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Jessica is keenly aware of the differences in the word “friend” in both her mother languages.
She is friends with Taeyeon, of course.
In Korean.
Truth is though, they are just coworkers.
Not enemies. Not sisters. Not fated souls.
Just colleagues.
They don’t really have anything to talk about most of the time, or honestly any reason to keep in touch now that they’re not working together.
“Yeah.” Taeyeon’s voice comes garbled through the phone line. The connection’s been crappy all the way across the ocean, which has not helped the stilting awkwardness of all this. “You’re right. Of course.”
“Okay,” Jessica acknowledges.
“Well…” There is silence for a few moments where the only thing Jessica can hear is her own breathing. “Goodbye, Jessica.”
“Bye, Tae.”
There are a few moments of additional silence before she hears the call disconnect.
**
Jessica is right.
She’s right, and it burns, and it feels like failure to Taeyeon somehow.
How can she sit there and argue against her… bandmate, her member, her friend, when really Taeyeon has no clue what drives Jessica (does she? she used to think she did?) or what happens to her on any given day. And she hasn’t bothered figuring it out either, she supposes.
Was she too cocky? Taking a connection for granted only by the bonds that tied them together?
Is Jessica going to be only the first one Taeyeon loses if she’s not careful?
“You’re right. Of course.” She hears her own voice say dully into her phone.
“Okay,” Jessica says, to her favor. She could rub it in some more, Taeyeon thinks - she herself probably would have if their roles were reversed. If it was Jessica that had called her for the first time in as many months as it takes for a rice crop to harvest.
She wonders dully if she should try to plant some rice. Might be one thing she’s capable of tending to fruition.
“Well…” Should she apologize? Tell her that, well, it’s not like Jessica had tried either? Her throat feels too choked up to do any of that, though, and she doesn’t want to say anything. “Goodbye, Jessica.”
She doesn’t think she wants to say that, either. It sounds insincere even to her own ears - like she is giving Jessica some weird type of blessing she has no place to, benevolently giving them some sort of civil closure.
There is a little sigh from the other end of the line. “Bye, Tae.”
Something in Taeyeon’s chest twists and lurches and she is too busy grappling with that to hang up immediately. She sits there, twists her mouth, and blinks forcefully to clear her vision of her dark room.
Before she can say anything else stupid, she hangs up and throws her phone across her bed.
It doesn’t feel like closure.
**
It’s not closure.
But life goes on, doesn’t it?
And Taeyeon’s left to try to cope with it.
**
“Why the hell do you have a… What is this?”
“It’s rice,” Taeyeon states plainly, and Jessica looks at her like she’d said it’s human teeth. “What?” she quips a bit defensively.
“Why are you growing a tub of rice at home?” Jessica asks incredulously.
God, from the way she’s acting it’s almost like Taeyeon had personally tried to stab her eye out with a rice grain or something, and not like she'd just shown up at Taeyeon's door unannounced five minutes ago asking if she could come up for a bit.
Taeyeon has nothing to offer her other than a somewhat annoyed shrug. Jessica’s response is to give that little huff she gives when she thinks someone is being too much, but she also shakes her head like she shouldn’t have expected otherwise from Taeyeon.
It makes Taeyeon feel silly about how much she cares, and she desperately wants to get rid of the sudden tight feeling in her chest. She shouldn’t mind what Jessica, or anyone, thinks. It’s not that insane to want to grow something.
She can’t keep the annoyance out of her voice now. “Why are you in my home,” she barks, walking over to check the water level in her rice pot as an excuse to not have to look at Jessica and try to know if - and how - she’s judging her.
Taeyeon doesn’t actually have to check the rice by now at all - the only thing she needs to do is leave it be and maybe check the water level sometimes, but every day she still finds herself fretting a bit about it.
She touches a fingertip lightly to one of the growing stalks and pretends to not notice the heaviness in the air or how she thinks she feels Jessica about to burst a few feet away from her.
It takes a few moments of Taeyeon resolutely not looking at her for Jessica to finally reply: “Because you let me in,” she says in a low tone.
Yeah.
Taeyeon closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She doesn’t want to have her day soured. All she wanted to do was to chill in, check some music out, maybe even try to bake a brownie. She didn’t at any point want to do this. Whatever it is, whatever was that challenge in Jessica’s voice, it’s more complication in a life she desperately needs to be manageable.
