who i am.
‘you guys are so nauseating.”
Yuri laughs and looks at yoona. “we really are, aren’t we?”
Yoona makes a face. “yea, absolutely disgusting.”
Donghae waits for them to stop, but they don’t.
“you guys are each other’s friggin' moons or something.”
Yuri manages to take her eyes off yoona.
“Moons?”
“yea, you do nothing but revolve around the other,” donghae explains, making a circle in the air with his finger.
Yuri smiles harder, leaning into yoona’s ear.
“hi moon.”
Yoona pulls her closer and neither sees donghae roll his eyes and walk away.
“hey moon.”
*
{elsewhere, else-when}
krystal rounds the corner of the club, mumbling under her breath about Jessica pulling the older sister card, “…thinks she can boss me around…”
the place is fairly dead for somewhere that’s supposedly the biggest club in the city. Krystal has seen honor society parties more alive than this. But whatever, she just needs to get jessica’s stupid jacket.
Next to the coat check counter there’s a girl in a very pretty shimmery dress and high heels gripping her phone, hunched over it desperately. The conversation doesn’t sound like anything she wants to be a part of and she quickly passes the number over to the staff. But the girl isn’t really trying to be private with how loud she’s talking.
“I love you, okay, I do, I do,” this girl is practically begging. It’s so pathetic. “just stay where you are, I’ll be right there.”
Krystal rolls her eyes and thankfully gets handed jessica’s jacket before she can hear more. But the phone call ends and they both turn to leave.
“are you fucking kidding me?” krystal says, staring right into tiffany’s eyes.
no one will ever get the chance to say they truly, genuinely startled tiffany hwang like krystal did at that moment.
But tiffany is quick to recover.
“didn’t your sister ever teach you eavesdropping is kinda a shitty trait?”
krystal may have some of jessica’s features but this face is new to tiffany. this sneer, this fury isn’t something tiffany has seen.
“i fucking knew it, I fucking knew you were a lying, cheating piece of-”
tiffany cuts her off, matching krystal’s vehemence, or upstaging it because tiffany’s voice is so cold and absolutely serious. “you do not know what you’re talking about.”
“fuck you! I heard you. I heard how you fucking said it.”
and again krystal manages to shut tiffany up, choke the words like her hand was at tiffany’s throat.
“I love you,” krystal repeats it, “I do, I do.”
tiffany tries to take a breath, muster up something, anything.
“stay the fuck away from my sister, Stephanie.”
Seconds pass. Tiffany gets a vague thought of running after krystal, of calling Jessica before krystal can get to her, of just moving. She doesn’t. instead, she remembers promising yuri that she’d be right over and it’s the only thing that makes her legs work.
*
Tiffany opens the door, with the keys she made a very long time ago, and she wishes she hadn’t. she wishes she didn’t have to feel some obligation towards yuri. She doesn’t want to be the one to keep saving her.
“yessss, now it’s a party!”
it’s not a party, at all. Tiffany looks around and for the most part, the apartment is spotless. It’s surely not post or mid-party.
“why am I here?” tiffany asks, flinging her arm up in front of her. she’s not actually sure if she means the apartment itself or yuri.
Yuri’s sloppy grin turns into a sloppy pout, her hand clumsily pushing hair from her face. Her voice is sullen in the party girl kind of way, where the fun of being drunk fades and all there’s left is a lot of emotions and nausea.
“I don’t need an excuse to need you, remember?”
Tiffany scoffs out a defeated laugh. She wants to mention something about sacrifice, specifically, what she just possibly sacrificed by coming here. And for what? Who was even yuri to tiffany anymore?
“to see me,” tiffany corrects her, pointlessly, really. Because what was the difference? “I told you, you didn’t need an excuse to see me.”
Yuri throws up a finger to tiffany, leaning back. she almost falls. “that’s riiiight. See you. To seeee you.”
This was ridiculous. Tiffany makes an about-face.
"Don't you dare fucking leave again!" Yuri screams, all of the jovial, drunk indifference replaced with irrational, drunk rage.
Tiffany turns back and stares at her, at this girl who looks like yuri, who's swaying and probably ready to pass out and would tiffany really break her promise about leaving if she didn't make a promise to this drunk doppelganger?
No, she wouldn't. She made that promise to someone else.
She turns to leave again and gets as far as the door. A wave of nausea rises to her throat as she hears yuri hiccup behind her and she wants to scream too. She wants to punch the wall until her knuckles break or the wall cracks, whichever came first. Maybe it'd calm her down. But she can't. She's not brave enough to break like that.
So she gathers all the hate yuri is infecting within tiffany and pushes it to the walls of her skin to fight on another day. And she knows it's destroying her, she feels the poison at the corners of her mouth like the traces of an old kiss. She bets Jessica can taste it.
Her feet return her to yuri, hands fisting at the sleeve of yuris shirt and drags her into the bedroom.
"Hey, ow, what the hell!"
"Lie down."
There's nothing behind Tiffany's words, she knows, but what's worse is yuri knows too.
"No, I need to go,” yuri says. It’s obvious it’s absolute bullshit; she’s just being defiant. “I told Nana I'd meet her--"
"To do what? Keep the high rolling?"
