in every universe (one shot-s) | JENLISA

i've got a fever, can you check?

Despite what she's sure were her family's very best efforts, Jennie Kim is a good person.

She is. She's invested billions in sustainable energy. She buys local, free-range, fair-trade produce. The minimum wage paid to every single JNK employee is more than double the national average. She does meat-free Mondays, takes soy milk in her coffee, and tips every server at least 50%.

She doesn't cheat. She doesn't steal or scam or commit murder, directly or otherwise, which already gives her a leg up on 90% of her relatives. She isn't cruel. Never intentionally causes pain to others. She doesn't lust or covet, much.

And she doesn't lie. Except about this.

This being her current position: curled up in her best friend's lap, head tucked against Lisa's neck while the woman in question cards her fingers through her loose hair, rocking them gently back and forth.

"You're still a little warm," Lisa murmurs, her cool hand pressing gently to Jennie's forehead before sliding down to cup her cheek, thumb stroking out along her jaw. "How are you feeling? Headache still bad?"

"Mmm, yeah," Jennie hums, like the liar she's become. Because the other thing Jennie Kim definitely and unequivocally is, aside from good, is fully and completely healthy.

But she's not about to admit that she'd fabricated today's 'headache' out of nothing, that the feeble voicemail she'd left Lisa explaining her 'symptoms' was nothing more than an Oscar-worthy performance by a seasoned actress.

Not when Lisa had dropped everything and shown up at her door not three minutes later, painkillers in hand and concerned frown firmly in place. Not when Lisa is wrapping her in blankets and calling her baby and kissing her forehead and flatly refusing to let go of Jennie for longer than the duration of a bathroom break.

She's not going to admit to her own falsehoods, to the liberties she's taken with the truth. Not when the result of such a confession would certainly involve Lisa leaving in a huff, with Jennie left behind un-cuddled and un-kissed and decidedly unhappy.

Jennie Kim may have spent her entire life trying her level best to become and remain a good person, but she's no saint. Even she has her limits.

In her defence, it wasn't like she'd set out to lie.

The first time, she really had been ill. She'd spent years successfully evading the colds and workplace bugs that so frequently felled her employees, had soldiered on through plenty of sniffles, muscled right past many a migraine.

Jennie had taken a quiet kind of pride in her perfect attendance record, had regarded it as another well-placed piece of her successful CEO puzzle. It was proof, however circumstantial, that she could handle herself, could do what needed to be done. That she wasn't as weak as her mother and brother had led her to believe. That she could, in fact, do this.

So it was, if anything, quite a momentous occasion the day she'd finally encountered a germ with, as Jihyo had so eloquently put it when Jennie had called in sick that morning, enough balls to take her on and win.

In her half-delirious state Jennie had had just enough presence of mind after hanging up on Jihyo to send a text to Lisa asking for a rain-check on their lunch plans on account of her mild cold. Her mild cold, which in all actuality was more of a particularly vicious bout of flu that had knocked Jennie's usually stoic immune system on its ass and left her huddled feverishly under a mass of blankets in her darkened bedroom, sweating even as she shivered so hard her teeth rattled.

She'd barely hit send when Lisa was shouldering her way through her bedroom door, brow furrowed and pouting in earnest.

"You never get sick," she'd said, almost an accusation, crossing the room to lay the back of her hand against Jennie's clammy forehead. "Oh, Jen."