Chapter Text
"This was the fourth time this month."
Nayeon sits at the edge of the bed, her back turned to the door, spine straight in the particular way of someone holding herself together by sheer will. The room behind her is dim, lit only by the lamp on the nightstand, its yellow glow pooling across the comforter and catching the edge of an untouched dinner tray someone had carried up here hours ago, hoping. Her shadow stretches long and crooked across the hardwood, bending where the floor meets the wall. She doesn't turn around when she hears the door open. She doesn't have to. She knows the sound of that door, the particular hesitation before it clicks shut, the way Jennie always pauses on the threshold like she's bracing herself for something.
"I had to move my plans with my sister because you said you would be here," Nayeon says, still facing away. Her voice is even, controlled, the kind of controlled that comes right before it isn't anymore. "You promised. Twice. On the phone, and on that video call." She finally turns toward the door, slow, deliberate, like turning costs her something. "And then, instead of telling me yourself, you had Sooyoung-unnie call me to tell me your lousy excuse."
She turns fully now, the motion no longer measured but raw, urgent, like she can't bear sitting still another second. Her eyes are glassy, rimmed red at the edges, but no tears have fallen yet. She'd been holding them back the entire evening — through the reheated dinner she didn't end up eating, through the silence of an apartment built for two but occupied by one, through the long minutes of staring at her phone and willing it to ring with something other than an apology relayed through a third party. She remembers exactly how that call had gone. Sooyoung's voice, careful and apologetic in the particular way of someone used to delivering bad news on behalf of people too cowardly to deliver it themselves. She's so sorry, Nayeon-ah. The schedule ran over. She wanted me to tell you she'll make it up to you. As if a stranger's voice, however kind, could stand in for the one Nayeon actually wanted to hear. Nayeon remembers, too, exactly what she'd been doing when the call came through — standing at the stove with a wooden spoon in hand, stirring a sauce she'd looked up specifically because Jennie had once mentioned, months ago, that she missed the version her mother used to make. She remembers setting the spoon down very carefully on the counter, the sauce still simmering, and saying, "Oh. Okay. Thank you for letting me know, unnie," in a voice so calm it had frightened her a little, because calm, for Nayeon, has never once meant fine.
She'd turned the stove off after that. Let the sauce sit, cooling, congealing slightly at the edges of the pot, while she set two places at the table anyway, out of some stubborn refusal to admit, yet, that the evening was already over.
"Did you eat?" Nayeon asks now, the question slipping out before she can stop it, equal parts accusation and concern. "At the fitting. Did you even eat?"
Jennie blinks, thrown by the sudden shift. "I — a little. There wasn't much time."
"Of course there wasn't."
"Look, I get that you have your career all lined up for you," she continues, voice tightening. "I get that. I—I'm your biggest fan, Jennie. I will always be your number one fan. But this—this—I don't think this is fair."
Jennie stands by the door, coat still on, one hand still gripping the strap of her bag like she forgot to put it down. She's already crying. Not loudly, not the kind of crying that announces itself, but the quiet, exhausted kind that comes from someone who has been holding something in for hours and finally let it go the second she stepped past the threshold. Her makeup, still mostly intact from whatever fitting had kept her, smudges faintly at the corners of her eyes, dark crescents forming beneath them.
Her schedule had been brutal all week. With the world tour two weeks out, every hour of her day had been swallowed by something — wardrobe fittings that ran an hour over because a hem needed redoing twice, label meetings about merchandise timelines, last-minute choreography revisions Lisa insisted on at the worst possible moments, interviews that dragged because some reporter wanted one more soundbite about the tour's opening city. Nayeon had known, going in, that being with Jennie during this particular stretch would be close to impossible. She'd told herself that, repeated it to herself like a mantra every time a dinner got pushed.
But Jennie had promised. She'd said it clearly, on the phone, the kind of clear that doesn't leave room for misunderstanding — I'll be there, Nayeon-ah, I swear. Tonight's ours. BLACKPINK can wait one night. That BLACKPINK would be relegated to second place, just for one evening, and Nayeon would have the entirety of her attention. She'd repeated it again, two days later, on a video call where Jennie's face had filled the screen, tired but earnest, and she'd held up three fingers like a child making a promise. Pinky promise, except I don't have a free hand. Three fingers. Scouts’ Honor. Same thing.