Yuri scoffs, but does nothing more to back up the indignation. Tiffany can feel her anger bubble again, right there, like sweat. All she needs right now is for yuri to stay in the apartment, to just stay in the fucking apartment.
Yuri moves to leave but tiffany clutches the shirt again, right at the dip of her v neck and pushes her to the wall.
"Tiffany, " yuris voice is low, threatening, and Tiffany wants to fight the wall again, paint it red with her blood, "let go."
Yuri tries again to get out and Tiffany has run out of tricks. That and she's so tired.
So she kisses yuri, the shirt in her hand crumbling in her fist.
"Tiffany--"
The anger is overtaken by something else, that ugly desire that'd been rotting at her fingertips, but whatever, that doesn't matter, yuri is still. Tiffany just needs to keep yuri here until she's sober. She'll figure out the rest later.
Tiffany grabs yuri’s jaw and the look in yuri’s eyes is all she wants, because tiffany can see the yuri she knew in them. But she can’t continue to look at them if she wants to keep this up and puts her mouth to yuri’s ear. The words come up like acid, caustic to her throat and she prays yuri can't tell.
"Who's gonna fuck you like me?"
But how could yuri tell when tiffany was so good at it? At playing people they meant the world to her, these make believe kisses that felt like the i love yous and I want yous yuri wanted to hear.
Tiffany wasn't even that good of liar.
Yuri had better been worth saving.
*
Tiffany barely makes it to the bathroom before retching, the plopping sound of water echoing out of the toilet and into the room. The last time she was clutching a toilet bowl was when she tried to run from Jessica, hoping distance and a different country could drown that stupid blonde head and those zombie eyes.
What a nice way to mourn stupid decisions.
She flushes the toilet and goes to the sink, swishing handfuls of water in her rancid mouth and spitting it out. When the taste of vomit is gone she goes to pick up her clothes, but not before regretfully glancing at mirror. She wasn't supposed to, she didn't want to look at her face right now, but her torso is a horror. Her fair skin is plagued with dark red bruises, littered from her neck down to her pelvis and stop at her underwear. Thank God yuri had passed out before getting any lower.
Tiffany stares at them like checkpoints. Would she have let them go further? She had only wanted to distract yuri from leaving with a make out session and it worked and it didn't go beyond that but would she have let it if she did? How much further was she going to go for yuri? How fucked up could they get?
Her lip snarls almost instinctively. Fucking pointless questions.
She goes to living room and waits, thinks and waits.
*
there was really no graceful way in waking up when someone was slapping your face. Yuri tries to cover herself but then the slapping is redirected to her arms and she shoots up, outraged, until she registers with the help of her comprehension skills it’s tiffany. (it’s a very debilitated, foggy set of skills, but they’re still present. Somewhat.)
“what’s going on?”
oh god, her voice. Yuri puts her hand to her throat and shuts her barely open eyes again. The brightness is too loud.
Tiffany says nothing, allowing yuri too slowly piece some bits of memory together. Which was a difficult enough task, but once everything was pieced together? Now that was another level of suck.
“shit…” yuri rubs her forehead, looking so anguished tiffany almost wants to spare her the pain. “we made out last night…”
tiffany nods. “yea, we did.”
Yuri’s face caves in on itself further. It’s just an avalanche of misery at this point.
“…did we do anything else?”
“I’m that good huh? Wiping your memory clean?”
yuri chuckles; it sounds like she’s gurgling rocks. It probably feels like it too.
“you can calm down, you fell asleep on top of me like a sack of potatoes.” Tiffany ponders it for a moment. “But you know what, not my worst lay.”
Tiffany can see the rose on yuri’s cheeks and nose spread to her ears. She thinks about being serious, because this is serious, yuri is spiraling, but everything she can come up with sounds like an after school special.
Luckily, yuri saves her by speaking first.
“I’m sorry. Again. I’ll stop.” Yuri looks up into tiffany eyes morosely. “I don’t want to lose you too.”
If it were an acceptable human act, tiffany would gouge out yuri’s eyes so they’d never look at her like that ever again.
“whatever. Just get your shit together.”
Tiffany leaves and yuri tries not to let it get to her head how dismissive tiffany was. after all, she had every right to be.
*
“…and really, why is a hamster considered a pet? Mice are just as good. Rats are even better. But hamsters? And don’t even get me started on hamtaro.”
Tiffany paused for the waiter to interject but he only shifted his feet and looked beyond tiffany’s head nervously.
“miss, I’m really sorry but if you’re not going to order anything I need to assist another table.”
Tiffany shooed her hand at him. “you’re dismissed.”
She started stacking sugar packets in between watching people walk into the café. The more people came in, the more annoyed she became. Begrudgingly she took out her phone and pressed one of the speed dials. The call was picked up on the first ring.
“TIFFA-NAAAAAAAAAY.”
Tiffany has to pull the phone away.
“jesus, sooyoung.”
“oh man, I was just going through your photo album on my phone, what a wonderful coincidence.”
“should I call back later?”