She is ready to state exactly that to Jessica, in her most resolute voice, but the words die in her mouth when she finally looks over at her and is met not with the strict faced Jessica she was expecting, but instead with…
Is that a shy look?
Taeyeon’s head spins.
She hasn’t seen that expression, that look on Jessica’s face since… God. Since they were eighteen, probably. When Jessica’s shyness and tentativeness would be at odds, and she’d look at Taeyeon like she was trying her best but still needed to hear from Taeyeon that it was good enough, and…
Jessica averts her eyes. “I can go.”
Taeyeon hasn’t had to tell Jessica anything of the sort in a long time. “You don’t have to.” She hears herself saying over the roaring in her ears. She thinks she means it as she says it, but it still somehow comes out like a question.
She doesn’t know what precisely she is asking, and her confusion and bafflement are growing at every turn of this interaction, but Jessica’s shoulders relax the slightest and she meets Taeyeon’s eyes again. “Okay,” she says, not quite smiling but softening. Somehow appreciative, and Taeyeon’s stomach squirms.
They look at each other, awkward now. Taeyeon has no idea what she is supposed to do or say and feels like it’s not fair for Jessica to expect her to be the one to do it, so she looks back at her rice. The plants seem to be growing along happily, and she kind of envies how little they have to worry about. Definitely no bizarre conversations with people they don’t understand for them.
Taeyeon has to admit, though. She had let Jessica in. And she did it because she, for whatever reason, wanted to. She had to.
“Why are you here?” Taeyeon asks, this time without accusation in her voice. What would she even accuse Jessica of? Of being a somewhat social adult and checking in on her… ex-colleague? Or, most likely, of breaching their semi companionable agreement of non-interference for the sake of… what?
It’s Jessica’s turn to shrug, and Taeyeon is reminded of how absurdly aggravating she can be.
Taeyeon presses her fingers to her temple and decisively does not sigh in exasperation. She wonders if this is just a thing for foreigners: being in Taeyeon’s life in really absurd ways that make her constantly struggle to understand what is going on.
She doesn’t want to think about how long it’s been since she’s probably decently talked to Tiffany, though, so she forces her mind to veer into another direction. She thinks of the memory she likes to pretend not to rattle her as much as it does.
What Jessica had said - they, Taeyeon and her, not being friends. Wasn’t it true? They have no reason to catch up, no reason to be standing in Taeyeon’s living room doing a bad job of untangling pleasantries from quips.
Unless, of course, they do.
Unless they wanted to?
Taeyeon is not sure she does. But she let her in.
She takes a breath. “How long are you in Korea for?” she asks in the most neutral tone she can muster.
She makes a show of casually walking away from her rice pot and towards her kitchen, and while Jessica seems amused by it, she still follows her.
**
Taeyeon’s attempt at a brownie burns, so they munch on the sweets Jessica had bought at the airport instead.
It’s terribly stilted and awkward, and Jessica wonders for the hundredth time why the hell she’s still there after she’s run out of texts to reply to (and the ones she initiates, increasingly nonsensically: one to Irene, asking her when is the soonest they can get drunk on that Sauvignon Jessica still has in her house in Seoul; one to Minyoung, telling her she appreciates how nice it is to be quiet around her; and one to Soojung, comprised entirely of the emoticons within range of Jessica’s fingers as she mindlessly tapped in frustration while reminding herself she had come here for a reason).
Call it making amends. Or karmic retribution.
As for staying, Jessica is still clueless about why she is. It might be just because of the fact Taeyeon keeps asking her questions.
“How is… you know. Clothes?”
“… How are clothes?” Jessica asks, baffled and not sure whether to laugh.
“Well, like.” Taeyeon doesn’t really look at her, seeming completely aware of how idiotic she sounds. “Making them. Designing. Stuff.”
So her questions are not terribly eloquent. But Jessica can’t ignore how visibly she is making an effort. Almost too much of an effort, because now and again she looks like she’s going to panic about how long they’ve been quiet for, like she’s forgotten that Jessica has never actually been particularly chatty.
Though maybe she has forgotten, Jessica thinks somewhat bitterly.
At one point Jessica moves to get up and get herself water, mourning silently to herself about Taeyeon’s terrible taste in alcohol and wishing direly for some wine. When she does, though, Taeyeon’s face morphs into something weird that Jessica hardly has time to understand before Taeyeon blurts “Soojung!”.
