Jenlisa Drabbles

A Hundred Paper Stars (and I Find Myself Drawn to You)

Jennie sees her make them in the station every morning and even though they don't talk to one another, she always gives her one.

She's down to the 100th paper star and Jennie figures it was time to finally talk to her.

OR

Jennie having internal gay panics whenever she's given a paper star and loses her ability to speak

Notes:

Sooo this is like a new favorite of mine so I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did writing it.

Taken from this Tumblr prompt:
You make paper stars in the train and you give me one everytime I see you. I have a hundred now and to celebrate I think I should finally talk to you.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

____________

Jennie takes a deep breath, wiping sweaty palms over the fabric of her jeans over and over until the skin hurt in certain places. She thinks this was better off than finding her heart in her throat and not having enough space for the words she wanted to say to flow through. Way, way better. 

This is crazy, since when did Jennie Ruby Jane Kim fret over something as simple as trying to say “hi”?

The train was in a constant state of mumbled conversations from people that crowded it’s small, dingy spaces. It filled every known space with “hi’s” and “hello’s”, the usual “how are you’s” and every other type of conversation in between. Conversations that floated and used to make Jennie irritable. 

Emphasis on “used” because if it wasn’t for that annoying brown haired girl that always got on the same station as hers and got off a station earlier -- she’d probably find herself rolling her eyes at every damn thing. 

Jennie runs a hand through her hair and sees her sitting right across, doing the exact same thing she’s been doing for the past couple of months. 

Don’t ask how Jennie knows, she wasn’t exactly subtle about it.

She looks up briefly, looking a little confused at the crowd around her; making Jennie smile and making her otherwise fidgety fingers calm down just long enough for them to stop playing with the tips of Jennie’s hair. 

She looks cute, okay? She thinks of the same words again and again, trying to reason out with her own brain how it’s not rude to gawk at strangers when… she wasn’t entirely a stranger to Jennie at all. Does that make sense? No?  It doesn’t stop Jennie from stealing glances until the other girl finds Jennie’s eyes among the packed crowd and gives her a small soft smile. 

It starts out slow, little tingles that start from the tips of Jennie’s fingers and run across her arms, up and up until it reaches her heart, where they become tiny explosions that fill her chest cavities with a supernova of flurries and… 

Shit, she's getting sappy --isn't she? Well tough luck, she doesn’t even understand why that’s happening, what’s happening or -- how? No, she knows how… remembers when this “how” started clearly in her mind. Remember and know it by heart.

Jennie wiggles in her seat a little too uncomfortably. Darting her eyes to the little girl in a high ponytail who was seated with her mother, trying her damnedest to focus on how the mother and daughter were laughing at the view of trees outside -- let’s be perfectly honest here, Jennie will look at anything. Anything and anywhere else but at the girl with brown hair, kind eyes, soft smile and bangs that sat opposite her.