"Nay—babe. I'm so, so sorry," Jennie whimpers, her hands trembling at her sides. There's fear in her eyes, audible in the way her voice cracks down the middle, and something in Nayeon's chest answers it despite everything — some old, stubborn part of her that has never once, in nine years of knowing this woman, been able to watch her cry without wanting to fix it. "I really, really wanted to be here. The meeting ran late, I had to do a last-minute fitting. I tried, Nayeon-ah. I did everything to get out as fast as I could—"
"But you didn't do enough."
The words land sharper than Nayeon intends, and her own tears finally spill, hot and sudden, tracing down a face that had been composed just minutes ago. She doesn't wipe them away. She lets them fall, because some part of her thinks Jennie should see exactly what four months of almosts and rescheduled dinners and phone calls relayed through someone else has cost her. Four months of canceling plans with friends who'd stopped asking why. Four months of telling her sister, again and again, that something had come up, without ever being able to say what, or who.
"Do you know what I told my sister?" Nayeon's voice wavers, thin and brittle. "I told her I had a work thing. Again. She didn't even ask this time, Jennie. She just said 'okay' and hung up, because she's stopped expecting anything different from me anymore."
At the door, Jennie's knees buckle, and she lowers herself to the floor without seeming to decide to, the coat pooling awkwardly around her, her bag sliding off her shoulder and landing somewhere near her feet with a soft thud she doesn't seem to register. "Nayeon-ah. Please. Let me make it up to you. Just give me this one more chance, please. I'm begging you."
Nayeon stands. Something in her chest splinters further at the sight — Jennie, on her knees in an expensive coat she'd worn to whatever meeting kept her so long, mascara bleeding faintly at the corners of her eyes, looking smaller than Nayeon has ever seen her look on any stage, in any photograph, in any of the thousand images strangers have taken of her face and turned into something to be admired from a distance.
"I said I was okay being in the background," Nayeon says, and her voice wavers now too, the anger thinning into something closer to grief. "Being the 'friend' who was always there for you. But three months, Jennie. I've been by your side through everything." She presses a hand briefly against her own sternum, as if she can hold the ache in place by force. "And I get it — you can't just up and tell the world you're secretly dating your best friend from high school. I get that. I'm not dense. I know you can't do that."
She takes a breath that shudders on the way in, the kind of breath that doesn't quite finish before the next sentence forces its way out.
"But there are things you can do. Things like show up to the dinner we've rescheduled four times. Call me yourself. Tell me you're running late. Tell me anything, Jennie, anything at all, instead of letting Sooyoung-unnie be the one who has to look me in the eye — well, not even in the eye, on the phone — and apologize for you." Her voice breaks fully now, cracking down the same fault line as Jennie's had moments before. "I'm just—I'm tired, Jennie. I'm so tired."
She starts to walk past, toward the kitchen, toward her bag slung over the back of a chair, toward anywhere that isn't this doorway and the woman crumpled in front of it. Jennie, still on her knees, reaches up and catches Nayeon's hand as she passes, fingers closing weakly around her wrist. Nayeon pulls it away — reluctant, the kind of reluctant that comes from a body that wants to stay even as the mind insists on leaving — and keeps walking, though her steps slow, just barely, as if some part of her is hoping to be caught again. Jennie pleads after her with her whole body, twisting where she kneels to keep facing her, hands outstretched.
"Babe, don't do this, please." Jennie's voice climbs, frantic now, edged with something close to panic. "I'll do anything. I'll call in sick. I'll tell them I need a break. The tour isn't even for another two weeks, it should be fine. We can go away. We can stay in. Anything. Nayeon-ah, please, just — just don't walk away from me right now."
Nayeon looks back at her once, grabbing her bag off the kitchen table, fingers closing around the strap a little too tightly, knuckles paling. "You could have done that before, too, Jennie. But you didn't."
The sound that comes out of Jennie then isn't quite a sob — it's something rawer, something that breaks open completely, a sound Nayeon has only heard a handful of times in nine years, usually reserved for funerals and the worst kind of phone calls. "No. Nayeon-ah. Babe, please—"
"I'll be at Jeongyeon's." Nayeon's voice is quieter now, stripped of the heat from before, replaced by something flatter, more tired than angry, the kind of tired that settles into bone. "I'll—I'll see you around, Jennie. Call me when you've decided what you want to do with this. With us."