“are you kidding? I’m only halfway through, you’d have to call me back tomorrow.” Sooyoung laughs, and tiffany ignores how maniacal it sounds. This was sooyoung. “what’s up?”
“nothing much, just remembering your ultimate betrayal by ditching me for your dumb boyfriend, in france. Like, france? Who the hell does he think he is? Pepe le pew?”
“honestly?” sooyoung sounds worried. “i think so, a little bit.”
“you sure it’s just not the axe?”
“you know what,” sooyoung says, and tiffany can perfectly picture sooyoung’s wide eyes at the sudden revelation. “you’re so right. He probably goes through a can a day.”
tiffany keeps her disgust from her face but then realizes sooyoung isn’t there to see it anyway.
“so how you’ve been fanny pack?”
normally tiffany would have spent at least the next 2 minutes berating sooyoung over that nickname but something else is preoccupying her brain so she lets it slide.
“I made a mistake last night.”
“just one? You’re getting soft.”
“I know, it’s embarrassing.”
“what’d you do? sleep with a guy, find out later he’s married and then seduce his wife to get back at him?”
“no, not that.”
“oh good, ‘cause that happening twice in someone’s lifetime deserves an award or something.”
Tiffany flicks her stack her packets as hard as she can out of frustration. A few people give her disapproving looks and she flips them the bird. She grinds her teeth as sooyoung waits patiently.
“I kissed yuri.”
“OH MY GOD, REALLY? THAT’S GREAT.”
“I kissed her to keep her drunk ass from leaving her apartment.”
“oh. Well that’s slightly more depressing.”
She starts flicking the edge of the table, still as hard as she can. the pain isn’t that good a distraction.
“we talked and it’s fine. I don’t know what to tell Barbie.”
Sooyoung doesn’t respond immediately. Tiffany stills her throbbing finger.
“well, Jessica knows you almost as well as I, you’re bestest friend in the whole world, do, and if that’s any indication, she’ll forgive you.”
“your single foundation is based on an almost?”
“dude, I don’t know what to tell you, you kinda fucked up.”
That is exactly what tiffany did not want to hear. But at least she no longer wanted to murder sugar packets or mutilate her body parts. She looks at her reddened fingernail.
“ugh, this feeling sucks.”
“which one? Love? Aw, are you worrying you might hurt your baby boo bear ‘cause she’s the love of your life and you-”
tiffany decided to end the call there. Sooyoung was obviously done with helping.
*
Krystal had been such a nuisance.
Tiffany went through her typical ways of reaching Jessica. The bar, the café she liked, the stupid pet store because Jessica had some insane affinity for hamsters and of course, the apartment but krystal found ways to keep Jessica from tiffany. The bar got a new bouncer that refused to let tiffany in. the café suddenly stopped selling the coffee Jessica liked. The hamsters got replaced with beady-eyed ferrets. And the apartment got new locks. Even the fire escape had been torn down.
Krystal put their lives in danger to keep tiffany away.
*
she walked the pews with a foreign discomfort. There wasn’t much that made tiffany uncomfortable but there was something about the possibility of a god and the power of millions believing in said god that positively terrified her. it was creepy as fuck.
The pews are almost all empty but she has to walk to the front to get to where she wants. Her heels echo to the ceilings, replicas of 16th century paintings of a god and prophets judging her from above. She doesn’t know whether to run to her seat or walk even slower.
It could have been the devil’s house as much as god’s as much as tiffany panicked. She’s worried about a mass starting but thankfully the back of jessica’s head is comforting. She takes her seat and leans forward, the pew creaking and she has to suppress the urge to scream, I get it, you’re fucking old, lots of history!
Just as she gathers the courage of a breath to finally speak, it’s like Jessica had finally sensed her presence, her head sharply turning to the side.
“what are you doing here?” Jessica hisses.
Tiffany has a lot of answers for that question. The problem is none of them can see the light of day if she wants to keep a shred of her dignity.
She doesn’t know what it is, whether it’s the stupidity of this place being holy and the god fearing that the guilt makes her a notch less audacious than she’s known to be.
“me? If you’re looking for peace this is possibly the worst place to get it.”
tiffany would squirm but the pew would yell at her again.
Jessica straightens and looks forward. She shakes her head in disbelief. This should have been the last place tiffany would ever be.
“how’d you even know I was here?”
that question too had an answer but was also one tiffany wouldn’t dare answer. After a particular fight tiffany had stormed after Jessica to tell her all the reasons why donating half of tiffany’s income for time travel was absolutely valid. Tiffany ended up following her here, to this church. She never told Jessica because Jessica might have mistaken it for something stupid, like love.
Fuck.
“where else do barbies purchase souls? Priest give them out like candy apparently.”
Tiffany can’t see jessica’s face, to see if that tiny hint of a smile is there that always relieved any tightness in her chest. It was the only thing that worked on tiffany. she hates that she can’t see.
“they’re all sold out unfortunately.”
But that’s enough for her. maybe there was something to be said about the reverence of this place, because tiffany doesn’t mean to, but the relief that loosens her shoulders is almost audible. It’s embarrassing.
