french fries & milk ice-cream// JENLISA ONESHOTS

i need tender hands (to hold me through the night)

emetophobia cw (very minor and it's offscreen but be safe anyway)

and also, hiiii guysss 🙋🏻‍♀️ been quite some times since i last updated yeah. i hope everyone is safe and pls enjoy this short update 😊😊😊

//

Of all the ways Lisa might have expected their first date to go poorly, this was not one of them.

She couldn't even say it had started out well, because it had started out like this: She had arrived at the restaurant, a family-owned hole-in-the-wall with vegetarian options that she and Jennie had been going to for months, ten minutes early. Then she stood outside and waited. Jennie had showed up ten minutes late, walking slowly down the sidewalk, and when she'd seen Lisa she'd given her a tight smile and said, "Hi."

"Hi," said Lisa, trying not to sound like someone who spent a significant amount of time thinking about Jennie's laugh. Then she'd remembered they were literally on a date (their first date) (Jennie had asked her out) (Jennie Had Asked Her Out), so maybe it was okay to sound like that. "How are you?"

"Good," Jennie said shortly. "Um. Inside?"

And she'd swept past Lisa into the restaurant. That was... fine. It was chilly out and Jennie wasn't wearing a jacket, so maybe she was just cold. Lisa followed her inside, into this warm place that smelled like seafood and frying things, and they were seated at a small table along the wall, and Lisa said, "How was your day?" because it was Friday and she hadn't seen Jennie since Monday, and Jennie said, "Good." And stared at the menu like she'd never seen it before. After about thirty seconds of this, she said, "...Ah. Yours. How was yours."

"I saw Bam this morning," Lisa said, and found herself faltering, falling silent. The thing was, she was good at talking to Jennie. She'd never really been good at talking to people, but it was easy with Jennie, who always waited for Lisa to collect and rearrange her scattered words, who said things like 'I know what you mean' and 'Yes! Exactly that! Oh my god, that's exactly how it feels' and 'Remember a few weeks ago when you said that thing about tuning forks? I've been thinking about it ever since, and...."

But the Jennie sitting across the table from her was closed off, shoulders hunched, not even looking at Lisa.

"Jennie," said Lisa. "Are you okay?"

Jennie nodded once. "Fine. Just tired. Sorry."

It continued like that. They ordered, waited in silence for the food to come, ate in silence when it did. Or, Lisa ate. Jennie just sort of stirred at her soup, spooning rice into it and then not actually eating any. She'd taken a couple sips of hot tea in the past half hour; that was it. Lisa asked her again if she was okay, and again Jennie said yes, and Lisa asked in desperation how her little sister was doing, because Jennie loved talking about Ella, and Jennie said, "Ell's... yeah. Good. Thank you."

"Do you...." Lisa watched Jennie poke at the rice in the bottom of her soup bowl. "Do you want to order something else?"

Jennie didn't respond for a moment, then gave a tiny shake of her head. "No, I like it," she said. As if trying to prove something, she raised her spoon to her lips and ate what had to be a single grain of rice.

Silence settled in again, a snowdrift.

Lisa almost felt made fun of, which was not something she was used to feeling around Jennie; at least not since the very beginning, and never like this. She didn't know what to do with this silent, expressionless Jennie. She could try yet again to start a conversation, but it was obvious Jennie didn't want to talk. It felt like Lisa was being annoying just by sitting here, which was also not something she was used to feeling. She wondered if this was how Jennie had felt, in those first few weeks when she'd been pestering Lisa to get a reaction and Lisa, flustered and panicky, had shut her down every time.