She makes it three steps toward the door before Jennie catches her wrist again, this time with both hands, gripping like she's afraid letting go will mean letting go of something much larger than a wrist. When Nayeon dares to look back, Jennie's head is bowed, shoulders shaking with sobs that have, by now, consumed her entire body. Her hair has come loose from whatever style it had been pinned into for the fitting, strands sticking to the wet of her cheeks.
"I would quit everything, Nayeon."
Nayeon's breath catches. The apartment goes very quiet — the kind of quiet where even the refrigerator's hum seems to pause out of respect.
Jennie lifts her head only on the word Nayeon, and her eyes — red, swollen, stripped of every ounce of the composure she usually wears like armor in front of cameras — meet Nayeon's. Something in Nayeon breaks at the sight of it, some final defense she hadn't realized she was still holding, some last wall built specifically to survive moments like this one.
All of Jennie's words come rushing back to her at once. The phone call. The video call. The three fingers held up like a child's promise. And now this — I would quit everything — and Nayeon knows, with the clarity of someone who has loved this woman since they were sixteen and trading notes folded into paper cranes under desks, since before either of them had any concept of what a stage or a stadium or eighty-nine million followers could mean, that this is guilt talking. Jennie is trying to atone for every cancelled dinner in one impossible sentence, trying to offer up the one thing she has nothing left to give, because it's the only currency she thinks might be enough.
Nayeon knows she would never actually go through with it. Knows these words were never meant to survive the night they were spoken in, that come morning, the tour will still be two weeks away, the contracts still signed, the years of training and sacrifice still sitting heavy and immovable behind every choice Jennie has ever made. Surely Jennie can't be that reckless. She's spent her entire adult life, every ounce of youth she had to give, building something too enormous to walk away from on a whim, in the middle of an argument, on her knees on a hardwood floor.
Nayeon exhales, long and slow, and the bag slips from her fingers, landing softly at her feet.
"Are you an idiot, Jennie?" Her voice has no anger left in it now, just exhaustion threaded with disbelief, and something gentler underneath both. "Quit everything? So what, all of this was for nothing? Twelve years of training, every showcase, every sleepless night before a comeback — for nothing? I didn't ask you to quit anything. I am your supporter, Jennie. I am just asking for your time. Or at least the decency to tell me honestly if you can make it to a dinner or not."
"I'm sorry," Jennie whispers, broken and down, the fight gone out of her entirely now, replaced by something hollowed and small. "I just—I don't know what to do, Nayeon-ah. I don't know how to be everything to everyone and still have anything left for you, and I hate that. I hate that you're the one who ends up with nothing."
And the part of Nayeon that loves her — the part that wins, every single time, the part of her that swallows pride whole and asks nothing in return — kneels down on the hardwood and wraps her arms around Jennie's shaking frame. Jennie collapses into the embrace completely, her crying growing louder, more open, like the warmth of Nayeon's arms has given her permission to finally let everything out that she's been holding back since the meeting that ran long, since the fitting that ran longer, since the moment she realized, somewhere in the back of a car on the way home, that she was about to disappoint the one person in her life who'd never once asked her for anything.
They stay like that for a long time, kneeling on the floor by the door, neither of them speaking, the dinner on the table going cold for the fourth time this month. Nayeon can feel Jennie's heartbeat against her own chest, too fast, still racing from the crying, and she rubs slow circles against her back the way she used to when they were teenagers and Jennie would call her at two in the morning, overwhelmed by a future neither of them could have predicted.
"I'm not going anywhere," Nayeon murmurs eventually, into the crown of Jennie's head. "I'm tired. I'm allowed to be tired. But I'm not leaving you over a dinner, Jennie."
Jennie's only answer is a fresh wave of tears, quieter now, more relieved than devastated.
—
At some point — Nayeon couldn't say exactly when, only that her arm had gone numb beneath Jennie's weight and the lamp had burned low enough to flicker — they migrate to the couch, neither of them quite deciding to, just shifting there together as exhaustion finally outpaces emotion. Jennie falls asleep first, curled small despite her height, one hand still loosely fisted in the fabric of Nayeon's sleeve even in sleep, as though some unconscious part of her is still afraid Nayeon might leave the moment she lets go.
