blackpink oneshots

let me be your fire || chaelisa

After hurting herself onstage, Lisa needs a little pep talk.

-

Performing live is a crush of sensory overload: backing tracks booming in her ears, heat sticking her hair to the back of her neck, the pulsing scream of the fans and the spotlights scattering across the stage and winking off the sequins on their costumes. Being this alive is delirious, almost too much to feel without breaking.

"MAKE SOME NOISEEEE," Chaeyoung demands of the crowd, and they do, lightsticks flashing in spastic swoops in between the flashes of the spotlights.

Lisa has practiced this choreography so many times: step back, shoulder shake, lean, lean, lean - but suddenly the controlled slide onto the stage explodes in spike of pain up her ankle and breath whooshes out of her lungs as her back collides with the floor. Lights swerve in and out of her eyes, blinding her; she tries to stand up, but the world tilts around her and she half-collapses back onto her elbows with a groan.

Sparkles appear above her, glittering in every direction and at first she thinks she's about to pass out, but then she realizes it's Chaeyoung, trying to yell something above the backtrack and the fans screaming. She can't hear anything, but she looks up mutely and holds up her hand, and ignores the stab of pain all up her leg as Chaeyoung pulls her back onto her feet.

Manager Oppa is charging out from the side - he's gesturing at her, asking if she needs to stop, but she shakes her head, gritting her teeth against another wave of dizziness. Two more songs: she can do this. She is not going to hobble off stage like this, in front of all their fans who came to see a show.

He doesn't look happy, but he lets her go, and Chaeyoung turns them to face the crowd, holding their joined hands up as the fans' cheering swells into a roar. They're skipping going to the start of DDDD, and she half-jogs over to take her position.

The next two songs are a haze of pain, her ankle throbbing in time to the beat and sweat breaking out on the backs of her arms and just under her hairline - she freestyles her last dance solo to avoid a series of jumps, and she can see Jennie giving her a sideways look but if she has to land on that ankle she is going to pass out.

The lights go down, and she makes it halfway to the stage door before she passes out anyway.

•••

She wakes up in a mint green gown in a white bed, makeup scrubbed off her face and her stage clothes nowhere to be found. Her ankle throbs, but not with the same sickening pain; under the blankets she can feel that it's been bandaged.

Beside the bed is a small collection of flowers and balloons, a fuzzy teddy bear, and a few cards. Most of them are from fans, but right at the front there's a big card from her groupmates, attached, inexplicably, to an oversized stuffed monkey.

Frowning, she picks up the card: it's full of ridiculous cartoon drawings and get-well wishes, with a PS at the bottom in Jisoo's handwriting: Monkeys are the best dancers in the animal kingdom...except for you!

When she checks her phone, the four of them have all spammed her with ridiculous compilation videos of animals dancing to ridiculous American pop songs, which keeps her busy until the nurse finally arrives with their manager and a pair of physical therapists. As it turns out, Lisa has a sprained ankle, which would have been a small problem but turned into a big one when she kept dancing on it through two more songs and an encore.

She's going to have physical therapy. She's going to need a great big foot brace. They're going to have to cancel a dance show. Their manager rattles off the list of problems, scolding her for not taking care of herself, but she can't help thinking of how many times she's been shuffled around from appearance to appearance without more than a few hours of sleep in the back of a van. Apparently, the line between dedication and carelessness is whether or not you can hide the problem with a layer of concealer and a cup of coffee.

She pulls the plush monkey off the table and curls up in the blankets, hugging it to her chest.

•••

The next day, the rest of the group is allowed to come and visit her, bringing even more balloons and encouraging reports from the fans.

"They support you," Jennie says earnestly, "they really do. We got right on top of explaining everything that happened - "

"She was on her phone before she even took a shower after the show," Jisoo cuts in to complain, "it was a full-on Communications Director attack," and Jennie shoves her sideways.

There are even weird memes to laugh over. They get so giggly that the nurses come in to shoo the other girls away in the name of letting her rest, but Chaeyoung begs a few more minutes with a promise to be quiet.

Her eyes flash, and for a moment, she's Rosie again, not Chaeyoung. "You're not taking any crap for this from the label, are you?"

Lisa's silence is all the confirmation she needs.

"You can't let them do that to you. Stand up to them. Tell them you're not going to take it."

She thinks of Chaeyoung, refusing to give in to plastic surgery and then writing a song to celebrate it to auditoriums full of girls screaming along.

"I'm not you." She squeezes the monkey a little tighter. "I can't just do those things."

"Sure you can." Chaeyoung reaches into her bag and pulls out something huge and gold and glittery. "I even brought you a good-luck charm, see?"

It's Lisa's matching necklace that she bought for herself and Chaeyoung during trainee days, a simple necklace with each other's initials on it. She'd insisted on keeping it for as long as she lived, not as jewelery, but to wear when life gets hard and Lisa needs a little boost from Chaeyoung.

Chaeyoung grins at her, and then reaches down into her bag again. "Hey, I brought you something else, too. Move over, we're watching a dumb movie until I have to go get ready for this interview."

She scoots over to the side of the bed so Chaeyoung can climb in under the covers with her, careful of her leg, and settles her laptop across both of their legs. Her shampoo hides the flat, hospital-antiseptic smell of the room, and her clothes are comfortingly out of place in the muted world of white and pastels.

She doesn't remember falling asleep on Chaeyoung's shoulder, but when she wakes up, the necklace is still stuck to her skin under the hospital gown, the monkey nestled in the crook of her arm, and there's a note in Chaeyoung's handwriting on the table: when the night gets dark let me be your fire.