, unnie?” Jimin asks, already rummaging around in Jina’s purse, pulling out item after item and depositing them in Tae’s hands.
“Oh, super glue,” Tae says approvingly. “Always good to have some with you in case you need to put glitter on something.”
Jina considers that for a second before she says, “You know what, Tae? I may only carry it around because I’m dating the goddess of destruction, but you just opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.”
“Okay, time to start the movie before you lot get any stupid ideas,” Yoonji says, even as she’s clearly amused. “I’d better not find any glitter on my furniture tomorrow.”
Jina smirks, but she just settles into Namjoo’s side and doesn’t say anything as Yoonji hits play.
3.
Namjoo is cursing under her breath while she searches through her inbox for the email she knows one of her activist friends sent out last week. It had some important information regarding their upcoming activities, and while Namjoo thinks she wrote it down somewhere, she’s not sure she could find it among the mess of papers spread out on the dining table.
There’s a couple posters and signs she agreed to prepare ages ago, but she hasn’t gotten around to most of them yet. She sighs as she pushes her glasses back up her nose. Maybe Tae has some time to help her out - whenever Namjoo has asked her in the past, she’s come up with really creative designs.
Jina is still awake despite the late hour, sitting cross-legged on the sofa as she paints her nails. It's soothing, just quietly sharing space like that. A familiar, comfortable presence that puts Namjoo at ease.
There's a news channel on the TV providing background noise, and Jina scoffs at the footage of a government spokesperson at a press conference, fielding questions about the latest scandal rocking the nation.
"What an amateur," Jina mutters, more to herself than anything, but Namjoo catches it anyway.
"You think you'd do a better job?" she teases, "Any plans on leaving the restaurant business for a higher calling, Kim Jina-ssi?"
“I was born for politics,” Jina says, inspecting the drying nail polish critically, “I have great hair and I love lying.”
Namjoo looks at the slogan proclaiming the need for honesty and transparency in politics that she’s painstakingly written out. The corner of her mouth quirks up despite herself.
“I’m attending an anti-corruption protest this weekend,” she points out mildly.
“That’s nice, honey,” Jina says, and moves on to painting the nails on her other hand.
4.
Going out to dance is not really Namjoo’s idea of a good night anymore, if she’s being entirely honest, and she knows that Jina would usually prefer being at home with a glass of wine or three as well. It’s more comfortable, less damaging to everyone’s eardrums and definitely less expensive - the maknaes can call them old all they want, it won’t change the facts.
But here they are, at a club with a bunch of Jina’s same age friends and their respective partners because it’s Hani’s birthday.
Any complaints about the venue aside, Namjoo does appreciate the way Jina dressed up for the occasion. In fact, she’s very busy appreciating it in one of the booths to the back of the place - they’re supposedly keeping an eye on the table while everyone else is on the dance floor.
So Namjoo is enjoying herself, doing her best to ignore the surroundings and focusing on her gorgeous girlfriend, who moved to straddle Namjoo’s lap the moment Byulyi and Yongsun dragged Jaehwan away to dance with them.
She’s actually just about to suggest they take this back home when Jina pulls back from where she was monopolizing Namjoo’s mouth. Namjoo blinks, confused for a second before she can make out the glint in Jina’s eyes even in the dim lighting and feels her shaking under her hands.
“Seriously?” Namjoo groans, because she knows the signs, and she can’t believe they have to stop making out because Jina thought of something funny.
(Actually, she can. It happens pretty frequently.)
“Does—” Jina starts, already losing the battle against the onset of her giggles. “Does anyone else get a little bit of a gay vibe?”
The moment she’s done talking she starts laughing really hard, her forehead bumping against Namjoo’s shoulder from the force of it.
Namjoo blinks, confused. Jina’s jokes may be terrible, but usually they at least make sense.
“We’re literally in a gay bar?” she says slowly, squinting at Jina. There’s something niggling at the back of her mind, an epiphany just out of reach. But then Jina raises her head and licks her lips, and Namjoo loses her train of thought again.
“Sorry, just had to get that out,” Jina says, pushing her long hair back with one hand and leaning in close. “Now, where were we?”
5.
Between the conference at work and all their social commitments lately, Namjoo was really looking forward to a quiet weekend at home to recharge. Her hopes are dashed by a phone call from Jina’s parents, however, requesting their presence for family dinner on Sunday.