Nayeon eases her hand free, gently, careful not to wake her, and pulls a throw blanket from the back of the couch over Jennie's shoulders before settling into the chaise beside it. She doesn't sleep right away. She watches the slow rise and fall of Jennie's shoulders, the way her face, finally unguarded, looks younger than it does under stage lights or camera flashes — looks, in fact, exactly like it did at sixteen, asleep at the back of a classroom during a study period, a half-finished essay on idol trainee life crumpled under one cheek. Just a tired girl. Just Jennie, before any of the rest of it.
Eventually, sleep takes her too.
—
Nayeon wakes to the smell of butter.
It takes her a moment to place it — the unfamiliar weight of morning light through the curtains, the stiffness in her neck from a chaise that was never built for actual sleeping, the absence of a blanket she vaguely remembers pulling over someone else the night before. She sits up slowly, blinking against the brightness, rubbing at the crick in her neck, and that's when she hears it: the soft sizzle of something hitting a hot pan, the clink of a spatula against metal, the low hum of a song Jennie always sings under her breath when she thinks no one's listening — something old, something from a drama soundtrack they used to watch together in middle school, back when neither of them had any idea what either of their lives would become.
The dinner table, she notices as she crosses the threshold into the kitchen, has been cleared. The plates from the night before are gone, presumably washed and put away sometime while she slept — she hadn't even heard the water running.
Jennie is at the stove, apron tied loosely around her waist, an oven mitt half-shoved onto one hand as though she'd abandoned the task of putting it on properly the moment something needed flipping. Her hair is pulled back in a messy knot, a few strands escaping near her temple and sticking faintly to her skin from the steam. There's a faint redness still lingering under her eyes from the night before — the only visible evidence left of it, besides the silence that still hangs a little too carefully between them, softer now than the silence of the evening prior, but present all the same.
Jennie lifts her head the instant she hears Nayeon's footsteps on the tile, and without a word, she sets down the spatula, picks up a mug from beside the coffee machine, and pours. Steam curls up from the cup, the kind of steam that says this coffee has been sitting, brewed and waiting, for the past several minutes — timed, Nayeon realizes, for exactly when she might wake, which means Jennie had been listening for her, somewhere in the back of her mind, the entire time she cooked.
Jennie adds a single cube of sugar, then a teaspoon of milk from a carton she frowns faintly at — I'll need to buy more of this is written all over her face, though she says nothing about it — and slides the mug across the counter toward Nayeon. She doesn't wait for a response. She turns back to the cooktop, sets another hash brown into the pan, and the kitchen fills with that low, satisfying sizzle again.
Nayeon wraps both hands around the mug, letting the heat seep into her palms, and watches Jennie's back for a moment. The line of her shoulders, the careful, almost reverent way she handles the eggs like getting them wrong would mean something larger than a ruined breakfast — like this particular plate of food has to do the work of an apology too big for words.
Jennie has known, for years now, exactly how Nayeon likes her English breakfast — everything except the beans, which Nayeon has hated since she was a teenager for reasons she's never been able to articulate beyond they're wrong, somehow, the texture is wrong. The bacon, crisped just past golden, never limp. The toast, lightly buttered, cut on the diagonal because Nayeon once mentioned, half-joking, that diagonal toast tastes better, and Jennie had taken it as gospel ever since. The eggs, soft in the center, never overdone. The sausage, browned evenly on all sides. Jennie wipes her brow with the back of her wrist as she plates everything, arranging it with a care that seems almost disproportionate to a breakfast, and slides the plate across the counter, followed by a set of cutlery wrapped neatly in a paper napkin.
She doesn't sit. She stands there, waiting, eyes anywhere but on Nayeon's face — on the plate, on the counter, on the faint scratch in the granite neither of them has ever bothered to get fixed.
"Tell me if the taste is lacking," she says, voice quiet, almost businesslike, the kind of tone people use to keep their hands from shaking. "It's still hot, so I can still make adjustments."
Nayeon glances at the clock on the microwave. 8:42. She knows, without having to ask, that Jennie has a prep meeting with JTBC at nine — the one about the reality show pitch her team had been buzzing about for weeks, the one Sooyoung had mentioned in passing as a "good opportunity for visibility outside the group." She looks back up at Jennie, who is still staring resolutely at the plate as though it might do something unexpected if left unsupervised.