She leans forward until her forehead rests over jessica’s shoulder and she’s glad she’s not the only one affected by the church and its honesty because she swears she can feel the same rush of relief from Jessica as well.
“you’ve ruined me for anyone else,” tiffany tells her softly, but the words still sound like they echo. “I hate you for doing that. I hate that without you, everything else just isn’t as fun.”
“sorry I’m such a burden.”
“sorry I’m the same.”
Jessica digs her nails into her thighs. She knows it’s bad when tiffany is apologetic. It’s strange that it’s what she wants the most, when they’re bickering and all Jessica wants is sincerity, but the moment she gets it, it scares her.
“I’m scared you’ll let me try again," tiffany confesses. "And you know, it’s funny, I can feel myself holding you, still, but it’s in a separate universe.”
That’s why she wanted to give that stupid money into time travel. Maybe somewhere else, sometime else, she’s a little easier to love and loves easily.
Jessica moves and tiffany is immediately disappointed. But it’s alright because Jessica turns to her, delicately rests her fingers on tiffany’s cheek and presses a soft kiss to her lips.
Tiffany almost reconsiders this awful place. At the very least, she started to understand holiness.
*
they walk out of the church together, tiffany feeling better and better the farther they walked. she really didn’t want to ruin it, but it’s what she did, wasn’t it?
“listen, in an effort of being honest and saying truths, which are really overrated, by the way, I need to tell you something-”
“no.”
they both stop in the middle of the empty sidewalk.
“no?”
Jessica looks up at the church, the stained glass windows.
“I entered that church and left it as two separate people. Would you say the same?”
tiffany gave her a hard look.
“I knew you were an alien! blink once if you’re the real barbie, I won’t judge.”
Jessica rolls her eyes. “you know I would’ve sucked out your brain through your ear by now if this were alien me.”
Tiffany would kiss her if she didn’t feel like a thunderbolt or something would smite her.
“okay?" jessica reiterates. "It’s part of the past.”
Jessica starts walking again and tiffany follows next to her.
“okay.”
“but you need to stop doing things like buying me tangerine fields.”
“that’ll be more difficult," tiffany says casually, tilting her head to the sky. "I’ll need to rearrange some things.”
Jessica frowned, although honestly, see really wasn’t that upset. She just didn’t want tiffany worrying about creating some grand gesture at every mistake. She’d come to understand tiffany’s nature. And she’d also come to understand tiffany was irrevocably in love with her, so it’s not like she needed more. “rearrange? As in arrange differently?”
“you’ve been reading the dictionary I bought you, good job. We’ll make a teacher Barbie out of you just yet.”
Actually, jessica had been reading it, but only because tiffany had highlighted words like limerence, selcouth, aeipathy, elysian, opia and embarrassingly enough, callipygian.
*
{elsewhere, else-when}
It was 2 am then.
But time really didn’t exist then either.
Yoona still thinks about it. the sound of the planes overhead as they drove by narita. Yuri had almost left the keys to her newly bought bmw in the airplane. she said she'd just buy another.
“car or keys?” yoona asked.
yoona watched in wonder as yuri grinned, exhausted and confident. Yoona was watching yuri change before her eyes.
“both.”
She was so stupid then too, trying to make yuri laugh from the passenger seat while the girl was going 220 km/h on the highway.
No one knew yuri then but she was getting invited to all these parties for promotion and they’d go through them like days of the week. They didn’t care then who saw and who stared, and people loved to stare. They’d find themselves in corners, yoona’s face lost in yuri’s neck, trying hard not to expose their hands. They’d run to emergency stairs and set off alarms, kiss in the flashes of red light. they were untouchable and time was infinite.
But it was like that then. Lying on the floor despite the king sized mattress and imported Egyptian cotton sheets because it’s what they used to do in high school when yuri mixed something new. Then taking those same sheets and pitching a fortress lined with pillows, a nightlight on the other side of the room that barely illuminated anything.
“I don’t think these sheets were meant for the floor,” yoona said, running her hands down the fabric, like silk against her skin. And when yuri touched her arm, yoona couldn’t tell the difference.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wouldn’t be able to find a better place for them right now.”
Yoona listened to yuri uncap the metal lid of her flask and the liquid swash as she threw it back. she smiled and reached for it. they’d put juice in it then, an inside joke between them.
Everything was an inside something then. Yoona’d give her a look and they’d both start laughing. Yuri would hum 2 seconds of a song and yoona would start singing. it could take them less than 5 minutes to alienate everyone around them. Neither cared. People invited them to places and they still somehow got forgotten, drifting behind and away.
Yuri would get stressed about a new song, getting it finished in time, whether everyone would like it.
Yoona would take her face in her hands. “hey, moon. Where are you?”
Yuri’s concealer would be caked at the corner of her eyes, mascara smudged under her eyelashes. Long nights in the studio kept her in a baseball cap and a hoodie and she still took yoona’s breath away.
“hi, moon. I’m right here.”
“where?”
yoona loved the feeling of yuri sinking into her, and the girl’s voice is muffled against yoona’s shirt, but yoona knew the words by heart anyway.