Jessica looks back at her with a raised eyebrow. She wants to burst out laughing at the wide-eyed look Taeyeon is giving her, as if Jessica had been the one to pipe up with something weird.
“Jessica,” Jessica clarifies, pointing to herself just in case Taeyeon’s forgotten and filling up her glass of water.
Taeyeon’s expression turns embarrassed - Jessica wonder if she’ll blush - and gives a little ho ho! laugh that has Jessica simply unable to hold back her own smile. The way Taeyeon scratches her own forehead with a press of her lips is obviously mortified, but dare Jessica say it, quite endearingly so.
“Obviously,” Taeyeon chuckles awkwardly, trying to pretend she didn’t think Jessica had been about to dart out of there. “I meant, you know. How’s Soojung?”
“Still working in your company,” Jessica comments lightly into her glass.
It might have been the wrong thing to say.
Taeyeon draws back instantly, and the tentative easiness they’d set between themselves grows taut like Jessica had laid out a mine on the floor and asked Taeyeon to step on it.
“I know,” Taeyeon replies slowly, eyebrows drawing together. “It’s not like I can just talk to her much, though.”
“Can’t you?” Jessica asks, honing in on the stiffness in Taeyeon’s shoulders and the gruffness in her voice. Taeyeon isn’t talking about conflicting schedules here, and Jessica is reminded very clearly of Soojung confessing to her how alone she felt in the company now. Jessica’s gaze hardens. “Have you even tried?”
Taeyeon does blush now, but not in the way Jessica had been wondering about earlier. It’s not endearing at all, and the frown between her eyebrows deepens as her gaze hardens right back. “Have I tried? What are you trying to say?”
Apparently that’s all it takes.
“I’m not trying to say anything-” Jessica starts, with a half a mind to send them back into the inane conversation about the weather, but it’s too late now.
“Even if I haven’t tried, you don’t know- you can’t possibly know-” Taeyeon hisses.
“I can’t know what, Taeyeon?” Jessica snaps. “I don’t know what goes on with my sister? Is that it?”
“T-that’s not what I was saying-” Taeyeon falters.
“I know plenty well, Taeyeon, what it’s been like for her-” Jessica says, blood boiling.
A scoff. “Oh do you now?” Taeyeon sneers. “Yeah, you know everything about how it’s been for everyone from far away in your meetings-”
“Do not bring my sister or my business into this when it’s all I still have from-”
Taeyeon’s face contorts uglily. “-a lot of time in our Jessica’s hands for her to keep tabs on all of us for sure but none to actually be-”
This is not happening. Jessica’s hands shake, and she half wants to strangle Taeyeon for the very insinuation that- “Like this was all my choice-” her voice chokes, and she has to force herself to continue. “You don’t know-”
“Oh no I could not possibly know, it’s all beyond me, isn’t it?” Taeyeon gives a small dark laugh.
“Apparently it is if this is the type of thing you spout, like any of it-”
Taeyeon interrupts her again. “Oh, but I thought I was supposed to try to talk more?”
“You’re just being intentionally obtuse right now Taeyeon, and it’s not fucking cute-”
“Well, maybe I don’t appreciate you coming to my house and inferring that I’m the one who doesn’t try enough with people! ” Taeyeon hisses.
Jessica’s voice is nearly a shriek now. “Well I don’t think you do, and it’s obvious that it’s an iss-”
Taeyeon’s palm slams down with force onto the kitchen island between them, and Jessica jumps where she’s stood. The startle doesn’t compare to what her chest does at the rawness of Taeyeon’s voice when she shouts shrilly:
“May I remind you of what you said yourself - we’re not fucking friends, Jessica!”
Silence, then.
Right.
Jessica’s ears ring.
Her chest is heaving as she stares at the furious woman in front of her and realizes that she is the one that got herself to be standing in the kitchen of someone she hadn’t been in contact with for years for a reason.
She feels absurd, standing there clutching a two-dollar dessert plastic wrapper so hard in her hand that the plastic whines and trying to swallow the mess of emotions choking her up. Her throat is closing up the way it does before she starts crying, and she sees that Taeyeon is panting hard too.
This is not what she’d wanted when she came here.
She’d wanted- she’d wanted--
She doesn’t know.
“You’re right,” Jessica admits dully, her quiet voice somehow ringing louder in the kitchen than their shouts had been. “We’re not.” She blinks, intent on not letting her eyes water even more - she freaking hates her propensity to cry when arguing. “We’re not friends at all.”