"You have a meeting at nine," Nayeon says. She says it not as an accusation but as something closer to concern, because despite everything — despite last night, despite the countless cancelled dinners and the rescheduled plans and the tears on the hardwood floor — she loves Jennie, and she doesn't want Jennie's career derailed because she let herself get too emotional the night before.
"I had Sooyoung-unnie cancel it." Jennie's eyes are still on the plate, fingers worrying at the strap of the apron. "I told her I was feeling sick."
Nayeon finally takes a bite, and Jennie's whole posture shifts — not dramatically, just a small, almost involuntary lift in her shoulders, like she'd been holding her breath since she set the plate down. It's exactly how Nayeon likes it, every element calibrated precisely the way it should be, the kind of precision that only comes from someone paying very close attention for a very long time. Nayeon lets a small smile show, the first real one since the argument, and Jennie, catching it, smiles back, tentative but real, the kind of smile that seems to ease something tight in her chest. Gummy and so completely Jennie that Nayeon is suddenly taken back to when they were twenty-three, when they signed the contract to lease this very apartment together and Nayeon had then made an internal pact that she will, under no circumstance, be the reason for that smile to fade.
"You should have gone to your meet—"
"No." The word comes quickly, almost too quickly, like she's been waiting for the chance to say it. "It's not that important anyway. My team says they just added me to the casting to create buzz for the show. I was never the first option." She pulls a second plate toward herself, scoops only a small portion of hash browns and a few tomato slices onto it, the kind of plate that says she's not really planning to eat, just to keep her hands occupied while she sits across from Nayeon. "Plus, it really conflicts with our schedule and practices anyway. I think I'll decline it, down the line, once the dust settles a little."
She sets the pan in the sink, runs water over it briefly, and finally turns to lean against the counter across from Nayeon, arms loosely crossed, watching her eat with an attentiveness that would be unsettling from anyone else.
"How was your sleep?" she asks. "Do you want to go out today?"
Nayeon knows this rhythm. Knows that Jennie rarely gets to do mornings like this — her schedule almost never permits it, not with the tour bearing down on every available hour — and that when she does carve out the time, it means something. It's a small, quiet apology stitched into eggs and coffee and a freed-up morning, an offering of the one resource Jennie has the least control over, which is time itself. And it's a welcome one. Honestly, Nayeon's been needing time like this with her for longer than she'd admit out loud, longer than the four months of cancelled dinners would suggest.
"Slept fine," she says, picking at her hash browns with the edge of her fork. "Considering the chaise isn't exactly built for sleeping."
"Let’s buy a better one. Next time." Jennie says it like a vow, half-serious, half-teasing, the corner of her mouth twitching upward.
"Don't change the subject." Nayeon huffs out something close to a laugh, surprising herself with it. "Do you want to watch a movie, then? Or anything? Don't you have practice around three?"
Jennie shakes her head. "Lisa said it's just a choreo clean-up. She’s working with the team on it already. Not a full practice, really. There are some additional parts added to 'How You Like That' for the concert, but nothing too grand. I'll be fine, I promise. A real promise this time."
The word promise lands a little heavier between them than either of them probably intends, and a flicker of something crosses Jennie's face — recognition, maybe, of exactly what she's just said and what it might cost her if she breaks it again. But Nayeon only nods, choosing, for now, to let it sit as a small olive branch rather than another weight to carry.
Nayeon sets her fork down for a moment, studying Jennie across the counter — the apron still tied loose at her waist, the oven mitt finally abandoned somewhere near the sink, the careful, hopeful way she's watching for a verdict on a breakfast she already knows is good. "You didn't have to do all this, you know."
"I wanted to." Jennie says it simply, without hesitation, like there was never any other option on the table. "I keep thinking about how I should've just told you myself last night. On the phone. Not — not through Sooyoung-unnie. I had the time to call, Nayeon-ah. I just didn't, because I knew if I heard your voice I'd cry in the middle of the fitting room, and then everyone would ask what was wrong, and I didn't — I didn't want to explain you to people who don't get to know about you yet."
Nayeon's chest tightens at that, the admission landing somewhere softer than an apology, closer to a confession. "That's not a good enough reason."
"I know." Jennie's voice is quiet. "It's the truth, though."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
A faint, rueful smile tugs at the corner of Jennie's mouth. "No. I guess they're not."