“with you. Always with you.”
*
Yuri laughs and looks at yoona. “we really are, aren’t we?”
Yoona makes a face. “yea, absolutely disgusting.”
Donghae waits for them to stop, but they don’t.
“you guys are each other’s friggin' moons or something.”
Yuri manages to take her eyes off yoona.
“Moons?”
“yea, you do nothing but revolve around the other,” donghae explains, making a circle in the air with his finger.
Yuri smiles harder, leaning into yoona’s ear.
“hi moon.”
Yoona pulls her closer and neither sees donghae roll his eyes and walk away.
“hey moon.”
*
{elsewhere, else-when}
krystal rounds the corner of the club, mumbling under her breath about Jessica pulling the older sister card, “…thinks she can boss me around…”
the place is fairly dead for somewhere that’s supposedly the biggest club in the city. Krystal has seen honor society parties more alive than this. But whatever, she just needs to get jessica’s stupid jacket.
Next to the coat check counter there’s a girl in a very pretty shimmery dress and high heels gripping her phone, hunched over it desperately. The conversation doesn’t sound like anything she wants to be a part of and she quickly passes the number over to the staff. But the girl isn’t really trying to be private with how loud she’s talking.
“I love you, okay, I do, I do,” this girl is practically begging. It’s so pathetic. “just stay where you are, I’ll be right there.”
Krystal rolls her eyes and thankfully gets handed jessica’s jacket before she can hear more. But the phone call ends and they both turn to leave.
“are you fucking kidding me?” krystal says, staring right into tiffany’s eyes.
no one will ever get the chance to say they truly, genuinely startled tiffany hwang like krystal did at that moment.
But tiffany is quick to recover.
“didn’t your sister ever teach you eavesdropping is kinda a shitty trait?”
krystal may have some of jessica’s features but this face is new to tiffany. this sneer, this fury isn’t something tiffany has seen.
“i fucking knew it, I fucking knew you were a lying, cheating piece of-”
tiffany cuts her off, matching krystal’s vehemence, or upstaging it because tiffany’s voice is so cold and absolutely serious. “you do not know what you’re talking about.”
“fuck you! I heard you. I heard how you fucking said it.”
and again krystal manages to shut tiffany up, choke the words like her hand was at tiffany’s throat.
“I love you,” krystal repeats it, “I do, I do.”
tiffany tries to take a breath, muster up something, anything.
“stay the fuck away from my sister, Stephanie.”
Seconds pass. Tiffany gets a vague thought of running after krystal, of calling Jessica before krystal can get to her, of just moving. She doesn’t. instead, she remembers promising yuri that she’d be right over and it’s the only thing that makes her legs work.
*
Tiffany opens the door, with the keys she made a very long time ago, and she wishes she hadn’t. she wishes she didn’t have to feel some obligation towards yuri. She doesn’t want to be the one to keep saving her.
“yessss, now it’s a party!”
it’s not a party, at all. Tiffany looks around and for the most part, the apartment is spotless. It’s surely not post or mid-party.
“why am I here?” tiffany asks, flinging her arm up in front of her. she’s not actually sure if she means the apartment itself or yuri.
Yuri’s sloppy grin turns into a sloppy pout, her hand clumsily pushing hair from her face. Her voice is sullen in the party girl kind of way, where the fun of being drunk fades and all there’s left is a lot of emotions and nausea.
“I don’t need an excuse to need you, remember?”
Tiffany scoffs out a defeated laugh. She wants to mention something about sacrifice, specifically, what she just possibly sacrificed by coming here. And for what? Who was even yuri to tiffany anymore?
“to see me,” tiffany corrects her, pointlessly, really. Because what was the difference? “I told you, you didn’t need an excuse to see me.”
Yuri throws up a finger to tiffany, leaning back. she almost falls. “that’s riiiight. See you. To seeee you.”
This was ridiculous. Tiffany makes an about-face.
"Don't you dare fucking leave again!" Yuri screams, all of the jovial, drunk indifference replaced with irrational, drunk rage.
Tiffany turns back and stares at her, at this girl who looks like yuri, who's swaying and probably ready to pass out and would tiffany really break her promise about leaving if she didn't make a promise to this drunk doppelganger?
No, she wouldn't. She made that promise to someone else.
She turns to leave again and gets as far as the door. A wave of nausea rises to her throat as she hears yuri hiccup behind her and she wants to scream too. She wants to punch the wall until her knuckles break or the wall cracks, whichever came first. Maybe it'd calm her down. But she can't. She's not brave enough to break like that.
So she gathers all the hate yuri is infecting within tiffany and pushes it to the walls of her skin to fight on another day. And she knows it's destroying her, she feels the poison at the corners of her mouth like the traces of an old kiss. She bets Jessica can taste it.
Her feet return her to yuri, hands fisting at the sleeve of yuris shirt and drags her into the bedroom.
"Hey, ow, what the hell!"
"Lie down."
There's nothing behind Tiffany's words, she knows, but what's worse is yuri knows too.
"No, I need to go,” yuri says. It’s obvious it’s absolute bullshit; she’s just being defiant. “I told Nana I'd meet her--"
"To do what? Keep the high rolling?"