Taeyeon doesn’t take her eyes off her from across the kitchen island, all dark eyes and lips pressed together, nostrils flaring. Jessica has no idea what the look she’s giving her is supposed to mean, and the fact that she doesn’t only reinforces how stupid Jessica had been to think this could've gone any other way.
“Let me be the one to say goodbye for real this time, then.” Jessica forces out. “This was obviously a very bad idea.”
Her voice better not have trembled as hard as her fingers do as she unlatches them from around the stupid dessert wrapper in her grip. She takes a breath through her teeth and turns around to go get her bag and shoes.
God, she’s so stupid.
She should have learned by now not to revisit pages of her life in chapters long closed. She’s not meant to be here, trying to reconnect with any of her members - and especially not the ones she hasn’t talked to and who haven’t talked to her. In her mind (and sometimes in her dreams) Taeyeon’s always stood dead center in the contactless group, holding a big neon green sign flashing WE DON’T TALK. It’s been that way for this long for a reason, surely.
Jessica is angrily shoving her foot into her remaining shoe at the entrance of Taeyeon’s apartment when there’s a touch to her arm. She jolts slightly at the touch and shudders at how it lingers when she stills and counts her breaths. She has to muster all her strength to not let herself cry before turning around.
And there she finds her: a flushed yet blank-faced Taeyeon, standing there looking at her with eyes that have no right to look that broken.
All they can do is stare at each other - Jessica with eyes that, goddamnit, are burning again, and Taeyeon chewing on her bottom lip for dear life as she lets her hand fall from Jessica’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” Taeyeon mutters finally after way too many beats.
Goddamn Jessica’s fucking tear ducts.
At least Taeyeon gives her the decency to look away when Jessica looks up at the ceiling and determinedly does not cry.
“I’m sorry too,” Jessica tells the ceiling with a shaky breath before turning around and walking out the door.
**
Sometimes it feels like the more Taeyeon tries, the worse things get. It doesn’t even feel reminiscent of any specific point in her life anymore, just a jumble of confusing memories of failures and mistakes.
She wonders if it’s her own personal circle of life - try, try, try, finally seem to be getting somewhere, then get lost and get screwed.
She wonders why she still bothers, but she really can’t help herself.
It takes her a week of measuring the water levels in her rice pot, rewinding words in her head, and wondering out loud to her dog why she should do it for her to finally decide that maybe she doesn’t need a reason to.
**
“This is me trying,” Taeyeon says into her phone at last, staring out her window at the city night lights and trying to ignore the scared thrumming of her heart in her ears.
She pictures Jessica somewhere sunny. Wonders how recently those latest Instagram pictures were taken and realizes that she has no more jealousy left for solo glamour shots. Not when she thinks of tired teary eyes looking back at her in her hallway.
“Okay,” comes Jessica’s quiet reply. Taeyeon pictures her in her own living room. Wonders if it’d feel less empty.
“Okay,” Taeyeon echoes. “Talk to you later then.”
She looks at her reflection in the window and wonders if she is breaking the cycle or just playing into it.
**
She's crying over that stupid tub of ruined homegrown rice, and her hair has decidedly not been washed in two days too many, and all Jessica wants to do is kiss her.
Taeyeon has about a moment for her breath to catch halfway through a sniffle before Jessica does it - kisses her, pressing her lips chastely to Taeyeon’s dry plump ones and holding still.
Another sniffle, this time right against her face, and Jessica blinks her eyes open as she draws back slowly, lips sticking to Taeyeon’s for the barest of seconds before they come apart.
There are tears clinging to Taeyeon’s lashes as she blinks mutely at Jessica, a silent hiccup wracking her for a second. Her cheeks are flushed and damp, her nostrils are flaring, and she looks so wretchedly lovely that Jessica has trouble coming to terms with how intensely she wants to wrap her arms around her.
Instead, when Taeyeon blinks and a tear rolls down her cheek, Jessica reaches up and wipes it away with the sleeve of her sweater. When she runs the back of her knuckles gently over Taeyeon’s cheek, Taeyeon’s mouth trembles.
Taeyeon goes to say something, visibly so, but swallows it down and grabs Jessica’s face in her hands instead, pulling her in to press their lips together once more.
There’s a gasp, and Jessica’s fingers clutch to the collar of Taeyeon’s sweatshirt and lets herself be pulled in, lets Taeyeon kiss her urgently, almost angrily, lips tugging and pulling and breath going ragged against Jessica’s mouth.
