Fluent in Lesbian [M]

nine | after the rain [M]

She's in the middle of a dream when the alarm goes off with a screech, piercing through her sleepy brain. The last thing she sees is an eleven year old Taeyeon with cupcake frosting smeared across her cheek, and when she opens her eyes she's already forgotten what her dream was about.

With heavy limbs she crawls out of the blankets, leaves the warm comforts of the bed behind her and trudges away to the bathroom, school uniform crumpled in her arms.

She has to splash water over her face several times to become at least half-awake. After one entire week she still hasn’t gotten used to getting one hour less of sleep, because according to her only one hour can make a big difference. But she can’t really complain, since she put herself in this situation.

“Are you riding with me again today?” her father questions when she enters the kitchen, quicky finishing a glass of juice and grabbing an apple. She panics a little when remembering she had forgot to prepare lunch for the day, and decides to buy something in the school’s cafeteria instead.

Her father watches her calculatingly all the while, already dressed in his suit, briefcase resting against the counter.

“Well?”

She looks up, completely unaware of his presence until just now.

“Ah, yes,” she says. “It’s for the project.”

The project she made up a week ago. The project that doesn’t exist. She made it up so she could carpool with her father to school while on his way to work. She has to get up an hour earlier now, often rush through her morning routine but it’s worth it. Anything so she won’t have to go to school together with Taeyeon.

It’s not that she’s mad at her or anything, no, most of the anger (all of it, in fact) has subsided by now. But there’s still the unresolved feelings, facts she doesn’t want to face… She’s not ready for it yet, maybe wishing that time will make things clearer for her.

But that also makes her feel like a hypocrite, for not letting Taeyeon have her time. That’s where the guilt comes in.

“Okay. Well hurry up and clean up, we’re leaving in ten,” he says and she nods feverously before rushing back upstairs to brush her teeth.

When she returns her father has already pulled out from the driveway, and she quickly ties her sneakers and skips out, not forgetting an umbrella this time. She jogs up to the car, not wanting to Taeyeon to see her through her bedroom window and doesn’t feel safe until she has shut the door behind her and strapped the seat belt snugly over her torso.

“Off we go,” she says, fixes her skirt a little. But what she hears next makes her want to sink down in her seat, maybe sink through the car floor and through the ground while she’s at it.

“Taeyeon!” her father calls out, rolling down the window. “Need a ride to school too?”

Tiffany loves her father, but in that moment she wants nothing but to brutally kick him out of the car and drive away, without a driver’s licence and everything. Getting in a car accident is probably a better fate than this - when she looks out, Taeyeon is standing on the driveway across from theirs, looking frozen in place. She’s already in her school uniform, folded umbrella dangling off her arm. Tiffany realizes that she must have woken up earlier, hoping to catch Tiffany before she left, and is hit by a wave of guilt.

She looks so tiny somehow, fists clenched by her sides and eyes big. Tiffany quickly looks away from the window, not wanting to catch her eyes. She can’t hear what Taeyeon’s reply is, but soon her father is shouting again.

“It’s okay, I’m dropping Tiffany off too. Come on now,” he says.

“Dad..!” Tiffany hisses, to which her father replies in a startlingly serious tone.