Yuri scoffs, but does nothing more to back up the indignation. Tiffany can feel her anger bubble again, right there, like sweat. All she needs right now is for yuri to stay in the apartment, to just stay in the fucking apartment.
Yuri moves to leave but tiffany clutches the shirt again, right at the dip of her v neck and pushes her to the wall.
"Tiffany, " yuris voice is low, threatening, and Tiffany wants to fight the wall again, paint it red with her blood, "let go."
Yuri tries again to get out and Tiffany has run out of tricks. That and she's so tired.
So she kisses yuri, the shirt in her hand crumbling in her fist.
"Tiffany--"
The anger is overtaken by something else, that ugly desire that'd been rotting at her fingertips, but whatever, that doesn't matter, yuri is still. Tiffany just needs to keep yuri here until she's sober. She'll figure out the rest later.
Tiffany grabs yuri’s jaw and the look in yuri’s eyes is all she wants, because tiffany can see the yuri she knew in them. But she can’t continue to look at them if she wants to keep this up and puts her mouth to yuri’s ear. The words come up like acid, caustic to her throat and she prays yuri can't tell.
"Who's gonna fuck you like me?"
But how could yuri tell when tiffany was so good at it? At playing people they meant the world to her, these make believe kisses that felt like the i love yous and I want yous yuri wanted to hear.
Tiffany wasn't even that good of liar.
Yuri had better been worth saving.
*
Tiffany barely makes it to the bathroom before retching, the plopping sound of water echoing out of the toilet and into the room. The last time she was clutching a toilet bowl was when she tried to run from Jessica, hoping distance and a different country could drown that stupid blonde head and those zombie eyes.
What a nice way to mourn stupid decisions.
She flushes the toilet and goes to the sink, swishing handfuls of water in her rancid mouth and spitting it out. When the taste of vomit is gone she goes to pick up her clothes, but not before regretfully glancing at mirror. She wasn't supposed to, she didn't want to look at her face right now, but her torso is a horror. Her fair skin is plagued with dark red bruises, littered from her neck down to her pelvis and stop at her underwear. Thank God yuri had passed out before getting any lower.
Tiffany stares at them like checkpoints. Would she have let them go further? She had only wanted to distract yuri from leaving with a make out session and it worked and it didn't go beyond that but would she have let it if she did? How much further was she going to go for yuri? How fucked up could they get?
Her lip snarls almost instinctively. Fucking pointless questions.
She goes to living room and waits, thinks and waits.
*
there was really no graceful way in waking up when someone was slapping your face. Yuri tries to cover herself but then the slapping is redirected to her arms and she shoots up, outraged, until she registers with the help of her comprehension skills it’s tiffany. (it’s a very debilitated, foggy set of skills, but they’re still present. Somewhat.)
“what’s going on?”
oh god, her voice. Yuri puts her hand to her throat and shuts her barely open eyes again. The brightness is too loud.
Tiffany says nothing, allowing yuri too slowly piece some bits of memory together. Which was a difficult enough task, but once everything was pieced together? Now that was another level of suck.
“shit…” yuri rubs her forehead, looking so anguished tiffany almost wants to spare her the pain. “we made out last night…”
tiffany nods. “yea, we did.”
Yuri’s face caves in on itself further. It’s just an avalanche of misery at this point.
“…did we do anything else?”
“I’m that good huh? Wiping your memory clean?”
yuri chuckles; it sounds like she’s gurgling rocks. It probably feels like it too.
“you can calm down, you fell asleep on top of me like a sack of potatoes.” Tiffany ponders it for a moment. “But you know what, not my worst lay.”
Tiffany can see the rose on yuri’s cheeks and nose spread to her ears. She thinks about being serious, because this is serious, yuri is spiraling, but everything she can come up with sounds like an after school special.
Luckily, yuri saves her by speaking first.
“I’m sorry. Again. I’ll stop.” Yuri looks up into tiffany eyes morosely. “I don’t want to lose you too.”
If it were an acceptable human act, tiffany would gouge out yuri’s eyes so they’d never look at her like that ever again.
“whatever. Just get your shit together.”
Tiffany leaves and yuri tries not to let it get to her head how dismissive tiffany was. after all, she had every right to be.
*
“…and really, why is a hamster considered a pet? Mice are just as good. Rats are even better. But hamsters? And don’t even get me started on hamtaro.”
Tiffany paused for the waiter to interject but he only shifted his feet and looked beyond tiffany’s head nervously.
“miss, I’m really sorry but if you’re not going to order anything I need to assist another table.”
Tiffany shooed her hand at him. “you’re dismissed.”
She started stacking sugar packets in between watching people walk into the café. The more people came in, the more annoyed she became. Begrudgingly she took out her phone and pressed one of the speed dials. The call was picked up on the first ring.
“TIFFA-NAAAAAAAAAY.”
Tiffany has to pull the phone away.
“jesus, sooyoung.”
“oh man, I was just going through your photo album on my phone, what a wonderful coincidence.”
“should I call back later?”
