Title: Playing on Shuffle
Pairing: Taeny
Rating: Really hard G
Disclaimer: I have absolutely nothing to do with SNSD.
Summary: Accidental meetings, the importance of headphones, and a stranger with an angelic smile.
Taeyeon was listening to music through her headphones. It was a cheesy pop song that she heard on the radio at least a hundred times. As she walked through the street, she thought about the stuffy adults who nagged about how the current generation was so busy plugged in to their technology that they ignored the world around them.
At the crosswalk, she took off her headphones.
Taeyeon felt overwhelmed by the sounds that her earbuds were previously blocking.
The whoosh of speeding cars, honking horns from impatient-- and therefore unpleasant-- drivers, the couple next to her arguing about who would make dinner, the baby behind her that would not stop crying, and the baby's exasperated mother trying to get her child to calm down.
Taeyeon put her headphones back in.
Smooth jazz.
The world in her head was much better after all.
Her world was nice and safe. In her world, nothing that could hurt her could touch her. Her world was entirely her own and she didn't want to share it with any other person in the universe.
Well, that was a lie.
There was one person she wished she could share her world with.
In midst of her inner rant, she somehow ended up with her ass on the ground.
“Oh no! Oh my god, are you okay? I'm so, so sorry!” a voice - feminine - exclaimed. Taeyeon looked up to see a woman with long black hair and coffee brown eyes looking down at her in surprise. The woman extended a hand out to her. Taeyeon thought she looked like an angel.
Taeyeon nodded slightly and took the woman's hand. Her hand, despite being uncovered in the freezing cold, was soft and warm. Taeyeon tried to squish the thought as she got up from the ground. She couldn't have silly thoughts like those - no matter how angelic the person in question was.
It was when she got up that she realized that something was missing.
Frantically, she turned her attention away from the beautiful woman and placed her hands on her ears. Her ear buds were gone. She searched through her pockets, her phone was gone too. The woman in front of her looked at Taeyeon in confusion.
As if she was in a horror movie, Taeyeon slowly turned with her eyes widened in terror.
Her phone, thankfully, was fine.
But her headphones... her precious headphones were crushed to tiny pieces by people carelessly walking on them. Slowly, she picked up her phone and watched the headphones pathetically dangle at the end.
Her keys to the world inside her head, destroyed as if they were nothing.
Before the overwhelming sadness set in, Taeyeon felt a tap, tap, tap on her shoulder. She turned around and looked at the coffee eyed woman inquisitively. In the woman's outstretched hand she clasped a bundle of wires.
“I'm really sorry about bumping into you and destroying your headphones,” the woman said, pink blossoming from her cheeks. “Here, take mine instead!”
The woman smiled, and it took all of Taeyeon's will to not compare her to a bright summer's day. She failed.
Taeyeon shook her head, taking her headphones out of the jack and pocketing her phone, “I really shouldn't--”
“Nonsense!” the woman exclaimed, she took Taeyeon's right hand and gave her the headphones, “I barely use those anyways, and honestly, it's the least I could do.”
Taeyeon examined the headphones she was given before closing her hand around them, they were still warm from the other woman's body heat.
“Thank you, then,” Taeyeon said, trying not to blush in embarrassment, “That's very nice of you.”
The woman nodded in satisfaction, and then a look of recognition crossed her near-angelic features. “Hey, do you go to that cafe a couple blocks from here? Sunny's Sweet Roast? I feel like I've seen you there a lot.”
Taeyeon almost smacked herself for not realizing sooner.
It was her, the woman with her nose buried in a book that Taeyeon watched not-stalker-like from the corner of her eye as she sipped her black coffee.
The only person that Taeyeon would even consider sharing her world with.
“Y-yeah,” Taeyeon stammered. “I'm actually heading over there right now.”
“Tiffany.”
“Huh?”
“My name,” the woman clarified, “it's Tiffany.”
“Oh!” Taeyeon laughed, “I'm Taeyeon.”
“Taeyeon,” Tiffany said, testing the name on her lips. The sound made her heart flutter. “I see you all the time in Sunny's, actually. But you always have your headphones in and you bob your head to your music all lost in your own world...” she trailed off, blushing a deeper shade of red.
Taeyeon tipped her head to the side in curiosity.
“And I always wanted to know what it was like in that world of yours,” Tiffany said so quietly that Taeyeon almost missed it. This time it made Taeyeon blush.
“I-I uhh...” she really wanted to facepalm at her own nervousness, “I'm headed over there right now. I mean, if you wanted to come with me.”
Tiffany smiled. A smile that - if Taeyeon were honest with herself - was angelic.
“I have to return something to a friend first. But I will definitely meet you there in an hour or so.”
Taeyeon smiled and gave her a small wave, “I'll save a seat for you then.”
They started to drift reluctantly away from each other. Tiffany waved back, “See you in a bit! Enjoy the headphones!”
Taeyeon waited until Tiffany was a blip in the distance before plugging in her newly acquired headphones and pressing the play button on her phone.
She smiled when she peeked at the name of the song that was playing before putting her phone back into her pocket. She continued onto her destination with a spring in her step and a dreamy smile plastered onto her face.
Walking on Sunshine indeed.