If this is a rom-com, kill the director | Jenlisa

Fuse

"But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?"

It's fitting that this is the scene that they resume their filming with. For once, Lisa finds herself letting all of her emotions into the words she speaks, instead of just pretending those emotions are there. It feels less like she's working on autopilot and more like she's actually in the moment.

Seeing her, down there below the balcony the crew had created, lost in her thoughts as Juliet, Jennie thinks to herself that she's never felt more on set than she does today.

"It is my lady. Oh, it is my love. Oh, that she knew she were!"

————

When Jennie walks into her hotel room to find Kai sitting on her bed, she almost turns around and walks out again. There's nothing she wants to say to Kai, but so much that she's got to. No one else is going to say it to him, and she fears that Lisa would cause bodily harm if she tried.

So she grits her teeth, steels herself for the conversation and enters the room, sitting next to where Kai is splayed out across the bed.

"Cheer me up, Jen," Kai says, staring off into space. "I'm sad."

Jennie bites back a sigh. "You're sad?"

"The first girl that I've liked in ages, and she turns out to be a lesbian," Kai says.

"That's it. Up," Jennie says, slapping at Kai and pushing him up and off the bed. "Get off my bed, now."

"Jen, what are you doing?" Kai whines, but complies, getting up off the bed and hovering in the middle of the room.

"I don't really feel like talking right now," Jennie says, her teeth gritted.

She refuses to look at him, and stares down into her lap, trying not to blow a fuse.

"Jennie please," Kai says. "No one else will talk to me about this. Lisa's been glaring daggers at me all day."

He's about to say something more, but Jennie cuts him off. "Did you really think that it was okay?"

"Think what was okay?"

He genuinely doesn't seem to have any idea what he's done wrong, and Jennie is so glad Lisa is not here right now. If this was infuriating her, then it would enrage Lisa.

"To out Rosie in front of all those cameras. To blurt out that she's gay," Jennie says, her hands clenched into fists on her bed.

Kai shrugs. "I didn't mean anything by it!" he says. "I was just surprised, that's all."

"Did you have to ask her in front of everybody?" Jennie says.

Kai's eyes flicker down to the floor as he shrugs a second time. "...I don't know."

Jennie shakes her head and runs a hand through her hair. "This is why I told you not to ask her out," she says.

Kai processes that and frowns. "Wait, you knew she was gay?"

"Yeah. We were at university together, remember?" Jennie says, rolling her eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me?!"

Jennie feels ice shoot through her veins as she stands up off the bed. "Because it's human fucking decency not to out people without their permission!"

She doesn't realise she's yelling until she feels her fists clenching again, and the heat rising through her chest into her head. Kai steps back and stares at her, bewildered; he's never seen this from Jennie before.

Jennie exhales and unclenches her fists, dropping back down onto the bed. She doesn't need to get overly angry about this. She really doesn't. She doesn't say anything more, just nurses her fist in her hands as if she'd actually thrown a punch.

Kai turns away from Jennie, mumbling something unintelligible.

Then Jennie hears him mutter "I don't know why Lisa's being so pissy, though."

"Don't talk about her like that," Jennie says, her voice dangerously quiet.

Kai scoffs. "Why are you defending her? You're always going on about how much you don't like her. She's only hanging around you because she feels sorry for you."

That's it. Fuse blown.

"Get out," Jennie says.

"What?"

"Get the fuck out of my hotel room," she says. "I told you not to talk about her like that."

"I was just-"

"No," Jennie says. "You weren't just anything. Get. The. Fuck. Out."

Kai gets the picture and scarpers. Jennie stares at the closed door, and wants to scream. Instead, she backs up into her room and falls on her bed.

—————

"With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls, for stony limits cannot hold love out."

She's down there and she's up here, and even though this is all make-believe and in a few hours they'll be back in the same space again, she feels so far away from her. She's looking down at her with her bright brown eyes, her hair fluttering down her shoulders and all she can do is let Romeo's, Lisa's, lines speak to her.

"And what love can do, that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me," Lisa says.

—————

Jennie lies on her bed, her arms squeezing a pillow to her chest while she stares blankly up at the ceiling. This has been happening far too much lately for Jennie's liking.

But there's so much that has been changing recently, there's been so many feelings that have been changing, feelings about one person in particular.

She's been thinking about her actions, especially with Kai's return. About how she wanted to flip when he talked about her, about how the anger had fired up in her in a way she hasn't experienced for a long time. She thinks about all the scenes she's been shooting, about how all the lines about love are starting to seem a lot less laughable and a lot more real.

But most of all, she thinks about the butterflies that fly around her stomach, and the sweat on her palms, and the way she keeps feeling so dizzyingly high more and more and more.

It's time to do something about it.