“are you kidding? I’m only halfway through, you’d have to call me back tomorrow.” Sooyoung laughs, and tiffany ignores how maniacal it sounds. This was sooyoung. “what’s up?”
“nothing much, just remembering your ultimate betrayal by ditching me for your dumb boyfriend, in france. Like, france? Who the hell does he think he is? Pepe le pew?”
“honestly?” sooyoung sounds worried. “i think so, a little bit.”
“you sure it’s just not the axe?”
“you know what,” sooyoung says, and tiffany can perfectly picture sooyoung’s wide eyes at the sudden revelation. “you’re so right. He probably goes through a can a day.”
tiffany keeps her disgust from her face but then realizes sooyoung isn’t there to see it anyway.
“so how you’ve been fanny pack?”
normally tiffany would have spent at least the next 2 minutes berating sooyoung over that nickname but something else is preoccupying her brain so she lets it slide.
“I made a mistake last night.”
“just one? You’re getting soft.”
“I know, it’s embarrassing.”
“what’d you do? sleep with a guy, find out later he’s married and then seduce his wife to get back at him?”
“no, not that.”
“oh good, ‘cause that happening twice in someone’s lifetime deserves an award or something.”
Tiffany flicks her stack her packets as hard as she can out of frustration. A few people give her disapproving looks and she flips them the bird. She grinds her teeth as sooyoung waits patiently.
“I kissed yuri.”
“OH MY GOD, REALLY? THAT’S GREAT.”
“I kissed her to keep her drunk ass from leaving her apartment.”
“oh. Well that’s slightly more depressing.”
She starts flicking the edge of the table, still as hard as she can. the pain isn’t that good a distraction.
“we talked and it’s fine. I don’t know what to tell Barbie.”
Sooyoung doesn’t respond immediately. Tiffany stills her throbbing finger.
“well, Jessica knows you almost as well as I, you’re bestest friend in the whole world, do, and if that’s any indication, she’ll forgive you.”
“your single foundation is based on an almost?”
“dude, I don’t know what to tell you, you kinda fucked up.”
That is exactly what tiffany did not want to hear. But at least she no longer wanted to murder sugar packets or mutilate her body parts. She looks at her reddened fingernail.
“ugh, this feeling sucks.”
“which one? Love? Aw, are you worrying you might hurt your baby boo bear ‘cause she’s the love of your life and you-”
tiffany decided to end the call there. Sooyoung was obviously done with helping.
*
Krystal had been such a nuisance.
Tiffany went through her typical ways of reaching Jessica. The bar, the café she liked, the stupid pet store because Jessica had some insane affinity for hamsters and of course, the apartment but krystal found ways to keep Jessica from tiffany. The bar got a new bouncer that refused to let tiffany in. the café suddenly stopped selling the coffee Jessica liked. The hamsters got replaced with beady-eyed ferrets. And the apartment got new locks. Even the fire escape had been torn down.
Krystal put their lives in danger to keep tiffany away.
*
she walked the pews with a foreign discomfort. There wasn’t much that made tiffany uncomfortable but there was something about the possibility of a god and the power of millions believing in said god that positively terrified her. it was creepy as fuck.
The pews are almost all empty but she has to walk to the front to get to where she wants. Her heels echo to the ceilings, replicas of 16th century paintings of a god and prophets judging her from above. She doesn’t know whether to run to her seat or walk even slower.
It could have been the devil’s house as much as god’s as much as tiffany panicked. She’s worried about a mass starting but thankfully the back of jessica’s head is comforting. She takes her seat and leans forward, the pew creaking and she has to suppress the urge to scream, I get it, you’re fucking old, lots of history!
Just as she gathers the courage of a breath to finally speak, it’s like Jessica had finally sensed her presence, her head sharply turning to the side.
“what are you doing here?” Jessica hisses.
Tiffany has a lot of answers for that question. The problem is none of them can see the light of day if she wants to keep a shred of her dignity.
She doesn’t know what it is, whether it’s the stupidity of this place being holy and the god fearing that the guilt makes her a notch less audacious than she’s known to be.
“me? If you’re looking for peace this is possibly the worst place to get it.”
tiffany would squirm but the pew would yell at her again.
Jessica straightens and looks forward. She shakes her head in disbelief. This should have been the last place tiffany would ever be.
“how’d you even know I was here?”
that question too had an answer but was also one tiffany wouldn’t dare answer. After a particular fight tiffany had stormed after Jessica to tell her all the reasons why donating half of tiffany’s income for time travel was absolutely valid. Tiffany ended up following her here, to this church. She never told Jessica because Jessica might have mistaken it for something stupid, like love.
Fuck.
“where else do barbies purchase souls? Priest give them out like candy apparently.”
Tiffany can’t see jessica’s face, to see if that tiny hint of a smile is there that always relieved any tightness in her chest. It was the only thing that worked on tiffany. she hates that she can’t see.
“they’re all sold out unfortunately.”
But that’s enough for her. maybe there was something to be said about the reverence of this place, because tiffany doesn’t mean to, but the relief that loosens her shoulders is almost audible. It’s embarrassing.
