Jenlisa Oneshots

if i'm honest, it felt like love

Jennie is nineteen, when it becomes a habit. Nineteen and twirling around the room to some Blondie song, out of breath even as Lisa spins her once, twice, three times, so mindlessly fast that it's all she can do to flop onto the bed in a heap. Lisa follows her down, and the music's still blaring as they lie side by side, eyes to the ceiling. It doesn't go unnoticed - Jennie notices, at least - that their hands are still intertwined. Loosely, the kind of bond which is designed to be broken free from, but touching nonetheless; enough freedom for her thumb to start tracing slow circles into the skin of Lisa's wrist.

I love you, she wants to say, the same thing she's been wanting to say since they were fourteen and best friends didn't feel like a heavy enough title to fit what they had, anymore. Lisa, in turn, twists her head to look at Jennie, humming along to what she's now zoned-in enough to recognise as Heart of Glass.

"Didn't know you liked Blondie."

A half-smirk. Flushed cheeks. I could kiss her.

"You always wear those band tees. Figured it wouldn't hurt to listen."

Something blossoms in Jennie's chest. Something which says that such a menial act as listening to someone's favourite artist isn't particularly menial at all - a flower which keeps growing until its roots are stretched deep into Jennie's veins. Her circles are meandering now, the ones sketched delicately into Lisa's skin, looping paths curling into patterns in the silence. I love you. She thinks it again, and the urge is as strong as it always always has been, staring across at Lisa and holding eye contact until it's too much to bear. Passes it off as she looks away with a gentle laugh, though the action hollows out her lungs entirely.

I love you, and it aches, sitting so readily on the very edge of her lips that she's tracing the words into the corner of Lisa's palm to stop herself from saying the sentiment out loud. I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U, one letter after the other before she can stop the flood, a confession spilling from deft fingers until Lisa looks over again.

"What are you doing?"

Jennie grins, if only to warm the blood which has frozen in her veins.

"Sketching."

She's whispered this, before, these forbidden words. Under her breath, or when Lisa's talking to someone else, or whenever they're texting and Lisa sends one of those stupid gifs that she manages to find for every situation. Never to her though. Never where there's been any risk at all of Lisa actually hearing. It's a line they haven't crossed - this bold chalk boundary which they've scuffed at with muddy heels until it's faded almost entirely. Almost entirely is the key, though. It's still there, albeit smudged, a line which says we both know how fragile love can be. Which says this isn't something to be thrown lightly around.

Jennie, who sees love as this twisted, broken thing.

Lisa, who knows love as this half-empty idea which can be bottled and poured, if only in sparing doses.

They won't touch it - too bright. Too hot. Too dangerous. A risk which neither can truly afford to take.

-

Issue is, the habit of it. Finally, Jennie has found a way of expressing the weight which has sat on her shoulders for three years, and she keeps on expressing it, month after month as two souls twist further into each other. It's too easy, sometimes, to forget that she hasn't actually said it out loud - so often, now, she only catches the words right as they trip into the open air, twisting I love you into something so insignificant as I reckon we should get Thai tonight. Jennie's figure hangs heavy with the promise of it, throat raw with dozens of words left unsaid. It's something she's used to now, at least. Gazing from afar, paying the price of unrequited love as if it's nothing more than some monthly fee.