“Tae,” she breathes, cheeks warm under Taeyeon’s grasp and heart going haywire at the sucking of her lips.
“You can’t take this back,” Taeyeon gruffs against her mouth, voice still hoarse from crying, something heavy seeming to still have her choked up. Jessica’s grip on her collar tightens, pulls her back in to suck on her full bottom lip and kiss her again and again. “Jessica…” she wheezes, warningly, pulling her impossibly closer and wrapping her arms around Jessica’s neck. “Sica.”
Jessica’s name rings out between them, gasped into her mouth when Taeyeon has Jessica’s lips parting under hers, choked after their tongues brush together the slightest bit for the first time, groaned against her cheek when they’re catching their breaths and Jessica finally cradles Taeyeon into the hug she’s wanted to wrap her up into for way too long.
“I won’t,” Jessica promises, nose pressed to Taeyeon’s shoulder and eyes burning with tears. “I’m not taking it back. You can’t make me.”
**
Taeyeon has been growing more and more restless, in this jittery, energetic, and — dare Jessica say it — happy kind of way.
“Will you be around in three weeks?” Taeyeon asks, voice tinny from the phone in Jessica’s hand and face filling the whole screen.
“I think so,” Jessica notes, bringing over her planner from her nightstand and ignoring Taeyeon’s low whistle when the strap of her nightgown slides down her shoulder. She flips through the pages and confirms: “Yeah, I have two fashion shows the week before but then I’m in Seoul mostly free for about a week and a half.”
Taeyeon’s grin is so full and dopey when Jessica looks back at her that the responding pang in Jessica’s chest almost hurts. “Great!” she says, at the same time as Zero barks in the background. Taeyeon, of course, barks back at him.
“Why? Should I be planning for something?” Jessica asks, one hand holding the phone up and the other stroking the pages of her planner idly. She itches to touch, feels that wanting that tingles down to her fingertips, but she’d feel really stupid stroking the screen of her phone - especially while Taeyeon can see it.
“Nope! Well.” Taeyeon pauses. She seems to be considering something. “ Well no, you shouldn’t be planning for anything.”
Sounds suspicious. “What? Tae-”
“Sica,” Taeyeon interrupts, in this half amused half fond tone of voice. “You don’t need to plan for anything. I just,” she stops here, pressing her lips together for a second, “wanted to see you then,” she murmurs after a moment.
“Weeeell,” Jessica drawls, pleased beyond belief and circling a finger over the page of her planner more fully as she stares at the fullness of Taeyeon’s cheek and thinks of pressing her lips to it. “You’re seeing me now,” she decides to tease, because her ego could always have some more of Taeyeon’s stroking. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Oh I am definitely not seeing enough of you,” Taeyeon instantly shoots back with a smirk. “Why don’t you show me more?”
Oh, her voice has no right to sound like that. Jessica slams her planner shut, swallowing against the shiver that runs down her neck at that low tone. “Not gonna happen, Byuntae.”
Taeyeon pouts.
**
Taeyeon’s been preparing for what seems like forever for this.
This time, the moment the stalks had started turning from green to a duller hue, she forced herself not to panic. Forced herself to be patient and let things happen, and try to not mess it up.
It takes about a week for the stalks to go gold from there, and Taeyeon researches again and again what she should be doing even if she’s memorized it by now. Yoona is there when she finally can cut the stalks, carefully, appreciating their golden color and lying them down carefully onto newspaper.
“Zero is going to go insane,” Yoona comments over the barking in the background, watching Taeyeon’s progress with her chin propped up on a hand.
“He’ll get over it,” Taeyeon says, licking her dry lips and carefully cutting the next stalk. Only a couple more to go. “He’d end up eating them.”
“Isn’t that the point of rice? Eating?”
“Not like that,” Taeyeon replies exasperatedly, even though she knows Yoona is just being silly.
Once she has all the stalks wrapped in newspaper, she puts them safely into the lowest heat oven that she had prepared in advance.
“You seem happy, unnie.”
The way Yoona says it, not like it’s a surprise but like it’s been a long time coming, gives Taeyeon one hell of a pang in her chest. “We’ll see,” she says, closing the oven and turning around. “If this works out.”
Yoona shakes her head. “Regardless.”