For a moment neither of them says anything, the only sound the soft tick of the wall clock and the occasional clink of Nayeon's fork against the plate. Then Jennie straightens, pushing off from the counter, like she's decided the conversation has gone exactly as deep as it needs to for a Tuesday morning.
"So? Movie? Lunch outside?"
Jennie's whole face brightens, the kind of brightening that makes the redness under her eyes from the night before look like it belongs to someone else entirely, someone from a different morning. "Let's do both."
—
The drive to the theater takes them through a part of the city Nayeon doesn't usually see in daylight — the streets quieter than she expects for a weekday late morning, sun cutting low and gold through the windshield, catching dust motes that drift lazily across the dashboard. Jennie sits in the passenger seat, sunglasses pushed up into her hair more for the aesthetic than any actual need given the overcast patches drifting in and out, phone angled toward herself, thumb hovering over the shutter button.
"Smile," she says, not really asking, and Nayeon obliges out of habit more than enthusiasm, glancing sideways at the camera for half a second before her eyes return to the road. The shutter sound clicks twice, then a third time for good measure.
"You're going to get us in an accident," Nayeon mutters, though there's no real bite to it, just the residual fondness of someone who's said this exact sentence a hundred times before.
"We're at a red light."
"That's not the point."
Jennie laughs — a real one, unguarded, nothing like the practiced laugh she gives during interviews, the one that crinkles her whole face instead of just her eyes — and lowers the phone, only to lift it again moments later when Nayeon reaches for her coffee in the cup holder. Nayeon doesn't notice. She's looking out at a street vendor setting up an awning, distracted, mid-sip, completely unaware that the moment is being preserved somewhere just outside her line of sight. She doesn't notice when Jennie catches her mid-laugh either, head tipped back slightly at something Nayeon had said about the vendor's crooked sign — he's going to lose that whole thing in the next strong wind, watch — eyes nearly closed with the force of her own amusement. She doesn't notice the photo taken outside the theater lobby, where she's pointing — disdain written plainly across her face — at an oversized plush figure, a Labubu, of all things, mounted near the concession stand, something about its proportions clearly offending her on a personal level, the eyes too large, the limbs too short.
She'll find out about all of these later. Six photos, in total, where she is the only one in frame. Jennie, somewhere just outside it, watching, the way she's always watched, even before either of them had a word for what that watching meant.
The seventh photo, the last one in the sequence, is of their hands — Nayeon's resting loosely on the armrest between their seats in the dim of the theater, Jennie's laid gently over it, fingers slotted into the spaces between Nayeon's own, the screen's glow casting faint blue light across their joined knuckles.
After the movie, lunch is unremarkable in the best possible way — a small restaurant Jennie picked because it was unlikely to have anyone who'd recognize her, tucked down an alley with mismatched chairs and a menu handwritten on a chalkboard, a corner booth at the back, a shared plate of something neither of them finishes because they spend more time talking than eating. Jennie recounts, with theatrical exasperation, a story about Minyoung, their head choreographer, insisting an entire eight-count of choreography be reworked the week before the tour for reasons that, as far as Jennie can tell, amount to it felt better in my head. She does an impression of Minyoung's face mid-explanation, which Nayeon has no foundational basis of, brows furrowed, hands moving in sharp, decisive gestures that don't actually correspond to anything coherent, and Nayeon laughs harder than the story probably warrants, mostly because of how committed Jennie is to the bit.
"And then," Jennie continues, leaning forward over the table, "she made the entire group run it back four times before she admitted she liked the original version better."
"Four times? You're joking, right?"
"I wish I were joking. Four times, babe. I nearly threw my water bottle at her."
"You did not, though."
"I wanted to."
Nayeon shakes her head, smiling around the rim of her glass, and for a moment, the heaviness of the previous night feels distant, almost like something that happened to two other people. "How does the rest of the group feel about her, generally? Or is it just you who wants to commit violence?"
"Oh, everyone wants to. It's a group activity. We've got a system now — whoever's closest to snapping has to mouth it to the rest of us so we can brace." Jennie mimes the motion, mouthing an exaggerated I'm going to kill her with wide, theatrical eyes, and Nayeon nearly chokes on her water laughing.
"That's deeply unprofessional."
"We're professionals who are also, deep down, extremely tired women in our very late twenties. The two aren't mutually exclusive." Jennie steals a piece of Nayeon's toast off the shared plate without asking, the way she's been doing since they were sixteen, and Nayeon doesn't bother protesting, just watches her chew with a faint, fond exasperation that's been a fixture of their friendship for almost a decade now. "I think Minyoung-unnie's used to us hating on her by now. I think she just likes to keep us longer."