She leans forward until her forehead rests over jessica’s shoulder and she’s glad she’s not the only one affected by the church and its honesty because she swears she can feel the same rush of relief from Jessica as well.
“you’ve ruined me for anyone else,” tiffany tells her softly, but the words still sound like they echo. “I hate you for doing that. I hate that without you, everything else just isn’t as fun.”
“sorry I’m such a burden.”
“sorry I’m the same.”
Jessica digs her nails into her thighs. She knows it’s bad when tiffany is apologetic. It’s strange that it’s what she wants the most, when they’re bickering and all Jessica wants is sincerity, but the moment she gets it, it scares her.
“I’m scared you’ll let me try again," tiffany confesses. "And you know, it’s funny, I can feel myself holding you, still, but it’s in a separate universe.”
That’s why she wanted to give that stupid money into time travel. Maybe somewhere else, sometime else, she’s a little easier to love and loves easily.
Jessica moves and tiffany is immediately disappointed. But it’s alright because Jessica turns to her, delicately rests her fingers on tiffany’s cheek and presses a soft kiss to her lips.
Tiffany almost reconsiders this awful place. At the very least, she started to understand holiness.
*
they walk out of the church together, tiffany feeling better and better the farther they walked. she really didn’t want to ruin it, but it’s what she did, wasn’t it?
“listen, in an effort of being honest and saying truths, which are really overrated, by the way, I need to tell you something-”
“no.”
they both stop in the middle of the empty sidewalk.
“no?”
Jessica looks up at the church, the stained glass windows.
“I entered that church and left it as two separate people. Would you say the same?”
tiffany gave her a hard look.
“I knew you were an alien! blink once if you’re the real barbie, I won’t judge.”
Jessica rolls her eyes. “you know I would’ve sucked out your brain through your ear by now if this were alien me.”
Tiffany would kiss her if she didn’t feel like a thunderbolt or something would smite her.
“okay?" jessica reiterates. "It’s part of the past.”
Jessica starts walking again and tiffany follows next to her.
“okay.”
“but you need to stop doing things like buying me tangerine fields.”
“that’ll be more difficult," tiffany says casually, tilting her head to the sky. "I’ll need to rearrange some things.”
Jessica frowned, although honestly, see really wasn’t that upset. She just didn’t want tiffany worrying about creating some grand gesture at every mistake. She’d come to understand tiffany’s nature. And she’d also come to understand tiffany was irrevocably in love with her, so it’s not like she needed more. “rearrange? As in arrange differently?”
“you’ve been reading the dictionary I bought you, good job. We’ll make a teacher Barbie out of you just yet.”
Actually, jessica had been reading it, but only because tiffany had highlighted words like limerence, selcouth, aeipathy, elysian, opia and embarrassingly enough, callipygian.
*
{elsewhere, else-when}
It was 2 am then.
But time really didn’t exist then either.
Yoona still thinks about it. the sound of the planes overhead as they drove by narita. Yuri had almost left the keys to her newly bought bmw in the airplane. she said she'd just buy another.
“car or keys?” yoona asked.
yoona watched in wonder as yuri grinned, exhausted and confident. Yoona was watching yuri change before her eyes.
“both.”
She was so stupid then too, trying to make yuri laugh from the passenger seat while the girl was going 220 km/h on the highway.
No one knew yuri then but she was getting invited to all these parties for promotion and they’d go through them like days of the week. They didn’t care then who saw and who stared, and people loved to stare. They’d find themselves in corners, yoona’s face lost in yuri’s neck, trying hard not to expose their hands. They’d run to emergency stairs and set off alarms, kiss in the flashes of red light. they were untouchable and time was infinite.
But it was like that then. Lying on the floor despite the king sized mattress and imported Egyptian cotton sheets because it’s what they used to do in high school when yuri mixed something new. Then taking those same sheets and pitching a fortress lined with pillows, a nightlight on the other side of the room that barely illuminated anything.
“I don’t think these sheets were meant for the floor,” yoona said, running her hands down the fabric, like silk against her skin. And when yuri touched her arm, yoona couldn’t tell the difference.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wouldn’t be able to find a better place for them right now.”
Yoona listened to yuri uncap the metal lid of her flask and the liquid swash as she threw it back. she smiled and reached for it. they’d put juice in it then, an inside joke between them.
Everything was an inside something then. Yoona’d give her a look and they’d both start laughing. Yuri would hum 2 seconds of a song and yoona would start singing. it could take them less than 5 minutes to alienate everyone around them. Neither cared. People invited them to places and they still somehow got forgotten, drifting behind and away.
Yuri would get stressed about a new song, getting it finished in time, whether everyone would like it.
Yoona would take her face in her hands. “hey, moon. Where are you?”
Yuri’s concealer would be caked at the corner of her eyes, mascara smudged under her eyelashes. Long nights in the studio kept her in a baseball cap and a hoodie and she still took yoona’s breath away.
“hi, moon. I’m right here.”
“where?”
yoona loved the feeling of yuri sinking into her, and the girl’s voice is muffled against yoona’s shirt, but yoona knew the words by heart anyway.
“with you. Always with you.”
*