It’s a foreign concept. Taeyeon lets herself imagine this going terribly wrong, and somehow still being happy. When she finally opens the door to her bedroom to let Zero out and lets him yap at her shins, she’s shocked to find that it might even be true.
Maybe because she could just… try again if it does. And it might not be the end of the world if she has to.
**
Jessica’s wondered, and tried not to wonder, about what it is Taeyeon has up her sleeve.
The romantic in her, the stupid, hopeless, embarrassing one, makes up scenarios that she will never admit to. Of Taeyeon getting them rings - not wedding ones, God… well, not yet… ugh anyway - and giving Jessica a flower (not a bouquet) before sliding the ring on Jessica’s finger, and then sliding her own ring on herself because she is just like that, and Jessica would pout about it and Taeyeon would laugh and kiss her and offer to take it back off so Jessica could put it on for her, too. Jessica wouldn’t let her, of course.
That one has her fiddling with her notebook with a blush evident enough that it has her sister chuckling at her.
There are more scenarios too - some less romantic. Some, when she is lying in bed and hasn’t talked to Taeyeon in days, twist into her insecurities until they’re like thorny vines in her stomach threatening to choke her heart still. Maybe Taeyeon is doing her the courtesy of breaking up with her in person.
She tries to point out to herself that Taeyeon wouldn’t look so happy if that was the case…
… Unless?
She almost texts Taeyeon, if you break up with me i’m killing you but as she grabs her phone she sees her pending notifications - one from Taeyeon’s private instagram account, a selfie in her bedroom, make-up free and with belongings in sight. Jessica likes it before switching to Taeyeon’s public instagram, where she sees a post from a previous day that she’d missed. It’s a picture of a spread of newspapers with a shushing emote as caption.
She almost slaps herself just to force herself to stop theorizing before she goes insane when she really cannot afford to.
She should’ve known, of course, to not expect a single thing because no matter what, Taeyeon would end up going with something else entirely.
**
Taeyeon tries to keep the grin off her face, she really does, as she has Jessica sit on the seldom-used dining table (the couch is her preferred spot for eating) and squeezes her shoulder affectionately.
She pauses, hand still on Jessica’s shoulder, an idea suddenly hitting her.
“Unless… you wanted to do it together?”
Jessica turns her head to look up at her, slightly confused. “Do…?” A pause as she squints suspiciously at Taeyeon. “Yah, Kim Taeyeon. If you’re going to make me dinner, don’t try to make me do the work.”
Taeyeon puffs up her cheeks. “That’s not…” She rolls her eyes. “Fine. Just wait here, princess.”
Jessica bats her eyelashes prettily at her and folds her hand under her chin, propping her elbows on the table as if to say “gladly”, and Taeyeon turns to her kitchen.
She was going to use the cooker for this, but she thinks she should try to make the most of it - why not go all out?
Her focus is extreme. She’d measured the water already, but still makes a show out of doing her mother's trick of putting her hand in the water and measuring it with her knuckles. It’s still correct, as it was the last two times she checked before Jessica got there, so she flicks on the stovetop.
**
“You made rice.”
Taeyeon grins at her.
Jessica looks around the rest of the empty table, then back up at Taeyeon. She doesn’t feel like she needs to elaborate, but after the seconds tick by and Taeyeon keeps looking at her expectantly, it seems like she does. “Only rice.”
“Are you going to try it?” Taeyeon asks, evidently not catching on to Jessica’s hint.
She looks so expectant that Jessica grabs her spoon automatically despite the absurdity. God, maybe Taeyeon just needed some support in her newest attempts at proper cooking. Jessica could do that. “Are you not having any?” Jessica asks.
A flush comes to Taeyeon’s cheeks, bizarrely, and Jessica feels like she’s been transported to another dimension. “There… wasn’t enough. I mean, it’s. You know. That’s it.”
They stare at each other. Taeyeon’s flush grows deeper.
“I want you to have it,” she adds, almost… shyly?
The rice bowl in front of Jessica sits there almost mockingly. Daring her not to be a good girlfriend.
Jessica is suspicious. “Taeyeon, what did you put in here?”
“What?” Startled. “Nothing. Well. D-did you want some sesame oil? I thought…”
Jessica waves her hand to dismiss her. Whatever this is, it’s absurd. She takes a spoonful of rice - there’s not much more than that in the bowl - and shoves it in her mouth before Taeyeon self combusts in front of her.
She chews.
Taeyeon watches.
