there's a part of me that recognizes you | JENLISA

all that you are is all that i'll ever need

A night in New Orleans when everything changes. Kind of.

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Jennie’s head is fuzzy. Not in a way that makes her want to go back to the hotel and sleep, but just enough that she's a little unsteady on her feet and needs to lean into Lisa a tad more.

Lisa accepts the extra weight without missing a beat. She’s sober and completely has her wits about her so she stands up straighter to support the added weight. She does it so effortlessly that she doesn't even mess up the flow of her words as she talks to Seulgi and Jisoo.

Jennie’s following along, adding in her own comments when she has them, but mostly she just does what she does best. She observes. She listens. She watches the people in front of her and all the others surrounding.

She watches Lisa.

She’s always watching Lisa.

Somi has been hyping up Irene’s retirement celebrations on Bourbon Street since the moment the game in New Orleans was announced. She’d sent out a mass group text as soon as they’d gotten the email and she hadn’t stopped blasting them since. She promised them a night so good they’d never remember it.

She wasn't wrong.

The only other time Jennie has ever seen her teammates party this hard is when they won the World Cup, but this comes very, very close. Alcohol flows freely. Hips sway wildly.

Voices are raised and slurred happily, so happily. Given the cause for celebration, there's a bittersweet undertone to it all that keeps threatening to break through, but they all just drown it with more drinks and the night goes on.

Jennie wasn't going to drink, maybe one or two, but she wanted to remember this, wanted to enjoy her time with her friends before a month apart.

Well, maybe just one friend.

Definitely just one friend.

Lisa.

Jennie doesn't want to leave her. She doesn't want to go to opposite sides of the country and have to settle for long texts and lengthy FaceTime sessions ending in smiles that linger in Jennie’s dreams. Her heart aches at the thought of being away from Lisa for so long, but that's what happens sometimes. You have to spend time away from friends.

Friends.

Jennie’s begun to hate that word.

They're more than that, so much more, but yet they aren't. They act like it, they talk like it, but they don't do anything about it yet. It's comfortable, this thing they have going on. It isn't forced. It isn’t work. It's nice. It's warm. It's safe.

But Jennie wants more.

She hasn't strayed far from Lisa all night—hasn’t really strayed far from her for months. She told herself she would, told herself she'd hang out with Chaeyoung and Julie and Yeri and not just limit herself to Lisa. She did for a while, bounced around between groups, laughed and sang and danced with her friends, but she keeps coming back to Lisa. She keeps sliding up next to her, slipping her hand into Lisa’s, and joining in on whatever conversation she's having with whoever Lisa happens to be with at the time.

She just can't stay away. Lisa's like a beacon, a lighthouse luring her back into shore, her safe harbor. Jennie isn't against it. Neither is Lisa.

So she flits around, socializes with her increasingly drunk teammates for a while and then always finds her way back to Lisa’s side like she is now. It's inevitable, really.

Her limit of two drinks lasted all of thirty minutes when Chaeyoung demanded she take tequila shots with her and everyone knows there's no saying ‘no’ to Chaeyoung, especially when she’s already tipsy from pregaming in her room with Wendy. Jennie lost count of how many shots she made her take.