Jennie watches her with an expression Nayeon doesn't quite catch — something soft, something a little wondering, like she's recalibrating, in real time, how much of this — the laughing, the easy unguarded version of Nayeon across a chipped wooden table — she's been missing out on these past four months without fully realizing it.
By the time they get home, the afternoon light has gone soft and orange through the windows, and Jennie, true to her word, makes it to the practice room by three for the choreo clean-up, leaving Nayeon curled on the couch with a book she doesn't end up reading, distracted instead by the quiet contentment of an afternoon that, for once, went exactly as planned. When Jennie returns a few hours later — hair damp from a quick shower at the studio, sweatshirt swallowing her frame, smelling faintly of the studio's industrial soap — they order in, watch half of something neither of them is paying close attention to, and fall asleep tangled together on the couch they'd occupied so differently the night before, Jennie's head tucked beneath Nayeon's chin, one of Nayeon's hands resting absently in her hair.
It's only after they've gone to bed properly — Jennie's breathing already evening out into sleep beside her, one arm slung loosely across Nayeon's waist — that Nayeon reaches for her phone out of habit, scrolling without much purpose, and stops.
There's a notification. A familiar icon, the swirl of pink and white that belongs to the account she's followed for years, long before she ever imagined it would belong, in part, to her own life now. She blinks, scrolls up, checks the handle again, half-expecting it to be the practice account Jennie sometimes uses to post unfiltered, half-blurry selfies meant for an audience of exactly one. It isn't. It's jennierubyjane — the public one. The one with the verified checkmark, the millions of followers, the one vetted, curated, and approved by an entire PR team before a single pixel goes live, the one Sooyoung personally reviews before anything is posted, the one that has never, in the entire history of the account, featured a single unblurred photo of anyone who isn't a fellow idol, a designer, or a brand ambassador.
The post is a carousel. Seven photos.
Nayeon, mid-sip of coffee, the streetlight catching the side of her face, completely unaware. Nayeon laughing at the crooked vendor sign, head tipped back. Nayeon pointing at the oversized plush with naked disdain, brows drawn together in mock offense. Nayeon, unaware, again and again, captured in the in-between moments she didn't know were being kept, didn't know were worth keeping. And last, their hands, intertwined in the dark of the theater, fingers laced together like something neither of them had thought twice about.
The caption sits beneath it, simple, no hashtags, no careful PR phrasing, nothing that reads like it passed through a team of people whose entire job is managing exactly this kind of risk:
i'd rather have u than anything in this world 💗🌈
Nayeon stares at the screen for a long moment, thumb hovering over it without pressing anything, the soft glow lighting up the dark of the bedroom, throwing pale light across Jennie's sleeping face beside her. Beside her, Jennie sleeps on, undisturbed, one hand loosely curled near Nayeon's hip the way it always finds its way there by morning, utterly unaware of what she's just done, or perhaps — Nayeon considers, watching the slow, even rise of her chest — entirely aware, and choosing it anyway, somewhere between the theater and home, somewhere in the quiet certainty of an afternoon that had, for once, gone exactly as it was supposed to.
She doesn't wake her. She sets the phone face-down on the nightstand, slow and careful, and lies back against the pillow, staring up at the ceiling while something unfamiliar — not quite fear, not quite joy, some tangled version of both, something with teeth and something with warmth in equal measure — settles into her chest and refuses to leave. She thinks of the comment count already climbing, somewhere beyond the dark screen of her phone, of headlines that will exist by morning that didn't exist tonight, of Sooyoung's phone lighting up at this very moment with notifications she has no idea are coming. She thinks, too, of three fingers held up on a video call, of a promise that, for the first time in four months, was kept without her having to ask twice.
Outside, the city keeps moving, indifferent to the eighty-nine million people who will wake up tomorrow to a caption that changes everything. But for now, in the dark of this one room, there is only the sound of Jennie's quiet breathing, steady and unbothered, and the weight of a choice that has already, irreversibly, been made — not in anger, not in fear, but in the kind of quiet, deliberate certainty that Nayeon is only now beginning to understand had probably been there all along, waiting for the right morning to surface.