“Um…” Jessica swallows, carefully, and Taeyeon continues watching intently.
“So?” Taeyeon asks, perked in the chair beside her so attentively.
“It’s… it’s nice. It’s rice.” At Taeyeon’s slowly dimming expression, she hurries to add: “Really good rice!”
God, what the hell is her life? Taeyeon perks up again, then looks between the bowl and Jessica.
She sighs internally and gets another spoonful.
She counts to ten in her head. Swallows by the time she’s up to seven, and really, it’s admirable that she’s gotten this far. “Taeyeon, what the hell is going on?”
Taeyeon’s grin doesn’t dim at her annoyance. “You're having my- well. No. Um. Our rice.”
“Our rice?” Jessica feels a headache looming behind her eyes. She was actually hungry before she came over, and wasn't expecting a puzzle to solve to get to have a meal.
Taeyeon breaks their eye contact, dropping her gaze to the table and tapping her fingers on the table softly. She turns serious, quiet. The loveliest puzzle Jessica's seen, if frustratingly unclear at times. “Do you know how long it takes for a rice crop to be ready for harvest?” Taeyeon asks.
“Taeyeon—”
“Four months, usually. If all goes well. Maybe six.” She looks up at Jessica for a moment, then breaks their gaze again. “You know my first attempt didn’t go so well. So. If we count that… It’s been nine months.”
Jessica looks at Taeyeon - really looks at her. The tips of her ears are red, and she has this sheepish nervous expression that means that what is happening right now matters.
It makes sense now, of course, and Jessica can’t hold back the bark of a laugh that escapes her.
Taeyeon's head whips up with a nearly betrayed gaze, cheeks still flushed, and Jessica desperately tries to stop laughing, one hand dropping the spoon to cover her mouth and the other dropping to pat Taeyeon’s knee in semi comfort. “No, I’m sorry, I-” she laughs again despite her best efforts, then takes a breath.
Taeyeon looks downright grumpy now.
“Taengoo,” Jessica coos affectionately, cheeks hurting from the smile left behind by her laugh and by Taeyeon’s incredibly convoluted ways. She lets go of Taeyeon’s knee to cup the back of her neck instead, scratching softly at the hair there. “You cooked your rice for me?”
That flush on her cheeks really is oh so lovely. “Our rice.”
Jessica laughs again, delighted. Presses a kiss to a soft, heated cheek. “We should share it, then.”
“But you ate all of it.”
“Well, there wasn’t that much of it.”
Taeyeon is obviously exhasperated, and Jessica laughs.
"I guess I'll grow more for next time," Taeyeon notes with a roll of her eyes and a lopsided grin.
"Great," Jessica mutters fondly. She wonders how many months a next time would take, and has to kiss the corner of Taeyeon's grin at her certainty. A ring suddenly seems meaningless in comparison to this. "Now order me some actual dinner."
**
Jessica re-reads the printed instructions the store worker had given her, uncertain. She’s been fluent in Korean all her life and still had to google a couple of the gardening terms. “These seem intended for, like, mass production. Do I need to do it like this?”
“If you are looking to have only one or two indoor ones, may I suggest our potted seedlings? You would only need to tend to them.”
Jessica shakes her head instantly. “No, no.” She resolutely adds the sunflower seeds to her basket. “She has to plant them herself. I can help.”
The store worker just nods. “You can feel free to call us with any questions. For bouquet arrangements, you only need to space the seeds closer together.”
Jessica writes it down on her phone notes, along with the delivery time they’d agreed on for the pots, cheerfully thinking of the end of the days for those awful tubs Taeyeon’s been using.
Once she’s at checkout, tapping mindlessly on the counter, she remembers: “Actually, can you gift wrap those?”
The clerk nods. “Gift for a special someone?” He gestures at the display of gift package options.
Jessica stares at the options. There is a quite lovely dark red one with a silky bow. She thinks of the woman who squats by her used plastic tubs of plants and pokes at dirt with her bare hands. The same woman who’d cried when her dog had jumped into one of the tubs and destroyed her spices corner because she’d wanted to cook Jessica something with them before her next long trip. The same woman who’d been laughing the other morning about a poop emoticon hat.
Her ex-coworker. Her ex-leader. Ex-acquaintance. There would be a lot of ways to describe what she has been and what she is, and why Jessica needs to make this gesture.
Jessica taps the ugliest package option instead with an amused smile. “Yes. A gift for a… friend.”