“This Sunday?” Namjoo repeats. She loves Jina’s family, she really does, but she had plans that mostly involved not getting out of bed until at least 10 AM, staying inside, doing nothing more strenuous than working on some music, and only wearing sweatpants for two days straight.
“The very same,” Jina confirms. “My brother is coming too.”
Namjoo sighs. “We just saw them two weeks ago, didn’t we?” It’s as close to a whine as she ever gets, and Jina quirks an eyebrow at her in response.
“Well, it can’t be helped. It’s only natural they want to see me whenever they can, I’m the greatest thing our family and the entire Gwangsan Kim clan has ever brought forth.”
Namjoo snorts, ready to point out there was a queen as well as a couple of Prime ministers and scholars who probably placed just a bit higher on the hierarchy, but then Jina says, “My mother cried the day I was born because she knew she would never be better than me.”
Namjoo has a dazed moment to think about how that sounds rather out of character for Jina’s mother, who is an absolutely lovely woman, and then her mind screeches to a halt. She’s heard that before. The exact words Jina just said, Namjoo has heard them before, and she knows exactly where.
“You!” Namjoo sputters, aghast.
Jina throws her hair over her shoulder and schools her face in what Namjoo can only describe as her acting expression, and says, in a tone that’s unlike her but very much familiar from Namjoo’s late-night binge watching, “Hi, Gina Linetti, the human form of the 100 emoji.”
Then, in the face of Namjoo’s shock, she throws back her head and laughs her most obnoxious laugh.
Namjoo’s mind is back up and running, racing to reevaluate some of things Jina has said recently that seemed a bit weird, but not too out of line with her usual brand of absurdity to really stick out.
“You’ve been doing this,” she says with slow realization. “The other night, at the club, and a couple of times before that?”
“It took you so long!” Jina says gleefully. “I can’t believe you didn’t notice earlier, oh my god.”
Namjoo shares the sentiment, and she’s not sure what amazes her more - that she repeatedly failed to connect the obvious quotes to a show she watched not too long ago, or the fact that Jina, who usually starts cracking up before she can even begin telling her jokes, managed to keep a straight face all those times.
“How did you— You watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine? When? And wait, did you seriously remember all those lines?”
Jina waves one hand dismissively. “Babe,” she says, “I didn’t study acting for nothing.” She pauses for a second. “Also you can just, like, google TV show quotes. Very handy, that.”
“I can’t believe you,” Namjoo says again, but she’s laughing now. “How did you— how did you even know, did I somehow forget I told you about the show, or—”
“I have my sources,” Jina says, reaching for her phone and searching for something. She makes a pleased noise once she finds it, holding her phone out to Namjoo to show her a chat log. The contact name just says THIGHS, and it takes Namjoo a second to work out that this is probably Jackson.
A photo takes up most of the screen, and Namjoo is definitely going to have to kill Jackson, because it's her, face in her hands, covered in stray popcorn and all in all the picture of distraught misery. Namjoo makes a strangled noise and swipes down hurriedly to read the following texts.
lol ur girl having an existential crisis
what did you do jefferson
nothing!! we're watching a show and there's a character in it that's very you
same name & everything
nj just noticed and now she's having a mental breakdown haha
Hmmmm
What show
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
y?
thanks jackjack
noona please you know that's my friend's dog's name
See ya jackerey
NOONA ㅠ_ㅠ
Namjoo lets out a disbelieving laugh, at a loss for words. Eventually, she settles on, “Jefferson. That’s a good one.”
“Thank you. I think it might be my best one yet.” Jina says, locking her phone and putting it back down before she settles her arms on Namjoo’s shoulders to pull her closer.
“It’s a good thing you finally caught on,” she says, “I was running out of all the best ones.”
There’s a big smile on her face - obviously she's very pleased that she managed to pull this off - and while Namjoo wants to roll her eyes at how ridiculous her girlfriend is, she also really wants to kiss her. So she does, peppering soft kisses all over Jina’s face and making her giggle.
“You’re so weird,” Namjoo says fondly, “Wanna go watch rewatch season one with me?”
“Why not?” Jina agrees easily, and Namjoo grins.
“Cool,” she says, “Cool, cool, cool.”
The end